Shatter (6 page)

The envelope contains a glossy magazine and a letter from the admissions secretary of Oldfield Girls School in Bath.

Dear Mrs Tyler,

In reference to your request for addresses, I’m afraid that we don’t keep on-going records of our past students but there is an Old Girls website. You will need to contact the convenor Diane Gillespie to get a username, pin and password to access the secure section of the site containing the contact details of old girls.

I am enclosing a copy of the school yearbook for 1988 and hope it will bring back some memories.

Good luck with your search.

Yours sincerely,

Belinda Casson

The front page of the yearbook has a photograph of three smiling girls, in uniform, walking through the school gates. The school crest has a Latin quotation: ‘Lux et veritas’ (Light
and Truth).

There are more photographs inside. I turn the pages, running my fingers over the images. Some of them are class photographs on a tiered stage. Girls at the front are seated with
knees together and hands clasped on their laps. The middle row girls are standing and those at the back must be perched on an unseen bench. I study the captions, the names, the
class, the year.

There she is— my beloved— the whore’s whore. Second row. Fourth from the right. She had a brown bob. A round face. A half-smile. You were eighteen years old. I was still ten
years away. Ten years. How many Sundays is that?

I tuck the school yearbook under my arm and get a second can of beer. Upstairs a computer hums on my desk. I type in the password and call up an online telephone directory.

The screen refreshes. There were forty-eight girls in the leaving year of 1988. Forty-eight names. I won’t find her today. Not today, but soon.

Maybe I’ll watch the video again. I like watching one of them fall.

5

Charlie is dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, dancing with Emma in the lounge. The music is turned up loud and she lifts Emma onto her hip and spins her round, dipping her backwards.

Emma giggles and snorts with laughter.

‘You be careful. You’l make her throw up.’

‘Look at our new trick.’

Charlie hoists Emma onto her shoulders and leans forward, letting the youngster crawl down her back.

‘Very clever. You should join the circus.’

Charlie has grown up so much in the past few months it’s nice to see her acting like a kid again, playing with her sister. I don’t want her to grow up too quickly. I don’t want her becoming one of the girls I see roaming around Bath with pierced navels and ‘I-slept-with-your-boyfriend’ T-shirts.

Julianne has a theory. Sex is more explicit everywhere except in real life. She says teenage girls may dress like Paris Hilton and dance like Beyoncé but that doesn’t mean they’re making amateur porn videos or having sex over car bonnets. Please, God, I hope she’s right.

I can already see the changes in Charlie. She is going through that monosyl abic stage where no words are wasted on her parents.

She saves them up for her friends and spends hours texting on her mobile and chatting online.

Julianne and I talked about sending her to boarding school when we moved out of London, but I wanted to kiss her goodnight each evening and wake her of a morning. Julianne said I was trying to make up for the time I
didn’t
spend with my own father, God’s-personal-physician-in-waiting, who sent me to boarding school from the age of eight.

Maybe she’s right.

Julianne has come downstairs to see what the fuss is about. She’s been working in the office, translating documents and sending emails. I grab her around the waist and we dance to the music.

‘I think we should practise for our dance classes,’ I say.

‘What do you mean?’

‘They start on Tuesday. Beginners Latin— Samba and the Rhrrrrumba!’

Her face suddenly fal s.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I can’t make it.’

‘Why?’

‘I have to get back to London tomorrow afternoon. We’re flying to Moscow first thing Monday morning.’

‘We?’

‘Dirk.’

‘Oh, Dirk the Jerk.’

She looks at me crossly. ‘You don’t even know him.’

‘Can’t he find another translator?’

‘We’ve been working on this deal for three months. He doesn’t want to use someone new. And I don’t want to hand it over to someone else. I’m sorry, I should have told you.’

‘That’s OK. You forgot.’

My sarcasm irritates her.

‘Yes, Joe, I forgot. Don’t make an issue out of it.’

There is an uncomfortable silence. A gap between songs. Charlie and Emma have stopped dancing.

Julianne blinks first. ‘I’m sorry. I’l be back on Friday.’

‘So I’l cancel the dancing.’

‘You go. You’l have a great time.’

‘But I’ve never been before.’

‘It’s a beginner’s class. Nobody is going to expect you to be Fred Astaire.’

The dance lessons were my idea. Actual y, they were suggested by my best mate, Jock, a neurologist. He sent me literature showing how Parkinson’s sufferers benefit from practising their co-ordination. It was yoga or dancing lessons. Both if possible.

I told Julianne. She thought it was romantic. I saw it as a chal enge.

I would throw down the gauntlet to Mr Parkinson; a duel to the death, ful of pirouettes and flashing feet. May the best man win.

Emma and Charlie are dancing again. Julianne joins them, effortlessly finding the rhythm. She holds out her hand to me. I shake my head.

‘Come on, Dad,’ says Charlie.

Emma does a bum wiggle. It’s her best move. I don’t have a best move.

We dance and sing and col apse on the sofa laughing. It’s a long while since Julianne has laughed like this. My left arm trembles and Emma holds it stil . It’s a game she plays. Holding it with both hands and then letting go to see if it trembles, before grabbing it again.

Later that evening when the girls are asleep and our horizontal waltz is over, I cuddle Julianne and grow melancholy.

‘Did Charlie tel you she saw our ghost?’

‘No. Where?’

‘On the stairs.’

‘I wish Mrs Nutal would stop putting stories in her head.’

‘She’s a mad old bat.’

‘Is that a professional diagnosis?’

‘Absolutely,’ I say.

Julianne stares into space, her mind elsewhere… in Rome perhaps, or Moscow.

‘You know I give them ice-cream al the time when you’re not here,’ I tel her.

‘That’s because you’re buying their love,’ she replies.

‘You bet. It’s for sale and I want it.’

She laughs.

‘Are you happy?’ I ask.

She turns her face to mine. ‘That’s a strange question.’

‘I can’t stop thinking about that woman on the bridge. Something made her unhappy.’

‘And you think I’m the same?’

‘It was nice to hear you laughing today.’

‘It’s nice to be home.’

‘Nicest place to be.’

6

Monday morning. Grey. Dry. The agency is sending three candidates for me to interview. I don’t think they’re cal ed nannies any more. They are carers or childcare professionals.

Julianne is on her way to Moscow, Charlie is on the bus to school and Emma is playing with her dol s’ clothes in the dining room, trying to put a bonnet on Sniffy our neurotic cat. Sniffy’s ful name is Sniffy Toilet Rol , which is again what happens when you give a three-year-old the naming rights to family pets.

The first interview starts badly. Her name is Jackie and she’s nervous. She bites her nails and touches her hair constantly as if needing reassurance that it hasn’t disappeared.

Julianne’s instructions were clear. I am to make sure the nanny doesn’t do drugs, drink or drive too fast. Exactly how I’m supposed to find this out is beyond me.

‘This is where I’m supposed to find out if you’re a granny basher,’ I tel Jackie.

She gives me a puzzled look. ‘My granny’s dead.’

‘You didn’t bash her, did you?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

I cross her off the list.

The next candidate is twenty-four from Newcastle with a sharply pointed face, brown eyes and dark hair pul ed back so tightly it raises her eyebrows. She seems to be casing the house with the view to robbing it later with her burglar boyfriend.

‘What car wil I be driving?’ she asks.

‘An Astra.’

She’s not impressed. ‘I can’t drive a manual. I don’t think I should be expected to. Wil there be a TV in my room?’

‘There can be.’

‘How big is it?’

‘I’m not sure.’

Is she talking about watching it or flogging it, I wonder. I scrub out her name. Two strikes.

At 11.00 a.m. I interview a pretty Jamaican with braided hair, looped back on itself and pinned with a large tortoiseshel clip at the back of her head. Her name is Mani, she has good references and a lovely deep voice. I like her. She has a nice smile.

Halfway through the interview, there’s a sudden cry from the dining room. Emma in pain. I try to rise but my left leg locks. The effect is cal ed
bradykinesia,
a symptom of Parkinson’s, and it means that Mani reaches Emma first. The hinged lid of the toy box has trapped her fingers. Emma takes one look at the dark-skinned stranger and howls even louder.

‘She hasn’t been held by many black people,’ I say, trying to rescue the situation. It makes things worse. ‘It’s not your colour. We have lots of black friends in London. Dozens of them.’

My God, I’m suggesting my three-year-old is a racist!

Emma has stopped crying. ‘It’s my fault. I picked her up too suddenly,’ Mani says, looking at me sadly.

‘She doesn’t know you yet.’ I explain.

‘Yes.’

Mani is gathering her things.

‘I’l cal the agency,’ I say. ‘They’l let you know.’

But we both realise what’s happening. She’s going to take a job elsewhere. It’s a shame. A misunderstanding.

After she’s gone, I make Emma a sandwich and settle her for her afternoon nap. There are chores to do— washing and ironing.

I know I’m not supposed to admit such a thing, but being at home is boring. Emma is wonderful and enchanting and I love her to bits but there are only so many times I can play sock puppets or watch her stand on one leg or listen to her declare from the top of the climbing frame that she is indeed the king of the castle and I am, yet again, the dirty rascal.

Looking after young children is the most important job in the world. Believe me— it is. However, the sad, unspoken, implicit truth is that looking after young children is boring. Those guys who sit in missile silos waiting for the unthinkable to happen are doing an important job too, but you can’t tel me they’re not bored out of their tiny skul s and playing endless games of Solitaire and Battleships on the Pentagon computers.

The doorbel rings. Standing on the front step is a chestnut-haired teenager in low-slung black jeans, a T-shirt and tartan jacket. Ear studs like beads of mercury glisten on her earlobes.

She is clasping a shoulder bag hard to her chest, leaning forward a little. An October wind whips up an eddy of leaves at her feet.

‘I wasn’t expecting anyone else,’ I tel her.

Her head tilts to one side, frowning.

‘Are you Professor O’Loughlin?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Darcy Wheeler.’

‘Come in, Darcy. We have to be quiet, Emma is sleeping.’

She fol ows me along the hal to the kitchen. ‘You look very young. I expected somebody older.’

Again she looks at me curiously. The whites of her eyes are bloodshot and raw from the wind.

‘How long have you been a childcare professional?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘How long have you looked after children?’

Now she looks concerned. ‘I’m stil at school.’

‘I don’t understand.’

She hugs her bag a little tighter, steeling herself. ‘You talked to my mother. You were there when she fel .’

Her words shatter the quietness like a dropped tray of glasses. I see a resemblance, the shape of her face, her dark eyebrows. The woman on the bridge.

‘How did you find me?’

‘I read the police report.’

‘How did you get here?’

‘I caught the bus.’

She makes it sound so obvious but this isn’t supposed to happen. Grieving daughters don’t turn up on my doorstep. The police should have answered Darcy’s questions and given her counsel ing. They should have found a family member to look after her.

‘The police say it was suicide but that’s impossible. Mum wouldn’t… she couldn’t, not like that.’

Her desperation trembles in her throat.

‘What was your mother’s name?’ I ask.

‘Christine.’

‘Would you like a cup of tea, Darcy?’

She nods. I fil the kettle and set out the cups, giving myself a chance to work out what I’m going to say.

‘Where have you been staying?’ I ask.

‘I’m at boarding school.’

‘Does the school know where you are?’

Darcy doesn’t answer. Her shoulders curve and she shrinks even more. I sit down opposite her, making sure her eyes meet mine.

‘I want to know exactly how you came to be here.’

The story tumbles out. The police had interviewed her on Saturday afternoon. She was counsel ed by a social worker and then taken back to Hampton House, a private girls’ school in Cardiff. On Sunday night she waited until lights out and unscrewed the wooden blocks on her house window, opening it far enough to slip out. Once she had dodged the security guard, she walked to Cardiff Central, and waited for the first train. She caught the 8.04 to Bath Spa and a bus to Norton St Phil ips. She walked the last three miles to Wel ow. The journey took most of the morning.

I notice the grass clippings in her hair and mud on her shoes. ‘Where did you sleep last night?’

‘In a park.’

My God, she could have frozen to death. Darcy raises the mug of tea to her lips, holding it steady with both hands. I look at her clear brown eyes, her bare neck; the thinness of her jacket and the dark bra outlined beneath her T-shirt. She is beautiful y ugly in a gawky teenage way, but destined in a few years to be exceptional y beautiful and to bring no end of misery to a great number of men.