“Scary?”
“Well, knowing what people are really like and then having to write them up as someone different. To match their public persona. It’s a bit of a responsibility when you suspect someone is a violent thug, say. Is it your lie or their lie?”
“God, that must be very difficult. Have you ever turned a commission down?”
“No, I need the money.” Emma laughed. A brittle laugh.
“Must be funny seeing all the old faces here tonight,” Kate said, moving on quickly.
“Yes, it’s been years. Decades.”
“You moved away, then?”
“Well, not far physically,” Emma said, exchanging a glance with Harry as she emerged from a cubicle, tucking her shirt in. “Our lives went in different directions, I suppose.”
“What’s it like coming back?” Kate said.
“Odd. A bit like being in a dream,” Emma said. “I look round the room and see faces I almost know. Familiar but I can’t quite place them. Then they say their name and they come back into focus. Do you know what I mean?”
Kate nodded, enchanted by the description.
“Harry persuaded me to come. She has far too much influence on me. Don’t you?”
Harry smiled at her friend. “Does you good to get out. And this is brilliant,” she said.
Kate smiled mischievously and added: “I wonder if Malcolm is here.”
Both the other women laughed.
“Bet he’s got a toupee and a gold medallion off the market,” Harry said.
“Bet he’s got a mistress and a midlife-crisis Harley,” Emma said. “Let’s go and find him, meet back here in half an hour, and report.”
Kate opened the door to let the party back in and shooed them out. “See you later. Good hunting.”
SIXTY-TWO
Kate
SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2012
She edged round the room to the bar to see how Joe was doing. He was leaning on the sticky counter, deep in mimed conversation with the barmaid, a woman in shoulder pads with too much hairspray.
“Lemonade, please,” Kate ordered, spotting a bottle behind the bar.
“Hi, Kate,” Joe mouthed, looking pleased with himself. She pointed to the exit and picked up her plastic cup to lead the way.
“How’re you doing?” she said as they perched on a low brick wall in front of the hall.
“Great, thanks. Told people I was your son.”
Kate tried not to mind. “Good thinking,” she conceded. “And?”
“Rita behind the bar has been filling me in on all the gossip.”
“Good. What’ve you got?”
“Loads on Harry. Seems that’s all anyone wants to talk about. It’s the first time anyone has seen her since she was a scruffy little troublemaker. They can’t believe she’s done so well.”
“I’ve just been chatting with her in the ladies’. Bit awkward at first but she’s relaxed. But what about the baby? Are there any rumors?”
“No, nothing about a baby. No pregnancies that ended suddenly, no married women having affairs, no whispers. Complete mystery, Rita says. I asked about Barbara Walker’s house, number 63. She said she remembered there was a lawyer living there as well. A clever woman called Jude.”
“Judith Massingham, Barbara’s housemate,” Kate said.
“And a daughter,” Joe added.
“Yes. Barbara said there was a child. But she wouldn’t have been listed on the electoral register. What did Rita say about her? Did she know her?”
“Oh, yes. Rita was at school with her. She’s here tonight. Emma, she’s called.”
Kate clutched his arm. “Emma? I think I’ve just met her. You little genius, Joe. I’d kiss you, but it could be construed as sexual harassment these days.”
Joe beamed with pleasure. He wasn’t sure exactly what he’d done right, but it didn’t matter. He’d done good. The boss said so.
Kate left her drink on the wall and marched towards the door. “I’m going to the ladies’,” she called back over her shoulder. “See you later.”
Harry and Emma were already there, reapplying lipstick in the smeared mirror.
“Well?” Kate said. “Millionaire or dosser?”
The reflections of the two women looked at her and grinned. “Bald, beer belly, and five kids,” Harry said.
“Serves him right for breaking your heart, Harry,” Emma added.
“Did he marry Sarah S.?” Kate asked.
“No. Blimey, you know all our secrets,” Emma said.
“Well, some of them,” Kate said and got her own lipstick out.
SIXTY-THREE
Emma
SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2012
We’re on our way back out there onto the dance floor. Just like we always used to. Me following Harry, jigging up and down in readiness, when Kate taps me on the shoulder.
“Can we have a quick chat, Emma?” she shouts in my ear. She sounds nervous. And I wonder if she has guessed who I really am. If she has recognized my voice from my phone calls.
“Shall we go outside?” she says, and I follow her instead of Harry to the door, past the red Formica table where we’d picked up a name badge, now littered with crumpled plastic cups.
We sit on the wall at the front, watching the smokers waving to passing cars while our ears retune.
“What a brilliant party,” Kate says. “Must be like the old days.”
“Yes. Weird to see us all back in the hall as adults. Like one of Dennis Potter’s plays. The one where the adult actors play children.”
“Blue Remembered Hills,” Kate says. She’s seen it, too. “It was a really dark play,” she adds. “One of the children died.”
We sit silently. I’m thinking about the baby and reach for my stomach. And it’s as if Kate is reading my thoughts because she starts talking about Alice Irving.
“It was just down the road that they found her. In the garden of the terrace where you used to live, Emma. Have you seen the stories I’ve written in the paper?”
“Yes,” I say. “I saw them.”
“I’m trying to find out what happened to Alice,” she says. “The police think that she must have been buried when you and your mum were living in that terrace.”
“I can’t believe that,” I say. “I talked to my mum about it. She can’t believe it either.”
“Well, it happened,” she says. And she turns to sit sideways so she can see me properly.
“What was it like, then? How old were you? Thirteen or fourteen in the early eighties?”
I nod.
“Do you remember those days?” she says. Insistent. “Must have been hard living in a shared house at that age. It’s when you need a bit of privacy, isn’t it? You had your mum and Barbara Walker living there. Hard to keep anything private—or secret—when people are living on top of each other.”
“You’d be surprised,” I say. I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but it just came out.
“How do you mean?” she says. “I used to hide the books we were all reading secretly at school—The Carpetbaggers, I seem to remember. What sort of things did you keep hidden?” Like she knows.
I don’t know what to say without betraying myself.
“Emma, was there anyone you think might have had something to do with burying the baby?” she asks. Her voice is all soft and hypnotic. Willing me to speak.
The word “baby” is ricocheting round my head. Baby, baby, baby.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say. “It upsets me too much.”
“What does?” she says.
“The baby,” I say.
“Alice?” she says.
“No. My baby,” I say.
I start rocking gently on the wall. Soothing myself like my mother used to do to me.
“Your baby?” Kate asks. “What do you mean?”
I think I wanted her to ask. I wanted to tell. I wanted to let it out. She could be my razor blade.
“I got pregnant when I was fourteen,” I say.
“God, you were still a child,” she says and she takes my hand as if in absolution. I thought when I finally confessed, there would be shouting and recriminations, but the world doesn’t stop turning. We are still sitting on the wall and the smokers carry on waving to drivers.
“Shall we go somewhere to talk?” she says. “You must be getting cold. The Royal Oak is just round the corner.”
I shake my head. I can’t bear the thought of other people.