‘You’ll never know if you don’t ask.’ Heather had that determined and slightly crazy look in her eyes that Kallie remembered from their school days. It always used to envelop her whenever she decided to adopt someone else’s problem as a challenge. ‘Tell you what, I’ll ask for you. I do know the brother, after all. Let’s see if he’s there right now.’
‘Heather, he’s burying his sister. You can’t badger someone on a day like this.’
‘Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor, ever hear that? If we don’t ask, someone else will. Come on, don’t be such a wuss.’
‘I can’t, it’s her funeral. It’s wrong.’
‘Look, I’ll just pay my condolences and ask if he’s going to move in—stay here until I get back.’
As usual, Heather led the way. She always had, since they were eleven and nine. Heather, in trouble for stealing from the art-supplies cupboard, Kallie, the shy one who took the blame and never told. Heather, charging across roads and walking along the railway lines, Kallie stranded imploringly at the kerb or beside the track, waiting with clenched lips and downcast eyes. Heather with the lies of a demon, playing terrible games with older boys, Kallie with the heart of an angel, being terribly earnest. Men and money had driven them apart, but perhaps it was time to be friends again.
She sat in the kitchen and waited. The house was extraordinarily quiet. Walking to the window, she saw that the street was deserted but for a man and a woman from the funeral parlour, standing rigid and dormant beside the car, dressed in neat black suits and ribboned top hats, like a pair of chess-pieces. Having witnessed a thousand moments of sadness, their studied melancholia, so at odds with the urban world, appeared unfashionably graceful.
It was so very calm and still. Even the dingy clouds above the rooftops appeared to have stopped moving. They were, what, less than three miles from Piccadilly Circus? She could see the Telecom Tower through rain-spackled glass, although the top was hidden within low cloud. You forgot that there were still postwar pockets like this. Dark little houses. Cool still rooms. Ticking clocks. Settling dust. Polished wood. Time stretched back to the boredom of childhood. The houses were charming but slightly bothersome, as though they were waiting to dust down some half-buried memory and expose it to the light. Something here was comforting, yet best forgotten, a temporal paradox only serving to prove that you couldn’t go back.
Kallie let the curtain fall. The front door opened and quickly closed. Heather came in with a smug smile on her face.
‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get.’ She grabbed Kallie’s arm. ‘His name’s Ben Singh. Sounds like a character from Treasure Island, doesn’t it? But he’s her only surviving relative and he’s going to let the place go. He’s not doing it up to make money—he wants a very fast sale, even if it means going below the market price.’ She gave a muted scream of excitement. ‘I’m sure you could get in there, Kallie. The house could be yours. You’d finally have independence. You’d have somewhere you could call home.’
Kallie thought of the dark windows and doors behind which a woman had died, and smiled back uncertainly.
6
* * *
TAKING THE PLUNGE
‘I don’t understand how you got my mobile number.’
Paul Farrow set his beer back on the bar and studied the two men perched on stools before him. They had announced themselves as Garrett and Moss, sounding like an old music-hall act, but were involved in property. They represented a matched pair, a modern-day version of Victorian Toby jugs, with their grey suits, sclerotic cheeks and thinning fair hair, pink ties knotted loosely, stomachs forcing gaps between the buttons of identical blue-striped shirts. The heavier jug, Garrett, wore rings made from gold coins. As a plea for credibility, the look was singularly unsuccessful. Paul wore torn Diesel jeans and a black sweater, the regalia of the media man, regarded with disdain by men in cufflinks. They were doomed to be enemies before anyone had opened their mouth.
‘I’ve been in touch with Mr Singh on a number of previous occasions,’ said Garrett. ‘Obviously, properties like the house belonging to Mr Singh’s sister are highly prized in this area because of their proximity to the new King’s Cross rail link. We have a lot of European interest.’
‘So Mr Singh came to you for a sale.’ Paul fingered the beaded sandalwood strap on his wrist as he studied the two men, taking a fantastic dislike to them.
‘Not exactly.’ Garrett fidgeted atop his stool while he sought a way to shift the facts into a better light. ‘I’ve been trying to impress on him the importance of achieving the maximum financial benefit from his inheritance, and heard you were in touch—’