The Past and Other Lies (39 page)

That was odd. That was
very
odd!

The Davenports’ house had been empty for ages—why would Caroline go there? Unless Kitty Davenport had come back and was staying there? But no, that was daft, Kitty was engaged to that Yank, probably even married by now. And if Kitty was back, she would have come round to visit. And that went for any of the Davenports. You would have heard, the whole street would have known if the Davenports were back.

Unless..
.

It came to Deirdre in a flash so that she stopped dead in the middle of the street, slapping her hand to her head and feeling dazed, breathless.

It was William!
William was alive! He had returned, only to find all his family gone! He hadn’t been killed by that Wellington bomber, he had survived!

But why keep it a secret? It didn’t make sense. Why had Caroline said nothing?

She tried to think. Caroline and William had been stepping out...oh, forever. Everyone knew that. And come to think of it, Caroline hadn’t seemed that bothered at all when William had been killed. When they
thought
he’d been killed. She’d just got on with it really. She was sort of quiet, distant. But that was just Caroline... But if William was alive—had been alive all this time...!

A second thought hit her, with at least the same force as the first, though this one made her feel a little sick.

William was a deserter. That was it, it had to be, it fitted so exactly, explained why he was hiding out here, why Caroline had said nothing.

Oh, William! Oh, Caroline!
Assisting a deserter, perhaps engaged—or even
married
, God forbid!—to a
deserter!
He would go to prison. Or be on the run, for life. Forever. And Caroline, too, for aiding him.

And what about herself, standing there, knowing there was a deserter in that house? She was an accomplice. She would be arrested. They would all be arrested!

It was better not to know, then there was no question of being involved. She must leave at once and say nothing. Do nothing. Act surprised. Lie, if necessary!

But she had to know...

She approached the house, a feeling of dread dragging her stomach down into her bowels but somehow also forcing her on. She pushed open the gate of number twenty-eight and crept silently up the path.

Deidre wasn’t a snitch. She would keep their secret, of course she would, if they asked her to, if they made her.

She paused at the Davenports’ front door, listening. Inside there was silence. Outside, a dozen noises suddenly came into focus: men’s voices calling, a dog barking, a door slamming and, further off, the splutter of a motor engine, the klaxon of a distant ambulance. There had been no rockets for a while. Mum said it was almost like peacetime.

She slipped silently down the side passage until she came to the kitchen window, which was ajar. She knew the Davenports’ house, it was the same as her own house, although in reverse. She had been friends for a time with Jeanie and Dotty, Kitty’s younger sisters, though the friendship hadn’t lasted. But she remembered the house, its smells, the colour of the walls and carpets.

There was an old wooden crate beneath the kitchen window and after only a slight hesitation she stepped onto it, reached up to the window ledge and pulled herself up. She paused there on the ledge, waiting, reassuring herself all was quiet. Then she ducked inside, and clambered awkwardly down, landing with a thud on the floor and waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

The kitchen was empty, she could tell instantly because, even though she had made almost no sound, still her breathing, her muffled footstep on the linoleum, echoed in a way they never would in a room full of furniture.

She shivered violently. It was a vacant house in the blackout and God alone knew who might be hiding out here, what tramps and vagrants and looters and spies and murderers might be in this house, in this very room, right now. Watching her.

Sweat burst through the pores on the palms of her hands and her upper lip and under her arms and she became aware of the beating of her heart and the pulse of blood in her head. What if Caroline wasn’t here? What if she had been attacked or kidnapped and tied up?

She shouldn’t have come. It was stupid! Stupid being in this horrible empty house!

Deirdre scrabbled for the window ledge in the darkness and was about to pull herself up and climb back outside when she heard it.

A groan. Or a grunt. Made by a man.

Oh God.

She froze again. William? Could that have been William?

There it was again, louder, followed by a scuffle or a scraping sound, muffled. And upstairs, definitely upstairs. Were they struggling? But who was it? She couldn’t even say for sure that Caroline was up there. It could be anyone.

She left the kitchen and went along the hallway, reached the stairs and began to climb. Each stair creaked loudly, shrieking her presence, and the blood rushed in her ears. As she reached the top stair she heard another grunt followed by a thud. She froze, every muscle taut. If she moved now he would hear her, for sure.

I’m not brave, she realised with a sudden, ghastly clarity. I don’t want to be brave. And I don’t want to be murdered! Why am I even here?

She felt light-headed.

Ahead, just a couple of feet away, was the doorway of what had been Mr and Mrs Davenport’s bedroom. The bedroom door was wide open. The Davenports had taken the blackout curtains with them so that a shaft of yellow moonlight pierced the room, striking the wall, the bedroom floor, and an old mattress that lay in the centre of the empty room. And it struck Caroline, who was on the mattress and...

And Uncle Clive who was on there with her.

Deirdre gasped. She must have gasped because they heard her and as she hurled herself back down the stairs their voices floated after her.

‘
Bloody ’ell! There’s someone there!
’

‘What? Oh, I doubt it...’

‘I tell you, there
was
someone there, in the doorway.’

‘Ghosts. Must be a ghost. In this house.’

And it was only moments later, as she was running across the road and stumbling back through the front door at number fifteen, after the initial shock and revulsion had gone, that Deirdre realised that Caroline had seen her, that their eyes had met in the yellow moonlight, that it was Caroline who had said, her voice so quiet, so detached: ‘Ghosts. Must be a ghost. In this house.’

She had told Mum, of course.

It wasn’t fair of Caroline to expect people to lie for her, especially when what she was doing was so...horrid! Besides, it was for Caroline’s own good. Imagine if people found out she had done something like that. With her own uncle! With a man
that old
, a widower! And they not even married or engaged or ever likely to be and Clive’s wife—not to mention poor, dear William—barely dead and in their graves. Really, Deirdre had had no choice. Anyone could see that. Caroline was allowed to get away with murder and Mum and Dad never said a thing, never stopped her. It had always been that way, right from when they were children. And it was worse now, with her working at the factory and smoking and coming and going whenever she pleased. Well, this was where it had led, and they would all have to stew in their own juices!

Mum was standing in the hallway as Deirdre stumbled back inside the house.

‘Deirdre! What do you think you’re doing?’ Mum demanded, in that half-tentative, half-authoritative tone she had, and in that moment Deirdre despised her.

‘
Out!
I can go out if I want to. Caroline does!’

Mum looked shocked.

‘You know you are not allowed out after blackout, it’s not safe. You know Dad particularly forbid it.’

But Deirdre stood her ground. She had half a mind to say,
See if I care, after what I’ve just seen! If you only knew, that would wipe the smile off your face!
Instead she raised her chin defiantly and sniffed.

This seemed to annoy Mum, who countered with: ‘You’d better have a jolly good reason for going out, my girl, or I’ll be forced to tell Dad.’

‘
Tell
him then! And I’ll tell him I was following Caroline. She left an hour early for work—again!—and she went into the Davenports’ house. And I was the only one who noticed. So I followed.’

She hadn’t meant to say that but Mum had made her. Well, it was too bad. But nothing was going to make her divulge the rest of her dreadful secret.

‘Caroline?’ Mum replied, confused, suspicious, as if the idea of her eldest daughter doing anything untoward had simply never occurred to her. As if she suspected her errant younger daughter was making the whole thing up.

Deirdre felt a rush of fury.

‘Yes, Caroline!
And she wasn’t alone!
’

Oh that’s torn it.

The blood rushed to her face. She hadn’t meant to say that. She wasn’t sure what she had intended to say, but it wasn’t that.

Mum advanced on her, reaching for her arm angrily.

‘What do you mean? You ought not to say such horrid things about your sister.’

‘You mean, you don’t want to hear them!’ Deirdre retorted hotly, suddenly glad she’d said what she had. ‘Anyway it’s
true
and I don’t care if you believe me or not! They go there every night at six o’clock. Go and see for yourself if you don’t believe me. They’re in there right now! In the Davenports’ bedroom. There’s a way in round the back...through the kitchen window...’

Mum’s fingers grasped her arm, squeezing painfully, pulling Deirdre to her, and she suddenly seemed to have become something else entirely, some other person, not Mum at all, and Deirdre felt a flicker of panic.

‘
What do you mean
they
? Who? Who is it?
’

Deirdre’s eyes dropped from Mum’s face and she wished she could escape. She imagined herself pulling free and making a mad dash for her room. Instead she shrugged and muttered, ‘I didn’t see...’

‘
You said you saw them, who was it?
’

‘
I didn’t see!
Just two people. Caroline and...a man.’

Mum let go of her arm with a little shake and stepped back, and when Deirdre looked up, Mum had a closed, almost disappointed look on her face.

‘I don’t believe you saw anything at all,’ she said quietly.

‘You’d believe it if it was about
me
, wouldn’t you?’ Deirdre countered furiously. ‘Anyway, I
did
see and it
was
Caroline, whether you believe me or not! And she was with Uncle Clive!’

That was it. There was no going back. Mum had to believe her now, because who could make something like that up?

‘Go to your room, Deirdre.’

She had expected anger. She had expected a slap on the cheek. But Mum’s voice was flat, quiet.

‘Go to your room and stay there and say nothing of this to anyone, do you understand?’

Deirdre had nodded quickly. The only thing that mattered was escaping to her room and staying there.

The following morning Caroline had come waltzing in from the nightshift as bold as brass. And Mum had said nothing, done nothing, only banged the frying pan around a lot. And now it was six o’clock and Caroline was over there doing it
again
in the Davenports’ bedroom.

Ugh! Horrible, odious, insidious, disgusting Uncle Clive who always got ready to go out, so promptly, so punctually, at six o’clock. That awful eau-de-cologne, his shiny hair, that moustache, leaving the house just before Caroline did.

And no one ever noticed!

That slimy smile, the slow wink... She’d always assumed that horrid wink was for her! Ugh! And it had never occurred to her—never in a million years
—that Caroline was going to meet him. That Caroline was doing it—

Poor William! And Mum had done
nothing!

And at one minute past six the rocket had landed.

One moment Deirdre was in her room staring at a blank school exercise book. The next she was lying on her back staring at the ceiling with all the wind knocked out of her, fighting to catch her breath.

And somehow, seconds or minutes or hours later, she was in her parents’ room—how had she got here?—where, until a minute ago, a window had been. Now the window was a thousand shattered pieces all over the carpet and bedspread and crunching beneath her slippers.