He, too, stared into the crystal ball and contemplated the impossible scenario of Ruth, his Erin, stealing another woman’s baby. But all he saw in the glass was the face of Mary Bowman as she was denied her children.
‘I can see a woman. Her life is as fragile as the wing of a moth.’ Cheryl’s voice was barely there. She continued to stare into the glass. ‘She’s always scared. Always running away.’ Cheryl suddenly pulled her hands away from the ball. Her face went blank and her eyes hardened. She turned round and pulled a mohair wrap off the back of the chair and slung it around her shoulders. Robert noticed the hairs on her arms standing upright.
‘Go on,’ he urged, knowing she’d seen something, even though he didn’t believe in this kind of thing.
She gazed at the ball again. ‘Do you want me to be honest?’
‘Of course.’ He wished he could be honest but the truth, although it would change this woman’s life, would destroy Erin’s.
‘You lost someone dear, not so long ago. You blame yourself and live in circles, dizzying yourself with old habits, tired ways.’ Cheryl hugged the shawl tighter. ‘So scared,’ she whispered with a look that said the same about her.
‘And?’ Robert’s hunger for more information nearly outweighed the reason he had come. Cheryl had clearly seen Jenna.
‘I don’t see any more.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’ Robert said too loudly, wounded by her words even though he knew they were true. He wanted to shout at her and shake her cold body then cup her face in his hands and whisper that she could stop hurting now, that the pain could be over, that he had found her lost baby; that his wife, Erin, had stolen her and brought her up as her own, for whatever reasons, when she ran away from home, and that if she liked, she could have her back, to keep.
Except that to say those words would also be to shatter the life of a young girl who had just discovered confidence and happiness. How could he strip Ruby of the only mother she had ever known? How could he betray the woman he loved? Without doubt Erin would be tried and sentenced and the whole nation would know her story.
How could he?
Robert slouched in his chair. He groaned loudly, causing several other clients to stare. ‘I’m sorry.’ He straightened again when a look of surprise swept over Cheryl’s weary face. ‘It’s been a tough week.’
To ease the awkward moment, Cheryl dealt a spread of tarot cards. Robert focused on the elaborate pictures, not caring what they meant. She could tell him that he was going to be run over by a bus tomorrow and he wouldn’t mind. He just wanted her to mention her baby.
‘As I thought,’ she said, businesslike again, as if the moment between them, that thread of near connection, had never happened. ‘A long life with lots of changes afoot. But for the better,’ she added. Then, ‘You must have specific questions. Everybody does.’
Oh, I do
.
‘Does anyone ever tell
your
fortune?’ he asked.
Cheryl relaxed, amused. ‘I can read my own future. Why would I need anyone else to?’
Robert let it pass. She continued to translate the cards, while he tried to lay the map of what she said over real life. There was something about a dilemma, crossroads perhaps, nothing that wouldn’t fit the next punter as easily. Cheryl mentioned his work but told him he was in the wrong job. He knew he wasn’t. Robert looked at his watch, wondering how long he had left.
‘Can I buy you a drink when you’ve finished working?’
‘I’m running late. I have five more clients to see yet.’ No eye contact. Her cheeks reddened.
‘Lunch tomorrow?’
‘Mr Knight, did you come here to ask me on a date or do you want a reading?’ She folded her arms, abandoning the tarot.
‘I’m sorry.You’re probably married with a family and think that I’m a sleaze—’
‘You already told me that
you
have a family!’
‘It wasn’t meant to be a date. Just a drink.’ Robert swallowed, felt his jaw twitch. He knew she was experienced in noticing the signs, just as he was. ‘So
are
you married?’ He remembered there was a husband – Andrew Varney? – mentioned in the newspaper reports following the abduction. Robert instantly regretted probing. Cheryl dipped her head and clasped her hands on her legs. She was barely breathing.
‘I’m divorced.’ It was as if she was lifting a boulder. ‘A long time ago now.’ Signalling a degree of bravery, she shuffled the tarot cards around.
‘I’m a widower but married again now.’ Robert waited for her to absorb their connection, that they had each, somehow, lost loved ones. He waited for her to cross the bridge. ‘Do you have children?’
The gap of time was intolerable. The moment stretched to infinity but the immediate blankness on her face was what he had expected. Robert knew that underneath the layers of chocolate hair, beneath her flawless skin, behind the unfathomable eyes that had seen so much pain, was the core of her feelings.
‘No, I don’t.’ Her reply was the javelin of an Olympic athlete. The words were driven with finality:
don’t ask me any more
.
‘I have a daughter.’ There. It was said. He had shown her Ruby. ‘She’s thirteen.’
Cheryl smiled. ‘Difficult times then.’ She seemed grateful for the reprieve.
Robert heard the clairvoyant at the next table delivering a glimpse of the future to his client. He stole a look. A young woman sat riveted by the older man’s revelations. He was reading her palm.
‘Does anyone ever come back and tell you that you got it wrong?’ Robert didn’t know where he was taking it now.
‘Complain?’ Cheryl laughed. ‘It’s a bit hard to moan about fate. Not like you can take it back and ask for a refund, demand another life.’
‘But what if you were so wide of the mark, you know, with your information that they asked for their money back?’
‘If they were that unhappy then, no, I suppose I wouldn’t charge my fee.’
‘What if something should have been glaringly obvious but you overlooked it? Would you charge then?’
‘I can only tell my clients what I see. I access this information in a number of ways.’ Cheryl gestured to the crystal ball, touched the cards. ‘If you’re that much of a sceptic, Mr Knight, I suggest you don’t make appointments with clairvoyants. ’ Apparently recovered from the sudden glimpse of her past, Cheryl defended her occupation.
‘How did you first get into it? The psychic stuff.’
‘I went to see one myself. She told me I had a gift.’
‘Why did you go and see a clairvoyant?’ Robert didn’t realise he had incised and touched a nerve.
In an instant it was all over. Cheryl stood up. ‘Mr Knight, I will not charge you for this consultation because you obviously have no desire to learn anything about yourself. If you wouldn’t mind,’ she levered her arm at the door, ‘I have other genuine clients to see. Goodnight.’
Unperturbed by the outburst, in fact relieved that it had reached this point, otherwise how else would he know how to say the words, Robert also stood and leaned his hands on the small table. It wobbled.
‘I
know
,’ he began in a controlled tone, not too loud. Years of experience in court, impossible clients, even his recent struggle with Erin levelled his words. ‘I
know
what happened.’
Cheryl cocked her head. The space between her eyebrows tightened.
‘I know about your baby.’
Cheryl staggered and leaned on the chair, gripping it for support. Her knuckle bones turned yellow, nearly erupting through the skin.
‘I’ve found your baby, Cheryl. It’s all over.’
TWENTY-SIX
I soon learnt how hostels worked. Don’t ask for much and neither will they. Two nights here, another couple there. If I stayed too long in one place, they began to ask questions that I was no good at answering. I managed to track down several old clients and earned a few hundred so that one night I was able to treat Ruby to a night in a posh hotel. We ate ice cream out of the tub and watched weepy movies until we fell asleep in the king-sized bed.
Then I saw the advertisement. I might have missed it if Ruby hadn’t stopped to tie her trainer lace.
Assistant wanted
. I left Ruby standing in the street and impressed the flower shop owner with my extensive floral knowledge. I began work the next day and by the end of the week we’d rented a room in a house full of students. They didn’t care who we were because I paid two weeks up front with an advance on my wages. In some ways it was good to be back in London.
I enrolled Ruby at the local comprehensive school two weeks after the start of term. It should have been a new beginning; her first year at secondary school. She was eleven. It was a whole month before I realised she’d been truanting. Her bed was soaked from tears and I found her sobbing with the sheet stuffed in her mouth to silence her misery. When I pulled it out, she screamed. When I walked in on her in the bathroom, I saw the bruises on her back.
I made an appointment with the headmaster but he had little time for my complaints.
‘We have other itinerant children in the school. Why doesn’t she play with them?’ He thought we were gypsies.
I allowed Ruby to come to the flower shop where I worked. It was situated on a respectable high street and mid-morning she would run to the bakery and fetch doughnuts and hot chocolate. But she soon got bored and tried school again. I had to re-enrol her because the school secretary thought we had moved on.
With several months’ salary behind me, I rented a small bedsit that was all our own. No more sharing bathrooms or labelling food in the fridge. When the school asked for a copy of Ruby’s birth certificate, I kept promising I’d send it in. I never did and in the end they gave up asking. To them, we were trouble.
The florist was next to a music store. At three forty-five Ruby would step off the school bus right outside the shop. I’d see her trying not to smile as she spied me through the foliage of the window display and instead of coming to greet me, she’d go next door and run her fingers across the keys of the Bluthners and Steinways.
At first the owner was cautious of a pre-teen girl trailing sticky fingers over his expensive instruments but one day, when Ruby plucked up the courage to allow the fingers of her right hand to strike a complicated tune, he pulled out the stool for her and adjusted the height.
‘Do you play?’ he asked and Ruby nodded, too terrified to speak. Through the partition wall of the shop units, I heard my daughter lose herself in Debussy, Chopin and Mozart, everything Baxter had taught her over the years. From then on, whenever she wanted, she was allowed to go into the music shop and play the piano. The owner said it helped his business.
Months later, I was able to afford a second-hand piano for Ruby and I’ll never know how the removals men squeezed it into the living space of our tiny bedsit.
I’m rearranging Fresh As A Daisy. I’ve learned over the years that customers expect a completely new look every couple of weeks. It lures them back. Baxter taught me the importance of window arrangement. ‘Your invitation to the world,’ he said.
I’m aiming for the bleached driftwood New England kind of look today – lots of twisted, weathered branches, beach pebbles with whitewashed pallets to support galvanised pots of stunning grasses. I managed to get hold of a fishing net and I’m trying to hang it up at the back of the display but it keeps dropping down. The number of people who walk by and stop to stare, you’d think one of them would lend a hand. I pause to make a coffee, leaning against the counter to study my work while the kettle boils.
Eventually, the window is looking pretty much how I want it. It seems to be attracting attention and I get a nice comment from one of my regulars. She comes twice a week to buy an arrangement for the firm of accountants where she works. Some of my other displays are looking a little limp. I fetch my spray canister and a stepladder and barely before I have misted anything, Robert strides into the shop. My heart skips and I smile. I like it when he drops by unexpected.
‘Darling, what a surprise!’ I jump backwards off the ladder, still holding the sprayer. ‘You said you’d be away all day.’ He’d left me a brief message yesterday saying Den had sent him to a legal conference. ‘Den’s just terrible, making you go away at such short notice. I missed you last night.’ I think of kissing him but stop short. ‘You need a shower, Mr Knight.’ I squirt him playfully and grin. He doesn’t respond. He looks flat. ‘Remind me to give you a good scrubbing later.’
Robert still doesn’t say anything. He strides across my shop as if he’s looking for something and skittles a bucket of gerberas. He leans against the counter, his fists balled and white. He’s breathing as if he’s been running. Finally he turns to me and says, quite calmly, ‘A shower is just what I need. I feel wrecked.’
I’ve got him. I grin again. ‘Just let me bring the buckets in from the pavement then and I’ll shut up shop early.’ I wink at him and begin to drag the buckets in from the street. If he’d help, we’d be home quicker. But he doesn’t. For some reason he just stares at me like I’m a stranger. We drive home in separate cars and as I look in my rear-view mirror, the sun glints off Robert’s Mercedes as if it’s on fire.
Nine months after the squashed-in bedsit, I moved us to a two-bedroom flat. I was earning just enough to pay for it and, tempting though it was, I didn’t go back to selling my body. I wanted none of it. And, remarkably, Becco appeared to have lost my trail.
When we first moved in, the flat was grotty and smelled of cats but we soon had it our way and filled with the scent of lavender and home-cooked food. For the first time in my life I had my own kitchen.
Ruby seemed to be getting on well at school, despite being taunted by several kids. I prayed it wouldn’t turn into anything worse. She enjoyed French and music lessons and made a friend called Alice who came back for tea. I worked hard for the owner of the flower business, using the skills I had learned in Brighton to transform his rather dull shop into one of the most popular florists in the area.