Secrets (2 page)

‘I c-c-can’t go home,’ she blurted out, clutching the policeman’s hand in fear. ‘They’ll say it was my fault.’

‘Of course they won’t,’ PC Mitchell said disbelievingly, and rubbed her cold hand in his two big ones. ‘Accidents like this can happen to anyone, you’re only a kid yourself.’

‘If I’d just been a bit quicker,’ she sobbed out. His big kindly face full of concern for her was only a further reminder of how little her parents cared for her. ‘I ran all the way, but she was already by the road when I got up here.’

‘Your mum and dad will understand,’ he said, and patted her shoulder.

The ambulance drove off then, and the crowd began to disperse. Only the taxi driver was left talking to the two policemen as Adele waited. Everything went back to normal so quickly, cars now driving over the very spot where Pamela had lain just minutes before, the onlookers fading away to go to the pub, catch a bus or buy the evening paper. For them it was just an incident, a sad one maybe, but they would have forgotten it before they even reached their homes.

Adele had been aware right from when she was very small that Euston was a place of huge inequality. The stations, those vast and magnificent buildings, presided over the neighbourhood like towering cathedrals, employing hundreds of people. Those wealthy enough to travel relied on the labours of the poor to make their journeys comfortable and enjoyable.

The railway workers lived in the mean, dirty streets around the station. A porter might know the times of every single train, each stop and halt from London to Edinburgh, and he would strain his back and arms each day carrying heavy luggage. Yet he would never visit any of those places whose names tripped off his tongue so effortlessly. If he managed to take his wife and children for a day at the seaside he’d consider himself fortunate. Likewise, the maid who changed the beds in the smart hotels where the travellers stayed probably had no sheets on her own bed, let alone an indoor lavatory or a real bath.

Adele had so often watched the rich collide with the poor around here. An elegant lady in a fox fur buying flowers from a ragged old soldier with only one leg. A gentleman in a gleaming car signalling impatiently for the dwarf who sold newspapers to bring him one. Adele knew the dwarf lived in an archway under the railway. She had seen the old soldier doff his cap and smile at his customers even though he was frozen with the cold and tottering on his crutches. When the business people left their offices to go home to the leafy suburbs, out came the poor to clean up after them.

Yet Adele had always vowed to Pamela that there was something better in store for them. She had spun her stories of them living in a posh part of London, and how one day they’d visit all those destinations they saw on boards in the stations. But now, as she waited to go home, without her sister, all those dreams and ambitions were gone for good.

The taxi driver got into his cab, and for a moment he looked at Adele as if wanting to say something to her. But maybe he was too shaken himself to speak, and he drove off as the two policemen came back to her.

‘It’s time to go now,’ PC Mitchell said. Then, taking her hand firmly in his, he led her off towards the police car.

Adele had never been in a car before, but just that was a further painful reminder of Pamela. Her favourite game had been to put two chairs one behind the other to make an imaginary car in which she was always the driver, and Adele the passenger who decided where to go.

The Talbots had three small rooms on the top floor of a terraced house in Charlton Street. The Mannings lived beneath them with their four children, the Pattersons and their three children on the ground floor.

As in most of the streets in the area, the front door opened straight on to the pavement, but unlike most of the others the house was occupied by only three families and had the luxury of a shared bathroom and inside lavatory.

The front door was shut because it was so cold, and Adele put her hand through the letter box and pulled out the key. She looked back at the policemen before she used it. The younger one, who had said he was taking her home and introduced himself as PC Mitchell, was blowing on his fingers to warm them. The older one, whom Mitchell had called Sarge, was standing further back from the house, looking up. They both looked apprehensive, and that made Adele even more frightened.

As they mounted the stairs to the top flat, Adele saw the building as the policemen must and felt ashamed. It was so dirty and smelly, bare wood on the stairs and the distemper on the walls so old it had no real colour. As always there was a great deal of noise, the Mannings’ baby yelling blue murder and the other children shouting over the top of it.

The door to the top flat was flung open before they reached it, presumably because her parents had heard the sound of men’s feet on the stairs. Adele’s mother, Rose, looked down at them, her face contorting when she saw the uniformed men and Adele. ‘Where’s Pammy?’ she burst out. ‘Don’t tell me something’s happened to her?’

Adele had always thought of her mother as beautiful, even when she was miserable and nasty. Yet in that moment, with the light from the living room behind her, she saw her as she really was. Not a golden-haired beauty with an hour-glass figure, but a tired, worn woman of thirty, with a sagging body, muddy complexion and bedraggled hair. The pinafore she wore over her skirt and jumper was stained and torn, and her slippers, brown checked ones, had holes in the toes.

‘Can we come in, Mrs Talbot?’ the sergeant asked her. ‘You see, there’s been an accident.’

Rose let out a terrible shriek, taking Adele by surprise. Her mouth just dropped open and out came the noise like a runaway train.

All at once Dad was there too in the doorway, demanding to know what was going on, and all the while Adele and the policemen were still standing on the stairs, and down below people were opening doors to see what was going on.

‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ her mother screamed, her eyes closing up till they were just two slits. ‘Who did it? How did it happen?’

The policemen almost pushed their way into the flat then, PC Mitchell nudging Adele in ahead of him. The room was both kitchen and living room. It smelled of frying and the washing drying round the fire, and the table was laid for tea. The sergeant made Rose sit down in an armchair and he gently began to explain what had happened.

‘But where was Adele? She was supposed to collect her,’ Rose interrupted, looking daggers at her elder daughter. ‘Why did she let Pammy run across the road?’

Adele had expected to be blamed, purely because she always was, whatever went wrong. Yet a small part of her had clung to the hope that with something as awful as this, the usual system would be bypassed.

‘I ran all the way to get her, but she was already trying to cross Euston Road when I got there,’ Adele said frantically, tears running down her face. ‘I called out for her to stop, but I don’t think she saw or heard me.’

‘And she was hit by a car?’ Rose asked, looking up at the sergeant, her eyes begging to be told this wasn’t so. ‘And she was killed? My beautiful Pammy is dead?’

The sergeant nodded, looking to Jim Talbot for help. But he was slumped in his chair, his hands over his face.

‘Mr Talbot.’ The sergeant touched him on the shoulder. ‘We are so sorry. An ambulance arrived within minutes, but it was too late.’

Adele watched her dad take his hands from his face. He looked towards her and for a brief moment she thought he was going to beckon to her to come to him for comfort. But instead his face contorted into a scowl. ‘Too late,’ he roared out, and pointed his finger at her. ‘You were too late to collect Pammy, and now she’s dead because you were too bloody idle to get a move on.’

‘Come on!’ the sergeant said reprovingly. ‘It wasn’t Adele’s fault, she wasn’t to know Pamela would try to cross the road alone. It was an accident. Don’t blame her, she’s only a child herself, and she’s in shock.’

Adele remained standing by the door, too stunned and stricken even to find a seat. She felt she had no business to be there, like a neighbour who’d come in to borrow some sugar and wouldn’t leave.

This feeling grew even stronger as the two policemen tried to comfort her parents, calling them Rose and Jim as if they had known them a long time. PC Mitchell made a pot of tea and poured it; the sergeant picked up a photo of Pamela from the mantelpiece and remarked what a pretty girl she was. Her father cuddled her mother to him and both policemen tutted in sympathy as they were told how clever Pamela was.

But no one turned to Adele, not after the sergeant had given her a cup of tea. It was as though she’d become invisible to everyone.

Maybe she only stood there for five or ten minutes, but it seemed like for ever. It felt as though she was watching a play and was hidden from the actors’ view by the spotlights. She could see, hear and feel their shock and grief, but they were completely oblivious to her pain.

She so much wanted someone to hold her in their arms, to tell her it was not her fault and that Pamela had been told dozens of times that she was never to cross Euston Road alone.

After a bit Adele sat down on a small stool by the door and put her head on her knees. The adults all had their backs to her, and even though she knew this was mostly because of how the chairs were arranged, it felt deliberate. While Adele could agree wholeheartedly with everything that was said about her sister, how she was liked by everyone, top of the class, a sunny little girl who had special qualities, it seemed to her that her parents were pointing out that her elder sister was just the opposite, and it was unjust that she should be the one they were left with.

The talking and crying went on and on, round and round. Rose would get hysterical, then calm herself to relate yet another instance when Pamela was extra special, then Jim would butt in with his views. And in between her parents’ voices there were the two policemen’s calm, measured tones. Young and inexperienced as Adele was, she could sense their skill at dealing with grief, maintaining just the right amount of interest, care and sympathy, yet gradually trying to bring the couple to the point where they would accept their daughter was dead.

While she was touched they had enough compassion to do this, a small part of her very much wished she dared point out to them that Jim Talbot’s favourite words to both his daughters had always been ‘Shut up, can’t you.’ That he was the one who was supposed to collect Pamela, and forgot. She also wondered if the policemen would be as sympathetic to Rose if they knew she was mostly too morose to get out of bed in the mornings. Adele had always given Pamela her breakfast and taken her to school.

‘Would you like us to take you to see Pamela?’ the sergeant asked some time later. Rose was still crying helplessly, but not in the hysterical way she had been earlier. ‘She has to be formally identified, and it might help you to see that she died instantly and that there are no visible injuries.’

Adele had remained silently on her stool all this time, lost in her misery, but when she heard that question she came to with a jolt. ‘Can I come too?’ she asked impulsively.

All four adult faces turned to her. Both policemen looked merely surprised, they had clearly forgotten she was still in the room. But her parents looked affronted at Adele’s request.

‘Why, you little ghoul,’ her mother exploded, getting up as if to strike her. ‘It isn’t a freak show. Our baby is dead because of you.’

‘Now, now, Rose,’ the sergeant said, moving between mother and daughter. ‘Adele didn’t mean it like that, I’m sure. She’s upset too.’

Sergeant Mike Cotton wished he was anywhere but 47 Charlton Street. In twenty-odd years of police service he’d been called hundreds of times to inform next of kin of a death, and it was always a painful duty. Yet when it was a child’s death it was a hideous task, for there were no words that could soothe the pain, nothing that could justify a healthy child being cut down without warning. But this was one of the worst cases he’d known, for the moment Rose Talbot opened the door, and Adele didn’t rush into her arms, he knew there was something badly wrong within the family.

All the time he was explaining how the accident happened, he had been very aware of Adele still standing by the door. He so much wanted to call her over, sit her on his knee and comfort her, but that should have been the father’s job. Just as it should have been him who went to collect his small daughter on a dark, cold January night. Euston Road was not the sort of area any young girl should be out in alone. Every kind of scum hung around there – beggars, prostitutes and their pimps, men looking for a woman, thieves watching out for anyone to rob.

Mike had to admit that the Talbots were a slight cut above most of their neighbours in this street. He knew families of eight or ten crowded into one room, where survival depended on the mother being wily and strong enough to wrench some money for food from her husband’s hands before he spent his wages in the pub. He knew others that rooted about in filth like animals, and some where the mother turned the kids out into the streets at night while she earned money to feed them lying on her back.

The Talbots’ flat might be shabby but it was clean and warm, and an evening meal was prepared. Jim Talbot was still in work too, despite the financial depression which was slowly strangling the country.

Mike thought that Rose Talbot was almost certainly from middle-class stock: she spoke correct English even if it was peppered with London slang, and she had a refined manner. He had noted that despite his shocking news, she had still quickly removed her pinafore and run her fingers through her untidy hair, as if ashamed of being caught unprepared for visitors. Her skirt and jumper were clearly from a market stall, yet the subdued shade of blue enhanced her lovely eyes and gave her a surprisingly stylish air.

Jim, in contrast, was from the bottom of the social scale. Although tall and slender, he had that give-away stoop and awkwardness which always seemed to go with products of London slums. His London accent had a kind of nasal whine to it, and with his bad teeth, thinning sandy hair and washed-out blue eyes, he looked prematurely middle-aged, even though he was just thirty-two. He wasn’t the brightest of men either, for when Mike had asked him how secure his job was, he didn’t appear to understand the question. Why would an attractive and well-bred woman like Rose marry a man like Jim?