As She Left It: A Novel Read online

  She could hear him chuckling again, faintly, then a series of gasps and gulps. She put her ear back against the wall and listened. Yep. He was crying.

  She went out into the yard, right to the end, into the shadows, and leaned her back against the brick wall. Pretty much a failure of a day. She’d let Kate and Rhianne drive her home when she was supposed to be freezing them out. She’d made an enemy of Shelley. And she’d risked her job to make Franz Ferdi cry worse than ever. And then there was the thing she wasn’t thinking about, which she supposed had gone okay. It was progress, anyway.

  She’d found out Mrs. Pickess bought her mum’s brandy. Mrs. Pickess, who’d shopped her mum to the cops, had started taking care of her—at least Nicola would see it that way. So Mrs. Pickess knew something, or Nic did. Maybe both. Zula definitely did. Fishbo, possibly. All those people with secrets to keep, keeping Margaret’s secret too. How was she going to get any of those secrets out into the open?

  Well, she could stop kidding herself for a start.

  She remembered exactly who it was who told her about the big houses separate and the small houses in pairs. She had remembered when she heard FF crying again. Something about sitting on the stairs and a man crying in the kitchen. It was Robbie, of course. Robbie Southgate. Craig’s dad. He wasn’t just a pal, not just one of the Friday night crowd. He was Nicola’s boyfriend. He was on the scene when Opal left home—she knew he was, even if she didn’t remember anything about him—and if he was still on the scene when Craig disappeared, then he was the obvious person to find if she really wanted answers.

  If she wanted answers. If she did. Did she?

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “I WONDERED WHEN YOU’D get back round to us.” The voice was soft, like dough, like someone muffled under the covers at night, face pressed into a blanket. He had called out for her to come in and in she came, sat down on the edge of the sofa, and smiled. “Margaret’s missed you these last weeks. She’s worried she said something to offend you.”

  “Margaret?” said Opal. “Said what?”

  “She worries these days. She’s not like she was.”

  Opal smiled again. How could he sit there saying his wife wasn’t how she was, with the change there had been in him? Could it have happened so slowly he didn’t know?

  “I’ve just been getting myself settled,” she said. “Starting my job, seeing everyone again, saying hello.”

  “Yes,” said Denny. “I heard.”

  “Heard what?” Opal said. “Off of who?”

  Denny flung his head back to the open window behind him.

  “I mean, I heard,” he said. “You. In and out. Over the road and back again. I don’t miss much that goes on. Not these days.”

  Opal didn’t know what to say. She had almost forgotten, if she was honest, that all the time she was talking to Pep, shouting up to Fishbo, chatting away to the Joshis, fending off Mrs. Pickess, Denny was right here with the window open. Listening. But surely she hadn’t ever said anything she wouldn’t want him to hear.

  “And I don’t like the look of those two girls much, love,” he told her. Opal frowned and Denny held up a mirror—it must have been Margaret’s; it was one of those ones with a handle, roses on the back of the glass. He angled it over one shoulder. “I can see your house and the Taylors from here.”

  “Why don’t you turn your chair round so can you see out properly?” She was telling herself she’d known Dennis Reid all her life, there was no harm in him, nothing to fear. But the thought of him sitting there watching her house with a mirror made her shudder.

  “Keep my eye on the back too, this way,” he said, and it was only then that Opal understood. He wasn’t spying; he was taking care. Too late—and he must know that—but no harm would ever come to anyone on Mote Street again if Denny could stop it by watching.

  “Well, I’m sorry I haven’t been in for … however long it’s been,” Opal said, “but I’m here now. I take it Margaret’s working.” Denny closed his eyes and nodded his head slowly. “Can I get you anything, while I’m here then?” she said. “Cold drink?”

  “You help yourself,” said Denny. “I’m okay.”

  “I’m fine,” Opal said and then no one said anything for a moment or two. “Denny?” He must have guessed what was coming because he took in a breath, deep and hollow, almost gasping. “Please tell me to shut up if it’s clueless of me, but I’ve got to say something.” He didn’t answer. Opal couldn’t tell if that was his way of saying it was all right to talk or his way of telling her to leave it alone. So she kept talking. “I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for Margaret and you.” Nothing. “And Karen.” He was as still as a stone. “And Robbie.” She couldn’t even hear him breathing now. “And I know—Margaret told me—that her and Karen don’t see each other anymore. Or you. That’s rough. That’s got to be … But do you see Robbie ever?”

  Denny didn’t even blink, never mind answer. They sat in silence long enough for a phone in one of the other houses to ring out three times, clear as anything, until someone answered it and the street fell silent again.

  “You think it must be bad, eh?” He wasn’t looking at her.

  “Of course,” Opal said. “It must be the worst thing there is.”

  “Craig or Karen?”

  “Both. Well, Craig. But yeah, Karen too.”

  “How could anyone do that to her own mother?” he said softly.

  “I don’t know,” Opal said. “Anger, I suppose. Hurt.”

  “You don’t know?” said Denny. “Well, if you don’t know, who does? Where were you, eh? Thirteen years. Where were you when she died? Where were you the day she was buried?”

  Opal blinked five times, very fast; one blink after another. How could she not have seen that coming?

  “What good does it do to come to a funeral?” she said, knowing how it sounded. “It’s too late by then.”

  “No, it’s not,” Denny said and his voice was loud. “I told myself if nothing else brings her home, at least she’ll come to my funeral. I’d never have dreamed for a minute she wouldn’t come until you showed me different.”

  Even as Opal squirmed, though, she was thinking that if he would sit there and die to bring Karen back to her mother, there were other things—less drastic things—he would do as well.

  “What about just going round to her house and begging her?” she said. Then she took a deep breath. “Or getting someone else to talk to her.” Another breath. “I’d talk to her for you.”

  “We don’t know where she is, love.”

  “How hard could it be to find her?”

  “Don’t know where to start.”

  “Did you think about a private detective?”

  “Haven’t got that sort of money, Margaret and me.”

  “And then, once you’ve found her—and someone must know where she is—maybe you could … ”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because nothing’s going to bring him back again, is it?”

  “No, but wouldn’t finding out once and for all what happened to him be better than this?”

  “How would forcing Karen to see us again do that?”

  “Well,” Opal said, “maybe if you were all trying to find out together instead of trying to keep the secret—”

  Denny moved for the first time, an enormous movement like whale breaking the surface of still water.

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he began, but Opal interrupted him.

  “I do,” she said. “Look, I don’t mean the police. Or maybe I do. Maybe it’s not Craig that’s killing you all. Maybe it’s the secret. Maybe it would be better if it was out in the open.”

  “You think we never thought of that?” Denny said. He was restless now, his feet paddling against the floor and his arms flailing as he tried to grip the sides of the settee. “You think I didn’t beg Karen to tell the police what really happened?”

  “Margaret said yo
u all decided to keep it—”

  “At first, we did,” said Denny. “But you think I cared a damn about my reputation after months had gone by? That’s what drove her off. That’s what finally sent her packing. Me threatening to come clean. Me saying I’d add shame and gossip and all to what she was carrying already. It was me. I knocked the outhouse down. I went out boozing. I didn’t listen to what Margaret told me. And I threatened my own daughter and drove her away.”

  “But you didn’t mean it to be a threat, did you?” Opal said. “You just wanted to find him.”

  “Karen reckoned I wanted to clear my name.”

  “Of what?”

  “His mammy went to work, his nana went to bed, and I went walking along the canal with the dogs. Who’s the only one who could have had a babby along and lost him?”

  “But that makes no sense,” said Opal. “If you’d let him fall in the canal on Friday, you’d be the last person to tell the police it wasn’t Saturday. You wouldn’t be clearing your name at all. You’d be … muddying it. It doesn’t make sense what you’re saying.”

  “Karen said I was thinking of myself. Not Craig and not her.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense either,” Opal said. Her head was beginning to pound again like it had when she thought about Mrs. Pickess and Nicola. Who would keep quiet and who would speak up: the innocent or the guilty? Who would bribe and who would threaten? Why would he soil his name to clear it? Why would Karen think that’s what he would do?

  “None of this ever has made sense and none of it ever will,” Denny said. “How can a little kid be there and then be gone? Never come back? How can it be that you love a babby more than your own life and then one day you’re hungover and you’re in a bad mood and you just don’t keep him safe anymore?”

  “But someone might have snatched him, Denny,” Opal said. “They searched and searched, Margaret said, and dragged the canal. Someone must have taken him.”

  “And what sense does that make, eh? How could someone hurt a little kid? How could anyone?”

  But all Opal could think was that Denny, for all his sorrows, was lucky. That he must have had a good life up until ten years ago if he thought that was a mystery.

  “I’m sorry I upset you,” she said. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Ah, you’re all right,” Denny said.

  “I’ll go now.”

  “Fair enough, on you go. But leave it, eh? Just let it alone. There’s no point in another person starting to fret on it too.”

  Opal muttered something like an agreement, but there was no way she was going to leave it. She wasn’t just going to fret either. She was going to find Karen, she decided, as she let herself out. To get to Robbie, if they were still in touch, and she hoped they would be. She was sure that Robbie must know something. He was Nicola’s only connection to that little boy and Nicola definitely knew something, else why was Mrs. Pickess trying so hard to keep her sweet? Only why would she care, if it was Nicola’s secret? Or Robbie’s?

  Opal shook the tangle of questions out of her head.

  There was another reason to find Karen Reid anyway. Surely if someone told her what was happening to her mum and her dad—especially her dad—she’d come to her senses, bring her granddaughter round, and join what was left of her family together again.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  IT WASN’T EVEN THAT hard. It wasn’t as easy as years ago when everyone was in the phone book and you could just look them up, but she got Vonnie Pickess talking about it all again—no problem there—and said she supposed the police had interviewed everyone Karen knew, all her neighbors, everybody at the bank. And Mrs. Pickess had asked what bank, and Opal had opened her eyes very wide and said didn’t Karen Reid work at the Nat West, and Mrs. Pickess, triumphant, said Karen had worked for Leeds City College, organising the evening classes or whatever they were called now, from when she had left school. Took maternity leave and went right back again. Bank, ha!

  So Opal went along to the college gates on Park Lane at five o’clock and waited outside first one exit and then another and a third, watching. She didn’t really expect to see Karen; she was more than ready to pick a woman the right sort of age, one who looked as if she’d been in with the bricks and would remember everyone. Start there. Think up a story, see where she could get to. She was trying to think of what story she could tell—Karen’s stepdaughter, Robbie’s new wife’s girl?—when all of a sudden she was there. Opal turned her back, heart hammering. She couldn’t help herself, but of course, Karen wouldn’t recognise her, not after all these years and grown up like she was now. Opal wouldn’t have recognised Karen either, if it wasn’t for the fact that she looked so much like her father. Well, like her father used to. The woman walking over the road towards her had the same black hair and wide mouth, the same jaw and shoulders and, as well as all that, she had her mother’s walk, hurrying along, looking from side-to-side and a bit of a bounce through the balls of her feet that Margaret always used to have—Opal remembered it now—although these days it was gone.

  She walked right past Opal leaning there, didn’t give her a glance, and Opal shoved herself up off the wall and fell into step behind. What would she do if Karen went to a car park and drove away? A taxi? Order the driver to “follow that car”? But Karen made for the bus station and joined the queue at the rank for the 84. Opal walked past, let a few more people join, and then turned back and slipped in behind them.

  Karen used a pass when the bus came and so Opal, not knowing what fare to ask for, bought a return to Ilkley—the end of the route—and took a seat three behind on the other side of the aisle.

  Now she could look properly at Karen for the first time, study her. And the first thing she thought was that no one would know. She didn’t look stricken, there was no tension in the way she sat there, swaying a little as if she was tired and taking the chance to unwind. And what surprised Opal most of all was that she got a book out of her bag—a paperback book with a pale picture of someone’s legs on it—and started reading.

  Opal thought about Denny facing the back door with his mirror for the front, and Margaret with her bottles of pills and telling her secret to everyone, as helpless as a jug that overflows if no one stops the water running. Shouldn’t a woman whose child went missing in this city be looking out of the bus window in case he walked by? Wouldn’t a woman look out of the window every day, just in case? How could she help herself? Everyone said that Karen Reid was a bit of a cold fish and it was Robbie who wanted a family, but this was beyond a joke, the way she just sat there reading her book as they edged up Woodhouse Lane, stopping and starting in the long snake of traffic struggling home.

  And as they got to the turnoff to Meanwood, Opal waited to see if Karen would raise her head and look out to where her parents lived. Lived or died, no odds to her, apparently, because she didn’t look up and didn’t turn away. Her grip on the edge of her paperback didn’t loosen or tighten. The bus went past the junction and kept on out of town and Karen read her book, and Opal stared at the side of her cheek and wondered what it could mean.

  Therapy, she decided by the time they’d cleared the bypass. Karen had been to therapy and put it all behind her. Maybe giving up on old Margaret was part of her “recovery.” Maybe she’d let go and moved on and learned not to blame herself for anything. Opal had met that type before, and she couldn’t stand them. So calm and sure of themselves, they were more like robots than real people. Ask any of them for something you really needed and you were on your own. Big part of therapy, that was—learning to say yes when you wanted and no when you wanted—and not worry about anyone else and what they wanted at all. Opal had asked a woman in the Co-op a favour just that spring. Asked if she could borrow her caravan down the coast—pay rent for it and everything—just so she had somewhere to go where she wouldn’t see Baz, somewhere to think things through. And the woman had looked her straight in the face and said, “I’m going to say no, Opal. I don’t want you to stay in
my caravan, so I’m going to say no.” She had even smiled. “I don’t find it easy to say no. This is a big step forward for me.” So Opal had said she really needed somewhere quiet to be on her own for a while and she couldn’t see what harm it would do anyway, and the woman had said that she was very comfortable with her decision and it would be a better world if everyone said what they thought. And so Opal said she thought the woman was a selfish bitch, and that was the end of that. Opal ended up in that crappy little bedsit, and then she left the Co-op anyway.

  She blinked and came back to the present again. The bus was slowing and Opal looked out of the window to see where they were—not that she would know; somewhere in the suburbs—then she looked back towards Karen and her leg kicked out so fast that she banged it hard against the back of the seat in front. Karen was standing. Opal stood up and, limping a bit, followed her to the front of the bus. They were the only two getting off here.

  “This int Ilkley, love,” said the driver, seeing her waiting there. Opal smiled and said nothing. “You’ve paid through to Ilkley,” he said. “You don’t have to change.” Karen was listening, not quite turning round but paying attention. Opal smiled again. The bus had stopped now and opened its doors with a hissing sigh. Karen stepped down.

  “You all right?” said the driver.

  “Not feeling very well,” Opal said. “Just the heat. I’ll get back on the next one along.”

  “You can’t use your ticket,” said the driver. “You’ll have to buy another one. Maybe if you moved to the shady side? Or here—have a mint.”

  Karen had turned a corner out of sight, and the driver’s hand was hovering over the lever to close the doors again, so Opal just took both steps in one and launched herself out onto the pavement.

  “Thanks,” she said, but the driver was already looking the other way.

  She trotted to the corner and stepped boldly round the wall and hedge that hid the side street from view. Karen was still in sight, walking along at a good pace, past pairs of neat little semi-detacheds with cherry trees on the verges outside the gardens, even if most of the gardens themselves had been paved over to make parking for cars. Karen turned another corner, not looking behind her, not seeing Opal, but still Opal thought she had better hang back a bit. When she did finally start walking again and turned into the new street—more pairs of semis, and some bungalows too—she couldn’t spot Karen at first. Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw one of the front doors opening and there was Karen on the step. Opal slipped a few paces onto the hard standing of the house she had stopped at and ducked down behind the car parked there. She gave one quick glance at the front window—if the car was there someone must be in—but what choice did she have? Up the street, Karen didn’t go inside but just stood on the step waiting. Then, after a minute, a little girl about three or four, dressed in a pink sundress, bounced out of the door and down the path to the road. Karen followed, rummaging in her bag. She found something, took it out, and pointed it—like a gun, Opal thought—but then the sidelights on a car flashed on and off, and the little girl opened a back door and climbed in. Karen got into the driver’s seat and pulled away, passing where Opal was crouched, the little girl staring out at her and then twisting round in her seat to keep her in view as long as she could before they disappeared on their way.