As She Left It (25 page)

And the water had worked. Upstairs was not only not boiling hot anymore, it was almost chilly, so Opal went into the small back bedroom to close the window there. Three daddy longlegs had come in and were rattling about where the ceiling joined the wall; she’d forgotten how her room had always been full of them and she’d not been in there much since she came back. She looked around. This was where she would put her desk and computer if she had one. Maybe she’d get hold of a cheap desk and put it in here anyway, keep her notepad up here. It would be better than leaving her notes lying around the kitchen where anyone might see them. And the view was better too. Or at least you could see a bit farther. She went over to the window and looked out.

The backs of the big houses were dark against the pale pink sky, and the yellow oblongs of their lighted windows made Opal think of advent calendars. She wished she was close enough to see inside to what the families who lived there were doing. Not standing in an empty room planning the incredible luxury of a cheap desk anyway! She took her eyes away and let it rest on the trees instead. It wasn’t like her to be so chippy, she thought. Maybe the picking was getting to her: the avocados and pumpkin seed crisp breads, the endless bloody bottles of Cava people seemed to need to deal with a decent summer. But that wasn’t fair: Franz Ferdi used the online shop, and he never ate anything fancy.

Thinking of him she flicked a glance down at the yards, hers and his, and jumped. He was standing there.

THIRTY
-
TWO

S
HE HADN’T HEARD HIM
because for once he wasn’t crying. He was just standing with his head down in the middle of the concrete, looking at something on the ground in front of him. Opal watched him. He didn’t move. And now she couldn’t stop watching him because if
she
moved, he might hear her, the window being open the way it was and the night being so very still, nothing moving at all except the soft rattling of the daddy longlegs dancing around above her head in the empty room.

When he did move, Opal shrank back, holding onto the window frame. She hadn’t seen the thing in his hand, but it glinted when he raised his arms and she was sure she could hear it whistling as he brought it smashing down. When he lifted it again she got a clearer view and she could see it was a hammer, shiny metal with a long slim handle, and he was pounding something bright and brittle that lay on the concrete floor of the yard. Shards of plastic flew around, hitting the walls, and one flew right over and landed in Opal’s yard, just by the outhouse door.

And still he kept going, starting to chase the pieces around until he had beaten them all down as small as they would go, little splinters of red and blue plastic, then he hurled his hammer at the back wall of the yard and disappeared into the kitchen, slamming the door so hard Opal could feel her own bedroom floor shaking underneath her.

She waited, wondering if anyone else had heard, if someone else would come to the back gate and look over to see what the noise was, but after the slammed door stopped echoing in her ears there was perfect silence again. She looked at the curved jagged piece of blue plastic lying in her yard, and it jolted her back to life again. If she could see over his wall, then he could see over hers, and if he looked out of his back window and saw that lying there, he might come to get it. Opal didn’t want the man who had swung that hammer so fast it had whistled coming into her yard.

But before she could stir herself he was out again. And he went straight to his gate, trampling over the mess of plastic, wrenched it open, and disappeared out into the lane. Opal stepped back and waited to see him fill her open gateway, but he didn’t appear. And there were more noises now. She sidled up to the window and listened. He was chucking stuff into his wheelie bin; she could hear it bouncing on its little rubber wheels and the unmistakable hollow thump of the lid hitting against the body every time something landed inside.

She stepped away from the window again and went downstairs to her kitchen. Could she creep out and get her gate closed and locked without him hearing her? She could hear
him
—ragged breaths and scuffing, scraping sounds—and she thought he was kicking the plastic pieces across the concrete, maybe edging the mess towards the bin. She’d chance it. She slipped off her shoes. In bare feet she tiptoed down the two steps and took six of the eight paces before she heard him moving. He was going back inside again. He had closed the door. Opal sprang over to the gate to lock it, but then couldn’t resist the urge that took hold of her when she got there. She ducked out into the lane, streaked past his open gateway, and lifted the lid of his bin. She could see most of the front of a cocoa-pops box and the greasy gleam of string cheese. She lowered the lid and shrieked. He was standing there.

“Jesus!” she said.

He was still panting and his face was streaked with sweat and tears, the bags under his eyes bigger and more bruised-looking than they had been the last time—the only time—she’d seen him.

“I thought you’d gone back inside,” Opal blurted out before she realized that would tell him she’d been listening.

“What are you doing in my bin?” His voice sounded calm enough, but that in itself made her heart start to pound. He had just been sobbing and smashing stuff with a hammer and now there was someone raking though his bin. He should be anything but calm. He was trying to fool her. He wasn’t going to manage it.

“Sorry,” she said and she gave him a sheepish smile. “Mine’s full. I was just having a look to see if there’s space in yours. I should have asked really. I should have come and knocked on your door.”

His eyes flicked over to her bin, but if he was trying to seem calm and normal, he was hardly going to go and check, was he?

“Nah, you’re all right, love,” he said. “You help yourself if you need to.”

“Thanks,” said Opal. Then, “Are you okay?”

“Me?” he said. “Can’t smile wide enough, me. Sorry about the din.” And he took a very deep breath and rubbed his hands over his face. “
Brrrr
,” he said, like he was splashing himself with cold water.

“Din?” said Opal. “I never heard a thing.”

“Except me going back into the house,” he said.

So he hadn’t missed that little slip then. “So I thought,” said Opal. She looked past him at how far away the house was. She had definitely heard him close the door. She’d never have come out of her yard if she thought he was still around, and yet a moment later there he was again. Opal felt a movement as the hairs on her neck and down her spine crackled, leaving her tingling.

“I was in the outhouse,” he answered, and Opal nodded slowly. Of course. He hadn’t had time to cross his yard to the kitchen. That door she’d heard closing was the outhouse door. He held up a broom to show her and she nodded again.
The outhouse
.

“Well, night then,” she said, and he gave her a look different from all the others before, head cocked, brows high.

“Are
you
all right?”

“Tired,” said Opal.
The outhouse, the outhouse
. “This weather.”

“Aye,” he said.

“Makes it hard to sleep at night.”
The outhouse, the outhouse. The hold your nose and shout house
.

“All right if you can keep your doors and windows open,” he said. “All right for me. Nobody’s going to come bothering me, but you’ll be careful, eh love? Lot of funny folk about these hot nights. Full moon too.” He nodded over Opal’s shoulder, and she turned. A pale, glassy moon as big as a lake was just edging above the roofline.

“Right,” she said. “Thanks for the warning.”

He blinked. “Advice, love. Just advice. Ignore it if you want to.”

Grab thee by thy lughole, put thee down the plughole
. Opal felt her stomach roll over.

“Night, then,” she said again, but this time she started moving. She took her wheelie bin with her in through the open gate and then shut the gate behind her and bolted it. Waste of time. He no more believed she was “just checking there was space” than he believed she hadn’t heard all the commotion, than she believed he was just giving her a friendly piece of advice about locking her windows.
Pull, pull, pull the chain, wash back up again
. She couldn’t stop the voice in her head now it had started. She took the piece of blue plastic and put it inside her bin. It looked like a bit of a skittle or a Frisbee or something. Something a kid would use, although she supposed it might be a dog’s bed or the bucket part of a cheap wheelbarrow.
The outhouse, the outhouse, the hold your nose and shout house
.

She really did feel sick now and there was no way she’d make it up to the bathroom in time. Her cheeks were pouring with water. She looked at the outhouse door. Could she pull it open? The toilet, as far as she knew, was still in there. How hard had she tried that first time anyway?

She went over and grabbed the handle, hauling on it, bracing one of her feet up against the panels of the door and tugging with all her strength. It didn’t so much as budge, but Opal felt
something
give way. Something inside her body had burst and was flooding her. And she didn’t feel sick anymore. The sickness came from trying not to see what was in front of her eyes and not join up all the thoughts that were skittering around the edges of her brain. She tugged and slammed, crying now; changed legs and hauled again, ignoring the way her foot slid down the splintered door, ignoring the sting as tiny shards of paint and wood dug into her skin.

Then she gave up, panting. Looked around and picked up the half-brick used for propping the gate open. She stood back as far as she could against the opposite wall and threw it at the outhouse window. It hit the wooden crossbar and rolled away. She picked it up and threw it again, standing closer, not caring about broken glass now. This time it went through, shattering the coated, dusty glass and disappearing. Opal heard a dull thump and a grating sound as it hit something solid in there. She stepped forward and pushed the rest of the pieces in so that one quarter of the window was clear. Then she stuck her head inside and looked down.

The floor—except it wasn’t really the floor—was halfway up the door, about three feet below the bottom of the window, as smooth as a pond in patches, uneven in others, rippled at the edges, with crumpled, lumpy shapes half-in and half-out of the tilting plane of it.
Bags
, Opal thought. The bags had been shoved in through the window, the easiest way to get rid of them, and they poked up and broke the surface here and there. In one place, it looked as if a bag was just
below
the surface—not sunk and not floating. Something was there. Opal turned around and sank down, sliding down the wall until she was sitting on the ground with her legs bent like hairpins and her feet, one still bleeding, tucked close in underneath her. There was a noise inside her chest trying to get out of her. A howl. She held on hard and managed to keep it to a low moan that no one would hear.

Cement. Or concrete. Something Mr. Joshi wanted for his new garage floor and Zula gave to Nic instead. And Nic poured it in through the window and left it to set there. And now Zula wanted to know if Opal was planning any renovations, if she had any bikes or sports equipment that needed storing and wanted to make sure that Opal asked the Joshis to help before she turned to strangers.

Zula? Mr. and Mrs. Joshi? They couldn’t have.

Couldn’t have what, Opal?

And Mrs. Pickess. She told the cops to take Nicola’s house apart and she bought brandy and asked Opal if she’d managed to unstick the outhouse door. But she couldn’t know.

Know what, Opal? Come on, out in the open.

And Pep and Fishbo knew he liked hiding. Liked little dark places, little secret places, vans and sheds and behind bath panels. But that didn’t mean they would hide a thing like that.

Like what, Opal? Just say it. These things always come back no matter how deep you bury them.

“No,” Opal said, screwing her face up as tight as it would go. No kid could want to be in such a dark, smelly, cold, filthy hole. They were lying. He would have to be lured in there, with a trail of sweets thrown down for him to follow. Bribed in with the promise of a toy.

She jerked her head up, thinking of the piece of blue plastic, a toy smashed to pieces, treats thrown away. And she put her arms over her head and tried again to keep the howl inside.

“This is now,” she said to herself. “This is 2010, and you are twenty-five. You’re not twelve anymore. Franz Ferdi wasn’t here then. He’s the only safe one.”

But that left the rest of them, all around her; monstrous Denny and Margaret saying it’s secret, it’s secret, but telling everyone. And Mrs. Pickess watching, and Fishbo ashy and hacking and secrets locked in his wardrobe, and Pep looking at her like she was dirt and telling her not to think, not to ask, just to leave it be. And Zula Joshi—the sly look from the corner of her eye—and Mr. Joshi’s whispered questions, and the hammer glinting and smashing down, and Norah taking her thumb out her mouth and saying “Martin”.

Opal was stiff and, for the first time in weeks, cold. It was pure night now; the moon, much smaller, glittering down from out of a navy blue sky. Had she been sleeping? Please God let it be that she’d fallen asleep and not just that she’d
gone
. That hadn’t happened for thirteen years, and Opal had believed it never would again.

Okay
, she told herself.
Take another run at it. Breathe deep and stay calm. Stick to the facts.
The main fact was that Nicola Jones lived on a street where a little boy went missing, and that little boy liked hiding in small places, and Nicola Jones’s outhouse was half-filled with cement. If Nicola Jones wasn’t her mother, what would she think of that?

Zula gave the cement meant for her garage floor to Nicola. Vonnie Pickess kept her in brandy. Fishbo kept Margaret’s secret, and Pep Kendal was so grateful he was willing to
bathe
him. And Franz Ferdi came to live on Mote Street, and he cried all the time and smashed up a plastic bowling set (or whatever it was) with a hammer and threatened Opal. Those were puzzles. But the
big
fact was that Nicola Jones’s outhouse was half-full of cement and a little kid was gone.