Paradise City (44 page)

This last one came up again and again and again until, in the end, Carol had to place her hand on his and say she truly didn’t know and she wished she did. The police said the body had been so decomposed that there’d never be any way of telling. All she could say was that neither she nor Derek in a million years would have thought Alan capable of such a thing. Carol didn’t know if that meant anything. But when she thought about it herself, in the privacy of her bedroom as she lay on her back, waiting patiently for sleep to come, she found herself believing that Ada’s death was an aberration; that Alan hadn’t intended it to get that far; that he didn’t use her as his plaything or torture her before she died.

Carol knew she was telling herself a story in order to make the whole thing more bearable, but she wanted to believe that maybe there had been a relationship of sorts between Ada and Alan before she died. Maybe he had been in love with her. And maybe there was something fatally lacking within him that meant he couldn’t cope with that feeling. He didn’t recognise it or know what to do with it. Perhaps it frightened him, the vulnerability of it, the thought that he might lose it. Perhaps the only way he could hold on to the idea of it was to kill it before it was taken away from him.

She never said any of this to Howard but slowly, over the course of weeks, then months, their conversations ventured onto different territory. He told her about his childhood, growing up in Stepney and how his mother had struggled to make ends meet after his father left. He explained how he used to wear hand-me-downs and how he used to scour the streets in search of discarded shoes. He remembered the food parcels his mother got from the Jewish Board of Guardians – demerara sugar, butter beans and margarine – and the shame of going to eat in the soup kitchen. Howard had grown up poor and never wanted to go back to it.

He told her about Penny, whom he had loved, and then he told her about Claudia, who had been a mistake and whom he was in the process of divorcing. It was fairly amicable, he said, because they’d signed a cast-iron prenup and she wasn’t contesting any of it.

‘What’s a prenup?’ Carol asked.

He was very frank with her. Beneath the bluster and the immense wealth, Carol was surprised how much they had in common. She knew that Derek would have liked him and wished they could have met. She had never imagined Howard’s background would be so modest, that everything he had made was a result of his own hard work. His self-reliance impressed her. She said that to him once and he was genuinely touched.

‘Not many people give me credit for that,’ he replied. ‘Most people just see the flash stuff and think I’m a wa—’ He stopped himself. ‘A bit of an idiot. Fair enough, I s’pose. I’m not a good person, deep down.’

‘Why would you say that?’

He grimaced, tapped his fingers on the table edge and stared out at the garden. He took a while to respond.

‘I’ve done things I’m ashamed of, things I can never undo,’ he said finally. ‘I hate myself for that. Because now, after everything that’s happened, I wish I’d been a better person and then, maybe . . .’

He let the thought drift.

‘Maybe Ada wouldn’t have been killed?’ Carol said. He nodded. ‘But maybe, Howard, you did those things you’re ashamed of
because
Ada went missing. Maybe you thought you didn’t deserve happiness.’

She was becoming quite the psychiatrist, Carol thought. She wouldn’t normally have ventured such a bold opinion to a man she’d only met a few weeks ago, but it was odd with Howard. She felt she could speak her mind. That she knew him. That she helped him. It was good to feel that again – to feel needed.

Today is a special day. It is the first time she is going to Howard’s for tea. He had invited her, Vanessa and Archie a fortnight ago and Carol has been in a state ever since. She is nervous about how to behave in what will, she is convinced, be a vast and intimidating mansion. In her head, his house has acquired gargantuan proportions and several dozen uniformed staff so that she more or less ends up thinking of it as Downton Abbey and spends hours agonising over what to wear and how to do her hair. Underlying her anxious anticipation is a different sensation, one that she refuses to acknowledge is there. But if she were being honest with herself, Carol would have to concede that the fizzle she feels in the pit of her stomach is very close to being excitement.

Vanessa has been gently amused by the whole thing. When Carol’s daughter arrives at Lebanon Gardens, she takes one look at her mother and does a wolf whistle.

‘Very nice, Mum,’ she says, drawing out all the vowels to make some sort of point.

Carol bats away the compliment. Archie bowls past her into the hallway and says, ‘Can I go on the computer, Grandma?’ and she laughs and reminds him that he hasn’t even said hello so he comes up to her and gives her a nice, big hug. He is wearing a smart jumper she hasn’t seen before and his grey school trousers with proper shoes. His hair is brushed.

‘You look very handsome,’ Carol tells him and he squirms with embarrassment.

Vanessa leans forward to kiss Carol on both cheeks. She notices that Vanessa, too, has made an effort. She has put on those three-quarter-length trousers which show off her lovely long legs and a summery red top with some sort of floral pattern around the neck, instead of her usual black.

‘How are you, Mum? Do we have time for a quick cuppa?’

‘Well, Howard said he’d send a car at three—’

‘A car?!’ Vanessa shrieks. ‘Wow.’

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Carol asks. ‘Coming with me?’

They walk into the hallway together. Archie sprints up the stairs and Vanessa loops an arm round her mother’s waist.

‘Course not. We’re looking forward to it. Archie’s pretty excited about meeting his first millionaire.’ Carol winces. Vanessa hesitates, then says more quietly, ‘It’s nice that you have a new friend. I’m really pleased. We both are.’

For no reason she can understand, Carol feels sad. She busies herself at the sink so that her daughter won’t notice. She looks out of the window, across to the garden fence next door, and thinks of what happened beyond it. They’d recently put Number 12 on the market. There was a red Andrews Estate Agent ‘For Sale’ sign outdoors. Out the back, the police had tidied up as best they could but it remained a scrappy, dank patch of earth trodden over by footprints, bearing the trace of forensic markings.

Besides, everyone had read about the case. She couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to pay money to live there. Daniel, the estate agent, told her that the only viewers he’d had so far were the true-crime fans, who came armed with a thousand ghoulish questions and took photos of the home of a real-life murderer on their phones. Carol thought it was disgusting. She wished the council would raze the whole building to the ground. She knew, without having to be told, that the price of her own house would be affected but she didn’t mind. Number 10 had always felt safe; it was still her little haven. Carol wouldn’t want to move out of the home she made with Derek for all those years. She thinks of Derek, of all that has happened since she lost him, of all the things in her life that she will never be able to share with him and then she remembers Howard and how affectionate she feels towards him and how they are going to his house for tea and Derek won’t be there and she has to bite her lip to stop herself from crying.

Vanessa comes up behind her and places a hand on her mother’s shoulder.

‘It’s not a betrayal, Mum,’ she says. ‘Dad would want you to be happy.’

Carol turns away from the sink, her hands damp. Vanessa, knowing instinctively what needs to be done, wraps her arms around her without another word and holds her mother tightly to her chest.

Jocelyn, the chauffeur, comes to pick them up and rings the bell on the dot of three. Carol has got to know him a bit. When Howard visits, she always offers Jocelyn a drink because she feels bad that he has to wait outside on his own, but for some reason he never accepts and has not once crossed the threshold into her house.

Still, they’ve chatted, with her standing on the pavement while he leans out of the door on the driver’s side. He is a shy man and speaks uncertainly, as though always expecting someone to tell him he’s wrong. He’s very dashing and Carol is surprised by this, even though she thinks it’s wrong of her to be so. Why shouldn’t a chauffeur look like Gregory Peck in
Roman Holiday
, she asks herself? But even so, Jocelyn’s looks take her unawares every time she sees him. She had even wondered if she could set him up on a date with Vanessa but then she suddenly thought he might be gay and she didn’t want to risk the embarrassment. Besides, her last attempt at setting her daughter up with a strange man wasn’t what you’d call successful.

Archie is impressed by the car.

‘Wow, Grandma, look!’ he says when they are all safely ensconced in the back, breathing in the reassuringly expensive smell of leather, and he twiddles a knob that makes his seat slide backwards and a foot-rest whir up underneath his legs.

‘Very nice,’ Carol says, with deliberate coolness. It’s important that Archie realises money isn’t the be all and end all.

The journey across London is suspiciously smooth. Can it really be, thinks Carol, that when you’re rich even the traffic lights go in your favour? As they sail over Battersea Bridge, Vanessa’s BlackBerry beeps. Vanessa gives it a cursory look, then catches her mother’s eye and groans.

‘Ok, Mum, I’m switching it off right now,’ and she makes a big show of pressing the power button with exaggerated emphasis. ‘Happy?’

‘Yes, sweetheart. Thank you.’

She reaches out to ruffle Archie’s hair. Carol knows she shouldn’t but she can’t help herself. He shrinks away, says a half-hearted ‘Gerroff’ but he is grinning so she knows it’s all right really.

When they get to the house, Carol is relieved to see that it is smaller than she imagined. It is set back slightly from the road, behind a security gate: an imposing, red-brick edifice with large windows and creeping branches of ivy sprayed across the façade. He’ll want to cut that back, she thinks.

Jocelyn swings the car into a concealed driveway, further along from the main entrance. He has a buzzer on a key ring that he presses to open the automatic gates and when he parks up on the gravel, he comes out of the driving seat and goes straight to Vanessa’s side of the car, opening the door with a flourish.

‘Madam,’ he says, holding out his hand. Vanessa rolls her eyes at her mother, but she takes the proffered hand anyway and Carol can tell she loves it. The front door opens before they have a chance to use the brass knocker and there is a diminutive woman standing before them in a blue uniform, taking their coats and ushering them into the hallway which is a grand, square space with flagstones and a polished oak sideboard bearing an enormous bunch of white roses arranged in a crystal-glass bowl.

There are rapid footsteps from another part of the house and suddenly Howard is rushing down the stairs, beaming at them.

‘Come in, come in,’ he says, rushing towards them. ‘Thanks, Theresa, I’ll take them through.’ Carol has never seen him look so jolly. He is talking more rapidly than usual and she wonders briefly if he might be as nervous as she is.

‘It’s so nice of you to come,’ he carries on. ‘You must be Vanessa, I’ve heard so much about you. And this – this – well, I know who this is, don’t I? You’re the man of the house, I hear. Apple of your grandma’s eye. Archie, isn’t it?’ He shakes Archie’s hand formally. ‘Nice to meet you.’ Archie, stunned into silence, doesn’t speak. Vanessa jostles his shoulder and gives him one of her looks.

‘Nice to meet you too,’ Archie says, stuttering. Howard laughs.

‘You’re very polite. You’ll go far with manners like those.’

Still holding on to Archie’s hand, Howard locks his eyes onto Carol’s and she feels a tremble of loveliness, all the way down her spine. He comes across, kisses her on the cheek and she realises that she recognises his smell. That she would know it anywhere. He leads them into the house, with a gentle hand in the small of her back, and Vanessa is smiling and Carol can tell she’s relaxed, that she already likes Howard more than she thought she would.

‘Do you like cake, Archie?’ Howard is asking. Archie nods. ‘What’s your favourite kind?’

Archie thinks carefully.

‘Lemon drizzle,’ he answers. Howard’s face drops. Archie, sensing his disappointment, continues hastily, ‘Or chocolate.’

‘Aha!’ Howard says, pushing open the door into the sitting room. ‘Now that
is
a coincidence, because look what we have here.’

There, sitting on the coffee table next to a fan of glossy magazines and in front of an unlit fire, is the largest chocolate cake any of them have ever seen.

Beatrice

T
he river, refracting sunlight, is a sliver of crumpling tin foil. Beatrice had never imagined the Thames would look so beautiful up close. They are standing at the edge of Bishop’s Park in Fulham, overlooking the railings and a wall that slips straight down into the water. Tracy had suggested it would be a nice day out.

‘Make the most of the weather,’ she’d said. ‘We’ve waited long enough for summer, haven’t we?’

They had. For weeks, London had been enveloped in a blanket of cloud. Today was the first time this year Beatrice had felt brave enough to wear a short skirt without tights.