The Girls in the Garden Page 7

“Have you made many friends?”

  “Sort of.”

  “The sisters?”

  “Yes. And someone else called Tyler. And a boy called Dylan.”

  “Beautiful Dylan.” Rhea smiled. “Very popular boy.”

  “He’s kind.”

  “Yes,” said Rhea. “He is a kind boy. He looks after his brother very well.”

  “Robbie?”

  “Yes. Robbie. Poor soul.”

  “What’s the matter with Robbie?”

  Rhea cupped her hand over Fergus’s head and left it there. The rabbit went completely still. “Ah, well, no one really knows. I don’t think his poor mother even knows. Just one of those things. Her husband was an old man—sixty, I think, when Robbie was born—and a very, very heavy drinker. Not that I would want to blame him for what went wrong. He was a perfectly nice man. But it does make you wonder . . .”

  Pip wasn’t sure what it made you wonder about but nodded anyway.

  “Anyway, Dylan’s mum, Fiona, she couldn’t cope after Robbie’s dad died, it was all too hard, so she put Robbie into a nice place just outside London when he was about ten. And then suddenly Fiona is pregnant at forty-five and nobody knows who the father is and then there is this beautiful, beautiful little boy and still nobody knows who the father is. Nobody asks and she tells no one.”

  “Where does Dylan live?”

  “Up there.” The lady pointed at three tiny windows in the attic floor of the same house that the sisters lived in.

  “And where does Tyler live?”

  “She lives there.” She pointed at the imposing apartment block in the easternmost corner. “Her mother is a social worker so she gets the nice big flat for the good rent.”

  “And where do you live?”

  “I live just here.” Rhea turned and pointed at the apartment block behind her. “That one on the second floor with the balcony with all the flowers. I was a nurse, you see, so I too get the nice big flat for the good rent.”

  Pip nodded and stroked the rabbit from its crown to its haunches. She didn’t really understand about the big flats and the good rents. But she was enjoying talking to Rhea, who seemed to know everything about everyone and was able to answer all of the questions she’d been too shy to ask the children in the gang.

  “Who was Phoebe Rednough?”

  Rhea glanced at her quizzically.

  “Sorry,” said Pip. “I think I pronounced it wrong. The girl whose name is on the bench in the Rose Garden?”

  “Ah, Feebee Redknow.”

  “Rainbow?”

  “No,” said the lady, patting Pip’s knee, “although that would have been a very suitable name for her. No. Her name was pronounced ‘Redknow.’ ”

  “Did you know her?”

  “Yes. Yes. Everyone knew Phoebe. She was an adorable girl. A bit wild, but adorable. So cheeky, very clever. Very pretty. Everything sort of revolved around her.”

  Pip felt vaguely jealous of this dead girl. She sounded like everything she would like to be.

  “There was a gang of children then too of course, there’s always a gang in this park. There were all the Howes boys—you know, Leo and his two brothers. And there was Phoebe’s little sister, Cecelia, you know, Tyler’s mum—”

  “Tyler’s mum?”

  “Yes. Phoebe would have been Tyler’s aunty if she was still alive.”

  “Oh,” said Pip. Phoebe Rednough felt suddenly brought to life. “What happened to her? To Phoebe?”

  “Well, when she was fifteen years old she was found dead in the park.” Rhea shrugged. “I saw her from my balcony, covered in the morning dew, her hair all spread about, like Ophelia. Nobody ever really knew what happened. Drugs. Alcohol. Some kind of accidental overdose. Inconclusive. They had to bury her without ever knowing the truth. And of course the gossips went into overdrive.” She stopped and looked at Pip from the corners of her eyes. “Is this too grown-up for you?”

  Pip shook her head.

  “Well, Phoebe was linked to two of the Howes boys at the time of her death. She’d been going out with Patrick, who was the same age as her, for a few months. They were love’s young dream, Romeo and Juliet. But then, according to various gossips, the older brother had been involved with her too.”

  “Which one?”

  “Leo. You know.” She nodded toward the center of the crescent. “That man over there with all the daughters. He was a good four years older than her. An adult!” She threw her arms out from her sides, then tugged at the edge of her pink scarf. “He said he was not involved with her. Who knows if he was telling the truth? Only Phoebe knows what really happened that summer, and that poor child is dead.”

  “Do you like him?” Pip asked. She drew in her breath, feeling she’d asked an important question.

  “Leo?”

  She nodded.

  “Oh, I don’t know him all that well,” she said. “But I knew his father. Gordon.” She pronounced it as two words. Gore. Don. “And if his son is anything like him then . . .” She rolled her eyes theatrically in their sockets. “Well, then, God save his soul.” Rhea looked at Pip thoughtfully and said, “What about you? Do you like Leo?”

  Pip smiled shyly. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think so.”

  Rhea picked up her rabbit and tucked him under her arm. “Trust your instincts,” she said. “You’ll find they’re nearly always right.”

  Dear Daddy,

  So much to tell you, I don’t know where to start. First of all we’ve been invited for dinner at the sisters’ house. Mum and I really don’t want to go but Grace really does so we’re going to go and Mum and I will come back early. I think it’s going to be so weird. Mum’s not really ready for that kind of thing, she’s still all thin and nervous after what happened and she hasn’t really been out anywhere since we moved in here. Anyway, the really exciting thing happened yesterday. I went into the park to find the old lady with the rabbit and she was there and she told me loads of stuff about the people who live here. And I asked her about the girl on the bench, Phoebe Rednough, and she told me that Phoebe was found dead in the park one morning and no one ever knew why!! She said there was drugs and alcohol but that it was all a mystery! And she also said that Phoebe was going out with Leo’s (the sisters’ dad) little brother when she died but also people thought she might have been going out with Leo too even though he was four years older than her! And also that Phoebe is Tyler’s mum’s sister! So the girl on the bench is actually Tyler’s aunt.

  I just can’t believe that a girl could die and be buried and nobody knows why or what happened. I tried to get Grace excited about it but she was just, like, leave me alone, I’m trying to do my homework. And I won’t tell Mum because she wouldn’t get it. She doesn’t get much these days. She’s in her own little world really. I feel like I’m the only person in this family who’s normal. The only one who’s the same as they were before the thing with the house. If you were here you could help me find out about Phoebe. It’s the sort of thing you’d be really good at. Maybe you could even have made a documentary about it. You could have called it The Secret Park. Or Whatever Happened to Phoebe Rednough? Maybe it would have won an award . . .

  I thought I saw you today. When I was coming home from school. I saw a man who looked just like you. Except much thinner. With shorter hair. And a beard. He looked at me and I looked at him and I almost called out your name, but I managed to stop myself.

  I love you, Daddy, and I miss you every minute of every day.

  Be really good and maybe they’ll let you come home?

  Your Pipsqueak xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  9

  Clare was trying to dress for dinner at the Howeses’. She’d had to buy all her clothes from new after the fire. It had seemed mildly exciting at the time, the sort of experience her teenage self would have dreamed about: a five-hundred-pound budget and a whole new wardrobe. In reality it had been stressful and unsuccessful. Nothing really went with anything else, plus she’
d bought everything in a size eight and was currently closer to a size six and now it was June and everything was either too big or too warm.

  She knocked at the door of the girls’ room. “Girls, can I come in?”

  Pip opened the door.

  “I haven’t got anything to wear. Would you mind if I had a quick look through your wardrobes?”

  “I know what would look great on you,” said Pip. “Hold on.” She riffled through the wardrobe and pulled out a black lawn playsuit with wide shoulder straps and a drawstring waist. She held it up against Clare and appraised the effect. “You know, I think it might actually be too big for you. But try it on anyway. You look lovely in black.”

  Clare eyed the playsuit uncertainly. It was warm out, but possibly not quite warm enough for such a tiny thing. As if reading her mind Pip reached back into the wardrobe and pulled out a small black cardigan with a sequined collar. “There,” she said, passing it to her. “Try it on.”

  Clare smiled and took the outfit to the full-length mirror behind the door, where she was startled to see Grace sitting cross-legged on the floor, applying makeup. And not just her usual special-occasion coat of mascara, but lipstick, eye shadow, and wings of black eyeliner too.

  “Gosh,” she said. “Grace, that’s an awful lot of makeup.”

  Grace shrugged.

  “No, seriously, Grace. You’re not even thirteen yet.”

  “I’ll be thirteen next month.”

  “But that’s not the point. Even thirteen is too young for that amount of makeup.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says every mother of a twelve-year-old girl!”

  “That’s not true. How do you even know that’s true?”

  “More to the point, Grace, we’re only going across the way for supper with another family. I could maybe understand if I was taking us out to the Savoy. Who are you making yourself up for?”

  “Nobody,” she snapped. “For myself.”

  “But there won’t even be any boys there.”

  “What has this got to do with boys? I don’t dress for boys, Mum. I dress for me. And given that this is the first time in, like, six months that we’ve been invited anywhere—you know, like even left the house—can you blame me for wanting to look nice?”

  Clare breathed in. She had barely seen Grace this week. Every day after school she would change out of her uniform and head straight out into the park. She didn’t even come in for tea half the time. Clare would have to keep things warm for her under tea towels and tinfoil or occasionally just admit defeat (“I am not eating cold risotto!”) and give her a bowl of cereal. Most of the time she was on the benches at the top of the park. Other times she’d disappear entirely and Clare would text her, plaintively: Where are you? At girls’ house, would come the reply. And finally she would appear in the back doorway at seven, eight o’clock, smelling of fresh air and indifference.

  “Fine,” said Clare, “but you do not need makeup. And frankly, you look ten times better without it.”

  She stepped into the black playsuit that belonged to her eleven-year-old daughter. It fell off her. She took it off, looped it back onto its hanger, and handed it to Pip. “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll just put my jeans on, I think.”

  At the door she turned to look again at Grace. She was angrily applying a second coat of mascara. She looked brittle and bizarre. Behind her, Pip shrugged, an adult gesture as if to say: What can you do? Clare shrugged back and headed to her bedroom, where she sat down heavily on the edge of her bed and let her head drop onto her hands. There was something wrong with the shape and texture of her world. While her children grew bigger and stronger, outgrowing clothes and shoes, outgrowing their own mother, she was shrinking to the size of a doll. While they spread their wings, found new friends, new places to spend their time, new ways to look, she was turning into a recluse.

  She pulled on her too-big jeans and a black lacy tunic top. She fluffed up her white-blond hair and put on a coat of red lipstick. She faced herself in the mirror: Clare Wild. What would Leo and Adele make of her? A young mum. A single mum. A thin mum. Would they find her engaging? Peculiar? Hard work? Would they like her?

  “Girls!” she called into the hallway. “Are you ready? Time to go!”

  She almost didn’t recognize her own daughter as Grace appeared before her. She was thrown momentarily, unnerved by the presence of what appeared to be a second grown-up. Her brown curls were plaited tightly away from her temples, bursting out into a voluminous cloud behind. She wore skintight jeans and a fitted gray T-shirt showcasing her small high breasts and her flat stomach. When had she lost that roll of puppy fat? Clare wondered. Her liner-winged, almond-shaped eyes appraised her coolly as if to say: Don’t dare say a word.

  Clare didn’t. Instead she smiled and picked up the bottle of wine she’d bought earlier and a small potted orchid and said, “Okay, girls. Let’s go.”

  Adele greeted them at the kitchen door in a patterned chiffony thing over a black camisole and leggings. Her dark hair was twisted into a big bun on top of her head with a pair of black-framed reading glasses nestled into it. “Hello! You came!”

  She leaned in and kissed Clare on both cheeks. Then she grasped the girls’ hands and told them, “Go straight through, the girls are waiting for you!”

  Pip followed Grace into the living room, where they found Catkin and Willow behind a drinks trolley, mixing up cocktails.

  “No,” Catkin was saying, pulling at the neck of a bottle of vodka in Willow’s hands, “that’s way too much. No! Stop!” She snatched the bottle fully from Willow and said, “Now pass the vermouth. No, not that one, that one.”

  Pip watched curiously. Were they going to be drinking cocktails tonight? Nothing much would surprise her about this family. Then Adele walked in and said, “How are those vodka martinis coming along?”

  Catkin pushed a lid onto a metal flask and began shaking it up and down. “Nearly done,” she said, “but they might be a bit strong.” She threw Willow a withering look.

  Pip watched as Catkin carefully poured the cocktails into wide-topped glasses and arranged olives on the rims. Then Willow placed them on a tray with small plates of nuts and crisps and subserviently offered it around. Pip thought back to the old days when they still lived in Willoughby Road, before her father had got ill and gone mad, when their lives were relatively normal. She thought of nights when people had come around for dinner and she remembered how she and Grace would stay in their bedrooms for as long as possible or hide in the living room until it was all over. This was another world entirely.

  “What can we get you girls to drink?” said Adele. “We’ve got the usual: cordials, water, smoothies.”

  “Have you got Coke?” she asked.

  Adele’s face folded with disappointment. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “no. We don’t.”

  “Okay.” Pip shrugged. “I’ll have a smoothie.”

  Fern walked in then. She was wearing what looked like a man’s shirt unbuttoned over a black vest and low-crotched trousers with multicolored high-tops. Her hair was in a toweling turban and her face was streaked blue.

  “Fern,” said Willow, “what the . . . ?”

  “I’ve dyed it,” she said offhandedly. “Just the ends.”

  Pip waited for a reaction. She waited for Adele or Leo to say: What do you mean you’ve dyed it? What the hell have you done?

  But instead Adele smiled that contented smile of hers and said, “Oh how lovely, I can’t wait to see it.”

  Then they all changed the subject.

  “How’s your father?” Clare asked Leo.

  “Well, they finally operated yesterday,” Leo replied, fixing Clare fully with his dark eyes.

  “So the foot’s gone?”

  “Yes, the foot is gone.”

  Leo was looking very puffed up, Pip thought, as though he was trying to be really cool. Pip looked at her mother. She looked quite pretty tonight, she thought. Not in the same way as Adele,
with her piles of glossy hair and doe eyes and delicate bare feet with hot-pink toenails. But in a gentle way. She wondered if Leo was thinking that her mother was pretty and if that was why he was acting all puffed up.

  There was a kind of fuzzy, floaty, clubby music playing in the background and the room was all lit up with candles, little clusters of votives in interesting pots and bigger candles in glass jars. The French doors opened onto the patio, where more candles flickered and danced. Voices came from outside then and Tyler appeared in the doorway with a woman who could only be Tyler’s mum because she was virtually identical to her.

  Pip’s breath stopped. She sat up straighter. This was Cecelia. Sister of Phoebe—a character from a story come to life.

  “Hello! Hello!” Tyler and her mum edged into the living room. Cecelia was holding a bottle of wine wrapped in white tissue.

  Leo leaped to his feet. “Cece! You came!” He kissed her firmly on both cheeks, her arms held tightly within his hands. “Adele said she’d asked you but I told her you wouldn’t come. I’m very pleased you proved me wrong!”

  Cece was very tall with long, dead-straight, blond hair worn with a fringe. Her face was fine boned and pointy with the same hard-edged planes as her daughter’s. She didn’t smile or reciprocate Leo’s effusive greeting in any way, just seemed to kind of tolerate it. “Hi, Leo,” she drawled in a rough-edged London accent. “Long time no see.”

  “Well, you know where to find us, Cece.”

  Cece rolled her eyes as though she’d heard it all before.

  She didn’t look like Pip’s imaginings of a neglectful mother. She was graceful and nicely dressed in a dark blue Lycra dress to the knee and matching flip-flops, her blond hair in a tight ponytail, a small tattoo of a bluebird on a twig on her delicate forearm and another of a daisy chain around her ankle. Her face was tanned and scrubbed. She looked like the type of woman who went on holiday alone to dangerous places.

  “Martini?” asked Catkin.

  “God yeah.” Cece sighed and flopped down on the sofa next to Pip on the other side of the dog. She had that air about her of someone who was always at the tail end of a very bad day.