Silent Playgrounds. Danuta Reah

flushed as he looked at the photograph that McCarthy passed to him. ‘Do you recognize any of these people?’ McCarthy asked him.

      He shook his head, then said, ‘Sandra, of course. I don’t know …’ He peered at the picture. ‘I don’t recognize any of them,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to tell.’ McCarthy nodded. The photograph was indistinct. ‘I don’t know where this came from,’ he said. He’d known Sandra towards the end of the seventies, he said. He’d been in a band, and Sandra had been the singer for a while. ‘I left in ’77,’ he said.

      McCarthy asked him about Sandra’s pregnancy. Allan’s face flushed again. ‘We lost touch when the band broke up,’ he said. He caught McCarthy’s look and said with real indignation, ‘It wasn’t mine. I wasn’t her boyfriend.’ The band, Velvet, had broken up in ’78, when another member had left. ‘I met Sandra again in ’81,’ he said. ‘We got married in 1982, just before Emma was born.’ His face looked forlorn.

      Barraclough liked nosy neighbours. She particularly liked house-bound nosy neighbours. Best of all, she liked house-bound nosy neighbours who were quite up-front about their hobby. It was always a frustration and a delay to find your way tactfully around ‘I mind my own business’ and ‘I keep myself to myself.’ Rita Cooke was seventy-three. She had the shuffling gait and twisted hands of arthritis, but her mind was whip sharp, as, apparently, were her eyes. And she’d lived next door to the Allan family for ten years. ‘I don’t know which was worse,’ she said happily, pouring Barraclough a cup of tea. ‘That Sandra, always got a long face on her, always sighing and moaning. She’d come round here and it was, “Oh, Dennis’s done this and Dennis’s done that and poor me.” What she needed was a few real problems, take her mind off herself.’

      ‘What did her husband do? What did she complain about?’ Barraclough took another biscuit.

      ‘Oh, something and nothing. He worked nights, you see, and she didn’t like being on her own, or he wouldn’t back her up with the girl – “He lets her talk to me how she likes” – or he didn’t understand about how ill she was. You know. Mind you’ – Rita Cooke wanted to be fair – ‘he was just as bad. In his way. “Yes, love, yes, love, oh, what shall I do? Oh, I can’t cope.” It’s no wonder that child went to the bad.’ She waited for Barraclough to pick up the bait.

      ‘How do you mean, Mrs Cooke?’ Barraclough asked obligingly.

      ‘Oh well, I only know what I saw. She was out all the time. All night, sometimes. And she had some very odd-looking friends, not that they came here much. Not unless there wasn’t anyone here.’

      Barraclough nodded. ‘Would you recognize any of them?’ she said.

      Mrs Cooke gave her a sharp look. ‘I might be getting on, but I’ve still got my sight,’ she said. Barraclough hastily nodded again. ‘There was one lad – didn’t like the look of him at all. He used to hang around a lot and wait for her. I’d have sent him off, but you’ve got to be careful these days.’ Barraclough got a description of the youth. Tall, pale, dark hair and eyes. ‘Quite good-looking,’ Mrs Cooke conceded.

      Barraclough asked her about Sandra Allan’s death. For the first time, the old woman seemed a bit reluctant to speak. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She had a big row with the lass – shouting and screaming. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it went on for a while. Then the lass is off out, door slamming, and he starts. I’ve never heard him shout at her before. She went out for about half an hour …’ Barraclough checked the time. They knew about that. She’d gone to the chemist to collect a prescription, the prescription for the pills that she later overdosed on. ‘Then she didn’t go out again. I saw him going out to work, four o’clock that was. I thought she was going to come round here like usual when she was upset, but she never did. It was quiet after that. I heard him come back at six the next morning. Then I got woken up again by the ambulance.’ The old lady frowned, looking uncertain, frail. ‘I never thought she’d do it,’ she said, looking at Barraclough with troubled eyes.

      Suzanne gave up on work. She felt as though something trusted and familiar had let her down. She looked out of her kitchen window and saw Jane in her small yard, working in the early evening sun on the tubs she used to grow herbs. Lucy was crouched over some game involving building blocks and the animals from her wooden farm. Mother and daughter.

      She remembered her own mother, that close, intense relationship that had been the centre of Suzanne’s child universe. She could remember coming in from school every day, her mother lying on the settee, the disorder of the morning still to clear up, the food to prepare before her father came back from work.

      As a child, she had just accepted her mother’s illness. As an adult, she could see that it had deprived her of the things that a normal childhood should have: a mother who looked after you, friends, uninterrupted schooling. But as a child, she had liked it. It had made her feel important and wanted. She remembered her mother the year before Adam was born, always on the settee, always in bed. But she could remember a party, her friends round a bonfire, sausages on sticks and her mother laughing as she watched them bob for apples. When had that been? You’ve worn your mother out, Suzanne! How can you be so thoughtless! Her father. She shook her head. Memories of childhood were not what she wanted just now.

      She knocked on the window and, when Jane looked up, she mouthed, Tea? Jane smiled and nodded and, five minutes later, Suzanne was carrying mugs of tea out into the garden, and some apple juice for Lucy. The day was fine, the sky a deep blue, with just a few clouds racing in the breeze that kept the air warm rather than baking hot. Suzanne took off the sweatshirt she’d been wearing over her T-shirt, and sat on the low wall that divided the two gardens, watching Jane work. ‘It’s just tea,’ she said, indicating the mug.

      ‘That’s OK.’ Jane pulled up a long-rooted dandelion and looked at it. ‘You know, they used to cultivate these things. I tried making dandelion coffee once. It was disgusting.’

      Suzanne looked across at Lucy who seemed to be involved in her game, oblivious to the conversation between the two adults. ‘Have you heard anything more?’ Jane looked at her. ‘From the police, about Emma.’ Surely Jane didn’t need reminding.

      ‘Yes, I know.’ Jane went on looking at Suzanne, then she said, ‘You still look very tense. I don’t know – I haven’t heard anything directly.’

      ‘How do you mean, directly?’

      Jane knelt back on her heels and sipped the milkless tea Suzanne had given her. ‘I’m sure this stuff is better for you than people say,’ she said, indicating her mug. ‘Of course, you just don’t know what’s in it.’

      Suzanne wasn’t sure if Jane was being deliberately evasive, or if she was just thinking out loud while she sorted out an answer to Suzanne’s question. She couldn’t ask again, because Lucy came over and looked at the glass of apple juice. ‘Is that mine?’ Suzanne nodded, and Lucy picked it up carefully, holding it with both hands.

      ‘Sorry,’ Suzanne apologized. ‘It’s a bit full.’ Lucy nodded, concentrating as she lifted the glass to her mouth. ‘What are you doing?’ Suzanne indicated Lucy’s game over at the other side of the yard.

      ‘Playing.’ Lucy drank some more juice and looked at the level in her glass. ‘I’m going to take some for the people,’ she said.

      ‘People?’ Suzanne looked across to where wooden toys were assembled on some twigs and leaves. The peacock feather was stuck in the ground like a flag above them.

      ‘They’re on a boat,’ Lucy explained. ‘Escaping from the monsters. Tamby’s guarding them.’ She carried her glass carefully back to where she’d been playing.

      Jane pulled a face. ‘Still monsters,’ she said. ‘They spent a long time with Emma’s father,’ she went on, ‘but I don’t know why. Joel told me.’

      Suzanne had to do a quick mental pivot to realize that Jane was now answering her earlier question. ‘Emma’s father? How does Joel know?’

      Jane