The Red House (13 page)

The air is warm and still. I smell the churned-up earth. The land around us isn’t just houseless, it isn’t even fields any more, now I can see that. Even the grass is gone.

‘I’m sorry, Imogen. You shouldn’t have to see it like this.’ Maxwell draws me against his chest. I ride his breathing for a little while.

‘Who was she?’

He knows who I mean. ‘Dora Keene. Sings alto.’

I shove him back. ‘I don’t care what her fucking vocal range is!’

Maxwell can shout just as loudly. ‘That’s all I know about her! Nothing else! She’s nothing to me but a voice. What do you want me to say about her?’

‘What do you think I want? I want you to explain to me how this happened. This is the second accusation I’ve had to put up with.’

‘That
you
’ve put up with? You? These things haven’t happened to you. They’ve happened to
me
. What the hell, Imogen? We didn’t even know each other for the first one.’

‘Exactly. So how do I know what really happened?’

‘Nothing. Nothing happened because I don’t touch my students. I don’t touch teenagers. And I haven’t touched anyone but you since the day we met.’

My body wilts. I’m wrung out. I don’t know what’s finally broken me: the accusation against Maxwell; Patrick Bell, who might be scamming me or might now be lost to me; Cambridge, and memories, and my childhood home razed. I cover my face and cry into my hands. He touches me gingerly, gently. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I demand.

‘
Wrong
with me?’ he asks, incredulous. Almost angry.

I only need to push a little harder to get the reaction I need. ‘If you like grown women and not teenagers, then maybe you need to start acting like it.’

Maxwell slams the flat of his hand onto the hood of his car. ‘I thought she was you,’ he chokes out. ‘I came here for you. I heard a scream. I ran into the red barn and she almost fucking killed me. But I thought it was you, so I climbed up into that loft. I climbed up after
you
. That’s why I was there.’

‘So you’re making this my fault? If you’d agreed to come with me tonight to start with, we would have been together. You wouldn’t be able to claim to have mistaken a fifteen-year-old for your nearly ancient fiancée!’

‘I didn’t have a clear view. She was skulking up in that loft. Size and hair and general female-ness were all I had. And so what if she wasn’t you? She was frightened and
defending herself. Would you prefer it if I walked away from that?’

‘I’d prefer that we trust one another enough to face things together. I’d prefer that we not fight in shopping malls, and that you give me some credit for reasonable judgement, and that I not run away, pouting like a child. I’d prefer to start today over and that we both face it differently!’

Both our chests heave from shouting.

Maxwell touches his fingertips to my cheek. When I don’t flinch, he pushes his whole hand round the back of my neck, and pulls me to him.

Our eyes adjust to the dark.

‘You said the girl was called Dora Keene?’ I ask.

‘Yes.’

‘The Inspector asked me about a Davies family, not Keene.’

‘Fiona Davies. Another alto. It’s her house.’

‘
Another
girl?’ All my breath whooshes out of me. I take a step back.

‘I know, Im. I know. That’s how I felt, too. But I can’t force you to believe me. That’s up to you.’

I don’t want to have to make that decision.

‘Do you need me to quit teaching? Is that what you need?’ he asks, apparently rhetorically, because he doesn’t leave me room to answer. ‘I can’t make a proper living as just a musician. I’d like to, but I really can’t. Shall we live like
La Bohème
, in some attic, while I compose? We can do that, without any teenagers around, but I don’t think that’s what you want.’

‘It’s not what I want.’

‘It’s not what I want, either. I want you, Im. And I want
Cambridge. I want to marry you in the chapel and work at St Catharine’s. I want it, but I can’t make you give it to me.’ He lifts then drops his shoulders.

He really doesn’t know
. He doesn’t notice the crushes and the looks he gets. He’s a musician, and all that that implies: sensitive, expressive, nimble fingers. He has that light-heartedness that youngest and only children have, used to being indulged, forgiven, and adored.
He’s happy
, I remember. I saw it in him in Spain, on that beach. He was happy, if shy, and in awe of me. I’d been glad then that I’d worn the red bathing suit, that it was wet, that my recent boyfriend had broken up with me two weeks before. I feel age pushing me in the back. I have to make progress. I won’t be beautiful forever.

We get into Maxwell’s car to drive back the hotel.

He explains more fully what had happened: that Dora had been locked in, had triggered an alarm, had defended herself. ‘He had a shotgun,’ Maxwell says.

I shudder. ‘The builder?’

‘He used it to blast open the locked barn door.’

I wrinkle my forehead and ask the obvious: ‘If the dead man’s the one who locked it, why would he have had to shoot it to get it open?’

Maxwell nods. ‘Dora assumed he was after her. But I don’t think he was, Imogen. I think he was trying to help her. The Inspector isn’t stupid. She’s thinking the same thing. If he didn’t lock her in, who did? Who else was there?
Me
.’

‘Or Patrick Bell,’ I realise.

‘I didn’t want to be the one to say it. But, yes, Patrick Bell. She looks like you, Imogen. Dora Keene, the girl
locked in the barn, she looks like you: same build, same hair. I’m sorry, Im. I know you were hoping that he was your brother.’

‘He still could be.’ Now I’m crying again. The loss of the house is nothing compared to this. ‘He could be my brother, and do bad things. Maybe falling down the stairs that night did something to his brain …’

‘He’s probably just a scammer, Im. Some creep. The police will get him. Sebastian’s still out there, as good as you remember him.’

I sob frantically, my shoulders bouncing in little shrugs.

The girls come downstairs together, dressed. They don’t speak, just sit, on the same side of the kitchen table.

Gwen makes hot chocolate, and I cook eggs and toast. We’re in constant motion: scooping, stirring, serving. Our smiles are tight, and Dora smiles back, and sips, and bites into what’s put in front of her. Fiona is quiet, not interested in her food. Gwen nudges orange juice at her.

The outside sounds have started up. Today is recycling pickup day, but our boxes are still full at the foot of the kitchen island. The bin lorry rumbles outside, coming towards us.

‘Mum, do you want me to do the rubbish?’ Dora asks, rising.

Gwen makes a barking sound that I realise is a single laugh.

‘Honey, we can skip a week,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

Dora’s eyebrows knit together. The lorry’s grumble is nearer. She gets out from behind the table and heaves up the blue box of empty tins and bottles.

I reach out. ‘Sweetheart, you don’t have to …’

She waddles to the door, legs wide because the box is heavy. She lifts up one knee to rebalance things. Tears are running down her face; she can’t wipe them because she needs both hands. I sprint ahead and open the door for her. I don’t try to take the box away. She’d only wrestle me.
Rightly so
, I realise.

When I’d hurt my hand, Gwen had tried to help by brainstorming different kinds of work I could switch to. I didn’t want to look at the pages she’d printed out off the computer, about police desk jobs or training new cops or going back to university. We’d argued about my ‘inflexibility’, that was Gwen’s word. She just wanted to help, she said, and I wouldn’t let her.

Dora had taken Gwen’s side.
Why can’t you just try?
she’d begged me, during one embarrassing dinner. She and Gwen hadn’t understood my resistance. They’d thought that they were both in the same place as me, and that we all needed to figure out what we ‘want to be when we grow up’, Gwen because Dora’s not a child for her to look after any more, and Dora because she has to choose her A-level subjects. They wanted to know why I didn’t just pick something new and do it, like they were.

I think Dora, at least, understands now.

Dora needs to take out the recycling. It’s bad enough that she’s changed; she can’t bear the world around her changing too. It’s good that the rubbish pickup still comes every week, that there are things outside her that she can depend on. She’s not strong enough right now to hold herself together, but if everything around her stays like it was, then that can force her into shape from the outside. It can hold her up. That’s what I need too. Jumping into a new job, a new
world, would only make me frighteningly formless. It would make me so new that I wouldn’t be myself any more.

Dora doesn’t make it in time. The lorry is just pulling away. She could run ahead and dump our bottles and cans into someone else’s bin, but that’s not the point.

She puts the box down on the pavement and hugs herself. She has her dressing gown on over her clothes and it’s flapping in the breeze. I stand behind her, and wrap my arms over hers.

The lorry is leaving the street now. Beyond it, coming towards it, someone pounds on a car horn. The beeping car squeezes past before the lorry’s finished the turn and I’m amazed that the car’s wing mirror doesn’t crack off. It speeds down our little street and comes to a stop in front of us. I tense. The sun is reflecting off the windows and I can’t see who’s inside.

Legs slide out first, in pointy-toed shoes and shiny tights. The rest of Mrs Davies pops out all at once, fast, like she’d been compressed in there. She pushes past us, brushing Dora with a crackling static charge. Our door is open, and the woman charges in. Gwen hops to one side just in time.

A minute later, the woman drags Fiona out, pulling on her arm, not even her hand. Fiona’s shoulder looks wrong, like it’s being twisted.

‘Stop it!’ Dora says, stepping out in front of them on the path.

Mrs Davies is wild-eyed. Her hand moves fast and connects hard with Dora’s face. This isn’t just a smack of fingers against cheek that makes a sound and a sting; this is the palm of Mrs Davies hand against Dora’s jaw, pushing her head halfway around.

I lunge forward, but a small, furry body hurtles faster than me. Jesse has got out of the back.

Mrs Davies shrieks and backs away. Jesse gets her mouth around her skirt and pulls, growling. Gwen is yelling too, and I get Jesse’s collar. She lets go at my sharp command. We’re all panting. Dora’s rubbing her neck.

‘Sorry,’ Fiona says, and walks to the kerb. She stops at the car and waits, shoulders hunched. Her mother follows, and they get in together, both doors slamming at once, like snapping jaws.

I’m the one who gave in and said that Dora could perform. Chloe had finally called me back and assured me that Maxwell Gant won’t be there; they’ll have someone else to conduct and a pianist accompanying them instead. I was relieved to be able to let Dora go. I played music when I was young; I understand.

At the concert hall, Dora plunges into the crowd. She doesn’t look back. Gwen and I stake out a spot on one of the vinyl sofas.

It’s been three decades since I played Shostakovich and Berlioz in this place, and the blue lobby and orange auditorium are as they were then. There are more kids playing, now. It’s busier, seems to skew younger, but has the same energy. When you do it right, making music is a whole-body activity: breath, spine … Everything gets to be part of the work.

I wipe my forehead. It’s a hot day and all of the bodies crammed in here make it worse. The instruments attached to the children and teens give them strange, humped, exaggerated silhouettes as they mill about the lobby.

Fiona appears in the doorway. She’s pale, and flashes
quick glances all over the room. Suddenly, she turns back to look over her shoulder, then pushes herself forward into the mob.

Gwen nudges me. She wants us to move away from the entrance. No sense setting ourselves up for confrontation, assuming that Fiona’s mother isn’t far behind.

All of them from the formerly
a cappella
group sit together in the front of the auditorium. Just before their turn, they exit and line up in the wings.

The girls file on, curling into a half-circle around the replacement conductor. She cues the piano and they start low, all on the same note.

I close my eyes for a moment when they split into harmony. I’d almost forgotten what this feels like.

I hear it before I see it, just by half a second. A voice drops out. Then, Fiona crumples, straight down, accordioned at the knees and at her waist. The girls all trail off but the piano pounds on for another line, before the accompanist, too, stops. The last chord hangs in the air, unresolved.

The house lights snap on. I can’t see Dora clearly, behind the other girls. Gwen and I are near the back, up high. Gwen has already headed into the aisle. I stand up but stay here, trying to see what’s going on from this better vantage point.

The girls are shoulder to shoulder. It’s hot. Stage lights make it worse. Crowds make it worse. This building has been full of people all day, every one of them generating the heat of effort. Dora touches her forehead. I want to reach out and steady her but I’m too far away.

The director is calming the audience, asking them to return to their seats or to stay in them. A parent-helper wearing an
usher sash brings the girls cups of water. Fiona’s mother is shaking her shoulders. Her body bounces but she doesn’t open her eyes. Someone dabs water onto her face. Her mother keeps shaking her. Someone else is trying to make her stop.

Dora covers her mouth and looks around wildly. Realisation hits me at the same moment.
Why would Fiona’s grandmother need pills? Could someone that delicate even swallow that many?
There are easier ways to help someone who wants to die.

Dora wails.

Most people are sitting as told so I’m able to get down the aisle fast, with the phone to my ear.

‘Get off the stage!’ the parent-helper who brought the drinks yells at me, trying to clear everyone away. If she gets her way, Fiona and her mother will be left alone, on display like the last scene of an opera.

Gwen has Dora by the arms and faces her like a mirror, breathing deeply until Dora mimics her and calms down.

I get there. ‘She’s taken pills,’ Dora tells me. ‘You have to call a doctor.’

‘I’m on with 999.’ I turn back to the call.

Dora’s kneeling with Fiona now. She won’t let Gwen pull her upright.

The ambulance is on its way. I lean down to Dora. ‘What about you? Did you take anything?’

‘No!’ she insists. Her look of spontaneous offence and genuine horror assuages my worst fear.

That parent-helper is still trying to clear the stage but no one is listening. Fiona isn’t moving except to breathe. She’s still breathing.