The Rumor, page 4
Dave sticks his thumb in the air.
* * *
—
I PARK AT the top of Maple Drive, facing the water. Today, it is a deep violet-blue and there’s a hazy shimmer that makes the horizon seem barely visible. I never tire of looking at the ocean. It’s part of my soul; it’s etched on my DNA. All those long summer afternoons I used to spend sprawled on the sand with my nose in a book, the sound of the surf rasping on the shore. Then later, as a teenager, huddled around an illicit fire as dusk gave way to night, smoking and swigging beers or, if we got lucky, necking with the boys who worked at the carnival on Mistden Pier. I always knew I’d come back one day.
This time, I wait for Anne Wilson to arrive before getting out of my car. The less time I have to spend in Susan Marchant’s company, the better. I switch the radio on and open the window, watch the leaves on the sidewalk shift and separate in the breeze. With winter only a couple of months away, golden days like this have to be savored. The last breath of summer.
Most of the tourists have left now that the school year has started up again. Flinstead is being returned to its inhabitants. It’s as if the town can finally breathe. If the tourists stopped coming, this place would surely die. But oh how glorious it is when they pack up their deck chairs and sunscreen and trundle back to their cars and don’t come back, when the boardwalk isn’t cluttered with their beach toys and their giant inflatables and their sunburnt legs.
There’s still the odd day-tripper or dog-walker parked up on the esplanade, of course. A man and two children are flying a kite. A traditional diamond kite—bright yellow with a long red tail. It dips and soars in the sky, its tail streaming after it. Maybe I should buy Alfie a kite. He’d like that. In fact, I’d much rather buy him a good-quality kite than those overpriced school photographs. Which reminds me, I must find that order form when I get home.
I check my rearview mirror for Anne Wilson’s blue BMW, but she hasn’t arrived yet. The time of the appointment comes and goes and, since there’s no message from her, I keep waiting. It’s no hardship to be sitting here, with the afternoon sun warming me through the windows, the sound of seagulls squawking overhead. Even so, a small kernel of unease has lodged itself in the pit of my stomach. The dead leaves rattle across the sidewalk. Maybe it’s the thought of dealing with Susan Marchant again. Or maybe it’s my recent encounter with Sonia Martins, how weird she made me feel.
Susan Marchant. Sonia Martins. Am I going to start suspecting everyone with the initials S. M. from now on?
My eyes slide to the brown-paper bag on the passenger seat, the one that contains my incense sticks. I must have been in that store several times since moving to Flinstead, enticed by the gorgeous scents and chill vibes. If I were someone trying to hide my real identity from the world, someone with demons to suppress, what better place could I choose to spend my days than a peaceful, calming environment like Stones and Crones?
It must be so difficult having to keep all those lies in perpetual motion, like plates spinning on sticks. How could anyone live like that without going nuts? I pull my shoulder blades back toward each other and squeeze them tight to release the tension. So much for vowing to put Sally McGowan out of my mind. She’s taken up residence there like an unwelcome guest.
While I’m waiting, I scroll through Facebook. Tash has posted a picture of her ankle, which is massively swollen and badly bruised. She’s written Great excuse to stay at home and watch Netflix. I press LIKE and tap out a comment: Too much vodka last night???
She responds within seconds. Running to catch bus, tripped on curb. We need to catch up. Come and stay SOON.
Will do, I reply. Miss you.
Shouldn’t have moved then! followed by a winking emoji is her speedy response.
I just have time to send her one with a tongue sticking out before I see Anne Wilson’s BMW pull up on the other side of the road. She gets out, grimacing and mouthing Sorry. The highlights in her hair gleam in the sun as she hurries toward me. There’s no silver-haired man with her today.
“I was going to call to say I’d be late,” she says. Her voice has an apologetic, breathy quality. “But that would have wasted even more time. I thought it best to just keep going.”
Her skin looks even tighter and shinier than before. It’s impossible to gauge how old she is, but she isn’t young.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Honestly.”
Like last time, the front door of number 24 opens before I’ve even rung the bell. Susan Marchant’s eyes flick from me to Anne and back to me again. For a minute I have the impression she’s going to tell us off for being late, but then she gestures for us to come in. An imperious wave of her arm.
“I’ll be in the backyard,” she says, and disappears down the long hallway.
Anne Wilson shakes her head in disbelief. As much as Pegton’s needs this sale to go through—things have been a bit slow lately; Dave calls it the Trump Effect—I can’t help hoping she decides not to make an offer, and that nobody else does, either, so that Susan Marchant is forced to drop the price. It would serve her right for being such a cold fish.
7
MOM’S TOWNHOUSE AND THE ONE next to it make me think of those before-and-after photos. Both halves are covered in the same sandy-brown shingles, but the windows of the townhouse on the left where her elderly neighbor lives are dirty, with sagging curtains, whereas Mom’s are sparkling and have neat vertical blinds. Likewise, each half of the shared concrete driveway tells its own story, although I notice that, recently, Mom’s taken to pulling next door’s weeds up out of the cracks as well as her own. I’m surprised she hasn’t offered to wash the windows, too.
She opens the door, a dish towel slung over her shoulder and her cheeks all pink from the heat of the kitchen. Sol barges past her legs to greet me. He’s a ten-year-old yellow Labrador and he’s another reason why Alfie is so pleased to be living here. Alfie is dog-crazy, and now that he gets to see Sol almost whenever he likes, he’s stopped pestering me for one of his own.
Looking after retired guide dogs is something Mom’s been doing ever since I was a little girl. Granddad was blind so she grew up around working dogs. I can still remember all their names: Lulu, Nero, Pepper, and the biggest rascal of all, Quenton, who once ate an entire birthday cake when no one was looking. My birthday cake, as it happens, but I couldn’t be mad at him for long. Especially when he started shaking with sugar overload and we had to rush him to the vet’s.
When her last dog, Oona, a gorgeous German shepherd, died of cancer, I thought she was going to hang up her leashes for good. All her dogs have been special and, as she often says, you can’t afford to get too attached to them because they’re already old when they come to you, but Oona was a particular favorite.
In the end, though, she relented. The house didn’t seem the same without a dog in it.
Alfie comes running out of the living room for a hug. His hands are covered in green felt-tip and there’s Play-Doh stuck under his fingernails, but oh, he smells so gorgeous I never want to let him go.
Mom smiles. “Alfie, do you want to finish your coloring book while Mommy and I set the table?”
“Look at my alien spacecraft first,” he says, thrusting his handiwork under my nose for inspection. “It’s got a special rocket blastoff. Look, Mommy. Look!”
“That’s gorgeous, Alfie. And what’s this little creature here?”
Alfie and Mom exchange a look as if to say, Imagine not knowing that. “It’s a space robot. That’s his antenna and those are his special claws.”
“Oh yes, of course. Silly me. Aren’t you a clever boy?”
Alfie marches mechanically into the living room, chanting, “Affirmative, affirmative.”
“He loves that book,” Mom says, laughing. “The one you didn’t want me to buy.”
“It’s the title that annoyed me. The Boys’ Coloring Book, as if girls don’t want to color spaceships and airplanes. No wonder there are so few female engineers.”
Mom rolls her eyes and waves me into the kitchen. She shuts the door behind us. “Can we have a quick word?”
I dump my bag on the floor and perch on one of the stools at the breakfast bar.
“What’s he done now? He hasn’t been saying ‘shit’ again, has he? I’ve told Michael not to say it in front of him, but you know what he’s like.”
Mom makes a face that says, yes, she knows exactly what Michael’s like. “No, he’s been good as gold. It’s just that…” She pauses. “I’m worried about him, Jo. Especially after what he went through before.” My heart constricts. “Has he told you about lunchtimes?”
I stare at her, puzzled. “Lunchtimes?”
“How no one wants to sit next to him?”
The backs of my eyeballs burn as I remember the tummyache excuse this morning. “He hasn’t said anything about that to me.”
Mom takes three placemats out of the drawer. “This is the second time he’s mentioned it. I didn’t think much of it at first because, well, you know what kids are like at this age—they’re so fickle when it comes to friendships.” She hands me the mats. “But he’s clearly upset about it. And he says Jake and Liam are always being nasty to him.”
I go through to the sunporch and set the mats on the table. I’m glad he feels able to confide in her, of course I am. I just wish it was me he’d told first. Maybe if I’d asked a few more questions about Jake and Liam the other day, he’d have told me what was going on. I can’t let this happen again.
“He did say something about those two, but I had no idea about the lunch thing. I’ll have a word with Miss Williams tomorrow.”
Poor Alfie. I can’t bear to think of him sitting all on his own.
Mom frowns. “And that’s not all I’m worried about.”
Oh God. What else have I missed about my own son?
“He told me that Michael stayed over last weekend.”
Hmm. I should have guessed Alfie would say something about that.
“I’ve never interfered in your life, Joanna, and I’m not about to start now,” she says. “But if I don’t say this, it’s just going to play on my mind.”
“Go on, then. Say it.”
“Alfie could so easily get the wrong idea about things. You’ve said yourself how he sometimes wonders why his daddy can’t live in the same house. If Michael starts staying over, it’s bound to confuse him.”
Mom presses her lips together. She’s never really understood about Michael and me. She’s very old-fashioned in that respect. Probably feels a bit awkward explaining our “situation,” as she calls it, to her friends, although I know deep down she has only my best interests at heart. She told me once that she thinks I’ve settled for second best, but I don’t need to justify my relationship with Michael—it’s my life, not hers.
Even so, I find myself explaining. “He was exhausted after his flight. It felt mean sending him off again as soon as he’d arrived.”
“So he slept on the sofa, then?”
I open my mouth to respond, but there’s nothing to say.
Mom does one of those laughing sighs. “He might only be six, Jo, but children are much savvier than we think.”
She turns the gas off under the peas and takes a colander from the cupboard. “I hope he uses protection.”
“Mo-om! For God’s sake! Of course he does. We do.”
Apart from the one, notable exception that led to Alfie, of course, but we don’t need to go over that again.
“Because he’s probably sleeping with other women besides you,” she says. “You do realize that, don’t you?”
I breathe in through my nose and count to five. “We’ve never been exclusive, Mom, I’ve told you that. But one thing I do know about Michael is that he’s honest.”
Too honest, sometimes. On the rare occasions he has gone out with someone else, he’s always made a point of telling me, almost as if he needs my approval. And I know I could, too, if I wanted to. Except I don’t. I haven’t. Not since Alfie.
“He hasn’t been seeing anyone else for a long while now,” I say. “And if he does meet someone he wants to be with, he’ll tell me. I know he will.”
Mom sighs. “I’m sorry, darling. I can’t help worrying about you. It’s all part of being a mother, you know, worrying about your children. It never stops, even when they’re all grown up. I just want you to be happy and not have to go through what I went through with your father.”
She puts the usual sour emphasis on the word. Poor Mom. It’s hardly surprising she has such a dim view of men.
She squeezes my shoulder. “Do you remember when you were little and you had that imaginary friend? I was so anxious when you started school. I thought the other children would tease you about it.”
“Oh yeah, Lucy Locket.” I smile at the memory.
Mom laughs. “I can’t tell you how relieved I was when you stopped chattering away to yourself in your bedroom.”
“Actually, it’s perfectly normal for young children to have imaginary friends. I looked it up once. It’s a natural part of their development.”
“I know. I’m only teasing.” Mom passes me the salt and pepper to put on the table. “It sounds like Alfie just needs a bit of help settling in. Maybe it would help if you made friends with some of the other mothers, invited their children over for playdates or something. I got talking to Hayley’s mom when I picked him up today. Karen, is it? Her mother was there, too—nice lady, way too thin. She’s just moved in with Karen, I think she said. They both seemed really lovely.”
“Karen goes to my book club,” I say. “I think she’s also the secretary of the PTA. I find her a little intense, to be honest. And anyway, Alfie’s not too crazy about girls.”
Mom laughs. “You wait till he’s a teenager.” She takes three plates from the cupboard and puts them in the bottom of the oven to warm.
Alfie’s head appears around the door. “I’m starving!”
Mom rests her hands on her hips. “Well, it’s a good thing supper’s ready, then, isn’t it?”
She’s right. Of course she is. I’ll have to try harder with the other mothers. For Alfie’s sake. Get myself invited to their coffee-morning circuit if I have to. What did Tash say when I told her I was moving out here and going part-time? That it wouldn’t be long before I became one of those mothers who take over a whole coffee shop and talk endlessly about their offspring. I told her, “No way.”
But still, if it makes Alfie’s life a little easier…
8
LATER THAT NIGHT, ABOUT FIVE minutes after Alfie’s gone to sleep, the phone rings. I grab it before it wakes him up.
“I think I might be on to something about Sally McGowan,” Michael says. We’ve barely said hello.
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. I bumped into an old pal of mine who cut his teeth on the first big exposé. You know, when she was hounded out of Iowa.”
When Michael uses the phrase old pal, it could mean absolutely anything. An old hack he crossed paths with once. An ex-criminal-turned-informant. An innocent bystander delighted to embellish a story for five minutes of fame and the gratitude of a good-looking journalist with kind eyes. What it rarely means is a “pal.”
Bumped into is also not how it sounds. It’s not like me bumping into Maddie at the school playground this morning. Bumped into in Michael’s world means “tracked down by any means possible.”
“He heard that some guy who used to work in the Witness Security Program helped set her up somewhere else,” he says. “Unofficially, of course. Gave her a new name. A new legend.”
A legend? He’s really enjoying this. I can tell from his tone of voice, the way he’s spinning it out, like some CIA operative in a spy movie.
“It sometimes takes months before people with new identities are ready to go it alone. My source says Sally McGowan was a quick learner. She had to be. She didn’t have the cushion of WITSEC behind her.”
“Your source or your pal?” I say.
“Ha ha. Now here’s the thing. One of his sources—and he swears this guy was legit—got smashed one night and let it slip that she was safely stashed away in one of those seaside towns you go to die in.”
“Hmm. So you automatically thought of Flinstead.”
“Well, if the shoe fits…No. I haven’t finished yet. The last thing this guy said, before he became too inebriated to speak, was that, if it was him, he’d rather take his chances with an angry mob than wind up in a town with no bars.”
He waits for this to sink in. Flinstead used to be famous for being a “dry” town. It was big news when it finally got a bar.
“Who was this source?” I say. “I mean, if it was someone on the inside, someone privy to Sally’s new identity, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to go drinking with a reporter, would he?”
Michael laughs. “There wasn’t much my pal could do with it, anyway. No decent editor would touch it with a barge pole. Some outlets have strict policies on that kind of thing. And I certainly wouldn’t want to go out on a limb and expose her. I just thought you’d be interested.”
Am I interested? This is the question I ask myself when we’ve said goodbye and I’m getting ready to go upstairs, checking the stove burners are all turned off, even though I know full well they are—we didn’t even eat here tonight. It was all such a long time ago. If it’s true and Sally McGowan really is living in Flinstead, what difference does it make to my life, or anyone else’s for that matter?
She was a child then, an abused, damaged child. From what I’ve read, the police found lots of cuts and bruises on her body. Old wounds, some of them. Her father, a drunken bully of a man by all accounts, swore she was a devious child who’d inflicted the damage herself so that people would think it was him. The mother went along with this story. What’s so terrifying is that people actually believed them.
