The Darkening Hour (36 page)

‘It was wrong to put him in the river,’ Mona says.

‘No, Mona. We did the right thing. We didn’t hurt him – we just got rid of his body after his accident. It was to protect his family, his wife, his kids. They don’t need
to know he was seeing me. We must keep quiet. Say nothing, do you understand? Nobody knows that Max came here except for you and me. The police won’t find us. Oh, it says here, they found a
baby monitor on him – the alarm thing we had for Daddy. What on earth was he doing with that?’

‘I gave it to him,’ she says. ‘He said he would bring it up to your room.’

‘Your fingerprints will be on it,’ I say, ‘unless the water has washed them off. That, in addition to your overalls, will implicate you, I’m afraid.’ I smile. I
don’t want to frighten her, but it’s important she understands that if she speaks, she will be the prime suspect.

She takes a step back, like Endymion when he feels cornered.

Her eyes widen.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ I say. ‘You just have to keep doing exactly as I say. And then you will be all right.’

Does she realise how important it is not to speak about this?

‘Do you see, Mona, if the police find out that Max died here, in my house, I will have to tell them it must have had something to do with you. I found Max at the bottom of the steps. He
fell. But perhaps you pushed him?’

‘But why don’t you say he fell. It’s better always to tell the truth.’

I think this is rather rich, coming from someone who has openly thieved.

‘I told you, Mona.’ My voice is hard, I can hear it myself, but I feel she’s being a little slow and I’m growing impatient. ‘They don’t need to know he came
here at all. He has a wife in America. She doesn’t know about me! She need never know. If you speak . . .’ I make a slashing motion across my throat and Mona blinks.

Good God, there are a thousand reasons why it’s better not to tell ‘the truth’!

If the police discover this man died in my house, that we hid his body, what will become of my new radio programme?

‘You mention this to a single person, I’ll tell the police that
you
must have killed Max. Accidentally maybe. Or even deliberately. I’ll tell them you flirted with
Max, the way you did with Monsieur Sherif—’

‘I didn’t.’

‘I’ll tell them you must have wanted money from him: you wanted him to help you. That you’d already told lies to get work, said you were a widow. After all, you’d even
saved his number on your phone!’

I stare triumphantly at her.

‘Then you grew afraid of him, and you pushed him and he fell and cracked his head, and you wrapped it in your overall to stem the blood flow.’

She gives me her blank look, the one that’s impossible to read.

‘I wonder who they will believe,’ I go on. ‘Theodora Gentleman, The Voice of South-East England, or a domestic worker, desperate for money, for a passport. For British
citizenship.’

She remains speechless.

‘Another thing. CCTV. When we drove him to the river, I made sure I wouldn’t be seen, do you remember? I kept my head down. But you were driving, Mona. I imagine there is plenty of
evidence if I choose to use it against you, so I hope you won’t make me have to. The point is, Mona, Max is dead, but we had nothing to do with it There are no other witnesses.’

Still not a flicker of emotion crosses her face.

‘There
is
another witness.’ She speaks at last.

I look up. I want her to continue with the massage – I’ve had enough of this.

‘There is Charles,’ she goes on. ‘Your daddy. He saw you push the statue. He saw Max fall.’

I leave Dora on the massage table.

I can hear her shouting after me, ‘It’s all your fault! If you’d never come, this would never have happened!’

My heart’s racing, I don’t know what Dora is capable of doing now I’ve revealed what I know.

I hurry up to Leo’s room. He’s out.

I need to check my Facebook page for messages. See if there’s any news. It’s many days since I last checked.

Charles’s words as I left his flat earlier this evening come back to me.

That’s the doctor who examined me – American chap. I saw it happen through my bedroom window. Dora pushed the statue of Maudy at him, and he fell down the steps.

Images flood into my head. Dora forcing me to work on my hands and knees; the day she kicked me. Amina’s message, that Dora hurt Zidana. That she disappeared, never to be seen again.

What if Dora killed Zidana! Like she killed her lover.

I go cold then as the full realisation hits me.

The moment she turned and saw me at the top of the steps, she stared as if she thought she’d seen a djinn. She’d thought
I
had been in the flat with Charles.

She thought Max was me!

Dora pushed the statue over because she thought Max was me!

She tried to kill me.

I feel all the strength drain from me. I whisk round, terrified suddenly that Dora has come up, that her intention is to finish me off after all. I must tell someone. The police? But the police
have found a dead body in the river. I helped to deposit it there. The baby monitor and my overalls are clues that will prove, if Dora wishes to claim it, that I was involved.

I’m clicking on the screen as these thoughts tumble through my head.

Who will believe my word against Dora’s? Who will believe the words of an old man with senile dementia?

Yet if I run, I have no passport, no documents. I’m here as Dora’s domestic, tied to her, and she knows it.

One message.

From Sayed. It’s in Arabic.

We have news! An address for Ali in London. It’s a residential address, not a holding centre, and it’s not far from here. This is nothing to do with that crook
Hamid. I found it for you. Come to the shop and I’ll give you directions. I won’t charge you much!

My heart is a heavy drumbeat against my chest. The date on the message shows it’s been here for two days! Two days when I could have gone to him, got away! But
there’s no point in thinking of what might have been.

I look about me. I have nothing. I’ve sent the last of my money to Ummu, saving just twenty pounds for the week, which is in my bag in Charles’s flat.

I remember I still have the locket that Max was going to give to Dora; it’s in my pocket, my only safe hiding-place. I may not have documents, but with money, with enough money, you can
get most things.

Perhaps I should forget my bag. Just walk down the stairs now, go straight to Sayed’s shop. Hand him the locket, demand to have Ali’s address – even ask him to take me
there.

Yes, that’s what I must do.

I start down the stairs.

As I reach the landing outside Leo’s room – what Dora fondly calls the
piano nobile
– I stop. Dora’s downstairs. I daren’t face her again. The door –
the front door onto the world – is not an option for me anymore. I’m not free to walk through it without her permission while Dora is there.

Mona’s words play through my head. Daddy’s too unreliable, surely, to be used as any kind of witness? But I can’t tolerate the smug way Mona thinks
she’s won something over me.

I’m startled out of my reverie by a thump on the floor. Daddy’s banging with the broom handle on his ceiling, and I can hear his voice floating up through the dumbwaiter shaft.

‘Mona! Come on, Mona! I want you.’

I go to the foot of the stairs and shout up, ‘Mona, it’s time to go back down to Daddy! You can finish the rooms later when you’ve done the dishes.’

As long as I have Mona, if this thing erupts, I have the perfect story. That my maid, in her desperation to get a better life, made a pass at my rich American lover. She’s done it before
at Madame’s. And, when my lover refused her, in her panic that he would tell, she killed him then drove his body to the river . . . The baby monitor may still have her fingerprints on it. The
overall will have her DNA on it – after all, she had been wearing it all day. Yes, that version of events sounds credible.

Then other thoughts start up.

That Max did love me, after all, that he was preparing to come and live with me. I stand up, run my hands through my hair, go to the mirror and look at myself. Put my hand on my necklace,
telling the world who I am. It’s all right. I am Theodora Gentleman. No one will ever suspect me.

It’s several minutes before I realise Daddy is banging on the ceiling again.

I go to the bottom of the stairs again, shout up. Still no response. I grow impatient.

I take the stairs, calling Mona to me. She doesn’t respond.

I feel that tingle suddenly, the one I felt when I realised she was using my bathroom without my permission.

Is she snooping about my room? Silently rifling through my documents? Is she looking for her passport, planning to run away again? The tingle intensifies. Is she about to side-step me again,
just when I need her most, for my programme and, if the worst comes to the worst, for the police if they come?

Panic mounts as I reach the top of the first flight.

I check Leo’s room. His computer’s on, its screensaver dancing across the screen, but nothing else moves.

I climb the next flight. She is, perhaps, in the bathroom preparing it for me the way I like. Candles, incense.

No one there.

Up the third flight, blood banging in my ears now.

At last I push open my bedroom door.

It’s empty.

I take the pole, the one Leo used the day we got the decora -tions down. Unhook the trapdoor. Thankfully, from all the physical labour I do every day, my arms are strong. The
ladder slides down easily.

Dora will lie to save her reputation. I’ve seen her do it, she is capable of saying and doing anything to save herself. She
will
weave a story and the police
will
come
after me.

Then I’ll never see Leila or Ummu or Ali again.

I climb up the steps and into the warm quiet dark of the attic.

It’s more complicated shutting the attic door than it is opening it. And Dora’s calling, ‘Mona, Mona, I need you. Come now!’

I pull at the ladder, but it’s heavy, and awkward to move it from this angle. If she finds me up here, I daren’t imagine what she’ll do to me.

At last I manage to drag the weight of the ladder up, until it clanks down onto the floor and the trapdoor bangs shut, enclosing me in darkness. I sit and wait for my eyes to adjust to the lack
of light.

I feel for a moment as if the darkness is soft, a protective layer that holds me safe for a while, and I breathe deeply.

Then there’s the thump of footsteps on the stairs, and I know I must keep moving.

‘Mona. Mona – come at once!’

I move across the rough wood beams on the floor, groping, splintering my hands and grazing my shin. At last I reach the far wall where I can feel the tiny doorway into the next-door attic, the
one Leo showed me the day we found the Christmas decorations.

I push it. It seemed to open with ease for Leo, but for me it won’t budge.

I feel in my pocket. Check I still have it. Max’s gift to Theodora tucked up against me. I was going to give it to her, but it’s too late now. It’s all I have.

Then I hear more footsteps – Dora making her way upstairs. How long before she works out where I’ve gone?

I push at the little door again but still it won’t open.

I take a deep breath. Lean back, press my feet against it and give an almighty push.

The next bit is easy.

There is no partition between Desiree’s attic and the one belonging to the children who play with stones out on the street, and the next door swings back.

I must now have entered the large house with the women’s heads on the porticoes. This is the biggest attic so far, with a window in the roof looking out onto the sky.

Moonlight spills in and falls upon broken piano keys, an old round table turned on its side, a rocking horse and a doll’s house. The toys make me think of Leila and my head begins to spin
at the danger I’m in. How if I mess this up, I’ll lose her forever.

There doesn’t seem to be a door in the next wall. I feel for a crack, a gap in the panelling. Nothing. My heart begins to race. Am I going to have to give up, after all?

I can see the trapdoor down to the house below, go over to it, put my ear to the floor. There’s music playing, the faint murmur of voices. Then another sound startles me – the harsh
whoop of a police siren. Has Dora decided to tell them? Have they come for me already?

I go back to the wall, press my hands on it, and eventually find one panel that is more loosely fitted than the others. With a few shakes I manage to get it out and I crawl through into a space
as dark and stifling as the previous one was light and airy. I replace the loose panel. Feel again for the locket, my passport to freedom if there is to be one.

I think how for the months I’ve lived here, I have been invisible to people outside. But now there’s a body, a crime, it won’t be long until everyone is interested. I hug
myself. Now they are looking, now they care, it’s too late. If things go to plan, by the time they come I will have melted away completely.

I check my study, the wash room. Mona’s not there. Daddy’s thumping now and shouting. He’s not going to give up until someone goes.

‘Mona!’ I run up the stairs again.

I can’t cope with Daddy without her.

Daddy thumps hard again. There’s no choice, I’ll have to go down and quieten him.

I go out into the cold night and round the back.

I shudder as I pass Mummy’s head, feel her watching me as I descend the steps.

Daddy’s in his sitting room in his pyjamas. The broom in one hand, banging on the ceiling.

‘It’s OK, Daddy, you can stop that now. I’m here.’

‘I want Mona.’

‘Daddy, you’re going to have to come up to the house. I can’t stay down here with you and I’m not sure where Mona is.’

I fetch a dressing-gown for him, and his slippers, and help him put them on.