The Woman at Number 24 Read online

  ‘From anybody else,’ said Jane, leaning over to rub Sarah’s arm, ‘that’d make me vom. But from you . . .’ She smiled, slapped a bug on her shin. ‘I can take it.’

  By the shed, Tom glugged some water, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

  Changing the subject, Sarah said, ‘That shed’s never been opened in the two years I’ve lived here.’

  ‘I’ve been here since Una was born,’ said Lisa. ‘The shed was already a dump then. Full of rats, probably,’ she added, with some satisfaction.

  ‘Or, if we’re really lucky, a dead body,’ said Tom. He yanked at the padlock and it gave easily, sending him careering back into the pile of ivy he’d just swept up.

  Jane’s laughter set them all off; Tom’s attempts to stagger to his feet made them laugh harder. The harsh bang of a window closing silenced them all like a gunshot.

  ‘That’ll be Mavis,’ said Lisa. ‘She hates people enjoying themselves.’

  ‘She came to mine for dinner,’ announced Sarah to general amazement.

  ‘Mavis eats?’ said Lisa.

  ‘I assumed she drank the blood of young maidens,’ said Tom, upright again, dignity restored. In a way.

  ‘I feel like Mavis is waving from out at sea,’ said Sarah. ‘She wants to be rescued.’

  ‘If she wants to be rescued,’ said Jane, ‘she should stop putting on that old-fashioned accent.’

  ‘Do you think she puts it on?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘Since when did people who live in poky flats and wear the same filthy apron every day talk like a duchess?’

  The new improved Mavis #2 needed a champion. ‘I see something in her,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Something beautiful?’ Tom smiled directly at her.

  ‘Something ’orrible,’ muttered Lisa, just as Mavis appeared and said a loud, ‘Good afternoon, everybody.’

  Sarah jumped up, vacating her deckchair. ‘Sit! Sit!’ she said, into what was visible of Mavis’s face between the immense sunhat and the buttoned polyester collar.

  Tom waved a gloved hand. ‘I’m Tom, the newbie. We haven’t met properly.’

  Sitting on the grass, at Una’s level, Sarah listened as Tom tried heroically to engage his new neighbour in conversation.

  ‘Great weather, isn’t it?’

  Nothing.

  ‘You’ve lived here for some time, I hear?’

  Nothing.

  ‘I bet this house has a few tales to tell.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Remember,’ said Lisa, leaning down to her daughter and enunciating carefully as if the child was foreign, ‘when Daddy and you planted sunflowers?’

  Una stared at the dry stumps. Tom looked too; when he realised Sarah was watching him, he pulled a sad face.

  ‘She doesn’t talk,’ said Lisa.

  In her chair, Mavis quickened, but said nothing.

  ‘Not a dicky bird,’ Lisa went on, bafflement and disappointment and something akin to anger underpinning her words. ‘She just stopped one day. Worst thing is, I can’t get any info out of her.’

  ‘Info?’ queried Sarah, locking eyes with Una, reading a great many things there, but unsure how much of it she was projecting. It was hard to look at Una without the whoosh of time travel in her ears.

  ‘Information about Graham.’ Una wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m sure he’s got a new bird, but Una can’t tell me nothing when she gets back from his place. Drives me mad.’ Lisa didn’t seem to notice the concerned looks passing between the other adults.

  Except for Mavis, who studied the patchy lawn around her feet, as silent as Una.

  As if incanting a spell, as if the others weren’t there, Lisa said dreamily, ‘I reckon he left me for that tart, but he just says I’m mad.’ This pebble was rubbed flat from being turned over and over in Lisa’s mind. ‘I’m not mad. I know what I know.’

  Sarah wanted to smooth out Lisa’s forehead with her hands. She was stuck in a similar loop, asking unanswerable questions about her own failed relationship.

  When Jane went for a fresh supply of cold drinks, she took Una with her, showering her with the questions adults ask little ones: ‘What’s your favourite book? How old are you?’

  That wouldn’t help, Sarah knew. Little Una needed to swim about in her silence until she chose to talk. Direct queries only made her self-conscious.

  The shed gave up its treasures. An old hoe. A stringless tennis racquet. A leaning tower of flowerpots. The women watched Tom work, all sinking into a blissful sun-baked torpor. Bees zipped by, purposeful busybodies, and the drone of the main road felt far away.

  ‘Dahlias,’ said Mavis abruptly, jolting sleepy Lisa awake. Mavis coughed, as if her voice was dusty. ‘Dahlias would go nicely in that bed there.’

  ‘They would,’ agreed Tom. His nose was sunburned, just starting to glow in a prettily radioactive way. He winked at Sarah when Mavis looked down once again.

  Is he flirting with me? Sarah was canny enough to recognise that she only suspected Tom of flirting because of her reaction to his wink. Like a scientist observing a lab rat, she noted the leap in her pulse. It was a relief to welcome back her libido, missing in action since the divorce. She could practise on Tom, knowing there was no pressure.

  The man’s innate decency was, ironically, one of the reasons she found him attractive. Even if Tom noticed her tiny – very tiny, vanishingly small – crush, he’d never act on it.

  ‘An actual rose!’ Tom reached into the undergrowth and plucked a straggly pink bud, its petals edged with the brown of decay. ‘M’lady, for you.’ He bowed and handed it to Sarah, just as Jane reappeared with her bounty of Coca Cola and Sprite.

  ‘Watch out, Sarah,’ she laughed, handing out the icily perspiring tins. ‘You’re just Tom’s type.’

  Flushed, Sarah held her can to her cheek. Guilt pounced, but she batted it away. Jane was joking, as usual, with the self-assurance of a woman who is soundly, roundly loved. She looked at her watch. It was almost time to speed walk back to St Chad’s.

  Una stayed on her feet, orbiting the adults. With Mavis in their midst, conversation was stilted. Jane pulled a helpless face at Sarah; tension emanated from the older woman, the heavy air shot through with prickly discomfort.

  ‘Sarah, couldn’t you help Una?’ said Tom as he wiped the cracked window of the shed. ‘Isn’t that your line of work?’

  ‘It’s not that simple. I can’t just lend a hand. There are procedures.’

  Lisa slumped, her hopes raised and dashed in double quick time.

  ‘Besides, there are personal reasons . . .’ Sarah, embarrassed, had everybody’s attention. ‘If you identify too closely with a patient, it can be problematical.’

  ‘What personal rea—’ began Jane, before Tom stopped her.

  ‘NYB, Janey.’

  ‘Not your business.’ Jane translated for Sarah. ‘I’ll worm it out of you later,’ she stage-whispered.

  Perhaps it would be good to talk. Sarah could already imagine the partisan support, the hugs. It would be good to be hugged.

  Turning to Mavis, Sarah roped her into the conversation. ‘Jane’s house-hunting in Suffolk for a client.’

  ‘He’s filthy rich, Mavis,’ said Jane. ‘No taste. Reckons he’s looking for something medieval, but he’ll cover it in leopard skin and stick a hot tub in the cellar.’

  Mavis’s shoulders lifted, but her face gave nothing away, as if there was a law against laughter. ‘I’m very fond of Southwold, on the Suffolk coast,’ she said.

  ‘Yes!’ Jane was thrilled, as if she’d won a prize. ‘An old-fashioned pier and candy-coloured beach huts!’

  ‘I went there once,’ said Sarah, recalling an anniversary weekend. ‘There’s a lovely old hotel, what was it . . .’

  ‘The Swan,’ said Mavis.

  Mavis by the sea required a leap of imagination. She was a creature of dank kitchens and dim back rooms. ‘I didn’t realise you ever leave London,’ said Sarah. Mavis was part of the fabric of number twenty-four; no day was comp
lete without one of her black looks.

  ‘I, well . . .’ Mavis responded to this throwaway question by clamping her teeth together.

  ‘I didn’t mean . . .’ Sarah coughed. Talking to Mavis was like kissing a wasp.

  ‘Hey, Una!’ Jane stopped the child on one of her circuits. ‘I’ve guessed your favourite colour. Is it bogey green?’

  ‘Cunning, ve-ry cunning,’ said Tom.

  ‘Too direct,’ whispered Sarah.

  ‘Breaks my heart to see Una like this, it really does.’ Jane sighed and rubbed Lisa’s hand; Lisa enjoyed the attention. Turning, Jane said, ‘And I keep meaning to say something to you, Mavis.’

  ‘Yes, dear?’ Mavis looked up, all attention.

  ‘I’m so sorry about your sister.’

  Sarah bounced, trying to catch Jane’s attention, to semaphore ‘Stop!’ as Mavis accepted the sympathy with a stiff incline of her head.

  ‘I’m Zelda Bennison’s biggest fan,’ said Jane. ‘I’ve read every single book she wrote.’

  ‘I haven’t ready any of them,’ said Mavis.

  ‘Oh.’ Jane did her best to smother her shock. ‘Not even—’

  ‘Maybe Una’s silent because,’ interrupted Mavis, her straw hat shading her features, ‘she realises it’s not necessary to talk all the time.’

  As Mavis tried to pull herself to her feet, Jane’s mouth was a shocked ‘O’.

  Mavis flinched from the arm Sarah held out. ‘I’m perfectly all right.’

  Watching Mavis retreat from the electric brightness of the garden, Sarah said to Jane, ‘You touched a nerve.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, it’s my fault,’ said Jane. ‘How dare I praise her sister. What a cow I am. Honestly, Sarah, once an old bag, always an old bag. That woman isn’t who you think she is. There’s no lovely old dame trying to get out. Probably just another, even worse old dame.’

  ‘She’s trying.’ A ghost hovered by Mavis: the woman she wanted to be.

  ‘She ignored me,’ said Tom.

  Sarah mewed her agreement. ‘Mavis is like a problem toddler who doesn’t play well with other kids.’

  ‘It’s simpler than that,’ said Jane. ‘She’s horrible.’

  Before Sarah could disagree, a raucous ‘Hello!’ made them all look up. Leo waved from the roof terrace, an oasis of potted palms and rattan recliners and Diptyque candles. ‘Still on for tonight, darling?’

  ‘Yes, OK.’ Sarah had half expected Leo to forget his promise; feeling Jane’s eyes on her, she realised she’d hoped to keep it secret.

  When Leo disappeared indoors, Jane asked suspiciously, ‘Still on for what exactly?’ The explanation left Jane puzzled. ‘You said you barely talk to Leo. Are you sure you want his help? You look anxious.’

  Sarah’s tummy, alive with butterflies, seemed to believe she was a virgin anticipating her first date. ‘Leo and I are cool,’ she said, feeling anything but; a forest fire swept upwards from her toes as she backed away over the grass. ‘Even Helena and I are cool.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Lisa. ‘I couldn’t be matey with the woman who nicked my bloke.’

  ‘No, honestly, it’s . . .’

  ‘Cool?’ Jane was sardonic. ‘Let us help if you need it. Sod stupid old Leo.’

  Tom, from within the shed, called, ‘Yeah, don’t fall for it. You’ll thank us later.’

  Sarah saw how Lisa sat stock-still and listened, delighted, to the conversation. ‘Guys, you’re being very melodramatic.’ Warmed by their concern, Sarah also wanted to brush them away, to gag the commonsensical uproar. ‘It’s just two people doing a bit of wallpaper scraping.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Tom emerged with a rake, looking wry. ‘Why is Leo still in this house? I couldn’t live in the same house as my ex-wife.’

  ‘You don’t have an ex-wife.’ Jane was tart.

  ‘Not yet,’ laughed Tom, withdrawing.

  As Sarah tiptoed away, Jane said, ‘You could sell that flat as is, Sarah. Notting Hill properties get snapped up whatever state they’re in. The truth is, you can’t face moving, can you? You’re putting it off. That’s why you refused my help. You can’t leave Leo behind.’ She raised her voice as Sarah let herself in through the back door. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

  ‘Sorry,’ called Sarah. ‘Can’t hear you!’

  Sarah typed and answered phones and soothed anxious parents’ nerves. Keeley whisked past her reception desk a couple of times; Sarah felt her eye on her. And then it was time to go home.

  Then it was seven o’clock.

  Then Leo was there. In her flat. Our flat, Sarah corrected herself.

  Leo wandered the rooms with his hands in his pockets, thoroughly at home.

  ‘This is new.’ He ran his hands over the butcher’s block in the kitchen.

  ‘I’ve always wanted one.’ Sarah fiddled with the kettle. She used to sleep with Leo every night, but now she wondered what to say to him. ‘You always vetoed it.’

  ‘Bet you paid over the odds.’ Leo slapped the butcher’s block. ‘Still, it’s your kitchen now, darling.’

  Leo’s sense of entitlement had always charmed Sarah. It was part and parcel of his toff wardrobe of blazers and cords and a fondness for nursery desserts; Leo was anybody’s for a Spotted Dick. Sarah, who needed a welcome before making herself at home, felt confident in the long shadow he cast.

  Shouts drifted up from the darkening garden. Mischief was being made with a hose. Life was unfurling down there, in the previously barren earth. Its tentacles reached almost, but not quite, to the top flat, where time seemed to have turned on its heel and gone backwards.

  ‘What colour are you going with on the walls?’ Leo called into the kitchen as he made himself at home, feet up, on the sofa. He didn’t even feign picking up a tool.

  ‘White. To optimise the space.’

  ‘How bloody boring. What did we choose?’ asked Leo, sitting forward as Sarah emerged with a coffee made precisely to his tastes. Another redundant skill. ‘Was it Farrow and Ball Incarnadine?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Sarah had privately thought it too gloomy.

  ‘Shame . . .’ Leo was subdued. ‘It would have looked amazing.’

  Sarah’s life was cluttered with would haves.

  Leo patted the cushion beside him, but Sarah needed to pace, to keep on the move.

  ‘Where are you looking?’ he said.

  Sarah looked puzzled, so Leo spelled it out. ‘Where are you moving to? Notting Hill? Further afield?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I haven’t narrowed it down yet.’ Sarah had yet to look in an estate agent window.

  ‘Don’t go too far, darling.’ Leo scattered mixed messages like a trail of breadcrumbs.

  Sarah walked to the window, digesting this, arms wrapped around herself as if strait-jacketed. She didn’t quite trust herself around Leo. Whether she’d kiss him or break his nose she wasn’t sure, but it was imperative to keep some open water between them.

  Since he left, Sarah felt like one of the pale marks on the walls where his paintings had hung. There was no musky maleness to untidy her life. She missed Leo’s thighs and his hands and the dark spread of his stubble.

  He saved me. Sarah made no apologies for the colourful imagery; Leo had reached through a thicket of thorns and saved her. Her childhood had amounted to a PhD in self-reliance; she’d grown up to be staunchly independent, with a career that she adored (that her mother damned as ‘dull, dull, dull!’) and hadn’t even known she needed rescuing until Leo did just that.

  During their marriage Sarah had relaxed and let Leo take the reins. ‘A man like Leo,’ her mother had drawled, ‘needs to be in charge.’ Taking her mother’s advice regarding relationships was, in retrospect, self-sabotage.

  Sarah had naively believed they were together ‘forever’. Now she felt cowed by his presence, even though she could map every freckle on his body. ‘Don’t go too far, says the man who moved out the minute I discovered his affair.’

  Leo flopped back as if fatally wounded. ‘Oof. You got me.
I deserved that.’

  ‘Yeah, you did.’

  Leo let out a shocked ‘Ha!’ He bit his lip and looked her up and down, making Sarah wish she hadn’t slipped into her overalls. ‘All I’m saying, darling, is that it’s a tricky decision to make while you’re a wee bit fragile. Don’t do anything rash. I care about you, Sarah.’ The weather on his face changed. ‘Very much.’ He sat forward, earnest.

  Unable to compute that Leo might still care, Sarah simply ignored it. ‘If I am a wee bit fragile,’ she said, ‘whose fault is that?’

  ‘Can’t you lay down your sword for a minute?’

  The sword was heavy, but it was glued to Sarah’s hand. She’d been dignified throughout their divorce; now she wondered why she hadn’t filed her teeth into points and pounded on their front door. The peaceful handover had been Sarah’s last gift to Leo, and he hadn’t even noticed. ‘It all happened so damn fast, Leo. Last June, you told me about Helena.’ To hell with polite language. Sarah rephrased it. ‘Or rather, last June you confessed to shagging Helena.’ She enjoyed Leo’s groan. ‘On the same day,’ she stressed, ‘you moved out and set a divorce in motion. It was a hit-and-run.’

  ‘I should have been more sensitive.’ Leo looked pained. ‘I’m sorry, darling.’

  Just like that. He said sorry at last. The room hummed with the power of the word. Leo, who never admitted fault, be it using the last of the milk or ruining his first wife’s life, hung his head. Still smiling, of course; he hadn’t completely changed.

  ‘Thank you.’ Sorries and thank yous were sacred talismans, charged with power to heal. Sarah used them both liberally, a direct rebuke to her mother’s refusal to use them at all. ‘I needed to hear that.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Leo clapped his hands, pleased with himself, as if he’d not only healed their rift, but solved Third-World hunger in the process.

  ‘We’re not quite finished.’ This sadistic side to Sarah was new. ‘So, as I said, you start the divorce, and the decree nisi arrived in January.’ The document had exploded like a nail bomb in Sarah’s heart. ‘Within a fortnight, Helena was Mr Leo Harrison. A fortnight, Leo.’