Perfect Little Children Read online

  “Zannah’s right, Dom. We need to make contact with Lewis in Florida.”

  “I wouldn’t say we need to, but—”

  “Dad!”

  One of my husband’s best qualities is that he knows when he’s lost an argument.

  “All right. If I have a spare minute tomorrow, I’ll—”

  “I’ll do it,” I say. “And not tomorrow. Now. Right now.”

  6

  An hour later, thanks to my son, I have an Instagram account. He’s put it on my phone, too—a little pink and orange camera icon—so that I can correspond with Lewis Braid more easily.

  If he replies.

  I’d have preferred to contact Flora directly, but I’ve searched the whole house and can’t find the old address book where I wrote down her number. I probably threw it away years ago.

  So far I’ve sent Lewis one message: “Hi Lewis, Beth Leeson here! Could you send me a phone number where I can contact you? It’s fairly urgent.”

  Zannah was watching over my shoulder as I typed. “Is that . . . Oh, my God! Ben! She’s using punctuation.”

  “Lewis Braid uses punctuation on Instagram too,” I said as both my children laughed at me.

  Then I pressed send. Ever since, I’ve been picking up my phone approximately every ten seconds, and using the other nine of each cycle to prepare dinner.

  “Beth,” says Dominic from the kitchen table.

  “Mm?”

  “You know it might be hours before—”

  “I know.”

  “Then stop looking.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Can you come and sit down for a minute? I want to talk to you, while the kids aren’t around.”

  “I can talk while I chop peppers.”

  “I know, but I’d like to . . .”

  I listen to the silence as he reworks his plan and decides it doesn’t matter if I sit down or not. It’s lucky we’re not both equally stubborn; we’d have had to get divorced long ago.

  “All right. I get why you want to try and understand what you saw yesterday. Anyone would want to. But . . . have you considered the possibility that you’ll never know for sure?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “No. Which is why I’m trying to find out.”

  “And hopefully Lewis’ll get back to you. But what do you think he’s going to say?”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t need him to phone me.”

  “Here’s what I think he’s going to say.” I hear Dom pouring himself another glass of wine from the bottle on the table. “‘Hey, Beth, great to hear from you! What? No, Flora wasn’t in Hemingford Abbots yesterday—she’s here in Florida with me. What, the children? Yeah, they’re all here too. Sorry? Kevin Cater? Yeah, we knew him vaguely. Couldn’t believe it when he and his wife turned up to view our house—and then they bought it! No, sorry, I’ve no idea if they’ve got kids or what they’re called.’”

  “He might say all that,” I agree. “We don’t know that he will.”

  “What if he does? Will you accept that you’ve found out all you can, and leave it alone?”

  I laugh. “Why would I do that?”

  “What else could you do, at that point?”

  “If Kevin and Jeanette Cater have two young kids, I can find out their names. I can talk to other neighbors on Wyddial Lane, find out if any of them knew Flora and Jeanette Cater. Or if any of them say, ‘She’s the same person, and we have no idea why she suddenly changed her name.’”

  Behind me, I hear Dom’s long, slow sigh. Clearly my answer wasn’t the one he was hoping for.

  “Put that knife down, and the peppers, and come and sit here,” he says. He sounds so reasonable and hopeful, it’s hard to resist. From his tone, I can almost believe that something brilliant will happen as soon as I sit down at the table, something that’ll solve every problem.

  I compromise by bringing the chopping board and knife with me, so that I can sit and chop at the same time. Dom thinks if we’re face-to-face, he’ll be able to persuade me. Looking straight at him isn’t going to change what’s in my head.

  “Yes, you could find out the names of the Caters’ kids if you tried, but what good would it do? If they’re called Thomas and Emily, then yes, it’s a massive coincidence and bloody strange, I agree—but so what? And if they’re not called Thomas and Emily, then . . . well, you probably didn’t hear anyone call them Thomas and Emily. People can get things wrong, Beth. Even you.”

  Don’t get defensive. Answer as calmly as possible.

  “That’s true. But why would that happen to me, when it never has before? It was hot yesterday, but not that hot. And . . . everything else I’ve seen before and since is real. The bottle, our wineglasses, these chopped red peppers . . . you can see them too, right?”

  “Beth . . .”

  “I’m not being facetious. I’m serious. I’ve had no other delusions or hallucinations. This isn’t part of a pattern. That makes me a reliable witness. I trust myself. I know who I saw yesterday. I saw Flora Braid. I heard her speak. She was my best friend for more than a decade. I’m not wrong about this.”

  “All right, let’s say you did. You saw Flora. And with her were two small children—who we know can’t be Thomas and Emily because they’re not little kids anymore. So, fine. You saw Flora with two kids. She called them Thomas and Emily. Maybe she’s calling herself Jeanette Cater these days. Who cares? None of these people are anything to do with us. We can forget about them and get on with our lives. Or at least I hope we can. So far, Zan and Ben don’t seem too freaked out by all this, which is great, but if it carries on . . .”

  “They’re fine, Dom. Zannah’s loving it.”

  “Too much, yes. She’s got her GCSEs coming up. It’s hard enough convincing her they matter as it is. Having her mother fall apart at the exact time that—”

  “Wait. Who said anything about falling apart?” I take the chopping board back over to the counter and start to chop an onion. “Wanting to find an explanation for something isn’t the same as having a nervous breakdown, Dom. Look, here I am, cooking dinner. I’m not crying, screaming, disintegrating.”

  “No, but you are obsessing. We’ve talked about nothing else since yesterday morning—which is fine, because it’s recent and it’s peculiar, I’m not denying that, but . . . you know.”

  “You want me to just forget all about it?”

  Will he have the guts to say it?

  “Not immediately—speak to Lewis if you can—but at a certain point, yes. We’re going to need to forget this and move on. Accept that we’ll never know the answer.”

  “That’s not fair,” I say quietly.

  “What isn’t?”

  “Pushing something you know you’ll be able to do and I won’t.”

  “Beth, it makes no sense to pursue this beyond a certain point if no answer presents itself soon. Let’s not allow it to take over our lives.”

  Dom’s right: it’s not ideal for my thoughts to be full of an unsolvable mystery when Zannah’s GCSEs are coming up. Could it be some kind of stress-escape fantasy? Would that be enough to make me imagine I saw . . .

  No. No way.

  I might never know what it means, but I’ll always know what I saw.

  I check my phone. There’s a new notification, from Instagram. Lewis. “He’s replied. ‘Call me!’ with an exclamation mark. He’s sent a number.”

  “Good. Then let’s call him,” says Dom.

  * * *

  The Olde Jug, our local village pub, has been around since the seventeenth century, but has only been called The Olde Jug since the new owners took over last March, added on a conservatory at the back, and hung hundreds of pottery jugs from the dining-room ceiling. These changes caused a rift in the village that’s still noticeable more than a year later.

  The discouraging estate agent warned Dom and me about village life. “Personally, give me the city any day,” he said. “I
live two minutes’ walk from Rawndesley station, shops all around me. Don’t need to get into my car to go anywhere, apart from for work. Villages are all well and good if you like that sort of thing, but they’re not right for everyone—your neighbors popping in all the time, wanting to know your business.”

  This was the one consideration that made me anxious about moving to Little Holling. Dom reassured me. “Think of it this way: how much fun would it be to live in a village if you couldn’t give less of a shit what the other villagers think of you?”

  So we decided to eschew the film club, the book group and all other such delights, and hope for the best. Dominic often boasts that he’s avoided our neighbors so successfully that he has no idea what any of them think of him. The only exception to this is The Olde Jug’s new owners. When they first arrived and changed the pub, the opposition to their proposed new-conservatory shake-up was so loud and hysterical that it reached even Dom’s ears. At first it seemed as if the entire village might boycott the pub, so Dom decided we had to go there as often as we could. For a while, we ate there four times a week, even though it was a stretch, financially. “I’m not letting a perfectly nice pub go out of business because some idiots can’t cope with change,” Dom insisted.

  He also went around knocking on doors one day, trying to persuade people to see sense. Many of them did—chiefly, those who had most missed their evening pint or four while the whole-village boycott was in progress—and that was how Little Holling divided into two factions, the one led by my husband and the one led by the deeply obnoxious Val and Geoff Monk, who, now, turn and walk the other way if they see any member of my family heading in their direction.

  Robin and Ruth, The Olde Jug’s new owners, have become our close friends, even though we no longer bankrupt ourselves eating their Sunday roasts and Friday fish-and-chip suppers every week. I’ve told Dom I know they’ll understand, and they will.

  “Well, I don’t,” he says. “Why not ring Lewis from the car, if you don’t want to do it in our house?” he asks as we walk across the green to the pub. It’s an odd-looking building: tall and narrow, with a white-painted brick frontage and red-painted stonework above and below the windows. It doesn’t look like a typical village-green pub.

  “With people strolling past, nosy villagers knocking on the window, dogs barking on the green?” I say. “No thanks. I want to be in a quiet room, alone, where I know Zan and Ben aren’t going to stick their heads around the door and yell, ‘Can we go into town and get a Nando’s?’”

  “You’re building this up too much, Beth. Going to a special place to make the call . . .”

  “Dom, I’m nipping across the green, that’s all. I mean, here we are.”

  “You’re hoping and secretly believing that Lewis Braid is going to tell you something mind-blowing that solves everything, and you’re going to be disappointed.”

  “I want to be able to focus, that’s all.”

  I’ve never said so to Dom in case it would sound disloyal, but I can’t concentrate at home—not on anything important that requires focus, not while Zannah and Ben are in the house and awake. That’s why I do my work admin late at night. Teenagers are even worse than nosy villagers when it comes to smashing through your carefully constructed boundaries.

  The Olde Jug is quiet and smells temptingly of roast beef. Soon it will start to fill up with all those who have booked for dinner. There are no tables in the bar area, and the restaurant part of the pub is relatively small—only one room, now with a conservatory extension which has enabled a few more tables to be added—and needs to be booked several weeks in advance. Little Holling folk complain furiously if they’ve found themselves eating near people who look as if they’re from Somewhere Else, even though there’s no rule stating that priority should be given to those who live closest.

  Robin and Ruth live in a two-bedroom flat above the pub. They’re happy for me to use it to make my call, as I knew they would be. “Don’t even ask,” Dominic says over his shoulder to Robin as we head upstairs.

  “He didn’t ask,” I mutter.

  “Living room or kitchen?” Dom asks.

  “Kitchen.”

  “Shall we make a cup of tea?”

  “No. I’m ringing him now.” I want to get it over with, whatever it turns out to be.

  A few seconds later, I hear a voice I haven’t heard for twelve years. “Beth Leeson!”

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “International call. Actually, you’re right—as a hotshot CEO, I get loads of international calls.” Lewis has always done this: mocking his own boastfulness at the same time as indulging it to the full. “But I’ve been waiting for you to call since I sent you my number. How are things? How’s Dom and the kids?”

  “Fine. We’re all fine. How . . . how are things with you?” There’s a lag after each of us speaks.

  “Amazing, thanks. The kids are so American now, you’d barely recognize them.”

  I close my eyes. When I open them, Dominic is gesturing for me to put my phone on speaker so that he can hear Lewis’s side of the conversation. I shake my head. The look I get in response tells me I’m being silly, but I don’t care. I’m not risking pressing a button that might cut Lewis off.

  “Flora’s doing great. Loves the climate here. Keeps saying she can’t believe she put up with the gray, gloomy English weather for so long. When are you guys gonna get your lazy asses out here to visit us?”

  Another classic Lewis Braid move: making you feel guilty for not accepting an invitation you never received.

  “Do you ever come back to the UK?”

  “Yeah, when we can. We were back for Christmas, stayed with Flora’s parents. They’re still in their little place in Wokingham. Bit of a squeeze with seven of us!”

  Seven. Lewis, Flora, Thomas, Emily, Flora’s parents . . . and Georgina. She has to be the seventh person. Still, no harm in checking . . .

  “How old is Georgina now?”

  “She’s twelve. Terrifying how quick time passes, isn’t it? Did you and Dominic ever have any more?”

  “More time?” I’m confused.

  “No, more children. Though, come to think of it . . .” Lewis laughs. “God, what I wouldn’t give for more time. Bet you’re the same. Remember before we had kids, how we used to spend whole days lying around by the river, or watching movies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyway, enough about the past! As my favorite life coach always says: memories of the past are not the past. They’re thoughts you have in the present, about the past.”

  I shiver. Dominic mouths “What?” I turn away from him so that I’m not distracted. Lewis talking about the present and the past makes me feel . . .

  What? That he’s more likely to have frozen his children in time to prevent them from aging? Ridiculous.

  “Your favorite life coach?” I say, forcing out a laugh. “How many do you have?”

  “I don’t see them, I just listen to their podcasts. But enough about my perfect life in sunny Florida—tell me what you’ve been up to. Are you working again, or still a slacker?”

  I’d forgotten this: that Lewis described it as “slacking” when Flora and I gave up our jobs to look after our babies. He loved that joke; it became one of his regulars. I never minded it. It was like his boasting: so outrageous, we all assumed he didn’t mean it.

  Except Flora.

  I didn’t think of it at the time, but now I wonder: was that why she always looked worried and said, “Lew-is,” while Dom and I were busy saying, “It’s fine—we don’t take him seriously”? Was Flora scared he was revealing too much of his true character?

  “No, I’m working,” I say.

  “Aha! Hunting heads again!”

  “I’m not in recruitment anymore. I retrained as a massage therapist.”

  Lewis laughs loudly. “A masseur! You mean a hooker, right? Is that what this call’s about? Are you a hooker hoping for a handout from an old friend? Or, should
I say, a hand job? No, wait—that’s the wrong way around. If you’re a hooker, you’d be offering me a hand job. I’m mixing up my hooker metaphors.”

  I do some fake laughing and try to move the conversation on, but Lewis insists on knowing what I actually do, if not hookering. I explain to him about trigger-point massage, what led me to it, the principles involved. “Hmm,” he says when I’ve finished. “Reckon you could sort out my tennis arm?”

  “Definitely,” I say. “What about Flora? Is she working now, or—”

  “Hardly. She’s committed to slacking for life.”

  “You know, I . . . I drove past your old house.”

  “The Newnham flat? How’s it looking these days?”

  “No, the house you moved to afterward. In Hemingford Abbots.”

  “Wyddial Lane?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What the hell were you doing there?”

  My heart thuds. Is he suspicious? No. He’s just being Lewis.

  “Ben’s football team was playing nearby, in St. Ives, and I took a wrong turn on the way. I recognized the street name from the change-of-address card you sent when you moved.” Shit. That sounded so obviously like a lie. I hold my breath, waiting for Lewis to question it.

  Instead, he says cheerfully, “So, you really think you could un-fuck my arm? I’ve tried sports massage. Didn’t work.”

  “Because the trigger points in your shoulder and neck need releasing, probably. Your arm is where the effects are manifesting, but not where the problem’s located.” It’s hugely frustrating that so many people charging for massages all over the world don’t know this basic fact.

  “What the fuck?” Dominic murmurs behind me. I wave my arm frantically: sign language for “Be quiet or leave.”

  “Inneresting. Hey, Flora!” Lewis yells. “Guess who’s on the phone? Beth Leeson! She reckons she can sort out my tennis arm!”

  “Can I speak to Flora too?” I ask, my throat suddenly dry.