The Girls (14 page)

‘No. No idea.’

‘Well, what about IMDb? She’ll be on the credit list for the documentary she made with your husband.’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘But why would I want to find her?’

‘Because if you find her, you’ll know where he is. And surely you’ll feel better if you know that?’

‘I don’t think anything will make me feel better. Not any more. I’m beyond feeling better. I just wish …’ she began, but then drew herself back from the words that had been on the tip of her tongue. ‘I just wish none of it had ever happened.’

‘Was it a nice house?’ he asked.

‘It was a lovely house.’ She gulped. It still made her want to cry whenever she thought about her old home. ‘It was his aunt’s. She left it to him. We never changed a thing. Not even her funny old pine kitchen. Or the brown carpets. We kept talking about it and we never got round to it. Because it was so comfortable. And we were so happy there. And now …’ She pulled herself up straight. ‘But, seriously. Promise me,’ she said, ‘swear you won’t say anything. Not even to Adele. Please.’

‘I swear,’ he said. ‘Solemnly. But, Clare, I’m glad you told me. I can keep an eye out for you. And I will. If you need anything. Or if you’re scared. I’m just on the other side of the garden.’

She looked at his soft, sincere face, felt the very male kinetic strength of him. And then she realised why she’d told him, a virtual stranger. He was just the man you’d want around in an emergency. He would get things done, keep everything together, save the day. For her whole adult life she’d had Chris there to protect her when there’d been nothing really to protect her from. Now she needed someone to protect her from her protector.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it won’t come to that. But thank you. I really, really appreciate it.’

He smiled. ‘It’s a pleasure, Clare. It really is.’ He placed a hand on her upper arm and squeezed it.

Clare’s body twitched at his touch. Her face flushed pink.

Thirteen

It was the middle of June. Spring had turned to summer. The garden was technicolour bright and full of people that Pip had never seen before.

Tyler was sitting on the grass just outside Pip’s garden. Pip looked at her in surprise. Tyler never really came down this end of the garden, and certainly not on her own.

‘Hi,’ said Pip airily, preparing to walk past her.

‘Hi,’ said Tyler, jumping to her feet. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Just up there,’ said Pip.

‘You going to see Fergus?’

Pip looked at Tyler oddly. How did she know about her and Fergus? She shrugged.

‘Rhea’s up there. I just saw her. I’ll come with you.’

Pip nodded. She wasn’t sure what was going on. Tyler never talked to her unless there was a big gang of them. They walked in silence at first. ‘Where’s Grace?’ said Tyler as they neared the brow of the hill.

‘Don’t know,’ said Pip. ‘Probably with the sisters. She’s there all the time these days.’

‘Yeah, I’d noticed. How come you don’t hang out there too?’ Tyler scratched her scalp with some relish, as though she had nits. Pip noticed that she looked a bit shabby. Her normally glossy blond hair was lank and dusty-looking and her once-pristine white Converse were grey and dilapidated. There were deep scratches on her arms as though she’d been dragged through a field of gorse and a patch of dry red skin around her left nostril.

‘Don’t know. No reason.’

‘Don’t you like them?’ she carried on. ‘The sisters?’

‘Yes. I like them.’

‘They think you don’t like them.’

Pip stopped and turned to face Tyler. ‘They’ve been talking about me?’

‘Not really. Someone just said something about you and they said, “Oh, no, Pip doesn’t like us.” Or something like that.’

‘What, just because I don’t want to go and hang about in their house all the time?’

‘They said you’d rather hang about with a freak-out giant rabbit and an old lady than hang out with them.’

‘That’s crap. I’ve only seen Fergus like about three times.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s just what they said. It doesn’t mean it’s what I think. And anyway, your sister doesn’t spend all her time at their apartment, you know. She does other things.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘She hangs out with Dylan too.’

‘Yeah. Like,
in his bedroom
.’

‘No she doesn’t.’

‘Er, yes she does.’

‘She doesn’t even know where he lives.’

Tyler snorted. ‘Of course she does. She’s there right now. Probably.’

Pip looked up sharply at the attic windows that Rhea had pointed out to her. The curtains were drawn on all three windows. But then they always were. Rhea had told her that Dylan’s mum was sensitive to light. Then she glanced down again to the tall windows of the Howeses’ apartment.

‘How would she even get in there?’ she asked, knowing even before the words had left her mouth that it was a cretinous thing to say.

Tyler looked incredulously at her and used two of her fingers to mime a person walking up some stairs.

Rhea wasn’t at the top of the hill when they got there.

‘I’ve got some money,’ Tyler said. ‘Shall we go and get ice creams?’

‘I haven’t got any money though.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Tyler. ‘I can treat you.’

Pip didn’t have her phone with her. She glanced behind her towards the garden gates. She thought of her nervy mother, who seemed to freak out every five seconds when she was out of her sight, and she thought of Grace doing whatever Grace was doing, and even though Tyler was suggesting a ten-minute round trip it seemed rash somehow and liable to cause problems. But her curiosity overrode her instinctive misgivings and she said, ‘OK. Thank you. If you’re sure?’

They set off up the Finchley Road together. It was five thirty. The tube station was belching out creased commuters, most of whom walked straight into the supermarket to buy their dinner. Tyler and Pip peered through the plate glass. The queue for the basket-only checkout was thirty people long. ‘Let’s not bother with that.’ Tyler turned in the other direction. ‘There’s a corner shop down this way with a cabinet. Come on.’

The ten-minute round trip now seemed to have extended itself into a fifteen-minute round trip. Her mum would be doing tea about now. If Pip wasn’t there when she’d finished cooking, she’d try calling her. If she didn’t answer her phone, she’d come out into the garden to look for her. If she wasn’t in the garden she’d go to the sisters’ apartment. And if Grace wasn’t there and she wasn’t there her mum would go completely mental. Pip picked up her pace and said, ‘OK. Come on, though. I need to get back.’

Tyler looked at her pityingly. ‘What for?’

‘Tea,’ she said.

Tyler just tutted and flicked her hair as if she’d never heard of such a silly thing.

The pavement was dusty and hot, the sun a burning ochre reflection in the shop windows opposite. A swarm of girls from the private school further up the road were walking towards them, St Trinian’s scruffy in short navy and sunshine-yellow skirts, skinny legs, uncombed hair, as loud and territorial as the mums from the halfway house. Pip saw Tyler’s lip curl with distaste as they passed.

‘Posh bitches,’ she said under her breath. ‘They’re all anorexic, you know. I could have got a scholarship, because of my gran being the headmistress there for so long, but my mum wouldn’t let me.’

They passed the corner shop that Pip had thought Tyler meant.

‘I can’t go in there,’ said Tyler, nodding at the shop. ‘They know me in there.’

Pip looked at her, wondering what that meant.

Buses stormed down the bus lane to their right. Tyler stepped off the kerb to overtake a woman with a buggy and almost got run down by one. It sounded its horn, long and hard, and Tyler tried to pretend she wasn’t shaken. ‘Yeah yeah,’ she said to the back end of the bus. ‘Get over yourself.’

‘Shit. You could have died,’ said Pip, holding her hammering heart.

‘Whatevs.’

Pip’s discomfiture increased. She should have said no. She didn’t even like ice cream very much. Finally they stopped at a shop. Tyler held the door for Pip and for a moment they hung over the sides of a chest freezer, gazing into upturned cardboard boxes, evaluating and critiquing the various types of ice cream on offer, like two normal girls. Tyler chose a Magnum and Pip chose a lime Calippo. The time above the cash desk said 5.41 p.m.

‘How did you scratch your arms?’ she asked a moment later, as they headed back towards the garden.

Tyler glanced at the injuries. ‘On my mum’s dress.’

‘What?’

‘Long story. It was sequinned. You know, one of those dresses that’s got sequins all over it. And I tried to get it off her because she was asleep in it and it scratched me right up.’ Tyler shrugged as if to say:
Hey, you know, just one of those things
.

Pip’s skin prickled with the dark glamour of the imagery. It was like something out of one her Jacqueline Wilson books: the feisty neglected daughter and the beautiful broken mother.

‘Why did your sister lie about your dad?’

Pip almost stopped in her tracks. ‘What do you mean?

‘You know, she said your dad was dead and he isn’t.’

Pip shrugged. ‘Dunno.’ There was a profound lack of doubt in the tone of the question. She felt it would be futile to try to deny that Grace had been lying. Instead she turned the question round on to Tyler. ‘What about you?’ she said. ‘Where’s your dad?’

‘Don’t ask,’ she said.

‘Have you met him?’

‘Thought I had,’ she said. ‘Turns out I hadn’t. Turns out everyone’s been lying about everything.’

They were nearing the tube station. A few more steps and Pip would be able to see the mushroom-shaped turret of Rhea’s apartment block.

‘Does your mum ever talk about Phoebe?’

Tyler scowled at her. ‘What do you know about Phoebe?’

‘Just that she died. In the garden. Rhea told me.’

‘Yeah, we talk about it sometimes.’

‘What do you think happened?’

‘I think it was Gordon. The sisters’ granddad.’

‘What! Seriously?’

‘Yeah, well, just look at him. He’s a filthy old pervert. And Mum says when he was younger he was virtually a rapist. He was always leering over the young girls and making inappropriate comments.’

‘But that doesn’t mean he’d kill someone, does it?’

‘Course it does. Maybe he’d been raping her or something and he needed to shut her up. Or, I don’t know, maybe she tried to fight him off and he did it by accident or something.’

‘Is that what your mum thinks too?’

‘No. She just thinks Phoebe overdosed.’

‘She was on drugs?’

‘Yeah. Apparently. I don’t know. Phoebe was quite wild.’

‘Rhea told me Phoebe was going out with Leo when she died.’

‘Yeah. I think they had this on-off thing going on. She was going out with his brother too.’

They’d reached the gates to the garden. Tyler pulled a key out of the pocket of her hoodie and let them in. ‘Oh, wait up.’ Her phone had made a noise and she pulled it from her other pocket and switched it on. ‘There you go.’ She turned the phone to face Pip. ‘I told you so.’

She wasn’t sure what she was seeing at first. It was a photograph on Instagram, of a boy and girl. He had his arm around her shoulder and their cheeks were pressed together and there was a cartoon heart drawn around them and the words ‘Me and the gorgeous G’.

It was Grace and Dylan.

‘That’, said Tyler, pointing at the wall behind them in the photo, ‘is Dylan’s wallpaper. In his bedroom. And that photo was posted two minutes ago. So.’ She pointed at the attic windows opposite. ‘Believe me now?’

Dear Daddy,

Grace and Dylan are going out. It’s properly official. I don’t even know what that means when you’re thirteen years old. Some of the kids in my class say they’re going out but they’re not really, they’re just hanging out, basically. Not even holding hands. It’s really stupid. But maybe it’s different when you’re in year eight. Maybe you do kissing and stuff. They keep putting photos of themselves on Instagram. They have their faces touching sometimes. So, I don’t know. It’s all just really weird. Grace won’t talk to me about it. She’s really changed. Like, a few months ago we were virtually the same and now she’s got boobs, she’s started wearing make-up, she’s taller than Mum, she’s got really thin and now this. I don’t like it. I feel like I’ve lost her. Like I’ve lost you. I’m feeling sad today. And angry. Angry with you, for doing that stupid thing and leaving us all behind and making us come to this place. And angry with Mum for not letting us see you. And really, really angry with Grace for just kind of walking away from it all and leaving me behind.

So I’m quite glad you’re probably never going to read this letter because it’s not a very happy one and given the place you’re in right now it’s probably not a good idea for you to read sad letters.

Love you, Daddy,

Your Pipsqueak xxxx

Fourteen

Adele bumped into Cece on the Finchley Road on Friday. It was the first time she’d seen her since their dinner party earlier that month and since her discovery about her summer fling with Leo twenty-three years ago. It was a sunny day, with a warm breeze, and Cece was wearing denim hotpants, a loose grey T-shirt, pink trainers and black Ray-Bans, an outfit not dissimilar to those her daughter wore. Her long blond hair was tied up in a ponytail. Men turned and stared as she walked past them. She smiled when she saw Adele approaching and stopped, signifying that she’d be happy to chat for a while. ‘Hello, gorgeous.’ She leaned in and kissed Adele’s cheek. She smelled of coconut and stale alcohol. ‘I keep meaning to drop you a note or something to thank you for that lovely dinner the other week. I’m so hopeless.’

‘Oh, God, honestly, don’t worry about it. It was nothing. Just some curry.’

‘But it was nice. No one ever seems to do that kind of thing any more. It’s lovely when someone makes the effort. And I
promise
I’ll try and return the favour, but you know, work is crazy, and space is limited. It’s so hard to find the time.’