Tarnished (23 page)

‘But Jean says Mum
didn’t
ask Raymond to help her die.’

‘No way.’ Loz’s eyes grew wide.

‘She also said that Keith didn’t fall off the dock: Raymond pushed him.’

Loz blew out her cheeks.

‘I’m not sure what to believe, though. It seems like she just wants to make him out to be totally evil. And then I showed her these photos and she acted really weird.’

‘Photos?’

Peg told her about the pictures of the blonde, and how Jean had reduced them to paper snowflakes. ‘I suppose she doesn’t want me to hear about my father being unfaithful to Mum.’

‘But she doesn’t mind telling you that he killed her, and his baby brother?’

Peg stood up. ‘Can we start walking again? It’s bloody freezing.’

Loz took her arm and, as they carried on along the seafront towards Tankerton, Peg bit her lip against the cold and looked at the waves folding and unfolding on the shingle. It was an unusually high tide, and the water was practically lapping their toes.

She stopped and pointed out to sea. ‘That’s where The Street is,’ she told Loz. ‘You can’t see anything now, but we’ll come back tomorrow at low tide and we can walk out.’

‘I look forward to it.’ Loz leaned against her.

‘There were other photographs of the blonde girl. I wanted to show you them,’ Peg said. ‘See what you thought. You’re so good at reading people. But I seem to have lost them.’

‘They’ve got to be somewhere.’

‘They’ll turn up. Eventually. There’s a lot of stuff, though, and I’ve been shifting it around all day. They could have got buried anywhere. Or I might have thrown them out by mistake.’

As they rounded the curve that took them to the bottom of Tankerton Slopes, they were met by the deep bass-thrum of a sound system, underscoring barely-broken-voiced boy laughter and drunken girl-shrieking. Over on a shingle bank, a gathering of the local youth were dancing in front of a bonfire, squeezing what fun they could out of the cold night. As Peg and Loz drew closer, the unmistakable musk of skunkweed wafted towards them.

Peg had to think for a few minutes to place when she had seen the detritus of an earlier party at this same spot. It came as quite a shock that it had been just that morning – that only a day had passed since she was last here.

‘Oy, batty boy!’ A young male voice squeaked up at them from the beach. Peg instinctively broke away from Loz.

‘Sling your hook, knob parcel,’ Loz called back, pointedly taking Peg’s arm again. A flock of boy laughter rose from the shingle, but to Peg’s surprise and relief, it was not followed up by any action.

‘Twats,’ Loz said, and, Peg’s cheeks burning, they headed up The Slopes towards Tankerton.

‘So this is it,’ Loz said, standing at Doll’s front door. ‘The Famous Bungalow.’

‘And Aunty Jean’s down there,’ Peg pointed to the back of the building.

‘It’s like going back to the nineteen fifties.’

Peg let them in, and Loz stood in the doorway, sniffing the air, which was still pretty thick with bleach. After the cold night, the stifling warmth and the bright fluorescence of the hallway – Doll and Frank had never gone in for atmospheric lighting – made Peg feel so weary her legs could barely hold her.

‘Crazy colours,’ Loz said, as Peg showed her round.

Peg had never noticed it before, having grown up with the decor, but seeing it through Loz’s eyes, the combination of the many swirls of orange, turquoise and purple in the place was quite remarkable.

‘And so much stuff!’ Loz said, going into the kitchen and peering into a tall cupboard completely crammed with mismatched plates of all colours and sizes.

‘There’s still loads to do. But you should have seen it before I got started.’

‘Poor old lady. Fancy living like this.’

‘It’s not so bad. It’s what she’s used to.’ Peg twisted her fingers together. Loz was inadvertently hitting a lot of very sensitive buttons, making her feel scrutinised, on the defensive. ‘But it’s got to change now; she’s got no choice.’

‘Is it all right if I move these?’ Loz said. Most of the kitchen worktop was invisible under a crowd of badly washed empty jam jars and plastic food containers Doll insisted on keeping for some hypothetical future batch-cooking and jam-making session.

‘Hang on a sec.’ Peg fetched a couple of carrier bags from the cupboard, filled them with the junk from the worktop and put them by the back door to join the rest of the recyclables in the morning. Loz took a cloth from the sink, wiped the newly cleared space and put her cotton shopping bag down there.

‘Fancy a nip and a nibble?’ She pulled out two bottles of vegan-friendly Bardolino, a couple of Jiffy bags full of the spiced nuts that were Seed’s signature snack and a foil-wrapped slab of what she revealed to be the chocolate nut torte they made that Peg sometimes actually had dreams about.

‘Loz! You didn’t nick it, did you?’

‘So what? They pay me rubbish and I work my arse off. So why shouldn’t I just top it up a bit?’

Peg looked at Loz, her mouth open.

‘Careful, or you’ll catch flies.’

‘Now then,’ she said, searching in the kitchen cupboards, ‘I can see the cake stands and the vintage electrical appliances with the fraying cables, but where are the wine glasses?’

‘In the lounge. In the cocktail cabinet.’

‘Ooh. A cocktail cabinet.’ Loz grabbed the bottles and bags and swept through to the lounge. Peg followed.

‘Oh how super!’ Loz said in a clipped vintage BBC voice as she lowered the foldout table to reveal the mirrored interior of the cabinet. ‘And it lights up too!’ She picked up the flock Babycham faun that stood guard over Doll’s rarely touched sherry, gin and Martini bottles and kissed it on the nose. Then she pulled out some flamingo-shaped plastic cocktail stirrers, and the drinks mats. ‘Are these from Raymond’s club? Classy.’

Peg looked at the dust-swathed bottle of Doll’s potato wine in the cabinet and, with a flash of yearning, remembered her grandfather handing her a taster in a small liqueur glass. It was Christmas, and Jean and Doll laughed heartily as she tried it and made a face.

‘We’d best rinse these out before we use them,’ Peg said, pulling herself back together. She picked out a couple of dusty wine glasses.

‘Are you OK?’ Loz followed her through to the kitchen. ‘Did I say something wrong?’

‘No.’

‘You think I’m being snitty, don’t you?’

‘No.’ Peg rinsed the glasses carefully, then smiled up at Loz.

‘Yes you do.’

Peg shook her head.

‘I’m sorry,’ Loz said, following her back into the lounge. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m just a little excited to be here, that’s all. And all this –’ she gestured at the wall clock framed by wrought-iron curlicues, the canvas-effect Tretchikoff Chinese Girl print, the collection of precious Franklin Mint porcelain figurines that Doll used to let Peg sit on the settee and hold, one by one, over a velour cushion. ‘We’d be laughing at it if we found it in, say, the Golden Hind.’

The Golden Hind was a pub just round the corner from Loz’s parents’ immaculately tasteful house, which Peg and Loz used as a decompression chamber after a visit. It was run single-handedly by Daphne, a buxom, beehived blonde of at least sixty, whose eyelids were so heavy with mascara and eyeliner that Peg always wondered how she managed to hold them open. Her saloon bar was festooned with silk flowers, cute china animals and pictures of big-eyed little boys pissing in the gutter, worked in fluorescent paint on black velvet. Loz and Peg had spent their first evening there together giggling into their lager. The Spanish dancer loo-roll holder in the pot-pourri-scented ‘little girl’s room’ had nearly finished them off.

‘But this is different, Loz,’ Peg said quietly, looking down. ‘This is where I come from.’

Loz stood there for a moment and her spikiness melted away. ‘I know.’

She stepped forward, took the glasses from Loz’s hands and replaced them with her fingers. ‘And I’m sorry. I love it because I love you. I’m feeling nothing but love here. Come on.’

It took Peg one minute to melt, gratefully, into the one place she wanted to be more than anywhere else in the world. Wherever she was, if Loz’s arms were there, she was at home.

As Loz led her to the settee, the intercom buzzed briefly. Peg froze for a second.

‘What’s that?’ Loz said.

‘Aunty Jean. She might need me,’ Peg said, hoping it wasn’t another curry explosion. She listened for a couple of beats but nothing followed. Jean was unlikely to be wanting anything at two in the morning. For all her difficulties, thanks to the Guinness, some blue torpedo-shaped pills and a machine that helped her breathe through sleep apnoea, she generally managed to remain unconscious the whole night through.

‘It must be playing up,’ Peg said. ‘It’s getting on a bit. Gramps must have put it in over twenty years ago.’

‘Now, where were we?’ Loz said, as she pulled Peg towards her and worked her hand inside her T-shirt.

Then

My school years weren’t entirely friendless. There was a brief interlude when I was about eight, with a new girl called Philippa Burrell.

Phil was so skinny she was almost see-through. She also had a big hairy mole on her left cheek like a splodge of beard. Because she was even odder than me, she stepped neatly into my place at the bottom of the classroom pecking order. I was therefore able to offer her the understanding hand of friendship, which she was only too glad to grab.

Our tormentors called us Laurel and Hardy, or Mole and Wog.

I’m not sure that we liked each other, really. She pinched me too much. And she was always fainting, and I was pretty certain she faked it at least half the time.

But I suppose I was grateful for any friendship.

It was doomed, though, of course.

This is a quarter-way through the spring term.

Phil has been told that her parents are going away on business so she’ll have to stay at school for half-term.

She throws herself down on her bed.

I don’t think she’s crying. She’s just very, very still.

‘They hate me,’ she says into her pillow. ‘If I was a pretty round blonde girl, they’d take me with them and show me off. I don’t want to stay here all on my own with just Uma for company.’

Uma’s parents live in Hong Kong, so she only goes home for the summer. She’s got the stinkiest breath you can imagine, so, although she’s actually slightly above us in who to pick on, we make ourselves feel better by looking down on her.

So I go: ‘Come and stay with us for the hols!’

Phil lifts her head from the bed.

‘Seriously?’

‘Seriously.’

She leans over and gives me a sharp, hard pinch which I think means she likes the idea.

At first Nan isn’t too keen when I call and ask her, but when I beg, she gives in.

‘She’ll have to sleep on your floor,’ Nan says.

I say that’s fine, because we’re used to sleeping in dorm together.

‘And she’ll have to take us as she finds us.’

‘Of course,’ I say.

I’m twitching with excitement as we stand under the school portico waiting for The Car.

For the first time, I am bringing a friend home with me for the holidays.

The Car is one thing I remember clearly. It took me to school at the beginning of each term and returned me to Tankerton at the end. I didn’t ever wonder about it at the time – it was just one of those things that happened. But of course, it was paid for by my father, and Wayne the driver, a big man with a shiny suit and no hair, was his man.

Keeping an eye on me for Raymond, of course.

Of course.

When Wayne swings the big shiny Car up the gravel roundabout in front of our school, Philippa takes one look at him and pulls a face.

‘Who’s
that
,’ she says.

‘Wayne.’

She shudders and I look down and see that she has goosebumps on her arm. I think for an awful moment she’s going to faint, but luckily she decides not to. Wayne jumps out of The Car to hold the back door open for us and we clamber in to the wood-and-leather inside while he puts our suitcases in the boot. Philippa sniffs, wrinkles her nose and looks at me, but I like the smell of The Car. It’s coconut, and mint from Wayne’s Polos that he keeps on the shiny wooden table thing between the two front seats.

He climbs in and as usual turns to me and gives me a little salute.

‘Morning milady,’ he says in his boomy voice. ‘And where shall it be today?’

I pretend to um and err and then I say, ‘Tankerton, please, Wayne.’

‘Right you are milady,’ he goes. He turns and starts the engine, and I try not to look at his oily brown scalp and the bristly rolls of fat at the back of his neck.

We roll along the long, gravel driveway that leads from the school to the road and I turn to look through the back window. It’s such a grand building, all tall columns behind a misty mile of green, mole-hilled park. It reminds me of the house in
The Secret Garden
, or the one in
The Water Babies
.

It’s a world apart from where we’re going. But I prefer it at Nan’s, which is home and where I’m really and truly looked after.

We drive up through Sussex and onto the motorway. Philippa hardly says a word. She just sits back and looks out of the window like a sick child. In the end I give up trying to talk to her and pull out the
Beano
and packet of Fruit Pastilles which, as usual, Wayne’s put in the back pocket of the seat in front of me.

‘And here we are,’ Wayne says.

I don’t know if it’s his voice or the stopping of the car that wakes me. But then we are out, and he’s carrying our suitcases into the bungalow. Nan hurries across the front lawn in her pinny to give me a hug.

‘Hello, Meggy lovey.’ She puts her hands on my shoulders, which she almost has to reach up to do these days, and takes a look at me. ‘I should find out what they’re feeding you at that school of yours and try some for meself.’

She turns to Philippa, who is standing on my left. ‘And this must be—’ but she is caught short by the sight of Phil’s mole as she turns to face her. ‘Oh dear,’ Nan goes. ‘You
poor
little girl.’