It started to rain as Alice made it to Waitrose, and she left Agatha with Jim, The Big Issue seller who was huddling under the dripping canopy. She bought a pint of milk, some cream with a yellow reduced sticker on it, an onion, potatoes, leeks and some chives. She’d make some hearty soup, she decided, then light the fire and spend the afternoon with her library book. After the few days she’d had, a nap would probably then be in order.
Back outside the supermarket, she smiled, seeing Jim petting Agatha.
‘Bet you’re pleased the cold snap’s over?’ she said, buying a magazine and taking Agatha’s lead.
‘Yes, it’s been horrible. I hate this drizzle. Gets right in your bones.’
‘Spring’s not too far away,’ Alice said cheerily, but Jim looked sceptical. They both knew that these long winter months were going to be gruelling and hard.
As she walked back to her flat, she thought about Jim standing in the cold and how awful it was that he had to stay in the hostel several Tube stops away, which he called his temporary home. She often wondered whether she should just invite him to stay with her, not that she had the room, but she still always felt so mean walking away. She resolved to make enough soup to bring him a large flask of it.
Life was often so complex, the right path not always so easy to spot. Like with Enya’s death. Alice had so hoped for answers when she’d set out this morning but now she had more questions than ever.
She wanted nothing more than to hop into a warm bath and ring Jinx to tell her all about it, but she couldn’t admit that she’d baked the detective a cake without opening herself wide to a level of teasing she wasn’t quite feeling robust enough to take.
The more she thought about it, the more she worried she really had now done all she could to help find Enya’s killer. But her promise to Gerda weighed heavily on her mind. She’d promised she’d find out exactly what had happened to Enya, but what if the police proved Gerda right by ditching the case? The way Detective Rigby had said that it had gone ‘upstairs’ had made Alice suspicious. Who was ‘upstairs’ and what exactly were their powers? It was all terribly unclear.
As she rounded the corner onto her street, all thoughts of Enya were instantly forgotten when she saw two large red fire engines parked outside her building.
‘Oh, goodness,’ she said to Agatha, upping her pace. What was going on? Please don’t let anyone be hurt.
A crowd had gathered in front of the engines, and Alice recognised several of the tenants from upstairs amongst the lookyloos. But there was no sign of any smoke.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked the fireman standing at the edge of a cordon.
‘Sorry. I’m afraid you can’t go any nearer,’ he said. ‘We’re not sure how safe the building is.’
‘But that’s my … that’s where I live.’
‘Please, madam, just stand back,’ he said, his radio crackling.
Spotting Mr Mantis, Alice shouldered her way through the crowd towards him. The man from the flat above was with him too and, astonishingly, shot Miss Beeton a smile.
‘Look, she’s here,’ he said, jerking Mr Mantis round to face her.
Mantis gave her a flash of his yellow dentures. ‘Oh, thank God, thank God, you’re OK,’ he said.
‘But why wouldn’t I be?’ Alice asked.
‘Because we thought you were inside. You and your dog.’
Mr Mantis reached down to stroke her, but Agatha, who had a long – and vindictive – memory, viciously bared her teeth.
‘Please,’ Alice said, ‘will someone just tell me—’
‘Your ceiling. His floor,’ Mantis said, jabbing a fat finger towards the man from upstairs, who was now looking anywhere but at Alice and talking rapidly into his phone. ‘The whole thing’s collapsed.’
Alice gawped at Mr Mantis and then pushed forward with Agatha barking by her side. Reaching the front of the small crowd, she saw several more members of the fire crew at the bottom of her steps, surrounded by shards of smashed terracotta pots.
Dusty smoke billowed out from her open front door, which looked like it had been smashed in. She couldn’t see through her kitchen windows, but above, through the windows of the first-floor flat, she could see the same dust.
‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ Mr Mantis shouted down to the fire crew, pointing at her. ‘She’s here.’
A burly crew member with a huge handlebar moustache rushed up to talk to Alice, grinning to begin with, before shouting back down to his crew to call off the search. He started asking a lot of questions, which rushed over Alice in a wave.
As he spoke, she could only look at the smoke and her flat. Her lovely little flat. Her home in ruins. And her things … all her beautiful things …
‘I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to get into your property for some time,’ she heard the burly fireman telling her. ‘At least not until a structural engineer has deemed it safe, which, judging from the damage, isn’t going to be any time soon.’
‘How bad is it?’ Alice finally managed to say.
‘The kitchen ceiling’s fully down and there’s some damage in the other rooms too. One of the old mains pipes burst, so that’s the bedroom wrecked as well …’
She thought immediately of her prized Agatha Christies.
‘But you can just thank your lucky stars you weren’t inside,’ the crew chief said. ‘Or you’d probably be a goner.’
Yes, yes, he was right, of course. She picked up Agatha and squeezed her little dog extra hard.
‘You’re probably in shock, Miss, if you don’t mind me saying,’ said the crew chief. ‘Do you have somewhere else you can stay? We’ll make the door secure for you again. But you really should leave it a day or two to let the dust settle before going in.’
Dressed in a Japanese kimono, with her hair wrapped in an orange turban, Jinx was framed by a riot of colour, being the angels and cherubs on the designer wallpaper of her kitchenette. The cacophony of colours was giving Alice a headache.
‘So, what happened then?’ Jinx asked, as she plopped slices of lemon into the two large gin and tonics on the worktop.
Rain lashed against the skylight and window, which opened onto a small terrace with a view of the west London cemetery. The view was framed by mint silk curtains Jinx had purloined from one of her previous, larger homes. They ballooned excess material on the floor, which Agatha padded at with her paw.
‘Agatha, come here,’ Alice said, worried her little dog might mistake the plush green for foliage and decide to cock her leg.
Wriggling her hips past an art deco drinks cabinet, Jinx handed one of the glasses to Alice.
Alice sniffed loudly, dabbing the kitchen roll into the corner of her eye and gratefully taking the glass, as Jinx sat beside her, ruffling Agatha’s ears.
‘So much for dry January,’ Alice said.
‘Ah, but this is an emergency,’ Jinx told her, ‘wouldn’t you say?’
She smiled sympathetically and Alice nodded and they clinked glasses. Then she took a big, grateful swig.
Alice was over the worst of the crying, but she felt embarrassed now for losing control so comprehensively in front of Jinx when she’d turned up on the doorstep, bedraggled and angry, with Agatha in her arms.
‘You can stay here for as long as you like,’ Jinx said. ‘Honestly. Mi casa and all of that.’
‘No, Jinx, I can’t. You don’t have space.’
The tiny kitchen had a door off it to the bedroom, which also housed inappropriately large furniture, along with a life-sized cast-iron gorilla, which Jinx had adorned with sunglasses and a green feather boa.
‘You can have my room,’ Jinx said.
‘No.’
‘Or just camp down in the sitting room.’
Her sitting room where there was barely room enough to sit. ‘I’ll book into a hotel.’
‘You can’t afford a hotel.’ Alice blushed. Then, as if weighing up whether or not to say it, Jinx added, ‘I saw Jasper’s text.’
‘What text?’ Alice said, searching around for her phone.
‘It just flashed up when you were in the loo. I didn’t mean to read it.’
Alice picked up her phone from the ornate side table. She’d called Jasper earlier. She’d been in such a state that she’d just wanted to tell someone what had happened, but he hadn’t picked up. And now she read the text that Jinx had seen.
Still working on the money. Sorry Sis xx
So that’s the only reason he’d thought she’d been ringing him – to harass him. Not because she might have been in trouble herself. Jinx cocked her head sympathetically and Alice felt her eyes fill with unwanted tears again.
‘He’s still ducking you over that money, then?’ she said.
Alice shook her head and dabbed away her tears. She wanted to defend Jasper, but right now she couldn’t find the words. She hadn’t wanted to face it, but the interest on the loan was going to really bite this month. Panic started to rise again as she thought about her home insurance policy, knowing she’d taken out the cheapest one possible. And, pleased as he’d been that she wasn’t actually dead, Mr Mantis had already started making noises about leaving the matter of wider building insurance in his solicitor’s more than capable hands. In other words, he was going to fight her over every penny.
‘I’ve got a spare duvet somewhere,’ Jinx said, going through to her bedroom.
Alice followed her and stood in the doorway as Jinx opened the sliding door of her closet. In spite of her dour mood, Alice had to stop herself from gasping out loud. She’d never seen so many things crammed into one space.
‘Wow!’
‘Don’t judge. I know it’s a bit much.’
Alice walked over and surveyed the vast volume of clothes, hats, scarves, shoes and accessories before her.
‘You know, you could make a fortune selling some of these?’ she said, touching the jammed-together dresses.
‘Over my dead body,’ Jinx said. ‘These are my babies. They all have memories and meaning. They’re the very fabric of my life.’
Alice pulled out a slinky white satin jumpsuit. ‘Even this one?’ she asked.
‘Oh, now that is a treasure. There was this cute little shop in the meatpacking district in New York. This was back in the day, long before it became as trendy as it is now; 2002 or 2003 and I was with—’
‘You’ve never even worn it,’ Alice interrupted. ‘Look, it’s still got all its labels on.’
‘I know but—’
‘And it’s tiny. Does it actually fit?’ Alice asked. ‘Be honest.’
‘No, but if I went on a diet …’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Jinx. You’re still gorgeous, but you’ll never be a …’ Alice consulted the label. ‘Two. Not unless you get seriously ill.’
‘It’s not that bad. It’s American so a six, not a two.’
‘I rest my case. You’ll never be a six. Well, I hope not. So why not let her have another lease of life,’ Alice said, knowing that Jinx liked to give her clothes a sex. Most were women, but a few odd pieces were male. Alice had yet to fathom the formula. ‘What about Pandora? The dress agency. You know by the V&A? I know Bridget who runs it. She’d sell this and give you half of what she makes. Then you could buy something you really want. And that fits,’ she added.
‘Hmm, maybe,’ Jinx said. ‘I’ll think about it.’ Digging deeper into the closet, she hauled out a duvet from the very back. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said, recoiling at the slight smell of mildew.
‘You need a saucer of quicklime,’ Alice said. ‘That’s good for damp.’
‘And preserving bodies,’ Jinx joked. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got fresh sheets and you probably won’t even smell this after a while. Let’s set up the sofa bed. It’ll be just like old times.’
But as determinedly cheery as Jinx was, and as much as Alice suspected she was just trying to help, Alice knew that sleep was going to be elusive. She felt Agatha’s warm body coiled up against hers and put her hand on her soft ears for comfort. Where on earth were they going to live? Whatever was Alice going to do?