The Playdate (22 page)

The best thing, Debs decided, was just to leave the package on the doorstep. That way it would be hidden by the bin, but still visible to anyone opening the door.

She was just about to lean down when she heard the noise from inside—at the same time as she saw the two doorbells. Oh. It was a flat?

Debs leapt back as the front door flew open. A young Somali woman in a veil stared back, equally surprised. Debs lifted up her package to show her what she was doing. The woman grinned a wide, friendly smile and motioned Debs in.

“Oh, no,” Debs said. “I was just leaving something . . .”

The woman smiled again and shrugged to show she didn’t speak English. “Please, please,” she said, motioning Debs inside.

Oh well. Maybe the package would be safer in the communal hall anyway. She nodded and went inside. The young woman closed the front door behind her, leaving Debs alone.

The hall smelled musty. Stairs ran up to a flat above, covered in a worn gray carpet.

Now, where was the best place to lay the package? There was a shelf where mail sat. That should be fine.

She was just placing the package beside a tower of junk mail when the flat door beside her opened, too, and a burly, bald man walked out carrying a canvas tool bag.

“Oh!” she gasped.

“Oh, all right, love? You from across the road?”

She nodded.

“I was just going to pop these through,” he growled, placing some house keys in her hand. “Tell her it’s all sorted and that I hope her little girl’s all right. Got one that age, myself. Cheerio.”

“Oh . . . no . . .” stuttered Debs, trying to catch his attention as he swung open the front door and pulled it shut behind him.

She stood in the silent hall, holding the keys. Oh dear. What now?

She had really wanted to avoid speaking to Callie, till she had things sorted out in her own head about what had happened last night. Perhaps if she locked up the flat and waited on the pavement she could give the keys to the African lady. She might have been popping down to the corner shop.

Deciding that was the best thing to do, Debs went to pull the door to Callie’s flat shut. As she did, she caught sight of the inner hall.

That was odd.

No. This was not what she had imagined at all. She peered in. The walls of the hall were lined in wood chip that looked like it had been painted a beige color many years ago, the tips of its knobbly peaks picked white in many places, possibly by a child. The floor was covered in vinyl that was supposed to look like tiles. Too many coats were crammed onto the hall hooks. There was a muddle of shoes underneath them that was overflowing,
the heels pointing in all different directions. A few umbrellas, one with a broken spoke. A pile of hats and gloves bursting out from a plastic bag stuck on a peg. A child’s book bag, lying against the wall.

Curious, Debs walked in a little farther. This wasn’t how she imagined Callie lived at all. This flat was unloved, soulless.

She carried on into the sitting room and peered around.

A throw lay unevenly over an elderly sofa. The bookshelves on either side of the fireplace were empty, apart from a few scruffy files, and piles of children’s drawings, two of which had been stuck to the wall with Blu-Tack. One of the shelves sat at an angle, as if it had come loose from the wall and never been repaired. A few photos were propped up above the fireplace but not framed, one of Callie with Rae, and a man who looked like Callie’s father; one of Rae dressed in a Halloween costume with the children from next door, then another photo almost identical from a different angle. Everywhere Debs turned, there were more signs of Callie’s resignation. A plant pot with no plant. Piles all over the coffee table of unopened bills and out-of-date school letters.

This was too bad. Debs wandered into the kitchen.

It was similarly worn and tired, with a pen-covered plastic cover on the table, and more piles of paper. A list drawn in blue on a whiteboard was out of date, with “Christmas shopping” penned in faded blue ink.

Debs checked around. By the sink sat a dirty cup, probably left by the plumber. She looked for a dishwasher. There wasn’t one, just an elderly-looking washing machine with a cracked door underneath a dryer. Absentmindedly, she found some dish liquid and a brush and cleaned out the cup and went to lay it on the drying rack. The wash rack was covered in the thin layer
of white scale that the hard London water left everywhere. Not dirty, just unattended.

In a daze, wondering why Callie’s home seemed in such turmoil, she looked under the sink and found some bleach and a scrubber.

Oh. What was she doing? She stopped herself.

Well, what harm would it do?

She swirled it round the sink and the taps and over the draining board, and began to scrub.

Scrub, scrub, scrub.

Five minutes later, the sink was gleaming.

Good, she thought.

It was when she put them back that she noticed the dish liquid had spilled inside the cupboard and dried, a thick green line snaking through the other cleaning bottles and underneath some damp plastic bags pushed to the back. “I’ll just do that, too,” she thought.

It was while she was on her knees wiping out the cupboard, cleaning off the other bottles and pulling out some old cloths, that she noticed the vinyl kitchen floor. It was clean in a perfunctory way as if it were mopped quickly every few days. That had not been enough, however, to eliminate the thin ridge of brown dirt that skirted the bottom of the kitchen cabinets, almost in the crack in between.

Debs stood up. It would only take another minute. Now, where did Callie keep her mop?

*     *     *

She didn’t know where the time went. One minute it was two o’clock, then it was six o’clock.

The flat smelled damp and fresh, as if someone had thrown
a bucket of water over it. She stood back, pleased. It had only taken a second to pop home to fetch a few things. Every surface of the two-bedroom flat was polished and scrubbed. The windows sparkled. The toilet had been descaled and now flushed blue water. The sitting room was Hoovered and Shake ’n’ Vac’d. A second wash was in the machine, the first in the dryer. Old toothpaste tubes and empty toilet rolls had been removed from the bathroom, along with oddments of soap. A pile of junk mail and opened envelopes sat by the front door ready for recycling. Everything else had been sorted into folders marked with Allen’s colored labels. Urgent letters were now stuck to the old corkboard with red pins she’d brought from home. She had weeded out all the shoes that were smaller than a size eleven, or on their own, and put them in a recycling bag along with a couple of coats for “Age 3,” and a pile of old magazines and local newspapers she’d found down the side of the sofa.

Now there was only one more job to do.

She stood in the sitting room on a chair to close the windows, which she’d opened to let air flood through. It was then that she saw her. Suzy. The American woman was back home.

The window above Suzy’s front door was framed in modern clear glass, as if the original stained glass had been replaced. Through it she could see Suzy sitting on the stairs of her house, halfway up, handset to her ear.

Debs stared at her. It had been on her mind all day. Had that woman told her to hold Rae’s hand?

It took her a moment to realize she could hear something through the open window. It was a familiar sound. A phone ringing distantly. The world seemed to slow down for a second as Debs’s brain tried to work it out. It couldn’t be Suzy’s phone because she was on hers.

So it must be . . . Debs’s own phone.

Her eyes settled back on Suzy, her eyes and ears desperately trying to collate the information they had gathered, to make sense of it.

With her eyes, Debs saw the following.

Suzy replaced her receiver.

With her ears, Debs heard this.

The phone in her own house stopped ringing at the same moment.

How strange. Why would that woman be ringing her?

A shape moved to the right. Debs turned to see a figure walking up the street. It was Allen, wearing the smart raincoat she had bought him for Christmas. Gosh. Was it that late? She glanced at her watch. She’d need to finish up here quickly and put the tea on.

As she went to turn away from the window, Debs saw her husband slow down as he approached their gate. His eyelids were heavy behind the glasses that secretly Debs hoped he might change soon for lenses. He had nice eyes, Allen. Hazel, flecked with yellow, rimmed by long sandy lashes. But behind those old-fashioned frames with their thick glass, they took on a slightly bulbous look. The wiry hair of his eyebrows, which flew upward of its own accord, was underlined and exaggerated by the black frames. She was the only person who ever saw what his eyes really looked like. The first time he’d taken his glasses off she had been so shocked at the exposed intensity that emanated from his naked pupils, she had blushed and looked away. It had just felt so strangely intimate.

A little flush of love ran through her now, too, for the way her husband made do with what he had physically without
complaining. That mother of his had never shown him otherwise. Too scared she might lose him, Debs suspected. Well, she was here now. She would help him.

Debs watched Allen open the door, and noticed how his shoulders drooped at what drama might be waiting for him on the other side. Not tonight, love, she promised him silently. Tonight, she would smile, and be upbeat, and not mention the Poplars or airplanes or the children next door. She would simply ask him about his day, and give him the attention he deserved. Today, at least, they would have one good day.

Debs was about to turn again when a noise caught her attention. It was her phone again, ringing out more loudly now through the front door Allen had just opened. She watched as Allen put down the briefcase she had bought him on sale from Debenhams. Idly, Debs noted how Suzy was now opening her own front door, and pushing her double stroller through it, with her older son holding on to the handle.

That was strange.

The American woman had a handset at her ear again.

Debs watched, hypnotized, as Allen straightened up and walked across the wooden floorboards of their hallway, reaching his arm out to pick up the phone.

With a sudden certainty, Debs knew what was going to happen. Her eyes darted to Suzy, who took the phone from her ear and abruptly pushed a button.

Immediately, the phone in front of Allen cut off.

Debs froze. As she stood there, she saw her husband turn back to the door with a confused expression. Oblivious to Suzy’s presence a few feet from him, he shut the door gently.

Suzy then placed the handset back in her house, shut her own door, and walked to the gate with the three children.

A chill ran through Debs’s body.

All week she had heard the children next door through the wall, thumping along the wooden floorboards of their hallway and up and down their stairs.

What if Suzy could hear their footsteps, too? What if she knew when Debs was about to pick up the phone?

25
Suzy

The park was very quiet when Suzy arrived with the boys.

They had already been here after school, but Henry was so restless this evening, making strange squealing noises and jumping at the twins till they cried, that she decided to take them out again.

As they reached the play equipment at the far end of the park, she recognized the little girl hanging off the monkey bars, by the color of her long hair. It looked like dipped gold. Not like Nora’s red hair, of course. That would be pale strawberry blonde, her face sprinkled with freckles, her skin creamy white like Suzy’s.

The little girl was climbing up the monkey bars and leaning forward, attempting to reach the first bar. Her mouth hung open with concentration, her summer dress lifting up unselfconsciously to show underpants dotted with daisies.

Suzy looked around. The café had shut at 5:30
P.M.,
the schoolkids dispersed home for tea. Just a few dog walkers
strolled across the empty football fields, one throwing a red ball for a greyhound that whipped across the park at breakneck speed. Henry ran to the far side of the play area and climbed on the pretend tractor, making growling noises as he turned the wheel. She could tell by how hyper he was when she picked him up from school that he was missing Rae. Rae was so good for him. Calmed him down.

The twins lay asleep in their stroller, their perfect little faces collapsed like old men’s, mouths loose, cheeks soft and drooping. Suzy put the stroller brake on, and kissed them both on the head, while watching the little girl.

Where on earth was her mother?

“Can you help me?” the little girl called.

“Can I help you?” Suzy replied, pointing at herself.

“Can’t reach it,” the child panted, trying again.

“It’s Hannah, right?”

The girl nodded.

“Hon, where’s your mommy?” Suzy asked.

“My mummy’s running,” the little girl said, waving her arm toward the other side of the park. “She wants to be thinner. She goes to Weight Watchers, too.” In the distance Suzy saw the back of a plump woman in black trousers and a white T-shirt jogging away from them, well out of shouting distance.

“Does your mommy leave you on your own?” she asked the little girl, incredulous. It would take a second to snatch the child. Even if the woman saw someone take her, she couldn’t run across the park quickly enough to stop it. A few seconds. That’s all it took to hurt a child for life.

“It’s OK, I’m a big girl now.”

Suzy sighed. “Well, hon, I’m sorry, I am not going to lift you up just in case your mommy doesn’t want you to do this. If you
fell, she might be cross with me. But tell you what, you can ask her when she comes back.”

“OK,” said the little girl, jumping down. She ran past Suzy and began to climb up a ten-foot-high pole, using her bare feet to push her up the conical metal. “Where’s Rae?” she asked, looking down at Suzy with innocent brown eyes.

“Oh. Well, Rae is at the doctor’s right now. She had a little accident.”