Lonely Hearts

Fifteen

Rachel Chaplin shared her office with one of the other seniors, a room no wider than the average double bed and not a lot longer. Papers spilled out from in-trays and spread randomly across both desks, photocopied articles with the relevant passages highlighted, claim forms for necessary travel, memos. While you were out… Whoever had decided that pink was a good color for memo pads?

While Carole, her colleague, had spent the bulk of the morning trying to arrange for an eighty-two-year-old man with two replacement hips to be transferred from a geriatric ward into a nursing home, Rachel had been sorting out emergency fostering for Luke and Sarah Sheppard. Trying to.

“No, the boy is seven and the girl’s four. No, no, she’s got a nursery place. Not the same building, but close. Um, five, ten minutes walk, no more.”

“You don’t have any idea when a vacancy might occur? Yes, I do realize what it depends upon and without wishing that to happen. Yes, I see, in a coma for four days and the doctor has no idea…Yes, that’s right, if you would, please ring me. Right.”

“I don’t think it would be a good idea if the grandmother didn’t have access. She’s not very mobile, that’s the problem. Otherwise…Look, I don’t want to sound grudging, but can I get back to you? No, today, I promise. One way or another, certainly.”

“You do know what it’s like in a geriatric ward? Then you know why I’m anxious he should be moved.”

“Hello, this is Rachel Chaplin, city office. Yes, fine thanks. You? Good. Oh, really? That’s great. Listen, there was a woman you used to use for short-term fostering. I met her once at that case conference we both went to. Yes, that’s the one. I was wondering…Where? Australia. Thanks, anyway. Bye.”

For the first time in maybe an hour both receivers were in their cradles. Rachel stood up and arched backwards, stretching the muscles of her back.

“Alexander technique, that’s what you ought to try,” Carole remarked.

“Isn’t that where you lie flat on your back and have someone walk all over you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Always resisted it. Reminds me of too many relationships.”

“You’re all right, you and Chris.”

Rachel looked at her.

“I mean, he’s not like that.”

“More subtle.”

“Why don’t you get him to give you a massage?”

“Can’t see him having the time.”

“Find it. Last thing you want is a bad back. Something like that starts to go and the next thing you know you’re applying for a mobility allowance.”

Sitting back down, turning the pages of her address book, Rachel laughed. “Thanks very much!”

“You’re still a young woman, but that’s when it all begins to go wrong.”

“You can say that again.”

“I’m working with it all the time. People who’ve never given their bodies a single thought and then suddenly they’re sixty and looking around, wondering why bits and pieces are malfunctioning. I mean, if it were a car, you wouldn’t…”

Carole broke off as Rachel’s phone rang.

“Hello, this is…Chris? Anything wrong?”

She glanced across at Carole, who gave a quick smile before starting to dial a number.

“I was going to skip lunch,” Rachel said. “I don’t think I’ve got the time. Besides, I brought a sandwich.”

Continuing to leaf through her address book, Rachel’s face set in a frown. She didn’t want this.

“Look, Chris,” she said, interrupting him. “I’ll meet you by the church. Five-past. Now I’ve got to go.”

“Well, I suppose that depends on how you define incontinent,” Carole was saying.

Rachel closed the book decisively and rang the internal number of the officer in charge of domiciliary care.

The sheets, the duvet cover, even the mattress, all had been stripped and bagged, taken away to forensic for analysis and reports. Resnick sat on the iron frame of the bed. Graham Millington was squatting on his haunches, knuckles of one hand resting against the floor. The drawer of the bedside cabinet was open and empty. Between Resnick and Millington, spreading across the carpet, overlapped, the letters.

“It’s raining.”

Funny, isn’t it, Rachel was thinking, how suddenly, one day and for no good reason, all those banalities we exchange throughout out lives become so intensely irritating.

“I said…”

“I know.”

“Well, do we have to stand out in it, getting wet?”

“It was your idea.”

“Not to come here.”

“I didn’t want to go far.”

“Surely we could go to a pub? Even if it’s only for a quick half.”

Rachel went through the arched iron gateway and turned right along uneven flagstones towards the south porch. Surrounded by scaffolding, like so much of the church, it was in the process of restoration.

She took her hands from her pockets, unfastened the top of her coat. Pushing his fingers through his damp hair, Chris Phillips followed her out of the rain. A couple of solicitors’ clerks scuttled past them, cellophane-wrapped lunch inside white Marks amp; Spencer bags.

“So what was so urgent?”

He started to speak, checked himself, half-turned his head aside to where the rain glistened on the black of the railings and a couple of petals clung, pale, to the bed of rose bushes.

“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?” he said.

If Rachel heard him, she gave no sign.

Dear Box 124,

As you can guess I’m replying to your ad in Lonely Hearts. I’d better come right out with it and say that I’m a bit of a way outside the ages you mention-forty-three next birthday-but thought I’d give it a go anyway. After all, what’s the price of a stamp these days!

Seriously though, I am caring and lively. Given the chance, if you know what I mean! Used to be married and have one kiddie, who I see every other weekend. The wife, as was, lives in Lincoln now so, as I’m not running a car at the moment, the journey’s a bit of a problem. But enough of my difficulties! (You don’t say if you’ve been married at all, not a lot about yourself at all-slim, attractive, twenty-nine-that’s good enough, I suppose!)

Anyway, to save me rambling on, why don’t we meet up one evening and see how it goes? You can’t phone me at the moment (no phone!) so just drop me a line and say when and where.

I really hope you do.

Sincerely,

John Benedict

“Rach.” (God! She hated it when he called her that.) “I just want to know what’s going on.”

“It’s cold, it’s windy, I’m eating a…”

“Enough, Rachel.”

“…sandwich and you’re doing a very good impression of ‘deeply worried, Notts.’”

“Rachel, enough.”

Count up to ten, Rachel, she thought, stop being such a shit.

“All right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve been trying all morning to sort out some kind of care for two kids who’ve still got to be told their mother’s been murdered.”

He put an arm around her shoulders and she found herself trying not to flinch.

“I’m sorry, too,” Chris said. “I understand that you’re preoccupied,” (Preoccupied, is that what I am?) “but the same could go for both of us.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze before stepping away. “It’s bloody typical, isn’t it?”

“What’s that?”

“You can’t think about anything but work, which means you haven’t got any time left over for us, and my stupid brain’s so clogged up with what’s happening to us, I can’t think about my job for more than five minutes at a time.”

Dear Caring and Lively,

I don’t want you to think I’m in the habit of replying to these things, though I will admit to glancing through them, mainly for a laugh. There was something about the sound of yours, though, that made me want to set pen to paper for the first time. I couldn’t see you, of course, when I was writing but somehow it felt as if I could. See you there, sitting and having your lonely breakfast, sliding the end of the knife into my envelope and opening it up.

Why not give me a call?

Maybe you’ll be as attracted by the sound of my voice as I was by the words in your advert. We’ll never know till we try.

Yours,

Caring and Lively II (Not the Movie!)

“I just feel that I can’t touch you, I can’t talk with you, anything I do is wrong and everything I say is either stupid or insensitive or both.”

“Chris…”

“No, I mean it. I feel I’m offensive to you. That’s what it is.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No.”

“It’s the way I feel.”

Rachel stood with her face in her hands, leaning back against the parish notices, the poster for a concert of early music, details of the restoration appeal.

“Rachel, it’s the way you make me feel.”

Dear Miss Lonely Hearts,

I’m sure that you will already have received a mass of replies to your advertisement and so I suppose I shouldn’t rate my chances of earning a response too highly. When you’ve been trying, one way or another, to find a true friend in this harsh world, someone who might turn out to be your soulmate, for as many years as I have, you learn not to set your expectations too highly.

In case there is something in my letter which strikes a chord, though, let me tell you a little about myself. I am thirty-nine, only ten years older than yourself you see, and have always lived the bachelor life, though not through choice. Whenever I do begin to become close friends with a nice woman, something always seems to go wrong. When this happens, of course, I always say to myself, stop making a fool of yourself and vow to stop even trying. But that never lasts, does it, and something inside you, a sort of a yearning I suppose you could call it, makes you want to reach out to somebody again.

I very much hope that you will write to me and if you do I hope that we will be able to meet. Something tells me that we might be able to talk freely and openly to one another.

In anticipation of your reply,

Sincerely,

Martin Myers

“It’s this policeman, isn’t it? This Resnick.”

“What is?”

“Come on, Rachel! Ever since you met him, you’ve not been the same. Not towards me.”

“Chris, you’re talking about a man I’ve met on two occasions for a drink.”

“So you say.”

“What the hell’s that mean?”

“If that’s all there is to it, what’s he doing ringing you up at all hours of the night?”

“He rang me this morning because…”

“Because he wanted an excuse.”

Rachel laughed in amazement. “Oh, so he went out and engineered a convenient crime so he could meet me at half-past five?”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“It’s what you said.”

“What I mean is, he could have phoned through to the emergency duty team. That’s what anybody else in his position would have done. Wouldn’t they?”

Rachel walked past him to the edge of the porch. Rain was dripping steadily from the scaffolding, but otherwise it seemed to be stopping. There was a blue spray of sky behind the rooftops opposite.

“Wouldn’t they?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Yes.” Turning to face him, not knowing who she despised most for the hurt in his eyes, Chris or herself.

Dear 124,

Let’s get right down to it (as the actress said to the bishop). I’m twenty-six, five-foot-seven with my socks (and everything else) off and I weigh eleven stone. There are other vital statistics, but I’ll hang on until I can swop them with yours!

I’m a plumber, got my own business, van and that. Work evenings a lot of the time, but since what I do’s in my own hands (it is now, but if you play your cards right, nudge, nudge!) I could always meet you for a quick hour or so in the daytime. I don’t know if you’ve got a job or not, but that might suit you better.

Give us a ring. I’ve got one of them answering machines for the job, so you’d better not get too carried away talking to that! Leave that for the real thing.

Go on, do it today and remember what they say about plumbers!

You won’t regret it!

Love,

Dave

Through the railings they could see barristers going into the brasserie opposite. The sun was in the sky, the color of egg white. The slightest burnish of pink had begun to show on the stone slabs of the wall.

“He fancies you, then, does he? Resnick?”

“Chris, I don’t know.”

“Of course you know. Women always know.”

“Does it matter?”

“Then he does.”

“Chris…” She took, for a moment, no more than seconds, his hand in hers. “I can’t have this now, this…conversation. It isn’t the time.”

“It never is.”

She was looking at her watch.

“You’ll be home later?”

“Of course, I’ll be…Whatever do you think’s happening, Chris?”

“I know what’s happening. I’m not a fool. What I want to know is why, and how can I stop it.”

Rachel turned the collar of her coat up against the ends of her hair. Hands were back in her pockets. “We’ll talk tonight, okay?”

“Okay,” Chris sighed. “Yes, sure. You haven’t got any idea when…?”

“No.” She paused. “Chris…”

“I know. You’ve got to go.”

Along the path and down the worn steps, he didn’t expect her to look back but waited, anyway, until she was out of sight. He used his hand to wipe the surplus water from one of the benches by the front of the church and sat down.

“How many, Graham?”

“Forty-three.”

“Same age as John Benedict.”

“Sir?”

Resnick pointed at the letter at the top of its pile.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Millington said, adjusting his tie.

“What’s that?”

“All these blokes out there. Needing to, well, go through this sort of rigmarole.” He stood up, flexing his legs where the muscles had been stiffening. “I never thought anyone took it seriously. Personal columns. Computer dating. What sort of a state do you have to be in to do that?”

Resnick looked at him. “Lonely?”

“I still reckon…”

But Resnick cut him off. “When you were getting them out of the drawer, you were careful about touching them?”

“Kid gloves.”

“I don’t suppose we’ll get any prints, but there’s no point in making it more difficult. Collect them up, will you. Best get them back to the station.” He glanced back down at the letters. “One or two going to get the kind of reply they didn’t bargain for, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Everything all right?” asked Carole when Rachel walked back into the office.

“Urn, why?”

“Thought you seemed a little preoccupied, that’s all.” (So it had to be right; that’s what she was.)

“I’ve been thinking about these Sheppard kids and now I wonder if fostering is the best answer after all. It might be better to leave them in the grandmother’s home; there’s room, so that’s not a problem. Her lack of mobility had decided me against it, but maybe that could be coped with. Get someone to call in there on a regular basis. Morning and evening to start off with. It would be a way of getting the woman to accept help for herself anyway. Might turn out to be a better solution for her and the children. What do you think?”