Forbidden Fruit (9 page)

Dolores burst into tears again. Daniel looked at me. I looked at Daniel. The situation was not good.

‘We’ll have a look at her room,’ I said, getting up. ‘You come too, Dolores.’

Up a flight of stairs into an entirely different suite, furnished in quiet good taste, though fussy in that French Provincial way. Baskets of dried flowers. Framed flower prints on the walls, which were a quiet pacific blue. Spindly white or cane furniture.

Brigid had an office space for herself, with bookshelves and a serious desk behind a French Provincial screen pasted over with Victorian ladies in walking dress. Daniel switched on the computer and I left him to it, prowling from dressing table—sensible cosmetics, lip gloss, baby powder—to wardrobe. Mostly ‘smart casual’ clothes as worn by the average forty-year-old, with a couple of evening dresses of the modest kind, high necklines and long sleeves. For the pretty daughter to wear when presented to the cocktail party throng, I supposed. Dolores had a hard life, to be sure, but Brigid’s might have been harder, with the weight of all those expectations on her head. An embroidered motto of the sort which usually said
Home Sweet Home
or
Bless This Mess
or—my favourite—
Never Trust A Thin Cook
, which Therese was even now embroidering for me. It merely ordered
Strive
.

Goss had pursed her lips and was obviously restraining herself from comment. I nodded at her.

‘Well?’ I asked.

‘Her clothes are just as bad as …’ She glanced at Dolores, who sighed.

‘Mine,’ she completed the sentence. ‘But Brigie didn’t mind! She’d wear whatever they told her to wear. If the girls teased her about looking like their mothers she’d just smile. She had a plan, she told me, and nothing was going to stop her. She was going
to be a doctor. She’d win lots of scholarships, enough to pay the fees, and there’s a trust fund from Grandma to live on. Then she’d leave home and she’d never see the parents again, never talk to them, never think of them. No more Rev Putnam, no more virginity tests, no more asking for a pad. And I used to say,
What about me?
And she’d say,
I’ll take you with me, Dolly
. But now she’s in trouble. She was never in trouble!’

‘Dolly,’ said Goss consideringly. ‘That’s a nice name. Better than Dolores. I know how that is. My name’s Gossamer but no one ever calls me that. Was it Manny’s idea about throwing the rope out the window?’

‘Yes,’ said Dolly, conquering tears again. ‘He didn’t want me to get into trouble either.’

‘What’s her password?’ asked Daniel. ‘This file is password-protected.’

‘Escape,’ said Dolly.

I kept wandering. There was a large metal cage, leaking straw, where Bunny presumably spent his more confined moments. Dolly flicked through a box in the bottom of the wardrobe and was showing the contents to Goss.

‘No singers, no actors, just pictures of famous doctors,’ she was complaining. ‘She only listened to classical stuff that doesn’t have a tune. Tchaikovsky. Some dude called Vivaldi. Not real music. She didn’t even have an iPod.’

‘Did she have a mobile phone?’ I asked. I had never seen a teenager without a mobile phone.

Dolly brightened. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I called it. But all I got was her voicemail. And she will have ditched it by now. She knows the parents can track her by the phone. Dad told her that when he gave it to her. Me, too. But I never go anywhere for it to track. Except to school and back. In the car. With the driver.’

‘Driver? Do you have the same driver every time?’

‘No, it’s a firm. Most of them are all right. I don’t even know their names.’

‘She was bright,’ said Daniel from the computer. ‘Got straight A’s for all her science and maths subjects—and a nice line in B’s for English.’

‘I used to do her creative writing,’ confessed Dolly. ‘She didn’t like making things up. She didn’t read books, you know, or watch movies, except for school. She was only interested in the real.’

‘Well, it must be real enough wherever the poor girl is now,’ said Goss.

‘I know. You’ll find her?’ Dolly grabbed Goss’s sleeve. ‘She must be scared. She’s never even been to the mall on her own.’

‘We’ll find her,’ said Goss. ‘Who were her besties?’

‘She didn’t really have any. The parents won’t let us bring anyone home, and they don’t like us going to other people’s places, either. They say we have to keep ourselves as an elect. That’s what God wants. I don’t know why they had kids,’ said Dolly. ‘They don’t even like us much.’

‘Your father wants Brigid back,’ Daniel told her. ‘He’s put up a lot of money.’

‘That’s just money,’ said Dolly. ‘And because she belongs to him. He doesn’t like anything that belongs to him getting free. He didn’t even like Bunny, because Brigie loved him.’

‘This is Bunny?’ asked Goss, holding out a photo. I looked. A very large Dutch rabbit, white and brown, with long ears and a slightly supercilious expression.

‘That’s him. She could have left him with me. I would have looked after him. But maybe she thought Dad would kill him. He used to threaten to cook him in a pie. He thought it was funny. Brigie didn’t.’

‘All right,’ said Daniel, pressing some buttons and shutting the computer down. ‘I’ve copied her hard disk. I’ll look at it
carefully at home. Here’s my number, Dolly. You’ve got a phone? Call me if you hear anything about her. And if you hear from Brigid herself, tell her to call me. There’s voicemail if I’m not there. And I won’t make her go home, Dolly, not if she doesn’t want to. But we’ll find her. Shall we give her a message from you?’

Dolly gulped and groped for her soaked wad of tissues. ‘Tell her I love her!’ she wailed, and burst into further tears.

I went downstairs to talk to Sandra. Perhaps she routinely froze all her employers’ guests. Perhaps she just didn’t approve of Israelis or young women or fat women. I found her in the kitchen. She had donned a very becoming navy blue apron with white piping. She was vengefully kneading dough. Now this was something I knew about. I sat down, uninvited, to watch.

She had a proper action: thud, knead, pull, roll, thud, knead. She was putting a lot of muscle into it. It was a good mix, yeasty and bouncy. After about ten minutes I commented, ‘I should let it rest now.’

‘What do you know about it?’ she snapped.

‘I’m a baker,’ I said. ‘Corinna Chapman. I’ve got a shop in the city, Earthly—’

‘Delights,’ she finished, thudding the dough into its bowl and covering it with a spotless white tea towel. She slammed the kettle onto the stove and lit the gas. ‘Coffee?’ she demanded.

‘Thanks,’ I replied.

She sat down on the hard polished wood chair and leant her elbows on the table so that she could look into my face.

‘You make good bread,’ she told me, almost as if it was an accusation.

‘Thank you,’ I replied, a little taken aback.

‘You’ve got your own shop and I expect you make a good living from it. Then why did you get involved in this dreadful
business?’ she snarled, thrusting her face closer as though she meant to bite me.

‘Daniel is my lover. He’s the detective. I help out sometimes. I brought Goss, my shop assistant, to talk to Dolores because I don’t speak Adolescent. Why are you so angry with me?’

‘You’ll bring her back,’ she said flatly. ‘You’ll bring her back to this house.’

‘No,’ I said, edging away a little in case she really did flesh those white teeth into my throat. ‘We want to find Brigid because it is not safe for a girl like her—and in that condition—to be on the street, if she is on the street. But if she doesn’t want to come home, we aren’t the people to make her.’

‘Her father will demand an answer.’

I shrugged and used an Uncle Solly phrase. ‘Then he not get. Or as Grandma Chapman used to say, want must be his master. You’ve seen Daniel. He’s a Sabra. He’s doing his job out of conviction, backed up by some pretty powerful people, including one nun who is in line for sainthood. How vulnerable would you say he is to pressure?’

She grabbed my wrist. She was very strong. I fought down an urge to fight to get my hand back.

‘You won’t tell?’

‘Not if Brigid doesn’t want us to tell.’ I took her wrist in my grip as well, and squeezed.

We sat like that for a little while. I was wondering if I was going to have to kick her in the shins when she released me, gave a sound which might have been a sob, and stood up, putting her apron hem to her eyes.

‘I believe you,’ she stated. Thereafter she assembled, with amazing speed, coffee in a filter pot, milk and sugar, cups, saucers and spoons, and a plate of flat cookies studded with Smarties.

I took a cookie. I was suddenly hungry with all this emotion flying around. The cookie was delicious and the coffee a lifesaver; strong, authoritative and black as the ace of spades. Sandra poured a cup for herself as well and sat down next to me.

‘I don’t know where she is, the poor lamb,’ she whispered. ‘I’d tell you if I did, now that I know you won’t give her up. I’ve had her as my own since she was seven years old and that man sacked her nurse. Without warning, just said that the child was too old for a nurse.’

‘I hate to say this,’ I nevertheless said, ‘but your employer is a pig.’

She grinned mirthlessly. ‘So he is. I stay because the salary is huge—as is the workload—and the children need me. If only Brigie’d told me, when she first knew, I could have fixed everything. Got her to a clinic. But she was ashamed. She told her father and then there was nothing I could do. She wasn’t allowed to leave the house at all. I couldn’t smuggle her out. And then the baby was too far advanced, anyway.’

‘So when she vanished, where did you think she had gone?’

‘I thought one of her sisters or brothers. But they all swear she isn’t with them and the detectives that the boss sent reported that there is no sign of her. Your Daniel is only the most recent of the private detectives he’s sicked onto the poor girl. The others all failed. I wasn’t worried about them. They were big strong men, ex-cops. But you might find her.’

‘Any ideas at all?’ I ate the rest of my cookie and took another.

‘I really don’t know. She didn’t have any friends. She just worked. She was an obsessive little thing. She’s got top marks for her maths subjects. Used to play chess with her father until she was good enough to beat him and then he didn’t want to play anymore. She never learnt to allow him to win. Not flexible. All
black and white, like most sixteen-year-olds. If I could capture that boy, I’d wring his neck with my bare hands.’

She could do it, too. Those were very strong hands.

‘What about Mama? Would she know?’

‘Not a chance. She only wanted daughters as decoration. She hated bearing them—only did it because it was God’s commandment. Never let them have a private thought—they even had to come to her for sanitary pads because she wanted to know when they bled.’

‘Because?’ I asked, boggled.

‘Because in their batty religion menstruating women are unclean and they had to take special cold baths and live on dry bread and water. She even examined them to check for an unbroken hymen—so humiliating! You can imagine how fast the others ran away; married as soon as they could. Mama only noticed them if they were pretty and she could use them to adorn her parties or impress some disgusting visiting pastor. Brigie was beautiful but she didn’t flirt with the guests. She sat there like a good girl and said yes and no and passed the hors d’oeuvres. And thought about mathematics, she told me once. God, she’ll be so hot and dirty, so tired!’

‘We’ll find her,’ I soothed. ‘What about Dolores?’

‘She lives inside her own head,’ said Sandra. ‘She writes and writes, all fantasies. She isn’t pretty or amenable, so at least she is let alone. Of the two, I would have thought that Dolly would run, not Brigie. They’d be all right if they were together. Dolly may be vague but she remembers to eat. Poor girl. I wish I could feed her, but her mother makes her weigh herself every week, and if she’s gained anything, back she goes onto lettuce and grilled chicken.’

‘It’s child abuse,’ I said softly.

‘Oh, yes, and I can see any magistrate believing that,’ flashed Sandra.

‘What about this trust fund they have?’

‘Enough to live on, yes, certainly, if Pig Papa would disburse it. He’s one of the trustees and I can’t see him letting either of the girls out of his grasp.’

‘There may be ways,’ I told her, determined that there would be.

Daniel and Goss came down the stairs. I finished my coffee and shook Sandra’s strong, work-worn hand.

‘Here’s my number,’ I said, grabbing one of Daniel’s cards and writing it down.

‘I’ll call,’ she promised. Goss goggled. Daniel took my arm.

Sandra made us take the rest of the cookies. Timbo woofled through them in a fusillade of Smarties as we headed back towards town.

The phone rang. Daniel answered it.

‘Turn around,’ he told our driver. ‘We’re going to Collingwood.’

‘Why?’ I asked, snaring the last cookie.

‘That was Sandra. The Collingwood Children’s Farm called. They’ve found Bunny.’

King Jesus hath a garden, full of divers flowers.

Trad.

‘How?’ I asked, brushing crumbs off my front.

‘Microchipped. Like Horatio and the Mouse Police. Apparently he hopped into the farm and they ran a reader over him. He’s with the vet at present.’

‘She’ll be devastated at losing Bunny,’ commented Goss.

‘Poor girl! The freegans did say that they saw Brigid in Collingwood just before they got moved on by the constabulary. I wonder if they might still be there?’

‘It’s a farm,’ said Daniel. ‘Not a lot of places to hide.’

‘There speaks a man who has never been to the farm. It’s huge, goes right down to the river, and behind it is Studley Park. And come to think of it, next door is the convent, which is also huge and replete with buildings. I went to a market there. Sisters
of the Good Shepherd, as I recall. Sister Mary might prove our entrée, even though the nuns have gone. And maybe it will be cool,’ I said, wishful-thinking, looking at the relentless blue of the sky outside the car.