Losing Nicola (29 page)

‘And her toenails were painted the same red as the geraniums my mother used to grow.' Sasha fiddles with his knife. ‘I was so lonely then. I used to walk past your garden wall in the evenings, watch the two of you playing the piano and singing together. So sweet. It reminded me of my two little sisters.' He smiles round at us. ‘Let us change the subject. Maybe Orlando, you or I could play the piano and the rest can sing.'

‘Play
Muss i' denn
,' I say.

The years drop away. This room, this piano, this man, this song . . .
in my end is my beginning.

I am emboldened to put my hand on Sasha's shoulder. When he leaves I shall give him the diaries, and he will take them away, he will free me. Instead of resenting the years I wasted in longing for him, I shall regard them as strengthening, as instructional. Beside me, Orlando harmonizes with me, as he has always done, and I take his hand, feel his strong fingers curl round mine, remember our childhood, and the happy memories.

Before Nicola came.

T
wo days have passed and I'm on my own again. I'd planned to go for a long hike this morning, all the way to the cliff head at the end of my view, then up onto the top and along to where I could catch a bus back to Shale if I feel too exhausted to do the return walk. But clouds lower just above the horizon, turning the sea a thick grey. Bristles of fine rain slant fitfully across my windows. The weather seems to have broken.

I make an alternative plan. I drive into the heart of east Kent, heading for the little village of Madden, thirty-two miles away, where Valerie Johnson's parents still live, as I have discovered from the phone book. I know I am obsessed, but increasingly I wonder if the full-stop I have reached in my life might not be transformed into a mere comma, a semicolon, if only I could rid myself of Nicola for once, if not for all.

I'm not quite sure what I'm doing here, or what I plan to do. I can hardly knock at the door and say I used to be a friend of Nicola's, just as their daughter was. Had she lived, she would have been more or less the same age as I am. Play it by ear, I tell myself. If nothing else, maybe a ghost or two will be laid to rest.

The village of Madden is quiet. And small. It consists mainly of a high street lined with handsome red brick Queen Anne houses or Georgian cottages. There are two or three larger houses set further back, but not many. I spot a chemist, a newsagent, two pubs and a small corner shop. A mobile library van is parked across from a small recreation ground. A broad flat stream flows from the surrounding fields, runs beneath the main road and emerges into more fields. Its surface is littered with reeds and mallards; a third pub sits on its banks, with a terrace overhanging the water.

There are two churches, one brick and Catholic, the Church of St Michael and All His Angels, the other grey stone with a square Norman tower. The churchyard is extensive and well cared for. I park in a nearby side street and walk in through the wrought iron gates. It is ancient and peaceful; holly bushes, yew and a couple of cypress trees add a suitable melancholy. I walk up and down the sandy paths until I finally find the plot I'm looking for. On a rectangular piece of polished black granite, words are carved in square-cut gold letters.

Valerie Anne Johnson. 1939-1951

beloved daughter of Michael and Maureen,

At peace with God
.

There are fresh flowers – small pink rosebuds – in a metal vase. The grass around the headstone is neatly mown.

A wooden bench faces the grave. Is it possible for inanimate objects to exude misery? This monument to a much-loved daughter seems to cry out with pain; I imagine that the Johnson parents, Michael and Maureen, have spent hours and hours of their lives here, suffering, weeping. I cannot bear it for very long.

As I am about to leave, someone comes walking towards me. A man in a navy-blue raincoat, his head bare. He wears a blue-and-white-striped shirt with a black tie, and cotton slacks, and carries flowers wrapped in white paper. As he comes nearer, I can see that his hair is thin and white, his eyes a watery blue. Once he must have been a big man, but age has diminished him.

‘That's my daughter's grave,' he remarks matter-of-factly, which explains the fact that he seems vaguely familiar. I must have seen his photograph in Ava's scrapbooks.

‘She was very young,' I say.

‘Eleven, going on twelve,' he says.

‘How tragic.'

‘She was murdered.' A shadow crosses his over-rosy cheeks.

Unless I tell him why I'm here, I will have no option but to pretend I know nothing about what happened, then turn and walk away.

I draw in a deep breath. ‘Mr Johnson, you don't know me at all.'

He nods.

‘But Nicola – your daughter's best friend – was my best friend too. Until she was murdered, too.'

‘I heard about that. Funny how things work out.' He bends, a little stiffly, and picks up the metal vase. ‘I'll take these home to Mother,' he says. He hands the roses in the vase to me, their stems dripping water, then walks towards a tap which rises from the grass about ten yards away. He refills it, puts the fresh rosebuds in and replaces it on the grave, then wraps the original bunch in the white paper. ‘She loved pink, did our Valerie,' he says.

‘I did, too. I was wearing a pink dress the night before we found . . . before Nicola's body was found.'

‘I come here every single day,' he says. ‘Sometimes twice. Mother doesn't get out like she used to, so if it's a nice day, I get her into her wheelchair and bring her along.' He gazes sadly at the grave. ‘It doesn't do either of us much good, to keep on hashing it all over. I suppose we ought to let it go, after all this time, but it's all we have left of her.' He starts to shake. ‘Our little angel,' he murmurs. ‘Our little girl.'

I put my hand on his arm. ‘Mr Johnson, I'm so terribly sorry for you. I can't imagine the pain you've endured.'

‘Nobody can. Not unless they've lost a child too.' He looks at me, and a tear runs down his cheek. He doesn't brush it away. ‘We often sit here, Mother and I, talking to her. She had so many plans . . . we still like to discuss them, even though none of them will ever . . .' His voice fades.

I think of the two dead girls, all the promises unfulfilled, all the hopes snuffed out with two senseless acts of brutality.

Mr Johnson suddenly turns on me. ‘Valerie can't mean anything to you. You're not a journalist, are you?'

‘Absolutely not.'

‘Then what are you doing here?'

‘To be honest, I'm not sure.' I twist on the bench so that I'm facing him. ‘I was one of the two children who discovered Nicola Stone's – Farnham's – body.'

He looks astonished. ‘It was children who found her?'

‘Yes. We were both a bit younger than she was, and—'

‘That's terrible,' he says, shaking his head. ‘That shouldn't have happened.'

‘We can't possibly pretend to be grieving for her,' I explain, ‘but I think it's true to say that neither of us have ever really got over it. Especially me. Since the two deaths seem to be interconnected in some way, I thought that maybe if I came here, it would help me to come to terms with it, help me get on with my life – because, quite frankly, I'm kind of bogged down in the past. Does that sound crazy?'

‘Not in the least. Maureen – my wife – and I are too.'

‘But with much more reason.'

He nods. ‘Look, would you like to come back, have a cup of tea, see Maureen? She'd enjoy the company, I dare say. Like I said, she doesn't get out a lot any more.'

‘That would be very kind of you, Mr Johnson. I'd like that very much.'

The house is in a side street just off the High Street, a comfortable brick cottage with a narrow front garden separated from the pavement by a low picket fence. There's a little iron-trellised porch with wisteria climbing over it, and diamond-paned windows. A thatched roof is kept in place by chicken-wire netting. The front door opens straight into a dark sitting room which contains a sofa, a big television screen and a high-backed chair. There are low bookcases on two walls, containing twelve matching volumes of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
, the works of Jane Austen bound in limp blue leather, a lot of magazines, a piano tucked under some steep stairs leading to the upper part of the house.

‘I'll just go and put the kettle on,' Mr Johnson says. ‘Like a biscuit with your tea?'

‘That would be really lovely,' I say, overenthusiastically.

He disappears and I look round some more, though there's not a lot to see. On the piano is a framed photograph of Valerie, a plain child with chipmunk cheeks and a shy smile, an enlarged version of what must have been her last school photo. Draped over the frame is a thin gold chain. The original hearth is still in place, but a modern wood-burning stove has been fitted into the inglenook. There are some watercolours on the walls, simple but promising, which I guess were done by Valerie. There's a portrait of Valerie painted in dreamy sort of pastels, wearing a soft white dress and the gold chain round her neck; she looks ethereal and unreal. I suspect that it was commissioned after she'd died.

‘Here we go.' Mr Johnson reappears with a tray holding a teapot and three cups and saucers. There are biscuits on a matching plate.

‘That looks great,' I say. ‘My favourite biscuits.'

‘Chocolate digestives. We always have them – they were Valerie's favourite too.'

Suddenly we hear a voice from some back part of the house. ‘Valerie? Is that you, Valerie? Where've you been, you naughty girl? We've been so worried.'

‘It's all right, Mother.' Mr Johnson raises his voice. ‘We've got a visitor.'

There's a pause. Then the voice says tiredly, ‘I don't want a visitor, I want Valerie.'

‘Mother's never been the same since it happened,' Mr Johnson tells me. ‘And she . . . well, she's . . . she's not got long, Miss Beecham, so don't mind what she says, will you?'

‘Of course not.'

‘I'll just go and get her.'

He leaves the room again.

There are photograph albums on the table beside one end of the sofa and I pick one up, turn the thick black pages. Oh my God! I press a hand to my chest. After all these years, here is Nicola again, a black-and-white Nicola, grinning at the camera, her arm through that of a girl I now know to be Valerie. And here she is once more, and again, and still again. The sight of her brings back such vivid memories that I find it hard to breathe. She looks far too innocent to have seduced Bertram Yelland, or shoplifted in Woolworths, far too sweet to have deliberately ruined her mother's evening dress or treated Miss Vane so spitefully.

Many of the photos show Valerie with various relatives at various family gatherings. One woman is obviously her grandmother, the Justice of the Peace, there's an aunt and some cousins, an uncle with Valerie sitting on his shoulders. But there are enough pictures of Valerie and Nicola to make it clear that they were very close. And there are several of Mr Johnson, dark-haired, tall and hunky, muscled arms akimbo, or striking a bodybuilder's pose, or carrying two little girls on his shoulders – Valerie and Nicola, I assume.

Guiltily I put the album down as I hear his voice soothing his wife along the passage. She appears on his arm, tiny and shrunken, looking a good fifteen years older than he is. She is painfully thin; her skin has the waxy yellow look that betokens some mortal disease, cancer, I would imagine. Her tiny claw-like hands are manicured and she wears a wedding band and a diamond engagement ring; both of which must have been resized to fit her emaciated fingers. Behind them patters an aged liver-and-white spaniel, wheezing like a furnace.

‘Who are you?' Mrs Johnson shuffles into the upright chair and her husband fusses with pillows, making sure that she's comfortable. I imagine she's had at least one stroke, because her mouth droops on one side and it's obvious that one arm is useless. ‘I thought you were Valerie come home at last.'

‘This is a friend of . . . of Valerie's,' Mr Johnson says.

‘What's her name?'

‘Hello, Mrs Johnson,' I say. ‘I'm Alice Beecham.' I speak clearly, not sure if she's deaf.

‘Beecham? I don't remember any Beecham,' she says.

‘Yes, you do, Mother. You've forgotten, that's all.'

‘Have I?'

‘I was just passing through the village, and I remembered somebody telling me you lived here now.'

‘So I invited her in for a cup of tea.'

‘That's good of you, Mike.' She turns in my direction. ‘He's always been a kind man, ever since I first met him. We were always so happy, weren't we, Mikey? Not like we are now.'

‘I'm always happy when I'm with you, Maureen, you know that,' says her husband, his voice not quite steady. He takes her hand in his and pats it.

I imagine that neither of these two have been happy since the day Nicola's father killed their daughter.

The ancient dog totters across the carpet and drools over my sandals.

‘That's Minnie,' says Johnson. ‘Minnie the Third, actually. We gave Valerie a puppy when she was ten, just like this. Since then, well, we always have the same kind of dog, don't we, Mother?'

‘Always call them Minnie,' says his wife.

We sit for a while, making desultory chat. The subjects we wish to talk about – Nicola and Valerie – are too big for this little room, too much present. I am filled with a sudden fear that I will end up like these two, unable to shake off my traumas, unable to move on. I've tried. I fled to Paris, and then to Michigan. But flight doesn't work, I know that now, any more than simply standing still does.

‘It's her birthday, end of next week,' Mr Johnson says suddenly.