‘What were you digging for, Shirley Burke? What were you hiding? What were you trying to find?’
When I find myself saying these words out loud to myself in the bathroom mirror I know I am going mad.
I’m now at that stage where I’m taking lots of naps. The slightest exertion, be it opening a book, rolling my eyes at something Katie Hopkins has come out with – you name it, it’s knackering me. Plus my stomach is so Mount Everest-esque it’s rare to find a position, be it sitting, standing or lying, that’s actually comfortable, so it’s easier to block everything out with forty winks here and there. It must look like sleepy bye bye time in the elephant house down my end of Bloomsbury, the size of me. But it’s all in a good cause, I tell myself.
One day my mobile rings. A withheld number. I really hope it’s Kelly Hopper as I take the call, but instead it’s Pam.
‘Pam. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you. Is there a problem?’
And that seems to faze her.
‘Problem? Well, yes, I’d say there was a problem. Your mum’s died.’
‘Right. Well—’
‘Your mum’s died; I’m not allowed in there; instead you’ve got strangers traipsing through like Larry-oh, chucking out her knick-knacks.’
I’ve never heard the phrase ‘Larry-oh’ before.
‘Pam, is there a problem apart from the fact I’ve asked my friend to sort Mum’s stuff out?’
‘Well, yes.’
And then silence.
‘Well, what is it?’
‘Well . . . I don’t know.’
And I sigh quite loudly.
‘This is very hard for me, you know, Rachel. Very hard indeed. I was friends with your mum for an extremely long time.’
‘Oh yes, of course you were. Such good friends you never even asked her if she was baby Diana’s mum? What sort of friend doesn’t ask that kind of question? I’ll tell you what sort, Pam. A fair-weather friend.’
‘You always were an ungrateful little bitch,’ she says.
‘Well, look at who I was surrounded by growing up.’
‘I hope you don’t mean me, there.’
‘And forgive me if I’m a little bit ungrateful now that my mum went to her grave without the balls to tell me about my real identity.’
‘Oh well, I shouldn’t worry about any of that. Least said, soonest mended.’
‘How d’you mean? I’m allowed to be angry if I want to be.’
‘Yes, but . . . no point raking over all that . . . history stuff, is there?’
She is now sounding much friendlier and gigglier, like the fact I’d been abducted as a baby and made front-page news was akin to me getting a new pair of slippers. No point making a fuss about it.
‘Well, I have been raking over it actually.’
‘Oh, have you?’
‘Yes.’
‘In what way?’
‘I’ve been to the place I was abducted to.’
‘How did you find that out?’
‘The internet.’
‘Bloody hell, is it all on there?’
‘Yeah, you should get it, Pam. You can look up recipes for jam.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘North Wales.’
‘Where?’
‘Loggerheads.’
‘Loggerheads?’
‘That’s the name of the village. I know. Weird. I stayed overnight in the shithole where Shirley Burke took me.’
There’s silence on the end of the line.
‘She’s the woman who took me,’ I explain.
‘Shirley Burke.’
‘Does it ring a bell?’
‘Just racking my brains. No. Don’t think it does. What was it like?’
‘When she kidnapped me? I can’t remember.’
‘What was it like now?’
‘Oh. I don’t know. Bit dull, really.’
‘Well, I suppose you’d . . . go somewhere like that hoping to get answers. But what you just get is more and more questions.’
Suddenly it feels okay. Suddenly it feels like I am talking to family. And now that Mum is dead I guess Pam is the nearest thing I have to my own flesh and blood. And part of her understands me. I’ve nobody else really I could be having this same conversation with right now.
‘I met the woman who tipped the police off that I was there.’
‘Sorry?’
‘When Shirley Burke took me there. One of the neighbours got suspicious and called the police.’
‘She’s still living there?’
‘Well. I got in contact with her through one of the neighbours. Long story short, I went to meet her.’
‘How was that?’
‘She was sweet, really. Remembered it all like it was yesterday.’
‘What was there to remember?’
‘Oh, just how Shirley kept herself to herself.’
‘And that’s suspicious, is it? I suppose to some people it is. I like to keep myself to myself. Careful, Pam, you might get arrested.’
‘She saw her digging in the night.’
‘Digging?’
‘She’s got no idea why.’
‘Maybe she was planting carrots.’
‘Or evidence.’
‘Evidence of what? Wasn’t very successful, was she? She still got caught. Silly cow.’
I can’t help but laugh.
‘What?’
‘Well, I’d argue she was a bit more than a silly cow.’
‘Point taken.’
‘She did something really shocking and tried to get away with it. She ruined my mum’s life. Our relationship. Loads of things. She stole years from us.’
‘Was it years? I thought it was weeks.’
‘But the repercussions went on for years.’
‘I’m sure, I’m sure. I just meant if she was burying . . . what d’you call it?’
‘Evidence?’
‘Yes, then she was a silly cow.’
I really don’t understand Pam sometimes.
I really don’t understand Pam most of the time.
As much as I want to get into an argument about her suddenly having an opinion on a woman she’s never met, and who she couldn’t remember much about at my mum’s funeral, I decide to let it drop. She is the nearest I have to family. Now is not the time to rock the boat.
‘Pam, I’m sorry if you feel I’ve excluded you since Mum died. But I had to get the locks changed because I locked myself out.’
‘Oh forget it, it’s fine. What’s done is done.’
‘And maybe it’s good that my friend is going through her stuff. It would only upset both of us.’
‘Yes, and let’s face facts. You’ve already found out the biggie.’
‘This is true.’
Is it possible? Is it possible that Pam was nervous about me finding out? That she was honouring Mum’s wishes and so didn’t want me going through her stuff? That that’s why she was angry that I’d changed the locks and she no longer had access to the house? Did she promise Mum on her deathbed that she’d get rid of the evidence for her?
I don’t like to think that’s a possibility.
I believe now might be the correct time to bury the hatchet. And I don’t mean in Pam’s head.
‘Pam? I’m really sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘That I made out you . . . that you might have put a pillow over Mum’s head. Or a cushion.’
‘What a thing to say.’
‘I was in shock. I was grieving. And I’m sorry.’
I haven’t said I’ve changed my mind. I haven’t said that’s not what I think any longer. I’ve just apologized for using those words.
I still think she did it.
But maybe she did her a favour.
‘Thank you. Will we be seeing you in the New Forest soon?’
‘I’ll be sure to let you know next time I’m coming.’
I keep dreaming I’m back there. I keep dreaming I’m in that street and the mountain is towering above me. It’s always black and white in my dreams; it all takes place in a time that knew no colour. In the dream I’m always Myrus. I’m not unlike the gossiping housewife from the Bloomsbury doorstep, with my arms crossed across my cracking bosom, and a ciggie dangling from the corner of my mouth. I’m standing in my bedroom at the back of my maisonette, looking down onto the garden at Lovers’ Leap. I can see a girl, not unlike Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, same black-and-white gingham dress, same hair in pigtails, only in my dream she’s attacking the ground with a pickaxe.
I wake. And I always think the same thing.
There’s no place like home.
Dorothy. Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. She went missing. Okay, so she went on the most incredible journey and saw the most fantastical things, but all the time she hated it and wanted to get home.
Is that how I felt? Did I know? Was I as scared of Shirley as Dorothy was of the Wicked Witch of the West? Or did I love her like Glinda the Good Witch?
What were you, Shirley? A good witch or a bad witch?
I remember Ben telling me the story of the woman who’d played Auntie Em in the film. About how she killed herself draped in a gold cape, surrounded by all her publicity shots and press clippings from her successful career. Ben had always found this image so camp; who wouldn’t? The ageing star daring us in death to tell her she was no good.
No kid, I was a star!
But when I investigated further I found that the poor lady had been crippled with arthritis and was going blind, and she hated every minute of the pain she found herself in. So. Not so camp after all. Though the added flourish of the press cuttings and head shots was definitely a coup de théâtre.
Is that how you felt, Shirley? When it was all over? Did you end up killing yourself? Could you, too, no longer live with the pain? You’d done something quite extraordinary and it had gone and what were you left with? Nothing. And that’s a lot to deal with.
Christ. What am I sounding like? Enough with all the Wizard of Oz analogies. That way madness lies!
Although I do think that film, now, is very skewed in favour of the journey that Dorothy goes on. I mean. What about her poor family? Left behind in Kansas, having to deal with the aftermath of a twister and thinking that their child has been killed in the tornado. You don’t see any of that in the movie. That’s where the real story is.
Or is it?
Isn’t my whole driving force at the moment to work out what happened in Oz, rather than what happened back in Kansas?
I know. I really do need to drop it.
Even if the analogy is a really good one.
Oh no. Am I too camp? Is that why my last boyfriend turned out to be gay? Did I drive him to it with my camp analogies?
Stop. This. Now.
I’m at work, bored, when finally Kelly phones me.
‘Is now a good time?’
‘Hang on,’ I say, getting up. I address the room: ‘I’m just going out for a breather. Won’t be long.’
And I head out onto the pavement.
‘Okay. Shoot,’ I say.
‘I’ve found something interesting,’ she says, deadpan, as if she’s concentrating on something else.
‘Right,’ I say, all giddy and excited.
And then there is silence.
‘Okay, I’m all ears,’ I prompt, my giddiness levels still remaining high.
Yet again. Silence.
‘Kelly? Hello?’
Then suddenly she says, ‘I’ve got to go. I’m so sorry.’
‘Kelly?’
There is an urgency in her tone I don’t like. In the background I can hear a hammering sound. Like someone striking a wall with a heavy object. Is she being attacked?
‘I’ll have to show you in person. Meet me outside Kentish Town tube station.’
‘When?’
‘Half an hour.’
‘I’m at work.’
‘Six?’
‘I don’t finish till half past.’
‘Seven.’
And then she hangs up.
All afternoon I’m frantically wondering what it is she’s found, what she’s going to show me at the station. I worry that I’ve acted too ungratefully towards her. She’s had some sort of breakthrough. It’s the first time she’s made contact since we met. What’s more, she sounded sober. And I just acted all, Oh God, it’s really inconvenient right now, soz hon, to her.
What a rude bitch I am.
I realize the error of my ways and so spend the afternoon phoning her mobile, but every time it goes straight to answerphone. I leave a variety of ‘Actually I’m free now if you want me to come straight away’ type messages, but she doesn’t call back so by four I decide to leave it till our seven o’clock meet.
Ben, Didi and Tracy keep looking at me, wondering why I keep nipping out to make umpteen phone calls. As the obsession is eating away at me, I can’t help myself. I’m going to tell them. I’ll put some spin on it so they don’t think it’s me, but you never know . . . one of them might have some good advice about the situation.
‘So anyway –’ I try to sound as chirpy as possible – ‘I’ve got this friend, right, in the New Forest and she just found out that when she was little she was abducted.’
Didi gasps. ‘By Isis?’
‘From her back garden. People used to leave their babies outside all the time back then. ‘Anyway, she was missing for weeks on end before they caught her abductor.’
‘Who was it?’
‘Some random woman who’d told her boyfriend she was pregnant when she wasn’t and so she needed a baby to keep the lie going.’
‘Blimey,’ says Tracy, and I’m inclined to agree. It is indeed a blimey situation.
‘Wasn’t baby Diana, was it?’ Ben asks. And I nearly fall off my chair.
‘Yes! How do you know?’
And then of course I remember that Ben is quite a bit older than me and presumably saw the news items as a child.
‘Oh, I just remember her dad was really fit.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘I had my first wank over him, actually.’
Okay, this is now the seventh circle of hell that I’m finding myself in.
‘He was really fit. I loved seeing him cry.’
Now I want to change the subject. But Ben might have some welcome information.
‘I was quite disappointed when they got the baby back. He just disappeared like that.’
And with that Ben snaps his fingers dramatically.
‘What’s he like now?’ he asks. ‘Have you got a photo?’
‘Why would I have a photo?’
‘Well, he’s your mate’s dad.’
‘Oh, yeah. Oh, she doesn’t really see him any more.’
Ben looks most put out.
‘What was her mum like, then?’
He shrugs. ‘Like I’m gonna remember her.’
Typical.
‘She had big hair, though. I remember that. Well, it was the eighties.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Thirteen. Fourteen? When did it happen?’
‘Nineteen eighty-one.’
He nearly coughs up his windpipe with embarrassment.
‘Oh scrap that, I must have been about six.’
As I’ve always thought. This bugger lies about his age.
‘How is she? This Diana?’ he asks, in a rare moment of kindness and interest in others.
‘Yeah, she’s good.’
‘You’d think something like that might scar you for life.’ He sighs.
‘Do you remember anything about the woman who took her?’
Ben thinks. Chews the end of his vape. Then shakes his head.
‘Nothing whatsoever.’ Then his eyes widen as if he’s remembering something. He adds, ‘I always wondered if Lisa Stansfield’s song was based on all that.’
‘Which song?’
And he bursts into a heavily vibrato’d rendition of ‘Been Around the World’. And when he sings the bit about not being able to find his baby, Didi gasps and looks at me.
‘Someone wrote a song about your friend. That’s so awesome.’
‘Right?’ echoes Tracy.
‘Awesome sauce!’ adds Ben. Just then the phone rings. He snaps it up. ‘Hello, Venus?’
I feel like hitting my head against a brick wall.
It’s dark by seven and Kentish Town feels mobbed. The pavement outside the tube station is too narrow for the volume of people walking past. Alongside the entrance an awning is down, sheltering a greengrocer’s who’s put tables out on the pavement crammed with plastic bowls full of the most vibrant-coloured fruit and veg. It all looks like someone has painted them, or they’re a pre-filtered Instagram moment waiting to happen. It starts to drizzle and the colours all around me seem to smudge. The headlights of passing cars, the neon shop signs, the white cubes of iPhone screens, make me feel like I’m in a work of art, a drawing smudged by the artist’s thumb.
At twenty past seven I’m getting a bit tired of waiting, and starting to feel the cold. I try calling Kelly on my mobile but it goes straight to answerphone. At half seven the rain eases off a little so I decide to walk down the high street and see if she’s in her office. But when I get to the sauna I see that there is an ambulance outside, its back doors open, lights off. Maybe someone has collapsed in the heat of the sauna. But then I see that the door next to it is open, the door up to Kelly’s office. A few seconds later I see a flash of lime green and a paramedic is backing out through the door, carrying a stretcher. Another paramedic is carrying the other end. Lying on the stretcher is none other than Kelly. I freeze, suddenly feeling the blood drain down through me. Her eyes are closed and she looks dead. Selfishly, the first thing I think is, She can’t die. She’s made a breakthrough in my case. Please. Don’t let her die.
‘What’s happened to her?’ I call out to the paramedics. Then realize I must look like an incredibly nosy passer-by, so I add by way of explanation, ‘I do know her.’
‘Not sure. Taking her to the hospital,’ one of them replies, cautiously. ‘We found her collapsed.’
‘She’ll live, though, right?’
‘We just need to take her in, love.’
‘Of course.’
‘What’s her name?’ one of them asks me.
‘Kelly. Kelly Hopper.’ I then add, ‘Not Hoppen, like the interior designer.’
And they both look at me like I am mad. I am obviously speaking a foreign language to them.
‘Jeez!’ I joke. ‘What are you doing at eight o’clock in the evening when her reality design competition programme’s on?’
‘Saving lives,’ one of them replies.
‘Yeah, that was . . . part of the joke.’
I watch as they hoick Kelly up into the back of the ambulance, then strap in the stretcher so that it doesn’t roll about on its wheels.
‘Which hospital is she going to?’
‘Royal Free, love.’
As the ambulance pulls off I realize I am standing in the entrance to Kelly’s office. The ambulance men haven’t closed the door, thinking I was going in, judging by how I have positioned myself. Would it be rude to go up and see if I can make sense of any of Kelly’s notes?
I would only be quick.
I am going to pay her if she gets any results.
Therefore I sort of have a right to go up.
Sod it. I will.
It’s a shock when I get to the office at the top of the stairs. The door is unlocked and open; light is streaming into what feels like a white cube. Every single stick of furniture bar none has been removed, and every soft furnishing. The windows stand naked, stripped of any curtains, oblong marks across the floor showing where rugs once lay. Every shred of evidence that Kelly Hopper was once here has been eradicated. Gone. In a puff of paramedic. All the built-in shelves are bare, and in some places the actual light switches have been unscrewed from the walls. This is no longer a detective agency.
Was that what she was trying to tell me? Was that what she had discovered; that she’d have to move on, try something new?
Perhaps I will never know.