Kitabı oku: «The Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva», sayfa 2
‘The face?’ Kate picked Flo up, tentatively feeling her head and looking out of the window. There were no faces at any of the windows in the house opposite, which—local rumour had it—was some sort of Albanian- or Russian-run brothel. ‘She’s fine,’ she tried to reassure him, as Flo started to calm down.
Findlay remained motionless. This wasn’t good enough.
He wanted to know why she had permitted such a thing to happen and it dawned on her, standing there cradling Flo, that he was angry with her. The eyes staring at her through the slits in the Spiderman mask, which he must have come upstairs and put on himself, were angry. She’d shattered an illusion he didn’t want shattered and now he knew that mothers—in particular, his mother—sometimes left their babies on beds and forgot about them, and sometimes the babies rolled off.
She tried to think of a comforting lie to tell him when she heard the post being pushed aggressively through the letterbox by the postwoman, who had some minor mentalhealth issues.
From the top of the stairs, she made out the red gas and electric, and the one from Southwark Council that would be their second and final reminder for overdue council tax. Between the recycling bag and piles of shoes that were beginning to look like something a UN forensic scientist might go to work on, was a brown A4 envelope that had to be the letter from Schools Admissions.
‘Was it okay to wave at the face?’ Findlay called out behind her.
Ignoring him, she stumbled down the stairs towards the letter.
‘How is she?’ Margery said, watching her.
‘Who?’ Kate couldn’t take her eyes off the brown A4 envelope.
‘Flo. What happened?’
‘Oh—she rolled off the bed.’
‘You left her on the bed?’
Kate swooped down on the letter from Schools Admissions, trying to decide whether to open it now or in the car.
‘What’s that?’
‘The letter from Schools Admissions.’
‘Well open it,’ Margery said, impatiently. She’d been in on most of the week’s conversations leading up to this moment—and the rows; like the one that had resounded through the ceiling last night.
With Flo balanced awkwardly on her shoulder, Kate—now nauseous with anticipation—ripped open the envelope and scanned the lines of the letter over and over again until she became aware of Margery watching her.
‘So?’
‘What?’ she said, stupidly.
‘Did he get in?’
Kate carried on staring stupidly at her and it was only when Margery said, ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ that she realised she must have nodded.
‘Your face,’ Margery said after a while.
‘My face—what?’
‘It’s a picture.’
‘It’s gone bendy,’ Findlay put in from behind her on the stairs.
Margery, still watching her closely, didn’t look entirely convinced. ‘Don’t forget to tell Robert.’
‘I won’t,’ Kate said, automatically, with a sudden awful feeling that Margery was about to ask to see the letter—when the doorbell rang, followed by the sound of keys turning in the lock. ‘Martina!’
Pushing the letter quickly into her suit jacket pocket, she ushered in Evie’s Slovak au pair who, Kate sensed, much preferred the Hunter family to Evie and the rest of the McRaes at No. 112.
‘Hey—it’s Spiderman.’
‘Tell me about the pig,’ Findlay said, running up to her.
‘Not right now, Finn,’ Kate cut in, ‘we’re late for nursery.’
‘Her grandma made a football out of a pig’s head,’ Findlay said to the assembled adults.
‘For my bruvvers—it was Christmas,’ Martina said, resorting to the south London colloquialism she found easier to pronounce than the ‘th’ sound of received pronunciation.
‘Fascinating,’ Kate said vaguely, beginning to lose the day’s thread. ‘Finn—come on.’ She was about to leave when she remembered Margery, framed ominously in the kitchen doorframe.
‘Martina, this is Margery.’
‘Hello Margery,’ Martina said cheerfully, entirely unaware, Kate thought with pity, of what the next few hours held in store for her.
Margery took in the tall skinny girl with bad skin in the bottle-green leggings and Will Smith T-Shirt, and grunted. Margery didn’t know who Will Smith was and wondered if Martina was some sort of activist. She’d always been under the impression that one of the things the Communists had going for them was that they didn’t like blacks.
‘Martina—your money’s in an envelope by the cooker,’ Kate called out, starting to make her way down the hallway towards the front door.
‘D’you want me to get anything for supper tonight?’ Margery called out after her.
Poised on the doorstep, Kate’s mind and stomach skittered rapidly over last night’s chicken chasseur assembled with the aid of a chicken chasseur sachet and some bestbuy chicken goujons. ‘It’s fine—I’m out tonight.’
‘But what about the children?’
‘They get hot food at nursery and I’m only doing a halfday so I can get them some tea.’
‘And Robert?’ Margery tried not to yell. ‘What about Robert?’
Kate shrugged. ‘I guess there’s pasta and stuff in the cupboards—he can dig around and fix you both something.’
Margery was staring at her open-mouthed. She knew things were bad, but not this bad; not only had Kate been sucking him of potential all these years—his glorious, glorious potential—she’d been starving him as well. Margery felt suddenly, almost crucially short of breath. Her poor, helpless boy.
‘I’ll shop,’ she gasped.
‘If you want—but there is stuff in the cupboards.’
The two women stared silently at each other before Kate turned and made her way with the children to the Audi estate parked on the street outside next to an abandoned blue Bedford van that she would have seen on last night’s Crimewatch in conjunction with an armed robbery at the Woolwich Building Society—if she’d got round to watching any TV.
Chapter 2
Margery carried on standing on the doorstep to No. 22 until the Audi had turned the corner out of sight. She was about to go back inside when a BMW pulled up on the opposite kerb, the doors clicking smoothly open as a smart young woman got out and walked towards the house with the red door and nets (at least somebody on this street had the sense to have nets)—No. 21. The house with faces—that was what Findlay called it. Kate said it was a brothel—Margery wasn’t sure whether she was joking or not—and Robert thought Oompa-Loompas lived there because, apart from the smart young woman and short man in a suit now following her, nobody ever went in and nobody ever came out.
As Margery continued to watch, a face did appear at a first-floor window. The smart young woman who was at the front gate looked instinctively up and the nets fell back into place. She turned round and said something to the man, and it occurred to Margery that the man was afraid of the woman, now framed in the doorway to No. 21 and glancing across the street at Margery.
Margery smiled—she wasn’t sure what else to do—and continued to smile as the woman disappeared into No. 21. She looked—Margery decided—like the girlfriend of the landlord at the Fox and Hounds where Margery and her friend Edith had a spritzer on Fridays—and she was Lithuanian. Darren, the landlord, had intimated softly to Margery and Edith that Lithuanian girls really knew how to look after men.
Edith always used to say that Robert would end up with someone like that. A Lithuanian—or worse—a Rastafarian. Margery wasn’t even sure if there were female Rastafarians, which made the insult even worse. Was Edith implying that Robert was gay? She’d got East Leeke library to order a biography of Haile Selassie in order to get to the bottom of the matter, and had been halfway through it when Edith informed her—through pinched lips—that her son, Andrew, was marrying a girl called Joy, who was Thai.
Up until Joy, Edith and Margery’s friendship had a formula. It was understood that Edith had things and people in her life that Margery—bringing up an illegitimate child alone—was expected to envy. That’s how their relationship had always worked, and Margery had put up with a lot from Edith over the years because Edith was all she had and her son, Andrew, all Robert had.
Joy changed everything.
Edith had been all the way to Thailand to visit her. Joy lived in a village with no running water, but they’d gone to a restaurant for Edith’s birthday where you paid for the glass and could then refill it with Coca-Cola as many times as you liked. Not that Edith liked Coca-Cola, but—as she was quick to point out—that wasn’t the point.
Edith said Andrew was going to buy Joy’s village and turn it into a tourist destination—the Genuine Thai Experience. She also gave Margery some lurid and unasked-for details about Andrew and Joy’s sex life that Margery was unable to fathom how she’d come by. None of this sex and commerce, however, detracted from the fact—as far as Margery was concerned—that Andrew had married a mailorder Thai bride because he couldn’t get himself a decent English girl.
Since their sons’ respective marriages, the balance of power had shifted in the relationship between Margery and Edith.
While Margery might not exactly get on with Kate, Kate did at least speak English.
‘Do you like tea?’ a foreign voice called out from somewhere in the house behind her.
‘Tea?’ Martina asked her again, from the kitchen doorway this time.
Margery nodded, shutting the front door tentatively behind her and staying where she was, listening to the clink of china in the kitchen. So the au pair knew how to make her way round the kitchen then; knew how to help herself.
‘Please—try this,’ Martina said, reappearing in the hallway and handing Margery a cup of scarlet-coloured tea.
‘What’s this?’ Margery asked, sniffing at it.
‘Raspberry. I drink it three times a day,’ Martina said.
Margery had no intention of drinking the tea. Not after the article she’d read in CHAT last week about the cleaner who’d given an elderly woman like her a drink with a paralytic in it that had paralysed her from the neck down. Once the woman was paralysed, the cleaner performed an autopsy on her WHILE SHE WAS STILL ALIVE, filmed the whole thing and put it on the Internet. Nobody was catching Margery out like that—especially not a communist. Nobody was performing an autopsy on Margery without her permission.
She followed Martina back into the kitchen, noting the carrier bag on the bench with the box of tea bags inside that Martina must have brought with her.
‘You bought these all the way from Czechoslovakia with you?’ she asked, suspiciously
‘From Slovakia—yes.’
‘You can get hold of that sort of thing there then?’
‘Of course,’ Martina said, lifting her cup. ‘You like?’
Margery didn’t respond to this. ‘Did you have to queue a long time for the tea?’
‘For this tea? I don’t know. My mother bought it at the supermarket. There are always queues at the supermarket.’
Margery put her cup of tea down on the kitchen surface. ‘You have supermarkets?’
Martina nodded, blowing on her tea. ‘I take my mother in the car one time a week.’
‘Car?’
‘My car—yes.’
‘You’ve got more than one?’
‘We have two.’
A two-car family—and there was Robert having to either cycle to work or get the bus because Kate needed the car. Margery glared at Martina, as if her car, the Krasinovic’s second car, parked outside their block in Blac, was somehow denying the Hunter family their second car.
At least—as she discovered several minutes later—all the Krasinovic family lived in a flat; unheated, she presumed, until Martina set her straight on this as well, informing her that the Krasinovic apartment in Blac not only had central heating, but double glazing as well.
Margery’s eyes skidded, mortified, over the rotting, peeling sash windows in the Hunter’s kitchen that Kate refused to replace with new uPVC double glazing—not even after one of Margery’s insurance policies came off and she offered to pay for the double glazing herself.
Presuming the conversation over, Martina retrieved the Carry-It-All that Margery had bought Kate at Christmas from the cupboard under the sink. The Carry-It-All was a turquoise plastic container with a handle that you could use to transport your cleaning arsenal round the house.
Margery had a lilac one at home—which she had ordered from the Bettaware catalogue along with Kate’s—and it gave her a huge amount of pleasure, on a Monday morning, to make her way round her East Leeke bungalow with it. It was dishwasher proof as well—something she’d pointed out to Kate when Kate hadn’t shown quite the right amount of enthusiasm or appreciation of the carefully chosen Carry-It-All. ‘It’s dishwasher proof,’ she’d said, pointedly, and Kate had given her that lopsided grimace she thought passed for a smile, followed by that look she put on—like she was the only person on the planet who’d ever had to forsake their dreams.
Margery found the Carry-It-All at the beginning of this visit, at the back of the cupboard under the sink—where Kate had thrown it—on its side with part of its handle discoloured where bleach had dripped onto it. Its abandonment felt more intentional than careless and this fact had moved her almost to tears when she’d discovered it on her first morning here, in an empty house. She’d since washed it, replenished it with a selection of cleaning products bought with her own money, and left it at the front of the cupboard.
Someone was talking to her. She’d got lost in herself again and hadn’t heard; one day she’d get lost in herself and never come back and Robert and Kate and the children would put her in a place that smelt perpetually of food nobody could remember eating—like that place her and Edith went to visit Rose in when Rose came down with Alzheimer’s.
‘What’s that, dear?’ she said to Martina. The ‘dear’ surprised her, had slipped through usually tight lips without her even thinking about it. She said it sometimes, to waitresses when she was out with Edith, or to young cashiers at the Co-op. She only ever said it to strangers, and it always caught her unawares.
Whether Martina understood the endearment or not, her face lost some of its wariness.
‘I must clean now,’ she said, the Carry-It-All in her hand.
‘Yes,’ Margery agreed vaguely, suddenly shouting, ‘wait!’ Martina was going upstairs to clean. What if she’d forgotten to flush the loo? She pushed upstairs ahead of the au pair, breathing heavily, until she was standing, panting while staring down the toilet bowl. She had flushed the loo, but flushed it again anyway for good measure. Watching the flush, she thought fondly of the streams of luminescent blue that flooded her toilet at home as the flush passed through her new toilet bloc, clipped to the rim. She thought about how she’d stood in the new ASDA store where the mobility bus dropped her off and debated for at least five minutes over whether to choose the green or blue toilet bloc. There was nothing so colourful about the flush at No. 22 Prendergast Road; nothing to wipe away the memory of necessity.
For a moment Margery forgot what she was doing up in the bathroom, staring down the loo, then at the tread on the stairs, she remembered. They really were going to put her in that place alongside Alzheimer’s Rose if this didn’t stop.
Chapter 3
Kate pulled up slowly in front of Village Montessori, checking to see if cars belonging to anybody she knew were parked in the nursery’s vicinity. Seeing Evie’s, she drove round the block slowly twice and after the second lap saw the tail end of the black Chrysler disappear into Hebron Road. It was safe.
Fading out Findlay’s monologue on the death of one of the nursery chickens, which were kept in a hut in the playground—bird flu?—she moved swiftly through the security gate with Flo on her and Findlay behind her towards the nursery entrance, past the Welcome to our Nursery sign in French, German, Spanish, Hebrew, Welsh, Gaelic, Arabic, Chinese, and Urdu. On the wall next to this was a montage of photographs taken by Sebastian Salgado of child labourers in South American mines that parents were beginning to complain to the Management Committee about.
‘Red rooster’s eyes went yellow and mushy when she died, like inside a wasp when you squish it, and Sandy who does music and movement said it wasn’t a fox,’ Findlay carried on as he hung up his coat, then added, ‘Martina’s grandma did make a football out of a pig’s head and it’s true. I’ve seen the film.’
Kate, who’d been on the verge of pushing him gently into the Butterfly Room, stopped. ‘Film?’
‘She’s got a film of it on her phone. Arthur,’ he yelled, then, turning back to Kate said, ‘is Arthur going to my new school?’
‘We don’t know what school Arthur’s going to—why don’t you ask him?’
Findlay ran over to the Home Corner where Arthur was kneeling in front of the oven, removing a large green casserole pot that he’d put a Baby Annabel doll in earlier.
‘What school are you going to?’
Kate waited.
Arthur was about to respond when one of the nursery staff went up to Findlay and said loudly, ‘Shall we give this to Mummy?’ tugging pointedly at the mask on his head.
Sighing, Findlay pulled it off and pushed it into Kate’s hand, turning his attention back to Arthur.
‘We need knives and forks,’ Arthur was saying, efficiently.
‘We have a no-masks policy at nursery,’ the woman said.
‘I forgot,’ Kate quickly apologised before virtually running along the corridor with Flo towards the Caterpillar Room, where she handed her over to her primary carer, Mary.
She got back to the car without running into anybody else she knew, and checked her phone. There was an ecstatic message from Evie telling her that Aggie was ‘in’, an almost identical one from Ros re. Toby Granger, and a message from Harriet telling her in a strangely officious manner that Casper had won a place—won?—and reminding her to bring a food contribution to that night’s PRC meeting. Kate hadn’t even given it a thought.
She drove the car round the corner to Beulah Hill and parked outside the property Jessica had told her about. The house had nets up at windows painted peach, and a dead laurel in the front garden. She got the letter out of her breast pocket and read it again, just to see if anything had changed since she put it in there. She reached the Yours sincerely, Jade Jackson—Head of Admissions at the end. Nothing had changed. She felt, irrationally, that Findlay not being offered a place at St Anthony’s had something to do with Jade Jackson being Jamaican.
We are writing to inform you of the outcome of your application for a Southwark primary school. Your child has been offered a place at Brunton Park. The school will be contacting you with further information shortly….
She watched a pit-bull urinate against the tree on the other side of the window, then tried phoning the Admissions line, knowing how hopeless it would be trying to get through on the day all the offers had gone out. She listened to the engaged tone until she was automatically disconnected, then tried phoning St Anthony’s instead, eventually getting through to a woman who told her the school was once again oversubscribed and how this year more than twenty-five places had gone to siblings.
The woman cut her off before Kate even got round to telling her that they attended St Anthony’s Church every Sunday—every Sunday—or asking whether the school had definitely received the Reverend Walker’s letter confirming this.
She pushed her head back roughly against the car seat and tried phoning Robert, who didn’t answer, so sat contemplating No. 8 Beulah Hill instead. She was going to be late for her first appointment, and didn’t care.
Chapter 4
At No. 22 Prendergast Road, Margery stood listening to Martina clean the bathrooms, then went back into the kitchen, humming a Max Bygraves song to herself as she started on the pastry for the corned beef and onion pie she’d decided to make for Robert’s tea that night. She watched her fingers lightly pull the mixture together in the way she’d been taught as a girl by her grandmother, who went mad playing the organ, and thought of all the different kitchens she’d watched her fingers do this in over the years, and how the fingers had changed—grown lines, knobbles, arthritic twists and turns and finally gone all loose; so loose that the few rings she had would probably have already fallen off if they hadn’t got caught in the loose folds of skin round the knuckles.
The litany of industrious sounds coming from upstairs comforted Margery as she rolled the pastry and lined the pie tin—Communists certainly knew how to clean. When she went to wash her hands, she saw the envelope Kate had left for Martina on the surface by the sink. She went into the hallway and listened. Martina had just started hoovering. Margery went into the lounge and took another envelope out of Robert’s desk drawer—it wasn’t actually Robert’s desk, it was Kate’s, but Margery always referred to it as Robert’s—and went back into the kitchen.
She quickly tore open Martina’s pay packet and pulled out a twenty-pound note. She stood there for a moment, brushing flour off her nostrils with the crisp new note and knew that, according to her calculations, there was no way Kate and Robert could stretch to eighty pounds a month on a cleaner. Margery knew the Hunters’ finances as well as any accountant because she’d spent the better part of yesterday morning going through their two fiscal files. The Hunters were, in her opinion, in dire straits—she didn’t know how they kept the show up and running or why they weren’t collapsing under the strain of their imminent financial ruin. She could only surmise that Robert was keeping it from Kate and bearing the burden alone. She didn’t understand her son’s marriage. It seemed unnatural to her; more important still, it was unsustainable. What was it Robert said to her all those years ago: ‘Wait till you meet her, Mum—she’s going to change the world—not just mine; everyone’s. Kofi Annan beware.’
Well, personal finances were clearly below the likes of Kofi Annan, but Margery knew bailiffs—had had experience of bailiffs throughout her childhood, and she could smell them in the air now. Kofi Annan or not, when it was time they came for you and nothing could keep them from the door. They went where they were sent and didn’t discriminate. Margery stuffed the twenty-pound note into the new envelope as the hoover cut out upstairs, put it back on the bench by the cooker and opened two cans of corned beef that she’d bought with her from East Leeke. When she turned round, Ivan the cat was standing motionless on the kitchen floor, watching her, its back arched. She felt immediately nauseous; cats always made her feel nauseous. They brought her underarms out in a rash and gave her vertigo.
Then the phone started to ring in the lounge and she wasn’t sure what to do about it because Ivan showed no sign of moving, was in fact now sending out a hissing spit in her general direction. Even without Ivan, the phone alarmed her with its flashing lights and antennae.
‘You want me to get?’ Martina called out from the upstairs landing.
At the sound of Martina’s voice, Ivan relaxed and strolled past Margery towards his bowl, brushing her ankles.
Margery jogged quickly into the lounge and started to wrestle with the still ringing phone, eventually pressing the right button—because it might be Robert; it might always be Robert…
It was Beatrice, Kate’s mother.
‘Margery—how are you? I had no idea you were in town.’
Town? What town? ‘The cleaner’s here,’ Margery said, for no particular reason.
‘That’s nice,’ Beatrice said after a while.
So the cleaner was news to Beatrice as well. Margery relaxed a little. ‘She’s from Czechoslovakia,’ she explained.
On the other end of the phone Beatrice, unsure why they were talking about the cleaner, said briskly, ‘There’s no such place.’
Margery baulked. ‘What?’
‘There’s the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but no Czechoslovakia.’
‘Martina never said,’ Margery carried on, more to herself than Beatrice, ‘but they were Communists?’
‘While the Soviet Union was still in power—yes.’
‘I was going to ask her if she had any KGB stories.’
‘KGB?’
‘You know—the KGB—the secret police.’ Margery had withdrawn an abundance of material on the Gestapo and KGB from East Leeke Library’s well-stocked history section.
‘You must of heard about the KGB, Beatrice—how they used to come in the night while you were asleep,’ Margery carried on, breathless. ‘The footsteps on the stairs, down the hallway…knocking on doors, doors opening…people disappearing.’ She paused. ‘They came in the night,’ she said again, insisting on this.
After a while, Beatrice said lightly, ‘So does Freddie Kruger.’
‘He sounds German—was Czechoslovakia covered by the Stasi?’ Margery asked, interested.
‘Margery,’ Beatrice reined her in. ‘How long are you staying for?’
This brought Margery up short. Always sensitive to any hint of expulsion or the fact that she was outstaying her welcome, she said quickly, ‘Not long—it’s just while I’ve got the decorators in.’
‘What colour?’ Beatrice asked. She’d been to Margery’s East Leeke bungalow once—when Kate and Robert got married—and the only place she’d ever been to before that bore even the slightest semblance to the bungalow in terms of décor and overall atmosphere was a euthanasia clinic on Denmark’s Jutland coast.
‘What colour—what?’
‘What colour are you having the walls painted?’
Beatrice was shouting—Margery was sure Beatrice was shouting at her, and there was no need to do that; there was nothing partial about her hearing.
‘Magnolia,’ she said, surprised Beatrice had even asked.
‘What colour was it before?’
‘Magnolia.’
A pause. ‘Margery—is Kate there?’
‘She went out,’ Margery said, making it sound like she’d gone shopping and not to work as a clinical psychologist.
‘I was just phoning to see if Finn got into St Anthony’s—Kate said they were meant to hear by today.’
Finn—was Robert Rob or Robbie? ‘The letter came.’
‘And?’
Margery paused; suddenly thrilled by the notion that she had a small piece of the Hunter family’s future in her hands that Beatrice wasn’t yet aware of. ‘Well…’ she trailed off, provocatively. She could get Edith to the point sometimes where she was begging, her cheap dentures sliding around inside her mouth across saliva-ridden gums.
‘Did he get in?’
‘The letter said he did.’ What did that mean? Margery wasn’t sure, but she felt herself scanning the lounge to see if Kate had left the letter anywhere. She wouldn’t mind a look at that letter.
‘Thank God,’ Beatrice breathed down the phone. ‘Kate was talking about home schooling if Finn didn’t get in…leaving London—the works,’ she carried on.
‘Leaving London?’
‘Well, now she won’t need to bother.’
‘Leaving London for where?’
‘I don’t know, Margery, you know those two—Kate was going on about America, and Rob…’
She called him Rob.
‘…was talking about New Zealand. They talked themselves into a taste for bigger things; who knows, maybe they’ll end up going anyway,’ Beatrice concluded cheerfully.
Margery was shocked. New Zealand? Robert never said anything to her about New Zealand.
‘I’ll try and catch Kate before she starts work—and you must come down here to see us—get a blast of fresh air.’ She paused. ‘Come on your own, if you like, I mean if you get sick of family life. I can always come and get you—just give us a bell.’
Margery didn’t respond to this; still hadn’t responded by the time Beatrice rang off. New Zealand. She tried phoning Edith, but Edith didn’t answer.
Martina appeared in the lounge doorway.
Margery stared helplessly at her before blurting out, ‘New Zealand’s on the other side of the world.’
Martina smiled and moved cautiously into the room with the hoover, watched by Margery. After a while she put the hoover away and disappeared into the kitchen. Margery remained in the lounge, staring at the phone.
‘I go now,’ Martina called out.
‘Already?’ Margery responded, involuntarily, walking slowly into the hallway.
Martina was at the front door, the white envelope in her hand. ‘Now I have much ironing to do for Mr Catano.’
‘Catano?’
‘A bit Korean, I think.’
‘Korean?’ Margery said as Martina opened the front door, thinking briefly of cousin Tom.
Martina pushed her bike past sunflowers that Kate had let Findlay plant and that Margery thought would look ridiculous by July when they reached shoulder-height.
‘I see you again next week.’
‘Maybe,’ Margery called out, unable to think about next week when she could barely keep her mind fixed on what was happening the rest of today—especially after hearing about New Zealand.
‘And please—I fed the cat.’
Margery was about to say something about the cat when she heard the door to No. 20—the Jamaican’s door—start to open. She went quickly back inside, slamming the door to No. 22 shut and going into the lounge where she watched carefully, through slatted blinds Martina hadn’t forgotten to dust, as Mr Hamilton moved slowly over to his recycling bin and put an empty milk carton in it.
The sun glanced off his gold wristwatch as he turned round, shaking his head at a private thought before looking up suddenly, straight at her, smiling.
Scowling, Margery backed away from the window, almost running into the hallway where she slid the chain across the front door as quietly as she could, then waited. No sound of movement on the other side. Then, after another minute, the front door to No. 20 was shut.
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