Silent Children Page 3

  "What?"

  "Don't you want to see what we're reading?"

  He took his time about turning the left side of his face to her. "I know."

  She'd guessed as much. "Since when?"

  "When it says. Stu showed me at school."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  He spoke toward the house, and she almost didn't hear him. "Thought it'd put you off coming back."

  "It hasn't," Leslie said so vehemently that Melinda patted her hand, and more gently "Thanks for the coffee. Aren't you having a drink?"

  His unequivocal answer was to slouch into the kitchen, where he filled half a glass with grapefruit juice and topped it up with lemonade. As he fed himself a gulp he screwed his eyes tight shut before letting them relax. "I take it that means he's enjoying it," Melinda said.

  "I have to tell myself that about quite a few things. Maybe our parents had to about us."

  "That's, you'll tell me if I shouldn't say this, but I wouldn't have expected to hear that from you."

  "There's nothing like having a child to make you wonder how it was for your parents."

  "That's a reason I'm never likely to have," Melinda said, immediately followed by a smile that didn't feel the need to be forgiving, and had little else to say until they put down their mugs with a united thud. "I should be on my way. Unless..."

  "Don't miss the beat, Mel."

  "I was just thinking if you wanted I could phone Sally and say I was staying here tonight, if you'd appreciate the company. Only don't let me make you feel you need it if you don't."

  "That's really thoughtful of you, but I've got a young man about the house."

  "Then forget I even thought I should offer."

  That didn't help as much as it was meant to, but Leslie had realised what should. "As long as it's on your way home, could you give me a lift to Cricklewood? Me or us."

  "The more the, I oughtn't to say merrier."

  Ian was at the kitchen table, his elbows resting on it like clipped wings. "I'm going to visit the little girl's grave," Leslie said. "Coming with me?"

  He stared at the floor and shook his head. "May go to Shaun's."

  Her expressing disapproval of his friends would only make him more determined to keep them. She said as much to Melinda as the Volkswagen chugged through Wembley, and then no more during the twenty minutes it took to arrive at the church, a long concrete box practically featureless except for a triangular spire and a few coloured windows of various angular shapes. The Volkswagen puttered away toward Highgate as Leslie followed the flat white path beyond a metal sketch of gates. A railway ran behind the church, and a goods train spent some time ticking off its many wagons along the track, after which the churchyard grew quiet as stone except for a rustle of litter caught in the poplars beside the path. White headstones shone under the lowering sun, black ones glared like negative images of their neighbours. Leslie was close to where she remembered she had to go when a woman in a black tracksuit emerged from the church.

  She was about Leslie's age but prematurely greying. Her plump sullen face, lined not unlike a balloon starting to deflate, wobbled as she stalked toward the gate. Leslie moved out of her way, having spotted a wreath leaning against a small thin headstone that did indeed belong to Harmony Duke, 1991-1999. REST NOW BABE, the gilded inscription said. Leslie crossed the chunky turf and had just reached the grave when the woman demanded "What are you after there?"

  Leslie turned, thinking she ought to have acknowledged her with more than a passing smile, and met her pinched gaze. "Mrs. Duke..."

  "Reporter, are you? No more stories. We want leaving alone for a change."

  "I'm not a reporter. I—"

  "You're not another frigging social worker," Mrs. Duke said, suggesting the opposite, and turned her fiercely dry eyes toward the grave as though to reassure herself her daughter hadn't heard her swearing. "If they'd kept their snouts out of our business Harmony might still be alive."

  "I'm sorry," Leslie said before she realised that might sound more like an admission, but Mrs. Duke didn't let it interrupt her. "They made out she was at risk from the bloke I was living with," she said, close enough for Leslie to smell mints on her breath. "He'd gone with a girl he didn't know was under age, and you wouldn't have either if you'd seen her, like it was anyone's business but ours after he'd served his time, so when Harmony went missing they went for him and me as well like I knew he'd done it, and never looked where she was till it was too late."

  "That's..." Rather than complete her thought, Leslie felt safer saying "I'm not a social worker."

  Mrs. Duke's scrutiny felt like a weight on her face. "What's she to you, then?"

  "I own the house where, where she was found, Mrs. Duke. I nearly came to the funeral, but I stayed by the gate, so I felt I had to come now."

  "Why?"

  The question was so hostile Leslie couldn't help being compelled to produce a motive more specific than in fact she was aware of. "I feel—not responsible exactly, but if we hadn't had the house fixed up..."

  "You should."

  Leslie thought it best to turn to the grave. She interleaved her fingers and gazed at the inscription so hard that she heard the words in her head. "I'll leave you alone now," she said once she was certain her voice wouldn't sound as though it were borrowing some of Mrs. Duke's grief.

  As Leslie stepped back from the grave the other woman stepped between her and the path. "Selling the house, are you?"

  "I've given up on that. We've moved back in."

  When Mrs. Duke only stared, Leslie paced around her. She was on the path when she heard Mrs. Duke snarl "Living where he did that..." Leslie glanced back to see her crouched over the grave, a stance that looked both protective and threatening. "Stay away," Mrs. Duke said through her teeth. "You and your brat stay away from her and anything to do with her."

  SIX

  The thuds as regular as heartbeats Leslie heard as she stepped into Jericho Close were indeed coming from her house. They were the bass line of one of any number of albums Ian liked just now—she wouldn't have been able to distinguish which. Not much more in the way of music was apparent once she'd let herself in. She shut the front door none too quietly and called "Ian, I'm home."

  He either didn't hear or didn't think an answer was required. At least he'd switched on the oven when he'd come in from school, and the house was greeting her with the spicy aromas of imminent dinner. She sprinted upstairs to shy her bag and her linen jacket onto her mockingly wide bed, then she knocked on his door, knocked harder. "Ian? Ian."

  "What?"

  Since this was as much of an invitation as she was likely to receive, she inched the door open. A roar of guitars and a snarl of harsh torn voices had been awaiting her cue. Ian was sitting on his bed with his back against the headboard, his shoed feet on the quilt, schoolbooks strewn around him as he glowered over scribbling in an exercise book. On the walls the overlapping posters for loud films and louder music fluttered their edges as she stepped into the room. "Let's have the window shut. No need to share your tastes with the whole neighbourhood," she said, picking her way around the assortment of obstacles on the floor, and had to lean all her weight on the half-open sash before it would deign to slide down. "How long do you think you'll be?"

  He scribbled no more than another line and slapped the book shut. "That long."

  "No hurry. I can slow dinner down."

  "Don't. I'm going to Shaun's after."

  "Turn that down a bit. A bit more so we can talk."

  Ian jabbed the button of the remote control for his miniature hi-fi stack until he judged even she had to be satisfied. "What?"

  "Do you know if Harmony Duke has a brother at your school?"

  "Rupe Duke."

  "You know him?"

  "Seen him round."

  So that was how Mrs. Duke knew Leslie had a son. As if this explained his not having mentioned the other boy, Ian said "He's only half her brother. His dad wasn't hers or the one h
e's got now."

  Was there anything else Ian hadn't told her that she ought to know? She was trying to think of a question sufficiently casual not to aggravate his defensiveness when the doorbell rang beneath her feet. She made for the window again, stepping over a sprawl of dog-eared magazines about martial arts and motorcycles and teenage female pop stars wearing very little on the little there was of them. A woman was subsiding into a wheelchair on the path.

  By the time Leslie opened the front door the woman was levering herself erect with one hand on the chair to poke the bell push with a crimson-nailed forefinger. Beneath a cap of close-cropped artificially silvered hair, her sharp face pale as china blinked long lashes in what might have been reproach at Leslie's slowness. "Careful," Leslie was unable not to say as the woman fell back into the chair and planted her fists in the lap of her ankle-length brown dress. "Sorry if I kept you waiting. I'm afraid I need to go to the bank."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I've no money you'd call money in the house."

  "May I ask whom you're taking me for?"

  "Nobody. I mean ..."

  "I'm not collecting for the disabled, nor selling door to door." Having paused for Leslie's silence to betray she'd had such possibilities in mind the woman said "Leslie Ames? Verity Drew."

  She raised one hand, either offering it to shake or negligently indicating herself, and Leslie was about to reach for it when the name registered. "You're from the Advertiser."

  "It's good to be famous. Is it convenient for me to ask you a few questions?"

  Leslie wondered how many interviewees had been too abashed to refuse. Discomfiture wasn't her primary reason for saying "I wouldn't mind a word." She retreated as far as the stairs, then saw how high the doorstep was. "Can I—"

  "Please don't trouble." The reporter tipped her chair back, at the same time grabbing the sides of the doorframe, and in a moment she was speeding down the hall, barely allowing Leslie time to dodge. "So this is the room," she said as she came to a halt by the cooker.

  Leslie turned the oven down a setting. "It's my kitchen all right. Would you like a drink?"

  "I don't, thank you."

  "Tea or coffee, I was meaning."

  "Thank you all the same."

  "Not even a glass of water? You look hot."

  The reporter's gaze flickered to the taps and then to the pipes that led under the sink into the floor. "I'm comfortable as I am, thank you," she said, though her shoulders shifted. "Perhaps I can start by asking—"

  There was a screech of pine on concrete. Leslie hadn't meant to pull the bench out quite so vigorously, and almost flinched as the reporter did. She sat on it and thumped the table with her elbows. "Let me ask you something first. Why was that story of yours news?"

  "I take it you mean my piece about this house."

  "The house of horror, as you called it, or whoever wrote the headline did."

  "I'm responsible for it, I assure you."

  "I suppose when the paper's so local you might be." As Verity Drew sat up straighter as though her raised eyebrows had hauled her erect Leslie said "But however local it is, I don't see why selling a house, and that's all this is now, is news."

  "Quite a few of our readers did, Mrs. Ames."

  "After they'd been stirred up, maybe. Why did you?"

  "Why did we decide it was worth reporting? Some people—"

  "Let's stay with ones who've got names. What were you thinking?"

  "I believe the public has a right to know what's being done with the site of by far the most horrific crime that has ever appalled our community, especially when it's slap in their midst."

  "As you see, nothing's being done with it. I'm back."

  "Which brings us to the subject I wanted to raise. Can I ask you about it now?"

  "What do you feel is worth asking?"

  "How you feel about returning to, returning here."

  "To the scene of the crime, I suppose you stopped yourself saying." When the reporter only gazed expectantly at her over the notebook that an ample pocket of the brown dress had proved to contain, Leslie said "It wasn't my crime, perhaps you'd like to keep in mind. I was just coming back to my favourite house that I'd lived in. And maybe you'd like to consider that your paper made it impossible to sell the house except to people you wouldn't have wanted in it, I can tell you."

  "So would you say there were any feelings you had to overcome before you could be comfortable?"

  "What do you think? There still are. I feel sad and worse than sad whenever I think of the little girl, and sorry for her family. Don't you?"

  "This isn't about my feelings, Mrs. Ames," the reporter said, and immediately contradicted herself by starting so violently she almost dropped the notebook. For a moment Leslie felt as if the kitchen had grown cold as the underside of concrete, as if the sunlight had turned into clinging mist, and then she saw that the presence behind her was Ian. "How long have you been there?" she said with a laugh that surprised her by not being nervous.

  "A bit."

  Verity Drew pressed her lips together, erasing their tinge of pink. "I wonder if I could have a brief chat with your son," she said, and set about turning the wheelchair toward the hall.

  "That's up to him."

  "In that case," the reporter said, though Ian had expressed no enthusiasm, "let's adjourn to another room."

  "What for?" Ian said, lounging in the doorway.

  "I'm sure a big boy like you must have understood my meaning. I'd like to hear how you feel about living here," the reporter said, and wheeled herself toward him.

  "I mean, what's wrong with doing it in here?"

  "I should prefer not to. Just let me past and you can tell me all about your feelings."

  "There's nothing wrong with it, is there, mum?"

  "Not as far as we're concerned, but if Ms. Drew, I assume it's Ms., if Ms. Drew isn't happy—"

  "It's Mrs.," the reporter declared as if Leslie had cast doubt on her marriageability. "Will you please let me out of this—"

  "Thought you wanted me to say how I felt."

  "Yes, as I made clear, when—"

  "The same as my mum. The same as she said, that's how I feel."

  "If you say so. Now will you just—"

  "Aren't you going to write it down?"

  "I'll remember. Believe me, I will," the reporter said, her voice barely under control, and flattened her hands on top of the wheels preparatory to driving the chair at him.

  "Ian." However much the reporter deserved to suffer the effects of the atmosphere she'd created, Leslie felt that was enough. "Don't tease," she said.

  Perhaps she should have omitted the last word, because the reporter fixed her with a look that contained no gratitude. As Ian advanced into the kitchen the reporter accelerated down the hall, not quite along the tracks she'd already dug in the carpet, and didn't slow until she was past the stairs. By the time she'd levered herself up to seize the latch and pull the door open, Leslie was there to assist her in manoeuvring the wheelchair over the step. She'd hardly taken the handles when the chair lurched forward. "Let go of me," Verity Drew almost screamed, bumping the chair down onto the path. She twisted round to glare at Leslie and caught sight of the picture above the stairs of Beethoven in a truck. "Can't even take good music seriously," she muttered in something like triumph.

  Leslie strode to open the gate and close it with pointed gentleness as soon as the wheelchair was past. She stood in her doorway and watched Verity Drew pack the chair and herself into a Mini, and as the car swerved away with a rubbery squeal she closed the front door. "She's gone," she called into the kitchen, "and we aren't going to care what she writes, are we? It can't touch us. We're here for as long as we want to stay. What happened is over now."

  SEVEN

  "Mummy, look at the children in the clouds."

  "That one's bouncing on a cloud, mummy."

  "And those ones are dancing in a ring on one like we dance at ballet school."

>   "That one wants to sleep on his cloud, doesn't he, only the others won't let him. Why is he laughing about it? Why have they all got the same face?"

  "Ask the old man, Felicity. He drew them."

  "I don't want to, Rosalind. You ask."

  "Stop being rude to the gentleman, both of you. You'll have him thinking you're no better than all these children let loose to roam the streets without their parents. I do apologise. I assure you they've been brought up to respect their elders."

  "No offence, madam. Your little charmer was only speaking the truth. When you're as old as I am there's no point in pretending you aren't."

  "Why is he speaking like that, mummy? Has he hurt his mouth?"

  "Felicity, I'm utterly surprised at you. You know perfectly well not to make personal comments. Just you tell the gentleman you're sorry."

  "But I only—"

  "Never mind turning on the squeaky tap. I want to hear a sorry from you as well, Rosalind, or there'll be no pony lesson for either of you."

  "Mummy, that's not fair. It isn't fair."

  "Seriously, madam, don't upset them on my account. I don't mind if children laugh at me. Let's have a laugh or let's have nothing, that's what I say. Do you two want to see the funny bunny?"

  "Yes."

  "Yes, please."

  "Please."

  "I should think so too, Rosalind. You're supposed to be setting your little sister an example. Now just see whatever the gentleman is so kindly going to draw you and then we must be trotting off to piano practice."

  "I don't need to draw him. Here he is. What's up, doc?"

  "Oh, mummy, the poor old—the old gentleman has hurt his mouth."

  "Don't worry about that, Felicity. I'm not crying, am I? Don't you think the rabbit's funny? Ehhh, what's up, doc."

  "Say thank you very much, both of you, and here's some extra pocket money each to put down for the gentleman."

  "Thank you, Mr. Rabbit."

  "Yes, very much."

  "That's it, Felicity. Wave goodbye now. And excuse me"—the young blonde blue-eyed mother leaned toward him, her tailored grey suit releasing a hint of discreetly expensive perfume—"but maybe you ought to pop round to the hospital and have that looked at in case it gets infected."