The Silence
JOSS STIRLING

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Killer Reads is an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Killer Reads 2019

Copyright © Joss Stirling 2019

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover image © Shutterstock.com

Joss Stirling asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008358211

Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008358204

Version: 2019-04-19

For Richard Blackford

‘There are times when one cannot lift a blade of grass without finding a serpent underneath it.’

Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786-1859)

‘Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.’

Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part 1 – The Fair

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Part 2 – The Fool’s Room

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Part 3 – The Moor’s Room

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Part 4 – Return to the Fair

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

About the Publisher

Prologue
Jonah, Present Day

Jonah never thought he had it in him to kill a woman, but he was wrong. She was lying at his feet.

He had to make the call. Grabbing the receiver on the old landline phone, he dialled in the number. It took so long for the dial to turn back. 9 click-click-click, 9 click-click-click, 9 click-click-click.

‘Which service do you require?’

‘Ambulance – police – both.’ Her scream still drilled in his ear even though she was silent. He’d only thought to shut her up. ‘I think I’ve hurt someone.’

There was a microscopic pause before training kicked in. ‘Address, please?’

His mind went blank. Despite living here for two years, he couldn’t remember the postcode. ‘Gallant House. Blackheath. Off the Hare and Billet Road. Postcode? Can’t think …’ He scrabbled among the papers on the console table, shaking petals from the arrangement of lilacs, until he found a letter and was able to read it off.

‘And your name?’

He was in so much trouble. ‘Jonah Brigson. But don’t waste time! I need someone here right now!’

‘I’ve already dispatched an ambulance, Jonah. Please try to stay calm. I’m going to ask you about the casualty. Are they breathing?’

‘I don’t know – can’t see from here.’ She was lying on the cold tiles, a little on her side, one arm across her stomach, the other out as if reaching for something.

‘Can you keep on the line and check at the same time?’

‘Yes.’ The landlady’s reluctance to update anything in the house resulted in the phone base and vase of lilacs crashing to the floor as Jonah dragged the attached receiver with him. Water chased him over the tiles. He touched the slim throat his fingers had squeezed.

‘Are you still with me, Jonah?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are they breathing?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t know.’

‘Do you know CPR?’

‘Yes.’ Stupid, so stupid! He’d done this enough times. He should’ve realised what to do.

‘What’s the patient’s name?’

‘I’m putting the phone down on the ground.’ Jonah gently rearranged her on to her back so he could tip her chin slightly into the required position. This felt so wrong – he the one to have hurt her now the one who would try to save her.

The voice on the line babbled away but Jonah ignored it. He began to breathe for her.

Part 1 – The Fair

Chapter 1
Jenny, One Year Earlier

She couldn’t stand it any longer. Jenny staggered back, hand over mouth as bile rose. Someone had thrown up in the bathroom and not cleaned after themselves. Not for the first time. But today some joker had dropped a rubber duck in the middle of it. Really, she shouldn’t have to face this; no one should.

Jenny slammed the door on the mess and ran down to the small toilet on the ground floor, which was fitted at an awkward angle under the stairs. Thankfully, it was vacant, as none of the house’s other inhabitants were up yet after last night’s party.

A party that had included all but her. That hurt. When had she become Jenny-No-Mates? Jenny rested her aching head in her hands. She’d let this happen, hadn’t she? When her last relationship broke down, she’d let her ex carry off their friends into his new Jenny-free circle. Shannon, Tilly, Gina – when had they last messaged her – or for that matter, she contacted them? Maybe their loyalty had always been to him? It was stating the obvious to say that he was much easier-going. Any communication with her was so bloody frustrating – she could hardly blame them. But she’d have to try harder, find people who would understand her need to withdraw into herself at times and not take it personally, but be there for her when she felt like mixing. Did people like that exist in London? And how did you find them?

Jenny flushed the loo and washed her hands in the tiny basin, splashing the floor as everyone did. She air-dried her fingers, having noticed that the towel was a scrunched-up biohazard. She’d been working last night but her housemates probably wouldn’t have invited her anyway. The party had still been going strong when she returned from her late shift. She’d been majorly pissed off to find people grazing on each other on the stairs, cans sprouting like cylindrical mushrooms on every ledge, raucous mating calls in the lounge – all signs of the weird party wildlife of the urban jungle. She had to chuck two rutting lovers off her futon and secure the sliding door with the flimsy lock. Then she had to rip the sheets off the bed, put on clean ones, and set the room to rights, frantic that her safe space had been violated. Only then had she been able to go to bed.

To sleep? That was a joke. With the noise she hadn’t managed that till three, barricaded inside her room.

She steeled herself to face the carnage that would be the kitchen. Some letting company was running a campaign on the Underground about the annoyance of passive-aggressive notes from aggrieved flatmates, suggesting all you need do was find a new place to stop the nagging. As if it were that easy to move. In her case, she didn’t know how far she’d have to go to get through to her flatmates. She’d need at least a passive-aggressive billboard to get the attention of the people that shared the same space with her. Three Billboards Outside Ebbisham Drive. She could see them clearly: black words on red on the approach from the Underground. Clean Up! Do Not Leave Your Sick For Others To Find! Put Out Your Rubbish! They probably wouldn’t notice. The place was beyond saving. The landlord kept packing in more tenants, subdividing rooms with flimsy partitions. Her garden view window now had a plasterboard wall down the middle, leaving her just half to look out on the wheelie bins and broken paving slabs. No one complained as it was that or have the rent increased. Yet the more people moved in, the greater the pressure on Jenny, like the person crushed at the front against a barrier as the crowd surged behind her. Hard now to remember that it had started out so well as a flat share – just three of them, Harry, Luke and Jenny, friends from the orchestra; but the centre of gravity had shifted as Harry and Luke brought in more people to satisfy the landlord’s rampant greed. Now there were six, five men and her, and personal responsibility for the house had become so diluted it no longer had any meaning.

Jenny would no longer count herself a friend of Harry, or Luke for that matter.

I’m going to find a new place today. It’s that or throw myself in the Thames. And that’s not a joke.

So what was the damage? She opened the kitchen door. It was worse than she feared. She couldn’t eat breakfast in there.

‘Morning, sunshine,’ said Harry, coming out of the front room, his good mood an insult. Adjusting waistband elastic, he shuffled past in the music notation boxers that she’d given him that first Christmas in a Secret Santa.

She gave him now a single finger. He was usually the one to invite the guests to his famous impromptu parties and there were probably several left with him on the couch in various states of undress. He was proud of being adventurous in his love-making. Horn players had to live up to the jokes, he claimed.

‘Now, now, Jenny. No need to be jealous.’ He folded his six-foot plus frame into the too-small toilet and locked the door. At least she’d got in there first before he stank the place out.

This is making me into a horrid person, thought Jenny, turning her back on the kitchen. She couldn’t cope with that. I used to be happy, fun-loving, now I’m cast as the household Grinch. She plodded upstairs.

Hearing more retching from the main bathroom, the urge to escape reached boiling point. She grabbed a set of clean clothes, toiletries and her violin from her room. Life in the flat had devolved to the stage where she didn’t dare leave her instrument, fearing someone would throw up on it or use it as a cricket bat in one of their ‘hilarious’ drunken games. It was worth more than a year’s rent in London. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, the instrument case over the other, she hurried out of the house, and headed by bus for the sanctuary of the Brixton Recreation Centre.

Avoiding the pool and its battalion of early morning lengths swimmers, Jenny took a long time under the shower, soaping her body clean of the grim her house left on her. She fantasised about living somewhere completely under her control; one of those Japanese pod bedrooms would do for her, clean lines and minimal furniture. The best thing about the pod would be that she’d be alone when she chose. Completely Robinson Crusoe before Man Friday showed up alone. No need to communicate with a soul. No Harry. Just her and her music.

Her slippery fingers wandered to her throat, gentling over the scars left by surgery. A ghost of a touch still lingered; fingers squeezing, squeezing … White streaks lightninged across her lids. She dropped her hand, braced herself against the shower stall, and breathed through her nose. Not this. Concentrate on the here and now. Find something to focus on.

The ache in her neck was back. She didn’t want to think about the pain but it was better than the panic. She’d better get out of the shower and deal with it. Yes, that was good. Pain was like the conductor’s baton bringing scattered thoughts to attention.

Wrapping a soft white towel around her chest, tucked under her arms, she padded to the sinks. Filling a plastic bottle at the tap, she downed a couple of Tramadol in a gulp. It was a strong painkiller. Give it a few minutes and the relief would kick in with a little flip of pleasure; she’d feel near human again.

Tension easing, Harry struck up in her brain – her subconscious playing dress up. Other people her age liked Saturday-night parties. Why did she get in such a bloody twist about them? Mess was just mess. There were worse things in life as she well knew.

It was hard to explain to him, though, the sheer distress it caused her to find that her safe space was not safe, that Harry and her other flatmates thought it fine to let friends shag on her duvet, that they didn’t listen to her. She was screaming for help and they had their fingers in their ears.

I can’t take it any longer.

Then stop moaning and do something about it. Sometimes even subconscious Harry had good advice.

On time for her shift at the Royal Festival Hall café, Jenny set about cleaning tables with gusto. Con Forza. The seating spread far out into the acre of square-pillar-and-glass atrium and played host to a constantly shifting population of tourists and concertgoers. These faces were always different yet somehow the same, like the river in that saying about never stepping in the same one twice. School parties – the violins. Elderly couples from the home counties – the violas. Korean girls with kitten headbands or backpacks – the piccolos. American ladies with clarion tones – had to be the brass section. Each fell into their part on her imagined stave, weaving their different notes together. She was able to work quite alone for long stretches of time, absorbed in the logistics of carrying trays and discarded cups. She let music flow through her like her bloodstream. If she hadn’t had her violin to sustain her, she knew she wouldn’t have survived; it was the only thing that brought pure joy to her life. She craved it more than any lover or drug. For nothing less would she put up with crap pay and ridiculous hours. As she tidied, she let the exuberant strings part of Vivaldi’s ‘Autumn’ run through her mind. Yes, she knew that the piece had become a cliché, ruined by lifts and hold music, but it was still the best workout for a violinist’s fingers. Harry and his boxer shorts, the bathroom, the rubbish-strewn kitchen, all were blown away.

She was so absorbed in her mind-music that she didn’t see the lady who was getting up from a table behind her. Jenny collided, spilling the dregs from a teacup over them both. She stared at the lady’s stained white coat in silent horror.

‘Well, really! What’s wrong with you?’ trumpeted the customer. ‘You could at least have the decency to apologise!’

Frustration mounted inside Jenny. How to explain? God, she hated herself sometimes. She held out a cloth.

‘I’m not using that thing. This is a wool-cashmere mix!’ The woman blotted the stain with a clean tissue.

Her manager and good friend, Louis Palin, appeared at her elbow with his admirable ninja skill of sneaking up on her. Not bad for a heavyset guy the far side of forty. ‘Is something the matter, madam?’

‘Look what she did to my coat!’

‘I see – please accept our apologies. Here’s my card if you wish to contact me further about this.’

The woman grabbed her coat and the card. ‘It’s probably ruined.’

‘I sincerely hope not, madam.’

With a sniff, she exited.

‘Why the fuck is she leaving a priceless coat on the back of her chair in a canteen?’ marvelled Louis. ‘Stupid cow.’

Jenny rested her head on his shoulder and he patted her back.

‘Forget it, Jen. Women like that won’t be bothered to follow through with a claim – it takes too much time and she probably has six in her wardrobe. Sweetie, can you do a double shift today?’

Jenny nodded, eager to oblige her rescuer.

‘What do you think about doing a stint on the counter?’ asked Louis.

Jenny gave him an ‘are you sure?’ look. Not being able to speak due to the scarring on her larynx made customer-facing roles a tortuous challenge. Most musicians made ends meet as teachers but her disability meant that wasn’t an option for her. She was lucky they knew her here and looked after her.

‘We’ll give it a go, all right? See how you get on.’ Louis helped her clear the table. ‘It can’t be as bad as that woman and there’ll be others on hand if you can’t manage. It’s just that I’m really short-staffed for the pre-concert rush.’

All right for him to speak, thought Jenny, then realised the irony. See what I did there? She told subconscious Harry. I do still have a sense of humour. Just about.

‘How are you fixed for tomorrow?’

Jenny got out an iPad that she used for people who didn’t know sign language. It had revolutionised the speed of her messaging with its predictive spelling and she felt it was another instrument for her as her practised fingers flew. If she felt like it, she could even get it to talk for her, though she avoided using that function as she didn’t like any of the voices. None of them sounded like she did in her head. Rehearsal tomorrow at 11.

‘After that?’

Can do five hours. That would leave one hour’s break before the concert. Living on breadline wages meant she had to take all the shifts she could when the orchestra was in London just to make the rent.

Which reminded her. She cleared the screen, her signal for a new subject. Do you know anyone who has a spare room? I’m going crazy.

She had told Louis something of her struggles with her current living arrangement. ‘That bad, hey?’

She nodded vigorously.

‘Funnily enough, I do know someone who’s just moved out of a place. I thought of you when he mentioned it, but it’s on Blackheath.’

Her hopes flew skyward and wheeled like doves. She waved her hand asking for more information.

‘Blackheath’s on the hill above Greenwich. I realise most the people you know are mostly central and south-west London, so I thought it would probably be too lonely for you?’

Your friend moved out? Why? She didn’t want to step into another nightmare flatmates scenario as the other person fled.

‘He’s finally seen sense and moved in with his boyfriend – which would be me.’ Louis gave her a wink. Louis had been wooing ex-serviceman turned singer-songwriter Kris for months now, using Jenny as his agony aunt through the ups and downs.

Kris had given up his old place? It must be love. Jenny tapped her right palm on her left in the sign for happy. Even Louis could understand that.

‘Thanks, Jenny.’ But he didn’t look as ecstatic as Jenny expected, his tone a little downbeat. ‘It’s getting something good out of a bad situation, I suppose.’

She circled her fist over her heart, the sign for ‘sorry’.

‘You know Kris. He’s been struggling silently with his pain management but has finally had to acknowledge that he needs more help, and I volunteered. Anyway, before moving in with me, he lived with this eccentric old bird in her house just off the Hare and Billet Road. Did he ever tell you about it?’

She didn’t know Kris as well as Louis so couldn’t honestly remember him mentioning it. She wavered her hand in a ‘not sure’ gesture.

‘He didn’t talk about it much as, you know, grown up guy living with old lady …? Sounds a little weird. Anyway, it’s an amazing place.’ Louis took the tray from Jenny and threaded it on the rack for dirty dishes. ‘She takes in young disadvantaged people involved in the Arts at very low rents – peppercorn ones. Kris got to know her thanks to his GP and has managed to save up quite a bit from his army pension.’

Jenny raised her brows and drew a pound sign with a question mark.

‘Because she doesn’t need the money herself. Wouldn’t that be nice, eh?’ Louis started pushing the trolley of dirty trays towards the kitchen. ‘Kris says she was once a dancer so she understands how hard it’s to survive doing the kind of jobs we do.’

Jenny could only agree. She was lucky if she made twenty-five thousand a year even with two jobs, and that still went nowhere in London once student loan, rent and transport were paid.

‘The story goes that she crashed out with an injury just before she hit the big time.’ Jenny nipped ahead to hold open the swing door. ‘Thanks, Jen. But then her Prince Charming came along and she married money, moved into the husband’s family home, and stayed happily wed for years.’ They left the trolley with the washer-uppers. ‘Then her husband had the bad fortune to up and die on her from some long-term condition he developed. That left a great gap in her life. Kris says she amuses herself by taking in her waifs and strays – him the wounded soldier turned musician qualified in spades.’

Jenny was totally ready to be a waif or a stray if it meant escaping her shared house.

How do I contact her?

‘It’s by word of mouth only. Personal recommendations. She doesn’t advertise. I’ll get Kris to put in a good word for you. Come to think of it, I’m sure you’ll love Mrs Whittingham’s house. It’s stylish, like you.’ He was teasing. There was nothing the least stylish about her.

She nudged him playfully. Address?

‘Didn’t I say? Gallant House.’

Chapter 2
The House that Jack Built – Chapter One – Conception

Captain Frederick Jack dreamed of me – a house of his own – while he sailed the Caribbean in 1780. He was just a captain then. He’d done nothing of note, merely ferried cotton, pineapples and black ivory for a living. His days of fame as an admiral of the fleet were to come later when the little French upstart shook the thrones of Europe.

So, when I was conceived, my Captain Jack was distinguished only by the fact that he had the good fortune to marry a woman from the merchant class. With her money he could order my measurements from architects, adjust and fashion me completely to his taste. When he returned from his voyage, Jack gave his wife a perfunctory kiss, looked in on the infants bawling in the nursery at Deptford, then hurried along the Thames to climb the hill that led to my cradle. The builders were waiting to cut the first trench, spades poised. Jack bounded across the heath, waved his pocket handkerchief as his Blue Peter, and they set off, digging deep in the soil.

Chapter 3
Jonah, Present Day

‘So Jonah, we have a call here logged to the emergency services at 23.53. The caller identifies himself as you. Is that correct?’

Jonah sipped his water. ‘Yes. I made the call.’

The senior of the two police officers in the interrogation room flicked through the transcript of the brief conversation. Seen across the table like this, it looked like a script. ‘You said that you feared you’d hurt someone. Is that also correct?’ The inspector wouldn’t have been cast though in this role if this were a drama; he looked too scruffy and had several piercing holes in each ear. A director would’ve put him on the other side of the table with Jonah. ‘You requested the police as well as an ambulance. Please answer for the record.’

‘Yes.’

‘And can you tell us what you meant by that?’

‘I don’t know.’ The events were an ugly mess, like dropping a plate of spaghetti Bolognese and trying to retrieve the pasta strand by strand. Why was he even thinking of food? Jonah hadn’t slept since they arrested him. How many hours ago? God knows. He ran his hand over his face. This place was scarily familiar. He’d sat in numerous sets exactly like this one recently but none had the same smell as the real thing, the smell of sweat and some cheap industrial floor cleaner. TV sets weren’t around long enough to get the odour infused into the walls.

‘Jonah? Can you answer the question please?’

‘Sorry: what did you ask?’

‘I asked in what way you hurt her?’

He had a sudden jolt of realisation. These people would know. He wouldn’t be left speculating as he had been in the police cell. ‘Is she OK?’

The officers exchanged a look, debating between them if this was something that was better kept from him or not.

‘Please. She’s a …’ what was she exactly? ‘… she’s a friend.’

The scruffy man, Detective Inspector something, nodded to his female sergeant. Jonah had already forgotten their names. Nothing was sticking in his brain, wiped clean of everything but her scream.

‘Her respiration was compromised,’ replied the sergeant, a fresh-faced woman with sandy hair tucked back behind her ears, ‘she’s still in a coma, still critical, and we’ve no word yet as to whether she’ll survive.’

He’d heard the ambulance men discussing it. They hadn’t realised at that time that he was the chief suspect and instead they’d been impressed to meet the actor who played them on TV. They’d talked to him like he was one of them for real. They told him as if he already knew: interrupted breathing leads to oxygen deficiency which in turn could result in brain damage. He probably had known that, but he just hadn’t been thinking, only reacting.

‘Will you let me know the minute she wakes up?’ he asked.

‘There’s no certainty she will. We’re still trying to establish exactly what took place. This might turn into a murder enquiry. Are you prepared for that?’

He bit his ragged nail. ‘I still want to know.’

‘Why, Jonah? Are you afraid what she might remember?’ The inspector leant forward, body language intended to dominate.

Wishing his brain would stop note-taking on movement as if he were studying for a future role, Jonah shook his head. What he’d meant was that he wished to apologise for losing it with her, but he didn’t want to make anything that sounded like an admission of guilt. His frantic words on the emergency call were bad enough without adding that. ‘I just want to know that she’s OK.’

‘I wouldn’t wait until she can tell her side of the story, if I were you,’ said the inspector. ‘Tell us the truth now, hiding nothing, and your cooperation will be taken into account when the CPS comes to consider your case.’

He hadn’t really expected to walk out of here without some charges, not with his record, but he was hoping they would let him go on bail. ‘It’s complicated. I’m not exactly sure what happened.’ Jonah scratched at the spiderweb tattoo on his knuckles. He wondered if he should call a lawyer now. The last one that had been appointed for him by the courts had been a disaster so he’d not gone there yet, but from the seriousness of their expressions, he should reconsider the wisdom of talking to them alone.

‘Then start at the beginning. Tell us what your relationship with her was like.’

‘I wouldn’t say we had a relationship.’ He gave it the double meaning that the inspector hadn’t, mainly to stall while he considered the lawyer question some more.

‘Help us to see what went on in Gallant House, Jonah. At the moment, I have to say, things aren’t looking that good for you. We’ve got your call, there’ll be forensics, so dodging these questions is not going to help.’

‘I’m not sure anything is going to help.’ Jonah said this under his breath.

‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that.’

He gave the inspector a bleak smile. ‘Nothing. I’m just really tired. Not thinking straight. Gallant House? That all goes back to Bridget.’

Chapter 4
Jenny, One Year Ago

Bridget Whittingham was exactly as Kris had described when he rang Jenny to say that he’d fixed up the interview. Tall, thin, with fine-boned neck, wrists and ankles, Bridget moved like the dancer she had once been, her arm unconsciously leading her as she swept from room to room. Her auburn hair – Jenny assumed this was dyed – twisted into a soft peak on top of her head like a Mr Whippy cone. Not that Bridget looked the sort to buy that kind from street vans with blaring tunes. Jenny imagined Bridget’s ice cream came from hushed artisan shops that made flavours that included elderflowers or Madagascan vanilla pods.

‘And this is the drawing room.’ Bridget opened the door onto a high-ceilinged chamber. The walls were covered in an astounding plum flock wallpaper patterned with stylised peonies tumbling from urns. It was only saved from being overpowering by the white panelling that reached waist height. Chairs and sofas with well-turned wooden arms competed for attention in dusky pink upholstery like Victorian children come down from the nursery for their daily parental inspection. Family portraits hung in heavy gold frames; those pictured looked either faintly amused or terribly bored to be gazing down on a room that appeared not to have changed for a century. It was like walking into Schmann’s Symphony No. 1, thought Jenny. She’d played it recently with its nineteenth century lush inner tensions somehow resolving into harmony.

‘It’s still as Admiral Jack intended – the first owner. I redid it on my marriage to freshen it up and I have to say it’s held its colours quite well. North-facing – I suppose that accounts for it.’ Bridget’s tone was very BBC Radio Three, gently refined and pitched low for a woman, fit for commentating on the Proms. She would’ve been shocked by Jenny’s Estuary English if they’d met before Jenny lost her voice.

Jenny didn’t know if she should be appalled or impressed by the room. She was certain she would be too afraid to use it in case she damaged one of the vases on the side tables. Where were the ropes and reverential guide steering a party past a glimpse of historical old England?

‘Of course, we don’t use this much – just high days and holidays.’ Bridget adjusted a blind. With a tilt of her head catching the light just so, Jenny was suddenly aware of the skull beneath the skin, the high cheeks, eye sockets. She disliked these moments when her brain went x-ray on her. Bones, we’re just a collection of fragile bones. ‘We prefer to gather in the snug,’ continued Bridget.

Jenny shook off the disturbing vision. She was quickly learning that posh people had a different language. Drawing room, she’d met before in nineteenth century literature but snug was a new one. She decided to wait to see what it meant rather than show ignorance.

Bridget took her towards the back of the house through a generous hallway tiled in geometric patterns and into a room half the size of the first. This one looked out on the garden; south-facing French windows were partly shaded by a vine that clambered over the wrought iron balcony. New leaves were just unfurling.

‘That’s a Black Hamburg vine, sister plant to the famous one at Hampton Court, or so my husband claimed.’ Bridget opened a window to let in the sound of birdsong. ‘How anyone would know is beyond me as I’ve not found anything about it in the family archive but it does bear some passable black grapes in good years.’ Seeing Jenny approach, she added swiftly. ‘Don’t go out on the balcony, please, dear: I can’t swear to the soundness of the structure. The wretched thing is listed but far too expensive to repair. I’m afraid I’ll just have to let it moulder elegantly until it rusts entirely to nothing.’ Her gesture indicated the intricate wrought iron structure that ran across the back of the house. ‘It’s debatable if it’s the vine keeping it up or the other way around.’

Jenny smiled politely as if she understood the headaches in keeping a listed house going. Bridget was quite something, like a dinosaur left over from an earlier age found unexpectedly still roaming the earth.

‘You see that it’s much more comfortable in here compared to the drawing room.’ Bridget patted the top of the old television set. It looked like an antique rather than something capable of streaming Netflix. ‘The sofas I admit are a bit lumpy but I hate to throw anything out.’

The grey couches with winged armrests did indeed look like warty Indian elephants reclining on sisal matting. Bridget had attempted to liven them up with ruby red scatter cushions but they still looked a little sad, their best circus days over. The walls too had once been white but now had faded to a buttercream colour.

‘There’s nothing that you need worry about harming in here,’ said Bridget. ‘You can put your feet up on the sofa and no one will tell you off. That’s why it’s called the snug: it’s the place you come to feel comfortable. Now let’s go into the kitchen. I’ll make us some tea and you can tell me about yourself.’ She led the way past a console table with its black Bakelite telephone. It looked like it was expecting to receive a call from an earl or a duke, certainly not some telephone marketer sitting in Swansea or Bangalore. Jenny had to hope Bridget bent enough to the modern world to have a mobile as she didn’t do calls, only messages.

Bridget put a kettle on the hot plate of the Aga. The kitchen was surprisingly rustic for London: a long dresser displaying willow pattern china and lace-edged creamwear plates; scrubbed oak table; blue and white Delft tiles. Jenny had been awed by the drawing room, not sure about the snug, but the kitchen was a case of love at first sight. She could be very happy here, its neatness keeping the chaos of life at bay. She waved to the room and gave Bridget a broad smile.

‘I know what you mean, dear: this is the heart of the house. Now, tell me about yourself. Kris said you’re a violinist with the London Philharmonic, is that right? And he also said you don’t talk?’

Jenny nodded to both questions.

‘Is that can’t or won’t?’

People rarely asked her that. Jenny pointed to her throat. There was a white scar across her larynx that should answer for her.

‘What, no sound at all?’

Jenny shook her head. Long ago, when she was recovering, they’d tried to make her talk. All that had come out were ugly grunts and Jenny had freaked out; she’d felt like her voice had been eaten by a monster. She’d felt safer with silence.

‘You poor dear. An accident, was it?’

Jenny shook her head.

‘Illness then. I’m sorry. Does it still pain you?’

Jenny nodded. She let Bridget keep her assumption that illness had taken her voice; it was easier than the full explanation. That particular horror was better left locked away, her ugly Jack-in-the-box.

‘How terrible for you. You’re getting good treatment, I hope?’

Jenny nodded.

‘So how do we communicate?’

She got out her iPad. Who else lives here?

‘Oh, what a clever little device. At the moment, just myself and Jonah. He’s been with me about a year. He’s a darling. Making his way as an actor. Recently he’s joined one of those hospital soaps. Tells me he’s spends all his days rocketing around London in an ambulance, talking urgently into the radio. He’s got the lingo down pat.’

He sounded normal enough but she would reserve judgement until she met him. She’d thought Harry would make a good flatmate, hadn’t she? Any plans to take in more people? She didn’t want a repeat of her current situation.

‘Not at the moment. Not that there isn’t room; I just think three makes a good number, don’t you?’

Jenny smiled. Perfect.

‘I’ll show you your bedroom.’

You don’t want references or a deposit?

‘Oh no. Kris’s recommendation is good enough for me. If you’d be so kind as to arrange for monthly payments into my account – I’ll give you the details when you leave – that’s best for me. Then we can forget the sordid detail of the rent and just pretend we all live together like a family.’

Jenny was beginning to think Bridget was too naive for this world. I’ll do that as soon as I leave here. I promise. With the minimal rent being charged, she’d be stupid not to.

‘No need to promise. You’ve the kind of face I know I can trust. There are very few house rules – nothing that’ll bother you, I’m sure; just ones to make sure we all get along well together, like tidying up after yourself. Are you originally from England? You don’t mind me asking, do you? Not very politically correct, I’ve been told. It’s just that if you had an accent I wouldn’t know, would I?’

It was tricky writing while mounting the stairs. Jenny paused to tap out her answer. I’m from Harlow. You couldn’t get more prosaic than that Essex new town. But my dad’s from Lagos. He’s an academic. Currently at Princeton teaching literature. That was Dr Jerome Lapido: always somewhere else. At Jenny’s age of twenty-nine, it shouldn’t matter, but she still hadn’t let the abandonment go.

‘And your mother?’

Music teacher for the county music service. Her mum, Diana Groves had given her life to making Essex girls and boys just that little bit more musical. Driven by missionary fervour to convert her pupils to the same love for music as she had, she worked tirelessly. Jenny had thought it a thankless task until her mum explained that her reward was when she saw their eyes light up with joy when they discovered their own skill in playing a masterpiece or even just a nursery rhyme. With this as her motivation, Diana had more success with her students than one might think from the generally low cultural reputation of the county in the media. Jenny often met past pupils in her line of work who credited her mother with inspiring them as players and helping with the more practical task of getting them into music school. Harry had been one of Diana’s protégés, coming for tuition in music theory when he needed the extra help.

‘So that’s where you get it from!’ Bridget had the pleased expression of someone finding the missing puzzle piece. Was it a sign of a snobbish assumption that a girl from Essex wouldn’t be in classical music without some extraordinary explanation? That was too common for Jenny to waste time feeling offended. TOWIE had a lot to answer for. She’d be more offended if it were because she was mixed race – a fact that still surprised some old timers who didn’t recognize that society had changed. She chose to counter it by keeping on turning up in the second desk of violins. At the beginning of her career, with all that she had been battling, each rehearsal, every concert, had been an act of courage and defiance, but it had got a little easier as time passed. The music made it worth it and one day no one would question her right to be there.

‘You must tell your mother that she’s welcome to visit you at any time. And your father, of course. As you’ll see there’s plenty of room in yours.’ Bridget guided Jenny into a pretty front bedroom on the first floor, explaining the top floor was just attics. ‘You have a bathroom through there all to yourself.’

With a swoop of joy like a lark ascending, Jenny saw heaven before her. It was a huge house with only three people and she wouldn’t have to share even so much as a bath mat!

‘The mattress is new. Do you like the four-poster? I know it’s a little twee but Kris was always amused by it. I thought it might do for a daughter one day but sadly we weren’t blessed with one.’

It was perhaps a little early for Bridget to be telling her this kind of personal information but Jenny was used to the strange effect her silence had on people. They felt obliged to fill the gap and ended up divulging more than they planned. Sometimes that was very awkward, almost a burden as she shouldered the secrets of others; at other times, like now, she didn’t mind. They would be living together after all. Bridget was right: it was a bedroom fit for the missing daughter. The wooden bed had thin finial posts that held up a light square frame. Over this were draped net curtains, rather like a wedding veil. A sprig of lilac lay on the pillow. It was the kind of bed Jenny had dreamed of owning as a child but would never have fitted in her bedroom in Harlow.

It’s like a fairy tale.

Bridget laughed, a tinkling sound partly smothered by the hand she placed over her mouth. ‘Isn’t it? I’m afraid I have romantic tastes. Now what’s that lilac doing there?’ She moved it to join the others in a glass vase on the dressing table. ‘You should see my own room. I’ve gone the full satin curtain route in there. My husband thought I was insane. It was the late eighties, you know, and we were all terribly modern then, shoulder pads, permed hair, God forgive us. I was out of step with the times by about a hundred years, according to my husband. Do I take it you approve?’

Jenny poked her head into the bathroom with its clawfoot bath and black and white tiles, vanity unit and large mirror. She’d miss a shower but she was hardly going to complain about that when she had it all to herself. She mimed applause.

‘I’m pleased you like it. Yes, you’ll do very well here, I think. When would you like to move in?’

Jenny tapped her watch, indicating now.

‘Then come as soon as you can, dear. We look forward to having you.’

There was one drawback: it was around ten minutes on foot from Gallant House to the station down roads bordering the heath but Jenny decided not to care. The long dark walk in winter and fear of attackers lurking in bushes was a problem for another day. Sitting on the train heading home, she was still reeling. A beautiful house in mature gardens, an ancient vine, an overgrown tennis court, even a mulberry tree: she would be living in a Grade A daydream. She’d even possibly – maybe – be able to carry on as a professional musician and have only one job. It felt too good to be true.

Then she remembered the single jarring note: the sprig of lilac. If Bridget hadn’t put it on her pillow, that left the absent Jonah as culprit. That didn’t seem an appropriate gesture when they’d never met.

She didn’t want her perfect house spoiled. She was leaping to conclusions. There had to be a cleaner to keep a house that size in such good order; she might put flowers on a pillow to welcome a newcomer without it being odd, mightn’t she?

Chapter 5

Harry rapped on the flimsy folding door, making it rattle on its sliders. ‘Jenny?’

She looked up from her suitcase and signed ‘What?’.

‘I just wanted to apologise for Saturday.’ He was holding one arm awkwardly behind his back.

Her answer was a shrug. Her flatmates had tried to clear up; someone had tackled the bathroom and they had filled the wheelie bin to overflowing. Two days later the house had moved from unspeakable to merely foul.

‘I realised how it must’ve seemed to you. It wasn’t planned. We didn’t leave you out on purpose.’

Really? She could’ve bought the unplanned part but all it would’ve taken was a text for her to feel included. But what did that matter? She was moving to paradise.

‘I heard that you’re leaving. You don’t have to do that. We had a house meeting …’

Without her?

‘… And we agreed we’ve been pigs. We don’t even have the excuse of being students anymore. We’ve drawn up a rota.’ Like she hadn’t suggested that a million times. ‘So, please, don’t go. This is from us.’ He presented her with a bunch of mixed flowers which looked like they’d been culled from the derelict garden and a local park. The forget-me-nots were already wilting.

She took them. What else could she do without being a complete cow? She laid them on the windowsill and got out her iPad.

‘A new room at lower rent? Are you sure?’ Harry read more of her typed explanation. ‘Do you even know the woman? There has to be a catch surely? Are you going to be doing the cleaning or something else for her? Walking her dog?’

She shook her head.

Harry fiddled with the tie of her dressing gown which hung by the door. He was always restless. Even after they’d made love, when both should’ve been feeling mellow, he used to play with her hair, twisting it into braids or bunches. He couldn’t stop touching things. She missed people touching her. ‘I worry about you – that you might be taken advantage of.’

Or maybe I finally got a break.

‘I hope so. I’m still sorry. You wouldn’t have been looking if it weren’t for how we behaved.’

She shrugged. A lot of her reactions to Harry could be summed up in that gesture. It meant everything from ‘don’t care’ to ‘life’s shitty that way’. He could pick his meaning.

Harry sat uninvited on the edge of her futon. The last time he’d perched there she’d believed that they’d still been a couple. He’d then told her that it was over, that he liked her but not enough for the long haul, like she was an around-the-world flight he chose not to board. Did he even remember that? She should’ve moved out at that point but he’d persuaded her they could be adults and share the same space without recriminations. Jenny had caved, scared of the unknown and taking her problems to a house of people who didn’t know her. It was important to her to feel safe. Plus she’d just signed up for another six-month lease. That was coming to an end now so she could leave without penalties.

‘I used to find your silence restful, did you know that? I probably mentioned it once or twice.’ He fluttered the pages of a novel she was reading, losing her place. The more she looked at the thirty-something Harry, the closer the resemblance was to a petulant schoolboy. How had she missed that? He was waiting for a response.

Shrug.

‘Later I got frustrated with you not doing anything about it. That was the real reason I ended it. I should’ve said.’

So it was her fault, was it? What a surprise. He’d learned to read basic signing but that hadn’t stopped him nagging her. He wanted her to use an electronic voice so she could converse like an ordinary person. She still resented his insinuation that a disability stopped her being normal. Besides, she had a voice, a beautiful voice, that came from the four strings and bow of her violin. If he would only listen, she was more eloquent than most.

‘If you used a voice, you could tell me what’s really going on with you. You’re always so bloody enigmatic. It doesn’t have to be robotic – not like that crap one on your tablet that makes you sound like a sat nav. I looked into it. You can get a better app than the one you use – one where you can pick accents, tone, everything, to suit you.’

He’d looked into it? Jenny supposed that was a sign that Harry still cared at some level, but his rejection had hurt. He may’ve hidden his real reason but it wouldn’t have changed the verdict. The words that she was ‘not enough’ had haunted her. She wasn’t enough for him or any man to stay with her, not even her dad.

Thank Dr Jerome Lapido for that particular neurosis, she thought with grim self-knowledge.

‘Jenny? You’ll keep in touch, won’t you?’

‘Why?’ she signed.

‘I do care, you know. We’ve been friends for nearly ten years.’ And went out for three of those. ‘You’re just a lot for a selfish guy like me to handle. Complicated. Not just the voice thing but the nightmares and such from … you know?’

Of course, she knew: it was her life that nearly ended at fourteen. She regretted she’d eventually told him the details but she’d had to as he needed to know to avoid some of her panic attack triggers. At least he appeared to have kept his word and not told the others. It would’ve been much worse to be looked on with horrified pity.

She almost typed her wish for him to have an empty, uncomplicated future of meaningless, no-strings sexual partners, but thought better of it. It would show she still carried a grudge from their break-up. You’ve got my number she wrote instead. We’ll see each other at work.

‘Yeah.’ He seemed reassured by that. ‘And good luck. Do you need any help with your stuff?’

She shook her head.

‘OK then. And sorry.’ He got up and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. He still smelt good, the bastard. ‘Look after yourself, Jen.’

Jenny splashed out on a taxi to transport her stuff from Ebbisham Drive to Blackheath. To avoid the taxi driver striking up a conversation, she thumbed through her old messages. As friends and family knew not to call, there was plenty of these. It was hard to keep up with her mother’s continual one-sided chat. She’d turned texting into a Virginia Woolf stream of consciousness and Jenny would often find her phone had fifty or so unread message if she neglected it for a few hours. Scrolling down she came across one from a number her phone didn’t recognise. She could see the beginning of the message. Well done. You kept your promise.

What was that about? What promise? Was it a marketing technique? On any other day she would’ve ignored it, but she had time. Opening it, she read the rest of the message.

Well done. You kept your promise. I enjoyed our time together when you were 14. Want to relive the experience?

Her heart thumped against her ribcage with the first flutter of terror. So sick. She had thought these had stopped. Initially after the attack, she attracted messages from all sorts of weirdos. Her mum and the police shielded her from most, but occasionally she’d see one, or they’d find an innocuous cover and get through. They had ranged from suggestive messages, like this one where someone was pretending to be her attacker, to the seriously disturbing glitter and cutout words in cards or letters that seemed a celebration of the crime. She’d learned that there was a whole subculture of people who followed violent attacks. Her counsellor had tried to explain the pathology but even she, the professional, had struggled. As Jenny got older and seen more of life, she felt she had got to grips with some of it. People had fantasies, horrible, shocking ones, and projected them onto victims who hadn’t asked for any of this to happen to them. These sick people either liked tormenting victims or wished to be one themselves – the second seemed even worse. In Harlow, Jenny had even attracted a few so-called friends who only hung out with her because they found a vicarious thrill in being associated with her. Unsurprisingly, her trust in the goodness of people had taken a severe battering.

What to do? In the years after the incident, Jenny had had a number to forward the messages for the police to examine but she guessed that was long since defunct when the case went cold and got shuffled into the pile of unsolved. Her mum would still have a record of a current contact if one existed.

Her thumb hovered over the message, weighing up whether to upset her mother with this.

Oh fuck it. She wasn’t going down that rabbit hole again. She was so tired of being terrified. The past was the past. She was on her way to making a new start and wasn’t going to drag this into Gallant House with her. Sick caller, goodbye. She blocked the number and hit delete.

The taxi driver, unaware of the turmoil Jenny was experiencing on the back seat, couldn’t refrain from whistling appreciatively as they drew up outside Gallant House.

‘Lovely place.’

Still shivering, she nodded. With its tawny bricks, white sash windows, privet hedge and black railings it was the house equivalent of a person dressed up for a night on the town.

‘You live here?’

She smiled a ‘yes’.

‘A nanny, are you?’

She nodded. Sometimes it was just easier to agree. Her life was a confection spun of such little white lies to avoid having to admit she couldn’t speak.

‘Best of luck with that. In my experience, kids from houses like this can be spoilt little monsters. You’ll have your work cut out for you.’ He helped her pile her belongings just inside the gate. She gave him as generous tip as she could afford which probably wasn’t as much as he’d hoped. ‘Bye, love.’

She turned away as the taxi headed off across the heath to scout for fares by the exit from Greenwich Park. Taking her violin and computer bag to the front door, Jenny pulled on the bell. It literally was a bell: she’d seen it hanging in the hallway; the bell was connected to a metal rod which ran to a white knob outside, all pleasantly direct and mechanical. It took a while for Bridget to answer, long enough for Jenny to start slightly panicking that maybe she had been dreaming the offer of a room.

‘Jenny! From Kris’s message, I wasn’t expecting you for another hour. Come in, come in!’ Bridget stood by the door as Jenny ferried her belongings in from the road. ‘Do you want me to get someone to help? I’m afraid with my back I daren’t risk it.’

Jenny shook her head. There wasn’t much.

‘Just leave it in the hall for now and come and meet my guests. I didn’t tell you about my Tuesday gatherings, did I?’ Jenny shook her head, wondering what excuse she could conjure to avoid being dragged before a crowd of strangers. It was always so humiliating for her and frustrating for them. ‘You’re welcome to bring friends. It’s such a lovely evening, we’re in the garden. Keep your jacket on. There’s a definite nip in the air.’ She didn’t wait for an answer but assumed Jenny was following her down the stairs to the basement, out of the dark passageway and into the brightness of the garden.

Run upstairs, or follow? There wasn’t really a choice, was there?

Bridget’s guests were having drinks under the huge lilac tree that dominated the upper lawn nearest the house. It was a patchy, twisted thing, dead branches mingled with those bearing blossom, attesting to its great age. The flowers were white, their scent quite overwhelming. Dark butterfly shadows fluttered to rest on hair and shoulders of those below every time the lilac tossed its branches in the evening breeze. Jenny blinked, trying to clear her sight of the sun-dazzle on cut-glass tumblers.

‘Pimms? Or is it too early in the year for you?’ asked Bridget, going to the table.

Jenny gave a thumbs up. Doing this with a cushion of alcohol was preferable.

Bridget handed her a tumbler filled with pale red liquid and floating fruit and mint leaves. ‘I’m glad you’re like me and never think it’s too early for Pimms. Now Jonah here swears he won’t touch the stuff. He says he’s strictly teetotal. Jonah, this is our new house guest, Jenny.’

One of the three men at the table got up and came to her. He wasn’t how Jenny had imagined. In fact, she assumed the other youngish man was Jonah, as he looked more the part. As an aspiring actor, she’d predicted her housemate would have the classic good-looking Brit appearance, the floppy hair of Sam Claflin, the smouldering gaze of a Kit Harington. Instead he was crewcut, and decidedly edgy in appearance, skin in poor condition, blue eyes flicking from her to Bridget in a sure sign of nerves. Crudely drawn tattoos webbed the backs of his hands. He had two bolts tattooed either side on his neck.

‘Hi, Jenny. Mrs Whittingham warned us that you didn’t talk.’ His voice was much the most attractive things about him: a little bit London, but deep and resonant. It was a surprise coming from his strung-out frame, a bit like George Ezra’s bass-baritone emerging from such a lean person.

She smiled – her equivalent of ‘hello’.

‘And these are our friends,’ said Bridget, turning to the rest of the group. ‘Rose, meet Jenny. Rose has known me for ages, haven’t you, dear?’

The thirty-something woman laughed. She was small, and had an elfin haircut framing a heart-shaped face; Jenny got the impression of someone packed with energy. ‘If you call ten years ages, Bridget. I was one of Bridget’s tenants once upon a time, Jenny, when I thought I might make it as an actress. That’s until life disillusioned me. I went into psychology instead.’

‘And this is Jonah’s friend, William Riley.’

A bearded man, hipster to the core, whom she’d wrongly guessed was an actor, got up and offered his hand. ‘Call me Billy. I’m not supposed to be here you know. I just came to check up on Jonah and got inveigled into drinks.’

Jenny shook his hand.

‘And last but by no means least is darling Norman.’ Bridget placed her hand lightly on the shoulder of a rotund man with a balding pate. He was dressed in a tweed suit with a mustard yellow waistcoat straining across his middle. ‘Norman’s our neighbour and local historian. He also manages to fit in being our GP. A man of many talents.’

‘Bridget, you are a terrible flatterer! I’m no historian – I merely dabble. Bridget is compiling a history of this house and I’m helping her with some of the context. She’s got into the bad habit of overstating my qualifications.’ His exuberant white eyebrows arched over dark eyes.

‘Give Jenny one of your cards, Norman, so she knows where to register with a practice.’ Bridget patted the seat of a spare garden chair. ‘Now sit down, dear. No one is going to grill you so you can relax and enjoy this lovely evening. I do believe it’s the first time I’ve been able to have my drinks outside this year.’ Bridget deftly turned the conversation to Jonah’s latest role. Jenny noticed how everyone present took what seemed like familial pride in his achievements: Rose was beaming like she was his big sister at prize giving; Billy regarded him like an approving brother as Jonah described his latest episode attending an accident in a prison; Norman guffawed like everyone’s favourite uncle at Jonah’s navigation mistake that saw the ambulance turn into a real A&E bay, rather than the fake one the crew had constructed; and Bridget presided over the let’s-love-Jonah Fest with a matriarchal poise. No one made clumsy attempts to include Jenny or make her communicate. Her fear that she would be humiliated subsided.

Would she be here long enough to have this sense of family pride extended to her? Jenny wondered. Her mother was her main cheerleader but Jenny no longer lived at home to have her minor triumphs praised on a daily basis. It might be nice to be included.

There was a lull in the conversation as Bridget went in to fetch some nibbles to go with more drinks.

Jonah rubbed his hands. ‘Thank God she’s setting out the grub. I’m starving. Bridget’s Tuesday nibbles are spectacular, much better than a bag of crisps or bowl of peanuts. You’re a violinist?’

Jenny nodded. She couldn’t keep her participation limited to nods and shakes of the head. They’d given her enough time to feel the ice was broken. How long have you been acting? she wrote.

‘Not long. A year maybe. I’m in drama school but they let me have time off when I get a job.’ She wondered how old he was as he looked at least her age, rather mature for drama school. ‘It’s what we’re all there for after all. I have Dr Wade to thank for that: she helped me get in and find an agent.’

Rose waved that away. ‘It was your own talent that did it, Jonah. I’m pleased you’ve graduated to ambulance driver and got away from all those gang member roles.’

Jonah rubbed at his spiderweb on one knuckle. His hands looked raw, like he suffered from eczema. ‘Yeah, but my character has a drug problem and I’m stealing from the hospital pharmacy. I’m not sure I’m going to survive beyond the season finale.’

That explained the edgy look. Perhaps he was a young guy who just had the misfortune to look older, like those men who go bald prematurely? He had all his hair but his face wasn’t the smooth one of the newly hatched student. Lines bisected the top of his nose and dug in round his mouth.

‘You might,’ said Billy in a bolstering tone. ‘And eight weeks of steady work looks good on the CV. More jobs will come your way, I’m sure.’

‘It does look good, but my tutors tell me I have a problem.’ Jonah cracked his knuckles, not noticing the number of winces around the table. ‘If I change my looks, I don’t get these parts; and if I get these parts, I can’t change my looks. They think I might get boxed in.’

Jenny was pleased to hear that the ‘just got out of prison’ vibe he projected was for show. She wouldn’t like to be sharing a house with someone who might be a threat to her.

‘Maybe you should just look the way you want to look and leave the rest to hair and makeup?’ Thus spoke the psychologist.

Jonah scratched at his close-shaved head. ‘Maybe I’ll risk it. I’d like to grow this a little longer. People don’t sit next to me on public transport.’

‘Keep it, m’boy. You don’t want people sitting next to you. Each of them is a disease vector.’ The GP rattled the ice in his gin and tonic. ‘Can’t wait to retire and get away from the lot of you!’ But he said it with a smile to soften the words.

A bell rang inside – not the front door but another one with a higher tone.

Jonah leaped up. ‘That’s my summons.’ He dashed inside.

‘Very Pavlovian of Bridget,’ said Norman. ‘She always gets her houseguests very well trained by the time she’s finished. That boy was the epitome of rudeness when he first moved in and now look at him.’

‘She shames us all into manners,’ agreed Rose. ‘Not that she’s going to have any trouble with this one, I can tell.’ She smiled warmly at Jenny. ‘You’ve fallen on your feet here. When I couldn’t get a breakthrough as an actor, it was Bridget who gently nudged me from dead-end jobs towards doing something with my psychology degree. I think I’ve learned some of my best tricks with patients from her.’

Jenny drew a question mark in the air.

‘Things like how to put them at ease when they come into my office for the first time, how to draw the best from them. Jonah’s a case in point: a more lost young man I’d never met and now look at him.’ She stopped. ‘Sorry, that was very unprofessional. Forget I said that.’

‘It’s tempting to talk shop. We get it, Rose,’ said Billy. ‘I have to remember not to take my work home with me.’

What do you do? asked Jenny.

‘I work for the probation service. I find it very rewarding, especially on a day like today.’ He toasted her with his Pimms.

Jenny couldn’t quite see the connection but replied with a raised glass as expected.

Bridget and Jonah returned with trays of food – little asparagus quiches, salmon blinis, Parma ham wrapped around mozzarella balls, and tiny chocolate brownies. Jenny could now understand why these gatherings were so popular. Everything tasted as good as it looked.

‘Tell me, Bridget, that you got these at Waitrose,’ said Rose after eating her fill. ‘You make me feel so inadequate.’

Bridget collected in the empty side plates. ‘You know I like cooking. Anyway, these are simple to make. I could show you.’

‘I might take you up on that, but not tonight. I’ve got some work to do. Goodnight everyone. Billy, can I give you a lift to the station?’

‘Thanks, Rose.’ After a quick round of farewells, they left together.

‘And I must be off too. Got the grandson of an old friend coming to stay till he can find his own place. Better move some of my books off the spare bed.’ Norman hefted himself to his feet. ‘Here’s a card, Jenny. Don’t forget to register. You don’t have to sign on my list as they’re putting me out to grass soon. I’ve plenty of youngsters as my partners, including a female colleague or two.’ He winked and then waved farewell to the others. He headed home, not through the house but through a gate in the wall that opened into his garden.

‘I found Norman using the downstairs bathroom this morning. Red faces all round,’ said Jonah when the GP had gone.

‘His boiler’s out. I told him to come and go. We keep an eye on each other’s house,’ said Bridget. ‘We don’t stand on ceremony.’

‘I was just warning Jenny. I found it difficult to meet his gaze tonight after the eyeful I got this morning. He appears to think a towel enough covering to walk between his house and yours, and I’m afraid to say it doesn’t quite hide everything it should.’

Jenny made a note to be careful when venturing downstairs in the morning in case she met the streaker doctor.

Bridget stacked the empty tumblers on the drinks tray. ‘Don’t tease, Jonah. Norman is a perfectly respectable man; he just has a boiler problem.’

‘He has a buttock problem,’ muttered Jonah.

‘I didn’t think the young were so prudish. Jenny, what do you think?’

There was nothing Jenny could write down that wouldn’t sound completely wrong.

‘Mrs Whittingham, what do you expect her to say? That she’s fine with nudity?’

They picked up the trays and carried them towards the house.

‘We’re all human.’

‘But not everyone wants to be reminded of that in the shape of a dotty seventy-year-old man. You have to protect my delicate sensibilities, Mrs Whittingham.’

‘You – sensitive!’ Continuing to bicker good-naturedly, they went into the house, Jenny trailing after them. This house was proving even more interesting than she thought.

Chapter 6
Jonah, Present Day

They’d had a break during which Jonah had decided to keep lawyers out of it for the moment. He knew how to talk without saying anything.

‘Tell us how you feel about the women you shared the house with.’

Jonah was struck by the inspector’s use of past tense. ‘I’m not going back there?’ The sergeant was looking at him as if he disappointed her, like there was something obvious he was missing.

‘Do you think that would be appropriate under these circumstances?’ said the inspector.

Had he lost the right to walk those corridors, rooms and gardens of Gallant House just because he’d lost his temper the once?

But you hurt her, Jonah, said a snide inner voice.

He could no longer remember clearly what he’d done, just that he’d been driven to it. Not his fault.

So for that, he’d been kicked out of paradise. An overwhelming feeling of relief swept through him.

Chapter 7
Jenny, One Year Ago

Jenny hauled her bags and boxes up to her room one by one. There was no sign of Jonah when she would’ve welcomed the help. Maybe he only carried things in exchange for food? She didn’t even know which room he was in to knock on the door. Never mind: she was used to doing things alone. Hadn’t she decided she preferred it that way?

Belongings safely ferried, she stood for a moment to take stock of her new kingdom. It was clean and neat – just as she liked, no, needed it to be. The light was fading but the view out front was unsullied by streetlights. A bold orange tinge flushed the horizon, indicating the busy heart of London just over the hill, but here it could almost still be the eighteenth century when the house was built. That’s if you ignored the cars and the planes winking by, lining up with the Thames to land at Heathrow.

Pulling her duvet out of a box, she went to the bed to strip off the white lace counterpane. A bouquet of orange Californian poppies lay on the pillow. Petals fell off as she lifted it. Someone should tell the cleaner that poppies made terrible cut flowers. All she was left with was confetti and unattractive stubby heads on hairy stalks. She placed them in the bin, reminding herself to get rid of them before the next visit by the cleaner so as not to offend her.

Odd though. Bridget hadn’t mentioned anything about a cleaner in her briefing on house rules. Jenny didn’t expect one but she should make it a priority to ask. She liked to know if someone was coming into her space so she could prepare.

It didn’t take long to unpack. Her books went neatly onto a shelf by the fireplace, Maya Angelou, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Jane Austen and Vikram Seth all snuggled together. Growing up, she’d craved culture of all sorts – theatre, literature, but mostly music. She’d been teased for it as a child as other kids didn’t get it; now she found there were far more of her tribe out there than she expected, people like Louis. That was the best thing about adulthood: not having to apologise for your taste. Next was her mini speaker and docking station. She thumbed on Stravinsky’s Petrushka on her phone as she had to play that piece the following day. Shaking out her clothes, which were heavy on the black skirts and shirts, light on anything pastel, she hung them in the white wardrobe. That amused her: it was shaped like the one that danced in the The Beauty and the Beast film. She waltzed a few steps with one of her long dresses and laughed, before putting it away. Underwear hid itself in the top drawer of the dresser – it didn’t look fine enough for this place. Perhaps she’d buy herself some silky lingerie with her savings? Could she even consider dating again? Harry’s rejection had scared her off men for months. She’d foolishly thought he was the one, her childhood sweetheart. Her mum had warned her not to fall for her own fantasies about the relationship. Nikki Groves had done that with Jenny’s father and ended up a single mum in Harlow.

Mum would love it here.

And now the bathroom. Jenny swept into it in manner gently mocking of Bridget’s prima ballerina style. She emptied her toiletries into the vanity unit, leaving out on the ledge her favourite perfume, a tub of moisturiser and her seven-day pill dispenser. The plastic compartmented box looked ugly compared to everything else. She’d have to see if she could find an antique one on one of the junkeroo stalls in Greenwich market. She ran the tap. With a few groans and splutters it eventually ran warm, then scorching hot. Nothing wrong with Bridget’s boiler. She added some cold and washed her face thoroughly, removing all trace of makeup. She was going to be happy here, she could just tell.

Dabbing her face dry, she went back into her bedroom, clicked off the music and took her violin out of its case to tune it. A little thrill ran through her. Though she held the instrument for hours each day, she still got that shiver of anticipation, like the wonder of first love, when she knew what they were about to do together. An ocean of classical music gently lapped before her mind’s eye: everything from the storms of Beethoven to the silences of Arvo Pärt. The violin brought it all within her reach. They would have to wait though because she really needed to practice for tomorrow. Would that disturb anyone? It was bound to annoy Bridget and Jonah if they were having an early night. The snug? Was that far enough away from the bedrooms? Taking her music and folding stand in one hand, the violin and bow in the other, she went downstairs and set up the score for the concert. Her fingering for the opening scene still wasn’t right. She loved the Russian folk tunes that weaved in and out of the composition but she hadn’t quite captured the spirit of them. Violin loose at her side, she closed her eyes for moment and breathed to ease the tension in her back muscles. She tried to summon up her impressions of Tsarist Russia: bright peasant clothes, long winters, furs, puppet shows, dancing bears, sleigh rides. Ready now, she set the violin in its notch under her chin, ignoring the familiar twinge of pain, and launched into the first song. Yes! That felt good. The high ceiling flattered the sound of her violin solo. It was so much better practising here than in her old house. Reaching the end without a mistake, she held the last note.

Applause shocked her. Spinning round, she saw that she wasn’t alone as she had assumed. Jonah was on the balcony, cigarette in hand. If she could speak, she would’ve shouted at him for creeping up on her.

‘I don’t know what that was but it sounded great,’ he said easily, taking another puff. ‘Don’t mind me. I sneak out here as Mrs Whittingham doesn’t allow smoking in the house.’

The last five minutes that had felt so perfect were now tarnished by the knowledge she’d had an eavesdropper. She had thought she was sailing on her classical ocean alone and Jonah’s appearances was as shocking as a U-boat surfacing next to her. She put the violin down and gathered up her music.

‘Don’t stop.’ Jonah stubbed out the cigarette, pinched the end and slipped it in his pocket. ‘I guess I should’ve announced myself but, you see, I’m not supposed to be out here.’ He gestured to the rusting balcony. ‘Mrs Whittingham is always full of warnings of dire disaster but I figure that the vine will hold me if the ironwork doesn’t.’

Jenny told herself to slow down, not to flee as instinct was telling her. He had been here first and that it was her negligence to check that meant she’d been overheard.

‘Are you all unpacked?’

She nodded.

‘Got time for another tune?’ He pointed to the violin. ‘I’ve never been to a classical concert. Don’t you want to expand my horizons? People keep telling me they do.’

She shrugged.

He laughed and clapped a hand to his chest. ‘Jenny, you wound me. You’re saying you don’t fucking care one way or another? You’re right. No need to care about me. I was just curious. I’ll go.’

She held up a hand. She might as well try to make a friend of him if they were to live together – it would be safer that way. And it was hard for her to imagine a life that hadn’t included concerts. Going without classical music was akin to missing out on a sense.

Jonah perched back on the rail of the balcony, surely testing its strengths to the limit. He saw her aghast look.

‘Chill, Jenny. What’s life if not just another day cheating death?’

He had a point. Since her fourteenth birthday, she’d shared that philosophy. Everyone lived on borrowed time. So, what to play him? She needed a piece where the violin part was complete in itself, something in the easy listening category, and that she happened to know by heart. She settled for John Williams’ theme for Schindler’s List. If Jonah could listen to that and not weep then he had a heart of stone. Setting bow to strings, she yearned her way through the music, putting into it all the senseless pain of the tragedy it described, rising on to the balls of her feet as she did when caught up in a theme. She’d heard the piece during a televised Prom when she was a teenager and it had set her on the path to her current job, that ambition surviving even her own personal tragedy. God, she loved this: it felt like the top of her head opened and she was floating. There was nothing more powerful in life than this, not even pain, not even violence, not even love.

Jonah was still, with the pent-up tension of a predator crouching, ash drifting unregarded from cigarette tip.

The silence went unbroken when she finished, strings still resonating with the last sweet high note.

‘Fuck me, what was that?’ Despite his crudity, his voice was reverential. ‘It was amazing. Can I stream it?’

She nodded and jotted down the name of the piece.

‘John Williams. Is he the same as the Star Wars guy?’

She drew a tick.

‘Amazing – I know something about music. I’ve surprised myself. Can we talk without this?’ Jonah tapped the iPad.

She made the gestures for ‘Do you know sign language?’.

He followed her hands like he was studying her. ‘Is that sign language?’

Duh, yes. She nodded.

‘Teach me.’ He patted the spot on the rail next to him. ‘Come on, it’s nice out here. Trust me, it’s not given way yet and won’t tonight.’

Jenny was wryly aware that the dynamics of the playground were in operation. He was daring her, seeing if she was on his side or Bridget-the-rule-maker’s. She’d hated that when she’d been a schoolgirl; she wasn’t much fonder of it now. Putting down the violin – she wasn’t risking that – she stepped out onto the balcony. It creaked a little which made her gasp.

‘Steady now.’ Jonah caught her sleeve before she could retreat. ‘It’s just adjusting.’

There were no more creaks so she perched next to him, her back supported by the thick stem of the vine. She’d already planned to grab that if the balcony gave way. Jonah didn’t appear to need such reassurance. He sat with nothing but a drop behind him.

She held up her index finger. First sign. She ran through the basics: yes, no, please, thank you, ‘how are you?’, ‘what do you want?’. He mastered them quickly.

‘We’re studying movement at drama school,’ he said, which might explain his aptitude. ‘I should ask them to include this. Give me something, I dunno, emotional? Can you swear in sign language?’

Of course. She gave him a few of the mild ones.

‘That’s “wanker”? Right, I’m using that tomorrow. There are a few of the other students who really deserve that.’

She made another sign.

‘What’s that?’

She typed the translation. Be careful. You never know who understands.

‘It’s OK. They expect that kind of language – and worse – from me. So how did you lose your voice? Bridget said it was an illness. Was it cancer?’

He certainly tackled things head on. She shook her head and made the universal sign for ‘goodbye’.

‘You’re going? OK, sorry for being so nosey. Thanks for the song. The cast and crew are going to think I’ve gone all uptown when they hear that playing in my dressing room.’

Jenny contemplated trying to explain to him how music wasn’t the preserve of the posh but decided she wasn’t up to challenging the commonly held view tonight. She made a final sign combination.

‘What’s that.’ Jonah watched her lips. ‘Sweet dreams?’

She nodded.

‘Never had any of those, but thanks, Jenny. Goodnight.’

Chapter 8
The House that Jack Built – Chapter Two – Foundations

The turf peeled away revealing the black soil beneath. In the first spadeful – not that anyone noticed – was a scrap of ribbon let fall by a careless maid who once attended the fair on this very spot. She should never have trusted the promises of her sailor. Next came a penny from Sir Thomas Wyatt’s pocket. He dropped it when he pulled out gold coins to bribe his flagging supporters as his rebellion against Mary Tudor faltered. Further digging turned over the blood, sweat and tears of yet more thwarted revolutionaries: Lord Audley, the Yorkists, Jack Cade, Wat Tyler and Jack Straw. Over the centuries, so many came to dream their impossible dreams on Blackheath’s open space, lost in blue sky thinking that the capital was theirs for the taking. They believed that this was the day when society would change for the better. They were, as axe and sword went on to prove, mistaken.

The spades dug down to more primitive times. The cutting edge severed in two a discarded leather sole from a Dane’s boot. That bloody-handed man abandoned it, a casualty of the long march from Canterbury where they’d done away with the archbishop.

Go deeper yet, I begged from the rolled paper in which I gestated, tucked under the architect’s arm. I need my foundations to reach further back if I am to stand steady.

One digger unearthed a fragment of a stone age tool. The pick was fashioned from antlers by a practical man squatting in his round house on a cold winter’s evening. Chucking it aside, not caring what it was, the labourers carried on until they passed through the thin level of human habitation and reached down to that of the terrible lizards.

Chapter 9
Jenny

Nights were never easy.

Jenny lay in bed, telling herself that she was in her perfect bedroom, in a perfect house, safe from intruders.

But sleep still evaded her, whisking around the corner just when she thought she’d caught up. It was probably the unfamiliarity of her surroundings. Each house had its own time signature of beats and clicks; this one was no different. She could hear the pipes settling, the wash of water as someone used a distant tap. Overhead, though, footsteps paced. One-two-three, one-two-three. It had the pulse of the waltz, relentless and driving. She imagined silken skirts swirling as ladies leant back in the arms of dark-suited men, throats extended, vulnerable. She shuddered. Was Bridget’s bedroom up there? Or Jonah’s. She thought not. Her landlady had said it was only attics. Maybe it wasn’t coming from up there but just sounded like it did?

Jenny put the pillow over her head trying to muffle the steps but it didn’t work. Her brain was now worrying over the unexplained. She was still that child who lay rigid with terror, scared of the monsters under the bed – because she knew – oh, she knew – they were real.

Just go out into the corridor and find out which room it’s coming from.

Frustrated by herself, she threw off the duvet and slipped into her mules. This is the bit in horror movies where you scream at the ditsy female character to go back into the room, she thought with dark humour.

But this isn’t a horror flick. I’m in a feel-good girl-gets-a-break movie, she decided firmly. Anyway, I’m not going into the attics, just listening from the corridor.

She opened her door. A table lamp supplied a little low lighting. Bridget had said she left it on so that houseguests could find their way around in the dark. She didn’t want anyone taking a headlong dive down the stairs.

Jonah appeared at the far end of the corridor, heading for the bathroom in a towelling dressing gown. His room evidently didn’t have the same luxury of an en suite.

‘Are you all right, Jenny? Need something?’

She pointed upwards.

‘What?’

She beckoned him closer. Couldn’t he hear it? Actually, she couldn’t hear it out here either. He approached looking a little confused.

‘What’s the matter?’

She pulled him into her room.

‘Hey!’

Shaking her head at his protest that she was ravishing him, she pointed upwards.

Nothing. The steps had stopped.

That was awkward.

She dashed for her iPad. Waltz on the ceiling.

‘A waltz?’

Steps in a three-four pattern.

‘A three-four pattern?’

Give me strength! She shoved her fingers through her mass of black hair. She’d let it loose for bed and knew it must look like a wild halo around her head and shoulders. Time signature. 1 - 2 - 3. She mimicked the movement.

‘Jenny, I can’t hear anything.’ No wonder he was looking at her like she was crazy.

She bit her lip and signed ‘sorry’, a closed hand circling at her chest.

Jonah repeated the sign back. ‘That’s “sorry”, isn’t it?’

She nodded.

‘It’s OK. You probably just heard a bird. They nest up there. It freaks me out sometimes when I hear them scratching on the tiles. Can’t shake the idea that they’re rats.’

But birds don’t waltz, neither do rats for that matter.

Ghost?

He read her message and had the gall to laugh. ‘Probably. The ghost of Admiral Jack come to haunt us.’ He made a spectral arm flapping gesture to show he wasn’t taking her seriously. ‘He was a nasty piece of work according to Bridget’s history. You should ask her. It would be like him to do something so spiteful.’

OK, so Jonah was the wrong person to ask. In fact, she couldn’t blame him as it had been her to drag him in here.

She signed ‘thanks’ and ‘goodnight’.

‘You really OK? Don’t want someone to give you a cuddle? I’m volunteering in case you’re wondering.’ He put his hand up.

She shook her head vigorously. Maybe on another occasion she’d be unnerved by his suggestion, but right now she was only conscious of her own embarrassment.

He grinned with boyish charm. ‘Can’t blame a guy for trying. Goodnight.’

He closed the door as he left.

Jenny thumped her forehead. How embarrassing had that been? She thought she’d managed quite well on her introduction to her new home but she’d spoiled it all by sending Jonah totally mixed signals. He’d either think she was cracked or that she made a habit of pouncing on men in corridors dressed only in night shorts and a Tee. She looked down. She didn’t even have a bra on so she’d have been bouncing all over the place.

Kicking off her mules, she got back into bed. The house was silent now, pipes settled, footsteps ceased. Bloody brilliant. Her phone told her it was eleven-thirty. She switched it to night mode and pulled the duvet up to her chin.

At two in the morning, the steps started again. One-two-three. One-two-three.

This time she didn’t go and look.

Chapter 10

Yawning, Jenny entered the kitchen carrying her small box of food supplies. Daylight made the ghostly waltz less frightening. In fact, she’d rationalised it away completely. That was what she’d learned to do with her fears – tidy them away, paper them over. She was prepared to accept Jonah’s explanation that there were birds up there. Perhaps they’d been doing something perfectly normal, mating or fighting over territory maybe, and her brain had turned it into a pattern?

‘Good morning, Jenny. I see you’re an early riser?’ Bridget was sitting at the oak table, papers spread around her, pen in hand.

Not by choice. Jenny tapped her watch, indicating she had a shift starting at nine.

‘Sleep well?’

How to reply to that? She nodded.

‘Good. I never slept well the first night in a strange house. You must be built of sterner stuff than me.’

Jenny pulled a packet of muesli out of her box.

‘I should’ve told you last night: you’re welcome to keep your groceries in the pantry. I’ll clear a shelf for you. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you did as I don’t like food elsewhere. Old houses attract mice. So many voids under floorboards and wainscots for them to explore.’

Jenny didn’t think she’d heard anyone actually use the word ‘wainscot’ before. It was rather lovely. She gave Bridget an ‘OK’ sign.

Taking her bowl to the place opposite Bridget, Jenny gestured to the papers.

‘What are these? Ah, this is my history of the house. I can be a terrible bore on the subject as my friends will tell you.’

Jenny pressed a hand to her chest and shook her head.

‘You won’t be bored?’ Bridget laughed. ‘You say that now but give it a few weeks. I swear Jonah dives into the shrubbery when he sees me coming at him with a new chapter. I suppose it isn’t really his thing.’ Her eyes lit up as they rested on Jenny. ‘Maybe you’d appreciate my book?’

Jenny put out a hand. No harm in pleasing Bridget and she did have a genuine interest in the house, not least the fact Jonah had dropped into their late-night conversation about Admiral Jack being a rascal.

‘I’ll give you a sample then, see how you get on.’ Bridget rifled through the papers. ‘Might as well start at the beginning.’ She handed Jenny the opening chapters.

Jenny glanced at the first lines and looked up at Bridget.

‘I know: unconventional, isn’t it? I’ve tried to approach it like a novelist rather than historian. I’ve styled it an autobiography of the house. I’ve given so much of my own life to it that I felt I knew the old girl so well. She seems to speak to me like this.’

Jenny re-read the opening. Actually, it was a good idea, and felt very fresh, once you got past the oddness. She wouldn’t be surprised if Bridget did get it published one day. She could imagine a whole load of spin-offs as historians told their story from the point of view of the objects rather than the people. What would it have been like to be Beethoven’s piano, for example? Or Nelson’s flagship? Hitler’s bunker?

‘You can keep that. I have it all on computer.’

Jenny raised her brows.

‘I’m not totally technology adverse, dear. I just restrict myself to purchasing the very minimum I need to be part of modern life.’

Jenny held up her phone.

‘I have one but it’s not one of those smart ones everyone seems to have these days. Mine makes telephone calls.’

Jenny typed: can we text?

‘I suppose that would be useful. I’ll give you the number. I can’t swear I’ll remember to check it. If you need me urgently, get someone to telephone for you. When you’re in the house and can’t find me, leave a note on the hall table.’

Jenny gave her a thumbs up.

Bridget gave a pained smile. ‘I can’t say I like that gesture – so reminiscent of the Colosseum and a verdict of life or death. Odd how it’s become ubiquitous, used on everything from cat videos to world changing announcements. But don’t listen to me: I’m stuck in the past.’

Making a show of tucking her hand behind her back, Jenny smiled her agreement. She wasn’t a fan either of the thumbs up, or any of the grading systems that had proliferated online. Everyone now was a critic and could destroy, mock and troll a person without even knowing them, as she found out to her cost as a few years ago when she’d first started playing for the orchestra. A mute black female violinist attracted the crazies. It was enough to make you give up on humanity. She gathered up the papers and slipped them in her bag with her music. Getting up, she tapped her watch.

‘You have to run? I’ll see you later maybe. Actually, dear, it would make life easier if you put your comings and goings on my calendar so I don’t have to keep asking.’

Jenny noted down her shifts for the next two days in last few slots left to April and the upcoming Glyndebourne season, when she expected to be away. Jenny then washed her bowl, drank a quick glass of water, did the same for the tumbler, then dried both. She put them in the cupboard.

‘I like a tidy person,’ said Bridget, settling reading glasses on her nose.

That reminded Jenny. When do the cleaners come?’

Bridget frowned over the top of her spectacles. ‘I do have a company in to clean the windows and polish the floors once a month but I’m afraid we keep it tidy ourselves, dear. I hope that won’t be a problem?’

Jenny shook her head. Bridget sounded a little offended. Didn’t expect it, she added on the iPad.

Hurrying to the station, aware she was running behind for her shift, Jenny tried to make sense this new piece of household information. It had to be Jonah leaving the flowers then. Or maybe Bridget was getting forgetful? From the impression Jenny had got of both, Bridget was far more likely to be the one bringing cut flowers into the house.

Anyway, it was only flowers.

Chapter 11
The House that Jack Built – Chapter 3 – Birth

‘You’ve dug deep enough,’ Captain Jack told his men. ‘Now you can start to build her.’

And they obeyed, birthing me from course of brick and seam of mortar, eyelets of windows, ear flaps of doors. Seasons changed as my skeleton rose from the heath. The next spring, my head they tiled with slate brought from Wales on the slow-running arteries of canals once the ice had broken. Finally, the churned earth was turfed and gardens planted and I stood proud: a gentleman’s residence.

Gallant House.

But I know those earlier people are with me still, the cave dwellers, Vikings, failed rebels and heedless maids. They lie in the soil with my foundations, whispering their secrets to the black heath.

Chapter 12

An oddly disturbing tale – not at all what she expected. Jenny put the manuscript away as her train drew in to Waterloo East. She wasn’t sure what to make of Bridget’s origin story for the house. Her landlady gave it the voice of a needy mistress rather than a family home. After all these years living there, unable to keep up repairs to expensive features like the balcony, did Bridget feel the house absorbed attention in that way? Was she even a little resentful of it even while she was loved it?

Jenny joined the commuters funnelling through the ticket barriers, her violin buying her a little extra room in the crowd like a pregnant woman’s bump or old man’s stick. That was welcome as she hated people breathing down her neck.

The history of the heath sounded fascinating, she thought, even if told obliquely. But did it have to be told in macabre images of burials and unearthing? It wasn’t a reassuring thought for the already problematic night-time to dwell of the numerous sad ends that had been met on the spot. Bridget had made the foundations sound like catacombs. All old houses had seen deaths – of course they had – but Jenny thought that it was better sometimes not to know.

Louis waited for her in the café, eager to hear how her introduction to Gallant House had gone. Jenny was pleased to see that he was joined by Kris, who had chosen his favourite seat overlooking the river. A big man with sandy hair, jug handle ears and a flushed face, Kris appeared the least likely person to have the soul of a poet. That just went to show prejudging was a waste of time and energy; people were rarely what they seemed on the surface. She gave both a wave and dived into the staff room to stow her violin in her locker and put on her uniform.

When she returned, her manager beckoned her over. ‘I’ve got you tea. We’re quiet at the moment so, come on, tell us all about it.’

With a smile, she sat next to Kris. He kissed her cheek. ‘What do you think of the inimitable Bridget?’ His voice was a deep bass rumble, the kettledrum in the Festival Hall orchestra of visitors. ‘Has she got you curtseying yet?’

Not quite yet. Maybe that’s day two?

‘And have you met my guy, Jonah?’

What was it about the man that everyone wanted to adopt him as theirs? She nodded.

‘And?’

Jenny debated withholding the information about dragging Jonah into her bedroom but decided that an embarrassment shared was an embarrassment halved.

‘You didn’t?’ Louis chuckled, after reading her confession. ‘You don’t let the grass grow, girl!’

‘I bet poor Jonah felt all his birthdays and Christmases had come at once.’ Kris patted her hand in consolation. ‘A classy lady like you enticing him into her boudoir. Want me to have a word with him?’

She’d prefer just to forget it. If he mentions how a nymphomaniac has moved in then yes. So what about the house?

‘The isle is full of noises,’ said Kris. ‘Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and not hurts.’

The Tempest? She’d seen that at the Barbican.

‘Correct.’

So I should just ignore the waltzing?

‘Put it like this, I lived there three years and heard odd things all the time. I considered for a while that there was a mad woman in the attic …’

‘How very Jane Eyre,’ murmured Louis.

‘… But when I looked I just found bird nests and a broken window.’

Jenny felt a surge of relief. Her imagination had begun to people the mysterious attics with all kinds of horrors. It was just an attic floor.

‘I decided after that not to worry. It never progressed – no ghostly apparitions, no clanking chains, just noises. Old houses have quirks.’

It was reassuring that she wasn’t the only one to hear things. Did you read Bridget’s history?

Kris rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Don’t say she’s trapped you into reading that already? Damn, that’s fast work. She’s been beavering away on that for a decade. I think it’s become something of an obsession. I told her to get out more, volunteer as a reader at the local primary school, or join a gardening club, but she is attached to that place like a limpet to a rock. She says the best day in her life was the day she was able to do her shopping online.’

She never leaves?

‘Not that I recall. Maybe she did at the beginning but by the time I left, I can’t remember her going as far as the corner shop. She even gets Norman to make home visits when she needs a doctor. You’ve met Norman? He’s always there on Tuesdays.’

She nodded.

‘Don’t sign on with him. I started out on his list but quickly caught on that he’s no longer what he once was. They’ve shuffled him into a figurehead role and his retirement is imminent.’

Recommendations?

‘Dr Chakrabarti if she’s got space.’

How are you now?

‘Aw, sweetie, thanks for asking. I’m much better, due to the tender loving care I’ve been receiving. If you’d met me a month ago, I wouldn’t’ve been able to come out like this. I was getting as housebound as Bridget.’

‘So she’s an agoraphobic?’ asked Louis. ‘You never said, Kris.’

‘I wouldn’t describe her like that exactly as she loves her garden. Is there a word for someone who doesn’t want to venture into the outside world?’

Scared, thought Jenny, feeling kinship with her landlady. That had been her for a year between fourteen and fifteen. The violin was the thing that had dragged her out of seclusion as it was the only way she could get to play with others. Her mother had always said it was a blessing she hadn’t taken up with a solo instrument like the piano or she would never have emerged.

‘I’m not sure I’d even call her a recluse as she loves having people round. I’d say she was an original. So, Jenny, what’s on your agenda today?’

She told them about the performance of Petrushka that afternoon for invited schools. Thank goodness she wasn’t involved in the children’s workshop beforehand. No one escaped those raucous sessions without a headache.

Kris laughed. ‘No, I’ve never thought of you as a particularly child-friendly person.’

Jenny was oddly hurt by this, it was like being told that animals didn’t like you, suggesting some inherent flaw. I like little ones. The ones that did not require her to speak.

‘I stand corrected. What’s the story of that piece? Forgive my ignorance but the only ballets I have any idea about are The Nutcracker and Swan Lake. I saw those as a kid.’

‘You went to see Humanhood with Hazel at Saddler’s Wells last week,’ said Louis.

‘Doesn’t mean I had the first idea what their performance was all about. I just went to admire the dancers.’

‘See what I have to contend with?’ said Louis in a stage whisper. ‘He ogles Rudí Cole and then comes back home to me.’

Cole?

‘The most gorgeous dancer God made.’

‘But he probably doesn’t give as good back rubs as you,’ said Kris consolingly.

‘He probably does.’

They both gave sad sighs in unison. These guys were such a good duo.

‘OK, enough, Petrushka. What’s it about?’ asked Kris.

Jenny’s fingers danced over the keys as they read over her shoulder. Weird Russian story. Starts at a fair – usual street scene – then a puppeteer arrives with three marionettes – Petrushka, who’s this kind of the fool figure in Russian stories, the ballerina, and the Moor.

‘The Moor?’

Totally not PC these days, but this was made up around 1910 in Russia. The dance suggests a love triangle between the three. Petrushka loves the ballerina, the ballerina fancies the Moor, and the Moor prefers his coconut tree.

‘I see what you mean about not very PC. What do they do with it these days for schools?’

Jenny shrugged. Her business was the music not the visuals. And then it gets wacky.

‘Only then?’

The next act is inside Petrushka’s box – very surreal. The one after that is in the Moor’s room where, after worshipping his coconut, he gets it on with the ballerina, breaking Peeping-Tom Petrushka’s heart.

‘And children watch this?’

That last part’s implied. I’m more worried by the messages they get from the coconut bit. Last act the Moor chases Petrushka back to the fair and kills him for interrupting. The crowd is about to turn on the Moor but the puppeteer points out Petrushka is just a doll. He carries the slain mannikin back to the puppet wagon. Jenny was enjoying herself. She had always liked this bizarre story with its shifting perspectives.

‘Is that the end?’

In a poorer ballet it would be, but no! She grinned, fingers hovering.

‘Stop teasing us. Tell us how it finishes.’

The puppeteer is now alone and the stars are out. The spirit of Petrushka rises from the doll for a final defiant gesture. You are left wondering what is real and what is not? Was Petrushka to be considered a doll or human? And then, it’s all a show anyway so what do we believe? Everyone was acting roles.

‘Very Russian,’ said Louis. ‘Anguished and melancholy. I blame vodka and long winters.’

It’s beautiful. There’s a fantastic chord in the middle that’s known as the Petrushka chord. Two major triads clash – it’s really bold.

‘I guess we aren’t talking Chinese gangs?’ said Kris.

She elbowed him. C major and F# major.

‘I forget when I look at my hardest worker cleaning the tables that she had all this culture at her fingertips,’ said Louis.

‘And when she looks at her boss, she probably forgets that she’s looking at one of London’s top Jazz vocalists,’ said Kris.

We are all overlooked treasures.

‘If we weren’t on duty that would be the cue for the group hug.’ Louis stacked their empties on a tray and got up. ‘Unfortunately, us overlooked treasures have overlooked customers to serve.’ A small queue of early birds had gathered by the till with only Frieda to serve them.

Kris put his hand on Jenny’s arm before she followed. ‘I hope you like the house, Jenny, but I think it’s a bit of an acquired taste. If you have any problems with Bridget or Jonah, let me know, OK? I can talk to them for you.’

She patted his cheek in thanks and blew him a kiss.

‘I can’t help worrying about you!’ he called as she moved away to her cleaning station.

All the guys in her life seemed to feel that way. She’d prefer someone just to love her but that didn’t appear to be on the horizon. A selfish schoolboy ex and two gay pals: not promising prospects. She really should make the effort to get back on the dating circuit. Now she had a nice place to bring someone home to without Harry looming in the corridor, maybe she would.

Chapter 13
Bridget, One Year Ago

Today I’ll go beyond the front gate.

Duster in hand, Bridget stood at the window of Jenny’s bedroom gazing down the path to the untrodden green beyond. This room had the best view of Blackheath; hers looked out on the garden, to the lilac tree and the shrubbery, a closed, safe prospect. She came in here at least once a day to challenge herself.

I’ll put on my coat, make sure I have my keys in my handbag, and I will go for a walk in Greenwich Park. Simple. Nothing to fear in that. I remember the park well and it won’t have changed too much, not that little red brick museum on the hilltop with the absurd ball on the roof. I’ll watch the tourists straddling the line marking Greenwich Mean Time, holding sticks up to take selfies. Ridiculous, funny people. They’ll make me laugh. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.

Admiral Jack had built the house here because it sat on the exact same longitude as the observatory. Bridget imagined the line running through her front door, through this room, and out through the lilac tree, hopping over the fence and continuing beyond. It was like Mercury, messenger of the gods, circling the globe so fast you only saw the grass bending in his wake. It linked her to all those foreign countries that lay on the same line on the map: France, Spain, Algeria, Burkina Faso. Who lived in Burkina Faso? It sounded as made up as Timbuktu, which was also a real place apparently, in Mali, another country on the Prime Meridian. Ghana, Togo, the long stretch of the Atlantic and finally Antarctica. Bridget closed her eyes, summoning up the eerie vastness of the southernmost continent. Her husband’s great-uncle had died with Scott somewhere out there. His family were full of people who went on adventures and never came back. The empire was casual about its sons. The Jack dynasty never learnt the lesson that it was safer to stay at home.

She idly wiped a fingerprint off the pane. Her new tenant must have tried to open it but the lower sash was broken. Only the upper one slid on its ropes. Bridget pulled it down a little to let some fresh air into the room. Jenny used a strong perfume; Bridget could still smell it even though her lodger had left several hours ago. Jenny favoured that fake strawberry scent that was in so many of the cheaper deodorants. Bridget found it unpleasant but she could hardly ask the girl to change something so personal.

Bridget emptied the bin into the plastic bag she carried. What were dead poppies doing in there? She should remember to mention to Jenny that there was a compost heap behind the gardener’s shed and not to use the waste basket for recyclables. She hadn’t yet made up her mind about her new lodger. Change was not easy, not for Bridget. Kris had filled the house with his booming bass and his immoderate laughter. She’d like the military forthrightness he brought to every situation, the precision with which he’d made his bed and folded his towels. He played his new songs to her, flattered her outrageously, and managed to head off any arguments with some novel distraction techniques learned from his army days. Her favourite was when he had prevented her bickering with Norman about who was suffering from the worst aches and pains by throwing his prosthetic at them both. As a dramatic gesture it had been priceless. She and Norman had been properly shamed into not mentioning health matters on a Tuesday again. In fact, it had been solemnly entered into the list of house rules right at the bottom. Number twenty-four: thou shalt not moan about thy health in company.

As for Jenny, she was best described as Kris’s opposite. Her silence made others fill the gap.

We all end up talking too much around her, Bridget mused. She went into the bathroom to clean the mirror over the sink. And that can be dangerous.

When did I get to be so old? She turned away from the dark-eyed, hollow-cheeked woman who rose from the depths of the mirror-pool.

I’ll soon deal with you, my pretty. She sprayed blue glass cleaner onto the surface, blurring her reflection. Like Dorothy in Oz making her foe melt. Switching to a J Cloth, she briskly polished the mirror and didn’t meet her own gaze again.

The jury in Gallant House was still deliberating their verdict on Jenny. The vine liked her but the lilac tree wasn’t sure. The birds in the attic resented her music and the mice in the pantry approved her choice of breakfast cereal. And as for Bridget … It was like the space between dropping a stone into the old well in the kitchen courtyard and hearing it hit the water many feet below. Many had come and gone over the decades since Paul died. It would be interesting to find out if Jenny was one of the ones who stayed the course.

Taking her bucket of cleaning supplies, Bridget walked downstairs to prepare herself a light lunch as a reward for her housework. She paused in the hallway by the front door.

Today, I’ll open it and walk right out and keep going, she promised herself. She touched the coat hanging on the peg, her best one, not the old one she used in the garden. It was getting a little dusty on the shoulders. That wouldn’t do. She took it down and shook it. She should send it to the dry cleaners. Feeling in the pocket, she found a bent railway ticket. She checked the date. 8 January 2002. Definitely time it went to the cleaners. She wouldn’t be able to go out, would she, not until it came back?

Relieved, she went into the kitchen, made herself a salad, and set about revisions on her latest chapter. She’d reached the part where she entered the narrative, the young bride of the much older Paul Whittingham. He had been the son of the first owner of the house not to bear the Jack surname. His mother had been the eldest of a string of daughters, and wrenched the place from being owned by Jacks to settling disgruntled under a new dynasty, that of the undistinguished Whittinghams. It hadn’t lasted long, had it? She wondered if she should contact one of those ancestry websites and have a family tree drawn up. That way she could leave the house to some lucky Jack who was unaware he stood to inherit. The house would like that; she would feel happier back in familiar territory.

But what if the Jack the tree turned up were American, or, God forbid, Australian? She would have to take that into account, of course, when it came to choosing, vet the individual thoroughly. Better the house was left to charity than that. Her own relatives – all distant cousins – would fume when they found out what she had done only at the reading of the will. It would be like a scene from Dickens. Such a shame she by definition would be unable to attend.

I’ll specify that my will is read in the drawing room, she decided. If there is an afterlife of the sort that allows me to come, then I’ll make sure I’m present. I’ll swing from the chandelier with the ghosts of past Jacks. That is something to look forward to in all the grim prospect of death. A last hurrah.

She looked down at her chapter.

Chapter 14
The House that Jack Built – Chapter Thirty – My Old Age

At first, I wasn’t keen on Paul Whittingham. He never appreciated me in his youth, bringing his long-haired friends home to smoke spliffs in the snug and tell his mother that the smell came from the joss sticks. Employment sobered him. The hair was cut, a suit donned, and the city beckoned. He followed his father into Lloyd’s shipping. How his ancestor the admiral would’ve scoffed to see his flesh and blood sitting at a computer screen analysing the risks of going through the Suez or around the Horn. Go out there and see for yourself, he would’ve bawled in his voice that carried over the storm. But Paul was made for comfort. Not for him was life on the High Seas; he was born for riding a desk and drinking down the pub with his friends. They all grew soft, rounded faces and bellies, hair retreating, courage shrivelling. The irony is that the Eighties made these men out to be heroes. Insurance, as he told the woman he was wooing, is much more interesting than it seems.

He was lying to her, of course. All the men who brought their wives here have lied to them one way or another. All have had mistresses. Sometimes that mistress was a woman, more rarely a man, on occasion the sea. Best of all was when their first love was me.

I dismissed this new wife of Paul’s at the beginning, thinking she was too flighty for the flabby insurance broker. A dancer, he told his mother proudly. A prima ballerina. Or had been. Bridget Taylor had risen through the ranks of the Royal Ballet but, before she could take on any of the leading roles, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. She rejected the temptation of pushing herself beyond her body’s limits, resigned from the ballet and took to temping – quite a come down for one who had dreamed of her name in lights. And then Paul fished her from the typing pool. Needing a respectable date for the company Christmas dinner at the Savoy, his eye fell on the elegant secretary in her neat French suits. As the date turned into a relationship, he found he wanted to lose a few pounds, take up some active hobbies, even attend the opera with her if she so wished. They never went to the ballet. She didn’t ask and he never suggested. He learnt tactfulness in his middle years.

His mother was delighted her lacklustre son had polished himself up. She handed over the house and moved to Bournemouth where her sister lived. A Jack returning to the sea – none of us were surprised.

Paul went on one knee to propose under the lilac tree while it rained down bridal confetti. He offered his bride his love, his considerable income, a share in his pension, and a house. It was me that decided the lady in his favour. She liked him well enough, but her first love had been dancing and that had died on her. Rather than be a widow for the rest of her life, she settled for the pleasant prospect I offered.

They hoped for children to fill the empty rooms, but Paul was never the most virile of men. His wife languished, wondering what was wrong with her. It was only after his accident that she discovered what she was missing.

Chapter 15

Bridget put a line through that last paragraph. It was all true: Paul in another age would’ve realised that he was gay, or at least more suited to celibacy. Instead he’d taken the route most thought inevitable in those days: a heterosexual marriage. That didn’t mean she wanted that private failing laid open to all those who read her account so they could dissect and dismember. The house had witnessed it, as well as their mutual relief when they no longer had to pretend they enjoyed the marital bed after Paul had retired from active service. It was his sporting hobby that brought about that state of affairs. Tennis. Not a collision on court or anything of that nature, but a tumble from the balcony of the tennis club when he’d drank too much champagne – a more middle-class fate could not be imagined, he had always joked. She didn’t want readers to get the wrong idea about Paul. He could be huge fun and was blessed with an acerbic sense of humour about himself. They’d liked each other quite fiercely. The way he dealt with his injury was the truly heroic period of his life. They may even have grown to love each other a little.

His injury had also set her free. With his tacit consent, she had looked elsewhere for sex. As long as there were no consequences, she was free to choose. The house had witnessed her embarkation on what was to be a series of affairs. It had been with their first tenant, an Italian naval officer who lodged with them for a glorious six months, that she’d discovered the sensuous woman hidden inside her. If only she could’ve still danced professionally, she was sure she would now have produced incandescent performances as the many lovers in the prima ballerina’s repertoire. She hadn’t known enough when she was twenty-one, even though she had thought she knew it all, in the way the young have to think they are the first to discover love. Silvano he’d been called, which sounded romantic even before he started whispering sweet demands in his husky Italian. They’d had their trysts up in the attics on a daybed she’d stored up there, safe from interruption as Paul kept to the ground floor. She’d even danced again, just a little, as her lover lay back on the cushions and watched. Brava! he’d said. Brava!

Everyone should have one lover like that Italian in their life, she thought. One Silvano.

‘Mrs Whittingham! I’m just off!’ called Jonah.

‘I’m in the kitchen!’ Her tenant was a very different kind of man to Silvano but equally interesting in his own way: a talented actor if she was any judge.

He stuck his head round the door. ‘I’ll be late – night shoot.’

‘I’ll leave the chain off the front door for you.’

‘Thanks. Hard at work I see?’

‘I don’t suppose you want to read it, do you?’ She was only teasing. Jonah hadn’t proved to be a sympathetic audience for her work so she didn’t pursue him any longer. She’d given up with Kris too, and Rose all that time ago, and the forgotten ones in between. Perhaps Jenny would be the right reader? Her bookshelf was promising.

‘I’m afraid I won’t have time. I’ve got to learn my lines.’

‘You dodged that bullet very nicely, Jonah. Well done.’

He returned her smile with a brief one of his own. She’d been helping him have an easier time at college and on set by teaching him some of the tact than he’d missed out on in his unorthodox education.

‘What do you think of Jenny?’ she asked, curious what he’d made of this rival in the house.

‘She’s lovely and odd all at the same time.’

‘Lovely and odd. Hmm, yes, I suppose that’s accurate. She should fit in then. You find her attractive?’

He shrugged, clearly not wanting to answer that. ‘She played me a tune on that fiddle of hers that put a knife right in the gut – it was amazing.’

‘I thought I could hear music when I went to bed.’

‘We were in the snug. Did we disturb you?’

She knew full well he’d gone out on the balcony again but unless she actually saw him on it, she didn’t feel it her place to reprimand him. It meant he didn’t fog up the snug with his little roll up cigarettes. She had an acute sense of smell and stale tobacco numbered amongst her least favourite odours.

‘I enjoyed it. I might have a problem if she decides to practise in the middle of the night but as an evening serenade it was very pleasant.’

Jonah rubbed the back of his neck making the tattooed bolts twitch. Did he know that the Frankenstein creature in the book didn’t have those; that it was the clumsy interpretation of film? The original had been stitched, not bolted, together. ‘I spoke to her later too. We had what you’d call an embarrassing encounter. She thought she heard a ghost.’ He gave her a straight look.

‘Most people hear odd things here. I’ve always rather hoped there is a ghost but I’ve never seen one. Have you?’

He dropped his gaze and laughed; a short bark, not a belly laugh, of real humour. Poor Jonah: so sad under everything. All she could do though was offer him her affection to make up. ‘I’m too unimaginative for a ghost to waste its time on me. Anyway, I told her not to worry.’

‘Good. I hope she’d not naturally highly strung. I had another of those once.’

‘Another what?’

‘Highly strung tenant. Gillian her name was. She couldn’t settle here, thought people were interfering with her things, told terrible lies about me. I had to get rid of her in the end.’

‘You kicked her out of Gallant House?’

‘I’m afraid I did.’

‘Well, it’s your house, your rules. I reckon Jenny will be fine, though, once she’s got used to it.’

‘I hope so. It’s so good to have music here again. Kris leaves big shoes to fill.’

Jonah glanced up at the clock. ‘Right, really must go. Don’t work too hard now, Mrs Whittingham.’

She pointed to her cheek and, after a slight hesitation, he bent down to give her a perfunctory kiss. He didn’t like doing that but she wanted him to see her as family. Everyone who lived under her roof had to understand that. He also never stopped calling her Mrs Whittingham even though she had invited him to address her as Bridget numerous times. Jonah was stubborn that way, a core of steel she didn’t think she would bend. He quit the kitchen in a hurry and the next thing Bridget heard was the front door slam. She hadn’t managed to break him of that habit either.

I could follow him, she thought. Trail him to the station, then to the set, and watch them film the next episode. Perhaps I could be an extra, sit in the waiting room with a bloodied handkerchief to my temple, or leg in plaster?

She got up, went to the kitchen door and put her hand on the knob.

What am I thinking? She snatched her hand back as if the handle burned her. People don’t do that, they don’t go haring after their lodgers to thrust themselves into their work. I’m turning into a crazy old woman with stupid urges. She sat down again at the table, gathered her papers and patted them into order. Maybe she would revise Chapter One again. That was her favourite. Yes, that would be best.

Part 2 – The Fool’s Room

Chapter 16
Jonah, Present Day

‘I’ve been reading your file, Jonah, and it says that you’ve had anger management issues for years, ever since you were young, in fact. The first serious incident came when you were nine. Is that right?’

The way the inspector said it made it sound so tidy. Anger management. Turn left in the brain past accounts and record keeping. Jonah shrugged. ‘Can I smoke?’

‘Not allowed anymore,’ said the female detective. ‘Public building.’

‘Yeah, and we can’t have the boys and girls in blue dying of lung cancer thanks to all these chain-smoking criminals.’ He twiddled his thumbs instead on his lap, so hopefully they wouldn’t see his nervous gesture.

‘So you view yourself as a criminal?’ The inspector swooped in on his use of the English language.

‘Reformed. But not yet kicked the habit of Mr Benson and Mr Hedges. Sorry, I can’t remember your names.’

‘DI Khan and DS Foley,’ said Ms Foley.

‘Like in foley artist? The guys who do the backing sound for films?’

‘Sorry, not following.’

‘Sergeant, we’re getting off the point.’ The inspector looked at his watch. They’d been at this for hours and they were all a little punch drunk with tiredness. Khan looked scruffier than ever. Maybe he did undercover work? No, too senior. He was just a mess. Let’s just end this, thought Jonah.

‘Of course, sir,’ said the sergeant.

Jonah waited until she looked back at him. ‘Next time you go to a film, stay for the credits. You’ll see foley artists somewhere in the sound section. Cool job.’ He sounded calm enough but inside he was crawling with unease. Strung-out. Desperate. Serious tobacco withdrawal.

‘Jonah,’ said the inspector sternly, ‘you were telling us about your anger management issues.’

‘Were we?’ He gazed up at a cracked ceiling tile. Christ, he wanted to punch something. He could feel it building … building … He had to get out.

‘Issues arising, it says here, from an abusive upbringing.’

‘No!’ Jonah slammed his forehead on the edge of the table. Blood streamed from a cut. ‘Don’t …’

‘Jonah!’

‘Talk …’

‘Stop – you’ll hurt …’

‘About …’

‘Call for a medic.’

‘That.’ With the last hit he slumped on the table, head buried in his arms. He wanted out.

Chapter 17
Jonah, One year Ago

Jonah turned a corner out of sight of the house, put his head down, hands on knees, and breathed through his nose. He wasn’t going to throw up, he promised himself. Bridget had only asked for a kiss on the cheek, nothing more.

One … and two … and three. His school counsellor would be proud of him.

OK, mate, under control now? He could almost hear Mark’s soothing tones, counting him down from his full-blown panic mode. Yeah, I’m OK. Just one of my tripwires: being kissed by an older woman, smelling that ladylike perfume, brushing up against the soft pillowy skin. Shit. Don’t think about it.

Jonah forced himself to stand up and saw that his sudden stop in the middle of the pavement had persuaded a mother with a pushchair to cross the road. She was watching him with that suspicion he was so used to seeing, tugging her toddler close to her skirts, a hen gathering in her chicks. He tried to defuse her panic by smiling at them, but that only made it worse. Don’t look at the nasty man, darling. She was practically running for the shops, toddler trailing, his packet of crisps scattering. Jonah could hear his wailing protests.

What the hell am I doing here? A year on and he still wasn’t used to it. He looked up at the multimillionaire homes, the waxed-to-a-shine German cars parked on paved driveways, the manicured gardens. No wonder she ran. She probably thinks I’m housebreaking. Shows how much she knows. These houses would be a difficult target – alarmed and sensored up to the hilt, probably staff coming and going unpredictably, almost certainly big dogs. A bite on the arse was no joking matter, as Jonah knew from experience. A different grade of housebreaker went for this kind. If you wanted to make a quick quid, you went for the easy marks, the laptop left briefly unattended in a café, the house full of students where they’d each have a couple of grand of electrical goods, the neighbourhoods where no one bothered to watch for strangers as they didn’t even know what the people downstairs looked like. You could jimmy a back door or window, grab whatever your contacts on the black market would fence, and be gone before anyone knew you’d been there. The police hardly bothered to investigate that kind of crime.

Jonah began to feel more at ease, more anonymous by the time he got to the train. There were a few people like him on the London Bridge service: scruffy, hungry-looking men, all watching each other to see where the trouble would start. Not with me, mate, he thought, keeping his eyes down on the free newspaper. The passengers would probably be gobsmacked to find out that the dangerous-looking guy with the tats was actually heading for afternoon classes in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts Gower Street studios. How fucking posh was that? He wanted to laugh at the preposterous sound of it: him at RADA! But laughing suddenly was another thing that didn’t go down well in public.

His class would be immediately followed by his call at six for the night shoot: hair, makeup and wardrobe in a trailer parked in the backstreets of Hackney. Yeah, filming was so glamorous. He only had one line – ‘Don’t worry, love, we’ll find out’, spoken to some road traffic accident victim as they stretchered her into the ambulance – so he didn’t need much time to prepare despite what he’d said to Bridget. It wasn’t exactly Shakespeare this hospital soap, but the money was good.

The train rounded a curve and the Shard slid into view, the icy heart of the city. If he knew that more work like the soap was in the pipeline then he’d be in a financial position to move to somewhere more central where his presence would go unnoticed. The ugly truth was that he was stuck for now because his credit history was crap and his past unlikely to make him anyone’s first choice of tenant. Gallant House was his best of bad options. To stay all he had to do was curb his language and fall in with Bridget’s pretence they were a family.

Jonah wondered what the new tenant made of him. Kris had treated him like a younger brother, the wet-behind-the-ears squaddie in Bridget’s brigade, Kris the NCO. Nothing Jonah said or did shocked him as he’d seen worse. Jenny’s silence was interesting, by contrast, a challenge even. She wasn’t really quiet though, was she? Her instrument was a means of expression, and so was her body language. At college, they were taught to think about what a character said with all of his or her faculties, not just speech. It was a useful training. For so much of his life others had told him what he thought or felt. Now he was able to return the favour and read that Billy fancied Rose even though he was supposedly in a steady cohabiting relationship; that Norman was intensely lonely, regretted most of his life choices and probably gay; that Bridget … well Bridget was something else entirely, a kind of elegant disaster confined by her own neuroses to that house. He sometimes thought she was like a whirlpool, dragging what she needed to her.

But what about Jenny? What did she need? When she’d pulled him into her room the night before, he’d hoped for a second that it was an invitation to tumble on the bed. She was an appealing armful: masses of soft black hair, caramel skin, and as many curves as her violin. Out of his league though unless his luck changed. He was used to well brought up girls choosing him as their one walk on the wild side, quick shags at parties or in their bedsits. He’d long ago decided that he could be insulted or appreciate the benefits. Guess which door he’d chosen? It didn’t make him popular with the guys on his course, unless they also hankered after a bit of rough. He’d been known to oblige if he was interested enough. Sex didn’t mean that much to him. Means to an end.

He’d been wrong about Jenny though, as he should’ve anticipated from her hesitancy in the snug. Sex hadn’t been on her agenda. She was just spooked, like a kid scared of things that went bump in the night. It was the first time that he could remember ever being the one to show another person that there weren’t monsters under the bed, that noises were just the meaningless sounds of an old house.

And anyway, there was only one monster in the house – a tame one – and she’d been holding his hand.

Jonah slid in at the back of the movement class. He was coming to the view that it may have been a mistake to enroll on the full time BA Hons course as he was very behind with his assignments, not up to the mark academically, and the other students were complaining about him not pulling his weight in group projects. The little shits took everything so seriously. As if perfect scores were going to get them cast. If he made a second season of the hospital drama, he’d jack it in.

How much of the moaning was envy that he had an acting job, and how much it was genuine, he couldn’t tell. He had little in common with the nice kids who joined this course at eighteen and nineteen, fresh from nice schools and nice families. He was ten years older and a lifetime apart from them. Only coming across an idealistic admissions tutor who wanted to bring a wider cross section of society into the Academy had gained him his place. Yet he also knew, and so did his classmates, that his very difference was what made him more employable. He could act and he wasn’t identikit youth. Look at their head shots and you could swap many of them for the other with no one noticing. His ugly mugshot looked like he was posing for a police photographer at three a.m. – and it got him cast. He’d even heard one TV producer saying to the director of a film how refreshing it was that Jonah’s looks hadn’t been just for show but turned out to be genuine. He was gaining a reputation as a kind of mascot to any project that needed grit or a hard edge. His name, according to his agent, Carol, had been mentioned to the top casting directors. These sheltered people in the industry deferred to him as an expert. Jonah, what kind of weapons would gang members carry? Where would they get their drugs? How would they fight? It was fucking weird to be treated as someone special. He could take them to a part of town where he was the norm, not the exception; but they probably wouldn’t last long there.

‘Today, class,’ began Maurice, the movement instructor, strutting like the boss screw in front of the prisoners, ‘we’re going to build on our mask work that we were exploring last week. You’ll remember the clip of Medea I showed you?’

Fuck, yes. If he’d remembered what was on the schedule, he would’ve cut class. Jonah felt in his pocket, wondering if he could dip out for a quick smoke.

‘We’re going to act out the central event – Medea’s slaughter of her children – not with words but movement.’ Maurice sounded so reasonable, full of nothing-can-shock-a-real-actor bullshit, convinced by his own conviction that they had to plumb the depths and scale the heights. ‘The incident happens offstage so it’s up to the chorus to express the horror with our bodies. We react to the screams. Here, I’ll play you a clip of the soundtrack we’ll be using.’

Cries of ‘no, Mummy, no!’ and childish screams rent the air. Voices ripped the room apart into tattered lumps like flesh. Fuck, the sound engineer was good. In his mind’s eye, Jonah could see great gashes on the walls and ceiling as blood seeped, darkness encroached. He slumped against the skirting and leaned his head back. One … and two … and three.

Maurice switched off the recording. ‘Remember, this is the only murder of children in Greek drama to happen in cold blood rather than through temporary madness, and with the perpetrator – the mother – going unpunished at the end. It is meant to shock in every way, so nothing is too much here.’

Everyone but Jonah seemed to relish the idea of reacting to infanticide. Fucking pathetic. Anger was better than panic. Arseholes. He watched them cynically from the side as they limbered and stretched. A couple laughed nervously as they held up Greek masks to their face. It was at times like this that he felt a million miles away from them.

‘Jonah, are you going to join us?’ Maurice offered him a mask.

He shook his head. If he stretched out an arm, they’d see his hand wasn’t steady.

‘You need to complete the course to gain the credit – and that means joining in.’

Jonah could feel the rage building at the patronising tone. The tutor was the king turd of these little shits.

Maurice was now watching him warily, instincts picking up that an explosion was close. ‘Jonah, would you like to … er … take a breather?’

And let them all prance away while he threw up outside? Fuck that. ‘This is about child murder, right?’ Jonah snatched the mask from Maurice’s hand. The chatter subsided. The neat little party tricks some were trying out to gesture to horror faltered. ‘That fucking crazy mother slits the throats of her kids to spite their fucking father? You want us to react to it?’ He stalked into the middle of the room. ‘Here’s what I fucking think about Medea.’ He stomped on the mask. ‘Her kids are dead and she waltzes off Scott free. The chorus should fucking well have ripped her to shreds.’

One of the girls in the class made a move as if she were going to argue, but Maurice motioned her back. Now was not the moment for a feminist intervention.

‘No excuses. No “he had it coming”. No one should do that to a child.’ Jonah kicked the mask away. ‘No one.’ He was shaking. He recognised the adrenaline. It would take just one wrong word, one snide comment, and he’d probably end up in jail for GBH.

‘You’re right, Jonah,’ said Maurice, finding the right words to avoid a fist in the face. ‘We forget that this should also be about the children’s right to life because the play focuses so much on Medea’s anger. I don’t think any movement training would come up with a more eloquent reaction than yours so I’m going to leave it there. Put the masks away please. I’m going to anticipate next week’s lecture on Jacques Lecoq and mime techniques instead. Everyone, take five. Jonah, a quick word please.’

‘I’m going out to smoker’s corner.’

‘Then I’m coming with you.’

Jonah went out, expecting a reprimand. To prepare, he shoved his anger back in the cage where he kept it, driving it in with mental whips and prods. The smoking zone, huddled in a dank alley at the side of the building, was deserted. He went through his calming routine, getting out his cigarette papers, pealing one off, pinching just the right amount of tobacco, squeezing, teasing it out, rolling, sealing … As he brought it to his lips, Maurice offered him a light.

‘All right now?’

Of course the fucking turd of a movement tutor could read his body language. Jonah drew smoke into his lungs, held it, then exhaled over their heads. Maurice was calmly smoking his own factory-made brand.

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m sorry. I should have included a warning at the beginning of the class that we were dealing with difficult subject matter.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.