First Aid (21 page)

‘What do you think?' she said.

‘What else did she say?' Jo said.

‘Oh, all this stuff about me.'

Ella wouldn't tell her that. Even if she remembered word for word, she wouldn't get into the part. She'd have told her Tara's other stories. Marcia, at the office, whose hair got caught in the electric fan, or the ex-boyfriend her sister found under the bed. She had told Jo before. The rotating hair, Marcia's taut scalp. The soles of the boyfriend's boots caked in mud and dead leaves, the same leaves that were all over her sister's back garden. In Ella's case, Tara wouldn't have got the story right.

‘It's no good people telling you bits of your life back to you,' Jo said. ‘It never works.'

‘No,' Ella said. ‘They do it when they're telling you off and they do it to cosy up to you.'

Jo wasn't going to do either. There was no point in making Ella repeat the lies, airing them like second-hand clothes. The smell never quite goes. If it hadn't been those particular lies it would have been others. These things find casual substitutes. In the half hour since Peter had left a sense of recognition, hardly different from resignation, had been growing in her, in spite of the shock. The barrier between knowing and not knowing had been as thin as skin. A few words had broken it.

She thought back to Friday. The gap between Ella leaving the flat and Felpo coming back. They must have met by chance. Ella wouldn't have gone looking for him. The next time Jo saw Ella was when she was holding her head, pulling strands of hair off her face, tying them back in again. Rob had been there, running the tap, dabbing her cheek with cotton wool, letting water trickle down her neck, opening a bottle of antiseptic, stinging her with it. They had sat her down, pressed her head between her knees. Afterwards, when she was clearly going to live and the first shock was over, Rob had started to ask questions and Ella had told him to shut up. She had been different – not kind any more. Cold and irritable.

‘Did Tara say anything about me?' Jo said.

Her daughter looked at her then, her expression bland, but spiked with something. Jo couldn't tell whether it came from Ella, or from Ella being Tara. She watched as Ella got up from the table, went to the window and leant her hands on the glass. She wasn't the one who cleaned them.

‘“I don't mean to criticise her, but she should never have had him in the place with you kids there, especially you, Ella, an attractive girl. Well, you are. She should have had more respect. I appreciate some women might find it exciting, but there are limits. She should be giving you advice about sex, not having it,'” Ella said.

‘She said that?'

‘Yes. She said it was just an observation.'

‘What advice? What advice am I supposed to be giving you?' Jo said.

Ella shrugged her shoulders.

‘If you're wearing a tight skirt,' Jo said, ‘take it right off, don't hitch it up. I can't think of anything else. It doesn't get clearer.'

‘No,' Ella said. She didn't turn round.

‘Come on, Annie. Let's get those bags unpacked. Tip them all out over my bedroom floor,' Jo said.

Her younger daughter had been sitting at the table drawing a picture. It was a house; it always was, with fierce smoke coming out of a chimney. Funny how children put in the smoke. They'd probably be doing it in another hundred years. Annie was still little enough to be talked in front of – up to a point, anyway. If you talk rapidly and unemotionally and smile from time to time, children don't take much notice, Jo thought. She wasn't totally convinced – but some things are more important than others. She couldn't worry about Annie's ears, as well as the rest.

TREVOR SHUT THE
shop at a quarter to five on Monday and went across to the Co-op. A bell rang when he opened the door and he was hit by the lack-lustre grocery smell of smoked bacon and cheap currant buns.

‘Good afternoon, Kathleen,' he said.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Lucas. Hot enough for you? I see you sitting in the sun over there but if it don't rain soon you'll be down at the stand-pipe with your bucket.'

‘Right you are, Kathleen.'

It was best to get the greetings out of the way. Kathleen sat at the check-out, facing outwards, remembering her days at the scrubbed marble counter. She was, as far as he knew, the only person in East Kent who still had a rural accent, but he distrusted it. He was looking for starch. His shirts were limp, not soft to touch, but limp, and threadbare round the collars and cuffs. He recalled that Lois set store by starch and used it to titivate the old pillowcases and table linen before putting them on display. He was sure it came in a packet but here it was in a giant aerosol. He held the canister out at arm's length so he could read the writing on it.

‘You buying that for wasps, Mr Lucas?' Kathleen said.

‘Not that I know of,' he said.

She seized the can from him and passed it over the scanner.

‘Plenty about. That's what I use it for. That'll be three fifty-nine.'

He dug deep into his pocket and came up with a fistful of change and counted it out. The daylight robbery seemed less glaring if he didn't part with a note.

‘Reckon you're the last customer, Mr Lucas?'

‘I see no others, Kathleen. But there's time yet. Someone out there may, at this very moment, begin to crave an individual fruit pie.'

Kathleen snorted and fished out a bundle of keys from under the counter. Trevor left before she pursued him with the stool that she needed to stand on to draw the top bolt. He crossed the road and got into his car. He put his Co-op bag on the floor and opened all the windows. The steering wheel was burning hot and he waited for it to cool down. He thought it was a pity there wasn't some method of driving with the doors propped open – a motoring equivalent of the brick in the knitted cover he used for the shop.

He had told Jo he would pick her up some time after five. He'd rung her to find out if she was all right and she'd asked him if he'd mind driving her somewhere. He'd said, did she have anywhere particular in mind – Birmingham or Broadstairs? It was all the same to him, but he might need to re-plan his evening. She said that what she wanted to do wouldn't take long.

He had half a mind to drop in on Frankie again later. He'd been calling her that in his head – he'd have to try it out on her. Francesca was too long-winded for his liking. Where she came from the name was probably merely Catholic. He'd gone round to Borrowdale again last night, taking a couple of bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon with him. They'd taken two of Matron's wine glasses out of the cabinet. Frankie had sipped the wine in a ladylike way, holding the glass by the stem, but he noticed she downed it pretty fast, almost keeping pace with him. He liked that in a woman, though there was a cost implication. He said he was sorry about yesterday and she said she hoped he had had a good journey home. Sip, sip. Her English was sometimes rather formal. She said she had telephoned him to see if he had got back safely but there had been no reply. She had been worried about him. He was touched by that. She was prettier at a distance than close to, so he carried on talking to her without drawing nearer, enjoying her smooth, tragic face and the way she crossed her knees. He sat in Matron's armchair and she sat on the day bed. She told him of her troubles with the bank and the Benefits Agency and the Home Office. In his younger days there seemed to be a bit of a story attached to a woman, he generally came in on the tail end of it. Now women had problems. These were harder to respond to than a story. He took his hat off to them for understanding what they were talking about. He certainly didn't. The old ones down the corridors had been peaceful. They hadn't competed with him for Frankie's attentions. He had moved on to the day bed and given her a cuddle. She smelled nice. Her head fitted between his chin and his collar-bone and she had put both legs over his. He might even have drifted off himself at one point. He had enjoyed the evening and left while they were both feeling benign about each other and before either of them expected anything.

THE WHEELS OF
Trevor's car crunched on the chalk and displaced surface dust. The dust settled on the windscreen. The coastguard station was one of the only places where the road came near the cliff edge. Sometimes there were two or three cars parked there but today they were on their own. The car windows were already wound down. Jo could hear the amplified voice giving out announcements on a cross-Channel ferry. She couldn't distinguish the words, just the rise and fall of the voice, then the warning signals for practice. The passengers would be setting out deckchairs to catch the last of the sun, forgetting that the boat turned in the harbour and they would be in the shade.

‘Great view of the Channel,' said Trevor.

‘I know we haven't come for the ride,' she said. ‘No need to go on about it. It's good of you to drive me round scenic Kent. Especially as it's pointless.'

‘Don't worry,' he said, ‘I do it myself all the time. Lose things and look for them.'

He turned the radio on and stuck his elbow out of the window.

She had asked Trevor to take her to Felpo's old address in Folkestone. She had told him that Felpo had gone. Sorry to hear that, he'd said. She had knocked at the house while Trevor waited outside in the car on a double yellow line. A man had opened the door to her. She had stood on the step and Trevor had kept an eye. That's how he put it. The man had scratched his chest. He'd never heard of anyone called Felpo. Where's he from, then, he said. A woman from the restaurant next door had come out and emptied a bucket of hot dirty water into the gutter. Then, when Jo got back into the car, she had asked Trevor to drive round the country lanes for a while. He didn't mention Ella camping in the shop and she didn't say anything about the thin discoloured line down her face.

‘Anything else the matter?' he said.

Jo shook her head in a vague way. Then she said, ‘I met my neighbour, Megan, on the way out. She asked where the van was. She looked so pleased when I said it wouldn't be coming back.'

Trevor nodded. ‘Sounds normal,' he said.

‘She's obviously spent the last six months hoping that it would go. I hadn't realised she hated it so much,' she said.

‘Don't worry about it,' he said. ‘She wouldn't have wanted an accident, just a failed MOT – something like that.'

She stared at the sea. He was being patient with her.

‘Do you often just sit in the car?' she said. ‘You look as if you do.'

‘Like the Thermos mob on the front?' he said. ‘Yes, I suppose I do. It passes the time. Lois didn't lose things. A place for everything. She had rules.'

‘You didn't stick to them,' Jo said.

‘Nothing from the shop out on the pavement. That would have been like taking your clothes off in the street. She was right. You get the stuff outside, it looks pretty rough.'

About a month ago, it must have been, on an evening like this, they had moved three chairs into the sun and set out a trestle table with the items of junk which could stand light falling on them. They had sat there, the three of them, watching the world go by. Well, cars anyway and dogs. Annie had swept the pavement with the broom. She liked doing that. They hadn't sold anything. Trevor would probably remember it too, but he wouldn't mention it. He'd think she was brassed-off enough.

‘Did you see Ella on Thursday evening?' she said.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Did she tell you? We went for a nice walk. I was flattered she was prepared to put up with me. Boring old fellow like me.'

‘I don't suppose you happened to notice Felpo's van anywhere nearby, did you?' she said. It seemed the simplest way to ask directly.

He looked puzzled. ‘No, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there,' he said.

He started to tell her about someone called Frankie, but Jo was barely listening. She was telling herself that if Felpo had known Ella had lied, he would have stayed. She recognised it as one of those bargains made between two fools. Hope based on an alternative in the past, which hadn't happened. Sweet nothing. Ella's idea of reparation was to cause trouble – then to carry on living. It had to do with her age. She'd done what she could. She remembered Ella standing against the window in the kitchen. She supposed someone might mistake them for each other from the back.

‘I got the stuff from Ena Tiemann,' Trevor said. ‘It's in boxes in the back. She's breaking out. Decided to part with all the heirlooms she wrapped up and put away when her mother died. She says she needs the space.'

‘What for?' Jo said.

‘I didn't ask her. They do that sometimes. Clear the decks. The only freedom left, turning out a cupboard,' he said.

‘Let's not think about it,' she said.

‘She bought a new blouse too. Swallowed the spare buttons. Said she remembered thinking they looked like little white pills in their nice plastic packet and the next thing she knew she'd taken them with water.'

‘Was that before or after she turned the cupboard out?' Jo said.

‘Before, I think.'

‘I might try it,' Jo said.

‘September tomorrow,' Trevor said.

‘Yes,' Jo said. ‘It is.'

She thought of Ena Tiemann sitting in her chair waiting for the carer to arrive to put her to bed. She wouldn't know what she was waiting for, nor, for the time being, where she was. From the clouds of her mind, household items would emerge – plates with green and gold rims, a dish in the shape of a lettuce leaf, a fruit bowl with blue dragons chasing round it, a photograph of a girl dressed up as a princess, waving at the camera. She wouldn't know why she was thinking of them.

‘We could see what's in the box,' Trevor said. ‘Shall we? It's all in newspaper. Find out the weather forecast forty years ago.'