Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
As soon as she opened the door, Beatrice could hear laughter. She paused in the hallway, listening. She couldn’t detect Luke’s voice at all, only Orla’s and Livvie’s. Slowly, she walked towards the kitchen. Every muscle in her body felt leaden with tiredness; the previous night, she’d been up until three in the morning going through the last filing cabinet of papers on the first floor, but had found nothing of any value to her.
The house on Damask Square, it appeared, had once been home to a firm of accountants that had done the books for various local businesses, and Beatrice had spent a fruitless three hours looking through the ledgers of an Indian restaurant, a company that imported silk fabric from Vietnam –she’d felt a leap of excitement when she saw this, but it had subsided almost immediately; the names were wrong, the dates were wrong, everything was wrong– and a law firm that appeared to specialise in defending local gangsters.
The papers might have been interesting, but Beatrice had been able to make little sense of the endless columns of credit and debit, especially by the dim light of her tiny torch. At last, her head drooping and her eyes burning with fatigue and dust, she’d abandoned her search and gone to bed.
That was it, now. There was nothing left on that floor for her to investigate. She’d wasted whole nights – almost three weeks’ worth of nights – and found nothing, and now she didn’t know where to go next.
Nothing but the painting. She’d looked at it again and again, in daylight, admiring its quality and confirming – not that she needed to confirm – that it was indeed the pub in Clonmara. The hills were different now, their sides scarred with houses and small industrial estates. But the pub was still there, unmistakable. Beatrice wondered whether the painting showed the view from the big house where the Doyle family had once lived, now demolished.
She could, of course, ask Orla. The painting was unsigned – had it been in the house when Orla moved in? Had she bought it from one of the market stalls? Had she even – the thought made goosebumps rise on Beatrice’s neck – painted it herself? But Orla had never mentioned art to Beatrice, even though she’d seen her out in the garden with her own sketchbook, drawing the cat as she lay sprawled in the sun.
Besides, she never saw Orla alone. Beatrice left the house in the mornings before anyone was up, and by the time she got home at night Livvie was almost always there, chatting to Orla in the kitchen as she was now.
Silently, Beatrice walked through the dark hallway. Next to her was what had once been the dining room – a cavernous space, littered now with cans of paint, a pasting table, bags of plaster and Luke’s power tools. She hadn’t been in there yet; there was nothing to see. Then she felt a draught on her arm, a current of cool air in the otherwise warm house.
She stopped and looked. A door beneath the stairs, which had always been closed before, almost invisible against the layers of paint that covered the panelling, was standing ajar. She nudged it, stopping almost immediately when its hinges let out a creak of protest.
But it had opened wide enough for her to see that behind it, a steep flight of wooden stairs led downwards.
There must be a cellar. Of course, a house this age would have one – coal would have been stored there, probably, back in the day. Beatrice shuddered, imagining the grimy darkness beneath her feet. Searching the first floor had been bad enough; down there it would be horrible. There’d be rats and Beatrice had a terror of rats.
A sudden thump on the floor behind her made her jump and she spun around, but it was only Maud, hopping down the final stair from the first floor on to the bare boards.
Her mind made a snap connection: cat, rats. She remembered overhearing Orla, half-laughing and half-revolted, telling Luke she’d found the head of a squirrel on the landing outside her bedroom. If Maud was capable of that, rats would be a piece of cake in comparison.
But before she could formulate the fleeting thought into anything approaching an idea, the sound of water running into the sink in the kitchen stopped and she could hear Livvie’s voice quite clearly.
‘I mean, it’s not a date date, obviously.’
‘Really?’ Beatrice couldn’t see Orla, but she could picture the smile on her face. ‘What is it, then?’
‘It’s a… it’s just a pizza, or maybe a movie. On Friday night.’
‘Call me old-fashioned,’ Orla said, the smile still there in her voice, ‘but that sounds awfully like a date to me.’
Livvie laughed. ‘Okay. You’re right. It does sound like a date. But what if it isn’t? What if Luke just wants to hang out with me, like as friends?’
‘Then he’d be asking Beatrice to join you and hang out as friends, too,’ Orla pointed out.
Beatrice flinched at the mention of her name. She remembered reading somewhere that eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves. She knew she should walk away – go upstairs to her room, come down later and see if anyone had left any food for her. But she didn’t.
‘Well… maybe.’ Livvie’s voice was almost drowned out by the clatter of plates. ‘When we went to the pub a couple of weeks ago that was all of us, as friends. And maybe he has asked Beatrice to come too. I don’t know.’
But I know he hasn’t , Beatrice thought.
‘If it looks like a date, walks like a date and quacks like a date…’ Orla said.
Livvie laughed again. ‘Which leaves me with the question – what do I wear? I mean, I don’t want to look too try-hard, just in case it turns out not to be a date, and he’s got a girlfriend or something, and he just really fancies a pizza.’
‘He’s never mentioned any girlfriend to me,’ Orla said slowly. ‘Let me think. It’s been – what, almost three months since Luke moved in. And in all that time, I’ve never seen him going off looking like he’s going to meet up with someone special, or heard him sounding all lovey-dovey on the phone, or anything.’
‘Really? Are you sure?’
‘Not that it would be any of my business if he did,’ Orla continued. ‘And it’s not like this place is somewhere you’d want to bring someone for a night of passion. Though I can’t help feeling… he needed a place to live, quite suddenly. Perhaps there was someone before. But there isn’t now – I’m as sure of that as I can be.’
Beatrice heard the snap of a switch and the roar of the kettle starting up.
‘So I dress like it’s a date, then,’ Livvie said, as if she was thinking aloud. ‘But not fancy. Effortlessly stylish. How do you even do effortlessly stylish?’
‘With your figure, you can wear anything,’ Orla said. ‘There’s a reason fashion models are always tall and slender – clothes just hang better. There’s a stall at the market that has some great second-hand designer pieces for bargain prices. I saw a Nicole Farhi dress there last week. Which would be too much for Pizza Express, of course, but if you fancied a browse, I’m sure you’d find something.’
‘Which stall?’ Livvie asked. ‘I might go and have a look – maybe take an afternoon off work.’
‘I’ll show you,’ Orla suggested. ‘We could go together, maybe?’
‘Really? That would be great. Because you totally know how to dress. You always look amazing.’
Really? Beatrice echoed silently. Orla? With her unfashionably short hair that she didn’t even bother covering the greys in, and her clothes that, while admittedly well cut, were all clearly decades old? Why hadn’t Livvie asked her, Beatrice, what she should wear on this date – if it was a date – with Luke?
Eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves. She hadn’t actually heard anything at all, but she felt as if she had. She was queasy and resentful and – yes – hurt.
There was something about the way Livvie and Orla had been talking that told her this wasn’t the first cosy chat they’d had while washing up the dishes from dinner. There was a kind of casual intimacy about their conversation that Beatrice could never imagine there being between her and her landlady – and nor would she want there to be.
Or would she? Livvie and Orla sounded like friends – or more than friends. Like sisters, or even like a mother and adult daughter: affectionate, familiar, respectful.
Beatrice didn’t need a mother; she only wanted the truth. She had a perfectly good mother already, back home in Philadelphia. Although, somehow, she couldn’t imagine asking her own mother for advice on what to wear on a date – she almost laughed aloud at the thought, but stopped herself just in time. Her mother would probably suggest she wear a chastity belt, not some vintage designer treasure from a market stall.
I don’t care , she told herself. Let them go off on their girls’ shopping trip. I don’t care about Livvie and I don’t care about Orla and I certainly don’t care about Luke.
She was fairly certain that the last bit was true.
She crept back into the hallway, eased the front door open and then closed it again, more loudly than she had before, almost slamming it. Then she walked back towards the kitchen again, this time letting her feet thud noisily on the floorboards.
She stepped into the bright warmth of the kitchen. ‘Good evening.’
Livvie and Orla were sitting at the table, the teapot between them, the fragrance of the lapsang souchong tea Orla drank filling the air.
‘Beatrice.’ Orla smiled a greeting. ‘They’ve kept you late again. Are you hungry? There are sausages and potatoes.’
‘How was your day?’ Livvie asked.
Beatrice didn’t answer her. ‘I’m not hungry. I’ll go straight up to bed.’
Then she turned and made her way upstairs to her room.