The Safe House (28 page)

Thirty-Nine

My film excursion, all that was cancelled. It was just Elsie and me at home once more and I gave her exactly what she wanted. Tinned rice pudding with golden syrup dripped on to it in the shape of a baby horse.

‘It
is
a horse,’ I insisted. ‘Look, there’s the tail and there are the pointy ears.’

It was an overwhelming effort but I made myself be casual.

‘And how was Finn?’

‘Fine,’ said Elsie heedlessly, otherwise engaged in spiralling the golden-syrup pattern in the rice pudding with her spoon.

‘That looks lovely, Elsie. Are you going to eat some of it? Good. What did you and Finn do?’

‘We saw chickens.’

I manoeuvred Elsie into the bath and I blew bubbles with my fingers.

‘That’s a giant bubble, Mummy.’

‘Shall I try and do an even bigger one? What did you and Finn talk about?’

‘We talked and we talked and we talked.’

‘There’s two little baby bubbles. What did you talk
about
?’

‘We talked about our house.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘Can I sleep in your bed, Mummy?’

I carried her through to my bed and I gratefully felt her warm wetness through my shirt. She told me to take off my clothes and I took them off and we lay beneath the sheets together. I found a brush on the bedside table and we brushed each other’s hair. We sang some songs and I taught her to clip up, the game in which I turned my big fist and she turned her little fist into a stone, some paper or scissors. Stone blunts scissors, scissors cut paper and paper wraps stone. Each time we did it, she waited for me to show what I was going to do and then made her own decision so that she could win and I accused her of cheating and we both laughed. It was an intensely happy time and I had to stop myself at every moment from running out of the room and howling. I might have done it but I couldn’t bear the notion of letting Elsie out of my sight for a moment.

‘When can we see Fing again?’ she asked, out of nowhere.

I couldn’t think what to say.

‘It’s funny that you talked about our house with… with Finn,’ I said. ‘It must be because you played such lovely games there with her.’

‘No,’ said Elsie firmly.

I couldn’t help smiling at her.

‘Why not?’

‘It wasn’t
that
house, Mummy.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It was our safe house.’

‘How lovely, my darling.’ I held Elsie close against my body.

‘Ow, you’re hurting.’

‘Sorry, my love. And did she put things into the safe house?’

‘Yes,’ said Elsie, who had started to examine my eyebrow. ‘There’s a white hair there.’

I felt a vertiginous nausea as if I were staring into a black chasm.

‘Yes, I know. Funny, isn’t it?’ Without disturbing Elsie, I felt behind me for the pencil and pad of paper that I had seen next to the phone on the bedside table. ‘Shall we go into the safe house?’

‘What colour is your eye?’

‘Ow!’ I howled as an interested finger poked my left eye.

‘Sorry, Mummy.’

‘It’s blue.’

‘What’s mine?’

‘Blue. Elsie, shall we go into the safe house and have a look? Elsie?’

‘Oh, all right,’ she said like a truculent adolescent.

‘All right, my darling, close your eyes. That’s right. Let’s walk up the path. What’s on the door?’

‘There’s round leaves.’

‘Round leaves? That’s a funny thing. Let’s open the door and see what’s down on the doormat.’

‘There’s a glass of milk.’

I noted it down.

‘A glass of milk on a doormat?’ I said in my best nursery-school teacher’s tone. ‘How strange! Let’s walk carefully round the glass of milk, without spilling it, and into the kitchen. What’s in the kitchen?’

‘A drum.’

‘A drum in the kitchen? What a mad house! Let’s go and see what’s on TV, shall we ? What’s on the television ?’

‘A pear.’

‘That’s nice. You like pears, don’t you? But let’s not have a bite of the pear yet. Don’t touch it. I saw you touch it.’ Elsie giggled. ‘Let’s go upstairs. What’s on the stairs?’

‘A drum.’

‘Another drum. Are you sure?’

‘Ye-e-es, Mum,’ Elsie said impatiently.

‘All right. This is a lovely game, isn’t it? Now, I wonder what’s in the bath.’

‘A ring.’

‘That’s a funny thing to have in a bath. Maybe it fell off your finger when you were splashing in the bath?’

‘It did not!’ Elsie shouted.

‘Now we’ll get out of the bath and go into Elsie’s bed. What’s in the bed?’

Elsie laughed.

‘There’s a swan in the bed.’

‘A swan in a bed. How is Elsie going to get to sleep if there’s a swan in her bed?’ Elsie’s eyes were starting to nutter, her head wobbling. She would be asleep in a second. ‘Now let’s go into Mummy’s bedroom. Who’s in Mummy’s bed?’

Now Elsie’s voice sounded as if she was drifting away.

‘Mummy’s in Mummy’s bed,’ she said softly. ‘And Elsie’s in Mummy’s arms. And their eyes are closed.’

‘That’s beautiful,’ I said. But I saw that Elsie was already asleep. I leaned across and stroked some strands of hair away from her face. Paul, the mysterious absent proprietor of the flat, had a desk in the corner of his bedroom and I tiptoed over to it and sat down with the notebook. I brushed my neck gently with my fingertips and felt the pulse in my carotid artery. It must have been close to 120. Today the murderer of my lover had kidnapped my little daughter. Why hadn’t she killed her or done something with her? Suddenly I rushed to the bathroom. I didn’t vomit. I took a few deep slow breaths, but it was a close thing. I returned to the desk, switched on the small light and scrutinized my notes.

The murderer, X, had seized my daughter, risking capture, and all so that she could play one of the silly little mind games we used to play together at my house in the country with her. When Elsie told me what they had done, I expected something grisly, but instead there was this stupid collection of mundane objects: round leaves, a glass of milk, a drum, a pear, another drum, a ring, a swan and then Elsie and me in my bed with our eyes closed. What are round leaves? I drew little sketches of them. I took the first letter of each and played around with them uselessly. I tried to make some connection with where each object had been put. Was there something deliberately paradoxical about a swan in a bed, about a glass of milk on the doormat? Perhaps this nameless woman had put random objects into my child’s mind as a means of demonstrating her power.

I left the scrawled piece of paper and returned to bed and lay next to Elsie, listening for the sound of her breath, feeling the expansion and contraction of her chest. Just when I was feeling that I had gone a whole night without sleep and wondering how I could possibly get through a whole day, I was woken up by Elsie pulling my eyelids apart. I gave a groan.

‘What’s happening today, Elsie?’

‘Don’t know.’

It was the first day at her new school. On the phone my mother had been disapproving. Elsie is not a piece of furniture that can just be moved out of London and then back again whenever you want. She needs stability and a home. Yes, I knew what my mother was saying. That she needed a father and brothers and sisters and, preferably, a mother as unlike me as possible. I was brisk and cheerful with my mother on the phone and cried when she had rung off and got cross, depressed and then felt better. The primary school was obliged to take Elsie because the flat we were staying in virtually overlooked the playground.

I felt an ache in my stomach as Elsie, in a new yellow dress, with her hair combed flat and tied in a ribbon, walked across the road with me to her new school. I saw small children arriving and greeting each other. How could Elsie survive in this? We went to the office and a middle-aged woman smiled at Elsie and Elsie glared at the middle-aged woman. She led us along to the Reception class, held in an annexe. The teacher was a young woman, with dark hair, and a calm manner that I immediately envied. She came over immediately and hugged Elsie.

‘Hello, Elsie. Do you want Mummy to stay for a little bit?’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Elsie with a thunderous brow.

‘Well, give her a hug bye-bye, then.’

I held her and felt her small hands on the back of my neck.

‘All right?’ I asked.

She nodded.

‘Elsie, why are the leaves round?’

She smiled.

‘
We
had round leaves on our door.’

‘When?’

‘For Father Christmas.’

Round leaves. She meant a garland. I was unable to speak. I kissed Elsie on her forehead and ran out of the classroom and down the corridor. Emergency, I shouted at a disapproving teacher. I sprinted across the road, up the stairs to the flat. There was a pain in my chest and a bad taste in my mouth. I was unfit. Almost everything was in storage but I had a couple of cardboard boxes full of Elsie’s books. I tipped one of them on to the floor and scrambled among them. It wasn’t there. I tipped the other one over. There.
The Twelve Days of Christmas Picture Book.
I took it into the bedroom and sat at the desk. That was it. The swans a-swimming. Five gold rings. The drummers drumming. And a par-tri-idge in a pear tree. But what about the glass of milk? I flicked through the book, wondering if I was on the wrong track somehow. No. I allowed myself a half-smile. Eight maids a-milking. So, a contorted reference to a Christmas song. What was the point of it?

I jotted them down in the order Elsie had visited them: eight maids a-milking, nine drummers drumming, a partridge in a pear tree, nine drummers drumming again, five gold rings, seven swans swimming. I stared at the list and then suddenly the objects seemed to recede and the numerals to float free. Eight, nine, one, nine, five, seven. Such a familiar number. I grabbed the phone and dialled. Nothing. Of course. I dialled directory inquiries and got the Otley area code, then dialled again. There was no ring, just a continuous tone. Had it been cut off when I moved out? In confusion I rang Rupert at Stamford CID.

‘I was about to call you,’ were his first words.

‘I wanted to tell you…’ I stopped myself. ‘Why?’

‘Nobody’s been hurt, there’s nothing to worry about, but I’m afraid there’s been a fire. Your house burned down last night.’ I couldn’t speak. ‘Are you there, Sam?’

‘Yes. How? What happened?’

‘I don’t know. But it’s been so dry and hot. There’s been a rash of fires. Could be some electrical fault. We’ll have a careful look. We’ll know soon.’

‘Yes.’

‘Funny thing you should ring just now. What did you want to say?’

I thought of Elsie’s words as she had fallen asleep last night.

‘Mummy’s in Mummy’s bed. And Elsie’s in Mummy’s arms. And their eyes are closed.’ Were we asleep and safe or were we dead and cold like the pairs of bodies that X had already looked down on? Leo and Liz Mackenzie. Danny and Finn, brought together in death.

‘Nothing really,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to see how things were going.’

‘It’s progressing,’ he said.

I didn’t believe him.

Forty

Mark, the young estate agent, rang me later in the afternoon.

‘I hope you’ve got an alibi,’ he said cheerily.

‘Now, look here…’

‘Joke, Dr Laschen. No harm was done.’

‘My house was burned down.’

‘Nobody was hurt, that’s the main thing. But the other thing, not that I’d put it that way myself, but the main thing with a silver lining is that you are insured and some people might at a time like this point out that you will do better by your house burning down than you would have done by selling it.’

‘How can that be?’

‘It’s not that I’d say it myself, but some properties have been slow to move off our books and the sales tend to go to properties that are competitively priced. Very competitively priced.’

‘But I thought my house was so extremely saleable.’

‘Theoretically speaking, it was.’

‘You sound very chipper about the whole thing. Were you insured as well?’

‘Inasmuch as we are required to take certain financial precautions.’

‘So we both seem to have done rather well out of this disaster.’

‘There may be one or two forms to sign on our behalf. Perhaps we could discuss them over a drink.’

‘Send them. Bye, Mark.’

I replaced the receiver wondering whether the fire had been a warning or a perverse gift from a woman who knew my pyromaniacal tendencies, or both.

‘She’s been fine,’ said Miss Olds when I went to collect Elsie. ‘A bit tired this afternoon, but she sat on my lap and we read a book together. Didn’t we, Elsie?’

Elsie, who had given me a casual wave when she saw me, had wandered over to the home corner, where she and another little girl were wordlessly arranging plastic food on plastic plates and pretending to eat it. She looked up at the teacher’s words, but only nodded.

‘Things have been very, ah, disruptive for her recently,’ I said. My heart was still racing in my chest, like a motor car revving up wildly before a race. I clenched my fists together and tried to breathe more slowly.

‘I know,’ said Miss Olds with a smile. She had read the papers too.

I looked over at my daughter again, stopped myself from running across and picking her up and holding her too tight.

‘Yes, so I’m anxious for her to feel safe.’

Miss Olds looked at me sympathetically. She had deep brown eyes and a subtle mole just above her top lip. ‘I think she’s settling in here.’

‘I’m glad,’ said. Then: ‘Strangers can’t easily just get in and wander around here, can they?’

Miss Olds put her hand lightly on my arm. ‘No,’ she said, ‘they can’t. Though there are limits to the security you can have at a school where two hundred children arrive every morning.’

I grimaced, nodded. Stinging tears fuzzed my vision.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘She’s fine.’

‘Thanks.’

I called to Elsie, held out my hand, and she plodded over in her buttercup-yellow dress, blue felt-tip in a scar down her flushed cheek.

‘Come on, my poppet.’

‘Are we going home?’

‘Yes, home.’

‘At the heart of it are people who were not what they seemed.’ That is what I had said, so slyly, to the journalist. It had been intended as a warning to Rupert Baird but it had been read and taken as a warning by X, whoever she was. She had demonstrated once more that nothing was safe. My house was burned down and she had penetrated the mind of my daughter.

When we got home I put Elsie in a bath, to wash everything off her. She was in there pottering and talking to herself while I sat on the stairs outside and stared at the wall, telling a story to myself. I knew nothing about the girl but I knew a bit about Michael Daley. It was possible that if I investigated his life, I might find the shadow from which the girl had emerged. And I thought of the final image in Elsie’s safe house. Mummy and Elsie lying asleep in each other’s arms. There were two possible ends to the story. Elsie and Mummy dead together. Or Elsie and Mummy living happy ever after. No, that was too much. Living. That was enough. My reverie was interrupted by the ringing of the phone. Baird, of course.

‘I hope you’ve got an alibi,’ he said jocularly, as the estate agent had done before him.

‘You’ll never catch me, copper,’ I replied, and he laughed. Then there was a pause. ‘Is that it?’ I asked.

‘We heard that there was an incident yesterday.’

So they were keeping track of me. This was the moment of decision, but I listened to the splashing and knew that I had already made up my mind.

‘It was a misunderstanding, Rupert. Elsie wandered off in the park. It was nothing.’

‘Are you sure, Sam?’

We were like two chess players testing each other’s defences before agreeing a draw and giving up and going home.

‘Yes, I’m sure, Rupert.’

I could sense the relief at the other end of the line and he said goodbye warmly, saying that he would be in touch, and I knew that this would be the last conversation we ever had.

I lifted Elsie out of the bath and sat her on the sofa in her dressing gown and put a plate of toast and Marmite on her lap.

‘Can I have a video?’

‘Later perhaps, after supper.’

‘Can you read me a book?’

‘Soon I will. First I thought we could play a game together.’

‘Can we play musical bumps?’

‘That’s hard when there’s just the two of us, and one of us has to be in charge of the music. I tell you what, it’s your birthday in a couple of weeks’ time, we’ll play that at your party.’

‘Party? Am I going to have a party? Can I really have a party?’ Her pale face shone under its smudgy freckles. The tip of her pink tongue licked a smear of Marmite from her lip.

‘Listen, that’s part of the game, Elsie. We’re going to plan your party and we’re going to put the most important party things into the safe house.’

‘So we don’t forget!’

‘That’s it, so we don’t forget. Where do we start?’

‘The front door.’ Elsie was wriggling happily on the sofa, one Marmite hand in mine.

‘Right! Let’s take off the garland of leaves. It’s way past Christmas. What should we put there instead, if you’re having a party?’

‘I know, balloons!’

‘Balloons: a red one and a green one and a yellow one and a blue one. Maybe they’ll have faces on them!’ In my mind, I had an image of a line of little girls in their pink and yellow party dresses, all there for Elsie. I remembered the parties I’d been to as a child: sticky chocolate cake and pink-iced biscuits, crisps and fizzy drinks; pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and pass-the-parcel so that everyone won something, dancing games, Simon Says, and at the end a party bag containing one small pack of Smarties, one plastic thing that would be adored for an hour and forgotten for ever, a whistle, a flat shiny balloon. Elsie should have them all, all those cheap and tacky things. ‘And what’s next?’

‘The doormat, the doormat where Fing put a glass of milk.’

‘Yes, well, I think we’ve knocked over that milk by now.’ Elsie giggled. ‘What shall we put there instead?’

‘Um, what can go on a doormat, Mummy?’

‘Well, there’s someone we are very fond of who’s creeping nearer to your Marmite all the time so mind out, and he likes to sleep on the doormat.’

‘Anatoly!’

‘He can be our watch-cat. What shall we put in the kitchen? How about something we’ve cooked?’

Elsie jumped up and down, so that the plate slithered and I caught the toast stickily on my palm. ‘My cake! My cake in the shape of a horse house.’

I remembered. The one at a friend’s birthday party with the walls made of chocolate flakes and plastic horses in the middle, and Elsie had been sick half-way through. I hugged her.

‘Horse cake. Now, what’s on the TV?’ She puckered her brow. ‘How about my birthday present to you ? Something you’ve wanted for a long time, maybe something that sings.’

Her body went still.

‘Really, Mummy, do you promise? Can I really?’

‘We’ll choose it together this weekend. A canary on top of the TV then, singing away.’

‘Can I call him Yellowy?’

‘No. Now, what shall we put on the stairs?’

She was firm here: ‘I want Thelma and Kirsty and Sarah and Granny and Grandpa, because they’re all coming to my party. And that girl I played with today at school. And the other one too, the one you saw me with. I want to send them invitations.’

‘All right, all your party guests on the stairs. What’s in the bath?’

‘That’s easy. My red boat with the propeller that never sinks, not even in big waves.’

‘Good.’ Another boat sailed into my mind, broken and tipping into the crested sea. ‘Where next?’

‘My bedroom.’

‘What shall we put in your bed then, Elsie?’

‘Can we put my teddy there? Can we get him out of the packing box so he doesn’t miss the party?’

‘Of course. I should never have put him there in the first place. And last of all, I know what’s in my bed.’

‘What?’

‘We are. You and me. We’re lying in bed together wide awake and the party’s over and all your guests have gone and we’re talking about all the birthdays you’re going to have.’

‘Are you very old, Mummy?’

‘No, just grown-up, not old.’

‘So you’re not going to die soon?’

‘No, I’m going to live for a long time.’

‘When I’m as old as you, will you be dead then?’

‘Maybe you will have children then, and I’ll be a granny.’

‘Can we always live together, Mummy?’

‘As long as you want to.’

‘And can I watch a video now?’

‘Yes.’

I shut the door on
Mary Poppins
and went into the kitchen, where I pulled the window wide open. The sound of London invaded the room: schoolchildren on their way home, giggling or quarrelling, syncopated music from a ghetto-blaster, the roar and impatient rev of car engines, a horn pumping into the stop-start queue, an ignored and insistent alarm, sirens in the distance, overhead a plane. I breathed in the smell of honeysuckle, exhaust fumes, frying garlic, urban heat, the smell of the city.

She was out there somewhere, in that wonderful ungraspable mess, out in the crowd. Perhaps she was close by or perhaps she was gone for ever. I wondered if I would ever see her again. Perhaps one day, across a street, or in a queue at an airport or across a square in a foreign town, I’d glimpse a smooth face tilted upwards in the way I knew so well and stop and shake my head and walk quickly on. I’d see her in my dreams, smiling sweetly at me still. Her freedom was a small price to pay for Elsie’s safety. And I’d look at the newspapers. She had escaped but she hadn’t escaped with the money, not any of it. What would she do now? I closed my eyes and breathed in, out, in, out, to the roar of London. Danny had died but we – me and Elsie – we had come through. That was something.

The sound of Mary Poppins singing brightly to the children and to my child drifted in from the living room. I pushed open the door. Elsie was sitting back on the sofa, legs tucked up under her knees, glaring at the screen. I knelt beside her and she patted me absent-mindedly on the head.

‘Can you watch this with me, Mummy, the way Fing used to?’ So I stayed and watched, until the very end.

The following morning, the underground was more than usually crowded. I felt hot inside all my layers of clothing, and I tried to distract myself by thinking about other things as I swayed against the bodies and the train clattered through the darkness. I thought about how my hair needed cutting. I could book it for lunch-time. I tried to remember if there was enough food in the house for tonight, or maybe we could get a takeaway. Or go dancing. I remembered I hadn’t taken my pill this morning and must do it as soon as I got to work. The thought of the pill made me think of the IUD and yesterday’s meeting, the memory of which had left me more unwilling than usual to get out of bed this morning.

A skinny young woman with a large, red-faced baby squeezed her way down the train. No one stood up for her, and she stood with her child on her angular hip, held in place by the bodies all round her. Only the baby’s hot, cross face was exposed. Sure enough, it soon started yelling, hoarse, drawn-out wails that made its red cheeks purple, but the woman ignored it, as if she was beyond noticing. She had a glazed expression on her pallid face. Although her baby was dressed for an expedition to the South Pole, she wore just a thin dress and an unzipped anorak. I tested myself for maternal instinct. Negative. Then I looked round at all the men and women in suits. I leaned down to a man in a lovely cashmere coat, till I was near enough to see his spots, then said softly into his ear: ‘Excuse me. Can you make room for this woman?’ He looked puzzled, resistant. ‘She needs a seat.’

He stood up and the mother shuffled over and wedged herself between two
Guardians.
The baby continued to wail, and she continued to stare ahead of her. The man could feel virtuous now.

I was glad to get out at my station, though I wasn’t looking forward to the day ahead. When I thought about work, a lethargy settled over me, as if all my limbs were heavy and the chambers of my brain musty. It was icy on the streets, and my breath curled into the air. I wrapped my scarf more firmly around my neck. I should have worn a hat. Maybe I could nip out in a coffee-break and buy some boots. All around me people were hurrying to their different offices, heads down. Jake and I should go away somewhere in February, somewhere hot and deserted. Anywhere that wasn’t London. I imagined a white beach and a blue sky and me slim and tanned in a bikini. I’d been seeing too many advertisements. I always wore a one-piece. Oh, well. Jake had been on at me about saving money.

I stopped at the zebra crossing. A lorry roared by. A pigeon and I scuttled back in unison. I glimpsed the driver, high up in his cab and blind to all the people below him trudging to work. The next car squeaked to a halt and I stepped out into the road.

A man was crossing from the other side. I noticed he was wearing black jeans and a black leather jacket, and then I looked up at his face. I don’t know if he stopped first or I did. We both stood in the road staring at each other. I think I heard a horn blare. I couldn’t move. It felt like an age, but it was probably only a second. There was an empty, hungry feeling in my stomach and I couldn’t breathe in properly. A horn was sounded once more. Someone shouted something. His eyes were a startling blue. I started walking across the road again, and so did he, and we passed each other, inches away, our eyes locked. If he had reached out and touched me, I think I would have turned and followed him, but he didn’t and I reached the pavement alone.