‘Can we rearrange our meeting?’ I said. ‘I can come to you at home or you can come here if you’d prefer.’
‘You come to me,’ she said.
‘Today? This morning?’
‘Yeah, I’m not going anywhere,’ she said bitterly. The edge in her voice was a change from the resigned depression I’d heard during our last conversation.
I promised to be there in an hour’s time. I walked the three hundred yards round the corner to my office first. I rent a cellar there in the Dobson family home. Grant and Jackie are teachers and during term time I hardly see them. Their four daughters are all at school or sixth form college. The arrangement works well. I can keep my work separate from my home, I can interview clients and store my papers there. The Dobsons seem to enjoy the curiosity value of a private eye in the basement. Not as noisy as a rock band, anyway.
I’d given the room a face-lift that spring: covered the old lilac paint on the walls and ceiling with a sandy yellow, lashed out on a big, rag rug which covered most of the tatty carpet, painted the dining chairs and filing cabinet in bright citrus colours, pinned some filmy yellow muslin over the narrow basement window and stuck up a large, vivid blue silk-screen print that my friend Diane had done. The result was probably not what prospective clients expected from a private investigator’s office, neither lawyerly nor seedy. But I loved it and it seemed to have a relaxing effect on people who were usually pretty tense and upset by the time they got to see me.
I prepared an invoice for Platt, Henderson & Cockfoot for my valiant attempt to serve papers on the late Mr Kearsal, and got it ready to post. I collected my mail and checked my messages. Nothing important.
Debbie lived on Ivygreen Road, a street of terraced houses near busy Chorlton Green. Chorlton is a cosmopolitan district; the mix of housing means it caters for lots of different people. Not far from Manchester town centre and the universities, it has the added attraction of Chorlton Ees, a stretch of open meadows leading down to the River Mersey.
The long rows of identical redbrick terraces would easily look drab in the winter months, but in June the trees were in full leaf and people had placed hanging baskets here and there, and installed chimney pots and tubs in the tiny front gardens.
The Gosforth house was just like its neighbours, net curtains at the windows, neatly painted gate and door. Trim, unremarkable. The variety was in the choice of paint and the style of net. While some of them boasted frothing drapes and ruches like old-fashioned frilly baby pants, others went for sheer nets or the jardinière type with a convenient space in the centre of the windowsill to display a treasured ornament or plant. Debbie had chosen a bowl of dried flowers. The odd window without nets looked naked, shocking in its bravado, parading the life within to the world outside.
I rang the bell.
‘Who is it?’ Her caution in asking before opening the door was the first indication I had of how frightened this woman was.
‘Sal Kilkenny.’
I heard her release the chain and then unlock the door.
Debbie invited me in and took me through to the living room, previously two rooms which had been knocked together to run the length of the house. The place was immaculate, the air scented with floral pot-pourri.
The two shelves that held books and toys and the school photograph – three smiling faces with well-brushed hair – were the only clues that the place was inhabited by children.
How do people do that? Are they perpetually cleaning? Wiping up sticky finger marks, hoovering up crumbs and crisps, sorting toys…or do they somehow train their children to be neat, tidy, clean and careful – in other words, to behave completely unlike children. How?
I’d long since reached an uneasy truce, accepting, against all the lessons my mother had drummed into me, that a basic level of mess and grime came with the territory. Life was messy, kids were messy, there were more important things than a clean swing bin. Now and then, when I could no longer bear the jumble in the toy boxes or the layers of food particles and felt-pen marks on the doorjamb and the television, I’d have a binge. It would look OK (never pristine, I could never do pristine) for an hour or two until it got lived in again.
