‘He’s not in prison.’ Louisa shook her head. ‘Do you have to do that?’ She glanced at the dog-end. Robert ignored her.
‘But you said he got fourteen years.’
‘He did.’
‘If I promise not to smoke any more, will you tell me what happened?’ Robert put on his sunglasses. The glare behind Louisa made him squint.
‘Gustaw Wystrach is dead.’ Louisa stood and hitched up her jeans. Her white T-shirt didn’t quite meet the ornate buckle of her leather belt. ‘He hanged himself in prison.’
‘And you didn’t think to tell me this before we left London?’ Robert slid another cigarette from the packet and perched it between his lips.
‘You said—’
‘I haven’t lit it yet. So who the hell are we visiting now then?’
‘Search me. His mother, aunt, wife, daughter? I know not.’ Louisa plucked the cigarette from Robert’s lips, javelined it into a litter bin and opened the car door, briefly leaning on the soft roof of the Mercedes. ‘Mind if we go topless?’ She grinned before ducking inside.
As they drove through the town, the gentle summer breeze transformed into a warm wind and if it hadn’t been another day without Erin and Ruby, Robert would have enjoyed the sun wrapping hot fingers around his neck and tanning the ridge of his nose a shade deeper than the rest of his face. They entered an unremarkable suburb on the north side of town where Robert slowed to allow Louisa to study the map.
‘It’s two streets away,’ she said, squinting down the rack of dismal sixties concrete-fronted council houses. They couldn’t have been more conspicuous, thought Robert as he moved the car forward through the grim neighbourhood. ‘Turn left here.’
Number 72 Bell Grove Gardens was the least attractive of all the houses in the street. The concrete and pebble-dashed exterior suggested it was council property and unlike the neighbouring houses, it was most likely still owned by the local authority. Compared to the effort made by the other residents, such as hanging baskets of lurid orange and blue annuals and front gardens decorated with flaking gnomes and stone ornaments, number 72 was shabby and unkempt, perhaps even unoccupied.
‘Nice,’ Louisa commented, peering at the litter-filled front garden. ‘Shall I wait here?’
‘What, don’t want to dirty your shoes?’ Robert pressed a button and the car roof settled back into place. ‘Come on,’ he ordered. ‘You’re my investigator. You’ll know what to say to whoever might be alive in there.’
‘I will?’ Louisa followed Robert, both of them fixing their eyes on the decaying house as they crossed the street.
Robert marched up the front path as if the building were the keeper of all Erin’s secrets. When he knocked on the door and no one came, they ventured through the side gate and into a weed-choked rear garden. Some kids were fighting over a ball in the neighbouring property. They went around the side of a tatty extension to the back door. It was open and music crackled from a radio that sounded as if it was a tweak away from being tuned in. Robert rapped on the open door.
‘Anyone home?’
An old woman was suddenly there, materialising from nowhere and holding a laundry basket. They stared at each other, perfectly still, each sizing up the other. Robert saw someone’s wife, perhaps married for decades, her weary body resigned to pegging out the washing and dishing up pie and chips for the rest of her life before she died unnoticed in an old people’s home. Her skin carried a light sheen of grease as if she was sweating and her eyes, probably once blue, looked as if they had cried too many times and the colour had been washed out.
The old woman would have seen a stranger on her doorstep, a threat. Robert slid his sunglasses up onto his head.
‘Mrs Wystrach?’ Robert said finally, not sure if he had pronounced the name correctly. The woman barely nodded. ‘Would you have a few minutes? I’d like to speak to you about something important.’ The woman frowned, glanced at Louisa who stood behind Robert, and became agitated, the expression on her lined face showing fear. ‘Something interesting, actually,’ Robert added, like a stranger would offer sweets to a child.
‘Wait,’ she snapped and pushed the back door to, slipping into the darkness of the house. A moment later she returned with a big man, also old and also frowning. He filled the entire space in the doorway, looming over Robert in height because of the six-inch doorstep.
‘Good morning.’ Robert held out his hand and heard Louisa clear her throat. ‘I’m Robert Knight. I’d like to ask you some questions if you have time.’ The big man finally took his hand. It was a suspicious handshake, too frail for a man of that size, Robert thought, and his skin didn’t seem to have a temperature. ‘May I come in?’ The two faces continued to stare at them, their eyes flicking between Robert and the silent Louisa, the woman still pressing the basket of laundry against her hip.
Finally, the man moved aside, nodded and beckoned Robert into the gloom of their kitchen, which had the decor and furniture of the 1960s. The four of them stood around a pale blue Formica table. Mrs Wystrach placed the basket on the floor and adjusted her floral skirt. Robert focused his attention as if he were in court and preparing to cross-examine a witness. He saw the pilling on her grey short-sleeved sweater, the slight stain on her apron, her yellow-grey hair tucked back at her nape and an array of age spots on her cheeks as if someone had spilled tea on her face. He desperately searched for something that would link her to Erin, to Ruby, to the missing past of his wife that he longed to know.
The woman reminded him of nothing, of no one.
‘Are you the police?’ The man’s voice was weighed down with accent.
‘No, not at all. I wanted to show you this.’ Robert unfurled his left hand to expose the locket. It shone in his palm, casting an aura of wonder and shock over the old couple. The woman gasped and steadied herself on the back of a chair. The big man said nothing but Robert noticed his succession of swallows, didn’t miss it when his neck stiffened and his hands balled. Sweat beads erupted on his floury scalp.
‘Do you recognise it?’ Despite his recent assessment of the old woman, Robert already knew the answer. A pulse of hope quickened his heart and then slowed again as he checked himself. Even if the pair recognised the locket, it still didn’t prove it was anything to do with Erin.
‘Edyta,’ the woman whispered. The name seemed to summon spirits from another time, such was the atmosphere in the kitchen.
Robert prised the locket open and the woman slapped one hand over her mouth and crossed herself with the other when she saw the faded photograph. The man turned away and grunted but Robert knew he had seen. He could tell by the sudden prominence of the veins on the old man’s neck.
‘Mr Wystrach?’ He was guessing that was his name. ‘Do you know the woman in this picture?’
He didn’t reply but turned off the radio instead.
‘Of course he does.’ The old woman approached Robert for a closer look. She wiped a finger under her eye. ‘It’s his mother. Edyta Wystrach. She’s dead now.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘She was old and—’
‘Where did you get this?’ The old man’s accent thickened with anger and volume powering it. He banged his already tight fists onto the table.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’ Robert took a step back. ‘I didn’t realise your mother was dead.’
‘It’s not the photo of his mother that’s bothering him.’ Mrs Wystrach shrugged and reached for the kettle. She filled it and lit the stove. She seemed resigned, as if something they had been waiting for all their lives had arrived as casually as a letter on the doormat. ‘It’s the locket that my husband’s curious about.’
‘Go on.’ Robert held it out to the rigid man. ‘Take it. Have a look.’
‘Or should I say, he’s bothered by where it’s come from.
Who
it’s come from.’ Mrs Wystrach wiped her hands down her apron. ‘It was Ruth’s, you see.’
TWENTY-TWO
When Andy left, I knew I’d got what I deserved. Loneliness, misery, desolation and a vat of thick, stinking guilt in which to bathe – when I could be bothered. The sun never shone in my new world and days would pass when I wouldn’t speak to a single soul. Except Natasha’s soul, that is. I found myself offering her occasional words, like sorry or I love you, but she never replied. She just left me a tingle in the core of my spine and a whisper of cold air on my neck. For a time, that was enough.
After a while, I began writing letters to her. They’re all in the Natasha box up in the loft. But it still didn’t feel as if I was connecting with my baby and so strong was the desire to make contact that I went to see a psychic woman. She’d been advertising in our area for a few weeks.
Make contact with lost loved ones
. It seemed appropriate.
When I telephoned Madame Luna, she invited me for an appointment at her little semi-detached house across the other side of town. I took a bus and twenty-five pounds and a notebook and pencil to write down what she said. She led me upstairs and into a bedroom that was decorated like the inside of a gypsy’s tent. It was all red and purple and gold silk and candles burned everywhere. There was a small table with a crystal ball on it and a chair positioned each side. She told me to sit down. Madame Luna was fat and looked like a man but she changed my life.
‘Someone precious is trying to contact you,’ she said with a husky voice and I fell into her black eyes, desperate to be reunited with Natasha. Her hands hovered around the glass ball and I swear I saw shards of light crackling between her palms and the afterlife. I began to cry. ‘She says don’t be sad or she’ll cry too.’
‘She?’ I asked.
‘There’s a little girl wanting to make contact. A little girl who loves you very much.’
As soon as my body stiffened, the instant my pupils dilated, the very second that sweat erupted on my top lip, Madame Luna sank her tendrils into my fragile body like the quick-growing roots of a pernicious weed. Later I would learn she was just doing her job.
‘How old is she?’ I asked.
‘Two, perhaps three.’
My body relaxed with disappointment.
‘Although, wait . . .’ Madame Luna stared at me, agonised over the crystal ball, studied the minute muscle tremors that danced beneath my clothing like a biography. She understood the whiff of hope on each of my exhaled breaths. ‘I think maybe younger, older . . .’ I must have signalled unconsciously because she suddenly exclaimed, ‘This is a very young child. A baby, I think.’
I didn’t care that she was asking me, not telling me. I nodded frantically, releasing Madame Luna into revealing a frenzy of facts, some close to the truth, some so far removed I ignored them. I learned that Natasha was in heaven and that she loved me and forgave me and would talk to me every time I came to see Madame Luna and paid her for the privilege.
Before I left, my eyes hot from crying, Madame Luna made the mistake of telling me that I was a very intuitive person, possibly even psychic myself. Perhaps it was her way of ensuring I came back for another appointment, to make me feel special, to flatter her way into my trust.
Instead, she set me on the path to clairvoyance and, before long, I had placed an advertisement in the local shop window promoting my services. Within a week I had three clients of my own and I finally felt I was doing something useful while at the same time remaining close to Natasha.
I’m not really psychic. I simply have an ability to see the thread of sadness stitched into so many lives. With a gentle tug, everyone will unravel.
Sarah is visiting me today. She’s two hours late. I’m fretting now and don’t like the vein on my temple bulging and pulsing in time with every second she’s not with me.
Perhaps she’s had her baby and not bothered to tell me. I couldn’t bear it if I didn’t get to see the little thing, couldn’t stand to miss out on pressing my nose against its neck and nibbling its fingernails short when they get too long. ‘Don’t let me down, Sarah,’ I call out, one minute checking on the cakes I have baking for our tea and the next sticking my head out of the front door and peering up and down the street.
I am briefly halted by the line of sunlight that dares to enter my house through the open door. It’s like a bridge from my gloom to the place where Natasha and all babies live. I stare up at the sky and wonder what would happen if I crossed the bridge. I know I will get my baby back.
As the months turned into years, my contact with PC Miranda Hobbs and Detective Inspector George Lumley transformed into an annual update. An update of nothing. Natasha minus three years and they officially put the file into the hopeless pile.
In a way, it was a relief; a signal to move on and forget my baby. They didn’t bother me again with accusing questions about wool and cakes, realising that they’d taken a wrong turn. I tried hard to get on with my life. I dragged my memories around like a dead weight attached to my ankle, hindering me wherever I went, whatever I did.
Each time I passed the local playgroup on the way to the shops, I pretended that I was going to fetch Natasha, that she would come running up to me with a wet painting or a monster made out of loo roll tubes and empty cereal packets. I saw all the other mothers standing there, waiting for their darlings, and wondered what would happen if I just stepped inside the gates to see if there was a spare child. But I never did. I always walked on by.
My divorce from Andy was swift and cracked my life like scored glass. Finally, everything had gone. I immersed myself in my new career, building up a regular bank of desperate clients all wanting to fondle their sadness, unable to let go. That was why I was so good at what I claimed to be: I couldn’t let go either. Easily I wrapped my finger round their threads of misery, each time tugging a little harder, each time taking their twenty-five pounds, paying my mortgage, feeding on their grief.
I made quite a name for myself. I even got asked to have a stall at the school fête, now an annual booking, and I did an interview on the local radio station and regularly wrote columns for magazines. I began to work the pub circuit, and still do, hosting psychic evenings with other local mystics and healers. The punters queue up for their drinks and then queue up to see me. I tell them what they want to hear, pressing on the truth by clever deduction rather than super powers. I know I’m a fake, I know I’m a fraud but sometimes I get that feeling that something big is about to happen, something so life-changing that all I can do is gawp. Like I am now.