The Girl Below(88)

“I had that job in the florist’s on Portobello Road,” she continued, ignoring me. “I worked there all through school and afterward, when I was at the poly. At first he used to come in himself to buy small bouquets, nothing flash, but after a while he started to ring up from Frankfurt or wherever he was working and would ask for the flowers to be delivered.”

She was talking about my father; he had bought flowers from the shop she worked in. Why was she talking about that? “He wasn’t fussy about blooms, but they had to be specific colors: oranges and reds, really quite garish,” she continued. “Over time, the arrangements got bigger, more expensive.”

“Mum hated cut flowers,” I said. “She must have thrown them out before I even saw them.”

Pippa bit down on her lip. “They weren’t for her, darling.”

An attack of dimwittedness came over me, and I pictured a bouquet left on the wrong doorstep, flowers getting pelted with rain. “Who were they for?”

“I feel so bad about it now,” she said. “But at the time—I suppose I was too preoccupied with myself. And your father was so charming. He used to take us all out for drinks—not just me but my friends too. Champagne cocktails at Annabel’s, the works. Once or twice she came too. We all knew what was going on, but no one told your mother.”

I suddenly understood. Rowan had been in the background all along. In a blink my childhood was reshuffled, all the hidden cards revealed. “How long did this go on for?” I said. “The flowers and all the rest?” I couldn’t bring myself to say her name.

“A few years, perhaps.”

“A few years?”

“None of us ever thought he’d leave your mother,” said Pippa.

Then, with utter clarity, I saw the ace of spades that had been in the deck all along. “She was pregnant,” I said. “Simon, their son, was born not long after they left.”

“Yes,” said Pippa. “I wasn’t sure if you knew.”

“I knew the timing was close, but I didn’t know how close.” I was quiet for a moment, thinking things over. “I can’t believe you knew Rowan, that you had drinks with her.” I hadn’t meant it accusingly—I was merely astonished—but to Pippa it sounded that way.

“If I could go back and change my part in it, I would,” she said.

I wanted somehow to reassure her that it hadn’t been her fault. “All you did was make up bouquets, have a few drinks.”

“I did more than that,” she said. “I helped to deceive your mother while your father went out and had fun. I didn’t see it that way until I had a child of my own. Then I deeply regretted all the lies.”

“Well,” I said, choosing my words carefully, and scarcely able to believe what I was about to say, “telling the truth isn’t always possible. You did what you thought was the best thing—at the time. Telling Mum might have made things worse.”

“I know,” said Pippa, and smiled. “I suppose that’s ultimately why I didn’t tell her.” She rubbed her eyes and leaned toward me. “Anyway, good night,” she said, giving me a warm hug. “I’m so relieved to have that off my chest.”

“It’s nothing, really,” I said, hugging her back.

After she left, I lay awake, grappling with the implications of what she’d told me. I had been lying when I’d said it was nothing. For some reason I had always felt that my father had cheated on me and not just on my mother, and now I understood why. By starting a family with someone else, he had cheated on the one he already had. All the feelings of resentment I had tried to deny suddenly bloomed inside me. No wonder Rowan had been paranoid that I was going to take them to the cleaners, for she knew I had every reason to. For a few minutes, I let my blood boil with righteous indignation, but then I just felt worn out and sad. Fleecing Rowan was no use to my mother, and it couldn’t deliver me a childhood with my father in it.

I drifted off to sleep, only to wake abruptly some hours later from a feverish dream set in a vast mansion haunted by unspeakable horrors. I sat up in bed, thinking that an overload of fear had woken me, only to realize, a few moments later, that what had actually roused me was a noise: a blunt, metallic scraping sound that was still there—iron dragging on concrete.

I was sleepy, and it didn’t click at first that I’d heard the noise before. Then I remembered where I’d heard it, and all the air went out of my lungs. It was the same noise I’d heard that night at Peggy’s flat, when I’d looked out the window and seen . . . what had I seen that night, exactly? In the weeks since, I’d tried not to analyze it because each time I had, nothing became any clearer.