Ghigau 28

28. Wednesday 19th — Watford (again)

 

 

After breakfast, Lenny had to leave behind a tearful Lydia to be comforted by her grandmother. The tug on his heartstrings that seeing his daughter so unhappy caused, was an ache that wouldn’t go away, and got worse every day.

    As he drove north on the M1 towards Watford, the sight of Bushey Heath’s usually verdant fields turned ochre, parched by weeks of drought, added to Lenny’s growing feeling of surreality; nothing was normal, everything was turned on its head. 

     He found himself talking out loud to Nikki almost in anger. ‘Lydia is beside herself for Christ’s sake. I am beside myself. Why would you do this? How… could you do this?’

     He slapped the steering wheel in frustration and tried to imagine something, anything,  that would make him leave his family without a word; he came up with nothing. And if he wouldn’t do it, not for any reason in the world, why had Nikki? It just didn’t add up. 

    Then he spent the next half an hour hating himself for doubting Nikki at all. Of course she wouldn’t do anything to hurt Lydia, or indeed him. That left only one possibility, whatever had happened, it was against her will, and that was far worse.

    

He didn’t really know what he hoped to achieve by checking up on Jake. He only knew that something wasn’t right about the way his business partner was acting. Every time the subject of the gambling debt came up, Jake was obfuscating and squirming like a fish on a hook. If the mysterious Mr Smith had something to do with it, perhaps his trip to Watford would throw some light on the situation.

    He pulled up outside the address he had gleaned from Jake’s online diary and, despite a twinge of guilt about the pollution, initially left the engine running to keep the air conditioning on. Every day felt hotter than the last.

    He scanned the building. The house was so nondescript it was a suburban cliché. If it held any dark secrets, they weren’t immediately apparent. 

    He had only come here because the idea of doing nothing was torture. He felt that if he didn’t keep constantly moving, taking action of some sort, he would have too much time to think, and that was the route to despair, he knew.

    He cut the engine and sat for a while, feeling the temperature inside the car start to rise almost immediately. Now he was here, he realised he had no idea what he was going to do. What could he do? His emphatic suspicions of yesterday now seemed faintly ridiculous.  What was so shady about a meeting with a Mr Smith anyway? It could be Jake’s dentist for all he knew.

    He was just about to start up the car again and drive off, admonishing himself for not thinking things out properly, when he noticed someone watching him from the adjacent house. He couldn’t make out the figure in detail, reflected sunlight on the window obscured their features, but there was definitely a person standing behind the window, unmoving. His finger hovered over the start button on his dashboard; what would he even ask anyone? He unclipped his seatbelt, and got out of the car.

 

    Not many minutes later he was sitting in the living room of the house next door, slightly regretting his hasty acceptance of his host’s offer of a cup of anaemic tea and the stale custard-cream that refused to budge from the roof of his mouth.

    The watcher from the window was a Mrs Janet Fisher, a small, frail woman of perhaps eighty years old, with thinning, chalk-white hair, and she was absolutely thrilled to have a visitor.

    “My husband Derek loved machines you see,” said Janet. “He was an engineer, always in the garage tinkering, he could fix anything,” Her eyes were rheumy and her voice scratchy and tremulous, but her mind seemed alert enough.

    “I take it your husband is…” Lenny left the sentence unfinished.

    “Yes, passed almost eight years ago now.” Janet looked wistfully at, what Lenny took to be, a photo of Derek on the sideboard. “He was younger than me would you believe. I smoked forty a day for forty years, he never touched a ciggy and he got cancer. Makes no sense does it?”

    Lenny shook his head. “No sense at all,” he agreed.

    “Are you married dear?” she asked.

    Lenny hesitated, he saw no point in telling his story. “I am yes, to a very wonderful woman.”

    “Ah, that’s nice, I think it’s lovely that young men can say nice things out loud about their ladies these days. In my day we were as likely to get a telling-off as a compliment,” said Janet, hastening to add,  “Not my Derek though, he was a gentleman through and through.”

    Lenny smiled, he thought it might be a long cup of tea.

    “Do you know who lives next door by any chance? Lenny ventured, trying to steer the conversation,  I was hoping to find someone in.”

    “I think it’s one of those Air Breakfast places dear, I don’t think anyone actually lives there.”

    “You mean Air B & B?” Lenny said.

    “That’s it yes,” Janet agreed, smiling at her mistake. “It used to belong to the Walkers, George and Harriet, a nice couple, Derek and I would often have them round, but they both went into an old people’s home almost three years ago now. And then it was vacant for, oh about a year I suppose, until their children put it up for sale to pay the bills.” She looked sad as she said this.  

      Lenny thought what a hard thing it was to find oneself alone at the end of one's life. The very time when company is most needed.

    Janet tilted her head and squinted as if struggling to search her memory. “And then some builders came and did it all up, and now it’s mostly empty except occasionally someone comes for a day and then leaves again.” She took a slurp of her tea. “ I don’t understand why anyone would want to stay there myself,” she added with a shrug of her bony shoulders. 

    Despite the stifling warmth, she was wearing a crocheted cardigan over her floral patterned dress that revealed only her alabaster-white, veiny ankles, emerging from tartan, fleece-lined slippers.

    “I was hoping you might remember some people who came here a few days ago,” Lenny said cautiously, not wanting to break the congenial mood. He needn’t have worried, Janet was only too keen to keep the conversation going. He wondered when she had last had a visitor and whether she had family. There were no pictures of children or grandchildren on the sideboard as far as he could see.

    “What day would that be dear?” she asked.

    “On Sunday, in the morning I think.”

    Janet stood up, and, in her stooping gait, shuffled over to an old walnut bureau set against the wall of the living room. She rooted around in the messy pile of papers covering its surface for a while, before finally returning with a leather bound notebook, about the size of a paperback novel, and collapsing back into her seat with a pained grunt.  She leafed through the slim volume, licking a fingertip every now-and-then, to aid her purchase on the page corners.

    “Here it is,” she exclaimed eventually.

    Lenny was curious. “You keep a diary Janet?”

    “Ever since I was sixteen dear, I missed a few months because of my illness, that was before I was married, but I’ve always written down my thoughts. These days my memory isn’t as good as it was, so it’s quite a comfort to read back about happier times.” 

    Her face was shadowed by something; regret, nostalgia, Lenny couldn’t be sure. He wondered what secrets or personal truths, known only to her, were written in those pages.

    “Did you write anything on Sunday?” He hoped she had.

    “I’m sure I did, I do try to write every day, but I can’t promise it will be of any interest to you Lenny, I’m sure the musings of an old woman aren’t up to much.”

    Lenny said he thought it would be very interesting and, though she protested mildly, he could tell she was happy to share a moment with another person, even a stranger whom she had only known for a few minutes.

    She smiled at him, and then, holding the pages of her diary flat with her left hand and tracing the spidery handwriting with her right index finger, began to read aloud. 

    “Awoke just after six and felt very tired, perhaps today I shall lie in bed and not get up.” She looked up at Lenny through thick rimmed glasses and said apologetically, “I’m afraid it’s a little self-indulgent in parts dear.” 

    Lenny, surprised by her candour and the tone of the opening lines of her diary entry,  assured her it was anything but, and asked her to continue. 

    She carried on, “Walked to the Spar and bought milk and eggs. On my return, even after all these years, I am still surprised not to see Derek, in his oily boiler suit and boots, lugging pieces of his motorbike, or the lawn-mower, back and forth like a hoarding squirrel. 

    Made tea and wrote a list of things I must do before the summer ends. The garden is so dry it has become all one colour. The rainwater butt has long been empty and the roses, lavender and delphiniums are all but expired. I rather think I know how they feel. I cannot justify the cost of watering with the hose, I shall just have to hope that the dear things survive and come back next year.

    Lenny felt moved by the poignancy of her words. He hadn’t been expecting anything so elegiacal, so personal. Somehow it made him feel hopeful. He had almost forgotten the reason for his visit.

    “This must be terribly boring for you dear.” Janet said.

    Lenny realised he had been staring in to the distance. “No, no really, it’s… well it’s very charming actually, and well written. You have a talent for words,” he said truthfully.

    “I was a primary school teacher for most of my life. I tried to encourage all my pupils to keep a diary and so I felt I should heed my own advice.” Janet said.

    “Do go on,” Lenny said.

    Janet adjusted her glasses. “There is activity next door, for once — she peered over her frames at Lenny and smiled conspiratorially at this point — a very expensive looking car is in the drive and a very good looking woman got out of it. Not the usual type of visitor at all. She is not as young as she first appears I think, but nevertheless a very attractive and well dressed woman. Her driver looks like what Derek used to call a ‘Meathead’ . 

    Lenny queried this, “A Meathead?”

    “That was how Derek used to refer to those young lads with very short hair and big boots ‘Meatheads’, like a thug or a yobbo, that kind of thing,” explained Janet.

    Lenny nodded, “Ah, I see. So this man looked like that?”

    “He was very large and he had very short hair, I don’t think I would want to meet him in a dark alley, as my mother used to say.” Janet explained.

    “And the woman, ‘good looking’ you wrote, what made you write that?” Lenny said.

    “She truly was dear, I mean you don’t often see people like that around here obviously, so she stood out. Her clothes were very well tailored and she just had that look you know, like a model or an actress. She sort of ‘glowed’.  Am I painting a picture?” Janet looked pleased to be helping him.

    You are indeed, painting a picture, Lenny thought. “Please do go on,” he said.

    Janet continued reading, “I cannot imagine what such people are doing in this neighbourhood, or why they would want to visit the house next door. Perhaps they are making a film which would be very exciting. I could be an extra and play  ‘inquisitive old lady next door’ .” 

    Lenny interjected again, “I don’t suppose you know what type of car it was Janet, I mean the make or the model?”

    “I’m afraid I’m not very good with cars Lenny, but it was very large and dark-green and I think it might have been a Rolls Royce or a Bentley, something like that.” Janet said. “It’s such a shame, Derek would have known exactly what car it was.”

    “Could it have been a Mercedes?” Lenny asked, that make of car being on his mind.

    Janet looked sceptical, “I don’t really know anything about cars Lenny, but I don’t think it was a foreign car. As I said, I have the feeling it was a big English car like a Jaguar or a Rolls Royce. Perhaps it was the colour, but it just seemed like an English car to me, do you know what I mean?”

    “I don’t suppose you saw the registration number?” Lenny knew he was clutching at straws here.

    Janet shook her head and looked exasperated with herself, “I just didn’t have any reason to write it down Lenny, I’m so sorry.” 

    “Don’t worry, please, it doesn’t matter,” Lenny said, smiling to hide his disappointment, “Do go on, I’m sorry to interrupt.”

    Janet waved his apology away and continued… “This weather reminds me of 1976 when we holidayed in Spain for the first time ever and it was hotter in London than Madrid, just our luck!” She smiled briefly at this memory. “It is an unusually busy day next door. Another man has arrived and gone in to the house. He is much more ordinary looking but has quite striking red hair.”

    Lenny, who had been staring at the floor while he listened, jerked his head up and stared at Janet.

    Jake Booth’s nickname at school had been ‘Tango’ on account of his shock of thick, wiry red hair.

 

On the way home Lenny was pensive. Not so long ago his family had seemed unbreakable, permanent and immutable. Now it was shattered, wounded. The bonds that had once held the four of them together in an impenetrable unit, had been hacked away by tragedy and mystery. He did not want to accept that this new reality was their life, that the happiness that had come before was somehow flimsy and unreclaimable. 

    The loss of Jamie was something he couldn’t do anything about, and he knew he had to focus on what he could; he had to find Nikki.    

    He had liked Janet, and meeting her had impacted him in some way. Perhaps it was the story of her long and happy relationship with the now departed Derek, or her refusal to ‘lie in bed and not get up’. Whatever it was, he had somehow drawn strength from the encounter and felt more determined than ever to find Nikki himself and bring her home. As for Jake, his gambling debts and the future of their company; he was more certain than ever that he should extract himself as soon a possible from that whole mess. 

    And why had Jake been meeting with a glamorous woman, whom he had taken the trouble to disguise as ‘Mr Smith’?  He had no idea, but he intended to find out.