Constance A Novel

NINE

Until she saw his parents’ house and its garden full of flowers, Roxana thought that Noah’s flat in Hammersmith was the most comfortable place in the world. Now Connie unlocked the door to her apartment on the top floor of a tall, anonymously modern building – not so very far, Roxana worked out, from the bad house where she had stayed with Dylan.

‘Come in,’ Connie said.

Noah and Roxana shuffled in behind her.

Their first impression was of a space that opened straight out into the sky, a smoky summer’s-evening London sky now fading from amethyst into horizontal bars of grey and rose-pink cloud over tower-blocks and trees and the spires of city churches. The wall facing the door was an almost complete run of plate glass.

Noah looked about him. The family rift meant that he had never been here before.

‘Nice place, Auntie Con,’ he murmured.

Worrying a little that she might be leaving dirty footprints, Roxana walked over to the huge window and looked out. To her right was the strange bulging tower that Noah referred to as the Gherkin, the domes of St Paul’s Cathedral bathed bronze by the floodlighting, and the arrow shape of a descending plane given definition by its winking lights. In the distance to her left was another group of towers, seeming to float in the purple twilight. Below her spread layers of rooftops bisected by orange-lit streets, the crowns of big trees – the jumble of London that she was beginning to know, smelling at ground level of dirt and fast food, clogged with traffic, and crackling with the jolts of human static electricity discharged through sudden snarling altercations – and yet which, from up in this eagle’s nest, looked serenely beautiful.

The room itself was almost empty. There were no ornaments, hardly any furniture. A pair of sofas faced each other across a low table. A lamp hung on a swan’s neck of arched metal. In the distance, in the dimness, Roxana could see a countertop that looked as if it was made from some kind of stone, the glinting metal curve of a tap, some glass shelves.

This emptiness struck her as immensely restful, as well as opulent.

At home in Bokhara the ordinary places to live, her stepfather’s apartment among them, were in cheap Soviet-built blocks made of stained and crumbling concrete where the walls excluded no sound louder than a whisper and where the decoration consisted of pungent oilcloth table coverings, gaudy Chinese rugs, tin trays, and bulbous glass vases in shades of orange and purple bathed by the flickering light of the television screen. In the old city, down alleyways behind wooden doors, the old houses were kept dark against the heat, lined with ornamental plaster-work and painted into every cluttered crevice with brilliant patterns and colours. All of it was bright, in a monotonous desert landscape, but it was not restful.

To Roxana this pale apartment of Connie’s went with the glimpse of London that she had caught from the top deck of the bus. This huge city was a mass of contradictions, and of systems of possession and exclusion that she couldn’t fathom, but her hunger to be a part of it was steadily increasing. Noah’s family very obviously had their established place, which made her want even more to be accepted and included by them.

From the little she knew of Noah’s auntie’s history, and seeing her apartment, she reckoned that Connie had launched herself onto this glittering, wide London river with notable success. She herself did not have the advantage of being a genuine English girl, but Roxana would find her own way.

She breathed deeply, pushed her hands into the pockets of her denim jacket with the paper-coloured rose wilting in the buttonhole, rocked upwards on the balls of her feet and lengthened all the muscles of her back and her bare, dancer’s legs.

She became aware that Noah and Connie were both looking at her. She quickly lowered her weight back onto her heels, extricated her hands and let them hang at her sides.

‘I’ll show you the spare room,’ Connie said, clicking on the swan-shaped lamp and creating a pool of pale gold light.

Roxana followed her down a high, pale, empty corridor and they came to a flat door in the bare wall. Connie pushed it open.

The room was unfurnished except for a small double bed framed by built-in cupboards and the air smelled unused, faintly stuffy. The window came higher up the wall, giving a slice of a different view. Connie nudged open an inner door and this time Roxana saw a small bathroom lined with some light-coloured stone. Glass and polished mirrors showed her reflection and Connie’s retreating into infinity, but otherwise it was completely bare. She frowned.

‘Where are your…things?’ she began, imagining that Connie’s talcum powders and face creams must be hidden away somewhere.

‘This would be yours. My bedroom’s at the other end of the flat, and so is my bathroom. The room’s almost self-contained, so I thought it might be good for you.’

Awed, Roxana understood that this amazing apartment must have two bathrooms.

She remembered briefly the alcove screened with a plastic curtain where she had washed when she was growing up, soaping her developing breasts and afterwards pulling on her clothes as quickly as she could, not always in time, before Leonid came and caught her. At Dylan’s house the bathroom was a reeking cave that she had avoided as far as possible, and even at Noah’s the basin was speckled with shaved bristles and the towels tended to accumulate in damp drifts against the bath’s side. Here, Roxana allowed herself to imagine that she might have hours to soak and dream, safely alone, with all these mirrors gently fogged with steam. There would certainly be hot water here, endless hot water, she was sure of that.

‘It’s very nice,’ she whispered.

Noah hovered in the doorway. He didn’t look as pleased as Roxana expected. They filed back the way they had come.

‘What do you think?’ Connie asked. She moved into the distance, began opening concealed cupboards to reveal treasures of stacked white china, shining glassware, rows of bottles and jars.

Roxana’s excitement was draining away. Even Noah seemed smaller, somehow scruffier in this setting.

How could she possibly, even momentarily, have expected to be able to live here?

‘I don’t think,’ she sighed. Connie’s head turned, her fingers pinching the edge of a cupboard door. Their eyes met. ‘You see, I don’t think I will have money, enough money for rent.’ She remembered the Asian boy with the big shirt and the rental prices he had reeled off.

Connie resumed her search in the cupboard.

‘I don’t really need rent. Not right now, anyway. If you wanted, you could just stay here while you’re getting used to London. Until you’re ready to decide exactly where you’d like to be.’ She spoke tentatively, almost as if Roxana were the one offering to do her the favour. Roxana glanced at Noah, lifted her shoulders interrogatively while Connie’s back was turned. Noah shrugged with a touch of sulkiness, miming Why not?

‘You are very kind,’ Roxana began.

Connie turned back to face them again. ‘I’d be glad of some company now and again,’ she smiled, as if all this was unremarkable to her. Perhaps it was, Roxana reflected. ‘What do you think?’

Roxana smiled back. ‘So I would like to. Thank you.’

Noah said he could drive her over with her suitcase, if she wanted, but not before the next weekend because their work hours didn’t allow any time off in common.

‘I think for Andy, maybe it will be better if I come by myself before that. I don’t need to bring everything.’

Noah frowned again. Connie went away and came back with a pair of keys on a metal ring. These she dropped casually into Roxana’s pocket, adding, ‘We’re fixed, then. Come when you’re ready. What about a drink now, to celebrate? Or would you like something to eat? I’m just having a look to see what there is.’

The kitchen area somehow didn’t have the appearance of being much used.

Noah said quickly, ‘Thanks, Auntie Con, but we’ll be on our way. Work in the morning and all that.’ He kissed his aunt lightly on the cheek. ‘It’s been really good to see you again. And thank you for coming to see Mum. It’ll make a difference to her.’

‘I’m here. I want to be.’

Connie and Roxana said a quick goodbye, hardly looking at each other. They were already flatmates; it was almost as if they were conspirators, Noah thought. He was silent in the car as he and Roxana headed west.

They were on the elevated section of the route through London when Roxana asked him, ‘Are you angry with something, Noah?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Maybe it was rude, saying we would not like to stay to have something to drink and eat?’

‘That’s your culture. Not necessarily ours. You’re going to be living there, anyway. You’ll have plenty of time with Connie.’ Noah had seen Roxana’s hypnotised expression as she followed Connie round her apartment, and his normal equanimity was shadowed with jealousy. He didn’t want to have to share Roxana with anyone, let alone his aunt. There was too much history here, peering over their shoulders.

He sighed. ‘Sorry. I’m sounding a bit pissed off, aren’t I? I’m really glad you’ve got somewhere decent to stay, you deserve it, and I know you can’t go on staying with me and Andy. It’s just that for years Auntie Con hasn’t been popular in my family and I’m getting my head round thinking differently about her. And I’m also wondering when you and I are ever going to see each other. I mean, you work every night.’

Roxana’s hand slid across the handbrake and rounded itself on his thigh. Her little finger stroked a tiny circle, making him shift on his haunches and wish that they could get home a bit faster.

‘I am here now,’ she reminded him.

‘Mm. So you are. Rox, do you have to work every night?’

She turned her face to him. Streetlights and oncoming cars swept light across it and he glimpsed her set expression.

‘Yes. I need money. I need it to make myself into somebody,’ she said.

He couldn’t disagree with her absolute determination. It seemed familiar to him, surprisingly and closely connected to his own being even though he judged himself as slightly lazy, and he loved her for it.

‘But you are already somebody.’

Roxana didn’t answer.





Andy was already at home, occupying his usual end of the sofa, with the television turned up loud. There was an empty pizza box at his feet.

‘Hey, you guys. Had a good day?’ Remembering Jeanette he added quickly, ‘How’s your mum, mate?’

‘She’s about the same, thanks. She was pretty cheerful today, her sister was there. Actually, Roxana’s got a room over at her place. We’ve just been there to take a look at it.’

‘A room at your mum’s?’

‘No. My Auntie Con’s.’

‘It is beautiful,’ Roxana put in.

‘Ah. Oh. Well, cool. That’s really great.’ His gaze slid back to the television. Noah put his hands on Roxana’s hips and steered her briskly across to his bedroom. Once they were inside with the door closed he hooked his knee behind hers and tipped her expertly onto the bed, as he had been wanting to do ever since they had left his parents’ house. They rolled together, giggling and wrestling until Noah found a way to pin her down and kiss her. He caught the hem of her tiny skirt and edged it higher.

‘God, you’re beautiful.’

‘And you, Mr Noah Bunting, are a very kind man.’

‘Right. Is kind as far as it goes?’

She pretended to think. ‘You are, um, pushing for a compliment, I think?’

‘Fishing. It’s fishing for compliments. Quite an old-fashioned expression. Your English isn’t perfect yet, my Uzbek girl. Although it’s pretty damn good, come to mention it. You never told me how you learned.’

‘I had a teacher called Yakov. He knows a lot of languages. And I worked hard at it.’ He waited for her to expand, but she did not.

In the end he said, ‘Yes, I bet you did. I love you, Rox.’

Her expression lightened, and they were connected again. She touched her mouth to his. ‘Good. I am pleased to hear.’

She never said I love you back to him. But there was time, Noah thought. She would in the end.





It was a few days before Roxana stopped feeling like an intruder at Limbeck House, which was the name of the building crowned by Connie’s apartment. She half-expected, as she tapped the security code into the panel at the street door and then rode up in the hushed lift, that some security official would seize her by the shoulder and march her outside again.

But, gradually, she became accustomed to the place. She hung up her few clothes in the cupboard, and stuck her beach postcard right next to the side of the bed. She liked to see the picture when she opened her eyes, although it no longer represented her only idea of Paradise. Where she now found herself came quite close to that.

By the time Roxana got up Connie had usually gone out, and when she came back from The Cosmos her flatmate was always asleep. Roxana didn’t mind at all being alone in the apartment. She unfurled, slowly, like a new leaf.

At first she stayed in her room, watching the clouds and the planes passing her window. She took long, hot baths and stared at herself in the misted mirrors, not quite recognising the scrubbed, leisurely person who looked back at her.

Then she acquainted herself with the other rooms. The daylight in the big living area changed with the hour, and according to the weather. One afternoon there was a storm, and she watched the rain sweeping towards her like fine scratches over the city towers.

She looked in the cupboards in the kitchen and in the huge fridge. There wasn’t much food, and anyway she didn’t think she should help herself to what there was. She left the flat in the middle of the day and went back to the Best Little Internet Café. The owner greeted her warmly, and served her a plate of souvlaki and salad. The fatty meat and chopped salad and the flat bread served with them reminded her of the food at home in Bokhara.

After she had eaten, she checked the email account that the Asian student boy had helped her to set up. There was the latest email from Fatima, responding to Roxana’s news that she now had an English boyfriend as well as a job.

Fatima said she was glad that Roxana was having such a good time. You struck lucky, all right!

Fatima was working in the travel industry in Tashkent, mostly with the Turkish biznez men who came to invest in the new post-Soviet developments. It was okay, she wrote. You know.

Roxana rattled off a euphoric description of her new home. When they were little girls, she and Fatima had played with pebbles and pieces of stick in the shade of crumbling walls. It gave Roxana great satisfaction to think what different circumstances they found themselves in now.

The café owner called a friendly goodbye to her as she left, and that made her happy too. She was a regular customer, recognised and valued.

She called in at the grocer’s store on the corner of the street and bought milk, tomatoes, bread and cheese to take home to Limbeck House. She put the food in the fridge, seeing how lost it looked in the cavernous interior, and wondered what Connie liked to eat and whether she should cook something for her. She didn’t, in the end, but that was because she didn’t really know how to cook anything that would be good enough.

In the early evenings she went out to The Cosmos, and after the cool neutral air of Limbeck House it was like breathing in a toxic compound of smoke, sweat, alcohol and men’s lust. But she was rested now, feeling almost dizzy with the lifting of anxiety, and she was able to work much better. More punters wanted private dances and they paid more money for them, perhaps because her smile was convincing. She earned good money and she didn’t even have to worry about keeping the thickening wad of notes safe. It lay in an envelope, on a shelf within one of the cupboards in her sanctuary.

She came home at three thirty in the morning, her clothes and hair stinking of The Cosmos, and found a note from Connie on the kitchen counter.

I helped myself to milk and bread, etc. Hope you don’t mind. C.

It was beautiful that Connie should be so polite when this place and everything in it was hers.





The solitary hours of the next day flowed past. Roxana ventured beyond the living area to Connie’s end of the flat. She peered into the room where Connie spent most of her time when she was at home. From the doorway, she saw a bank of unfamiliar machinery with dozens of sliding keys, a musical keyboard, computer screens. A pair of headphones was hooked over the back of a swivel chair. There was a separate desk covered with papers, a big diary and a telephone. The inside of the room felt flat, dead of vibration, as if it had been soundproofed. Roxana silently retreated.

The only other door led to Connie’s bedroom.

It was tidy. The white bedcover was smooth and flat and there were no scattered clothes. Roxana knew that this was an intrusion but she couldn’t help herself. She tiptoed across to take a look into the bathroom. There were tiers of white towels, glass shelves with neat rows of cosmetics, a faint drift of Connie’s spicy perfume.

Roxana glided across and opened the nearest cupboard door. Inside, Connie’s clothes were ranged on hangers, like so many ghosts of her. Roxana rippled the tips of her fingers over the fabrics. Suddenly she stepped closer, lifted the sleeve of a dress made of some diaphanous greeny-grey stuff, and buried her face in the fabric as if she could breathe in the essence of the other woman. As if she could make herself into Connie. The perfume was much stronger here.

Nothing happened. She was still a taller, thinner, younger woman, whom none of these clothes would fit.

Embarrassed by herself, even though there was no one to see her, she dropped the sleeve and closed the cupboard door, turned quickly and retreated to her own room. The silence in the flat seemed to roar in her ears. Soon it would be time to go out to The Cosmos again to dance for men.





Connie saw her manager and discussed the current state of the music business, had two lunches in Soho with two producers she had worked with in the past, and called in to see Angela at her production company. They watched the first edits of the bank commercials, and Angela said how pleased she was with them. Connie thought her music was good enough, but no better than that. Ketut and the other musicians looked wonderful for the brief second that the camera lingered on them. She gazed intently at the little wedding temple, the clearing in the jungle greenery and the tropical beach, and the sight of them brought back the thick, humid warmth of Bali. She particularly missed her veranda and the rolling green wave.

She was also quite aware that wherever she happened to be, it was becoming increasingly unlikely that she would ever feel perfectly at home.

Angela raised one eyebrow. ‘What’s funny?’

‘Not much. Are you doing anything this evening? Shall we go and see an early film?’

Angela’s face clouded. ‘I’d like to, I really would. The thing is, though, Rayner said he might be able to slip away for an hour before he has to be home. We haven’t seen each other for a week. We’ve got a couple of work things to discuss,’ she added, lifting her chin.

‘We’ll do the cinema another evening,’ Connie reassured her.





Bill mentioned to Connie that Jeanette would like to see her. So she drove down to Surrey one morning, against the flow of traffic, arriving well after Bill had left for work. Apart from Jeanette’s cleaner, who hoovered in the distant reaches of the house and laid a tray for coffee, they were on their own.

It would probably be the longest time they had been alone in each other’s company, Connie reckoned, since she left Echo Street.

The weather had turned. It was cooler, and there were sharp bursts of rain. Jeanette sat in the room that opened onto the garden, small in her large armchair. She had her mobile that she could use to text for help if it was needed, a small tray with a glass of water and several vials of pills, her book and the newspapers and a radio arranged on the low table next to the arm of her chair. In the afternoons a nurse came in for an hour, and twice a week a beautician visited to wash and set her hair.

– I am well set up, you see, Jeanette said.

Connie sat down.

Do you want to talk?’ she asked. They exchanged a glance of mutual amusement.

– Yes.

At once, Connie’s tongue felt thick and awkward. Jeanette gazed out into the garden.

Connie began almost at random.

‘I was remembering the picnic. The day we saw that terrible accident. You and Bill, I remember you especially, were so capable. You were brave, and you knew exactly what to do. You sat in the road and held the biker in your arms. You were talking to him, all the time we waited for the ambulance to come. I was just afraid of what I might see.’

– You were only a girl.

Connie protested. ‘I wasn’t. I was grown up, or I thought I was. I don’t think I felt any different in those days from the way I do today, I’ve just seen and lived through more things since.’

Jeanette nodded.

– Why were you thinking about that day?

‘The picnic was to celebrate you and Bill getting engaged.’

– Of course.

Jeanette calmly reached out for her coffee cup, took a sip, replaced it on its saucer and adjusted the teaspoon that lay next to it.

– We could talk about the old days.

When she raised her hands her loose sleeves dropped back, exposing her wrists and forearms. A bracelet hung around her right wrist as if it encircled bare bone. Connie felt the dislocation between ordinary life, the present desire for harmony by not causing pain from old injuries, and the steady approach of death.

Their relationship was changing. It wasn’t too late.

Connie’s throat tightened.

– There are times that only you and I remember now. Only the two us, in all the world.

So Jeanette was thinking back to long ago, before Bill. This was safer ground.

‘I know. I’ve been conscious of that too. Remember how Tony used to tell us stories? He didn’t make them up, he always said he didn’t have the right sort of brain for inventing anything. But he was really good at painting a word picture. I used to think I could actually see the old Parade the way it was in the Thirties, just from the way he described it. That little supermarket, Gem Stores, used to be a butcher’s shop with sawdust on the floor, and beef carcasses hanging on hooks. The sawdust would be darkened with spots of blood, directly underneath where the animal’s head had been cut off. Where the café used to be, remember, he said there was a dairy. The milkman delivered to the houses with a horse and cart. What was the horse’s name?’

A smile lit Jeanette’s face. She didn’t hesitate.

– Nerys.

Connie was amazed. ‘Nerys. You’re quite right.’

This was comfortable, and comforting, for both of them.

Connie pressed on. ‘Remember the trains, at Echo Street? I could hear them rumbling through the cutting, when I was waiting to go to sleep and when I woke up in the morning.’

The tip of Jeanette’s fingers touched the rim of her ear then her hand stretched out. The fingertips fluttered, describing the faintest vibration, and the diamond in her engagement ring briefly caught the light.

– I could feel them.

The same experience, Connie thought. Differently perceived.

Talk, she exhorted herself. Before it’s too late. Talk about anything, while it’s still possible. You’ve got the words and Jeanette hasn’t.

‘Remember those Sunday lunches, at Auntie Sadie and Uncle Geoff’s?’

They both laughed. There was no need for either of them to say any more.

There had been the queasy car journey up to the better part of Loughton, to Geoff and Sadie’s house. ‘Detached,’ Sadie pointed out. Hilda was tense with anxiety and Tony would drum his fingers on the wheel as they waited at traffic lights, whistling through his teeth in an attempt to appear relaxed. When they reached their destination Jackie and Elaine would scoop Jeanette up and take her off to one of their bedrooms to listen to a record or admire a new pair of shoes. Connie would be left mutely scowling and eavesdropping on the adults’ talk.

‘Roast beef. Three different veg, in serving dishes,’ she said anyway.

– Orangeade. Blue glasses.

‘Sherry beforehand for Mum and Sadie, beer for the men.’

Sadie and Geoff had divorced after Sadie found out that Geoff was having an affair with his receptionist at the garage.

‘How are Elaine and Jackie?’

– The same. Jackie’s oldest is almost a barrister now.

‘Really?’

Connie was thinking that families were more alike than they were different. Children grew up. Grandchildren were born and then became lawyers or IT consultants. The unknown woman who had borne her most probably had grandchildren, a row of them. She’d have framed photographs, similar to the ones of Noah at various ages dotted round this room. Connie hoped that she did, anyway. She wondered if, when the woman looked at her photographs, she imagined another child’s face among them.

Suddenly she asked, ‘What was it like for you, before I came?’

Jeanette signed quickly, laughing.

– Heaven.

‘Was it?’

She shook her head.

– Mum said I’d have a little sister called Constance. Then you were there. In a cot. Black hair, red face.

Jeanette screwed up her eyes, opened her mouth and balled her fists in a swift impression of a howling newborn.

– I wanted you to disappear. But you stayed and stayed.

‘That must have been annoying. No wonder older siblings get jealous.’

There were threads of rain stitched across the glass. Connie could just hear the sounds of Jeanette’s cleaner working in the kitchen. Alarm and claustrophobia made her think of the fresh air outside, away from the faint smell of illness and the pressure of recollection, but she sat still. It was extraordinary, but Jeanette and she had never discussed their childhood like this.

‘Can I ask you something? Before Elaine told me, did you understand about adoption?’

– Yes.

‘What did you think?’

– I was angry.

‘Angry?’ Connie wondered, but she suddenly understood something. They were racing ahead, skipping pages of history, just as they skipped words and whole sentences when they communicated in their speech shorthand.

Jeanette lifted her head and looked Connie full in the face.

– They didn’t want another like me. So they picked you.

In her adolescent cruelty, Connie had taunted Hilda with this. Yet it had never occurred to her that Jeanette might have believed exactly the same thing.

Connie could see and smell the old house. Steep stairs, aerosol polish, gloss paint, the sagging fence at the end of the garden weighted with ivy, the low pitch of the shed and its curled tar-paper roof.

Within those neat, cramped rooms Hilda had constructed a brittle edifice around Jeanette, trying by ambition for her daughter to compensate for heredity.

She had drilled into Jeanette the absolute necessity to succeed in spite of being deaf, and – amazingly, brilliantly – Jeanette had met her expectations. She had gone to university, an unheard-of achievement in those days for a child from a deaf school.

While she did so, Connie had fulfilled her equal and opposite role of being unlike Jeanette in every way. And faithful, loyal Tony had done everything that his wife asked of him – except to stay alive.

Thinking of these things was like holding together pieces of a broken china dish. The shape was re-created, but the function was gone.

Connie said awkwardly, ‘You couldn’t have known they didn’t want another you. You were only five.’

– Not then. But soon.

‘How?’

Jeanette gestured, a small sweep of her hand that nevertheless took in herself, Connie, and the distance between them. Connie knew that the information had come from Jackie and Elaine, the drip-feed of family secrets, exchanged behind closed bedroom doors.

– We were different, was all Jeanette would concede.

‘We were alike in some things. I was angry as well.’

– I know that. You were terrible. What were you so cross about?

‘About not being you, of course.’

Jeanette stared, and then she started laughing. She laughed so much that she had to wipe the tears from her eyes.

– I see. Yes. That’s funny.

Connie nodded. ‘It is. I don’t think I ever saw anyone’s point of view but my own.’ She added, ‘Poor Hilda.’

– Mum would have been touched to hear you say that.

‘Would she?’

– She was afraid of you.

‘Afraid?’

– You were the unknown. And then you were gone, and then a huge success.

Connie was going to protest that she had arrived as a baby, two months old and helpless, and in any case Hilda hadn’t been forced to take her in. But she understood that they were talking about Hilda, and from that particular standpoint her own concerns were incidental.

Jeanette’s head fell back against the chair cushions. Talking and laughing had tired her. Connie realised how weak she was becoming.

‘Are you all right?’

– Yes.

The door opened and the large shape of the cleaner appeared.

‘Mrs Bunting, love, I’m off now. Your lunch is all ready,’ she shouted. ‘Mr B., he said make sure you eat something. There’s a nice piece of quiche, some tomato salad. You’ve got your sister here, she’ll see you’re looked after.’

‘I will,’ Connie promised.

The woman beamed at them and withdrew.

Connie helped Jeanette to her feet.

– She shouts, doesn’t she?

‘She certainly does.’

They went into the kitchen. Food was set out and the table was laid. Once they were eating, Connie said, ‘Old Mrs McBride, in Barlaston Road.’

– Yes?

She pointed with her fork for emphasis. ‘You told me that she was a witch. I was terrified. Most of my early life was badly affected by extreme fear of our downstairs neighbour.’

Jeanette’s eyes were round and as innocent as dawn. She chewed and swallowed.

– Broomstick. Every full moon. Without fail, I promise you.





Connie left her when the nurse arrived. Jeanette asked Connie if she would come back again the next day.

When she reached home Roxana had already gone out, but Connie guessed that she had only just missed her. The flat retained the warmth of another presence, nothing more than a breath in the air and a faint indentation in a cushion, but it was enough to make the place feel inhabited. Connie liked the idea of her being there.

Roxana had taken to leaving food in the fridge, and yesterday there had been a punnet of strawberries placed on a saucer in the centre of the polished counter, with a note saying For you. Today in the same place was a small marguerite bush in a brown plastic pot. A piece of kitchen paper had been folded into a square and placed underneath, so as not to leave a mark on the counter. Connie went in search of a better pot for the plant, humming as she looked through the cupboards.

Later she sat down and tried to listen to music, but she kept getting up and walking to the window to look down at the roofs and the streets spread below. A young couple who lived at the top of a terraced house in the middle of the nearest street were lighting a barbecue on their roof terrace. Connie stood and watched them fussing with food and plates while the blue smoke curled up behind them. Suddenly she turned and went down the corridor to Roxana’s door. She felt guilty about prying, but she told herself that she was just checking to see that she had everything she needed.

The bed was made, and there was a Russian–English dictionary and an English language course-book lying on the bedcover. In the bathroom, a roll-on deodorant, a lip-salve and a tube of toothpaste shared a glass shelf.

As in the main part of the flat, Roxana’s presence made an impression, but only a faint one.

Connie inched open the wardrobe door and saw a brown envelope, two pairs of neatly folded jeans, some tops dangling from wire hangers. On the wardrobe floor were two pairs of shoes, one flat and one high-heeled, both with worn-down heels and creased toes.

She noticed a postcard stuck to the side of the cupboard next to the bed, and leaned forward to study it. It was a picture of a beach, turquoise water and a rim of white sand, with a fringe of palm trees. Straightening up again, Connie thought how brave the girl was to live in a strange place with so little, so precariously, and with almost nothing to conjure up other places and other times except a picture postcard.

Connie herself did not like to feel insecure, not physically or financially or emotionally. She had, she supposed, devoted a lot of energy to work that shielded her in the first two cases and to retreating from the demands of the third.

She went back and turned off the music. She rolled back the section of wall that hid the television screen, and sat down to watch that instead.





– Would you mind driving me there? Jeanette asked.

‘Of course not. Shall we go now?’

Jeanette had been applying lipstick, holding up a compact mirror towards the light. She rolled her lips to smudge the colour, then ran her fingers through the blunt spikes of her hair. The make-up looked too bright against her skin.

– Yes.

Jeanette had said that she wanted to call in at work, to collect some papers and other belongings. They drove the short distance and Connie parked the car next to a red-brick building set in the middle of a botanical garden. The arms of willow trees trailed in the water of a small lake.

Connie followed Jeanette through a set of double doors and up in a lift, then along a green-painted corridor. Jeanette’s office was a big room lined with desks and big chests of drawers made of dark wood. A handful of people had been working in silence, but they all looked up as Jeanette came in. A woman at the nearest desk was bending over a bound catalogue of drawings, then studying a section of a plant through magnifying lenses attached over her spectacles. She took off this apparatus and leapt from her seat.

‘Here she is, back to cause more trouble,’ she shouted.

The other taxonomists, quiet-looking people, pushed back their chairs and called greetings. They smiled warmly, and they didn’t stare too hard at Jeanette. The first woman patted her on the arm and told her she was amazing, she was, and she was looking great. Jeanette introduced Connie, and Connie exchanged small talk with the first woman and the man at the desk next to hers. The strip lights overhead hummed faintly, and a younger woman in a skirt that might have been woven from hemp slid open a drawer near Connie’s knee and took out a specimen sheet layered between sheets of protective paper. She peeled back the paper to reveal the tiny components of a plant, fixed and labelled in minute brown handwriting. The room was stuffy and smelled of dust.

Jeanette sat down at her desk. The others hovered, and then turned uncertainly back to their work. She indicated to Connie that she would need a few minutes, and that there was a coffee room on the ground floor if she wanted somewhere else to wait. Obediently Connie descended in the lift again, and sat looking out at the miniature flanks of a rockery while she drank a cup of coffee from a vending machine. A gardener in green work clothes was stooping among the tiny alpines, picking twigs and debris from the cushions of leaves.

When she had finished her coffee Connie wandered back upstairs again. Jeanette nodded and began to gather up her papers. She put a book and a sheaf of notes into her briefcase, and rearranged more papers in neatly labelled folders. Her colleagues got up once more from their work and Connie watched as they said goodbye to her. They all agreed jovially that they would see her soon, but she wasn’t to rush back, not until she was good and ready.

‘When you do get back we’ll go out and have that dinner, all of us. A proper night out,’ the woman with the magnifying lenses cried as Jeanette passed between them.

But nobody looked her straight in the eye.

It was as if her sister was already a ghost, Connie thought.

In the car on the way home, as they queued up at a roundabout, Jeanette patted her briefcase.

– The Early Spider Orchid. Rare in Britain. I have been following a conservation project. The results are here.

‘That’s interesting,’ Connie said.

– I want to go back to work. In a week or so. Part time.

‘Good. If you think you can, that is.’

They had only been home for a few minutes when Bill’s car turned into the drive. Connie was making tea, opening and closing cupboard doors as she searched for cups, and Jeanette was reading the papers she had brought with her. Her head lifted at once, even though she couldn’t have heard the crunch of car tyres on gravel. Before his key turned in the lock she was touching her hair.

He came into the kitchen and Jeanette went straight to him. He folded her in his arms and rested his cheek on the top of her head.

‘Hello, Jan. What sort of a day have you had?’

Connie spooned tea into the warmed pot. She was conscious in this kitchen of weighted years of joint domestic life, drawer handles worn to the touch, a tea towel brought back from a trip to Dublin, pot basil on a sunny windowsill showing bare stalks where leaves had been picked off. The steps from the oven to the fridge, the view of trees and sky from the window over the sink, these would be as familiar to Bill and Jeanette as their own bodies. As each other’s bodies.

She loved them both.

The lid of the teapot clattered as she awkwardly dropped it into place.

After a moment she was able to turn and look at Bill. He looked formal, in a business suit with his tie loosened at the neck.

‘Con,’ he said quietly.

She smiled. ‘I saw where Jeanette works.’

‘The plant kingdom,’ he nodded. He unwound his arms from Jeanette’s shoulders.

– Tea in here? Jeanette wondered.

‘I should get home,’ Connie said.

– Stay for dinner.

‘Yes, do,’ Bill added.

‘Just tea. A quick cup.’





The next morning, Connie knew as soon as she opened her eyes that she wasn’t alone in the flat. There wasn’t a sound, but she could feel the comforting emanations of another person. She put on her dressing gown and shuffled into the main room. Roxana was standing by the window looking out, but she spun round as soon as Connie appeared.

‘Hi. You’re up early,’ Connie said.

‘I did not sleep so well.’

‘Would you like some coffee?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘How was your week?’

‘Fine. I have made altogether four hundred and seventy pounds.’

‘I think that’s pretty good,’ Connie laughed.

She opened a new vacuum pack of espresso coffee. Roxana came and stood by her elbow, watching closely as Connie pressed the ground coffee into the little holder and locked it into place. When she gave her the cup, Roxana took it and sat next to her on a high stool at the counter.

‘Thank you for the plant.’ Connie stroked the feathery leaves with the tips of her fingers. ‘And the strawberries.’

Roxana flushed. ‘I am glad you like them.’

Connie splashed some milk into the strong coffee and Roxana did the same.

‘What are you doing today?’ Connie asked.

‘I am going to meet Noah. He says we will see an art gallery.’

‘Very Saturday metropolitan.’

‘Yes. Then I must go to The Cosmos Club, of course. Noah is saying that he will be coming to watch me dance. He makes the threat, at least.’

‘You don’t want him to?’

Roxana jumped off her stool. Using the countertop as a pivot she gathered her face into a sultry pout, turned away from Connie while still holding her gaze, and mimed the slow removal of her top. She cast the imaginary garment away from her then rotated to face forwards with her hands coyly folded across her chest. She flung her head back and circled her tongue over her lips, sighing with apparent desire.

Connie coughed with laughter and a drop of coffee ran down her chin. Roxana snapped upright again.

‘You see? This is ridiculous, but I have to do it. I don’t want Noah to think that I am ridiculous.’

‘I don’t think he would, actually.’

Roxana raised an eyebrow. ‘Or, what might be worse, I would see him there with all the other men who come, with their money rolled up in their pockets and sit like this for their private dances.’ Now she sat on the stool with her legs splayed, hands in pockets and head cocked, more than filling an imaginary space. ‘And I’d think that he was the ridiculous one, for being the same as the rest. You see, when you go to work you can be one person. And then at home again you can be completely another. I think it is better that way.’

‘Yes, that’s quite true,’ Connie agreed.

They had finished their coffee and there was a clink as they both replaced their cups.

Roxana was suddenly beaming. ‘Yesterday I did some shopping. The first clothing I have bought since I was in Tashkent, with my friend Fatima. Except for stupid things, for working, I mean. I’d like to show you. Shall I bring it?’

‘I’ll come,’ Connie said. She followed Roxana along to her bedroom. There was a Topshop bag on the floor beside the wardrobe. Roxana reached in and brought out a short blue canvas jacket with oversized buttons. It was very like one that Connie owned. Roxana slipped it on, instinctively tweaking the cuffs and collar into a flattering shape. It suited her.

‘Do you think this is nice?’

‘I do.’

Carefully Roxana took it off again, smoothing the seams. She took a hanger out of the cupboard. The brown envelope still lay on the shelf. She sighed.

‘It cost thirty-five pounds. Is this too much money?’

‘No, Roxana, I don’t think it’s too much. And if it was, so what? It’s the money you earned from lap dancing, which must be extremely hard work. I can’t imagine doing it, not even if I had a body like yours. You can spend it exactly how you like. Although better if not on cocaine, perhaps.’

Roxana made a disgusted sound. ‘Some of the girls, Natalie and others, they do this. Myself, I think it is the most stupid pastime in the entire world.’ She picked up the envelope and opened it to show Connie a wad of notes.

‘After I had bought the jacket, I thought that before shopping I should really give you money for rent.’

‘Thank you. But I said you didn’t have to. If you’re here for a while, we can talk about you making a contribution towards the electricity bill, something like that.’

Roxana reflected on this. Whichever way she considered it, however pessimistically, it did not sound as though Connie was telling her to go.

‘I think you should put that money in the bank, though.’

‘I don’t have a bank.’

Connie considered. Roxana was almost certainly in the country illegally; she had no resources except her dancing and no one to stand up for her except Noah and Connie herself. However tough she might appear to be, she was vulnerable too. All Connie’s instincts were to help her as much as she could.

‘I can help you with that, if you like.’

Roxana looked pleased.

Connie’s eyes fell on the beach postcard again. ‘Where’s that? Did you go there on a holiday?’

‘A holiday? No. This place is my fantasy. My paradise. Whenever I was in a very ugly situation, before I left Uzbekistan or when I was here in London before I met Noah, I would stare very hard at this picture. I would tell myself, somewhere in this world that place exists. There is the heat of the sun and the cool water and lapping of waves. You are not here, you are there. Or’, Roxana shrugged as if to brush off the memories like a cobweb from her shoulder, ‘some day, you will be. The truth is that I have never seen the sea.’

‘Never?’

‘How would I have? Uzbekistan is a country that has no coast. Not even the countries that border it have any coastline.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ Connie said, embarrassed by geographical ignorance. ‘Would you like to see the sea? I’m not saying the beaches in England are anything like that one, but we have plenty of coast. Or no, wait a minute, you’d rather go with Noah, wouldn’t you? I’m sure he’d like you to see it with him.’

They looked at each other.

‘I would like to go with you,’ Roxana said.

‘Then we’ll do it.’