Creeping Ivy (19 page)

Oh, Renie knew it wasn’t the child’s fault, not really. Someone’d taught the girls words like that. Babies weren’t born knowing them. But somehow she couldn’t feel the same about what she and Harold had always done after. And if you couldn’t forgive the children and want to try to like them, then it wasn’t any good going on, was it? That’s what she’d said to the lady from the Social, and she’d said she understood and it wasn’t surprising. And by then she and Harold were both over sixty, and it was nearly time to stop in any case. They’d got their pensions, too, so the money didn’t matter so much, what with Harold not having been in work since the factory shut. Harold had wanted to go on but it wasn’t any good once Renie got ill. It was nice to know she’d never have to have another foul-mouthed little slut-in-the-making in her house again.

But Nicolette was different. She’d been such a nice child. Not pretty, mind, but ever so gentle when she stopped being scared, and always willing. If she’d been able to have her own kids, Renie’d have liked a daughter like Nicolette. She would.

Harold gave her the paper back when he’d finished with it, and she read the whole of the article, feeling tears rising in her eyes at the thought of the child being in such terrible trouble.

‘Where did she come from?’ asked Harold, not commenting on her tears. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘I can’t either,’ said Renie after ransacking her unreliable memory. The things she forgot these days; sometimes she’d go down to the shops and only find she’d left her list behind when she got there and would have to walk all the way back up the hill to get it. She’d forget her own name one of these days, just like Harold said. It riled her sometimes when he said it, but it was true enough. But anyway, she’d never forgotten Nicolette. ‘There’d been a tragedy of some kind, hadn’t there? There usually was.’

‘Or plain neglect,’ said Harold, who’d never had much time for the parents of the kids they’d been sent to foster. Lot of wastrels, he’d always said, having kids they couldn’t afford to keep decent and then hitting them black and blue. Some of them had come to the house with shocking bruises. And if there was one thing Harold always said he didn’t hold with, it was hitting kids. There was other ways to make them mind you, as he’d told her often enough.

‘It must be ten years since they took her away,’ said Renie when she had blown her nose. ‘Nearly.’

‘She’s done all right for herself by the look of it. Stuck in a fancy house in London.’ He stabbed his yolk-painted fork towards the front page of the
Daily Mercury.
‘Paid a fortune, too, I shouldn’t wonder by a woman like that.’

Renie was surprised at the edge in his voice, not having realised that he did not share her friendly memories of Nicolette.

‘I think it’s good she’s got herself a steady job,’ she said bravely. ‘Not many foster-children manage it. D’you think we ought to go up to London and see her? Try to help?’

Harold, who didn’t see he’d been bullying Renie ever since they got married – or how hard she had to work to keep from minding about it – shook his head.

‘You don’t want to get involved in something like that. It’s nothing to do with us and mud sticks, you know. You start going down there and getting involved and they’ll start saying it’s our fault she’s gone bad. Look what’s happened to all sorts of carers and foster-parents. It’s not safe. That poor little kid.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Renie, assuming that, like her, he was thinking of Nicolette.

He picked up his own paper and turned to the football results. Renie finished her bacon and egg. She didn’t much fancy it, but she didn’t like waste. Never had.

Later, when Harold had gone to meet his friend down the pub like he always did on Tuesdays, she disobeyed him for the first time in her married life and sat down to write a letter to the child. At the end she wrote:

I often think of you, Nicolette, and miss you. I remember the way you used to like helping make the butterfly cakes for that Mrs Smith’s stall at the church fête. Do you remember those, and the way we cut the tops in half to make the wings and stuck them in the icing? Oh, I remember as if it was yesterday. But you’ve probably forgotten, it was all so long ago.

I’m glad to see you got a good job, but I’m that sorry you’re in this trouble now. You were never in trouble here. And I know you didn’t do anything to that baby.

Renie Brooks.

PS Harold would’ve sent his love if he’d known I was writing, but he’s not here just now.

Renie did not much like the implied lie in the postscript, but it was better than confessing that he’d told her not to make contact. She did not know where to send the letter and re-read the piece in the paper to see if it said. But it didn’t. In the end she wrote Nicolette’s name on the envelope and then put
c/o Antonia Weblock, Kensington, London
and hoped it would get there.

Then she thought about that poor woman whose child had gone missing and she picked up her pen again. It was funny how good it could make you feel to be writing to people who weren’t going to tell you you were stupid or couldn’t remember your own name or weren’t worth anything. And that poor woman would probably like to know people were thinking about her and taking the trouble to tell her so.

Renie took both letters to the post office to buy stamps and was back at the house in good time to make Harold’s dinner. She’d do the kitchen floor when he went to the Lodge later. He’d never know the difference and it was better not to tell him anything about the letters.

Chapter Fifteen

Trish tried to work while she waited for Emma, who had promised to come straight to Southwark to report after she had tested Nicky, but it was impossible to keep her mind off Charlotte – and Ben.

When Emma eventually reached the flat, she looked worn and irritable, but Trish could not be sure whether that was because of what Hal was doing to her or the things she had learned from Nicky. Trish kissed her, took her briefcase, and offered tea, coffee or wine.

Snatching a quick look at her watch, Emma said, ‘Would you be shocked if I said wine? It’s past lunchtime.’

‘Of course I wouldn’t be shocked. Don’t be an idiot. Red or white?’

‘Oh, I don’t mind. Anything. Red please,’ said Emma.

Trish fetched a bottle of Rioja from the rack, collected glasses and a corkscrew and a bag of crisps she’d found at the back of one of the cupboards. If Emma was going to drink at the rate she had the previous evening, she’d need something to sop up the alcohol.

‘OK,’ she said when they were sitting with their glasses in front of them. ‘What did you think of Nicky?’

‘I’m not sure she’s the most interesting one,’ said Emma with rare harshness. ‘That cousin of yours was something else.’

‘Antonia? Oh, nonsense, Emma. I know she can be a bit robust, but it’s just her manner. And she’s not at her best right now, for obvious reasons.’

‘No. But I’m glad I don’t work for her.’ Emma took a sip of wine and then another. Then she put the glass down and opened her briefcase, saying, ‘She took me up to Nicky’s room, flung open the door without knocking and told her in the most appallingly bullying voice to get up and pull herself together. Then, while Nicky was surreptitiously trying to wipe her eyes and nose, Antonia told her who I was and ordered her to answer everything I asked, saying that there was no point trying to lie any longer, because I was trained to see through lies told by people like her.’

‘Oh God,’ said Trish. ‘It does sound embarrassing. I’m sorry, Emma. I didn’t realise she’d be as bad as that or I’d have warned you.’

‘I wouldn’t have cared less about embarrassment. But it was damaging, what she did. Nicky was so jangled by it that her physical responses to my questions were all over the place. I did what I could to calm her down before I started the test, but I’d say your cousin probably scuppered all my chances of getting anything useful.’

‘Shit. But, look, Emma, you can’t really blame Antonia. She’s desperate about Charlotte.’

‘Yeah, maybe. But …’

‘And she’s sure that the whole thing is Nicky’s fault.’

‘She’s not the only one,’ said Emma drily.

‘What?’

‘Nicky’s not stupid, Trish, and as far as I can tell she’s a thoroughly decent human being. No one could blame her more than she blames herself for what happened. Now, here are the charts. I’ll go through them more stringently later, but I’ve had a preliminary look. Here, here and here are where I was asking the control questions. These smooth outlines are the ones for questions that didn’t trouble Nicky, and these mainly about Antonia – are the ones I asked in order to provoke a reaction. Clear?’

‘Yes,’ said Trish, staring down at the long graphs with their rearing, crossing lines in different-coloured inks. She was reasonably familiar with such charts by now and knew that the different-coloured lines represented the changes in Nicky’s heart-rate and breathing and the electrical conductivity of her skin as she gave answers to each of Emma’s questions. The theory was that the reactions would sharply increase when she was under the kind of emotional pressure that lying brings. It took great skill to design the questions for successful polygraph tests and to interpret the results, but Trish had faith in Emma’s capabilities.

‘I’m not very good at reading the charts. What have they told you?’

Emma reached into her briefcase for the list of questions she’d asked and the notes she had made beside each. There were also a pair of cassette tapes and a small recorder.

‘Shall I play you the tape I recorded?’

‘No. Don’t bother. It would take too long. Just give me the gist.’

‘OK. As I say, I’ll go through the whole thing properly later. But the obvious conclusion is that everything Nicky’s told you and Antonia about what happened in the playground is accurate.’

‘And Ben? Does Nicky know who he is?’

‘She doesn’t know his name,’ said Emma, as though trying to control some emotion she mistrusted. ‘But she identified the photograph you gave me at once and agreed with the other nannies that he was there, watching the playround every Wednesday. Her reactions to the questions about whether he was there on Saturday are mixed, but on balance I’d say he was.’

‘Shit.’

Emma drank the rest of her wine. ‘I’m sorry, Trish.’

‘No. You shouldn’t be. We needed to know. Was there anything else?’

‘Just one oddity. When I was trying to find out what else Nicky might have seen that she hadn’t consciously remembered, she mentioned Charlotte’s swimming teacher, a man called Mike. When I tried to check the memory, she got confused but, again on balance, I’d say it’s possible – likely even – that he was there, too. I don’t know if that helps.’

‘It might,’ said Trish, feeling a faint hope again. ‘It just might. More wine?’

‘No, thanks. I’ve got a late afternoon meeting. I’ll sort through all this tonight, and if I come up with anything else, I’ll ring you, OK?’

‘You’ve been wonderful, Emma. Thank you.’

‘That’s OK. Sorry I couldn’t reassure you about Ben.’ She shut her briefcase and stood up. ‘I’ll be off.’

‘Emma, wait.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I just wondered how you are. It can’t just be dislike of Antonia’s manner that’s making you like this.’ For a moment Trish thought that Emma was going to retreat into anger, which would have been very unlike her, but then she shook her head.

‘Hal’s definitely gone,’ she said eventually. She sat down again with her hands clamped between her knees. ‘I got a letter this morning.’

‘It does sound as though it’s been on the cards for some time,’ said Trish to keep the conversation going.

‘Yes. What got to me …’ Emma’s big blue eyes filled with tears and Trish refilled her wine glass. She drank a little. When she looked up again she had herself back under control. ‘What got to me was that he accused me of trying to play power games with him. Power games!’

‘Isn’t that a typical kind of cop-out? Don’t they usually say that sort of thing when they’re buggering off?’

‘Do they?’ For a moment Emma looked almost hopeful. She also looked astonishingly young. ‘Do they really, Trish?’

‘They have to me,’ she said drily, wanting to help but knowing that all she had to offer was her own experience. There was nothing she could do to lessen Emma’s soreness except give her the chilly kind of comfort that comes from knowing one is not unique in one’s inadequacy. ‘It’s that or misunderstanding them or demanding too much commitment from them or behaving like their mother. Very few seem to come out with it honestly and say “I’ve gone off you” or “I’ve met someone else”. Let’s be fair: perhaps it’s not cowardice – perhaps they think that sort of reality would hurt us too much.’

‘I’m not sure anything could hurt more than this,’ said Emma, staring down into the wine in her glass. ‘I’d really come to trust him, you know. I must be an incredibly bad picker.’

‘You and me both.’

‘Weird, isn’t it?’ said Emma, reaching after the kind of cheerfulness she had not felt for months and months. ‘Two such gorgeous girls as us?’

Trish laughed obediently, although the disguised sadness in her friend’s voice cut into her like cheese wire. ‘From what I can see, gorgeousness doesn’t have anything to do with it. Has Hal said what he wants to do about the flat?’

‘Oh, flog it, of course. He wants his equity out. Thank heavens the market’s begun to pick up. At least we might make a profit. I’m supposed to be ringing an estate agent this morning.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Trish, revelling in the hot rage that efficiently pushed aside most of the sadness in her. ‘He’s dumping you
and
expecting you to do all the work to make it easy for him. What a shit!’

‘Well, he’s always earned the most and paid most of the mortgage. I suppose that gives him—’

‘That’s the way Antonia thinks, Emma. It’s not you. You’ve never thought like that before, so don’t start now. Money doesn’t excuse anything. And anyway, half the deposit was yours, wasn’t it?’

‘Yup. I’ll have to think about what to get next, where to look, where I can afford.’

Thoughts rushed through Trish’s mind faster than she could produce words for them. The most generous was that Emma needed help; she had trusted Hal with difficulty and then been betrayed. Someone had to make up to her for that. The least, that the mortgage on the Southwark flat was enormous and a little rent might help; and there was so much space that a temporary tenant need not be too much of an incubus.