As She Left It (31 page)

With a sigh that was almost a groan, Opal shut the back bedroom window. She even went up to the attic and shut the skylight there—that ladder looked long enough for sure. The front bedroom window could stay open, though. No one was going to set up a ladder in the street, where all the neighbors could see. Not on Mote Street. There was Vonnie Pickess coming home right now in a blue print dress and a short-sleeved white cardigan that showed her old-lady elbows, grey-pink spirals of skin. She stood outside her door, looking around, sniffing for news, hearing only silence. Margaret and Denny’s telly was off, no sign of life at the Joshis, all quiet at No. 1. Her glance flicked over to Opal’s house, and the look on her face was nothing that Opal could put a name to. Then she went inside and closed her door.

The open front window did no good at all. By two o’clock in the morning, Opal was twisted in her sheets, throwing her head from side to side, panting.

Someone was crying, locked in a room where the floor came halfway up the door and the bed was only a headboard and nowhere to sleep unless you balanced along it, and there were children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren too, but Opal didn’t know their names and she was supposed to tell the newspaper who they were for a photograph they were printing, but she was locked in a van where the floor came halfway up the walls and she was supposed to play the trumpet at the hospital but the mouthpiece was stuck in the concrete and only the horn was free and no matter how hard she pulled it wouldn’t come out, and she was coughing and bleeding and trying to hide the sheets inside a wardrobe full of frames wrapped in tissue with no pictures because she was hiding from someone—someone’s mother or someone’s daughter or sister. And a little girl could see her and she kept driving past, and Opal told her she was too young to drive the car and she should go home, and the girl said her daddy was driving and Opal looked and so he was, one arm on the steering wheel and one arm holding Opal in the seat beside him, two bluebirds, and they moved when he stiffened his arm to hold her down when she tried to open the door and run away, but she couldn’t open the door because she was locked in an outhouse where the floor came all the way up to the ceiling and tasted like iron and she was drowning.

“Leave me
alone
,” said Opal, waking and sitting in one snap. She waited in the quiet for a moment or two, gulped in three breaths that hurt her chest and didn’t draw any air down into her, then she curled up and put her hands over her head and began to rock, the old bed creaking and popping like a sailing ship all around her.
Someone will come along and they will find this
, she thought to herself, but the prayer of the little bed girl wasn’t working tonight. It sounded like a curse in her ears and yet she couldn’t stop it playing and replaying now that it had begun.
Our Father
, she whispered to herself, and then stopped.
In a cottage, in a wood
. But she had never heard that before Jill in the salon sang it to her.

“Help me, help me,” the rabbit said.

“No!” said Opal, out loud.

The outhouse, the outhouse, the hold your nose and shout—

“
No
!” She screamed it, and in the silence that followed she heard a loud click then nothing more. “Go away,” she said in a loud voice. “Leave me alone. Two times one is two, two times two is four, two times three is six.”

Halfway through the eleven times table she fell asleep, and “sixty-six” was the last thing he heard her say. He listened for a while, then walked away from his open window—separated from hers by only five feet—got into bed, and clicked his light off again.

THIRTY
-
NINE

S
ARAH
F
OSSETT HAD CLEANED
the kitchen, and Norah hadn’t had time to muck it up again. Or rather she had had plenty of time but couldn’t drag herself away from her new DVD, so all her dinners were still in their tubs in the fridge and the cooker top and sink were still buffed and gleaming.

“She’s lovely, your Sarah,” Opal said.

“Mm-hm,” said Norah, without moving her eyes away from the screen. She was barricaded into her armchair again.

“Norah?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Where do you keep the spare keys? The keys to the rooms up-
stairs?”

“I’m not supposed to touch the keys,” Norah said. “I’m not allowed to.”

“But
I’m
allowed to,” said Opal. “Where are they?”

“Mother keeps the keys,” Norah said.

Opal couldn’t help her face twisting up to hear Norah talking about her mother that way. If Opal hadn’t seen the empty rooms with her own eyes just yesterday, she’d be afraid to go up there.

“But
where
does she keep them, Norah love?”

“In a drawer, in her desk, in her room, in her house,” Norah said.

In a cottage, in a wood
. Opal shook it out of her head. She didn’t know that song. She must have let out a sound, because Norah tore her eyes away from the screen and took her thumb out of her mouth.

“Sorry,” she said. “Sorry, sorry.”

“Sh-sh-sh,” said Opal. “You haven’t done anything wrong. You watch your clowns and don’t mind me.”

She started right there in the morning room, since that was where the photograph albums and jewelry boxes were. In a desk in the corner with a roll-top, there were dozens of compartments Opal thought were ideal for storing keys, but there was nothing but letters and papers there. And pipe cleaners.

“I’m not allowed to touch Father’s desk,” Norah chipped in from across the room.

“Right,” said Opal. “Okay. It was your dad that smoked a pipe. Obviously. So where’s your mum’s desk then, eh?”

“Mum,” said Norah as if she had never heard the word.

“Mummy?” said Opal. Surely no one said
Mother
even back when they were a little tiny girl.

“You’re not supposed to say that,” Norah said. Opal thought that she was in a very obedient mood today and it was getting pretty annoying. She wondered if Norah had ever done anything naughty in her entire life. “Norah,” she said. “Do you want to help me do something secret?” Norah said nothing. “I want to hide a surprise in Mother’s desk. Do you want to help me?”

Norah stared, glanced at the door, looked back at Opal, and nodded. “A nice surprise?” she said.

“A lovely surprise,” said Opal. “Come on. You help me. I’ll pause the disc for you.”

Norah was already pushing away her tray table. She leapt up and trotted over to the door. Opal threw down the remote and followed her. Followed her along the corridor into the kitchen. From there through a door of dark wood with glass panels into a sort of little office with nothing in it except a chair set in front of double cupboard doors. Norah took hold of one in each hand and swept them open. She gasped, a small nervous sound, and turned troubled eyes to Opal.

“Where is it?” she said, but Opal was looking at the desk that was fitted into the cupboard, built in there. A household desk or something. Exactly where the lady of the residence would sit and write out her shopping lists and make up brown envelopes of money for her servants’ wages.

“It’s right there,” she said. Norah turned back and then faced Opal again.

“Gone,” she said.

“What’s gone?”

“Silver,” said Norah. “Mother’s silver. The turret … the soup …
turret.”

“A tureen?” Opal said.

“And the candelabrum,” Norah said. “And all the boxes! Oh. Oh. Mother’s cake slice. I’m not allowed to touch it. And the spoons and knives and forks. I’m not allowed to touch them. I didn’t touch them.”

Opal shushed her, holding her little hand and swinging it, trying to calm her. She looked at the empty shelves reaching high up above the desk all the way to the ceiling. Then she reached out and ran a hand along one. It was smooth and dust-free and her fingers, when she brought them to her nose, smelled of polish. Burglars wouldn’t polish the shelves once they’d swiped the silver.

“Sarah,” she said softly.

“I didn’t touch it,” said Norah. “I didn’t. We never had any silver. Mother doesn’t like silver. We haven’t got any. Men came. They took it away. They came and took it.”

“Sh-sh-sh,” Opal said. If Sarah wanted to sell Norah’s stuff to get the money together for a good nursing home, it was none of her business, but surely she should at least have tried to let Norah know. Or maybe she did. After all, Norah had forgotten all about it now. She was sitting on the chair—an old-fashioned desk chair that swivelled round and round on its single leg—swaying from side-to-side.

“Do you want to watch the circus?” Opal asked, and Norah leapt up and scurried off—silver forgotten, surprise for Mother in her desk forgotten, everything blown away like seeds off a dandelion.

It gave Opal a wriggling feeling inside every time. She kept upsetting Norah, right from the first day they had met out on the street. And then she threw her little treats like she was training a puppy and made her forget again. It wasn’t right and she would be glad when it was over.

But right now it was worth it. If Norah was going into a home, at least the people there would know about her, once Opal had found the evidence that would prove what had happened. The staff would know just how careful and tender they had to be and if it was a
really
good nursing home, Norah might be happier there than she had ever been anywhere. And anyway the last little trick—“Let’s hide a nice surprise in Mother’s desk for her!”—had definitely been worth it. Because there they were: a fat bristling bunch of keys, right there in the top drawer. Opal took them, restarted the circus, and went upstairs, telling herself she was helping. Not like Sarah was helping—helping get Norah into a nice, neat old folks home—and certainly not like Shelley was helping—helping her struggle on day after day. Opal was hacking through a forest of vines trying to get Norah out of the tower where she’d been asleep for a hundred years. Or that’s what it felt like anyway.

On the landing, she sat down on the carpet and started working methodically through the bunch of keys. Some were too big and some were too small, but more than she had expected were just right, fitting in and moving a bit, sometimes quite a bit. Then she thought,
of course they do.
Those were the keys for all the other doors, and so they were all the same size. Then she put one in that turned a bit more than the rest and with an extra twist turned all the way. She left the bunch hanging in the door, pushed it open and walked into the room.

“Oh bloody hell, I don’t believe it!” she said. She went as far as stamping her foot on the bare boards between the hall runner and the carpet on the bedroom floor.

It was all there, the chest of drawers, the dressing table with the marble top, the dressing table with the wooden top, the bedside pot stands, the wardrobe with three doors, all of them absolutely covered in roses and chrysanthemums in the pattern Opal knew so well. And where the bed should have been, just like before, just like in Mother’s room, a bit of rough wallpaper where it had scraped and a patch of dark carpet where it had shaded and no fucking bed. Again.

“Where is it
this
time?” Opal demanded, loud enough to set the lampshade ringing. And she took the stairs three at a time and went to stand in front of the television, ignoring Norah’s cry of distress and attempts to lean out far enough to see round her.

“Norah,” she said. “Where is Martin’s bed?”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Norah said.

“No,” said Opal. “Nuh-huh.” She wagged her finger. “You told me he got so tall that the foot part went to the attic. Okay, I get that. And when Sarah started clearing out, she saw two halves and didn’t see the bit that was in the rafters. And she took the two bits and sold them. Starting with the stuff in the attic and cupboards, she said. I get that. Because you wouldn’t miss it. But where is the top half of Martin’s bed? Hm?”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Norah said. “The bed and the silver and foxy and the glasses. I didn’t touch them. I’m not allowed to. We didn’t have any. Mother doesn’t like them.”

“What glasses?” Opal said.

“In the dining room,” said Norah. “Men came.” She pointed a finger out of the morning room door, her hand clutching a tissue, wavering a bit as she did so.

“Men came?”

“In my room,” Norah said. “I’m not allowed to.”

“You’re driving me bananas today,” Opal called over her shoulder as she left the room and opened the dining room doors on the other side of the hallway. More of the same heavy, blood-red furniture, even heavier with the blood-red velvet upholstery and dark-gold silk-papered walls. Opal went to a sideboard against the long wall, a beast of a thing, and opened one of the doors. Empty.

“It’s for a good cause,” she said to herself, but she wondered if Sarah had asked Norah’s doctor what he thought about the idea of sneaking things away when Norah wasn’t looking. Because if it happened in Opal’s house it would freak her right the hell out, and she had all her marbles.

“But glasses are glasses and silver’s silver,” she said, going back to the morning room. “What happened to the other half of Martin’s bed. When did ‘men come’?”

“One man,” Norah said. “He’s very strong.”

“He must be. Right. It’s gone then. If it’s gone, it’s gone.”

“Gone,” Norah said. “I’m not supposed to—”

“Okay, okay. It would have been good to have all the evidence, but I bet if you try, you’ll remember. It’s safe to remember.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Norah said, and deep down inside Opal a huge solid boulder of fear and revulsion turned over like a hippo in a mud hole. She swallowed.

“Norah, my love, I’m going to sit down now and talk to you and I don’t want you to get upset. Okay?”

“Okey-dokey,” Norah said. “And then I’ll watch my tape. I’ve got a tape of the circus. And I’ve got a new one too.”

Opal nodded, waiting for silence.

“Do you remember writing secret notes and hiding them?” Norah blinked. “Where did you hide them? Can you remember?” Norah said nothing. “Okay, let’s start with this one. Did you write in your prayer book?”