The Red House (24 page)

On the way to my car, I check my phone. I hope that Spencer isn’t trying to assert his lack of bias by being unnecessarily tough with Dora. I hope that Morris knows better than to try to contact me. Last night’s visit and update were as far as I can go.

Top message, from the CSI at the scene:
NO JEWELLERY IN DAUGHTER’S ROOM. SPY CAMERA ON HIGH SHELF.

Camera?
I wonder, and I feel fury seep up from the ground and climb my body. Morgan Davies had denied any cameras.

WHAT’S ON IT?
I text back.

RECEIVER NOT ATTACHED. DIGITAL TRANSMISSION.

Damn.
I reply, 
FIND RECEIVER. SEARCH FOR MORE CAMERAS. FURTHER INFO TO DS SPENCER
. This has to be his. The footage
could confirm or contradict Fiona’s confession, and indict or exclude Dora.

Morgan Davies lied to me,
I fume.

Then,
But why let us search the house?
She had to know that the camera would be found.

Unless Morgan didn’t know about the camera.

I send one more text:
GET A WARRANT TO CHECK THE SITE OFFICE AND BUILDERS SHED.
The developer might even grant entry without a warrant, considering his son is the victim.
Maybe more than a victim.

Morgan Davies had said once that Erik Keats had been in the White House to use the toilet. Might he have made a side trip into the teenage daughter’s room, and left something behind?

I feel a flutter in my belly, and rub my child’s kicking foot. Even the baby has been lazy in the recent heat, so the activity is reassuring. I walk up past accident and emergency, to the pedestrian bridge into the multistorey car park.

At the end of it, I extend my car’s key fob and click the button; the car flashes in reply. I walk to it, open the door and stand beside, fanning myself, waiting for the stale air inside to exit.

Back at the mouth of the bridge, a youngish woman in a wheelchair is being pushed by an older one. The parking structure features low ceilings and exposed metal beams, and its acoustics carry the tones of their voices, though not their words. They’re clearly arguing.

I only half-listen. People argue. It’s not something police have to worry about until it goes beyond words. I look away, idly considering the merits of various vehicles in terms of room for a baby seat.

Screams bounce off the metal walls, the metal cars, all that metal adding edge and tang to the already sharp sound. I squint, assess. The woman who was pushing the wheelchair is now on the ground, getting up, growling with effort. The woman in the wheelchair is rolling backwards, screaming. It’s Imogen Wright-Llewellyn.

I check the screen again then cram the phone into my pocket. No messages. I tell myself that coverage is terrible inside the hospital walls. Getting out may result in a flurry of notifications of missed calls and texts, but what good will this do me if I’m not allowed to leave until I’ve arranged for someone to look after me? I’ll call on a friend from London if I must, but I don’t want to have to explain everything, not until I better understand how life is now changed. Not until I know where I stand, with Maxwell, and with the police.
Maxwell, however angry you are with me, call me back!

But I know I have no right to depend on him. Contacting his father, then accusing the man, may have been unforgivable. Maxwell has been right about a lot, most of all about my obsession with family and with my supposedly idyllic childhood.

I’m sorry, Max,
I practise in my head, flopping back against the pillow. A lot has been becoming clear since I
visited the Red and White Houses in Caldecote.

It had been a little neighbourhood of sorts, back when I was a child, with the houses at odd angles, to avoid seeing straight into each other’s windows. My brothers and I had played on the shared grass between. There must have been boundary lines, but I hadn’t known them.

I remember now, clearly, the woman on the steps of the White House. The woman with the long hair and sunburnt shoulders, and the gold chain weighted by a charm between her breasts. She had done young me a kindness all those years ago, and I have only now realised it.

In the hospital room, a nurse bustles in. Her hair is short and she wears no jewellery. She couldn’t be more different, physically, from the woman in my memory, but she has that same warmth, that same kind posture, leaning and smiling. She brings good news. ‘Someone’s called to say that they’re picking you up.’

I try to sit up. ‘Maxwell Gant? He phoned?’ If he resorted to calling the hospital that must mean that I’m not deluding myself; my mobile isn’t picking up calls. Relief tingles.
Forgiven
.

‘I didn’t take the call,’ the nurse admits, then recites various instructions regarding medication, the wheelchair, and the return of my bedside locker key.

In my mind, I practise again:
Maxwell, you were right. My family were never perfect. Never. I’ll always love them, but I won’t worship them any more.

I pack my few belongings, the things that Maxwell had brought me from our hotel while I was in surgery, before I accused his father. He’d brought my dressing gown, my hairbrush, the book I’d left open, face-down, by the hotel
bed. He’d bookmarked the page with a coffee receipt. The kindness of that small gesture had almost overwhelmed me. I flick tears away from my eyes.

The nurse waits, holding the wheelchair ready. They need the bed; I’m being sent to the discharge lounge. When I nod, the nurse helps me transfer. My leg sticks straight out, as if pointing. I feel like a compass needle that hasn’t been properly magnetised. ‘Which way is north?’ I joke, and the nurse laughs, a short laugh, as if she doesn’t really get it. I rest my hands in my lap while the nurse pushes me forward.

Lying in a hospital bed invites fantasy or memory, depending on your mood. Memory had come to me in this hospital. Just pieces: sounds, previously unconnected images, all of them unprocessed, because young Im hadn’t known what any of it was.

The day that I’d met the long-haired woman, I’d followed my father there. I see that clearly. The way the Red House is positioned, I’d never before made the journey round it to the front of the White House. That had always seemed off-limits to me, except that once, following Daddy.

I’d followed him because I was bored. The twins were away on a school trip. Our heavily pregnant mother had been napping.

In the present, the lift slides open. The nurse and I enter it. In my mind, though, I exit, out of Meadow View, the peach house, chasing my father.

I didn’t call his name. I wanted to surprise him. By the time I got around the Red House, he was gone. I had laid my hand on the sliding barn door, listening. I’d heard my
father inside, and someone else. I’d reached for the iron door handle.

The nice woman with the long hair had pulled young me away, to the White House steps, inviting me to comb her hair and listen to her radio. She’d stopped me from walking in on something. She’d turned up the volume to protect me from hearing things. I had heard some, but hadn’t understood what it was, then.

I know now.

The hospital lift doors slide open. I’m pushed forward. The nurse pauses at the glass doors of the discharge lounge, discussing my transition and paperwork with an officious older woman. I peer inside, hoping to see Maxwell there, but no one is his height, has his hair, or seems to be looking for me.

Maxwell
, I think,
My dad wasn’t always nice to my mum. He had an affair with one of our neighbours. Well, one that I know of. Who knows if there were more. He was just another doctor fucking a subordinate, just another husband of a pregnant woman who wanted to fuck a body that wasn’t full of something else.

Tears, now. Angry ones. The older woman tells me ‘chin up’ and asks me to sign a paper on a clipboard. The kind nurse is gone. I scribble. The new woman pushes me into the lounge and parks me in front of a television.

Rowena Davies was my father’s lover.
How bizarre to put the two together in my mind: one of them I imagine only as an old woman, and my father had never had the chance to age.

Then there’s the bit that doesn’t make sense. I still remember the kind, long-haired woman picking up a ball –
hard, like a basketball – and throwing it down the hill, the hill that I know isn’t really there and never was.

A jolt. Someone’s hit the back of my wheelchair. I turn to glare, but it’s another newbie wheelchair user; we mutually smile and joke about trading insurance information.

I check my phone. Maybe the reception is better in here. No messages; no missed calls.

Maybe it takes a while for them to appear,
I console myself. So I stare at the screen, willing them to pop up.

‘Imogen!’

I haven’t yet got the hang of turning the chair. I twist my neck instead.

‘Imogen? Is that you?’ A woman’s voice.

‘Mrs Gant?’ I do turn the chair, suddenly, but too hard, and my body pitches forward then smacks back.

Maxwell’s mother bends down over me. ‘Dear, I was just coming to see you.’

‘Did Maxwell ask you to come?’ I don’t mean for my voice to catch, but it does, and Muriel Gant smiles generously.

‘Of course. He’s been worried about you.’ Mrs Gant gets behind my chair, takes the handles, and pushes. She nods to the older woman at the desk, and I wish that the nurse were here, the kind nurse, or the woman with long blond hair.

‘Is he here? Is he parking the car?’ I feel light-headed. Mrs Gant is moving fast and the hospital lobby blurs. Suddenly, we’re outside. Sunlight blinds me.

‘Don’t be silly. The wheelchair wouldn’t fit in his Mini.’ Mrs Gant steers me past A&E, around the corner, and onto a pedestrian bridge into a multistorey car park.

The sound of the chair’s wheels on the bridge surface is buzzy compared to its glide over pavement. I babble over it. ‘What did Maxwell say? Is he meeting us? Is he at the hotel? You’re welcome to join us for dinner tonight …’ My hands have nothing to do. They’re supposed to be spinning the wheels. A steely voice pops out of me: ‘You know, I’d really like to steer this myself. I have to practise.’

‘I’m only trying to help.’

‘I don’t see how the wheelchair will fit in your car either.’

‘It folds up into the boot, Imogen. Don’t be dense.’

I tug the brake lever and force the chair to a halt. ‘I really think that I should take the bus. I don’t want to try squeezing myself into a car right now.’ I’ll have to sit in the back, my leg extended across the seat.

‘I have a large car, Imogen. Really, it’s as if you think I haven’t planned any of this.’ Mrs Gant presses the button on her key fob, activating her locks and headlamps. In the distance, I can just make out the flashing lights, and faint beep, and the vehicle’s colour. It’s green.

At the same moment, my phone hums and chimes the influx of multiple messages.
Maxwell
. The last one – yes, from him – glows steady on the screen:

DON’T TRUST MY MOTHER.

I push the brake lever loose and spin, slamming my cast-encased extended leg into Muriel Gant’s middle. She doubles over. I repeat the motion, only just missing her head, smacking my leg against her shoulder instead. She falls back.

I scream for help, deliberately rolling backwards to create distance but keep Mrs Gant in sight. She is transformed, pushing herself up from the surface, her face puckered with
effort. Achieving full height, she throws her shoulders back.

I spin the wheelchair around and surge away, only to be yanked back.

She’s taken control of my chair by the back handles, and steers me towards the green car. Its grille and headlamps make an innocent face, as if it hasn’t tried to kill me before.

I grab at the wheels, to try to take charge, but she pushes faster. The speedy motion of the spokes spinning under my fingers makes it impossible to get a grip, so I take the only action left to me: I pull the brake again.

Mrs Gant’s forward motion continues, even as the wheels lock, tilting the chair forward and dumping me out onto the ground.

Suddenly, the Inspector is here.

She grabs Mrs Gant’s wrists from behind, cuffing one arm, but the woman wriggles out of her grip. Mrs Gant swings the cuffed hand upwards, slapping the Inspector in the face with the hanging metal ring.

Inspector Frohmann falls back, clutching her face. Her other hand reaches back to stop herself, but she lands hard and oddly next to me, seeming to bounce off the cement to fall again, sideways, smacking her belly on the floor. A car sweeps around the curve, braking to avoid us with an ugly, pig-like squeal. It revs and inches backwards, timidly trying to reverse round the tight curve behind it.

Mrs Gant has run. In the distance, the pounding footsteps of hospital security echo.

‘Are you all right?’ the Inspector and I ask one another at the same time. I sit up but cannot stand; my cast is too far up my leg, not allowing it to bend. She’s a turtle on her
back. A dark mark across her cheek bleeds. The coward in the car is still trying to back out.

‘I’ll help you,’ I say. I reach for her far hand, to pull her to sitting.

On the way, my hand skims her belly. I pause there, let my palm fall to rest, and spread my fingers over the firm curve. My throat constricts; I skip a breath; I scream, and scream again.

I call for light. Whether as a joke or out of practicality, what Spencer and I get are the hot stage lights, not the general auditorium glow. I squint. There’s Fiona’s harp, tucked in the far corner.

I pat its soft case, looking for pockets. I flick Velcro tabs and expose pencils, gum wrappers, and a folded rehearsal schedule, but no jewellery.

The flesh around my black eye burns when I perspire, but otherwise I seem to have recovered from the car park altercation. The baby’s heartbeat is steady, that’s the main thing. Baby feet still punish me from the inside. All is as it should be at seven months.

Muriel Gant has been arrested. Imogen’s complaints against her will be hard to prove, so it’s luck, I suppose, that the woman assaulted a police officer. We did follow up on her car, and records show that she’d taken a ferry to the Isle of Wight on the same day that Imogen had, and then off again. Remote video found in Erik Keats’ site hut
in Caldecote show the same green car entering the area the night that Imogen had been supposed to meet Patrick Bell. Keats had set up cameras at strategic points throughout the site, arguably for security, but the footage from Fiona’s room has no explanation beyond voyeurism. Older footage on the computer proves that it was not the first time Keats had used a camera to peep. We’re following up on past victims. It looks like at least one of them was the victim of an unsolved assault.

I shudder, relieved that Dora had so ably defended herself.

Keats’ footage also showed the green car on site a second time, on the day of the barn fire. Superficial investigation has found that the fire originated at the power strip for the night-time investigation lights, as if it had been caused by an overload. Of course, the fire had happened during the day, when the lights weren’t needed. Strangely, they had all been turned on at once …
Nice way to try to set up the victim as the cause of her own ‘accident’, but not a dependable way to actually start a fire.
Traces of an accelerant have since been identified, and my fingers are crossed that we may yet find a link to Muriel Gant via a spill on her clothes or the contents of her handbag.

It hurts every time I blink, but that black eye is keeping her in custody while we put together a decent case.

All to keep her son to herself?
I marvel. It’s enough to make me hug my mother-in-law, who’s given nothing but support since Dan and I replaced our elaborate wedding plans with a civil ceremony last month, party postponed till after the baby.

‘Here it is,’ Spencer announces. He’s unzipped the case
and wriggled his hand deep inside, coming up with a red velvet bag. Forbidden to wear make-up or even simple jewellery, Fiona used to play with Rowena’s jewellery at night in her room, and the harp case made a good hiding place. There’s no reason for anyone to be suspicious of a musician being protective of her instrument.

Spencer points out that if Dora had stolen anything in the course of assisting in Rowena’s death, she wouldn’t have left it here in Fiona’s case, not if she’d had the intention of ever getting at it. I was careful to not put this view forward myself, but waited for him to come to it, which he did gratifyingly quickly. I look forward to slipping this news to Morris: Dora is safe.

‘You’re pretty good at this job,’ I tell Spencer, as he opens the velvet bag with his gloved hands. ‘Don’t forget to miss me while I’m off bringing new life into the world, all right?’

He laughs. ‘We all expect you to be back at work straight from hospital, baby in your arms and latched. My mother—’

‘Stepmother,’ I correct.

‘My stepmother feeds my sister right at her desk. Only took a week away. Clients on the other end of the phone don’t even know. Mothers are crazy. You were crazy, flinging yourself between Imogen Wright-Llewellyn and Muriel Gant.’ Crazy, in his tone, is clearly an admirable thing to be.

‘Just doing the job,’ I say, pushing on my knees to get to standing.

‘You sure you’re all right?’ Spencer asks, and his sudden concern makes me wonder if I am.

Do I look all right?
It’s hard to feel oriented in the isolation of the spotlighted bare stage.

He puts out a hand to steady me.

‘Sorry, blood rushed to my head,’ I say.

The baby kicks. I pat the little heel in thanks for the reassurance.

We drive the jewellery back to Major Investigations, to log it: a second bracelet, numerous clip-on earrings, a garnet ring and earrings, bead necklaces, a broken gold chain, and a lion charm, its mane radiating from the head like light.

‘Well, someone was a Leo,’ I observe. I recognise the charm as a copy of a famous zodiac painting.

The work takes hours. First, I check who was the Leo in the family. Not Rowena, I quickly establish. Not Morgan, nor Fiona.

This gets Spencer excited. ‘What if our skeleton’s the Leo?’

We already have reasonable parameters for her birth year and the year of her disappearance, and hope of the name being a Dora variant. Adding in an August birthday would pop up the answer like a piece of toast, if only the records from the eighties were computerised.

Spencer says quietly, ‘Makes them seem more real, thinking of one of them with an August birthday. Maybe her birthday’s today.’

‘Sentimental,’ I mutter.

‘Don’t you …?’

‘No,’ I say, flexing my swollen ankles under the table.

‘Once we find the name, it’ll be like a real person.’

‘A body’s not real enough for you?’ The skeletal baby,
nestled in its mother’s pelvis, had nearly done me in. I’d forced myself to keep steady while on the job but had broken down when Dan asked me about it at home. Records, names and numbers are nothing compared to the tiny little bones, the little alien-like skull. I’ve been unable to sleep, partly from working the case around the clock, partly from pregnancy reflux, and partly from dread of nightmares.

‘Are you
sure
you’re all right?’ Spencer asks again.

‘Piss off,’ I insist.

We slog. We enlist the office admin to help sift written records. No match, no match. I feel my back ache and stretch to relieve it.

‘You’re white,’ Spencer says.

‘I’m pretty sure that you’re not twigging my race for the first time,’ I joke.

‘No, paper white. Do you want to go home?’

I shake my head. ‘Don’t talk. I’m thinking.’ Dan and I have been kicking around baby names, and one of the things to be aware of is initials. You don’t want names to add up to an embarrassing acronym that will become a stuck nickname. ‘We’ve already speculated that she could be a Laura. What if she’s not a Laura born in August? What if she’s a Laura whose initials are L, E, O?’

The three of us scramble into action, pulling out Lauras. We find her in the middle of the stack of discards: Laura Evelyn O’Neill.

Once named, her story comes together quickly. Google brings us back to the same message board where Muriel Gant, posing as Patrick Bell, had contacted Imogen Wright-Llewellyn. It has a section for ‘Lost Loved Ones’ as well as ‘Adoptees’.

‘Darling Laura,’ Spencer reads aloud, ‘We miss you so much. Every day I wake up wishing for you and for my grandchild. If you won’t forgive us for yourself, do it for your baby. We have so much love to give.’ The post includes a photo of a woman with long honey hair, and a lion-head charm hanging on a gold chain.

I fill in the details in my mind: surprise pregnancy; unhappy parents; uninterested boyfriend. From the begging of forgiveness, it sounds like they kicked her out. I can’t imagine how frightening it would be, going through the backbreaking work of carrying a baby alone.
Maybe she was one of those glowing women I’m always reading about in magazines,
I think sarcastically. But, for myself, backbreaking is almost the literal word for what I feel. I want to lean forward to stretch my spine, but even with knees spread to accommodate the belly I can’t lean forward far enough to make the pain go away.

Is it supposed to feel like this?
I wonder. Carrying a baby hurts, I know, but what’s the difference between the hurt of expanding and swelling and diverting my resources, which is supposed to happen, and the hurt of something gone wrong? What if my actions in the car park have done something to the baby? What if its balloon of fluid wasn’t enough of a cushion when I hit the cement floor? My heart is speeding up.
Is the baby’s heart beating too fast too?

Dan and I haven’t named it yet. We’ve agreed to be surprised by the sex. We don’t know anything about it, just that it’s ours. I don’t have a picture in my head of who this baby will be, so my fears of the worst manifest
as an image of Dan’s reaction to the worst: he would be shocked, wounded, bereft. My face would reflect his, with one element more: guilt.

I gasp.

‘I’m calling for an ambulance,’ Spencer announces.

Please do
, I only think. It hurts too much to speak.

After her daughter left, Rowena let the White House decay. She didn’t want it. The Red House was enough for her, and had been for years.

Months living alone changed that. Her desire for solitude, which had been perpetual when constantly thwarted, became satisfied. She became – and it took her weeks to put a word to it – lonely.

Not lonely for someone to take care of, or someone to live with. Rowena became lonely for simple contact between independent adults who have no authority over one another. This was another concept that she didn’t immediately have a word for. She finally allowed that ‘friend’, at least, a certain kind of friend, was probably what she meant.

Laura came first. She came with a rucksack, knocking on doors offering to do odd jobs. She didn’t knock at the Red House, of course. One doesn’t knock at a barn. She knocked at the White House, having been rejected elsewhere. Then it started to rain, and she sheltered on the porch. It rained all night, and no one came home. Laura discovered that the door was unlocked and that the kitchen had not recently been used. Rowena knew the word for this: Laura squatted, an especially apt word given her rounded and growing silhouette.

Rowena left the property only for work. Her car, which to others might have appeared to be abandoned junk, served her fine to get back and forth to the hospital. It’s inevitable that Laura eventually saw Rowena. Laura stiffened, ready for anger or pursuit, but Rowena only waved. That afternoon, coming home, Rowena left a jar of antenatal vitamins at the door of the White House.

A few days later, Laura left Rowena a pail of blackberries. The berries were Rowena’s own, but they had been picked and washed.

Dr Joseph Llewellyn came second. He was a surgeon at Hinchingbrooke, while Rowena worked in maternity, but she recognised him. His wife birthed her babies there. Rowena knew that he was a neighbour.

‘Ms Davies,’ he said, his white doctor’s coat in a flutter behind him as he confidently swooped in. He always seemed to know nurses’ and midwives’ names. ‘I’d like to see my wife’s records, please. Isobel Llewellyn.’

‘I’m sorry, Dr Llewellyn, but you know that we’re not allowed to do that.’

He swore, then apologised for having done so in front of her. ‘I hate to ask a delicate question, Ms Davies, but perhaps you could advise me. Is there anything about this stage of pregnancy that makes it dangerous for a woman to be with her husband? She tells me that her doctor advised her to abstain.’

‘I can’t reveal her personal information, sir, but that would be unusual. Unless she’s at risk for pre-eclampsia or otherwise on bed rest …’

Dr Llewellyn shook his head. Rowena imagined an embarrassed blush under his dark beard. She felt heat in
her own cheeks. They laughed together, acknowledging the awkwardness. That’s all. But he came back later, and asked if she needed a lift home.

She didn’t, of course. But she wanted one.

Rowena didn’t think about sex, not consciously. It had been a practical and unpleasant duty with her husband, so, as with the words ‘lonely’ and ‘friend’, she didn’t immediately recognise it as what her body craved. If Joseph Llewellyn had used that word she would have bolted, but the subtle electricity under the superficially benign offer of a lift was something she could say yes to.

Dr Llewellyn was an efficient and affectionate lover, who got off on women’s pleasure and so was adept at provoking it. They made love, frantically, in his car outside the Red House.

When he was done, Rowena said, ‘How shall I get back to work tomorrow?’ Her car was still at the hospital.

He agreed to pick her up at the end of the long road, well away from the houses. That became their system, for the times they went home together.

At the hospital, in passing, he acknowledged her with only a nod. She accepted this. She had exactly what she wanted, except for the frustration of timing. He chose when to come to her; she could never go to him. But, aside from that, it was good.

She noticed that Isobel Llewellyn failed to come in for a scheduled appointment. A follow-up card was popped in the post. Curious, she looked back in the records. There were only a few pages, and a scan showing what the doctor supposed to be a little girl. Isobel had failed to come for an earlier appointment as well. Rowena knew that she should
phone; that was part of her job. She just didn’t feel able to speak to the woman whose husband was her lover.

Instead, she asked Joseph, in bed. They were in the Red House; she lay across the mattress, propped up on pillows; he sat at the side, pulling up his pants. ‘You really should get your wife to keep her appointments,’ she said. She didn’t mean to berate; it’s only that she had had little experience in tactful conversation.

He left abruptly, without even an answer. Days went by. Rowena feared that she had put him off. She tried waiting by his car in the hospital car park. He didn’t say anything when he saw her there, but he got in and just sat, not driving away. She got in the passenger seat.