Risking It All Page 28

  ‘Rennie could never leave well alone,’ she grumbled. ‘I didn’t tell him anything, really I didn’t, Fran. I don’t know how he pieced it together. But that was Rennie for you.’

  I’d had an idea or two, but I’d kept them to myself along with everything else. To begin with there was my mother’s letter to me, which, as I told you earlier, I suspected he’d managed to read. But perhaps things had gone wrong even before that. They’d started going wrong when she’d called Rennie in to find me, so that in turn I could find Miranda-Nicola.

  Of course, she hadn’t mentioned Miranda to Rennie. But on the other hand, she was very ill when she spoke to him, and on medication. Little wonder if she’d been confused at times, especially when discussing such a stressful subject. Was it possible that, in talking to Rennie about me, she had sometimes slipped into calling me Miranda—‘Find Francesca for me’ alternated with ‘Find Miranda’—and that Rennie had sussed pretty quickly she was talking about two different daughters? Like a lot of other theories I’d had about this business, though, it would remain in the realm of ‘perhaps’.

  It had been one of those clear, cool days following rainy weather when the light seems to make everything look crisp and distinct. Although by the time I turned into the hospice grounds evening shadows were gathering, the light still seemed to hold a special quality. The surrounding vegetation had a curious luminosity. The big, irregularly shaped rhododendron bushes were like slumbering beasts. Their shiny dark-green leaves looked softer and more tactile. Everything looked about to move, to reach out and touch me. This Surrey garden was as exotic as the rampantly tropical Palm House. A light breeze blew across my face. For a second, I felt as if I were someone else, that I stood in the dusk and watched me walk up the path. The house ahead of me looked unreal. As I approached the front door, I saw a movement. Sister Helen had appeared on the other side. She pulled the door open and stood waiting for me.

  I knew what had happened, what she was going to say, and anticipated her. ‘Mum’s died, hasn’t she?’

  ‘I am so sorry, Fran,’ she said. ‘It was only about an hour ago. I’ve been trying to find you. I telephoned the shop and they said you’d gone to the police station, so I called there but you’d left. I guessed you were on your way.’

  She stood aside and let me into the foyer. Delicately, she asked, ‘Would you like to see her?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Have you seen a dead person before?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I’d seen my dad and my grandmother, both nicely laid out. I’d seen a girl I shared a squat with hanging from a ceiling fixture. I’d seen Rennie Duke collapsed in his car. I was notching up more than my fair share of scenes of death.

  ‘You have to remember,’ she said, ‘the undertaker hasn’t been yet. We’re waiting for him. We phoned our regular funeral parlour. Do you have an alternative wish?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m sure the usual man will be fine.’ I thought of Susie Duke and wondered if I was going to be expected to pay for the funeral. I hadn’t those kinds of funds and it was too much to hope that Mum had been insured. Hideously embarrassed, I began, ‘I can’t – I’m unemployed . . .’

  She put a hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s all right. We’re a registered charity, and one of the things we take care of, in specified circumstances, is the funeral costs. Don’t worry.’

  I followed her down the corridor. It seemed wrong to have been discussing money like this, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to say or do.

  Mum was lying nicely in her bed by the window. Through it I could see the birdbath and a pair of starlings jostling one another in it. I wondered if she’d been watching them when she died. She looked surprised, as if despite living with the knowledge of her own mortality, Death had still seemed an odd sort of visitor to have turned up in her room. Her lips were parted as if to ask what he was doing there. I wanted to cry but there weren’t any tears. I felt, if anything, numb.

  I heard my voice asking, ‘Was she alone?’

  ‘Yes, but she’d just had visitors,’ said Sister Helen’s voice in reply.

  That permeated the fog surrounding me. ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘A young girl and a social worker.’ I must have looked shocked. She asked, ‘Are you all right, dear? Do you want to sit down?’

  I sat down on the chair she pushed forward. She stretched out her hand to Mum’s water jug, but I waved it aside.

  ‘Was the girl Nicola Wilde?’ I asked hoarsely.

  ‘Yes.’ Sister Helen put her head on one side, much like one of the birds out there in the garden. ‘You knew about her?’

  ‘Yes, I knew.’ This was awkward. ‘Do you – did anyone explain?’ I asked.

  ‘I had a chat with the social worker while Nicola went in to see Eva. I gather the girl was adopted and Eva was her birth mother. I had a feeling, you know, that Eva was waiting for something. I can tell you now that she hung on far longer than we were expecting when she arrived here.’

  Waiting for me to bring Miranda back. Sister Helen had spoken of love making sacrifices. Perhaps my mother had been self-centred in some ways, but in one she hadn’t. She’d left me with Dad and Grandma, so she reckoned I was all right. But Miranda had faced the kind of life facing the wailing baby in the squat I’d visited with Marty. And then Jerry and Flora had walked out of the hospital, deep in their grief, and into her path. She’d given away the baby she truly loved because she wanted a better life for her daughter.

  ‘I’m glad she came,’ I said.

  ‘I think it made Eva happy,’ Sister Helen replied. Happy, and ready to let go.

  I travelled home in that curiously numb state. Of course, Nicola had been told by now that she wasn’t the Wildes’ own child. Perhaps she’d demanded to know about her real mother and brow-beaten the social worker into taking her to the hospice. I could imagine my sister doing that. I wondered how she was coping, poor kid.

  In my head, I addressed my mother: ‘I managed it, then. I got Miranda back for you.’ I felt I had her approval, and that she’d found her peace.

  It was dark when I got back to Camden. Given the way I was feeling, even the idea of going back straight away to that dingy room of Norman’s was unbearable. I wanted company, and to talk to someone. I started to walk towards the shop. Before I got there, however, a fire engine raced past me, followed by another.

  When I got to the shop, Hari was there alone. As soon as I appeared in the doorway, he threw up both hands, darted out from behind the counter and swooped on me.

  ‘My dear, my dear! You are safe! We have been so worried!’

  ‘Yes, of course I’m safe!’ I said. I looked round. ‘Where’s Gan?’

  In the storeroom, Bonnie, hearing my voice, began to bark.

  ‘At the fire, of course,’ said Hari. ‘Because he was afraid, you see, that you would come back from visiting your mother at the hospice and have gone there, to that room you rented.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I exclaimed. ‘Norman’s place is on fire!’

  Chapter Eighteen

  As I approached the scene of the fire, I saw that the winter evening sky above the area was glowing an angry orange. The air was filled with smoke and tiny specks of burning debris. Breathing was difficult and painful. My nasal passages and throat were beginning to feel sore. There was a terrible stench of blistering varnish and paint, charred wood, smouldering carpets and furnishings.

  Fire engines blocked the street. A crowd had gathered at the end of the road and was being ordered back by a couple of coppers. The watchers still hung on obstinately, fascinated by fire, by destruction and the sheer terrible power of the scene. At my old school, one of our teachers had attributed civilisation to man’s mastery of fire, allowing him to heat and light his cave and cook his bison steaks. Fire is something so important the ancients reckoned someone stole it from the gods. The gods must have had a few good laughs since then. Fire isn’t so easily mastered. It’s like trying to domesticate a caged wild beast. It’s wa
iting, just waiting, for you to turn your back.

  Here, in this street, the beast was free and destroying all about it. Despite the gallons of water pouring down on it, the fire hid, waited and pounced. As I watched, a giant spray of water from a hose soared into the air. The burning roof hissed and crackled. The flames subsided for an instant before breaking out again. From what I could see of the house it was a blackened, windowless shell. The houses to either side hadn’t escaped unscathed, blackened with smoke, windows shattered from the heat, paintwork blistered.

  A man standing next to me said, to no one in particular, ‘There’s gotta have been somefing stored in that house, somefing what burns up fast. I never seen a place go up so quick.’

  More water arched into the air. The flame subsided again and this time didn’t reappear. I shook the man’s arm. ‘Did they get the people out?’

  He looked at me in surprise. ‘I dunno.’

  I pushed my way between onlookers until I was stopped by a copper. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘what d’you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I live there,’ I shouted above the surrounding clamour.

  ‘What, in that house? Hang on!’ He attracted the attention of a nearby firefighter. ‘This girl says she lived in the house!’

  The fireman lumbered towards me in his heavy protective kit. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked. I told him. ‘Right, Fran,’ he said, ‘you can tell us how many people might have been in there. A neighbour says the old chap took in lodgers.’

  ‘I don’t know how many lived in the basement,’ I told him, ‘but four of us lived in the rest of the place, including the owner. Do you mean you haven’t got anyone out?’

  ‘We got two out,’ he said. ‘The old boy who owns the place is one of ’em. He’s not making any sense. Keeps going on about his collection. What did he collect?’

  ‘Newspapers,’ I said unhappily.

  ‘News—’ His jaw dropped. ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘What about the others?’ I persisted.

  ‘One other. But he run off, jumped out the ambulance and legged it down the street.’

  Poor Zog, still running. Would he ever stop?

  ‘So that makes three, with you accounted for,’ said the fireman. ‘You say one more lived in the main part of the house?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘In the attic.’

  As I spoke there was a great rending crack and crash and the roof of the house caved in.

  Shrieks and cries rose from the watchers. We all surged back. I cannoned into someone and hands gripped my shoulders. Someone was yelling my name in my ear. I turned and saw Ganesh.

  ‘Oh my God, Fran,’ he gasped. ‘I thought you were in there.’ His face was running with sweat, which had streaked long rivulets through grime. His long black hair was plastered down. He must have been standing as close to the fire as he could get.

  ‘I just came back from the hospice,’ I said. ‘I went to the shop.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s get you out of here.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said the fireman, reappearing. ‘Where can we find her? She’ll be needed for the enquiry.’

  Ganesh told him to contact me at the newsagent’s, then put his arm round my shoulder and steered me clear of the crowd and away from the horrid scene.

  At the shop, Hari had been fretting. When he saw us, he seized us both, dragging us inside with a frantic, ‘Come, come, come!’

  ‘I’m closing up early,’ said Ganesh in a voice which brooked no argument, and Hari didn’t utter a word of objection.

  We all went upstairs to the flat and Hari made us herbal tea. Ganesh and I reeked of smoke. Gan had pulled off his sweater and put on a fresh one. He brought one for me, too. I realised I had nothing but what I stood up in. Even when I’d been flooded out of the flat, I’d managed to rescue a few personal bits. Not this time. This time my loss was doubled. In one day I’d lost both my mother and my home. I thanked God for Bonnie, safe downstairs in Hari’s storeroom when fire broke out, and now, by special dispensation, allowed up here in the flat.

  I sat on the sofa, sipping at my tea, while the others watched me, two pairs of dark eyes filled with concern. I wanted to thank them for caring, but it would have embarrassed them. Bonnie had jumped up on the sofa and lay with her head resting on my knee as if to make sure I didn’t slip out again without her knowledge. Her bright little boot-button eyes were rolled up in their sockets to fix on my face, and the fur above them was puckered in a worried canine frown. I touched her head reassuringly and her tail moved uncertainly.

  ‘What will you do now, my dear?’ asked Hari. ‘There is still my garage—’

  ‘She can stay here,’ Ganesh interrupted him. ‘She can sleep on the sofa. Tomorrow I’ll go with her to the council. They must find her somewhere.’ He hesitated. ‘While you were gone, that Sister Helen person from the hospice rang, wanting to talk to you. I told her you were down at the copshop, adding to a statement. I wondered—’

  ‘My mother died today,’ I said. ‘About an hour before I got there.’

  They were kind, commiserating and comforting. I sat there letting their condolences and kindness wash over me. I still felt numb, not knowing how I was supposed to reply. After a while, Hari went into the kitchen to start chopping up vegetables for the evening meal, which they assumed I’d eat with them. I wasn’t hungry, but I couldn’t refuse.

  When he’d left us, Ganesh asked, ‘You want to talk about her?’

  ‘I want to talk,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know what to say. Nicola had been to see her with some social worker in tow. So I guess she died happy. It was what she wanted. Maybe she just let go after she’d seen Nicola. I don’t know. I wish – I can’t help wishing she’d waited for me to come.’

  ‘Dying isn’t a time we have the picking and choosing of,’ said Ganesh.

  ‘No. I think she was glad to have seen me again. What she really wanted was for me to find Nicola, but I’ve got my head round that now. I still think she was pleased to find me, for my own sake.’

  ‘Of course she was!’ said Ganesh firmly.

  I met his gaze. ‘What I do know,’ I said, ‘is that I’m glad I saw her again. When Rennie Duke first came to see me and told me she was alive and looking for me, I thought meeting her again would be the last thing I wanted. But I did want it, really. It’s as if a bit of me was amputated long ago and now it’s been sewn back. Perhaps she felt that way too.’

  Ganesh reached out and took my hand. ‘She is at peace, Fran. She got her children back. Whatever Morgan says to you, you did all the right things.’

  I pulled a face. ‘Morgan’s not pleased with me!’

  ‘Let her stick to catching crooks and murderers,’ said Ganesh. ‘Some things are none of her business.’

  In the end, the basement tenants were accounted for, both out at the time of the fire. Zog had vanished. They found two charred bodies in the burned-out wreckage; one was identified as Sid, the attic tenant. They never identified the other.

  Ganesh came with me to my mother’s funeral. Nicola wasn’t there to say goodbye, which I was sorry about. Perhaps the social worker had jibbed at going, or there’d been some fuss over Nicola visiting the hospice. Morgan was there. She was nice to me, but Ganesh glowered at her, all the same.

  Social Security made me an emergency cash payment for some clothes. The council found me a temporary room in a hostel. I hated it there. An air of hopelessness permeated the place. There was one girl who sat on the stairs all day long with her head in her hands. She was always there. You had to step round her. For all I knew, she stayed there all night. The people who ran the place were mostly volunteers. They meant well but they had that kind of waterproof cheerfulness that drives me nuts. I thought that if I didn’t get out of there soon, I’d go as mad as that poor creature on the stairs.

  Then, out of the blue, I got a visitor: Sister Helen.

  ‘How are you, Fran?’ she asked, looking round the tiny bare room with its hard bed on which the b
right-red duvet only served to draw attention to the dearth of other furnishings and the pitted walls.

  ‘Surviving,’ I told her.

  She smiled. ‘You’d like to move out of here, of course you would. I’ve come with a suggestion. I have a friend who’s involved in a charity which buys houses, renovates them, divides them into flats and lets them out at controlled rents to suitable homeless young people. Of course they only work on a small scale and can only offer places to very few, but it so happens that one flat is available, and when I explained your circumstances to them, they thought you would be very suitable. Would you like to go and see it?’