Barbara’s movement made suffi cient noise to waken her father, and, seeing her, he smiled, showing teeth that were blackened, crooked, and in places altogether missing. “Barbie. Mussa dozed off.”
“Where’s Mum?”
Jimmy Havers blinked, adjusting the tubes in his nostrils and reaching for a handkerchief into which he coughed heavily. His breathing sounded like the bubbling of water. “Just next door. Mrs. Gustafson’s come down with fl u again and Mum’s taken her some soup.”
Knowing her mother’s questionable culinary talents, Barbara wondered briefly if Mrs. Gustafson’s condition would improve or worsen under her ministrations. Nonetheless, she was encouraged by the fact that her mother had ventured out of the house. It was the fi rst time she had done so in years.
“I’ve brought Chinese,” she told her father, indicating the sack she cradled in one arm. “I’m off again tonight, though. I’ve only half an hour to eat.”
Her father frowned. “Mum won’t like that, Barbie. Not one bit.”
“That’s why I’ve brought the food. Peace offering.” She went on to the kitchen at the back of the house.
Her heart sank at the sight of it. A dozen tins of soup were lined up near the sink with their lids gaping open and spoons stuck in them as if her mother had sampled each one before deciding which to offer their neighbour. Three had actually been heated, in separate pans which still stood on the stove with the fire left carelessly on beneath them and their contents burnt to nothing, sending up a scent of scalded vegetables and milk. Perilously near the flame, a package of biscuits lay open, spilling out its contents, its wrapper hastily torn away and part of it discarded on the fl oor.
“Oh hell,” Barbara said wearily, turning off the stove. She put her package down onto the kitchen table, next to her mother’s newest album of travel information. A glance told her that Brazil was this week’s destination, but she wasn’t interested in looking at the collection of brochures and photographs clipped from magazines. She rummaged beneath the sink for a rubbish sack and was dropping the tins of soup into it when the front door opened, hesitant steps teetered down the uncarpeted hall, and her mother appeared at the kitchen door, a badly scored plastic tray in her hands. Soup, biscuits, and a withered apple were all in place upon it.
“It went cold,” Mrs. Havers said, her colourless eyes trying to focus past her own confusion. She was wearing only an irregularly buttoned cardigan over her shabby housedress. “I didn’t think to cover the soup, lovey. And when I got there, her daughter had come to stay and said that Mrs. Gustafson didn’t want it.”
Barbara looked at the curious mixture and blessed Mrs. Gustafson’s daughter for her wisdom if not for her tact. The soup was a blend of everything on the stove, an unappealing concoction of split pea, clam chowder, and tomato with rice. Rapidly cooling in the night air, it had formed a puckered skin on the top so that it vaguely resembled coagulating blood. Her stomach churned uneasily at the sight.
“Well, no matter, Mum,” she said. “You thought about her, didn’t you? And Mrs. Gustafson will be sure to learn of that. You were neighbourly, weren’t you?”
Her mother smiled vacantly. “Yes. I was, wasn’t I?” She set the tray down on the very edge of the table. Barbara lunged forward to catch it before it toppled to the fl oor. “Have you seen Brazil, lovey?” Affectionately, Mrs. Havers fingered the tattered artifi cial leather cover of her album. “I did some more work on it today.”
“Yes. I had a quick glance.” Barbara continued sweeping things off the work top into the rubbish. The sink was piled with unwashed crockery. A faint odour of rot emanated from it, telling her that uneaten food was also buried somewhere beneath the mess. “I’ve brought Chinese,” she told her mother. “I’m off again in a bit, though.”
“Oh, lovey, no,” her mother responded. “In this cold? In the dark? I don’t think that’s wise, do you? Young ladies should not be on the streets alone at night.”
“Police business, Mum,” Barbara replied. She went to the cupboard and saw that only two clean plates were left. No matter, she thought. She would eat out of the cartons once her parents had taken their share.
She was setting the table as her mother puttered uselessly in her wake when the front doorbell rang. They looked at each other.
Her mother’s face clouded. “You don’t suppose that’s…No, I know. Tony won’t come back, will he? He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“He’s dead, Mum,” Barbara replied fi rmly. “Put the kettle on for tea. I’ll get the door.”
The bell rang a second time before she had a chance to answer it. Muttering impatiently, flipping on the exterior light, she pulled the door open to see, unbelievably, Lady Helen Clyde standing on the front step. She was dressed completely in black from head to toe, and that should have served as warning enough for Barbara. But at the moment, all she could contemplate was the horrifying thought that, unless this was a nightmare from which she could mercifully awaken, she was going to have to ask the other woman into the house.
The youngest daughter of the tenth Earl of Hesfield, child of a Surrey great house, denizen of one of the most fashionable districts in London. Come to this netherworld of Acton’s worst neighbourhood…for what? Barbara gaped at her wordlessly, looked for a car in the street, and saw Lady Helen’s red Mini parked several doors down. She heard her mother’s nervous whimper some distance behind her.
“Lovey? Who is it? It’s not…”
“No, Mum. It’s fine. Don’t worry,” she called back over her shoulder.
“Forgive me, Barbara,” Lady Helen said. “If there had been any other way, I would have taken it.”
The words brought Barbara back to herself. She held the door open. “Come in.”
When Lady Helen passed her and stood in the hall, Barbara felt herself looking at her home involuntarily, seeing it as the other woman must see it, as a place where lunacy and poverty whirled wildly hand in hand. The worn linoleum on the floor unwashed for months at a time, tracked with footprints and puddles of melted snow; the faded wallpaper peeling away at the corners with a damp patch growing mouldy near the door; the battered stairway with hooks along the wall on which ragged coats hung carelessly, some unworn for years; the old rattan umbrella rack, with great gaping holes in its sides where wet umbrellas had eaten through the palm over time; the odours of burnt food and age and neglect.
My bedroom’s not like this! she wanted to shout. But I can’t keep up with them and pay the bills and cook the meals and see that they clean themselves!
But she said nothing. She merely waited for Lady Helen to speak, feeling a hot tide of shame wash over her when her father shambled to the door of the sitting room in his baggy trousers and stained grey shirt, pulling his oxygen along behind him in its trolley.
“This is my father,” Barbara said and, when her mother peeped out of the kitchen like a frightened mouse, “and my mother.”
Lady Helen went to Jimmy Havers, extending her hand. “I’m Helen Clyde,” she said, and looking into the kitchen, “I’ve interrupted your dinner, haven’t I, Mrs. Havers?”
Jimmy Havers smiled expansively. “Chinese tonight,” he said. “We’ve enough if you want a bite, don’t we, Barbie?”
At another time, Barbara might have taken grim amusement from the thought of Lady Helen Clyde eating Chinese food out of cartons, sitting at the kitchen table and chatting with her mother about the trips to Brazil and Turkey and Greece that occupied the inner reaches of her madness. But now she only felt weak with the humiliation of discovery, with the knowledge that Lady Helen might somehow betray her circumstances to Lynley.