Run, Mummy, Run (25 page)

Leaving the mirror, she stepped over the pile of clothes and hair and crossed the landing. Taking hold of the banister with her left hand and lifting up her sari with the right, she began slowly down. She wasn’t used to wearing a sari, she hadn’t worn one since she’d met Mark, and she was having to step very carefully to avoid catching her feet in the hem. Halfway down the stairs, she heard a ringing, and it took her a moment to realize that it was the phone on the hall table that was making all the noise. Who on earth could be phoning her? She had telephoned the children that morning, and wasn’t expecting them to call back. In fact she wasn’t expecting anyone to call, unless it was the undertakers? Or more likely someone for Mark who hadn’t yet heard of his death.

Cautiously she picked it up. ‘Hello?’

‘Mrs Williams?’ It was a deep male voice that seemed vaguely familiar.

‘Yes?’

‘Stan Calder.’

She said nothing, still unable to place the caller’s voice.

‘Inspector Calder,’ he clarified. ‘Oh, yes?’

‘I hope I haven’t disturbed you, Mrs Williams, but I thought you would like to know that our enquires are complete. I have filed my report, and you won’t be charged with dangerous driving. I’ll return your licence and insurance in the post.’

She paused. ‘Oh right, I see, thank you.’ She hadn’t even been aware he was thinking of charging her with dangerous driving. Had he told her? Possibly, she couldn’t remember.

‘Also, at some point, Mrs Williams, and there’s no rush, you will need to make arrangements to collect and dispose of your husband’s car and bike. They are in the police compound, forensics have finished with them. There will be a letter in the post, explaining what you have to do.’

‘I see,’ she said again. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome. That’s the end of my involvement then. Goodbye and take care.’

‘Yes, and you. Goodbye, Inspector.’

The line went dead and Aisha stood for some moments listening to the tone, and then slowly replaced the handset.

A
isha really didn’t need that now, not exoneration. What she needed was to be blamed and punished. For who was she going to talk to now the inspector had gone and with it her lifeline of confession? All those nights since the accident when she’d sat alone in the chair, confessing, telling the inspector what had really happened and how she was to blame. To be let off now, absolved and pardoned, was more than she could bear. But if she wasn’t to blame then someone else must be. Christine loomed, ever more the accomplice.

Grabbing her coat from the hall stand, Aisha went out of the front door and slammed it shut behind her. It was pitch dark now, with a biting cold wind, and she didn’t relish the prospect of the thirty-minute walk to Christine’s flat. With the monk’s five-pound note still in her coat pocket, and her father’s one hundred pounds untouched at home, she felt unprecedentedly rich, so she decided to take the bus. She vaguely remembered the area Pleasant Road was in, from having used a dentist there once when she’d first been married and had had toothache and was allowed to go to the dentist. She felt sure the number 32 bus would take her to just past the end of the road, and if not it would only be a short walk away.

Aisha sat in a near-side window seat and stared out through the glass, monitoring the bus’s haltingly slow progress up the High Street. Every so often her eyes refocused on the glass and her unfamiliar profile with its chin-length hair. Aisha wondered where this stranger had come from, for it wasn’t the person who’d had a life before Mark – who had studied and worked hard and achieved; but neither was it the person who’d come after, who had cowered in obedience and was beaten for her trouble. No, the person in the glass was someone new, someone who was in the middle of before and after, and who was frantically trying to find answers – to unravel the knot of pain in her head, and put logic where there was none.

The bus turned down by the old grammar school and past the playing fields attached to the college. Then it pulled into a bus stop and the automatic doors swished open with a sigh. Scooping up her sari, Aisha went down the steps and onto the pavement. She could see the end of Pleasant Road – it was where she had thought it was, although the corner shop had changed and was now selling electrical goods, its window full of lamps and dazzling chandeliers.

She began along the road, past numbers 4, 6 and 8, which were bungalows. Set further back was number 10, a small, modern, infill development of flats, with a short path, flanked by shrubs, leading to the main door. She went up to the door and studied the illuminated labelled bells on a metal grid on the wall: Flat 10a – D Sharpe, 10b – Tony Hyde, 10c – Christine Price, 10d – P Waterman. She gave the buzzer to 10c one long press and waited.

A female voice, distorted by the intercom, came through. ‘Hello?’

Aisha leant towards the grill as she spoke. ‘Is that Christine Price?’

A small hesitation, then, ‘Yes. Who is this?’

There was no point in lying, she would find out soon enough. ‘Aisha Williams,’ she said evenly.

Another hesitation, then, ‘Mark’s widow?’

So she recognized her name, and knew he was dead; clearly news travelled fast in their close and doubtless select network of friends. ‘Yes.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I’d like to talk to you.’

A longer pause, then, ‘OK, come up. But I can’t give you long – I’m going out in half an hour.’

Very trusting
, Aisha thought, she doubted she would have let her in if she’d been Christine.

The front door clicked its release and Aisha pushed it open and went in; it shut automatically behind her. She stood for a moment and looked around the entrance hall with its immaculate inlaid wood floor free of scuffmarks, and spotless magnolia emulsion walls. A pine balustrade staircase rose elegantly before her. Doors to flats 10a and 10b led off either side of the hall, and outside 10a was a huge Chinese vase with a magnificent arrangement of dried flowers.
All very pleasant, like its road name
, Aisha thought bitingly. Doubtless Mark and Christine spent many a pleasant night in her flat.

Hitching up the hem of her sari, she took hold of the wooden handrail and began to climb the staircase. She heard a door above open and glanced up; a woman in a white toweling bathrobe with a matching towel wrapped turban-like around her head appeared on the landing and smiled. Aisha looked down again and concentrated on the stairs. As she completed the climb, Christine came forwards to shake hands. ‘Hello Aisha, we meet at last.’ She was softly spoken with a London accent and not at all embarrassed by meeting her.

Aisha would have liked to have ignored Christine’s offered hand and slapped her face instead. But even now her upbringing told her it was unacceptably rude. ‘Manners maketh the man,’ her father used to say, and ridiculously Aisha remembered Mark saying it too. She took Christine’s smooth, cool hand in hers and looked into her perfectly composed face. Her eyes were blue, almost the same shade as Mark’s, and her delicate pale skin was flawless without any trace of make-up.

‘Do excuse me,’ Christine said. ‘I was in the shower. I hope you don’t mind talking while I get ready.’ She dropped Aisha’s hand and without waiting for a reply, turned and led the way into the flat.

Tall and slim, Christine exuded elegance and confidence, and Aisha could see only too clearly what Mark had seen in her. Time had obviously been kind to Christine, time and success, for there were none of the signs of the alcohol abuse that Mark had described – the coarse red features and heavily lined skin from years of heavy drinking. Christine must be older than Aisha, yet looked much younger. But what struck Aisha more than anything was that Christine didn’t seem to be grieving for the death of her lover, but appeared incredibly composed and was actually getting ready to go out.

Aisha followed Christine down the short hall and into the very spacious lounge-cum-dining room. It was white, pure white, all of it, even the leather four-seater sofa was white.

‘Do sit down,’ Christine said lightly, waving to the sofa. ‘I thought you might pay me a visit.’

‘You did?’ Aisha stayed where she was and stared at her, shocked. ‘Why?’

Christine shrugged. ‘It’s what I would have done. Though I didn’t think it would be now. It must be the funeral soon.’

Aisha held her gaze, flustered and uncertain. ‘Yes, Friday, I think.’

‘Don’t you know?’ she gave a little laugh. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ Aisha shook her head.

‘Well, sit down then and make yourself at home. You look like you could do with a rest. I’m just going to get a glass of water. I haven’t been in long from work.’

Work – a career and a life
, Aisha thought bitterly as Christine disappeared into the hall. She went to the sofa and perched at one end and looked at the room. How Mark must have loved it here, with its calm and uncluttered sophistication, a world away from what she could offer, with two children and no money.

‘So, how did you find me?’ Christine asked, returning with the glass of water and placing it on the marble mantelpiece. ‘Mark surely didn’t tell you?’

Taken aback by her directness, Aisha faltered. It was she who should be asking the questions and demanding answers, not Christine. ‘I found it in his address book,’ she said at last.

‘I see. Before or after his death?’

‘After, when I was clearing out. Why?’

Christine shrugged. ‘Just curious.’

Aisha watched as Christine turned to the huge gilt-framed mirror over the mantelpiece, and unwinding the towel from her head, shook out her blonde shoulder-length hair. Taking a comb from the pocket of her bathrobe, she began running it through the professionally styled layers.

‘So why didn’t you come and see me before he died?’ Christine asked after a moment.

Aisha stared at Christine’s reflection in the mirror, confused. ‘Why should I? There was no need until I found your address and realized he’d been seeing you.’

‘No? Really?’ Christine returned her gaze in the mirror and gave a small tight laugh. ‘So the leopard has changed his spots? I don’t think so. Not in my experience at least.’ She picked up the glass of water and walked nonchalantly to the armchair opposite Aisha. She sat down, draping one long leg over the other. Aisha stared at her, and her anger flared – this woman who should have been apologizing but seemed one step ahead of her.

‘Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?’ Aisha blurted angrily. ‘You have so much. It could have worked without you. He might have tried harder if he hadn’t had you to run to. You are to blame as much as he was!’

Christine tucked the comb into her robe and, unfazed, rested one arm along the chair. ‘If that is what you really believe, Aisha, then you’re a bigger fool than I thought. But you’re not, are you? You know it’s not that convenient. Mark came here yes, more than once, full of sob stories about how you didn’t understand him and refused to have sex. He even thought you were having an affair.’ Aisha gasped and opened her mouth to defend herself, but Christine raised her hand. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t believe him. Remember, I had lived with Mark too, and as I said a leopard doesn’t change its spots. But I was curious, I wanted to hear how life was treating him. So I let him in, listened to him, gave him a drink, then sent him on his way, possibly back to you, or not – it wasn’t any of my business.’

Their eyes met and locked. ‘I don’t believe you,’ Aisha said.

‘Suit yourself. I’ve learnt a lot, Aisha, and one of the things I’ve learned is that some men are dangerous – so dangerous they should carry a government health warning. I expect some women are too, but that’s not the point. Here, let me show you something that might help you to understand.’

Christine stood and crossed to a bureau at the far end of the room. Aisha saw that the bureau was almost the same as the one she had at home – it had been Mark’s before he had met her. Picking up a framed photograph, she carried it back and placed it squarely in Aisha’s lap.

‘Familiar?’ Christine said. ‘My guess is you have an identical picture. Angela has. You know about her, I assume?’

Aisha stared at the photograph in her lap, and heard the name of Mark’s first wife. She looked at the ten-by-eight photograph, unable to believe or understand what she was seeing. The couple sitting side by side on the bench beneath the oak tree – a couple so obviously in love; they had taken their eyes from each other just long enough to smile into the lens. Christine was right, it was a replica of the one she had on the bureau at home: the photograph Mark had asked a passer-by to take, then given to her framed as a token of his undying love. Only, instead of Mark and her it was a younger version of Christine and Mark. Aisha looked up, not knowing what to say, or think.

‘Each of us has one,’ Christine said matter-of-factly. ‘First Angela, then me, and you too. We all had the life that went with it too. History repeated itself. True, I didn’t have children, but it didn’t make it any easier, believe me.’ She stopped and sitting at the other end of the sofa lightly rested her head back.

Aisha looked at her. ‘So are you going to tell me?’

She gave a faint nod. ‘I thought I was pretty smart,’ she said in a low, even voice. ‘I thought I was streetwise when it came to men. I was in my late twenties, not a lovesick teenager, I thought I could read men like a book. And of course everything was perfect to begin with, I had a man who was the answer to every woman’s prayers. Mark wooed me with his incredible charm and good manners just like he did Angela, and then later, you. I was completely won over and yearned to make him happy, to make up for the way his first wife had treated him. But by the end of our first year together I was a wreck and unrecognizable from the person I had once been. Yet still I tried to make it work because I was convinced it was my fault and I was to blame. So I tried harder and each time I got a harder beating for my efforts. I could never get it right. Then I turned to the bottle and tried to block out the pain by drinking. As a result, I lost my job and eventually, with no further to fall, got out.’ Christine gave a small dry laugh. ‘Ironically, it was Mark who allowed me the means to escape in the end. He gave me such a beating one night that I landed in hospital. It was while I was there, away from him and his control, and surrounded by so much kindness and attention from the nurses and doctors, that I was able to see what I had become. I left him with what I stood up in and didn’t go back. No one can understand unless they have been in the same position. Abuse strips you of everything, bleeds you dry, so that you end up believing that you couldn’t survive without the very person who is doing it to you.’

Christine stopped. Her words hung in the air and Aisha heard the truth in what she’d said. The account Christine had just given her – with all its detail – like the photograph, was an exact replica of her life with Mark.

‘But if you knew,’ Aisha said after some moments, her voice rising, ‘why didn’t you tell me? You could have said something, warned me. Why let me go through all that if you knew, and you knew it could happen again. You should have warned me!’

Christine turned to look at her, her delicate features sincere. ‘Would it have made any difference if I had? Aisha, would you have believed me with all that was on offer? No, of course you wouldn’t. I couldn’t prove it and Mark was so charming when he wanted to be. You’d have dismissed me as the embittered ex, which is what I did with Angela, when she tried to tell me. And there was always the chance it could have worked out for you two. There was only Angela and me then, there wasn’t an ex-wives club. I always thought that if you needed to know – if you were in trouble and history was repeating itself – then you would find me. I would have done what I could.’

Aisha looked from Christine to the photograph and had to admit she was right. Like Christine had done with Angela, she too would have rejected any suggestion that Mark was less than the person he appeared to be – she’d been too much in love and there’d been too much at stake.

‘That tree is still there,’ Christine said more lightly after a moment. ‘I pass it on the way to work. It’s seen a lot, that tree. It might have seen more, had you not stopped him. I admire what you did, Aisha. You’ve certainly got more guts than me.’