The Woman Next Door(66)
‘Mum? Where are you?’
Melissa gasps and stumbles back to the garden gate.
HESTER
I sag into myself when she has gone. I can’t believe she assaulted me!
An odd mixture of emotions swirls in my tummy. I can still feel the warm pressure of her touch and her coffee-edged breath on my cheek. She could have done anything.
As I stand there, gathering myself, something catches my eye. Whatever it was she put into her bin is poking out a little. Curious, despite how shaken I am, I open the lid and peer inside.
A scrumpled wodge of grubby yellow cloth sits on top of the bin bag. For a second I can’t work out where I’ve seen it before. And then I remember. Amber was carrying it.
Smiling a little, I whisk it out and study it. It’s soft and well-loved by small hands. I put it to my cheek and inhale the milky sweetness as I think things through.
That pestle isn’t going anywhere. I have plenty of time to go to the police. Maybe there are other ways to make Melissa pay for how she has treated me first. Maybe I should be a little more … inventive.
It’s fair to say I am not a woman with many skills.
But I can bake. I am very good with small children. And I have an excellent memory.
Flat 302, Burnside Estate, N9 2HJ
The address is a tube ride and then a bus journey away, but it could be in another city in some ways. I clutch my handbag a little tighter as the main road narrows, lined now with a cluttered mix of fast food shops with names like Chicken Licken and a host of foreign names (Turkish and Middle Eastern, I think) along with charity shops and a plethora of betting establishments. The people have changed too and the population is much more mixed than in my own neighbourhood. There are more coloured people generally, and a lot of women in scarves and burkas, trailing small children in Western dress.
I get off the bus in what I think is generally the right area, feeling very out of place. I’m not totally sure that I know where I’m going and wish I had remembered to bring my A to Z. A little flustered, I go into a newsagent to buy some tissues and ask directions. An old Indian man is serving. His eyes are rheumy and yellow-tinged; his beard grey and thin. I ask him if he knows the way to the Burnside Estate and he just shakes his head as he hands me the change. I am about to leave when a young man, possibly his son, pops up from behind the counter, where he must have been bending down to do something, out of sight. He is wearing a white robe sort of thing and has a beard.
He also has the most beautiful brown eyes, and he flashes a friendly smile at me. ‘Burnside you want, love?’ he says in perfect Cockney.
‘Yes,’ I say, surprised at his English. But I suspect he grew up here. It seems a shame he has to dress that way. Why can’t people like that integrate?
‘Easier to show you, come on,’ he says lightly and leads me out of the shop onto the busy pavement.
He gives me a series of simple directions and I thank him before going on my way. I am not completely sure about what I intend to say when I get to Amber’s flat. I don’t even know if they will be at home. But my feet carry me with a sense of purpose that comforts me after the sensation of floating, untethered, in space ever since Melissa betrayed me.
My nerves almost get the better of me when I approach the estate. There is a scrubby patch of wasteland and a path littered with fast food boxes and dog mess leading to it. The buildings are those 1960s brown and white ones that have long balconies. I can see some makeshift washing lines from here and am suddenly longing for my own private, quiet garden. A young man with aggressively gelled hair approaches with a dog on a metal chain. It’s one of those Staffordshire terriers, which I’m not fond of since one bit Bertie. The dog is muscled, powerful-looking, and strains against the lead as though it wants to eat me up.
Scanning the numbers of the flats I see that Amber’s is on the third floor of the first building and so, clamping my handbag even tighter to my side, I gamely head for the staircase located at the end of the building.
It smells of urine, and I blanch, holding my breath. I am picturing gangs of youths now, with Mohicans, taking drugs and clogging up the stairwell, and my nerve almost fails me. But I only pass a couple of giggling teenage girls clutching mobile phones and a tired-looking woman about my own age with a shopping basket, who surprises me by smiling and saying ‘good morning’. I suppose I shouldn’t assume everyone in this place would like to mug me.
The walkway along to Amber’s house has an array of rubbish along it, from broken children’s bikes to an old pram and uncared for pots choked with weeds. Really, I see no reason not to look after the place you live just because it isn’t in the most salubrious part of town. It really doesn’t seem like the right sort of place to bring up children, especially ones who have additional health challenges. There are a couple though, which look neat and tidy, with plant pots that contain actual flowers.
But when I get to flat number 302, I am not at all surprised to see that the front door could do with a lick of paint. My heart is thumping as I press my thumb to the doorbell, hearing the sharp ring inside the flat. I wait for a few moments, and, nothing happening, I try again. It’s no use. No one is in.
Feeling rather like the withered balloons that hang from the letterbox on the house next door, presumably detritus from a long passed party, I turn to trudge my way home again. And then I see two figures coming towards me and my insides jolt.