What They Do in the Dark (14 page)

She’s better at danger than me. As I push the knife beneath the skirt at the bottom of the settee, she’s already making for the French doors out into the garden. It isn’t until she’s climbing over the fence, showing her knickers (which seemed to be men’s Y-fronts), that I realize there’s been no further noise since the latch had gone. Cautiously, I round the corner to the hall. No one is there. What if it was a burglar, who has gone upstairs? I creep back into the living room and retrieve the murder weapon. Then I sit, holding the knife pointed at the stairs for a lifelong minute or two. Nothing. Gradually, my pulse calms. There’s nobody in the house except me. Not Ian, not Mum, not a burglar, and not Pauline.

About an hour later, as Mum serves savoury pancakes, me
facing Ian, and above him the knife on the wall (I replaced it earlier, teetering on the dining-room chair), it strikes me how lucky it was that Pauline had known immediately she needed to get out of the house, that me getting done would have been caused more by her presence than us being discovered mucking about with knives.

After tea, as I uncomplainingly dry the pots for Mum, she remarks on how quiet I am and begins to ask questions about school.

‘Someone tried to get into the house,’ I blurt.

She stops scrubbing the basket of the chip frier.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I heard the door go, I thought it was you back or Ian. It was someone trying to get in.’

‘Don’t be daft.’ But she’s worried, I can tell. She moves off, hands dripping, to talk to Ian, who is watching the news round the corner of the open-plan.

‘She says someone was trying to get into the house when she was back from school.’

After a slight delay, Ian appears with Mum.

‘What’s this about someone trying to get in?’

‘I heard the door go.’ This is, after all, the truth. I absolutely did. I must have done.

‘You mean you thought you heard someone using a key to get in?’

This hasn’t occurred to me, that the phantom would have had to have a key. I don’t like the way things are going. Why have I started this?

‘I don’t know.’

Ian hitches his trousers, angrily excited by the possibility, or by the possibility that I’m lying; I can’t tell which.

‘Were they rattling the door?’

‘A little bit,’ I concede. Now I think about it, there could have been rattling.

Ian marches off, Mum following, to have a look at the door, to
see if there are signs of forcing the lock. What if there are? The prospect makes me queasy. They move outside, murmuring. The image of Ian’s headless wife comes to me again, her large body in one of the flowered dresses she wears in the photos lurching around the living room behind me, blood spurting from the neck. She gathers behind me, ready to pounce. I wheel from the sink and race into the garden, where Ian is crouched by a flowerbed.

‘See?’

Satisfied, he prods at the earth next to some trampled flowers. Mum has her arms folded. She isn’t eager to believe my story.

‘And here.’ He’s triumphant this time. Mum leans in to look. There is the clear indent of Pauline’s shoe in the soil near the fence.

‘Must have gone over the fence.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’ll have a word with next door. Might be worth letting the police know.’

Unexpectedly, Mum takes my hand and squeezes it, pulls me close for a sideways hug. She’s sorry for not believing me, I can tell, as well as annoyed in that way she has whenever she’s worried about me.

‘You can come to the salon after school and we’ll travel back together. I’m not having you on your own in the house. It’s only another week until you break up. Nothing to worry about, anyway.’

Anyway
. After I’ve gone to bed I can hear them talking, still galvanized by the event I’ve provided for them. And the next morning, I notice that many of the photos of Ian’s good lady have been removed, but whether by Ian or by Mum, or why, I have no idea and don’t dare to ask. As with the Lallie audition and the cancellation of the holiday, I feel obscurely and guiltily involved. It isn’t something I want to pursue. And I definitely don’t want it to pursue me.

Q
UENTIN DIDN’T REALLY
like kids. Like all the stuff in the school, they gave her the Fear. All that trust and shining hope and shit. They were like puppies locking on to you with the big soft eyes and eager little tails at the very moment you tied the sack over their heads and slung them in the river. The thought of having a child of her own to fuck up made her want to down anything mood-altering she could get her hands on, even those Vicks inhalers they were into in high school, snorting the menthol stuff on the tiny sponge you could prise out from the plastic case. There was a thought … could you get those in the UK?

She hadn’t been near a store. She was in the location–hotel–location bubble. Which was fine, surprisingly, but she’d been insulated by having Hugh around, which was something to get her out of bed in the morning even if she hadn’t been stark awake by three from jet lag. But today, he was back in London. No one would expect the producer to be around the whole time, and God knows he had things to do, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t going to miss him, as she’d told him lightly as they’d said goodnight a few hours before. He’d kissed her forehead. Who ever did that? He was like an uncle in a forties movie, and so, definitely queer. Didn’t stop her craving him though. Already nearly eight hours since her last hit and who knew when she’d score again? Actually, he’d said he’d be back the following night, when they were doing some of the search scenes. She could almost definitely make it till then.

Quentin heaved herself to the bathroom. She’d started taking baths, since she had been told that there wasn’t anything wrong
with the shower. That is, it wasn’t malfunctioning, it was just existentially inadequate. She was supposed to be meeting Lallie and her mother for breakfast. This had been Katrina’s suggestion, although something of that nature had definitely been on Quentin’s to-do list, since Clancy back in the office wanted her to put out feelers about the
Little Princess
movie. There was only the hotel to eat at, or the catering bus, so they were plumping for the hotel. Quentin wasn’t sure if she was relieved or irked that Katrina would be chaperoning. Truth was she’d been avoiding the kid as much as possible. It was impossible to avoid the mom; she’d made herself indispensable in fetching cups of coffee, for one thing, as though she was Quentin’s own personal runner. And Quentin had had to borrow a tampon from her, which always created a bond. Particularly as the woman had then donated the whole goddamn box. But the kid, well.

The hotel dining room was usually full of crew and actors, all grey from lack of sleep and tanking down large plates of fried food. Like that would help (well, maybe it did; they all seemed to live on the stuff. Or maybe that was the reason they were grey?). But that day everyone was already out on set, shooting some of the police scenes, by the time Quentin came down at nine. Only one of the older actresses was left tucked away in a corner, smoking and reading the newspaper. And there were Katrina and Lallie, right on the middle table, Katrina wearing enough make-up for a drag act and Lallie unusually pale and silent. Her greeting was polite enough, but Quentin had seen her bouncing around the set and knew she always had energy to burn.

‘Bit tired,’ said Katrina, rolling her eyes.

It was as if she had taken a key and wound Lallie up. She produced an impression. Garbo. ‘I vant to be alone.’ Beneath it, Quentin could see there had been words. Maybe Lallie hadn’t wanted to come. After all, it was work for her too, shaking that little money-maker. Poor kid.

‘Shall we order breakfast?’

Lallie had a poached egg, Katrina stipulating on her behalf that it should be kept apart from its accompanying toast. Which should be unbuttered. Quentin approved of the juvenile finickiness. From what she’d seen, this was a country generally in need of a little more active discernment. She herself had been negotiating for yogurt for a couple of days, and that morning it cashed out in the shape of a narrow pot, gingerly proffered on a saucer, with a vaguely alarming logo: ‘Ski’. What the hell did skiing have to do with yogurt? She delved, cautiously, as Katrina smoked over her fried stuff and Lallie methodically opened the three foil pats of butter that had come with her order.

‘So you do like butter,’ Quentin observed.

‘Yeah, but I don’t like—’

‘She doesn’t like melted butter,’ interrupted Katrina. ‘She likes butter on toast when it’s gone cold. Don’t know where she gets it from!’

Katrina, Quentin had noticed, was always eager to promote her daughter as some sort of freak, whose eccentricity was unique but whose talents were firmly connected to her. She watched Lallie mush the rectangle of cold butter on to the toast.

‘It’s nicer,’ she said, firmly.

‘So.’ Quentin gathered herself, smiled. Time to shake her own money-maker. She wondered what Hugh was up to. Breakfast at Claridge’s perhaps, or rough sex with some boy he’d picked up; did he give or take? It was hard to work out in one so confidently dominant and yet alertly receptive. Well balanced, that’s what she loved. Complete even. Maybe that was it. Maybe he didn’t need anyone. Maybe he did it with himself in the mirror, or only with boys who looked like him, like a certain movie star her dad had told her about. While looking at himself in the mirror. And where was the harm, as she’d thought at the time? The movie star was so beautiful, why wouldn’t he want to drown in his very own
swimming-pool-blue eyes? Of course with Hugh, it wasn’t narcissism exactly. There just didn’t seem that much of a gap between him and the world, a gap that cashed out as any kind of need.
Ah, that need, that fucking need, Quentin
. To work.

‘Have you ever read
A Little Princess
?’ she addressed Lallie, smiling her smile.

‘
A Little Princess
,
A Little Princess
, ooh, I’m not sure we’ve read that one, have we, luvvie?’

Lallie chewed her toast.

‘No.’

‘She’s not much of a reader,’ confided Katrina. ‘Too much to do.’

‘Well, I’ll make sure you get a copy.’

And then she pitched it, aware that as long as there was a ticket to Hollywood on the table, she could have said it was about a kid giving blow jobs for peanut-butter sandwiches and the mommy would sign her daughter up. It was tempting, but Quentin stuck to the truth. Weirdly,
A Little Princess
was a book she remembered well from her own childhood. Particularly the ending, when the dad came back. Or was that the one about the trains? It didn’t matter: in a movie the dad would end up coming back for the girl, since that was obviously what everyone would be rooting for.

If she did say so herself, Quentin did a good job. She knew, because Lallie switched her attention from cutting exact triangles from the white of her egg to listening to her. The story began to live in her face. She loved the ending too, Quentin’s version. Katrina was also excited, if only for her own reasons. They were all still talking about it and asking questions when Lallie’s tutor came to find her. The tutor was a hesitant woman in her forties, too fat for her fussy purple blouse. Quentin knew as soon as she saw her she had a drink problem. Holding it together, maybe not yet starting until after lunch, but in another ten years she’d be a wreck. No wonder.
Nice career, hon
.

‘Off we go! Fractions today.’

Lallie took her time drinking a glass of milk, enforcing her status as the tutor hovered, unconfident of taking a seat. Quentin didn’t suggest she did, and it clearly didn’t occur to Katrina, who operated only out of commitment to the cause of Lallie. Finally, Lallie got up.

‘I’ll get you a copy of the book,’ Quentin told her.

‘Ooh, we’d love that, wouldn’t we, hen?’ said Katrina. ‘I’ll have to read it and all.’ At last, she included the tutor. ‘She’s talking about our Lallie being in a film, in America.
The Little Princess
. You know, from a book.’

The tutor smiled indefinitely, revealing mottled teeth. ‘Lovely.’ She scooped Lallie along. ‘Isn’t it set in England, though?’

‘Well, they’ll set it where they like, won’t they? Doesn’t have to be in England.’

For a moment, Quentin was apprehensive that Lallie and the tutor would go and leave her to Katrina’s mercies, but after a moment to stub her cigarette with all the vehemence of grinding it into the tutor’s eye, Katrina headed off with them. Maybe she sat in on the lessons? As soon as they’d gone, although she had been desperate for them to go – hey, she could do Garbo herself – Quentin felt the drop, another of those time spools. Maybe another cup of coffee. The coffee here was weird, with a gross kind of skin that clung to your lip, like algae bloom on a stagnant pond. When she glanced around, she was surprised to see the room was empty except for the older woman in the corner, and that all the other tables had been cleared.

‘I think there’s someone in the kitchen, would you like me to knock?’

The actress waved her baton of folded newspaper at the door behind her shoulder. Quentin could see she was nearly done on the crossword.

‘Oh, that’s OK—’

But the actress – she should know her name, probably – was
already leaning over and calling through an opened gap: ‘Excuse me, service?’