Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner (primary phonics .TXT) 📕

Anna made us eggs on toast, the steam from the boiler pipe blowing clouds over the kitchen window. The kitchen tiles were cold, she brought me green socks to borrow. It’s funny, the things you remember.

Now, they are dead, their house in ruins. The garden a wasteland of bricks, a cement mixer, tarpaulins. The massive bonfire heaves and breathes and paints the bricks a luminous orange. The heat over the bonfire makes the tall windows seem to wobble, like a circus mirror. It feels like an apocalypse. I look at the discarded cans and cigarette butts that litter the beautiful garden, the rotting fruit from Anna’s beloved pear tree. I wonder what Helen’s parents would think of their children now.

HELEN

‘Where did you get that dress?’

My words snap like teeth. For once, Rachel has the grace to look embarrassed.

‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind. It was in your bottom drawer. I hadn’t seen you wear it before – I thought maybe you didn’t like it.’

‘What were you doing in my bottom drawer, Rachel?’

‘You did say I could borrow something,’ she says. She looks puzzled, as if she doesn’t understand. ‘Remember?’

For God’s sake. I had said vaguely, once, that she could borrow something. It hadn’t been an open invitation to rifle through my drawers.

‘And you left that red dress out for me, the other time, when we went to Rory’s thing,’ she adds, frowning. ‘I thought you’d be cool with me taking something else for tonight.’

I stare at her. I have no idea what she means about the red dress. I’d never seen that thing before, and even if I had, I would never have dreamed of suggesting she wear it to a dinner at Serena’s house. What is she talking about? But as she fiddles with the hemline of her blue velvet dress, I remember the real source of my fury.

‘I know you’ve taken other things,’ I say, a tremor in my voice. ‘I know you took that note from inside my book. That photograph – it was you that stuck it back together, wasn’t it? Why did you do that, Rachel? Where did you even find it?’

‘What note? I didn’t take anything from your book. I didn’t stick any photograph back together. Seriously. I don’t know what you’re talking about, Helen.’

I ignore her. I am shouting. ‘What is this all about? Look, I found your hiding place!’ I point at the hole in the floor. ‘What have you done to my passport, Rachel? Was that some kind of sick joke, cutting my face out?’

Rachel shakes her head. ‘No, hang on,’ she is saying, looking upset. ‘You’ve got this all wrong. It wasn’t me that did this.’

‘For God’s sake, stop lying! I found your hiding place.’ I throw the passport down in front of her. ‘I let you stay here. And this is how you repay me – snooping around? Stealing things? Cutting up my passport? Lying?’

Rachel holds up the palms of her hands, looks me in the eye. ‘I didn’t take a note from your book, Helen,’ she says slowly. ‘Or a photograph. Honestly. That must have been someone else. Whatever it was about, someone else is on to you – not me.’

I hear the blood pounding in my ears, still not drowning out the incessant noise of the dehumidifier. On to me? She’s insane. Completely insane.

‘Rachel,’ I say, ‘you stole our laptop. You stole my passport – cut up my bloody passport! You stole my mother’s dress …’ I pick up the note from her suitcase, the one addressed to W. ‘So what’s this, then? Is this yours? Or did you steal this as well?’

She steps closer to me. I remember the touch of her cool hands on my bump that time in the market. The feeling it had given me, like I was teetering over the edge of something. Instinctively, my hands fly to my belly.

‘I don’t know what happened to whatever note was in your book,’ she says again. ‘But I can explain everything else. All of this.’ She gestures to the laptop, the passport, the cuttings. ‘Look, Helen. You’ve been good to me. I know you didn’t have to let me stay here. But you need to listen to me now, OK? Because I know other things. Things you really should know. Before this baby comes.’ Then she reaches out, closes her hand over my stomach. ‘I had to wait before I told you – I just had to make sure I understood it all.’

I flinch, horrified by the feel of her fingers on my stomach, and catch the shelf with the back of my head. A glass vase falls but I manage to turn, pin it clumsily to the wall before it hits the ground. I feel the weight of it in my hands as they close around it. The thick rim, the heavy glass bottom. I think about it, just for a moment. I just want her to be quiet, I think. I just want her to go away. Leave me alone.

‘I’m on your side, Helen,’ she says. ‘Trust me, OK?’

‘Trust you? After this?’

‘I’m serious. You need to listen to me – or we could both be in danger. I mean it.’

I look at her and, at last, I see her for what she is. A fraud, a meddler. A source of trouble. A thief, in a dress she stole from my dead mother, over-plucked eyebrows and a face of cheap make-up. She is a joke. I don’t trust her. I don’t believe her. I don’t want to hear another word she says. I just want her gone. For good.

‘Rachel,’ I tell her, ‘we’re not friends. We never were.’

Rachel’s mouth drops open, her eyes wide. For once she is speechless, gawping at me like a child.

‘I’m sorry. I want you to leave, tonight, and not come back.’

KATIE

As I walk through the hallway, my hand finds the wall. I’ve had too much, far too much. I turn