The Old House on the Corner (23 page)

The bazaar was tomorrow and it would be Christmas next week. The decorations were up and there were already a few parcels under the tree – her brother,
Christopher, always sent expensive presents for the nieces and nephew he’d never met, although Rachel sent him loads of photographs – they could never afford to take the whole family to Cyprus and Christopher was at first too busy, then too frail to come home – he’d recently had his seventy-sixth birthday. The cake and the puddings had been made weeks ago, but she still had mince pies to do and shortbread for Frank – he loved homemade shortbread – and had promised to make a couple of sponges for the cake stall at the bazaar. There were buttons to sew on the matine´e jackets she’d knitted and, of course, ordinary, everyday things, like washing, cleaning, and preparing that night’s meal. As soon as the headache had gone, she’d get started.

An hour later, the headache had got worse, not better, and the pain had spread to her limbs. She was shivering, yet felt much too hot. Twice during the morning the doorbell rang, but she felt too sick to answer. At around noon, she managed to stagger as far as the kitchen and take more tablets but, almost straight away, she vomited them up in the downstairs lavatory. She collapsed on to the settee and drifted into a restless sleep.

When she came to, it was quarter past two. In an hour, it would be time to collect Alice from school. Rachel tried to stand, but fell back when a wave of dizziness mixed with nausea washed over her. She’d never make it as far as school. She wondered who to call and ask to fetch Alice home? Some of her close friends had moved away and the ones left no longer had children at infant school. She was about to ring the school, but remembered Frank had promised to come home early that afternoon. He would be only too pleased to collect Alice. Once again she drifted into sleep, this time full of
bizarre dreams featuring giant spiders and trees with eyes that stared at her balefully.

It was Kirsty who woke her. ‘Are you all right, Mum? You look awful,’ she said when Rachel struggled to sit up.

‘What time is it?’ She rubbed her eyes. They felt sticky and would hardly open. She saw it was pitch dark outside.

‘Nearly five o’clock. Where’s Alice?’

‘Isn’t she home?’ It was a stupid question to ask. As if Alice would have come home and not woken her mummy! Rachel had the first feeling of dread.

‘She’s being awfully quiet if she is.’ Kirsty went to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Alice,’ she called, ‘are you up there?’ There was no reply. Kirsty said, ‘I’ll just make sure,’ and ran upstairs. ‘She’s not there,’ she said, white-faced, when she came down.

‘Then where is she?’ Rachel screamed. She stood, but had to sit down again when her head swam. ‘Is your dad’s car outside?’

‘No.’

‘He said he was coming home early. I expected him to pick Alice up.’

‘Don’t panic, Mum,’ Kirsty said sensibly, although she looked about to panic herself. ‘If you weren’t there to collect her, maybe she’s gone to someone’s house. You shouldn’t have relied on Dad, you know. He often promises to come home early, but can’t if a customer turns up.’

‘Yes, but …’

‘But what, Mum?’

‘Never mind. I’ll ring the school. Maybe she’s still there.’ It seemed most unlikely at this hour. She tried to stand again, but it was impossible. Her legs refused to
support her. ‘Kirsty, you’ll have to do it for me, love. I think I’ve got the flu.’

‘OK, Mum.’ A few minutes later, she came back. ‘I spoke to the secretary and she said all the pupils had gone, but Alice’s teacher, Mrs Burgess was still there and she called her to the phone. Apparently, it was late when Alice left. She’d been making a Christmas card for the family and the glue hadn’t dried. Mrs Burgess said she was dancing around the classroom, waving the card to dry it. Next time she looked, Alice had gone and she thought you’d taken her. Why didn’t you call the school, Mum, and tell them you were ill?’

‘I don’t know,’ Rachel muttered.

James arrived, dumped his satchel as soon as he heard the news, and left to search the streets for his sister. Kirsty called every number she could think of to see if anyone knew Alice’s whereabouts, but no one had seen her. She called the showroom to ask her father to come, but he’d already left. ‘Mum,’ she said in a frightened voice, ‘I think we’d better call the police.’

Rachel nodded. By now, fear had entered her soul. She just knew, could feel in her aching bones that something terrible had happened to her darling Alice.

Neighbours knocked to ask if Alice had been found. They stood outside, looking grim, telling each other they couldn’t imagine how they’d feel if it had happened to them, and what a lovely child Alice was.

Time passed very slowly: seven o’clock, eight o’clock, nine, and with it came the certainty that by now there was no chance of Alice coming home of her own accord. Someone must have taken her. Either that, or she’d had an accident.

No one had thought to close the curtains on the Williams’s house, so gaily decorated for Christmas. Frank
could be seen, pacing the room like a crazy man, while Rachel lay on the settee, her mind full of nightmares and her body shaking with fever. James had long since returned from his search of the streets, having shouted his sister’s name, the shouts becoming louder and more desperate when Alice didn’t appear. There was no sign of Kirsty, who was in her room trying not to imagine the unimaginable horror of Alice never coming back.

It was just before midnight when a police car drew up outside the house. By then, the small crowd had gone, although quite a few curtains moved when the car was heard to arrive.

Alice’s body had been found floating in the canal. Rachel couldn’t think what it was that made her come home that way. Perhaps, knowing it was Mummy’s favourite walk, she’d thought they were more likely to meet.

‘I’m sorry,’ the oldest of the policeman said soberly. ‘It looks as if she just slipped, but there’ll be an inquest, naturally, to see if there’s any sign of foul play.’

Frank’s eyes were two black holes of horror. His face seemed to collapse, as if the bones were coming apart and Rachel realized how fragile he was inside. His wife and children had made him strong, but now that one of the children had been tragically taken away, he could no longer hold himself together. Rachel knew that, from now on, he would need her more than ever. Her blood seemed to turn to water when he turned to her and said in a voice she’d never heard before, ‘It’s your fault. If it weren’t for you, Alice would still be alive. I’ll never forgive you for this, Rachel. Never!’

Christmas was forgotten. No one left the house. Endless
cups of tea and coffee were drunk and Frank was never seen without a glass of something in his hand: whisky, rum, gin, bought to offer visitors over Christmas.

Rachel’s flu persisted for a few days, but she did her best to rise above it. Her grief was fourfold. She had her own to deal with while at the same time her heart ached for James and Kirsty who were gutted. And Frank, poor Frank, who refused to let her comfort him the times he collapsed, sobbing in despair. ‘Don’t touch me,’ he would roar when she tried to put her arm around him.

Inevitably, once the new millennium arrived, life acquired a semblance of normality. The children returned to school and Frank to work, although he continued to use his wife as a sort of mental punchbag to help him cope with his despair. He looked on the edge of a nervous breakdown, so Rachel just bowed her head and let him get on with it in the hope he would eventually come to his senses.

‘It was all your fault,’ he would insist contemptuously. ‘Alice would still be alive if you’d used your brains and asked someone to collect her.’

‘But you promised to be home from work early,’ Rachel protested more than once, knowing how weak it sounded, knowing what his reply would be.

‘I didn’t promise. I said I might. You’re a fool to have relied on that. The manager called a meeting and I had to stay.’

‘I felt ill, Frank.’

‘Nobody’s that ill.’ He turned away, not realizing that she was more necessary to him now than she’d ever been. Without Rachel, he would have had no one to blame, no one to vent his frustration on.

James and Kirsty were growing away from her. They also
blamed their mother, although hadn’t said it openly. Whole days would pass and they’d hardly talk. In the main, Frank ignored her, but when he spoke, he made her feel very small and very stupid and told her she was letting herself go, which was true. She no longer bothered to have her hair set, didn’t care what she wore, was putting on weight, although had no idea why because she ate very little. Perhaps it was the lack of exercise, of sitting in a chair for hours on end, thinking about Alice, torturing herself, wondering if she’d suffered and cried for her mummy as her head sank under the dirty water of the canal.

She didn’t want to see the few friends she had left. Their eyes were full of blame, although they pretended to be sympathetic. She longed for new friends, people to talk to who didn’t know about Alice, about how she’d died and why.

That summer, James left school and went to work for a firm of accountants in Liverpool – and Frank had an affair. A divorcee in her forties had moved into a house across the road. Her name was Bella and she was the very opposite of his wife, with her long brown hair and short skirts and dazzling, inviting smile. As soon as James and Kirsty were in bed, Frank would slink out of the house and not return for hours, not caring what Rachel thought. She didn’t protest. She told herself he was getting things out of his system. One of these days, everything would return to normal – or as normal as they would ever be without Alice.

Another New Year and nothing had changed. Bella and Frank had parted, but his clothes still smelled of perfume and he often arrived home late from work, offering no excuse and refusing the meal she’d made him. He didn’t
care what Rachel thought. All he felt for his wife was contempt, and the confidence, the sense of her own worth that she had acquired over the years drained away, drop by drop, until she felt like a little girl again, the one who’d gone to infant school and found it agony to speak.

In February, Christopher died in his sleep as his father had done before him. When Rachel was born, he’d been twenty-seven years old and, as far as she knew, had led a happy, contented life in the Army and his beloved Cyprus. It was many years since she’d seen him, but they’d corresponded regularly and often spoken on the phone. She felt too dispirited to go to his funeral, too exhausted to weep, too disillusioned to pray for his kind soul.

She knew Christopher had left her everything in his Will, but was surprised by the amount of savings he’d accumulated. Added to the proceeds from the sale of his apartment and his share of the travel agency, it came to quite a hefty sum.

‘I don’t want anything to do with it,’ Frank said churlishly when she told him. ‘It’s your money, you do with it what you like.’

‘I’d like us to buy another house, get away from here.’ Memories haunted her. She kept expecting Alice’s curly head to pop round from the behind the settee, her favourite hiding place. There were nights when she could have sworn she could hear a childish voice shouting for a glass of water. She would never forget Alice for as long as she lived, but wanted to live in a place where her ghost wasn’t around every corner, reminding her of her loss, where she could make new friends and start to feel normal again.

Frank looked ready to dismiss the idea, but Kirsty said
immediately, ‘I’d love for us to move. I think it’s a really cool idea.’

‘What about school?’ Frank growled.

‘I’ll be leaving in July. We might not even have moved by then.’

‘We could live closer to Liverpool,’ James suggested. ‘It’d be more convenient for my job.’

‘Yeah,’ Kirsty agreed, ‘and more convenient for clubs and stuff.’

Frank just shrugged and didn’t speak. Rachel took this as a signal to proceed and contacted a number of estate agents. She was inundated with details of houses, although none were the sort she had in mind.

‘What exactly
did
you have in mind?’ Frank demanded irritably.

‘I don’t know,’ Rachel said vaguely. ‘All the ones we’ve seen so far look too
lived
in. People might have died there. There might be a horrid atmosphere. I want a house that’s ours and ours alone.’

When a brochure arrived for Victoria Square, she knew immediately that one of the detached houses was exactly what she wanted. They were very similar to the one built where the cottage in Maghull had once stood: it had been called Three Farthings, she remembered. The properties hadn’t been built yet: the brochure showed only drawings, skeletons of houses with empty rooms set around an oval of little dots that would be a lawn. The small estate was adjacent to a park and close to a lively shopping area in one of the nicest parts of Liverpool, only a short bus ride away from town.

Frank drove them to the site that weekend. The foundations had been dug, the coffee-coloured brick walls of the two detached houses were only a few feet high, the floors just stretches of smooth concrete.

James and Kirsty examined the plans and discussed which bedrooms they would have. For the first time since Alice had died, there was excitement in their voices. The move would do them good, Rachel thought gratefully. She even felt a tiny surge of excitement herself.

‘What do you think, Frank?’ she asked cautiously, expecting to have her head bitten off, but it was much worse than that.

‘I like the fact it’s got four bedrooms,’ he said pleasantly. ‘It means I won’t have to sleep with my stupid wife any more.’

Rachel took a step backwards. She felt herself go icily cold as the meaning, the sheer nastiness of his words sank in. Frank pushed his hands in his pockets and went over to speak to the children. She looked at him, seeing for the first time how stout he had become, that his shoulders were no longer square, but round and heavy, and his hair had receded, exposing his red, heavily freckled scalp. Why hadn’t she noticed before? It must have happened overnight. Perhaps it was because she loved him that she’d only seen the handsome man she’d married.