Читать книгу Never Tell - Claire Seeber, Claire Seeber - Страница 10

I arrived at the paper at eleven, which meant they’d all be on a fag-break out the back. I needed to busy myself: to stay in the present. Making myself a cup of strong tea, I checked the boards in the faint hope there might be a half-decent story for once.

‘Edna Brown’s prize-winning vegetables sabotaged.’ Next to this someone had scrawled ‘Watch out for her melons’ in green marker.

‘High School Musical comes to Cheltenham.’

‘Five sheep savaged near Ostley Woods – return of the Burford Beast?’

The only story that looked remotely exciting was apparent police interest in a local MP and an allegation of bribery. I vaguely remembered him from Alicia’s school fête, a sweaty, corpulent man more interested in the refreshment stall than the children.

Tina banged through the doors. Ex-Fleet Street herself, but sick of the horrendous hours and the in-fighting, she was happy and efficient running this little paper.

‘Hello, stranger.’ She slammed a pile of files down on her immaculate desk. ‘How’s tricks?’

‘Tricks are OK, thanks, Tina.’

‘How’s the gorgeous husband?’

Everyone always loved James. The life and soul. ‘Good, thanks. Pretty busy with the relaunch of the club.’ I pointed to the board. ‘What’s Johnson being investigated for?’

‘Not sure exactly,’ she shrugged. ‘Something to do with taking some kind of bung, I think.’

‘Really?’ I perked up.

‘The by-election’s coming up. All sorts are stirring.’

‘Shall I take a look?’ I said carefully. I didn’t want to admit to myself how much I needed some kind of spur.

‘I think Richard’s on it, thanks, love.’ She booted her old computer up. It made a sound like it was dying inside. ‘Why don’t you take a look at Edna Brown’s lovely vegetables?’

‘Oh, right.’ I suppressed the sudden urge to scream. ‘Yes, of course.’

Richard Sawton rushed through the door and scooped his car keys off the desk.

‘Hey Rosie,’ he winked, his long face almost excited, ‘fancy a spot of doorstepping?’

‘I was going to talk to Edna Brown about her—’

‘Fuck Edna Brown.’

‘I’d really rather not,’ I grinned.

‘Come on. The word is Johnson’s going to get picked up again today.’ He was almost out the door by now. ‘I could do with a second opinion.’

I glanced at Tina; she waved us onwards with her trusty green Pentel. Grabbing my bag I followed Richard, feeling something I hadn’t for the longest time. Adrenalin.

The Johnson story turned out to be a damp squib. Richard and I spent a chilly hour supposedly hiding outside his house, drinking stewed tea in polystyrene cups from the Copper Kettle, only for the wife to arrive at our window and bang on it with a cross be-ringed hand.

‘This is private property, I’ll thank you.’ Her front tooth was tipped with fuchsia lipstick.

‘It’s not you know, love, it’s a public highway, actually,’ Richard pointed out affably. ‘Have you got any comment on your husband’s recent arrest?’

‘He was not arrested.’ Her soft chin quivered as she drew her camel coat tighter around her. ‘He was merely ‘elping the police with enquiries.’ She’d got very grand, apparently, since her husband won his seat four years ago. A stone squirrel gazed at us from the pillar behind her, concrete nut held forever between his paws.

‘Rightio. And why was that, then?’

She drew herself up to her inconsiderable height. ‘I wouldn’t know. You’d have to ask him. But, I might add,’ she fixed us with steely little eyes, ‘he won’t tell you.’

‘Rightio,’ Richard repeated. ‘Well, thanks for your help.’

I leaned across him, offered her my hand. ‘Hi, Mrs Johnson. Rose Miller.’ She refused my hand and glared at me instead. ‘We will find out, you know, Mrs Johnson. It’ll be in the public domain before long, so you’d be doing yourself a big favour by telling us your side of things now.’

‘I have no interest in speaking with you,’ she said stiffly. ‘None whatsoever.’

‘This is your chance to put your side of the story across. We could offer you an exclusive.’

‘No comment,’ she sniffed. The little boy statue peeing into the lily pond looked on languidly as she slammed the garden gate behind her and sailed towards her house.

Richard sighed, and started the car without looking at me.

‘Richard, I—’

‘What?’ He concentrated overhard as he pulled out.

‘I hope – I mean, you didn’t think I was stepping on your toes back there?’

‘Of course not.’ He was obviously lying.

‘I just thought – she needed some coercion, and—’

‘Rose, it’s fine really.’ We slowed to a crawl behind an old red tractor. ‘I understand, honestly.’

But he still stared straight ahead, refusing to look at me. My heart sank. I rarely mentioned my previous incarnation, and although sometimes they actually asked my advice at the Burford Chronicle, it was hard not to see how differently we had done things on the nationals. I was used to the pace of the major broadsheets, the fast-track of a story you had to turn around immediately. I was used to working alone, pushing on despite being told no, unrelenting when I was on the trail of a story. But in Burford they ran a polite ship – it was just that kind of operation. However welcoming they’d been since I’d joined their ranks a year ago, sometimes I felt they just suffered me because they were just – well, polite.

‘So, what now—’ I began as a shiny black Range Rover with partially-tinted windows swung into the small lane far too fast, ragga music pumping from it, narrowly missing our wing mirror. I ducked instinctively as Richard swerved into the hedgerow.

‘Blimey!’

An indignant crow flapped out with a rusty squawk.

‘Bloody idiots,’ Richard muttered. ‘Can’t even drive the bloody things. I don’t know why they bother.’

In the mirror I watched the Range Rover disappear round the bend. It was impossible to see who was driving.

‘Stupid poser,’ Richard muttered, reversing.

I thought of my husband’s big car and cringed.

‘It must be so annoying when you’ve lived here all your life,’ I murmured.

‘What?’

‘All these fake farmers driving round in Chelsea tractors.’

‘Or lived here since ‘ninety-eight, any road.’ Richard’s face finally relaxed into a smile. ‘Truth be told, I wouldn’t mind having a go in one of them myself. I bet they’re bloody powerful.’

We drove back to the office debating the finer points of Mrs Johnson’s twee front garden. In the end, the pissing boy won genitals-down.

* * *

I was packing up to leave when Tina called me over.

‘I have got one thing that might be more up your street. We want to do a kind of Homes & Gardens thing about the new guys up at Albion Manor. Bit of local glamour.’

‘Oh?’ I chucked my notebook into my bag, unenthused. It might be time to give up on the Chronicle. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Hadi Kattan.’ She stuck her pen behind her ear. ‘I want to approach them about a lifestyle piece. It’d be quite a coup, wouldn’t it? And I think they’ll be quite keen because he’s already involved with some community stuff. Word is he’s helping launch his son’s political career, so they’re getting stuck in all over the place. And you’re our big catch really, so he might buy it.’ She looked up at me. ‘Sound up your street?’

I had a chance to say no. I knew I should. But the part of me that had been chasing a story since I was twenty-one said yes.

‘Sure,’ I said quickly. ‘Always. Let me know what you want to do.’

At bedtime I realised Effie’s efforts at breakfast meant we were out of milk, forcing me to unearth a reluctant James from the studio. Leaving the kids glued to Alice in Wonderland, I drove to the garage at the end of the lane.

Pulling my cardigan over my head, I dashed through the driving rain to the kiosk, plucking a carton of milk from the fridge. As I joined the queue, there was a sudden screech of tyres on wet tarmac and a collective gasp. A small sleek silver sports car had taken the corner too fast, swerving to miss a motorbike, mounting the grass verge outside the garage and coming to a juddering halt inches from the Entry sign.

She looked like the mermaid from Alicia’s book of myths, the young woman who flung herself from the car, and she was wailing. Her soaked green dress flowed round her body like seaweed, her face streaked with black kohl, her long hair dark and tangled under the fluorescence of the petrol station forecourt. The rain drummed down and the queue shifted and muttered as one organism, succumbing en masse to horrified fascination – for a moment, I couldn’t drag my eyes from her either. I stared out of the kiosk window at this beautiful barefoot woman weaving unsteadily between the petrol pumps, the silver Porsche abandoned behind her, driver’s door flung wide. In this light it was hard to see where the rain ended and her tears began.

I looked away, discomfort palpable in my chest, gazing instead at the damp and rather dirty neck in front of me, its owner now halted in her laborious counting out of coppers as she too stared, the silver raindrops on her beanie glistening.

‘She’s pissed out of her head,’ the burly man in the next queue muttered. ‘She don’t know what she’s doing. Look at her.’

‘Someone should call the police,’ an elderly woman said, her whiskers twitching, her face a sagging mask of disapproval above her ill-fitting mac. ‘It’s a disgrace.’

The mermaid raised her face to the heavens and howled into the night, her words incoherent. There was something so primal in her voice that all the little hairs on my arms stood on end. I pulled my old cardigan tight around me and willed the cashier to hurry up.

‘You should call the police. They should, shouldn’t they?’ The man looked to me for approval as he folded his newspaper, but I found that I was speechless, as round-eyed as one of my own children.

When I looked back, the woman was falling. Her hands out before her to meet the ground, she crumpled like a wounded soldier until she was finally on her hands and knees, where she froze for a moment, head bowed. A car behind her sounded its horn irritably.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, pushing past a boy on a mountain bike gawping in the doorway. I hurried across the short distance to where she crouched, attempting now to pull herself up, doubled in half as if in pain.

‘Are you all right?’ I bent beside her. Her eyes seemed blind as she looked up at me.

A black Range Rover pulled up behind the Porsche, bumping up onto the grass, gleaming with rain and polish, braking just in time.

‘I …’ She wiped her face on her arm, smudging the streaming eye make-up further. She seemed slightly delirious.

‘Can you stand?’ I said, offering her my hand, trying quickly to assess what was wrong. ‘Are you ill?’

I was half aware of the Range Rover’s door opening, a tall fair man in a black windcheater jumping down now from the driver’s seat.

‘I – I’m not sure,’ she mumbled. Her hand was ice cold. ‘I don’t feel – I’m not—’

‘Maya,’ the man behind me said.

I turned.

‘Thank you,’ he said to me, but he was looking at her. He spoke with a faint Celtic burr that I couldn’t place. ‘I’ll take over now.’

Our eyes met briefly as I stood too fast, staggering very slightly. He put out a hand to me but I’d regained my balance so he turned back to the girl now, sliding his hand into hers, gently releasing mine. I stepped back. He had her now; supporting her, holding her upright. I thought I could smell lemon sherbet.

‘If you’re all right then …’ I backed away, ‘I’ll just—’

‘We’re fine, really. Thanks a lot.’ The fair man nodded at me. Under the artificial light, his eyes were frighteningly blue, his tousled hair sun-bleached like a surfer’s. ‘Ash is in the car, Maya. He’s been really worried. Let’s get you back home, OK?’ His tone was soothing, like he was coaxing a nervous animal into a cage.

Through the open car door I saw the shadowed passenger lean forward and pull the cigarette lighter from the dashboard. I hesitated for a second, and then I ran back to the kiosk before I got any more wet.

The unnerved cashier was still muttering to her colleague about what to do and the burly man in his smelly red anorak was still loudly demanding someone call the police when another collective groan went up. I turned to see the girl collapse again, and now another man was by her side, dark-skinned like her, dressed in an expensive navy coat. The fair man stepped back.

The dark man pulled her up with gentle force and for a moment she hesitated, pulling away. He said something to her, taking her chin in his hand and making her look at him. Her make-up was streaming down her face in rivulets as she gazed at him, and she seemed to be listening. Eventually she stopped resisting and let herself sink into him, almost gratefully, her face in his shoulder as he guided her towards the big car like a docile child, ensuring she didn’t fall despite stumbling several times.

The girl in front of me had finally pocketed her 10 Rothmans. ‘Blimey,’ she said, pulling her beanie down protectively, ready for the downpour. ‘You don’t see that every day.’

‘You can say that again. Bloody foreigners. Just the milk?’ My cashier held her hand out. ‘Eighty-four pence, please.’

When I looked again, the girl like a maddened mermaid was being swallowed by the Range Rover. The dark man shut the door behind her and turned with a graceful movement to his audience in the kiosk. He smiled politely, bowed his head to us in a courtly gesture. Instinctively I stepped back.

He climbed into the Porsche. With a screech of tyres the Sweeney would have been proud of, both vehicles were quickly swallowed up by the night.

And then I went home, put the milk in the fridge, checked the children, fed the cat and finally went to bed alone again, I found that the woman’s image was imprinted on the back of my lids. And even as I fell into sleep, I couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that the second man, the man called Ash, had been less guiding her towards the vehicle than forcing her.

And there was something else, something deeper down, something clicking, whirring into place, like the levers on a deadlock that are not quite true yet. Images from the day: the mysterious Kattan, the MP’s wife so outraged, James, all newly tense. These images fought something I couldn’t quite access, a memory buried deep. A memory fighting to the surface.