Every Good Girl (10 page)

‘I thought you said Joe
always
behaved as if he was on the loose,' Sally interrupted.

‘Not really, not now I'm looking back. He just played at it. He always came home.'

‘Huh. Just like a little boy bringing his football kit home for Mummy to wash.'

‘I suppose so. I suppose in the end I just decided the metaphorical washing machine was terminally broken. But then he found another mummy.'

It was the lady with the pink baby-cardigan and the hurt leg. She was looking very peaceful now, laid out ready for collection, her white hair neatly brushed to show her at her dignified best for the viewing relatives. Graham wondered if she'd got any, if they'd been in to see her like this. They'd have been told, offered the chance. Some of them didn't want to know till they could visit days later in a chapel of rest when the undertaker had had a go, then they could say how wonderful the dead one was looking, you wouldn't think, would you? Seeing a body in hospital just moments after the event like this, well some of them, he'd heard them saying it was all too fresh, like it might still be just a silly mistake. They were afraid, scared the body might take one more heaving breath, or that some lingering reflex would make it sit up. They'd all heard stories like that, ones they never thought they'd believe but now weren't so sure, you could tell by the looks on their faces.

Graham pushed the big metal trolley further into the room, wondering what had happened to the bag of onions she'd had with her down in A & E. He couldn't smell them, but then when deaths happened, he was always careful not to breathe too hard. Some illnesses were more odorous than others. Some deaths made him sick.

‘It was the shock, probably.' The nurse, clutching
the black bin-liner that contained the patient's possessions, stood beside Graham. ‘She'd probably managed fine up till the fall. Some of them just give up.' She sounded sorry, and kind, which might be because she wasn't so young – probably a couple of years older than him. A silveriness that he couldn't quite pick out in her dark brown hair was catching the light as if grey hair was in there somewhere but doing its best to hide. Some of the younger nurses were really hard. He'd heard them
accusing
old people of ‘just giving up' – saying it with contempt, as if they'd died on purpose, just to spite them. Then they'd hassle him to be quick getting the body out, they needed the bed.

Graham eyed the plastic bag. He hated it that dead people's stuff went into bags meant for rubbish. It diminished the owners, as if they and their things were now unworthy of a better-quality container. Didn't matter how rich or grand they thought they were: whatever smart luggage they'd brought in with them, on death they all got a bin-bag, standard issue. Perhaps the onions were in there. They'd make her pink cardigan smell. There might be a relative, a sister or a cousin, who'd want it. It had been so carefully knitted.

‘I'll help you move her,' the nurse said. Her name tag said ‘Jennifer'. As she leaned forward over the old lady, Graham watched her large breasts strain forwards in her overall. The buttons had trouble staying fastened. Graham moved the trolley in closer to the bed and closer to Jennifer. ‘I'll take her feet, OK?' she said.

‘OK,' Graham grunted. He had pictures in his head that he wasn't used to. Pictures of Jennifer's overall, pulled wide open and her big hips shoving against him. He looked away and concentrated on being more reverent. He was in the presence of death. The lady's
soul might still be in the room, disapproving.
He
disapproved.

‘Ready? One two three . . .' Together they lifted the dead woman onto the trolley. Graham covered her face with the sheet and closed the lid.

‘When I was little,' Jennifer told him, ‘I went to a hospital once to visit my grandad, and I saw one of these trolleys being wheeled in. I remember rushing round the ward telling the patients that their dinner was coming and pointing to it. I just thought it was a big tin box full of hot food, like the ones at school.' She patted the lid gently. ‘Bye, Mrs Cox. I hope they give you a good send-off.'

‘We could have a drink, after work,' Graham heard himself saying. He could feel a hot blush starting and sweat welded his shirt to his back. He looked at Jennifer, waiting over the canned corpse of Mrs Cox for her to answer. What he most wanted now was to be already far away in the service lift, halfway to the mortuary with his companion who would require no tricky conversation.

‘OK, I'd like that,' Jennifer said simply. ‘Do you mean tonight?'

‘Er . . . yes.' He supposed he did. Tomorrow would be better, give him time to get used to the idea, but then she might be offended, think he was looking for a way out. Mother, with supper on the table at exactly 6.45, came into his head. ‘Eight o'clock? The Green Dragon in Church Street?' he suggested, then added, as he felt he should, ‘Or would you like me to collect you from home?'

She laughed. Graham looked down anxiously at Mrs Cox's trolley. They were talking across her, rudely it seemed, talking about life things. That couldn't really be bad, surely?

‘I could collect
you
from home if you like,' Jennifer teased. Graham, for a moment, was horrified. Mother mustn't know about this. Mother would have none of it, would know just how to get rid of Jennifer, just as she had with all the others, and keep him for herself. She'd say she had his best interests at heart and convince him she was right, but right now this was something he didn't want to risk.

It was appalling really, just how little Nina knew about her neighbours. The Crescent was one of those shrub-barricaded roads where everyone was forever on their way out. There wasn't a play, exhibition or art film in London that any one household wouldn't be able to analyse and argue over. But if there'd been a grisly murder right next door, no-one would have heard a thing or known the victim even well enough to do holiday cat-feeding. TV news crews would find only a collection of diverse and bewildered folk who'd have to admit, in a prim, net-curtain way, ‘We tend to keep to ourselves.'

‘We've lived in the Crescent for over ten years, and I couldn't tell you the names of even half the inhabitants. I only really know Chrissie and Jack up at the top end and posh Penelope with the Weimaraner. And even that's only to chat to on the Common when we're out walking dogs. Isn't that dreadful and unsociable?' she was telling Emily as she applied mascara using the badly lit kitchen mirror.

‘Hmm,' Emily murmured, from the depths of
Marie Claire
which was propped up at the table on a pile of neglected homework.

‘After seeing them that once early in the morning, I didn't even notice number 26 moving in. And I don't think that actually
was
them, I think there's a wife. I
must have been at work, unless they sneaked their stuff in during the night, like a reverse moonlight flit. Perhaps they don't
have
tons of junk like the rest of us,' she said, looking round the room, where, in spite of what she considered ruthless sorting and disposal, newspapers, homework and assorted shoes and bags seemed to be reassembling. It too seemed to creep in in the night, sneaking out of its pre-painting storage. ‘Imagine being truly minimalist, like those architects in magazines who don't seem to have anything but one perfect chair and a glass bowl of a hundred white tulips,' she said wistfully. Emily, who owned much of the room's debris, didn't deign to comment.

‘I suppose it's different for you,' Nina said, foraging in her bag for lipstick. ‘Children grow up in a place and expect to move on, away from it. It's your duty
not
to get over-involved with the inhabitants, otherwise it might be difficult to leave. And of course it's not like it was when I was little, all the children sent outside to play together. I don't think I know of anyone's kids who are allowed on the Common without a parent. You just know that behind every tree lurks a crazed rapist.'

‘Hmm,' Emily replied again. Nina, as she applied blusher, remembered her own childhood, making camps with friends in the woods, fishing for sticklebacks in a river that no-one even bothered to check the weedy depth of. Once, when she and a friend, at about Lucy's age, had been digging in the earth for shards of highly prized old broken pottery, a man had knelt beside them and asked if he could show them his own ‘treasure' and had unzipped his trousers – bottle green corduroy, she could see the warm fuzzy fabric now, and could almost smell the dusty dried earth she and the friend were so solemnly scraping into with their
seaside spades. She remembered how politely, with what must have been almost comic decorum, they'd told him, ‘No thank you, we're busy.' By some sixth-sense agreement he had never been mentioned again, to each other or to anyone else. Talking about it, telling, would have meant the incident was significant and sinister and playing out in the woodsy freedom would never have been the same again. Girls who told parents about that kind of thing got kept in, confined to their own dull gardens, which felt just like a punishment, till only gangs of boys would be left to roam wild and free. Parents then didn't think things like the treasure-man happened to boys. Lucy didn't have that freedom, driven to school, kept safe, made wary. She still hadn't been out of Nina's sight over on the Common, wasn't ever allowed to use it as a short cut to the school unless she or Emily was with her.

‘He mentioned something about babysitting, this Paul man. You could earn yourself some cash,' Nina suggested.

‘How much?' Emily looked up, instantly interested. At Joe's expense she was having driving lessons, but buying and running a car along with her social life might well be at her own.

‘Oh I don't know, you'd have to negotiate some kind of hourly rate. Ask your friends, someone at school will know.'

Emily flicked a few magazine pages, but Nina could see financial calculation on her face as she said, ‘They might have real brats. I think the charge should be per child, as well as per hour. Suppose there's a teeny baby that cries all the time and needs bottles and nappies every couple of hours and stuff.'

‘You're talking yourself out of it, I can tell,' Nina told her. ‘Just think of it as a chance to do your revision in
peace and get paid for it at the same time. What do I look like, will I do?'

Nina did a twirl. Emily inspected her, head to toe, slowly. ‘You look fine. Your hair looks really good and I like that suede shirt thing.'

‘It leaves ginger-coloured flecks on the black trousers, that's the only trouble.' Nina fussed at the hem of the shirt.

‘Better let me have it then,' Emily suggested swiftly. ‘Teenagers don't care about things like that.'

‘How true.' Nina leaned down and kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelt delicious, like strawberries. She remembered suddenly the scent of newborn babies' heads, something primitive and beadily dampish, making her want to lick the downy scalp like a mother cat.

Lucy was born ten whole years ago, she thought; probably the next one I'll get that close to will be Emily's own. Unless of course Joe brought his new baby to their monthly lunches. Nina imagined it clinging in a denim sling, suspended like a baby ape. They'd have to go to an Italian restaurant where babies were cherished and given a breadstick to chew. Or perhaps there'd just be no more lunches.

‘Emily darling, don't let Lucy watch too much telly. I'm only going over for a quick drink, I'll be back for a latish supper. You could get yourself and Lucy something earlier if you like. There's plenty of pasta in the fridge.'

‘S'pose,' Emily conceded, returning to her magazine. ‘Have fun.'

Nina could hear party noises as she crossed the road. Paul's house was closer to the Common, with a small alleyway along the side of it that the residents had got accustomed to using as a dog-walking short cut while
the house had been empty. They'd all have to go back to trailing round the long way now, up to the main road and along past the riding school. Henry, to her surprise, was sauntering towards her from his own house, hands as ever stuffed in the pockets of his old jeans and his matted blue sweater showing he made no concession to silly social niceties.

‘Do you mind arriving with me or would you prefer to go in alone while I hide in the hedge for ten minutes so no-one mistakes us for a couple?' Henry asked politely.

‘I think I can just about tolerate being seen with you, just this once,' Nina laughed, pushing open the gate of number 26, ‘As long as it doesn't become a habit.'

‘Not bloody likely,' Henry retorted, ringing the bell.

The door was opened by a child, a girl of about nine wearing army camouflage trousers, a paratroopers' red beret, and with her face striped with mud coloured make-up. So there
is
a wife, Nina thought, or at least a partner. Henry saluted: ‘Neighbours reporting for drinks duty,' he said. ‘Corporal Henry Perry and Field Marshal Nina Malone. Or have you gone back to Dyson?' he added. Nina shook her head, ‘Well not yet.'

The child looked at Nina, put a finger to her temple and twiddled it in the universal ‘completely crazy' gesture, glancing sideways at Henry.

‘Do come in. I'm Megan. I see you've met Sophie.' Nina heard a gasp from Henry and took a look at her new neighbour, who had appeared behind the child. Megan Brocklehurst looked like a walking flower; a hibiscus came to mind, or a pale scabious. She was wearing several layers of white floating fabric (in early April) each piece of which had an asymmetric hem and so accurately gave the impression of layers of petals that it looked decidedly peculiar to see a hand
holding a glass protruding from among the folds. Her stomach bulged gently with pregnancy, and she looked the absolute definition of ‘blooming'. Her face, tiny among clouds of blond hair, was the kind of perfect heart-shaped one on which they would originally have based the drawings of Snow White.