As She Left It: A Novel Read online

  “What happened to him?” Opal whispered. “Is this the thing you thought I’d have heard?”

  Margaret shook her head. “There was a tragedy here on Mote Street, Opal,” she said. “Ten years ago this summer. Feels like a lifetime and feels like the blink of an eye.” Margaret shook a cigarette out of the packet and lit it. “Ten years of shame and sorrow. Killing Dennis there. And killing me.”

  “Shame,” Opal said, picking on the only word that didn’t fit with her idea of a tragedy.

  “Remember my daughter, Karen?” Margaret blurted it out, startling Opal. She nodded. “And her husband, Robbie?”

  Opal nodded, less certainly. She didn’t remember Robbie Southgate. Didn’t want to.

  “Remember Karen and Robbie’s little lad?”

  “Craig?” said Opal, brightening. “Of course I do.” Craig Southgate was the first baby she had ever been trusted to carry about in a shawl or wheel up and down in a pram, and she had spent the last summer before she left Mote Street watching out for Karen dropping him off and then hotfooting it over to the Reids’ to ask if she could take him.

  “He’s gone,” Margaret said. “Disappeared.”

  “Ran away?”

  “Ten years ago,” Margaret said. “He was three.”

  “Taken?” said Opal. She hadn’t thought about Craig Southgate once in thirteen years, but she could see him as if he was standing in the kitchen beside her. She was imagining reddish hair cut in a short back and sides, tiny teeth like white kernels of corn clenched hard together when he smiled, head tipped right back, like Michael used to do. Margaret hadn’t spoken. “Do you mean he was taken?” Opal said again.

  “That’s what they said. The Mote Street Snatcher. All over the papers it was.” Opal watched her take a deep drag, hold it inside her, and then let it out through her nostrils, like a dragon. She had only known Margaret as a grownup while she herself was a child, and she wasn’t used to this swimmy feeling of being the one who should think of things to say. She spoke very gently.

  “Margaret? You said ‘shame’.”

  “Aye,” Margaret said.

  “I can see the tragedy and the sorrow … ”

  “It was all in the papers,” Margaret said again. “Toddler vanished. Snatched in minutes flat. Never seen again.” She took another drag, let it out through her mouth this time, blowing it so hard out of her down-turned lips that the jet of smoke kicked back off the tabletop in rolls.

  “There’s no shame in that,” Opal said. “That would make people sorry for you, not make them—”

  Margaret was shaking her head. “They don’t know,” she said. “People left flowers and sent cards, Opal. People sent money. They don’t know.”

  Opal didn’t want to ask, but she couldn’t help herself. “Know what?”

  “And if I don’t tell someone I’ll run mad with it pressing on me.” Margaret lifted her head and turned those magnified, headlamp eyes on her.

  “No,” Opal said.

  “You coming back is a sign,” Margaret said. “You’ve been sent to me.”

  “No. I haven’t. It’s not.”

  “Let me speak before I burst.”

  Opal screwed her eyes shut, thinking no, no, no. She was escaping—she could admit it inside her head. She was running away. Free as a bird, free as a bird. And if she tried to fit a secret as big as Margaret’s inside herself beside all her own secrets, something would spill over. Alone in a crowd, free as a bird.

  But Margaret spoke anyway.

  FIVE

  “KAREN … ” HER voice cracked on the word, but she cleared her throat and tried again. “Karen went back to work full-time.” Opal opened her eyes again. That didn’t sound too bad. She had room for that inside her.

  “After Craig was …?”

  “Before. And if I’m to be fair, she didn’t have to. To listen to Karen, you’d think he kept her without two ha’pennies to rub. But Robbie was a good man, a wonderful father. You’ll remember him Opal; he was a great friend of your mother’s at one time.”

  “Just a pal,” said Opal, shaking her head. “Not a friend. I never knew him really.”

  “Well, I looked after little Craig for her anyway. I was on early mornings over at Immaculate Heart, and then afternoons for my old girl in Headingley, and in between I used to have the baby.”

  “I know,” said Opal. “I helped, remember.”

  “Ah, it’s no toil to look after a tiny baby, but by the time he was walking, he was a handful. So that’s the first thing. Karen went to work and I jiggled and juggled and we just about managed, you know. Most of the time he played out in the yard there. He loved to play in the outhouse.”

  “In that black hole?” said Opal. She got a cold feeling inside her to think of a little kid in there.

  “He liked it,” Margaret said, then her voice dropped to a gravelly whisper. “Then the second thing. Dennis decides he wants more space for the dogs, see? And he knocks it down.”

  “Jesus!” said Opal. “With Craig inside?”

  “No, Christ! But once his little wee playhouse was gone, Craig started to wander. Any time the back gate wasn’t chained shut, he was at the latch. If I took my eye off him, he’d be away.

  “And then one fine day—it was a Friday in the middle of the summer, a hot summer just like this one’s getting—Karen dropped the babby off and went to work. Now Dennis wasn’t feeling too well that day—a hangover is what it was—and he come home from work about ten in the morning—waste of time going in. Craig was in the yard, and when Dennis come back, I said to him that I’d go up and lie on my bed for a sleep and would he … ” Margaret paused and once again her eyes swam with tears. “What I said was, would he mind out for the babby. Meaning, you know, keep an eye on him. But what Dennis thought I meant was would he not go out until Karen had brought Craig, so he could answer the door. That’s what Dennis thought I meant. That’s what he’s said for ten years, and there’s no shifting him.”

  “Jesus,” said Opal again. “Denny didn’t know Craig was there?”

  “No. And he didn’t feel like sitting around waiting either. He thought a bit of fresh air would help his head, so he got the dogs and went away along the canal.

  “When I got up, Denny was back and Craig was gone and I thought nothing of it. ‘Karen’s got the babby then?’ I said to Dennis. And he said, ‘Looks that way’ or ‘she must have,’ or something like that, thinking I was pestering him. And I was mad at that, thinking why was he being rotten to me when I’d not poured the beer down his neck. So we never spoke another word to each other the rest of the day. And I thought Karen had come and got the babby and took him to the nursery same as ever.”

  “So what happened when Karen went to the nursery to get him at the end of the day?” Opal said.

  Margaret closed her eyes and shook her head slowly from side to side. Her cup of tea was growing cold, untouched, in front of her, and it felt wrong to Opal to sip at her own even though her mouth was dry and foul, a metallic taste beginning.

  “Karen—God love her,” Margaret said. “This is the third thing, see? That very day, Karen got asked out on a date. Her and Robbie were over and done with by then. Anyway, this fella she’d been getting to know asked her if she was doing anything that night. And she thought ‘Ah, why not,’ and she called the nursery and left a message, would her mother hang on to little Craig, keep him overnight and she’d pick him up in the morning. Hoping the date would go well, you know? That was her way. Flesh and blood of my own as she is, I cannot deny that that was the way of her.”

  “Then what?” asked Opal, the bad taste in her mouth growing.

  “And the nursery thought ‘hang on to him’ meant … Ah, it was all garbled and third-hand.”

  “But why didn’t Karen just phone you?” Opal said, before remembering that Margaret and Dennis hadn’t had a phone then. Hard to believe now when everyone had mobiles and had everyone’s number in them, but when Opal left Mote Street, Margaret had s
till been knocking on Mrs. Pickess’s door to use the telephone when she needed to.

  “I’m never away from one now,” Margaret said, patting the big pouch pocket in the front of her overall. “Ten years too late to be any good.” Her voice wobbled, and she sniffed hard before she went on. “It wasn’t until the next day, Saturday, going on for eleven in the morning, when Karen turned up here looking for Craig.”

  “Oh, Margaret,” said Opal.

  “We searched. All through the house and the yard and lane, all the other yards. The waste ground, the canal path, everywhere. The road up to his nursery, all round there. Shouting and yelling for him.”

  “But you didn’t find him?”

  “We asked the neighbors all up this side and your mother and next door. The student houses were empty, but Dennis broke in and searched them too. And everyone kept saying he’d turn up and he wouldn’t go far and he was such a right little wanderer—a nomad, old Fishbo called him.”

  “And what about the night before?” said Opal. “Nobody heard anything? Saw someone?”

  Margaret said nothing for a long time, and when she started to speak again, it was very quietly, with her head down.

  “We didn’t tell them. Couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself. Karen—she was hysterical. And Dennis was like a zombie. The thought of looking into everyone’s face and saying … We couldn’t face the … the … ”

  “The shame,” Opal said, so softly she didn’t know if Margaret had heard her. Then she stirred. “Didn’t the police tell the neighbors, though? When they were taking statements?”

  Now Margaret squeezed her eyes shut as if she was trying to disappear. Like a baby, thinking if she couldn’t see anyone then no one could see her.

  “The police came, sure enough. But the thought of it. His mother out on the town with a fancy man, Dennis hungover, and me in my bed there. Nobody speaking to each other. We couldn’t … We just …

  Opal, you’ve no idea how they were looking at the lot of us and the questions they were asking, even from what they did know.”

  I’ve got a pretty good idea, Opal thought, saying nothing. She knew exactly how people looked at you when they had your form in front of them and they knew the worst things about your life and you knew not the slightest thing about theirs.

  She put her hand out and took hold of Margaret’s, squeezing it gently. This made the tears finally start to fall. “Poor Karen,” said Opal. “And you. And poor Dennis too.” She turned her head and looked at the living room door, thinking about him sitting there.

  “Karen got so she was a stranger to us,” Margaret said. “Came round less and less and now we haven’t seen her for five years. Not a call, not so much as a card at Christmas. We’ve lost the both of them. My sister Annie tells me she has a daughter now. I have a granddaughter, Opal, and I’ve never clapped eyes on her.”

  “Margaret,” said Opal, “I understand, I really do.”

  “It’s killing me.” She leaned forward, her skinny bust flattening against the tabletop.

  “But if you tell people now … ” Opal said. “It won’t bring him back, and it might make it worse. For Denny and you.”

  “I don’t tell people,” Margaret said. “I told you.” She sat up and pulled at her neck as if her overall was strangling her. “No one ever got over it, you know. Mr. Kendal next door and Mrs. Pickess. It’s changed her, no matter what you think of her. And the Joshis. The Taylors next to your mother moved away. And your mother was never herself again. And as for Dennis … he’s just going to sit there and die. If I lose Dennis after I’ve lost Karen and Craig … ”

  “So what are you going to do?” Opal said. Margaret only shook her head slowly, more to show sorrow than anything else. Then she sniffed again, stubbed out her latest cigarette in the brimming ashtray, and stood up.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” she said. “I’m going to cook the tea. Will you stay?”

  “I’m really tired,” Opal said, “and not hungry.”

  “Chips and egg,” said Margaret, as if she was dangling a real treat.

  “How are you still okay?” said Opal. “How come you’re still you when Denny and Karen are lost?”

  “I don’t know, and that’s the truth,” said Margaret. “Tough as old boots, me.”

  But as Opal let herself out the back door, she saw the prescription bottles lined up on the kitchen windowsill, getting on for a dozen of them—bottles, boxes, and blister packs—and she wondered if Margaret, just like Denny, had found a way to dull the pain every day.

  SIX

  SHE STOPPED IN THE lane and leaned her back against the cool brick of Margaret’s yard wall. It made her dizzy to think of the thread that kept life strung together and joined one thing to the next. If Margaret hadn’t said “mind out,” or if Denny hadn’t been hungover, or if the nursery people had paid more attention, or Karen’s new man had asked her out on the Saturday night instead of the Friday, Craig would be at his mother’s house right now. Or maybe up here at his granny’s eating four fried eggs and a pound of chips with his laughing granddad.

  And look at how she’d landed back here. Nic didn’t ever tell the council that Opal was gone, and someone sent the mail and paid the bills, and Stephanie was gone from the house at the right time, and Opal still had her key, and everything lined up so that exactly when she needed to escape, here was somewhere she could escape to. Another thread, as delicate as a single strand of spider’s web, stringing things together, leading you through the forest, but only if you squinted hard enough to see it glinting and held it lightly, barely touching, in case it broke and everything drifted away.

  She pushed herself up off the wall and strode down the back lane, across the bottom of the street, up the lane behind her own side, avoiding the front and the sharp eyes of Mrs. Pickess, still second nature after all these years. In her own little yard again, she glanced for the first time at the outhouse door and her pulse quickened. He played in one of those? How could any little kid not be scared even thinking about going in there, getting stuck in that pitch black, freezing cold, stinking hole? Deep inside her, something shifted, as if a single drop of water had fallen on something dry and tight and a tiny of piece of it had softened, spreading into a bigger part of her.

  She shook her head. She was grown up now, and there was nothing to fear. So she put her hand on the outhouse doorknob and twisted it. It turned, but the door wouldn’t open. She frowned and tried pushing instead of pulling, even though she was sure it opened out, or it would have banged against your knees when it opened in. Still it wouldn’t move. Opal let her breath go; she hadn’t realized she’d been holding it.

  Back inside again, she started cleaning. She threw out all the food, jars of jam and treacle and lemon curd, then the ashtrays. There was going to be no more smoking in this house, she decided, even though that had been Steph’s rule and she would rather it was her own. Opal hadn’t smoked since she was fifteen, since Steph had stood over her and made her finish every last one in the packet, making her retch.

  “Steady on, love,” her dad had said, hovering in the doorway, looking out at them. Opal was on a garden seat on the patio with a bucket in front of her. There were eleven butts and the ash from them in the bucket.

  “She needs a lesson, Sandy,” Steph had said. “She’ll throw up on top of them and then bloody well clean it out.”

  “Is this supposed to be traumatic or something?” Opal had asked. “Shock to my system kind of thing?” She managed a laugh. “Well, eight of ten for effort, Steph, but you’d need to do more—” then she had belched, a thunderclap, and leaned over the ashy bucket, and her dad had gone inside and closed the door.

  Opal shook the memory out her head and dropped in the last of the ashtrays, the Stella Artois one that had been on the non-nest side of her mum’s bed for as long as she could remember. “Who is Stella Artois?” she had once asked, rhyming it with tortoise, and Nicola had cackled with laughter and made Opal ask it again
in front of all of her friends.

  Then, looking around the kitchen for more things to chuck out, her eyes landed on the big iron key hanging on its hook at the back of the door. “Duh,” she said out loud. No mystery after all. The outhouse door wouldn’t open because it was locked. And it could stay locked too. She didn’t need to go in there. That soft spreading feeling inside her was only hunger. She should have stayed at Margaret’s. Had some tea.

  But now she had noticed it, the key was in the corner of her eye every time she moved. Black against the white paint, enormous. She remembered reaching up for it with both hands and the feel of it cold against her skin. But she was grown up now. No reason on earth she shouldn’t go and look in the outhouse, just as part of settling in.

  So she took the key outside, tried to fit it into the lock on the outhouse door, wiggling it and shoving it, bending down to look through and see what the problem was. The lock was bunged up with something. She stepped to the side and peered in at the high window, amazed that she was tall enough; this window had been far above her head anytime she’d wanted to see out of it when she was a kid.

  She had no more luck this time, tall as she might be. The window was completely covered with a layer of fine grey dust. She rubbed, but it was all on the inside, turning the glass milky, showing only her own reflection back to her. The window still opened, but the way it worked—the top half dropping inwards until, about twenty degrees from upright, it hit a metal bracket that stopped it going any farther—meant that she couldn’t see a thing even with it as wide as it would go. She rattled the handle one more time then took the key back into the house with her and hung it up, only realising when it took three goes to get it on the hook that her hand was shaking. She breathed in and out, shrinking that feeling down like she’d learned to, twisting it hard, making it so small and so tight that soon it was gone as if it had never been there at all.