The lock was well maintained, and the key turned without as much as a squeak. The door opened inward. Gentle as I was, it hit something behind with a loud thud. ‘Shit!’ I stopped; my breath caught in my throat. Then I gave a snort, Carol was two floors up, she was hardly going to hear.
I took a step into the dark room. If I’d been expecting treasures, I was sadly disappointed. Even in the dim light that filtered from under the kitchen door, I could see it was nothing but a storeroom.
It was time to go before Mrs Wallace arrived home and I had to explain my presence in the house. Carol would not be impressed if I was found down there, especially after all the fuss I’d made about her taking ten minutes of my time for free.
Yet, I stayed looking into the shady space. Why would a storeroom be kept locked? Did Mrs Wallace suspect her cleaner of making off with supplies? Or Carol, or any of the other staff who came in during the day. Supplies were locked away, yet silver frames were left for any thieving git to take. It didn’t make sense and if there was one thing I hated even more than locked doors, it was a mystery.
I felt along the wall till I found a switch. When I pressed it, the glaringly bright light from the single unshaded bulb illuminated the room without providing any clarity as to why this room should be locked. The shelves were full of random stuff… tins of soup, toilet rolls, bars of soap, cleaning products.
Nothing of any value.
The small table behind the door explained the thump. Moving into the room, I straightened the pestle and mortar that had been knocked over. ‘Well, well,’ I muttered under my breath. The reason for the locked door became apparent as I picked up packet after packet of medication with dawning incredulity.
Carol had said Mrs Wallace insisted on giving her husband his meals. Maybe I was being overly suspicious, but I thought I knew exactly why Mrs Wallace was keeping the door locked, and why her husband’s condition had deteriorated faster than the doctors had predicted.
27
After a night shift, I usually fell asleep on the bus journey home. Since most of my recent shifts had been in Bath, the regular drivers knew me. If I were asleep when the bus arrived at my stop, they’d simply give a yell to wake me up. Once, it was a replacement driver and I didn’t think to tell him – tiredness can make me stupid – and I ended up in the bus station in Chippenham.
That day, I had too much to think about to feel sleepy. I stared out the window as Bath was left behind and the bus barrelled through treelined streets that always seemed too narrow for its size.
Mrs Wallace intrigued me. I needed to know more about her to understand what I’d seen in that storeroom. It hadn’t shocked me. Not much did any more. I was the murdering daughter of a bigamous father – what could possibly shock me? Anyway, it was impossible to deal, not only with the sick and dying, but with their relatives too, without seeing the worst humanity had to offer. So, I wasn’t shocked, but I was intrigued.
Perhaps if I hadn’t been quite so bored with my dull mundane life, my going-nowhere career, the unedifying prospect of the same-old same-old for years to come, I’d have let it go. Perhaps too, if I hadn’t seen that photograph, if it hadn’t brought my father back into my head. He was never far away, but now it was the man he had been before I ever knew him that was invading my thoughts. What had made him choose to do what he’d done? Was it being married to my mother, or had it been my entrance to the world that had forced him to split his life? Did he look at me and worry about our future? Had he seen through to my soul and been afraid?
As the bus chugged along, I stared out the window, forgetting to blink, my eyes watering from weariness.
There was little natural light in my apartment. The long narrow window above the door faced north and was in the shadow of the two-storey house next door. As a result, even on the brightest sunny day, the interior was in a perpetual twilight. It didn’t bother me, and in fact was a blessing when working nights.
I pulled off my clothes, dropped them where I stood and slipped under the duvet. After a night shift, sleep would normally come as suddenly as switching a light out. That morning, I shut my eyes, the thoughts of Mrs Wallace and my father buzzing in my head making me toss and turn. When I finally fell asleep, my dreams were full of staring eyes. I recognised Jemma’s and Olivia’s. I always did. They followed me everywhere. Awake or asleep. But there was another pair. I wasn’t sure, but I’d a sneaking suspicion they were Carol’s.
Less than two hours’ sleep only filed the edges off the exhaustion that would probably linger until I slept again that night. Rather than getting up, I lay there with my fingers linked behind my head, my thoughts dancing around the intriguing Mrs Wallace. I wasn’t interested in people in general. Most were boringly dull two-dimensional characters trudging through their incredibly banal sad little lives.
I preferred people to be like onions with lots of layers to peel off, never knowing if under the next there was going to be something gross, or if you’d make it to the centre before finding the heart of it was stinkingly rotten.
Sometimes it was easy. People like that ward manager Pippa, peel away one layer and you saw what was underneath – someone who’d be happy to do anything to get what they wanted or keep what they already had. Sometimes it was a little more difficult. I still wasn’t sure about Carol.
The unknown Mrs Wallace struck me as being more fun to investigate. I hadn’t needed to peel away any layers to see her secret behind the locked door, but I guessed there was more to be discovered, that if I looked, I might find something deviously ugly and rotten at her centre.
I hoped so; I scrambled from the bed and grabbed my bag, then sat back with the silver frame in my hand, staring at the young Mr Wallace, my father’s lookalike. I had planned to leave the photo in it as a reminder of the man my father had once been, but I changed my mind. The frame was difficult to open. When I broke a nail, I grabbed a knife to prise it apart. The photograph of Mr Wallace as a younger man had been put on top of an older one of him with a woman, her face slightly averted. She could have been anyone. She could have been my mother. Frowning, I took it out and put it into the book I’d been reading. A photograph of my mother was propped against a book on the shelf. I slipped it into the frame and put my father’s lookalike behind. When the frame was reassembled, I made space for it on the bookshelf. It did my mother justice.
My thoughts drifted back to Mrs Wallace. She had been married before, Carol had said. But not him. I wondered why. Did he too have secrets? I suddenly desperately wanted to know, as if somehow, knowing him would help me understand my father and the road he took.
Carol had been working for the Wallaces for weeks, and unless she went around with her eyes shut, she had to know something. She was such a goody two-shoes though, it wouldn’t be easy to squeeze information out of her.
I lay considering my next step until hunger pushed me from the bed. There was no need to get dressed. A scruffy T-shirt that had lost both colour and shape over the years and hung to my knees was perfect lounging wear. I wasn’t going out or expecting visitors. That was a joke on me. I never went anywhere except to visit my mother, and nobody visited me. Ever. It was the way I liked it.
The small freezer was full of ready meals I bought in bulk every few weeks from Waitrose. Their meals for one were convenient and tasty although the variety was limited to three: cottage pie, fish pie or beef lasagne. I ate them in rotation, sometimes bringing home a Domino’s pizza for a change if I happened to be passing one of their shops. I didn’t get deliveries. Officially, I didn’t have an address. Nor did I have a letter box.