In Bitter Chill (2 page)

‘Hold on, Soph. You’re walking too fast.’

Rachel stopped suddenly in the street and yanked up her long white socks for the third time. The elastic had gone, too many washes in her mother’s new twin tub that had taken so long to save up for. All those books of Green Shield stamps and Rachel’s job to lick them into place, the gluey, musty taste souring her tongue as she carefully laid the strips on the coarse pages. The old wooden washboard had been shoved into the garden shed and the new machine now stood by the kitchen door, banging Rachel’s hips as she made her way out into the garden.

But the effect on her socks had been disappointing. Pinged elastic had stretched the tops to twice the size of the ankles and they never reappeared in her drawer white any more but instead with a hue of drab grey or pale inky blue. So she pulled them up constantly and there they would stay for about a minute before they started to creep down her shins again. She knew it was about a minute because she had started to count using the method that Miss Thomson had taught them in school. One thousand, two thousand. If you counted like that and spoke at a normal speed it was the same as a second.

She carried on walking as Sophie, impatient as always, led the way. Forty-one thousand, forty-two thousand. Slither, slither, down they went. She reached sixty thousand and there they were, flapping around her ankles. Huge, pale orbs that looked ridiculous against her white legs.

Sophie was looking around in irritation and this time stopped, with a sigh, and glanced down at Rachel’s legs.

‘Hurry up,’ she said. ‘This is the fifth time we’ve stopped this morning.’

‘I can’t help it. They won’t stay up.’

Rachel gave her socks what she hoped was a final yank but she could feel them beginning to slip again as they approached the summit of the hill. Rachel had been doing this walk with her friend for the last five weeks, ever since Miss Thomson had singled out Sophie as someone whose mother still took her to school. They were at an age, Miss Thomson had said, when they should now be walking by themselves. Sophie had blushed beetroot red and Rachel that evening heard her mum receive a call from Sophie’s mother.

‘You’re going to walk to school with Sophie Jenkins every day.’

Rachel had screwed up her mouth. ‘But . . .’

Rachel’s mum held up her hand. ‘Don’t argue, Rachel. You can start tomorrow. Sophie will be waiting for you. But you need to ring the doorbell.’

Now, together, they puffed as they reached the hill’s summit. At the top of the road stood the landmark that told them they were nearly at the school. A red letterbox, its squat shape stamped with the letters GR, the name, according to Rachel’s mum, of the old king of England. George something-or-other.

As they reached the letterbox, a white car drew up at the kerb and Rachel and Sophie watched as a woman reached over and started to wind down the window.

‘Can you post this for me?’

The woman held out a white oblong envelope. It looked to Rachel like a birthday card. Both she and Sophie dived for it but it was Sophie who got there first and snatched it out of the woman’s hands. She tapped it into the letterbox and turned around to the car window to receive her thanks. The woman smiled at them both.

‘Thanks for your help, girls. Are you going to St Paul’s? I can give you a lift there.’

Rachel and Sophie glanced at each other. ‘It’s only round the corner,’ said Rachel and looked in the direction to show they knew where they were going.

‘I know, I’m going there too.’ The woman was still smiling at them. Was she a teacher? Rachel hadn’t seen her before, but she didn’t know all the teachers in the baby school. She leaned forward to peer into the back of the car. She couldn’t see anyone hiding there.

‘Jump in the back.’ Still Rachel hesitated, but Sophie had opened the door and was clambering in.

‘Sophie, do you think . . .’

‘Come on, Rachel. It’s only round the corner.’ Sophie was crawling across the seat and waving at Rachel to follow. Taking a quick look around her, Rachel could see no one who could snitch on them to her mother that they were taking lifts from strangers. Hitching up her socks once more, she followed Sophie into the back seat and pulled the door shut.

‘Got any kids yourself?’

Rachel looked up, the sudden movement causing the stiff green notebook balancing on her lap to wobble. She laid a protective hand on it.

‘I’m afraid not. And it’s looking unlikely. I’m reaching my “best before” date.’

Eileen Clarke smirked at her. ‘Nothing to be sorry about, love. Mine have caused me nothing but grief. It’s one of the reasons I’ve decided to trace my family history. The past can’t possibly be worse than the present.’

Rachel said nothing and looked at the rough sketch of the family tree she had begun to flesh out as her client had chatted about her grandparents. Luckily, Clarke was the woman’s married name. Although Irish in origin, it was one of the most popular names in England and a nightmare to sift through. Too many variations – Clark without an e, Clarke with an e, Clerke with two es. But fortunately, before her wedding in 1966, she had been Eileen Weeks. Weeks, from the old English
Wikke
, meaning battle. Not an uncommon surname but far, far less popular than Clarke. And fortunately her mother’s maiden name had been the even more unusual Calthrop. A nice, solid Derbyshire name that would mean local records and the possibility of some distant relations still living in the area.

The woman chatted on and Rachel, aware that she had let her thoughts drift off, snapped back to the present and forced herself to focus on the woman opposite.

‘. . . changed her name, she had, not to deceive she kept telling her family but to make life easier when she came to England. There were still a lot of prejudice here against foreigners then and in any case the rumour was she had been adopted by an aunt who then pretended she was her real mother.’

Rachel looked confused at her notes. A name change? She had missed something.

‘Who changed their name? I need to add it to my notes.’

Eileen Clarke adopted a martyred expression. ‘That was my husband, Bill’s, mother. I don’t want you to look into him. I was just using it as an example of what happens in families sometimes. You know, done not to deceive but to make things . . .’ Eileen made quotation marks with her fingers, ‘easier.’

Rachel stared at her and gritted her teeth. Her job had made her an expert in the labyrinthine lives that some people made for themselves. Now a woman who would clearly be an expert in any subject they were discussing was telling her what was what. She shut her notebook with a snap and passed over a contract for the woman to look at. Eileen signed it without reading any of the disclaimers that Rachel had already outlined for her verbally. No guarantees. The records she wouldn’t have access to. Rachel hoped that Eileen’s blasé attitude wouldn’t be extending to the payment of her bills, although at least she had a cheque for the woman’s deposit in her purse.

She picked up her shoulder bag and stood, her legs numb where she had been resting her notebook. Eileen Clarke also rose and walked with her to the front door.

‘Are you . . . ?’ The woman stopped, confused, and Rachel, aware of what would be coming next, waited. Eileen thought better of it. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

Rachel stepped out into the sharp winter cold and heard the door close behind her as she retrieved the car keys from the depths of her handbag. She could feel the woman watching her from the window, the unasked question still circulating in the air. Ignoring her, Rachel slid her hand under the waistband of her skirt. Plenty of room so no need to skip lunch. She could even justify pasta. Turning on the car’s engine, she drove towards Sorelle, an Italian restaurant.

Within five minutes she was sitting in a queue of traffic. She buzzed open the car window and leaned out to see what the delay was. It was a big mistake. Freezing air shot into her car and she fumbled to close the window, her eyes stinging from the cold. From what she could see, it looked like a diversion had been set up around the main Bampton square and cars were being forced to take a sharp left to avoid the centre. Fortunately, the diversion would take her towards her home, but it meant she would have to make do with a sandwich in front of her laptop. She could pick up her research and get something meaningful done for the rest of the day. The traffic inched forward and, as she made the diverted left turn, Rachel could see a small cluster of people congregated outside the Wilton Hotel.

Back in her house she switched on the kettle and brewed some tea. Taking the pot over to the dining room table, she opened her notebook and began to make the outline of what would eventually become Eileen Clarke’s family tree. Births, marriages and deaths. The bare bones of life but recorded for posterity and left in perpetuity for the chronically curious. People like her. As the miniature lives slowly expanded on the screen, Rachel felt the satisfaction seeping through her as the chart became less a computer file and more a human organism, a mass of individual lives linked by shared DNA.

After an hour, the barely touched pot of tea had gone cold and Rachel’s eyes were feeling the strain. A knock on the door made her jump; she looked out of the window at the late afternoon sky and tried to make the shadow she could see outside her front door into a recognisable shape. Putting on the chain, she opened the door and saw her diminutive neighbour Jenny shuffling her feet, her brown duffle coat and red scarf reminding Rachel of a robin.

‘I can’t stop, I was just wondering if you had heard the news? About the woman’s body.’

For a moment, the pale gloom of the fading afternoon took on a more sinister hue. Rachel felt herself go cold, the dull weight of nausea causing her to steady herself against the door frame. Her neighbour didn’t notice her reaction.

‘A woman’s body’s been found, at the Wilton Hotel. It’s just been on the local news.’

Rachel shook her head. ‘I don’t know anything about it. Why did you ask?’

‘I saw you coming up the hill in your car. I thought you might have seen what was going on. You all right?’ Behind her tortoiseshell glasses, Jenny looked concerned.

‘I hate hearing about death, that’s all. Do they know who it is?’

‘Nothing on the news. I wondered if you knew. I can’t stop, I’m on the way to the school to pick up the kids.’

‘I’ll come out with you. I need some fresh air.’

Grabbing her handbag, Rachel followed her neighbour halfway up the street towards the school. She could hear shrieks in the distance as the children came out of classes into the cold air.

‘I’m a bit late. I’ll need to run,’ said Jenny.

‘You go on. I’m going to take the car instead.’

Watching her neighbour run splayfooted towards the school, Rachel unlocked her car and sat for a moment in the driver’s seat. Various parents were trying to find a parking space and she watched one mother as she double parked near a zebra crossing and sounded her horn. Switching on her engine, Rachel did a U-turn in the street and negotiated her car down the slippery hill, past her cottage where the pale living-room light gave little warmth or comfort through the window. The road was still treacherous and the gritting vehicle had clearly been delayed by the diversion. The need to leave her house had been overwhelming when she had heard about the discovery of the woman’s body, the four walls of her small sitting room oppressive. But she had nowhere to go.

At the bottom of the hill, she made a decision and took a left turn that would lead her out of the town and towards the village of Clowton. It looked like the gritter had made it to the main road, although drivers were taking it slowly as they passed each other. Frustrated at the speed, Rachel took the next left, a shorter route to the village when the weather was good, but as soon as she entered the narrow lane she realised that it had been a mistake. Her car started to slither at each turn and she could see out of the corner of her eye a steep ditch that abutted the high hedgerow on her left.

She clenched the steering wheel and kept her eyes firmly fixed on the Church of St John the Baptist, her destination in the distance. The spire had a gold locust at the top and, recently cleaned, it gleamed in the pale low winter sun. At the village, Rachel pulled onto the first verge she came to and left the car behind as she walked down the steep path to the church. It had been nonsensical, of course, to come here. Her boots crunched along the snow that had settled into a thick layer, not yet icy, but the temperature was dropping fast. Reaching the graves, she stepped onto spongy submerged grass and made her way to the far right corner.

There, a bunch of headstones were clustered together that bore the last name Jones. Jones: the Welsh surname so common throughout the British Isles that it was another nightmare for family historians like her.

But it was her last name, and that of her mother who had reverted to her maiden name after the death of her husband and, unusually for that time, had passed it on to her child. Rachel wished she had brought some flowers to put on her mother’s grave. The snowdrops that she had planted in the autumn were beginning to unfurl but were not yet in full bloom.

Next to her mother’s grave was that of her grandfather, Hughie Jones, whose stone had a half-finished look, probably because that’s what it was. Missing a half. The bottom portion of the drab grey limestone was blank awaiting the addition of Rachel’s grandmother Nancy, who was soldiering on well into her eighties and wreaking havoc in her private nursing home. But with her mother and grandfather there were two generations of Joneses buried in that churchyard and possibly, if she didn’t marry or move away, in due course there would be a third. Her great-grandmother was also there, Mair Price, mother of Nancy. No half-finished stone for her. A great-grandfather had been banished long ago and remained only a name on a marriage certificate.

Rachel wiped the worst of the snowfall from the headstones with a gloved hand and, blotting the damp from her gloves onto her coat, took out a notebook from her bag. Flicking to the familiar page, she started to recite the litany of names.