As She Left It: A Novel Page 7

  “Phew,” she said, fanning herself. “It’s my age—hot flushes.”

  “Power surge,” said Opal. “That’s what they call them now.”

  “Bloody hope not,” Zula said, tapping her headphones. “These things’ll electrocute me.”

  And because it might have been a hot flush and nothing more, plus because there were more important things to ask about, Opal changed the subject. But she didn’t miss the fact that after they stopped talking about the mail and the bills, the hot flushes were gone.

  “So how’s it been?” she said. “Your lads must all be cracking on now? Any of them married? Any grandchildren?”

  “Ha!” said Zula. “That’s a laugh. They’re all still here! In their twenties and me slaving after them. You should see the size of the washer and dryer I’ve got out the back there. They’re meant for hotels.”

  “Doesn’t that cramp their style a bit?” said Opal.

  “What?” Zula said. “Not them. Every Sunday morning I’m tripping over some poor lass that’s been sent down to make them tea.”

  “What does Mr. Joshi say to that then?” said Opal.

  “Past caring, same as me,” Zula said.

  “Better than never seeing them,” Opal said, trying to work the conversation round to Margaret and Denny.

  “Sure is,” Zula said, and as she put her coffee mug down and pulled her black brows together again, Opal realized, just too late, the blind alley she had walked herself into. “I mean, I’m pig sick about Birbal being here at twenty-eight, true enough, but leaving home when you’re twelve, Opal. What happened?”

  No, Opal told herself. This is about Craig Southgate. Not about me. And she rubbed her hands up and down her legs. They were sweating.

  “Nothing happened,” she said. “No one big thing. Anyway, Mote Street was no place for kids, it turned out.”

  “Craig,” said Zula.

  “Yeah,” said Opal, trying to sound casual even though she was cheering inside to have finally got the talk round to where it needed to be. “Little Craig. Margaret told me about it. That must have terrible for you.”

  “Me?” said Zula, and she fanned her face again.

  “With five kids, on a street where a little boy had gone missing.”

  “Oh!” said Zula. “I see. Well, Vik was ten by then and he was always tagging along behind Advay and Sanj. Little Craig was a toddler. A baby.”

  “It must still have been bad, though,” Opal said. “Margaret told me how hard you took it.”

  “Me?”

  “Everyone,” Opal said. “She said none of the neighbors ever got over it. Even my mum.” Zula was staring at her with tears beginning to well up in her eyes.

  Margaret had said that, hadn’t she? Opal hadn’t dreamed it. But thinking about it again, it was peculiar. Of course, Craig disappearing was sad—it was tragic—but would neighbors really be so much affected? Ten years on? One of the tears splashed down Zula’s cheek. She scrubbed at it and then looked into her hand.

  “What is that all over my face?”

  “And the investigation,” Opal went on. “I can hardly imagine it. Poke, poke, poke.”

  “Now that,” said Zula, “were hell. Sheer hell. All these coppers. You hear a lot about how they keep going off on courses all the time, learning how to talk to folk, but I never saw any of it. Not ten years ago. Not that day. They had all our lads, one by one; where had they been and who was with them. Even Vik. Ten years old.”

  “Jamie Bulger,” said Opal. “Those kids were ten that took him, weren’t they?”

  “Aye,” Zula said. “I suppose they had to. And I sat in with them, all except Birbal because he was eighteen. And with it being a Saturday morning, of course, they’d all been hanging about, no proper whatyoucallems.”

  “Alibis.”

  “That’s them. If it had been the Friday they’d have been at school and then football and we picked them up and went straight to a party at my auntie’s, and they’d not have had to go through it.”

  “If it had been the Friday,” Opal repeated.

  “Aye,” Zula said. “But seeing it wasn’t, the police had a hundred questions. Had they seen him and did they ever play with him, did they ever make him do things for a laugh, play jokes on him, had they ever made him cry.”

  “Jesus,” said Opal.

  “And Doolal lost it. Said how come they were coming down like a ton of bricks on us instead of going out trying to find the little lad. And—oh, Opal, he said some terrible things.”

  “Like what?” Opal said.

  “He said they were only pestering us because we were Indian and instead of trying to make something out of nothing with five lads, how about the other end of the street and all those single men that hung around together.”

  “My God,” Opal said. “Did Pep and them ever find out he’d said it?”

  “No,” said Zula, grimly. “And neither did his father, I can tell you. But I gave him a belt across the backside he’s probably still feeling now. Sixteen and six feet, just the same. I’d die if Pep and Fishbo ever knew about that.”

  “That’s right,” said Opal. “Mr. Fish was a friend of yours, wasn’t he. Didn’t he work for you?”

  “He did,” said Zula. “He drove one of our cabs.”

  “Until he had a smash-up and stopped again, right?”

  “Right,” said Zula. She was giving Opal the hard, head down stare again. “Fancy you remembering that after all these years.”

  “Anyway, Margaret said the police reckoned Craig was snatched, because he didn’t have time to wander off,” Opal said, and she was glad to see that Zula seemed happy to talk about Craig some more. “So he couldn’t have been snatched by a neighbor. They wouldn’t have had time to take him away and then get back here again. In time.”

  “That’s right,” Zula said. “Not in the time.” Then, to Opal’s horror, she gave a sly glance from the corner of her eye. “Because only minutes after he was gone, Margaret and Karen were turning the streets upside down looking for him.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Margaret told me,” Opal said.

  Zula nodded. “Me too.”

  And then the silence between them stretched until it was singing, until it seemed it would have to snap, both of them waiting.

  Opal had been nursing her empty cup, but she put it down now, cursing inside as it rattled on the glass top of the table.

  “I better go,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “I’m keeping you back.”

  But Zula put a hand out and laid it firmly on Opal’s arm “So what are you going to do with yourself then? Got a job lined up? What plans?”

  “I’ve got a job, and I’m going to start my trumpet up again. Talking of rowdy.”

  “Still on the trumpet, eh?” said Zula. “No other hobbies?”

  Opal shrugged. Zula was still holding on to her and her grip was impressive. Opal had to work at not pulling her arm away.

  “Not got a canoe in that backyard, eh?” Zula forced a laugh out from behind a stiff smile.

  “A canoe?”

  “Or—I don’t know—a mountain bike or a potter’s wheel … I thought all you young ones went in for hobbies with loads of fancy equipment these days. You should see our garages. That’s why we always have three cars parked up here. The lock-ups are full of sailboards and BMXs.”

  “And potter’s wheels,” said Opal. “I haven’t even got my own trumpet anymore. Fishbo’s going to lend me one.”

  “He’s a good neighbor,” said Zula, walking Opal to the front door. “Him and Pep.”

  “They helped me out bringing my new bed home,” Opal said. “Took it upstairs, put it together and everything.”

  “But if you’ve any work wants doing, proper work I mean, you come to us, love.” She had hold of Opal’s arm again. “The Mote Street Boys aren’t boys any more. You get my lads on it.”

  “On what?” said Opal.

  “Like if you want any renovations doing,” Zula sai
d. She had let go and was pleating and repleating the curtain that hung in front of her alcove where the coats were. “Any DIY. If you want anything doing out in the yard. Any improvements.”

  “I thought you didn’t want a lot of noise,” said Opal, but Zula didn’t smile back at her.

  “Just that nothing’s ever been done at your mother’s, has it? And I was thinking if you wanted to make any big changes in the house or out in the yard or anything, the lads could help you.”

  “Thanks,” said Opal, “but I don’t think I’ll be getting the builders in just yet. I’m saving up for another two plates so I can have a tea party.”

  “So no major works in the pipeline,” Zula said. She let the curtain drop and opened the door. “Still, let us know if we can ever help you. Don’t go struggling away on your own.”

  “I won’t,” said Opal, stepping out. “Bye.”

  TWELVE

  THE DOOR SHUT RIGHT on her heels. Opal knew Zula felt the cold, never found Leeds warm enough to leave her front door open, even after all these years. Even tonight when the evening air settling down over Mote Street made Opal think of the way Steph used heat up a dish of stew and then roll a disc of raw dough over the top of it, pressing the edges down, trapping the steam inside. She blew upwards into her hair and downwards into the neck of her shirt. It wasn’t just the heat of the evening making her prickle all over. That she knew. It was the memory of that firm grip on her arm, that hard look right into her eyes, and that wretched failed attempt at a light voice and laughter. Anything doing in the house. Or out in the yard. Changes in the house. Or out in the yard. The house made sense. But that tiny little square of concrete? What would want doing there? All it was, was a place to hang the washing and keep the bins. Plus the outhouse.

  “Oi!”

  The voice made Opal start and sent her pulsing thrumming. She looked wildly round and saw what she’d missed before: a red, white, and blue Tesco van parked outside her door. The driver hopped down and wiggled his eyebrows at her.

  “You were miles away there!” he said. “Are you number four, love?”

  “Six,” said Opal.

  “Well, can you tekk these for number four?” He had opened the back of the van and dumped out three of the flimsy carrier bags at his feet. “There’s nobody in.”

  “Are you supposed—” Opal pressed her lips together to stop the end of the sentence coming out. Of course, he wasn’t. The customer was supposed to be there for the delivery; if they weren’t, the driver certainly shouldn’t leave it with any Tom, Dick, or Harry next door to be poisoned. Or even someone who lived on packets and would leave a seafood salad on a sunny windowsill for five hours, not thinking. But she didn’t want to turn into Dave, the team leader.

  “Aye, fine,” she said. “Should I sign for them?” And she scrawled her name, Opal Jones, and tried to remember that thing Steph always wrote on her paperwork from the social club when she signed instead of someone who wasn’t there, the same thing people wrote on your formal letters to let you know you weren’t worth the boss’s attention and it was the tea lady or janitor or someone looking after your case. But she couldn’t remember, so she just left Opal Jones signed beside the name FF Gilbert, with nothing to explain.

  Once the driver had gone, she wished she hadn’t had that thought about poison and salmonella. Because now she couldn’t bring herself to leave the bags behind the front door, and she couldn’t fit them all into her little fridge, even bare as it was, so she was going to have rummage through them. Through someone else’s stuff, someone’s private things. An only child—Michael was so much younger than her and was kept as far from her as Steph could get him—Opal had never had her clothes borrowed, felt-tips left to dry with their tops off, hair mousse used up before a big party. If she had ever kept a diary, no one would have forced the little gold lock and read it. Plus, Nicola never even hid stuff that no kid would want to know—wafting about in the mornings with her kimono flying in two wings behind her, contraceptive pills kept in the soap dish to remind her to take them, letters from the rent office sitting on the kitchen table with Nicola’s planned disputes over the sums written in red to help remind her what to say when she phoned them, ranting, from one of those public phones like big plastic helmets in a row down at the Arndale Centre where anyone—even someone from Opal’s class—might hear her.

  So on two counts, Opal hated poking and prying so much it was like a phobia nearly. She didn’t mind asking questions—people could always decide not answer them, after all—but pawing through private things made her feel queasy in the same way she’d sometimes get in Baz’s car with its soft suspension and dirty engine.

  Standing up straight, with her eyes and nose as far away as they could be and still have her hands reach to where they needed—the way nurses stand to change dressings, keeping out of it even when they’re in it—Opal untied the bag handles and looked inside. There were no dirty magazines, no three-litre bottles of cheap cider, nothing like that. Just white sliced, polyunsaturated, mild cheddar type of thing. Oven chips, lasagne, and peas. A lot of tins. But Opal didn’t look at the ambient; she packed the chilled into her fridge and managed to squeeze everything frozen except the chips into the ice-cube bit at the top, so she wrapped the chips in three issues of the free paper, planning to swap them over with the peas if the crying neighbor was more than an hour or two.

  And then back to Zula, that look she had given Opal from right in the corner of her eye. She hadn’t imagined it. She might have imagined the rest—or picked it up wrong, made something of nothing—but that look had been real, quick and furtive as a little mouse dashing out of sight when the lights came on.

  But how could Opal suspect Zula, or any of those five boys that she might be protecting, of knowing something they shouldn’t about Baby Craig? How could she even think those things about the woman who had—face it—given Opal a home? Except that was one of the things she might just be imagining: that niggling question of why Zula so much wanted Nicola’s daughter back in Mote Street, why she made out like Nic herself was such a saint all of a sudden, why she cared so much about Opal having fun—mountain biking?—and what would make her offer free labour for the very “renovations” she said she couldn’t face if new people came to live there.

  Opal was staring out of the kitchen into the yard, moving from foot to foot, making the evening sunlight dazzle through the smears on her just-washed window, when a soft noise—hardly a knock at all—came at the door. Had someone tried the handle? She stepped quietly towards the front of the house, and the knock came again.

  For some reason, when she opened it, the words Jill had sung to her in the salon on her last Saturday came back to her. In a something, something wood, a little old man at the window stood. Of course, he was at the door and he wasn’t really old, she realized when she looked properly at him. Forty maybe, but tired with it. It was just the way he was standing, planted on the step as if he’d been there for hours. (Had he tried the door?) Or as if he’d been placed there, like a statue, for decoration. Or actually, Opal thought, not a statue, but a carving. Like the chainsaw carvings at the garden centres, eagles and warriors and three monkeys one on top of the other to make a totem pole.

  “Hello,” said Opal, trying not to let her voice go up at the end.

  “Hiya,” said the man. He rubbed his hand up and down the leg of his jeans before holding it out to her, and some kind of reddish dust flew out in a cloud from either his skin or jeans, Opal couldn’t tell which.

  She took his hand and let him shake hers up and down once each way, feeling herself flushing. She had hardly ever shaken anyone’s hand in her life and always hated it, not knowing how it was supposed to be done, when to stop, but this man’s hand was as sure and steady as the latch that swung up and down on her cart at the Co-op, locking the cage.

  “I think you’ve got something for me,” he said, making Opal blink. Was he one of Nicola’s friends? A boyfriend? Had he left something behind here,
something that she’d heaved into her wheelie bin without looking at and that he could sue her for?

  “I don’t think so,” Opal said, noticing over his shoulder that one of the Joshi boys—not Doolal, one of the younger ones she hadn’t sorted out again yet—was standing watching. She relaxed and went as far as to lean against the door jamb. “I can’t think what it is, anyway.”

  The little man frowned and looked down at a piece of paper in his hand. As he moved his head, more of the red dust flew out of his hair.

  “The driver’s note says next door,” he said. “And the other side’s empty.”

  “Oh God, yes!” said Opal. All the puzzling over Zula had driven it clean out of her brain. “God, sorry. Your shopping. Mr. … Gibson, was it? I’ve got it right here.” Vik or Advay or whoever it was nodded slightly and turned away. “I’m Opal, by the way. Pleased to meet you.” He stuck out his hand again and shook hers up and down like before, like someone at a slot machine.

  “Hiya,” he said again.

  “I hope you don’t think I was being nosy, but I just split it up a bit and put the cold stuff away. This weather, you know?” She was calling over her shoulder, hopping like a bird around the kitchen, shoving the three bagfuls back together. She brought them to him, then remembered the chips and went back again. He smiled as she handed over the newspaper parcel.

  “Thanks,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”

  “I don’t mind,” Opal said, thinking that anyone who cried as much as this man, all alone in his house at night, could do with a friend. She looked closely at him to see if his eyes were red or his nose swollen, now that she knew who he was, but the bags under his eyes might have been from tiredness or age. Or from that red dust he had all over him. “In fact, you know, you can enter up to nine alternative delivery addresses. You don’t have to do it on the nod. The next driver might be a stickler, or what have you.”

  “Nine?” said the man, his eyebrows shooting upwards, turning his forehead to corduroy and showing white crows feet at the corners of his eyes where the dust had missed. He looked over his shoulder. “We’ve only got seven neighbors.”