Mrs Tizard was collecting up a selection of gin bottles from the floor. Her mouth had become a thin, disapproving line. Cynthia had no wish to speak to her.
‘Well,’ Cynthia said to Mr Tizard, hating the brightness in her voice, ‘it would appear Emma lived mostly in this room. I told you she worked very hard. It’s not really surprising that she allowed the place to get a bit messy.’
Mr Tizard didn’t respond. He had picked up a sheaf of sketches and was impatiently leafing through them. ‘Do you know this man?’ He thrust a sketch into Cynthia’s hands.
‘Er. no. I don’t think so,’ she replied, feeling heat suffuse her face. The subject of the drawing was naked, sporting an undisguised erection. She dropped the paper quickly on to the desk. Mr Tizard had slumped heavily into the swivel chair in front of the desk. Cynthia empathized with what he must be feeling. She started to tidy the scattered papers into one pile. Apart from reams of illegible notes, there must have been hundreds of sketches and water-colours, many of them depicting the same naked man. Some of his poses were so explicit, Cynthia had to keep averting her eyes while tidying them. She was also distressed to find his face becoming more and more familiar to her. Could it be Michael Homey? No, of course not, and yet she’d seen no other man with whom Emma had had any connection. Apart from these disturbingly erotic sketches, there were also many water-colours similar to the one Emma had given to Cynthia; strange, unearthly landscapes in flowing, muted colours; ethereal beings floating in clouds that looked like palaces. Holding them up one by one, Cynthia was tempted to keep some of these for herself. Emma Tizard had been unbelievably talented. Then Cynthia came upon a series of violent, horrifying scenes, where grinning demonic shapes inflicted torture on bodies that spouted blood, and in some cases, entrails. She glanced through them with horrified fascination. No one had spoken in the room for several minutes. Mrs Tizard opened the cupboard. She uttered a dismal squeak and Cynthia turned round.
‘What is it?’
‘I… I don’t know. Not really.’ The door swung back and forth. A yellowed skull, perhaps of a ram or goat, was the first thing to catch Cynthia’s eye. Everything else in the cupboard looked as if it belonged to a mediaeval apothecary. There were jars of roots and powders, an ornate, spired incense burner (that explained the smell), curly-handled knives, an abundance of other strange paraphernalia. A bizarre diagram, surrounded by what appeared to be foreign words, was scrawled in chalk on the back of the cupboard. ‘Why?’ Mrs Tizard said, weakly. ‘Why?’
Mr Tizard led her quickly from the house.
In the comfort of Cynthia’s front room, Mrs Tizard announced that as soon as the police had finished with her daughter’s belongings, she wanted the lot burned. There was nothing of Emma there that she wished to keep. To lose a daughter under such awful circumstances was bad enough, but to discover she had some kind of weird alter ego was even worse. Cynthia was now convinced that sweet, innocent Emma had become unwittingly involved with unsavoury characters, who had undoubtedly been instrumental in her death. An ingrained sense of decency, along with her superstitious dread, made her feel that no one but the three of them should ever know exactly what had been found in Wren’s Nest. Let it be burned and forgotten. Nobody could do anything about it now.
Some weeks later, after the inquest had taken place, and press interest had died down, Mr Tizard came down alone to see to the disposal of Emma’s belongings. The police had come up with no further leads, and it seemed the murder would remain a mystery for ever. The Tizards had put Wren’s Nest on the market. Obeying, or agreeing with, his wife’s desires, Mr Tizard packed everything, including Emma’s smart, expensive clothes, into plastic bin liners. Cynthia Peeling drove him in her estate car up to the borough dump and disposed of the lot. It was late afternoon by the time the job was finished. Cynthia was in two minds about what they were doing. She couldn’t help feeling it was wrong that all Emma’s beautiful clothes and the more expensive of her books had been destroyed, yet she must respect the parents’ wishes, and part of her could understand why they felt the need to dispose of everything so finally. However, what really went against the grain was throwing all Emma’s drawings and paintings into a skip along with other paper rubbish. Whatever the Tizards might think of the subject matter, Emma had been a superb artist and her work deserved to survive her death. For this reason, Cynthia surreptitiously rolled up about two dozen of Emma’s paintings and stowed them in her bedroom while Mr Tizard was occupied elsewhere. Why she also pocketed the book that had been lying open on Emma’s desk, she didn’t consciously examine.
Cynthia was relieved when Mr Tizard told her he was going home that evening. She quickly agreed to keep the keys for Wren’s Nest and to show prospective buyers round it. For some reason, Mrs Tizard hadn’t wanted to leave them with an estate agent. As she drove him to the station, Cynthia took the opportunity to direct a few more questions at Mr Tizard. They had been forming in her mind all day. She didn’t normally like to pry into other people’s affairs, but felt she just couldn’t exist if her questions weren’t answered.
‘What was Emma like?’ she asked. ‘When she was a child, what was she really like?’
‘You’ve lived next door to her for two years,’ Mr Tizard answered. ‘You’ve probably seen more of her than we have. She left home at eighteen, went away to college. We only got about two visits a year out of her after that. Sometimes she asked for money, but it was always paid back.’
‘But as a child…?’
‘She was a very private girl,’ Mr Tizard answered. ‘Quiet, well-behaved.’ There were a few moments’ silence. ‘I don’t think we ever knew her.’
‘What about boyfriends? She was such an attractive girl. She must have had boyfriends.’
‘Not that we knew of. Did you ever see her with a man?’
Cynthia shook her head, quickly passing to the next subject, thinking of the drawings they’d seen. ‘And the girl she lived with in London, the one who disappeared, did you know about that?’
‘Emma came home for a couple of days after that. I think she was quite upset. She slept most of the time. Never spoke much about it though.’
Could a parent really know so little of their child?
That night, Cynthia lay awake in bed next to her snoring husband thinking about Emma Tizard. Had it really been Emma who’d lived in that workroom? Cynthia had never seen Emma smoke and she’d always politely refused any alcoholic drinks at the Peelings’. Gin bottles and overflowing ashtrays? It didn’t seem real.
Cynthia tried to sleep. Dream fragments swooped around her, all of Emma. Emma laughing, her long red hair blowing in an angry wind. Emma hunched over her work table, frowning in concentration, one hand plunged into her hair, the other lovingly shading in an outline of male genitalia. And there was Emma, naked, arms raised to the sky, dancing herself to a frenzy beneath a full, pale moon. Now she and Emma were walking arm in arm through a park, Emma chatting girlishly, no longer shy or withdrawn. ‘Of course, it takes so long and there are always errors,’ she was saying, ‘but it doesn’t matter, the result is always the same.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ Cynthia said.
‘Of course you don’t, you’re so fucking normal! Frigid bitch!’ And Emma was laughing at her.