Paradise City (37 page)

‘I don’t have to quote you by name,’ Cathy says. ‘I’m really just trying to build up a bit of a picture of what’s gone on for this Sunday’s paper for a full-length feature.’ She leans forward, confidingly. ‘I’m not a news reporter, if that’s what’s worrying you. I know they can be a bit heavy-handed.’

Carol allows a slight smile to form on her lips. Cathy clocks this and carries on smoothly.

‘If you don’t want to talk to me, I completely understand and I’ll go away and leave you in peace. I just thought . . . well, you might like to tell your side of the story. It can’t have been easy . . .’ She lowers her voice respectfully. ‘Discovering the body.’

‘How did you know about that?’ Carol blurts out.

Cathy’s eyes widen.

‘Let’s just say the police aren’t always as discreet as they should be.’

Well, thinks Carol, if they’re shooting their mouths off, why would they care what she did? And, after all, it
would
be nice to speak to someone – someone who knew a bit about the case and didn’t just want to pump her for all the gory details, someone she could offload to, someone with a calm, professional manner and an inviting smile and neatly blow-dried hair. Someone like Cathy Dennen, in fact. Besides, Carol read the
Tribune.
It was a respectable paper. A tiny part of her was delighted at the thought of being featured in it. That’d be one in the eye for Connie.

‘Come in,’ she says, opening the door fully and inviting the journalist into the hallway.

‘Thank you so much Mrs Hetherington, I really appreciate you taking the time.’

Cathy walks in, wipes her shiny brown heels conscientiously on the doormat and follows Carol into the kitchen. The journalist waits for Carol to tell her to sit, which Carol notes with silent approval, and when asked how she takes her tea, Cathy Dennen says strong, with just a dash of milk and no sugar. Carol normally has a heaped teaspoon in hers but today she pushes aside the sugar bowl, thinking of Cathy’s toned arms and reminding herself that she could do with losing a few pounds. Stress always made her crave sweet things.

She chooses the only two matching mugs from the cupboard – garishly patterned purple things that never seem to be the right size for the amount of tea you want – and puts some biscuits from the tin on a dainty plate. She doesn’t have a doily but she lays out two small serviettes instead. Did people use doilies any more? She isn’t sure.

Once the tea is made, Carol places the mugs carefully on the table. She manoeuvres herself into the chair facing Cathy, trying to ignore the twinge in her lower back. She hopes her sciatica isn’t playing up again. It’s all that bending to water the plants that’s doing it.

‘So what do you want to know?’ Carol asks, taking a sip of tea. It is hotter than she anticipated and she burns the roof of her mouth.

Cathy has laid out a plastic folder full of loose-leaf bits of paper, a spiral-bound notepad open to a blank page and a slim white rectangular object that Carol assumes is a tape recorder of some kind. Before replying, Cathy takes a bite from a chocolate Bourbon, catching the crumbs in her serviette.

‘Mmm, lovely,’ she says. ‘Thank you so much.’

The journalist looks at her levelly, then drops her voice, ever so slightly.

‘I can’t imagine how draining this whole thing must have been for you.’

Carol waves her hand, as if it’s just one of those things. She finds herself wanting to impress Cathy Dennen without understanding why.

‘The police have been kind,’ says Carol. ‘The worst thing has been the coming and going, to be honest. All day and night they’re traipsing in and out of that house, digging up the garden and all sorts. I don’t know what Alan’s going to think . . .’

She catches herself, realising how stupid this sounds.

‘I mean, it’s hard to get used to the idea that your next-door neighbour could be a murderer . . .’

‘At least, that’s what they’re saying now,’ Cathy prompts.

Carol nods. ‘Terrible business. Terrible. That poor girl.’

‘Do they have any idea who it is?’

Carol looks up sharply. ‘No,’ she says crisply.

‘Of course not,’ Cathy continues. ‘Too early to know with a body in that state.’ A pause. ‘How did you come to make the discovery?’ Cathy blows on her tea, lipsticked mouth pursing prettily. ‘If you don’t mind talking about it, that is. I don’t want to upset you.’

‘No, no, it’s fine,’ Carol assures her. ‘I don’t mind.’

And she ends up telling her the whole story: about Alan and how he sat exactly where Cathy was sitting now and drank a cup of tea and ate biscuits just as she was. About how she’d even begun to think that Alan might be a suitable partner for her daughter and thank God she hadn’t pursued it because who knows what might have happened?

At this point Cathy sits back in her chair and lets out a low whistle.

‘Doesn’t bear thinking about,’ the journalist says, scribbling a note in her pad.

‘I know,’ Carol says. ‘I know.’

And then she tells Cathy Dennen how Alan had asked her to water his plants while he was away and, no, he hadn’t told her where he was going but now she wishes she’d thought to ask.

‘What was he like when he came round and asked you to look after his garden?’ Cathy says and Carol can see her eyes darting towards the tape recorder, checking whether the red light was on and if it was working properly.

‘Normal.’ She lifts her mug to her lips but it stalls halfway. ‘Although . . .’ She looks out of the window above the sink. She can just about make out the flash of white from the edge of the police tent next door. She shakes her head, decides not to say anything.

‘What?’ Cathy puts her pen down and gives her her full attention. The journalist starts to reach out across the table and for a moment Carol wonders what on earth she thinks she’s doing and then Carol realises her nose is running and tears are slipping down her cheeks.

‘Sorry,’ she says, reaching for the tissue she always keeps tucked into the cuff of her blouse. She dabs at her tears. ‘I don’t know what’s come over me.’

Cathy smiles, cocks her head to one side. ‘Sometimes it can take you like that,’ she says. Her hand is still there, sitting oddly on the surface of the table. Carol glances at the hand and sees clean-cut nails slicked with a coat of pale varnish. There is a single silver ring with a semi-precious stone on the middle finger. Looking at the hand, Carol thinks Cathy had probably been intending to pat her on the arm. Then she glances at Cathy, whose eyes are glassy like polished pebbles.

Cathy, sensing something has shifted, removes the hand and becomes engrossed in her notes, flicking through the pages and marking certain sections of shorthand with an asterisk. Carol sees that she has divided every page with a line down the centre, so that she writes in two columns. But the column on the margin side had barely any text in it and Carol wonders why this should be. Hasn’t she said anything interesting enough?

She finds herself thinking of the one and only job interview she’d ever had, back before she was married and a friend told her they were looking for shop assistants at C&A. Carol had been so nervous that she could barely speak. Two store managers, both men in grey suits, had sat behind a desk and peppered her with questions, asking what she could bring to the organisation. She had no convincing answers, so Carol answered as truthfully as she could: that she knew very little but was willing to learn and that what she could bring to the organisation was an interest in fashion and then she stammered and realised she wasn’t sure what to say next. She lapsed into a silence while the store managers mumbled amongst themselves and before they had a chance to say they weren’t interested, thank you very much, she stood up, pushed the chair back into place, said a polite thank you and walked out of the office with as much dignity as she could muster. She’d never felt so humiliated.

She didn’t get the job. Instead she’d got married to Derek and then became pregnant with Vanessa and a career didn’t seem to matter all that much. Once Vanessa was old enough, Carol got a part-time job as a receptionist at the local GP’s surgery. She’d worked there until retirement and then Derek had got ill and now she didn’t have anything left with which to occupy her time, unless you counted looking after Archie and even he was getting too old to need babysitting.

‘. . . so really I was just wondering: do you know?’

Carol realises she is being asked a question by Cathy Dennen and hasn’t been listening for a good few minutes.

‘I’m sorry, dear. What was that?’

‘We’ve all heard rumours about the identity of the girl under the flower bed, so really I was just wondering, Mrs Hetherington, do you know?’

‘Do I know who it is, you mean?’

Cathy nods.

Carol sighs. She is exhausted. Cathy Dennen of the
Tribune
no longer seems like a kindly listener and Carol is worried that she has now said too much. She has no idea what possessed her to invite a journalist in and she talks to herself sternly in her head about not being swayed by first impressions, about not trusting people, however nice or generous or lonely they seemed. Had she learned nothing from the whole Alan Clithero saga?

She is beginning to understand that she is deeply naive. Not in an appealing, young girlish way, but in the way that suggests a sheltered existence of limited experiences and a blinkered attitude to unpleasantness. For so long, all she had cared about was her family unit of three: Derek and Vanessa and then, later, Archie. She had poured her energies into looking after them, into keeping things running smoothly, remembering their favourite foods, sweeping up their crumbs, folding their laundered clothes, making their modest home as tidy and clean as possible and showing them that they were loved in countless small ways. The world beyond these four walls had been blurred. It had been a world for other people.

Now, sitting at her kitchen table exactly as she has done a million times before, it comes to her in startling clarity: she has not been open to life. It has taken Derek’s death and a woman buried under a flower bed to shake her out of her self-imposed stupor. No wonder, then, that she is out of her depth.

Across the table, she meets Cathy’s eye. She wants this to be over. Part of her wonders whether she should give the name she’s overheard just to end the conversation. But then she thinks of the girl’s poor father and what he must be feeling. She’d seen a picture of him in the paper a while back, laughing as if he didn’t have a care in the world. She can’t bear to think of him now, having been told the news.

‘I can’t tell you,’ Carol says, downing the rest of her tea and hoping Cathy gets the message.

‘I appreciate that.’ Cathy closes her notepad, clicks the top back on her biro and picks up her large handbag from the linoleum floor. Just as she is putting her things away, she looks straight at Carol and says, without flinching, ‘It’s Ada Pink, isn’t it?’

Carol stares at her. She can feel a flush starting on the top of her chest. She shakes her head vigorously, hair jiggling as she does so. She wants to say no, that’s not it at all, you’ve got it all wrong and why don’t you stop meddling and have a thought in your head for that girl’s grieving parents, but she can’t. She is a bad liar, always has been.

‘I didn’t say that,’ Carol says and the words, when she hears them, are scratchy and unconvincing.

Cathy takes her tape recorder, slides a switch and the red button that has been winking at Carol for the best part of an hour snaps off.

‘You didn’t have to,’ Cathy replies, so quietly that Carol isn’t sure she’s heard her correctly. Carol stands, snatching back Cathy’s mug of tea which has hardly been touched.

‘I think you’d better go,’ she says, attempting to draw herself up to her full height which, after all, is only an unimpressive 5 foot 4.

Cathy gives a tight smile, ‘You’ve been a great help, thank you, Mrs Hetherington. I can see myself out.’

And then she is gone, as quickly as she arrived, leaving behind her a trail of scent and the sound of smart heels clipping across the kitchen floor.

Carol rinses out the cups and leaves them to dry on the draining board. Then, trying not to think, she ignores the ache in her hip and limps into the lounge. She sinks gratefully into the sofa and switches on the television.

Countdown
, she thinks with relief as the theme music starts up. Perfect.

Beatrice

Beatrice settles into her new job more easily than she had expected. She has always been good at adapting to new situations, at finding the necessary camouflage to fit in. It was a necessary attribute when you lived a double life, when you had to keep secrets to survive.

She enjoys the routine. Each day, she savours the walk to the office in her smart clothes, winding through the Lebanese restaurants and clouds of rose tobacco and thinking about the impression she must be giving, about how other people look at her now and see her as a professional working woman rather than a downtrodden immigrant who is only fit for cleaning their toilets. She loves the hours, the fact that her working day now fits neatly between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. with a lunch break and frequent coffees with Tracy, accompanied by the biscuits that Beatrice has started to bring in from the corner shop in Bermondsey.