Diana was thirty-five, single, and lived with her elderly father, who was a “pain”, she claimed, particularly now that his health was failing. She was a small, slight woman, permanently discontented, with a garishly painted face, a degree in land and property management, and an eye on the position of manager of the Woolton office. She didn’t realise that I nursed the same ambition and when we were alone together she openly discussed it. I’d suspected she had an ulterior motive in inviting me that evening and it turned out she wanted to pump me about George’s plans.
“Has he ever talked to you about it?” she asked, over the Italian meal. There were red and white gingham cloths on the tables and candles in green bottles dripping wax.
The walls were hung with plastic vines.
“Hardly ever,” I replied truthfully.
“I bet you anything he gives the job to Oliver.” She pouted. Oliver Brett, solid and dependable, was the assistant manager, in charge when George was away, which was rare.
“I doubt it. Oliver’s nice, but he’s proved more than once he couldn’t handle the responsibility.” I sipped my wine. On nights like this, Kirkby seemed a million miles away. “Remember last Christmas when he rang George in the Seychelles to ask his advice?”
“Hmm!” Diana looked dubious. “Yes, but he’s a man.
The world is prejudiced in favour of men. I shall be very cross if it’s Tweedledum or Tweedledee.”
“That’s most unlikely.” I laughed. Apart from June, who’d taken my old job as receptionist, the only other permanent members of staff were two young men in their mid-twenties, Darren and Elliot, startlingly alike in looks and manner, which accounted for their nicknames.
Both were too immature for promotion. “George has never struck me as being prejudiced against women,” I added.
“I might do a survey of Woolton, see how the land lies.”
Diana’s rather heavy eyebrows drew together in a frown and the discontented lines between her eyes deepened further. “I’ll type up some notes for George.”
“What a good idea,” I murmured. I hadn’t added to my own report since last week.
It was late on Wednesday when I returned to the office in Castle Street. I’d taken a couple, the Naughtons, to see a property in Lydiate. It was the sixth house they’d viewed. As usual, they walked round several times, wondering aloud whether their present furniture would fit, asking if I would measure the windows so they could check if the curtains they had now would do. George insisted that keys were returned, no matter how late, and it was almost eight when I hung them on the rack.
George was still working in his glass-partitioned office and Oliver was about to go home. His good-natured face creased into a smile as he said, “Goodnight.”
I was wondering if there was time to drive to Blundellsands, collect the cardboard boxes I’d acquired from a supermarket, return to town and start on Auntie Flo’s flat. I couldn’t bring the car to work with boxes on the back seat when I had to take clients to view.
Before I’d made up my mind George came out of his cubicle. “Millie! Please say you’re not doing anything special tonight. I’m longing for a drink and desperately in need of company.”
“I’m not, doing anything special that is.” I would have said the same whatever the case. At the moment it was essential to keep in George’s good books.
We went to a wine bar, the one where I’d met James.
George ordered a roast-beef sandwich and a bottle of Chablis. I refused anything to eat. “You should get some food down you.” He patted my hand in a fatherly way.
“You look pale.”
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me. I’ll wear blusher tomorrow.”
“You mean rouge. My old mother used to go to town with the rouge.” His mother had died only a year ago and he missed her badly, just as he missed the children his ex-wife and her new husband had taken to live in France. He was alone, hated it, and buried himself in work to compensate. George Masterton was fifty, tall and thin to the point of emaciation although he ate like a horse. He wore expensive suits that hung badly from his narrow, stooped shoulders. Despite this, he had an air of drooping elegance, enhanced by his deceptively laid-back, languid manner. Only those who knew him well were aware that behind the lazy charm George was an irascible, unpredictable man, who suffered from severe bouts of depression and panic attacks.
“Why the desperate need for company?” I asked lightly.
I always felt at my oddest with George, as if one day he would see what a fake I was, and never speak to me again.
“Oh, I dunno.” He shrugged. “It was Annabel’s birthday on Monday. She was sixteen. Thought about whizzing over to France on Eurostar but told myself Stock Masterton would collapse without me. Really, I was scared I wouldn’t be welcome. I’m supposed to be having her and Bill for Christmas, but I shan’t be at all surprised if they don’t come.”
It was my turn to pat his hand. “I bet Annabel would have been thrilled to see you. As for Christmas, it’s months off. Try not to start worrying yet.”
“Families, eh!” He chuckled. “They’re a pain in the arse when you’ve got them, and a pain when they’re not there. Diana calls her old dad everything but now he’s ill she’s terrified he’ll die. Poor chap, it sounds like cancer.
Anyway, how’s your lot over in Kirkby?”
“Same as usual.” I told him about Auntie Flo’s flat, and he said bring the boxes in tomorrow and put them in the stationery cupboard until I found time to go. He asked where the flat was.
“Toxteth, William Square. I don’t know round there all that well.”
His sandwich arrived. Between mouthfuls, he explained that William Square had once been very beautiful.
“They’re five-storeyed properties, including the basement where the skivvies used to work. Lovely stately houses, massive pillars, intricate wrought-iron balconies like bloody lace, bay windows at least twelve feet high. It’s where the nobs used to live at the turn of the century, though it’s gone seriously downhill since the war.” He paused over the last of the sandwich. “Sure you’ll be safe? Wasn’t there a chap shot in that area a few weeks ago?”
“I’ll go in daylight. Trouble is, finding the time. Things keep coming up.”
George grinned. “Such as me demanding your company!
Sorry about that. Look, take tomorrow afternoon off. I’d feel happier about you going then. Don’t forget to take your mobile and you can call for help if you get in trouble.”
“For goodness sake, George, you’d think I was going to a war zone!”
“Toxteth’s been compared to one before now. As far as I’m concerned, it’s as bad as Bosnia used to be.”
At two o’clock on a brilliantly sunny afternoon, William Square still looked beautiful when I drove in. I found an empty parking space some distance past the house I wanted, number one, and sat in the car for several minutes, taking in the big, gracious houses on all four sides. On close inspection, they appeared anything but beautiful. The elaborate stucco decorating the fronts had dropped off leaving bare patches like sores. Most of the front doors were a mass of peeling paint, and some houses were without a knocker, the letterbox a gaping hole.
Several windows were broken and had been repaired with cardboard.
The big oblong garden in the centre of the square was now, according to George, maintained by the council.
Evergreen trees with thick rubbery leaves were clumped densely behind high black railings. I thought it gloomy, and the square depressed me.
With a sigh, I got out of the car, collected some boxes and trudged along to number one. Two small boys, playing cricket on the pavement, watched me curiously.
The house looked clean, but shabby. Someone had brushed the wide steps leading up to the front door recently. There was a row of four buzzers with a name beside each, so faded they were unreadable. I ignored these and used the knocker—Charmian Smith lived on the ground floor.
A few seconds later the door was opened by a statuesque black woman not much older than me, wearing a lime green T-shirt and a wrap-round skirt patterned with tropical fruit. Her midriff was bare, revealing satin smooth skin. She held a baby in one arm. Two small children, a boy and a girl, stood either side of her, clutching her skirt. They stared at me shyly, and the little girl began audibly to suck her thumb.
“Mrs Smith?”
“Yes?” The woman regarded me aggressively.
“I’ve come for the key to Flo Clancy’s flat.”
Her expression changed. “I thought you were selling something! I should have known from the boxes. Not only that, you’re awful like Flo. Come in, luv, and I’ll get the key.”
The magnificent hallway had a black-and-white mosaic tiled floor and a broad, sweeping staircase with an intricately carved balustrade. The ornate ceiling was at least fourteen feet high. But whatever grand effect the architect had planned was spoilt by crumbling plaster on the coving and cornices, hanging cobwebs and bare wooden stairs worn to a curve. Several sections of balustrade were missing.
I stayed in the hall when Charmian Smith went into the ground-floor room, the children still clinging to her skirt. Through the open door, I could see that her flat was comfortably furnished, the walls covered with maroon flock paper. Everywhere was very clean, even the massive bay window, which must have taken hours to polish.
“Here you are, girl.”
“Thanks.” I took the proffered key and wondered if the children stayed attached to their mother like that all day.
“Which floor is it?”
“Basement. Give us a shout if you need anything.”
“Thanks.” I returned outside. The basement was situated behind railings down a narrow well of steep concrete steps. Little light reached the small window. I struggled down with the boxes to a tiny area full of old chip papers and other debris. To my consternation, there were several used condoms. I wondered what on earth I’d let myself in for.
A plastic mac and an umbrella were hanging from a hook inside the tiny lobby, and a brass horseshoe was attached to the inner door, which opened when I turned the knob.
The first thing I noticed when I stepped inside was the smell of musty dampness, and the cold, which made me shiver. Although it was broad daylight, I could see nothing. I fumbled for a light switch just inside the door and turned it on. My heart sank. The room was crammed with furniture, and every surface was equally crammed with ornaments. There were two sideboards, one very old and huge, six feet high at least, with little cupboards in the upper half. The other was more modern, but still large. Beneath the window was a chest covered with a red fringed shawl and a pretty lace cloth. On top of that a vase stood filled with silk flowers; poppies. I touched them. The effect was striking, as if they’d been bought to echo the colour of the shawl. It was the sort of thing I might have done myself.
I walked slowly down the room, which ran the length of the house. Halfway along, two massive beams had been built into the walls to support an equally massive lintel, all painted black, and covered with little brass plaques. An elderly gas fire was fitted in the green-tiled fireplace, and on each side of it, more cupboards reached to the ceiling, one of which I opened. Every shelf was stuffed to capacity: clothes, crockery, books, bedding, more ornaments stored in boxes . . .
“I can’t do this all on my own,” I said aloud. I had no idea where to start, and I would need more like a hundred cardboard boxes than ten.
A window at the far end overlooked a tiny yard, which was level with the rear of the flat. It contained a wooden bench, a table and plant-holders full of limp pansies. The wall had been painted almost the same pink as my lounge—another indication that Auntie Flo and I had shared similar taste. The woman upstairs had said I was like Flo, and I wondered if there was a photograph somewhere.
I turned and surveyed the room, and supposed that, in its way, it had charm. Very little matched, yet everything seemed to gel together nicely. There was a large brown plush settee and a matching chair with crocheted patchwork covers on the backs and arms. Obviously Flo hadn’t believed in leaving an inch of space bare. There were numerous pictures and several tiny tables, all with bowls of silk flowers. Linoleum, with a pattern of blue and red tiles, covered the floor, and there was a handmade rag rug on the hearth. A large-screen television stood next to an up-to-date music centre, a record visible on the turntable beneath the smoky plastic lid.
If only it wasn’t so cold! On the hearth next to the fire I saw a box of matches. I struck one, shoved it between the bars and turned the knob at the side. There was a mini explosion and the gas jets roared briefly before settling down into a steady flame.
I held out my hands to warm them and remembered I’d been looking for a photo of Flo. After a while, I got up and moved round the room again until I found some on a gate-leg table, which had been folded to its narrowest against the wall. The photos, about a dozen in all, were spread each side of a glass jar of anemones.
The first was a coloured snap of two women taken in what looked like a fairground. I recognised Flo from Auntie Sally’s funeral. Despite her age, it was obvious that she’d once been pretty. She was smiling at the camera, a calm, sweet smile. Her companion wore a leopardskin coat and black leggings, and her hair was a violent unnatural red. I turned the photo over: The and Bel at Blackpool Lights, October 1993”.
There was a picture of Auntie Sally’s wartime wedding, which I’d seen before at Gran’s. The bride, in her pinstriped suit and white felt hat, looked like a character out of Guys and Dolls. Another wedding photo, the couple in Army uniform. Despite the unflattering clothes, the woman was startlingly lovely. On the back was written, “Bel & Bob’s wedding, December, 1940”.
Flo and Bel must have been friends all their lives.
I found two more photos of Bel getting married; “Bel &: Ivor’s wedding, 1945,” in what looked like a foreign setting, and “Bel & Edward’s wedding, 1974” showed a glamorous Bel with a decrepit-looking old man.
At last I held a picture of a young Flo, a snapshot turning white at the edges. It was taken outside a ramshackle building with “Fritz’s Laundry” above the door. A man in a dark suit and wire-rimmed glasses—Fritz? -stood in the middle of six women all wearing aprons and turbans. Flo was recognisable immediately because she was so like me, except that she was smiling and I had never smiled like that in all my life. She looked about eighteen, and seemed to be bursting with happiness, you could see it in her eyes, her dimples, and the curve of her lovely wide mouth.