The Woman at Number 24 Read online

Winded, Sarah asked, ‘Why would you want my flat?’

  ‘We’d knock them together. Imagine it! A fabulous two-storey penthouse. They command a premium. Plenty of space for little ones . . .’ Helena winked and Sarah’s stomach lurched. ‘Don’t tell Leo I told you this, but he’s planning to make an offer through a third party. He knows how proud you are and he wants to make sure you ask the full price. He has the silly idea you might give him a discount. I told him not everybody’s as soppy as he is.’

  ‘Yeah. I mean, no.’ Sarah was thrown.

  ‘It’s sentimental but he wants to set you up with a nice pot of money. Says he hurt you and wants to make up for it.’ Helena pulled a mock sad face and then laughed again. ‘I said to him, oh don’t you worry about Sarah. She’ll meet somebody new and forget all about you.’ She drummed her gel nails on the table. ‘I wonder. Do I have a man for you?’ Helena looked at the ceiling, as if an eligible bachelor might be entwined around the light fitting.

  ‘I’m fine on my own, Helena.’

  ‘That,’ said Helena with a mew in her voice, ‘sounds so, so sad.’

  ‘It’s perfectly possible to live without a man.’ Sarah sharpened a little blade she rarely used. ‘You did, after all, before you bumped into Leo.’

  ‘That was different.’ Helena, apparently, also carried a knife about her person. ‘I’m not you, Sarah, am I?’

  After a brief polite tussle about paying the bill, Sarah waited for Helena on the pavement as elaborate goodbyes were made to the manager. The organic croissant sat like gravel in her stomach, as painful to digest as Helena’s casual shredding of her hopes.

  Leo’s motive wasn’t romantic; it was practical.

  And yet. That sounded too neat. As if Leo was a supervillain. Sarah knew him better than that. Her mother had been wrong; all men weren’t the same. I won’t crucify Leo without evidence.

  ‘I have to be somewhere.’ Helena appeared and offered her cheek. ‘We must do this again. But not for a while. I’m snowed under.’ Helena looked down and put her hand to her throat. ‘Ooh no, no, no.’ Biting her lip, she glared at Sarah’s feet with something approaching repulsion. ‘Those polka dot shoes have to go.’

  Number twenty-four dwarfed Sarah as she dawdled up the parched path after work. She was more preoccupied than tired. She’d been distracted from her filing and tea-making and saying ‘Hello, St Chad’s, how can I help you?’ by a mass of half-formed thoughts.

  Helena was the gift that never stops giving. Her throwaway remarks had ignited a reappraisal of the past and the present.

  When Sarah and Leo had said they’d ‘get round’ to having children, she’d assumed they had years ahead of them. Perhaps his ‘respecting her career’ was a sham – what if he simply didn’t want a child with me? The ink was barely dry on Leo and Helena’s marriage certificate and already they were ‘trying hard’.

  Letting herself into the house, Sarah wondered at her younger self’s chutzpah. As if babies just come when you whistle for them.

  The new regime had solidified. It was fruitless to wait for Leo to come to his senses, for this second marriage to disintegrate.

  Babies were cement. Babies were superglue. If Helena fell pregnant, Leo would never leave. He was a cad, yes, but a cad with morals.

  Lingering in the cool, shady hall, with the house alive around her, a door closing somewhere, a television set burping out news, Sarah wondered why they’d never sat down and discussed when, how, if to start a family.

  Was she mourning an intimacy that had never existed when she mourned the end of her marriage?

  Cocooned in the hall, Sarah shivered despite the heat of the day. This sanctuary was threatened. It was a timeshare, not a home. In just – she counted on her fingers – in just nine weeks she’d have to relinquish her queenship up on the top floor.

  In need of distraction and consolation, Sarah almost reached out to knock on the door of the ground-floor flat. For a moment she forgot that Smith wouldn’t answer, that Smith was gone, that there’d be no automatic ‘Come in!’ and the pop of a cork and the sharing of some escapade.

  Sarah laid her palm flat on the door. Jane had repainted it. It felt smooth and sleek. There’d never be a ‘KEEP OUT BITCHES!’ sign tacked to it again.

  That sign had warned Sarah not to knock because Smith was entertaining a gentleman caller. Or ‘shagging some poor bloke’s brains out,’ as she’d preferred to describe it. Smith had a different job each week, and each new job brought a brief new relationship. And a new ‘KEEP OUT BITCHES!’ sign.

  Always cash-in-hand and casual, Smith’s career covered waitressing, barmaiding, dog walking. Her stint as driver for a mobile puppet show had lasted longer than most. Sarah had wondered if her friend was doing something crazy like settling down, but Smith handed in her notice after a night of passion with her boss.

  ‘He insisted on keeping Captain Cuckoo on his hand while we . . . you know.’

  ‘His puppet?’ Sarah pulled a face she’d never pulled before at the mental image Smith conjured up. ‘Jesus!’

  ‘And he talked in Captain Cuckoo’s voice.’ Smith was shaking now, with laughter and remembered revulsion. She imitated her suitor despite Sarah’s pleas. ‘Do you like that? Captain Cuckoo wants you to—’

  ‘Stop! Yuk!’

  Sarah smiled sadly and laid her forehead against the door. Another memory popped up. That very same man, the puppeteer, turned up on the step a few months ago, asking if Smith was in. He’d looked sad to hear she’d gone, and Sarah wondered if perhaps this man, despite the fetish, might have had been a potential ‘keeper’.

  ‘So you’re the amazing Sarah,’ he’d smiled. ‘Smith went on about you all the time.’

  ‘Did she?’ Sarah had laughed.

  ‘God, yeah. Sarah this. Sarah that. No offence, but I got sick of the sound of your name.’

  Sarah closed her eyes, back in the here and now, leaning against the door. It had been reassuring to hear from a stranger that Smith had treasured her, that the to and fro of their friendship had been as vital to Smith as it was to Sarah.

  Straightening up, she knocked. Jane wasn’t Smith but she was special, too. No reply. Perhaps she was out in the garden, with her uncomplicated enthusiasm and open arms. Maybe Tom was there, too. And that would also be good, although it was good in a slightly different way. A way Sarah dare not examine.

  Over the years, extensions and new windows had erupted from the back of the house as flats were carved into its original grandeur, leaving scars on the bricks and mortar. The building’s imperfection made it benevolent, or so Sarah now fantasised, as it stared down on her pale arms and dangerously rosy forehead: Sarah was not a natural sun-worshipper. She tended to fricassee.

  Anaesthetised by the heat, the rampant shrubs were static. There was no Jane, but there was a sweating Tom, toiling up and down the patchy grass with a lawnmower. Leaves and dust were trapped in his hair, and a bitchy rose brush had scratched his shoulders. He called a greeting over the whine of the mower as Sarah took a deckchair.

  Spotting Mavis’s wan face at an open basement window, Sarah waved. Mavis waved back. She didn’t slam shut the worm-eaten frame. Perhaps Sarah had been forgiven for her faux pas.

  Tom pointed to a cooler in the grass. The beer, not Sarah’s usual tipple, tasted foreign and refreshing, like their new friendship. Being around Tom was informal, simple; a relief after her coffee with Helena.

  Tom’s loyalty to Jane raised the bar for mankind. The fact that Tom was tall, virile, and as deliciously wantable as a freshly baked – and sexy – cake was a detail that Sarah could acknowledge, because fancying him was a harmless hobby. Like crochet.

  ‘Shall I put some trellis up the side of the shed?’ Tom paused near her with the mower.

  ‘How do you know how to do that stuff?’ Accustomed to living in her head, Sarah had excessive admiration for people who were good with their hands.

  ‘I just figure it out.’ Tom seemed surprised by the question
.

  ‘Nice to see practical work getting done. It reminds me that not everything’s virtual reality.’

  ‘Sitting at a screen all day would send me crazy.’ Tom wiped his brow with his forearm, flattening his hair. He looked about twelve, and Sarah saw the boy he’d been, all conkers and scabby knees and home-made go-carts. ‘If you build something it’s there.’ He gestured squarely with his hands. ‘You can touch it.’

  ‘We all need something solid,’ agreed Sarah, keenly aware that Tom and Jane had built something together. Once, she’d been able to touch the four walls of her own relationship, but now she was . . . Sarah shied away from bleak metaphors of deserts or tundras. Leo was still nearby; she could touch him if she so wished. I even have his wife’s permission.

  Tom glanced at his watch and, ludicrously, Sarah felt quashed.

  ‘You off?’

  ‘A voice-over at seven. It’s an emergency, last-minute thing. I don’t have to go yet. Before you ask, it’s for toilet cleaner. “But, Tom,” you say, “toilet cleaners can’t talk!” I, madam, am the Robert De Niro of toilet-cleaner acting and you too will believe that bleach can speak.’ Tom bowed low, then sprang back up, as an angry yell sounded across the garden.

  ‘Lisa,’ murmured Sarah, darting a look at the open windows of Flat D.

  Graham yelled next. ‘Just look at her! Look at the kid!’

  As Sarah cringed, Tom said, ‘The kid has a name,’ his body tense.

  ‘Lisa, you’ve messed with that child’s head!’

  ‘It wasn’t me who walked out on her!’

  ‘Why would I stay here and listen to your bullshit?’

  ‘You’re ruining your daughter’s life! You and that slag!’

  ‘If Una lived with me she’d fucking talk!’

  Tom stopped pretending to work and stood, arms hanging. ‘Can’t they do that somewhere Una can’t hear?’

  ‘This is their business, Tom,’ warned Sarah as he flexed his fingers. She looked over at Mavis’s window, but it had closed.

  ‘Aren’t troubled children your territory?’

  ‘I can’t help Una, Tom.’

  ‘But she’s only a few yards away.’ Tom flung out an arm. ‘It couldn’t be closer to home.’

  ‘That’s the point. Una’s too close, in all senses of the word.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to pressurise you. It’s just hard listening to that.’

  ‘You didn’t.’ He had. A little. Sarah understood and forgave; funny how often those two impulses arrived hand in hand. ‘I can’t help Una, much as I’d like to.’

  Not all the past could be packaged as nostalgically as Retro Woman’s window display; the child was a clouded looking glass, one that Sarah had avoided looking in for years.

  ‘I’ve had enough. I’m going home,’ shouted Graham.

  Sarah imagined him carrying his pent-up anger back to the expressionless young girl she’d seen with him. She sat up abruptly. I get it.

  ‘Er, bye then!’ called Tom as she sprinted for the back door. Sarah didn’t hear him; she was making up for lost time.

  Lisa opened her door a slither, and said sulkily, ‘I know, it got a bit out of hand, won’t happen again,’ and was closing it when Sarah asked to come in. ‘If you want.’ Lisa watched her visitor sceptically, as if Sarah might pull a gun. ‘S’cuse the mess.’

  A leatherette sofa sat alone in the featureless magnolia square of a sitting room. A teddy bear lolled, paws in the air; this, possibly, constituted the ‘mess’.

  ‘It’s so cool down here.’ Sarah was glad of the respite.

  ‘Damp in winter, cool in summer. Swings and roundabouts.’

  A blurred stain crept like fog across the ceiling. Lisa, ever touchy, followed Sarah’s gaze and snapped, ‘Lovely, innit?’

  ‘Your landlord should—’

  ‘Yes, he should,’ interrupted Lisa. ‘But he doesn’t, so . . . Did you want something? I’m only just in from three home visits on the trot and then that sod was waiting to do my head in.’

  Una appeared, a stampede of one, drawing to a breathless halt when she saw a visitor. She looked down at Sarah’s feet and her mouth fell open.

  ‘Yup,’ said Sarah. ‘You liked them so much I had to buy them.’

  Sarah slipped off the polka dot shoes and Una stepped into them, her chubby feet only half filling them. Her face sweaty with happiness, she lurched off to her room.

  Yah boo sucks, Helena, thought Sarah. My style guru approves, even if you don’t.

  The view from the bay window was bisected by the raised lawn, reducing Tom to a pair of feet. If it wasn’t for the waiting-room decor and the damp, Lisa’s flat would be cosy. ‘Can we talk about Una?’

  Lisa bristled with Keep Out! signs, arms folded over her blue nylon uniform.

  ‘Tell me how it is, Lisa.’

  Something in Lisa gave way; perhaps sympathy was rare in her neck of the woods. ‘It’s bad,’ she said.

  That seemed to be all she had to give. Sarah waited. She had inside information on little Una: some of it decades old; some brand new.

  ‘School’s, y’know, difficult.’ Lisa’s head bobbed, her face’s unhappiness brutally laid bare by her dragged-back hair. ‘They were helpful at first, but teachers are busy, you know?’ Lisa began to pace. ‘I thought it was a phase, but now it’s like Una’s just that kid who doesn’t talk. The teachers work around her. Her little bestie and her, they used to collect sweet wrappers together . . . sweet wrappers.’ Lisa almost crumpled at such endearing silliness. ‘The girl moved on to another friend. One who talks back. So Una only has me, just me, and I’m . . .’ Lisa raised her arms at her sides and then let them fall.

  Sarah took a moment before she spoke. Lisa was fragile, and when Sarah thought of Una, she saw her tiny and silent, marooned in a desert, standing in her sandals, her hair tidily brushed, miles from civilisation.

  That’s me I’m seeing.

  ‘Lisa, you’re strong. You’re holding everything together. You’re doing your best.’

  Lisa turned away, as if Sarah had slapped her. As if sympathy was dangerous.

  ‘You’ve been the lynchpin, but now you need a hand.’

  Lisa’s face was belligerent.

  ‘I can help you.’

  ‘Don’t tell me to ring some doctor I don’t know,’ said Lisa. ‘I threw away that stupid card you gave me.’

  ‘Me, I’ll help. If you’ll let me. This is what I do for a living and I’ll do it for you and for Una.’ She read Lisa’s expression and put her mind at rest. ‘For free. Just between us.’ She hesitated. ‘As friends.’

  Chapter Eight

  Notting Hill, W11

  This calendar is FREE to valued customers!

  Friday 24th June, 2016

  CHARACTER IS HOW YOU TREAT THOSE WHO CAN DO NOTHING FOR YOU

  Not a morning person, Sarah went over her groggy features with a cotton wool pad and brushed her teeth on automatic pilot. Officially ‘bad in the morning’, the thought of her little clients waiting for her used to prise her out of the house.

  Now the children waited, but not for Sarah.

  The intercom buzzed. ‘Sarah, dear,’ said Mavis. ‘There’s a large package for you.’

  A few nights before, Sarah had been sucked into the supernova of eBay and now here was her reward for beating all the other bidders.

  At the bottom of the stairs stood Mavis, demure in another of her collection of threadbare dresses, her wiry hair pinned up anyhow. ‘Good morning,’ she said civilly, carefully.

  ‘Talking to me again?’

  ‘Of course.’ Mavis wasn’t playful; she was grave, and Sarah regretted being breezy. Mavis was turning round her own juggernaut; rejoining the human race was a massive undertaking for an older woman with her record. She stood beside a huge unwieldy shape, smothered in thick plastic. ‘It looks like an old-fashioned chair,’ said Mavis. ‘Rather grand.’

  ‘And much too big!’ Sarah circled her purchase. ‘Jesus, it pongs,’ s
he said, and Mavis winced her agreement. A strong musty smell escaped the wrappings.

  Footsteps – plodding but heavy, like an approaching bear – announced Leo. ‘Ladies.’ He tipped an imaginary hat at them both.

  The tilt of his head, the gleeful private joke that simmered between him and Sarah, the greed in his eye – Leo didn’t have the acting skills to pretend he had feelings for Sarah just for the sake of getting his hands on Flat A.

  She felt lighter. If the letter was right – and Sarah believed in its wisdom the way some people believe in the bible – then perhaps the beauty in Leo was this uncomplicated love he had for Sarah. Even when he shouldn’t. Even when he was married to somebody else.

  Always drawn to furniture, Leo laid his hands on the wrapped chair. ‘Old, darling, or repro?’ He peered through the cloudy plastic.

  The front door opened, and Tom appeared, backlit with a halo of sunshine: St Tom of Notting Hill. ‘Morning all,’ he puffed, bending over, hands on knees.

  ‘It’s too hot to go running,’ said Mavis reprovingly.

  ‘I have to keep in shape, Mavis.’ Tom stood and stretched, exuding a warm male scent of exertion and health. ‘For my job.’

  As Sarah endeavoured not to look at Tom’s chest as it rose and fell under his tight camouflage fabric running top, she felt Leo staring at her. Perhaps he felt the contrast as keenly as Sarah did, of the younger man exuding well-being, and the older one with the marks of the pillow still on his face. ‘Why do you need to keep in shape,’ he asked, jocular, ‘for doing funny voices?’

  ‘I’m not just a voice-over, I’m an actor,’ said Tom. ‘This yours, Sarah?’ Tom nodded at the chair.

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ Sarah suddenly hated the chair. ‘I thought . . .’ She felt their eyes upon her and had to confess. ‘Laugh as much as you like, but I thought I’d bought a doll’s house chair.’

  They did laugh; Mavis reluctantly, Leo at full throttle.

  ‘You still play with doll’s houses?’ asked Tom.

  ‘I do. With the children I treat.’ Used to treat. ‘Rearranging tiny tables and beds can help them open up about their home life.’