Nevertheless, her chin stuck out as if this dreadful place was firing her determination to be in it for as short a time as possible. She'd get a job, any job, as soon as Freddie was in Nursery School and somehow start afresh, somewhere decent with maybe a little car. No way would she ever depend on anyone again. No way would she ever follow her idiot heart.
She looked around with dismay as she reached Needle Walk. It was worse than anything she'd ever seen in her life, and thank God both Freddie and Kayleigh were fast asleep. Her resolve however, faltered further during her walk along the dog-shitty pavement to where an old man was about to cross the road. She asked the way to Wort Passage.
The tired eyes seemed to pin her to the awful reality of where she was. "Mrs Maxwell got done in there a week ago. What number ye after?"
"Eleven."
The stranger's frown deepened. "Oh dearie dear." His gaze transferred to the buggy. "'An’ ye got wee bairns..."
"Just tell me, please. Am I near it, or what?"
But he shuffled away, dodging a souped-up Fiesta which tried to run him off the road. Rita hesitated, unsure which way to go, and was about to move off when she heard the purr of a more expensive car’s engine slowing down and stopping behind her. Then the sudden thud of a car door being shut. The alarm set.
Fear froze her to the spot.
She spun round to see a black Mercedes, and a young man in a long brown mac approaching.
"Mrs Martin?"
"Yes. So?"
"Nick Little. Housing Department. Pleased to meet you." He preferred a leather-gloved hand which she didn’t take. Her trust in people had reached zero. "Nice weather, eh?" he tried, clearly used to such rebuffs. He pulled up his collar and led her down a narrow alleyway lined by mostly broken fencing festooned with razor wire. Rita noticed the sign, WORT PASSAGE. She wanted to turn back, to run and keep running, but knew there was no way out.
"You could soon make the place quite smart," her companion pattered on. "Flat 1 is two bed-roomed with a stainless steel sink, no damp, no vermin..."
"Is there a garden?"
"A small one."
He sprinted up a short flight of uneven concrete steps to a door with 11 scratched into the shabby paintwork. Rita could barely look. 74, Holly Road was Buckingham Palace by comparison. "Some old boy told me about a murder along here." She hung back, unwilling to go further.
"A Mrs Maxwell, yes. In the top flat. But don’t worry."
"I am."
“To reassure you, the husband’s serving a full life sentence." The official winced at Freddie and Kayleigh who'd woken up and were now fighting again. Rita lifted her from the buggy, trying to keep the rain off her head.
"Who lives there now?" She stared up at two bare windows.
"The Ishmaels. Nice couple. They’ll be in at the end of next month. From Nuneaton.”
Rita set Kayleigh down. Saw how the lower room curtains were like rags, the paint half off the sills, but worse were the knee-high weeds and litter strewn everywhere. "I don't know about this,” she said. “How much?"
"Eighty three pounds a week, excluding bills."
He ignored her gasp of protest, her audible mental arithmetic which would leave her fifty quid over for food and heating, instead hunted for the key in his mac pocket.
"Let's look inside, shall we? That might convince you to accept."
He unlocked the front door and held it open for her as she hauled the buggy backwards up the steps. Kayleigh followed, looking miserable, saying she’d rather be in school.
"I'd better warn you, we have ten other families waiting." Mr Little said as he switched on one shadeless bulb after another.
"Eighty three? For this?" Rita held her nose. The drains were bad.
"Poo," said Kayleigh, wrinkling her little nose. "Smells like Freddie's nappy."
The man coughed and retreated as Rita turned on the rusted kitchen taps for a trickle of brown water to appear. This, plus the grotty lino, blackened cooker and smeary, yellow walls made it worse than outside. Kayleigh had never been so silent, so clinging. Breaking Rita's heart.
"What are the schools like here in Scrub End?" she asked, as the man shone a torch into two meter boxes in the passageway beyond.
"Doing their best, like everywhere else." He clicked off the torch and looked up, changing the subject. "Nothing owing for gas or water, so you have tabula rasa, Mrs Martin. No mean asset for a new tenant."
"What d'you mean, tabula rasa?"
"Clean slate."
"Great."
He checked his watch, but Rita forestalled him. "If I accept this dump, I want a Dyna Rod job done and the plumbing checked. I've three kids and don't want any of them to..." Her eyes filled up. Her bottom lip trembled and Kayleigh gripped her hand even tighter, “…getting ill, OK?"
"Leave it to me." He produced an embossed card from his wallet. A string of letters after his name. "And if there are any other concerns in the meantime, let me know."
"I am. Now. I want those Ishmaels properly vetted. They might seem very nice, but we don't want any drug dealers, porn merchants whatever. Not with kids here, understood?" Her intense blue eyes had caught him unawares, yet after a brief tour of the other three rooms then a glimpse of the tiny, sodden garden, he escorted her out into the rain and back to Needle Walk.
"Someone will be here at 9 a.m. on the 31st with all services re-connected, and in the interim, you'll be sent written confirmation plus a rent book." His bare minimum wave was of someone keen to get away, and once his exhaust had vaporised into the air, Rita realised he'd not even asked if she'd wanted a lift back to Holly Road.
*
When they got home, Jez, still in his pyjamas, handed her the post. Two envelopes. Another Final Demand with the dreaded words THIS IS NOT A CIRCULAR on the flap, something from the Department of Social Security setting out her future entitlements, but the blue envelope was intriguingly different. She turned it over and over, noting her name alone was in block capitals on the front and it must have been hand- delivered. Having pulled out the enclosed letter with trembling fingers, her breath went on hold when she saw the heading BRIAR BANK POLICE STATION and recognised the writing.
23/3/09
Dear Mrs Martin,
I wanted to get back to you as soon as possible re; our enquiries into Transline plc, but regret to inform you that a) your husband doesn’t appear to be on their payroll, and b) the company has no record of irregular trading or any other business which might necessitate further investigation on our part.
I’m sorry not to be more positive, but should you require any other assistance, please don't hesitate to contact me.*
In the meantime, I hope your intended move goes smoothly,
Yours sincerely,
Sgt. Tim Fraser.
PS *As from April 8th, I shall be joining the Metropolitan Police Authority in London, targeting organised immigration, but my colleagues here will also assist you in any way they can.
Rita said little to the children that evening and at nine o'clock, just after Jez had walked the dog, she went to bed and, clutching the sergeant's letter tight against her pyjama top, cried herself to sleep, dreading what the future might hold.
BOOK THREE
Saturday 3
rd
July 2010
7
The heat makes everything bubble. His skin, his scalp under his tousled, brown hair and the lenses of his black-framed glasses, bought for a quid from the Oxfam shop in the Mall. But worst of all, the stagnant, malodorous pool fed by the brook which meanders south through three overcrowded housing estates until joining the Oxford Canal.
The schoolboy sets down his blazer then his violin case which has always seemed like some weirdly-shaped coffin. Even the domed darkness around him appears ripe for death. Not his own, however, for that's a subject which has never engaged him.
Now beech and alder conspire to shut out the sky, to keep this place secret from prying eyes, condensing the vapours from decades of rotting leaves and human effluent forming the water's skin.
He can hear the soft tick his pilot’s watch. The one they got him for his thirteenth birthday in April. The Fawn and The Maggot. People he can manipulate for his own ends, who, since he was able to understand such things, have denied him his ultimate craving. To know who he is. Who made him...
All at once he lets out a cry of excitement for the little waterborne family is on time. He and his new friend who’s habitually late, have kept a log of these daily arrivals, particularly since the cygnets were hatched. As always, mother swan swims first, followed by her three things dipping their scraggy necks into the sludge, nervously eyeing the bank, before making little surges to catch up...
"Hello runt."
He stares at the last in line. The boy had found that word in his dictionary and likes saying it whenever he can, and now here's the creature in real life, lagging conveniently behind. Half the size of the other two - the last to share in any pickings.
First, his stone lands on target. Next, he rips a branch from a nearby tree - its forked end perfect for bringing in the harvest. The runt is heavier than expected, its noise the oddest thing. Into the undergrowth then, its terrified eyes lined with stuff like plasticine, squeezing tight shut...
Crack
...
The next bit never lets him down. The leather-sheathed knife he'd found in its usual place makes everything easy-peasy. Grey feathers everywhere in the peeling. They float without landing...
He has help now for his friend has arrived, out of breath but keen to show off his new butchering skills.
Then afterwards, with the bloodied bird thrown back into the brook and sinking, they compare penises. Use a twig to measure their excitement. But because of no foreskin, the violinist's erection is the shorter and in that brief moment, his brittle pleasure vanishes, leaving only shame and hurt which lingers all the way home.
8
The grass sloped up sharply away from number 14, Meadow Hill, yellow and ugly with all of Dave Perelman's neat mown stripes burned away. He sat next to a plump, auburn-haired woman under a teak-stemmed parasol, their shadows merged together, lengthening in a curve as the sun edged towards the chestnut trees of Dingle Wood. The new name given by the developers, in preference to Greythorn Wood which continued over the other side of the busy trunk road leading south-east towards Rugby.
Jacquie Perelman who, for their son Louis' sake at school, had taken his father's surname and wore a thin, gold ring on her wedding finger, rubbed more Factor 15 on to her pink shins, yet knowing she wouldn't be idling there long. Every twitch of her watch's second hand increased her unease. As did the silent heat, save for a distant lawnmower and her companion's humming as he browsed through his Finzi score sheets. For Louis hadn’t yet returned from orchestra practice at school. And Louis was never late.
"Dave? I'm really worried," she said at last. "Can't we just go and take a look round? See if he's on his way?"
"Why do you always have to overreact?" Her companion peered more closely at something on the score sheet. "He's probably stayed on to work on his scales or whatever that Barber woman's given him to do... "
"That Barber woman?" She repeated scornfully.
"So?" Without looking up. "Her name, isn't it?"
"She used to be first violin with the London Symphonia, and made a couple of records," Jacquie persevered.
"Doesn't make her a decent teacher, though. And she doesn't need you trotting out her CV. She's rubbish."
Jacquie Perelman glanced across at the man with whom she'd shared the past fourteen years of her life, and until last summer, the same bed. Strands of thinning hair lay like wet grass across his tanned scalp, and sweat glistened where his sunglasses’ frame met his ears. She was used to these put-downs of anyone who encroached upon his world of classical music where of course he was
sans pareil
– without equal; this contrived absorption whenever she was anxious. But what she couldn’t handle was his detached attitude to Louis.
The academic’s latest career move had brought the three of them to this Meadow Hill development of luxury homes just yards away from the notorious Scrub End Estate, knocked up in 1969 for the London overspill. Depicted on the internet and local maps as an area of dark cross-hatching. A maze of unreadable streets.
All Dave’s idea.
"It's close to my work," he'd argued in front of the estate agent's Sales team who'd hyped up the house's investment potential. "And near the bus stop for Louis' school and best of all, I’ll have a music room. So, it's two against one. Anyhow," as he'd signed the mortgage deal, "you'll adapt. You always do."