At five past ten, when I arrived at her house, Frances opened the door with a smile of such welcome and relief that it made me smile back. ‘I thought you wouldn’t come,’ she said. ‘I thought maybe I’d hallucinated you yesterday, out of desperation. It’s such a disaster zone. I have to work here but you don’t.’
‘I’ll help out for a day or two,’ I said. ‘I’ve got work of my own to get back to, but you’re having a bad time, so if there’s anything I can do…’
‘I am having a bad time,’ said Frances, ‘a terrible time, and part of what’s terrible about it is that I don’t know what you can do to help, what anyone can do, apart from putting a match to it all.’
‘I can’t organize a party,’ I said, ‘or dress up as a waitress, or cook a five-course meal for forty people, but if someone could give me a cup of coffee, I’ll go through every piece of paper in this office and reply to it or do something about it or put it in a file or throw it away. And then I’ll get back to my own life.’
Frances’s smile changed to something of a frown. ‘What have I done to deserve you?’ she asked.
I felt the tiniest shiver of apprehension. Was I being too obvious? ‘I’m trying to do as I would be done by,’ I said. ‘Does that sound too yucky?’
Frances smiled again. ‘I’m a drowning person being dragged to the shore,’ she said. ‘Who cares?’
Chapter Thirteen
Beth arrived just after eleven. She apologized, saying she had been out late, but she looked entirely fresh and rested. And she was immaculately dressed, entirely different from the day before: a dark grey pencil skirt with a little slit up the back, shoes with very low heels, and a waistcoat over a crisp white shirt. Her skin glowed, her hair tumbled over her shoulders. She made me feel shabby, old and boring. She seemed surprised and not completely pleased to see me. ‘Where’s she going to work?’ she asked Frances.
‘She’s going to hover,’ I said, before Frances could reply. ‘Just sort out a few things and not get in anyone’s way.’
‘I was just asking,’ said Beth, and was interrupted by a merry tune from her mobile phone. She opened it and turned her back on me; I noticed there were seams on her black tights.
It was immediately obvious that it would take more than a day or two to restore order to the chaos of the office. It surprised me that Frances had let everything get into such a mess: she seemed the kind of person who would be calmly and instinctively organized: knickers folded in her underwear drawer, herbs and spices arranged alphabetically on the kitchen shelf, car insurance and MOT documents neatly filed.
‘Did Milena do the organizing and filing?’ I asked, as we drank our first coffee of the day, poured from a new cafetière.
‘That’s a laugh,’ said Frances. ‘No. Milena was the gorgeous public face of Party Animals. It was her job to schmooze the clients, flirt with the suppliers and come up with the brilliant ideas.’
‘What did you do?’ I asked.
‘We picked up the pieces,’ said Beth, from across the room.
‘She sounds quite a character,’ I said.
‘You must have seen that,’ said Frances.
‘I meant that you don’t know what people are like at work,’ I gabbled, cursing myself silently. ‘You must miss her.’
‘She’s certainly left a gap,’ said Frances, as she picked up her phone and punched numbers into it.
I found some space by a work surface at the back of the office that gave out on to the steps that led up to the garden. I began to add to the piles of paper I had created the previous day. I tried to avoid speaking for a while, worried I might give myself away again. I felt startled and shifty every time Frances called me Gwen. Couldn’t she tell that I was not a between-jobs Gwen but an out-of-control Ellie, that my black trousers, grey jersey and eye-liner were a feeble disguise? I kept expecting a stern hand to fall on my shoulder.
‘How did you know Milena?’ Frances asked me.
‘Oh.’ My mind raced. ‘I met her at a fund-raising event. For breast cancer,’ I added. ‘It was boring and she was fun so we kept in touch. Vaguely. I can’t remember when I last saw her, though.’ I glanced at Frances: she didn’t seem to find my words incredible.
‘What do you do normally, Gwen?’ she asked.
‘I’m a maths teacher at a comprehensive school.’ So far so Gwen Abbott.
‘No wonder you’re good at this kind of thing. But why did you leave?’
‘I don’t know if I have left, not permanently. I’m taking a break. I like teaching but it’s so stressful.’ Frances nodded sympathetically and I warmed to my theme, remembering things Gwen had said, TV documentaries I’d watched, and my own schooldays, when I’d hated maths. ‘I teach in an inner-city school in…’ areas flashed through my mind and I seized on one that was far to the north but still in London ‘… Leytonstone. Half the kids don’t want to be there. Some hardly speak English and need much more support than they’re actually getting. Instead of teaching them, I try to keep order. I thought I’d take a few months out and think things over. If I’m going to make a change, it should be now. Maybe I’ll travel.’
‘Lovely,’ said Frances, staring at a brochure and frowning. ‘Where?’
‘Peru,’ I said. ‘Or I’ve always wanted to go to India.’ Without warning, tears stung my eyes. Greg and I had talked about going to India together. I blinked furiously and pushed two receipts into the appropriate folder.
‘Are you married?’
‘No. I was with someone for a long time but it didn’t work out.’ I gave a rueful shrug. ‘Between jobs and between relationships. So, you see, I have this rare moment of freedom.’
‘No children yet?’
‘No,’ I said shortly. And then I added, without realizing that I was going to, the words taking me by surprise, ‘I always wanted children,’ and for one fearful moment my defences were down and I was being me, Ellie, with a pain in her heart because she hadn’t been able to have children and now… I sat up straighter, snapped a folder shut. ‘Maybe one day,’ I said – Gwen said – with brisk cheerfulness.
‘I never wanted children,’ said Frances. ‘It seemed so time-consuming, so wearing, trading your freedom for someone else’s well-being. I watched friends turn from fun-loving, carefree creatures to people who talked about nappy rash and started yawning at eight o’clock and thought, That’s not for me. And David agreed. I used to thank God I was born into a time when it was permissible to admit to possessing no maternal feelings. But then, just a few years ago, I suddenly thought how nice it would be to have someone to care for like that. Would have been, I should say. Too late now. Tick-tock,’ she said, with a sad little laugh.
I didn’t get much information about Milena from the papers I went through on that first morning, just slapdash signatures on copies of letters about the cost of finger-food and the hire of champagne flutes, although I wrote down every relevant date and place in my little notebook. I decided to go for a more direct approach.
‘Tell me,’ I said, as we sat drinking another of the mugs of coffee that punctuated the day, ‘this man Milena died with: who was he?’ I ran my finger round the rim of the cup, trying to appear casual. Was my voice wobbling?
Frances shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about him. I think he was married. Silvio said something about meeting his wife once. He seemed rather taken with her – but, then, Silvio’s an odd fish.’
My face felt hot. How would a normal person react? Should I ask who Silvio was? No. I was meant to know Milena. ‘You never met him?’
‘I never even knew he existed.’
‘Strange,’ I said.
‘Not in Milena’s world.’
‘How d’you mean?’ I put my mug down and shuffled papers, as if I wasn’t particularly interested in the answer.