The Killer Next Door

Chapter Fifteen

‘These are lovely,’ says Vesta, and helps herself to another. ‘What did you say they were called again?’

‘Shirini Khoshk.’ Hossein hovers a finger over the white card presentation box, selects a heart-shaped sandwich covered with shreds of something green and pops it whole into his mouth.

‘I’m never going to remember that,’ says Vesta. ‘You know what they remind me of? Biscuits.’

‘Yes,’ says Hossein, solemnly. ‘That’s right. They are like biscuits.’

‘Well, I never knew Persians ate biscuits.’

Hossein smiles. ‘What did you think we eat?’

Vesta sits back in her lawn chair, dunks a pastry in her PG Tips. ‘Oh, I dunno. Babies and that, I suppose.’

‘Only on Eid,’ he says. ‘They are very expensive.’

They lapse into contented silence and gaze up at the azure sky. The garden is prepared for Vesta’s party: blankets from her airing cupboard and her mother’s full tea service laid out on a side-table Hossein has carried out, and water bubbling on a primus stove left over from the Three-Day Week. The others are due any minute, but she doesn’t really mind too much if they don’t show up.

This is nice just as it is, she thinks. To be honest, I could do without having to make polite conversation with people I hardly know, though of course that’s the way they become people you do know. I bet him from Flat One doesn’t bother to show. Didn’t answer his invite. Not that I’m bothered if he doesn’t. All sandy hair and pale lips and not meeting your eye in the hall. Not a party animal, Gerard Bright. No great loss to one, either.

Who would have thought, thinks Vesta, glancing across at Hossein, that at nearly seventy my best friend would be an Iranian asylum seeker half my age? Not Mum and Dad, that’s for sure. They thought the Pelcsinskis at number seventeen were suspiciously foreign, with their weird cabbage-based food. What on earth would they make of the world now? We hadn’t even heard of Iranians before the 1980s, and now they’re all over the place. Like Somalis. Haven’t had many of them down here, though. They seem to be more of a north London thing.

‘Ooh, I saw your article in the Guardian, by the way,’ she says. ‘Very interesting.’

He raises his eyebrows. ‘Thanks, Vesta. I didn’t think anyone I knew would see it.’

‘Oh, you know. I like to go through the papers in the library. If there’s one thing you have a lot of when you’re retired, it’s time. So tell me something.’

‘Yes?’

‘I thought you weren’t allowed to work?’

‘I’m not. They don’t pay me. They make a donation to the Medical Council for the Victims of Torture.’

‘Oh. I see. That makes sense, I suppose.’

‘It does. They were good to me. They deserve something back.’

‘Still. Seems like a pretty pointless rule. All these people moaning about scroungers and they won’t let you work.’

Hossein shrugs. ‘It keeps my hand in.’

‘True.’

‘And it’ll make it easier to get a job when I get my papers.’

‘That’s true too.’

She starts to reach down to take the cling film off the food, but Hossein puts out a hand, pushes her back by the arm. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘I’m not ninety, Hossein.’

He tuts and gets down on his knees. Looks up as Cher comes round from the side-return, with a tall, fair-haired woman in tow. Vesta gets to her feet to greet them, like an old-fashioned hostess at a cocktail party. ‘You must be Collette,’ she says. ‘I’m Vesta.’

Collette blushes slightly, and shakes her hand. ‘This is very nice of you.’

‘Oh,’ Vesta waves a breezy hand over her bounty, ‘it’s nothing. A pleasure. Always a pleasure to get to know your neighbours.’

‘Hello, again,’ says Hossein, and she stutters a greeting, the colour on her pale cheeks deepening, but only meets his eye for a split second. My my, thinks Vesta, our new lady’s got a thing for the handsome lodger, and it’s only been a split second since she moved in. How cute. He could do with a nice lady friend. I’ve not seen him with a woman since he got here. ‘How are you settling in?’ he asks.

Her eyes are tinged slightly pink. Crying, or hay fever? ‘Okay,’ she says, and looks up at the sky.

‘Here,’ says Vesta, ‘sit down, do. Have the chair.’

‘Oh, no, I couldn’t. Someone else must…’

‘You’re the guest of honour,’ says Cher. ‘Just take it.’

Collette lowers herself selfconsciously into the spare deckchair. The beautiful man has his back turned to her now, uncovering a collection of old-fashioned teatime foods laid out on elegant antique plates. The old lady has a stack of matching cups and saucers and one of those big brown earthenware teapots at her side, on a spindly table. She studies her as she pours: she’s the only neighbour she’s not seen in the flesh before. She’s a surprising-looking woman. Tall and dignified, with nut-brown skin and steel grey hair, and the sort of profile that wouldn’t go amiss on a Cherokee brave. Not what you think of when someone says ‘the old lady downstairs’. Somehow that always conjures up pictures of walking sticks and buns full of Kirby grips. This woman looks like she’d be running an intensive care ward, if you let her.

Cher has sprawled herself on the edge of a blanket, platform soles like orange boxes on the ends of her skinny legs. The man keeps his eyes studiously away from the bare flesh, concentrates on the task at hand. What am I doing here? Collette wonders. I don’t want to make friends. All I want to do is go and lie down and think about Janine.

As soon as the wrapping is off, Cher’s hand darts on to the sandwiches. ‘I’m starving,’ she says.

‘Have a sandwich,’ says Hossein, and she laughs and flicks his upper arm with one fuchsia fingernail.

‘Did you make that cake, Vesta? Ooh, Vesta-cake. I knew you’d make a cake.’

She’s so kiddish, thinks Collette. And these people: they’re enablers. They treat her like some cheeky niece, indulge her. ‘We’re not cutting it till we’re all here,’ says Vesta. ‘Offer those sarnies around, Cher. Don’t just hog them. Would you like a cup of tea, Collette?’

‘Um,’ she says, ‘yes, that would be nice, thank you.’

‘Got better manners than you have, anyway,’ says Vesta to Cher.

‘Probably wasn’t drug up in care,’ says Cher, and stuffs a sausage roll whole into her mouth. She’s as skinny as a string bean, though she has a pair of surprisingly large breasts for such a small frame. Probably doesn’t eat much when it’s not given to her. Those kids never do. Cheese doodles and diet Coke, most likely, and the lack of calories made up with Baileys.

‘Milk and…?’ asks Vesta, and picks up a teacup.

‘Just milk, thanks. That’s a pretty service.’

‘It was my mother’s. Booth’s silicon china. It was a wedding present to my gran, before the Great War.’

‘Oh, how lovely,’ says Collette. She has nothing of family, now. Not that there ever was much. The one thing her mother achieved with her own life, as far as she knows, was to get out of Limerick and cut off her ties. After that, once she got to London, once she was pregnant and alone and the council gave her a flat, it was as if all the fight went out of her. She just sat there waiting for a man to save her and weeping as, one by one, they never did. There will be nothing but pound-shop china and second-hand pans for the council to clear out of her flat when they get round to it. She didn’t even have many friends to swap Christmas presents with. That’s how a lot of people amass decorative stuff: gifts and inheriting.

‘I would have died if the burglar had broken these,’ says Vesta. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to stop seeing my mother’s face.’

‘I’m sorry about your breakin. That must’ve been horrible. Did they get much?’

‘Scary, more than anything,’ says Vesta. ‘I’ve lived here all my life, and nothing like this has ever happened before. I just hope… you know. Now they’ve been in, they could come back. They do say they do that.’

‘It’s okay,’ says Hossein. ‘I’ll fix a chain lock on that door. They won’t get in again. Bastards.’

Vesta laughs. ‘My knight in shining armour. He’s an absolute godsend, this one,’ she says pointedly to Collette; lets her know she hasn’t missed her attempts not to look at him. ‘He’ll do anything for you, if you ask him.’

‘Well, not anything,’ says Hossein. He turns his golden smile on Collette, and Vesta sees her glow in the reflected light. ‘So, how are you settling in, Collette? Are you enjoying your luxury accommodation?’

‘All mod cons,’ says Collette, and waves away a sandwich from the plate Cher holds out. She remembers her gift, blushes and digs in her bag. Finds her pack of chocolate HobNobs and offers them to Vesta. ‘I brought these. A… a contribution. I’m sorry. They look really poor, against all this…’

‘Nonsense,’ says Hossein, as Vesta takes the biscuits and hands them on to him. ‘HobNobs are one of your country’s finest foodstuffs.’

‘Thanks, love,’ says Vesta. ‘What a treat.’

‘Don’t let him get started on food,’ says Cher. ‘He’ll go on for hours about his mum’s lamb with rhubarb if you let him.’

‘Lamb with rhubarb?’ says Vesta, ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’

‘Oh, God, it’s beautiful,’ says Hossein, and his eyes glow with liquid nostalgia. ‘The lamb is cooked for hours, so it falls off the bone, and she used to throw in fried mint and parsley at the last minute, so it’s still crunchy when you eat it…’

‘Told you,’ says Cher. ‘What are these? Arab cakes?’

‘Iranian,’ says Hossein, and pronounces the ‘a’ long, like an aaah. ‘Not Arab. Iranian.’

‘Whatever,’ says Cher, and pops a little baklava in to chase down her sausage roll. ‘Nnnnfff,’ she says, and sprays pastry flakes over the blanket, ‘that’s sooo good.’

‘I know,’ says Hossein. ‘Really, it’s hard to believe that such beauty could come from an evil empire, isn’t it?’

‘Can we start the cake?’ interrupts Cher.

‘Not till Thomas gets here.’ Vesta waves a finger in the air. ‘It’s easy to make young people happy with food, isn’t it?’ she says to Collette, confidingly. Oh, Lord, thinks Collette. Does she see me as closer to her generation than to theirs? She must be the same age as my mum.

Cher’s face drops. ‘Oh, Christ on a bike, is he coming?’ she asks.

‘I told you I was asking everybody. I asked him up there, too,’ she gestures towards the upper ground floor. ‘Although I somehow doubt we’re going to be graced with his presence. I saw him go off with his overnight bag this morning. I think he’s gone off to see his kids again.’

‘Thank God for that. He’s not exactly Mr Party, is he? Between him sitting there staring at the air like he’s trying to catch flies and Mr Chatty going on about the Second World War or something, we might as well pack up and go to sleep now. We’ll never get a word in once he turns up.’

Vesta raises an eyebrow. ‘Said the pot to the kettle.’

‘No, but I’m funny,’ says Cher, with the petulant assurance of the young. ‘He’s just such a… a fuckweasel.’

The side-return gate scrapes open, bangs to. They fall quiet and crane round, none of them sure, really, what a fuckweasel is, but fairly sure that Thomas won’t have liked being called one if he has heard. He can’t not have. Cher’s voice could warn ships on the Mersey.

‘Hello, hello!’ he calls, and his voice is unnaturally jolly. Yes, he’s heard, thinks Collette, but he’s going to pretend he hasn’t. ‘A beautiful afternoon for it!’

He comes round the corner. He’s wearing a polo shirt today – the minor bureaucrat’s smart-casual. It has obviously been maroon at some point in its existence, but has faded to a dark pink. He wears clip-on sun lenses over his spectacles; they’re smudged, and a small chip has come off one corner of the left lens so he has the look of someone who’s fallen on hard times, whose self-maintenance has slid downhill. The scuffed shoes and the slightly dandyish shirt suggest someone who clearly once cared about his appearance. Collette sighs inwardly – he looks like someone who’s lost hope.

‘Well!’ he says, marching across the lawn with a box of Milk Tray held out before him. ‘What a treat! So good to see the garden being used, as well. I love looking down on your little patch of green, Vesta. What a treat to come and be in it for a change. Hello, Hossein, hello, Collette. I’ve brought you some chocolates, Vesta. Maybe not the best present in this heat. I’m sorry. I didn’t think. About the melting issue.’

He doesn’t look at Cher, doesn’t include her in the greetings. Yes, he heard, thinks Collette again. And he’s not happy.

‘They’ll be lovely,’ says Vesta, taking the chocolates. ‘You are kind. Milk Tray! You shouldn’t have!’

‘Not at all, not at all, it’s nothing.’ He rubs his hands together like Uriah Heep and beams around him – at Collette, at Hossein, at Vesta’s begonias, at anywhere other than Cher. ‘Well, it’s another beautiful day, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘Though I suppose some people might find it too hot. Nothing’s ever perfect for everybody, is it?’

He stands awkwardly above them all, looking about for somewhere to sit and radiating an aroma of suppressed astonishment that the chairs have run out. I bet he’s one of those people, thinks Collette, who always gives off a faint air of reproach, one of those people who’s never truly happy unless he’s hard done by.

Collette gives it a go, anyway. ‘Here,’ she hauls herself to her feet. ‘Have a seat.’

‘Oh, no, no,’ says Thomas, ‘I couldn’t possibly. You’re sitting there.’

‘No, you’re all right,’ says Collette. ‘I’m more of a floor sitter anyway. And I’ve been in chairs non-stop today. It’ll be nice to get on to a rug.’

‘No, no,’ he begins again, but Collette practically dives on to the blanket next to Cher. ‘Look, I’m here now,’ she says, and he tuts sheepishly and sits himself down, takes the cup of tea Vesta holds out across the gap. ‘Isn’t this nice?’ he says, again, and this time no one bothers to respond.

‘So can we have some cake, now?’ asks Cher.

‘Yes. Collette, do you want to play mother?’

‘Sure.’

‘There’s a knife in the basket.’

‘Okay.’ She reaches in and closes her hand around a handle that sticks out from under a chequered teacloth. Feels a tiny jolt of surprise as it brings the whole cloth with it. It’s a chef’s knife, best part of a foot long: a pointed end and an edge that looks like it would cut silk in mid-air like a Samurai sword. ‘I thought I was just meant to cut the cake,’ she says, holding it up, ‘not stab it to death.’

‘Sorry,’ says Vesta. ‘My old man was a butcher. I’ve got all sorts. Knives, sinew scissors, cleavers…’

Hossein bursts out laughing. ‘It suits you,’ he says, looking at Collette. ‘It’s like it was made for you.’

Collette wrinkles her nose and makes a stabbing gesture through the air. They grin at each other and Vesta sees a small, indefinable moment pass between them. Then Collette bends to cut the cake.

‘So tell me, Collette,’ asks Thomas, ‘what brings you to our fine neck of London?’

This is why I didn’t want to come. Questions. They’re going to ask me questions. And I don’t know what to tell them. She lets her hair drop forward and cover her face, pretends to be concentrating on making the slice just so. ‘Oh, you know,’ she replies. ‘This and that. I’ve been abroad for a while. Just getting myself back together and working out what to do next.’

‘Do you come from here originally, then?’

No harm in telling them that, surely? Millions of people come from here. ‘Further over,’ she says. ‘Peckham, really. Over towards the Elephant.’

She sees the shutters of lost interest clamp down. No one cares about Peckham. London has invisible borders way beyond the north-south divide. To someone from the south-west, anything east of Brixton might as well be Berlin. It’s one of the reasons she had Janine sent to the home she did, one of the reasons she hopes she may get away with staying here: that in London terms, Leyton is as far from Ealing as Mars.

‘So what brings you to Northbourne?’ asks Vesta. ‘That’s a bit of a way from home, isn’t it?’ She can count the number of times she’s been to the West End herself on her fingers and toes. Even now she’s got a pensioner’s Freedom Pass, she can’t think of any reason to go.

‘I – my mum’s in a home. In Collier’s Wood. This seemed like, you know, near enough, but far enough away at the same time, if you get my drift.’

Hossein grins. ‘Oh, yes,’ he says. ‘I know what you mean.’

‘In a home?’ asks Vesta. ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, love. That must be hard.’

Collette shrugs. ‘It is what it is. But I didn’t want her to… you know. Alone. Not that she knows who I am, really, any more.’

‘Dementia? How old is she?’

‘Sixty-seven.’

‘My God!’ Vesta looks stricken. ‘But that’s younger than me!’

Collette doesn’t know what to say to that. It’s never really occurred to her that someone of Vesta’s age would think themselves still outside the zone when it came to the diseases of old age. ‘It’s her heart,’ she says. ‘It’s because of her heart. She’s got heart failure, and it’s affected her brain.’

What do you say? That she lived her life on a cocktail of prescription drugs and high-tar cigarettes and London Gin, and now she’s paying the price? A memory of Janine’s slack face swims up before her, and she wants to cry again. It’s not been much of a life, has it, Mum? I wonder if you ever wanted anything different for yourself?

‘My granddad had that,’ says Cher. ‘It sucks.’

‘How much longer do they think she’s got?’ asks Thomas, and the party freezes. Even Cher looks a bit shocked. You don’t encompass impending death with strangers. Not unless you’re in a hospital. He doesn’t seem to notice the change in atmosphere: just sits forward with his elbows hooked round his knees, curious. ‘Only, I work for the Citizen’s Advice,’ he says, ‘two days a week. It’s not something we handle, but if you need, you know, to know what to do, I’m sure I can find out.’

What a funny man, thinks Collette. I honestly think he actually means well. ‘I – thanks,’ she says. ‘Not much longer, I don’t think. It’s hard to tell.’

She glances up and is surprised to see an expression that looks like deep sorrow in Hossein’s eyes. Gosh, she thinks. You’ve seen some stuff, haven’t you? There’s someone you really, really miss. Then he looks away, awkwardly, and starts arranging the remaining patisseries on to the empty sandwich plate.

‘Who’s for cake?’ she asks, brightly.

‘Me,’ says everyone.