Thirty-seven
Liz sat in the playground outside the Hotel Britannia. It was one of the hottest days of the year. The sun looked as if it had burned a round hole in the metal sky. Children raced one another in the pool, splashed out and shook their sparkling hair; younger children were pleading with their parents for ice creams. Anna was in the playground, looking after the youngest ones. Liz watched her, trying not to hate the child.
It was all Anna's fault. If she hadn't annoyed Liz so much, Liz might have been some help when Jane had phoned. If Anna hadn't run away, Liz could have gone straight to Jane's; she might have been in time, she might have… She was in an agony of guilt. Worst of all, if Anna hadn't started her nonsense about the man who was hiding, Liz might have gone in to Jane anyway. If it hadn't been for Anna, Georgie might still be alive. How could Liz not hate her?
She was doing her best, telling herself that Anna couldn't have known, being determinedly gentle with the child, to compensate. Couldn't Anna tell that she ought to take care? Apparently not, for now she was gazing longingly at the pool, then at Liz. Liz shook her head, but still the child came over to her. 'Can't I have just a little swim?' she pleaded.
'Not now. Not while the big ones are in the pool.' Not while a swimsuit would expose the marks on her shoulder from the day Liz had caught her outside Jane's, scratches and a swollen purple bruise. 'Anyway,' Liz said triumphantly, 'you haven't got a swimsuit with you.'
'Can I take my blouse off, then? I'm so hot.'
Was the child determined to let people see her injuries?
'Keep it on,' Liz said. 'I haven't taken mine off, have I? We'll both be elegant. We hardly ever wear these blouses Granny Knight bought us.'
Anna looked sulky. 'Go on, Anna,' Liz said; Maggie the nursery girl was approaching, and Liz didn't want to lose her temper in front of her. 'Look, the little ones don't know what to do with themselves. You go and look after them.' Not the way you looked after Georgie, she thought before she could stop herself.
For a while she sat and talked to Maggie, then she kept an eye on the children while Maggie went in to lay the nursery tables for lunch. A seven-year-old brought her twin to Liz for first aid. Both little girls were silent, pale and tight-lipped while Liz tended to the gash, caused by a falling tricycle. Why couldn't Anna be like them? Had she ever been? She was copying Liz now, giving first aid to a reluctant toddler – 'I'll be nurse because you've hurt yourself,' she said. For the first time Liz wondered if the toddlers wanted Anna to look after them.
She was brooding about that when Ned came to her. 'Gail would like a word with you.'
The foyer was stifling, and smelled of dusty plants and carpet shampoo. Gail was fanning herself with a bunch of receipts; she glanced sharply at the long sleeves. 'We're both a bit sunburned,' Liz said glibly.
Gail shrugged that off. 'Derek has managed to get Jane into a private ward near Norwich,' she said. 'Rebecca and I are going to see her. Will you come?'
'I should come, Gail, I know I should, but I don't think I can, not yet. You do understand, don't you? Maybe when Alan comes back, when I'm not on my own.'
Gail raised her eyebrows, though she was obviously trying to understand. 'And I don't want to leave Anna,' Liz said desperately. 'We couldn't very well take her with us.'
Why had she said that? She felt she was saying too much in an attempt to hide the truth.
'You could leave her in the nursery,' Gail suggested. 'It would only be for the afternoon.'
'Well, as I say, Anna isn't really the problem.' She wished she hadn't mentioned the child at all; Gail had seemed altogether too eager to take Anna off her hands. 'It's just me, Gail. I can't help how I feel. Tell Jane I'm thinking of her,' she said, which sounded so feeble that she wished she hadn't said it at all.
She wandered through the ground floor of the hotel, trying to think before she went back to Anna. Children were clambering on armchairs in the lounge until their father chased them out; in the games room opposite, a pair of table-tennis bats formed a round-winged insect on the table. She couldn't go to see Jane, not yet – not until she knew what to do about the claw.
She was sure that Jane had taken it. Rebecca had virtually told her so: she'd said she didn't believe that any money had been stolen from Jane's bag that day at Liz's house. The claw must be somewhere at Jane's, too well hidden for the police to find. She couldn't raise the subject in front of anyone else, she didn't know why. The more she thought about the claw, the more urgent it seemed to retrieve it, yet thinking about it seemed to snag her thoughts, preventing her from planning coherently. When she heard the rattle of the grille she went to talk to Jimmy in the bar.
He wanted to talk about Jane; everybody did. 'You can't assume any kids are safe, whatever their parents are like in public,' he said morosely. 'You never know what goes on in their homes. You can't know what they do to their kids when nobody else is watching.'
He was making her uncomfortable, not least because she wasn't sure that he was talking solely about Jane. What did he know about it? He hadn't even started teaching, and even when he did he'd have no idea what it was like to have to put up with a child all the time, without being able to send it home at the end of the day, or take a holiday from it at all. He was just like the rest of them, trying to make her think there was something wrong with her. Since he didn't seem disposed to change the subject until he'd finished lecturing, she took her drink out of the bar.
The sun made her eyes ache. Why should it worry her that she couldn't see her surroundings straight away? Now she could: Anna was helping a toddler up the steps to the slide, though he didn't look entirely convinced that he wanted to go; nobody was in sight who shouldn't be. Liz sat down at a table on the grass to watch, the plastic chair burning her thighs and back for a moment, before the heat faded. Then she made to dodge into the bar, but restrained herself. It was too late. Alex had already seen her.
'Hello, Alex,' Liz said, as coldly as she could. 'Finished your filming?'
'I've finished that one. I've some more glamour ads to do.' She sat opposite Liz and stretched her long polished legs into the sunlight, to show them off or to add to their tan. 'I heard about Jane. I wish I hadn't been away.'
'Why?'
'Well, what a question! She had nobody to turn to, had she? Derek was away. She couldn't cope on her own. Things finally proved too much for her.'
Liz stared at her. 'Something certainly did.'
'I don't know why you're looking at me like that. What do you mean?'
Liz hadn't the patience to reply to that. 'What do you mean, spreading rumours about me? It was you who told people that I'd left Anna alone the night I came to Gail's party, wasn't it?'
'Oh, Liz, I really can't remember. I may have passed on some story of the kind. I'm sorry if it wasn't true -1 wasn't at the party, after all. Don't let's fall out. Hasn't there been enough viciousness without our starting too? We ought to rally round.'
Liz almost laughed out loud, though without a trace of humour. 'Surely you can't believe that Jane would want to see you.'
'Well, why not? I'm her friend too, aren't I? I should have thought we could forget our differences under the circumstances. I'll do everything I can to help.'
Liz punched the table-top to restrain herself from lashing out. The noise was so loud that parents glanced across from the nursery. 'Are you really as stupid as you make out, Alex? Haven't you done enough?'
'If you're trying to imply that what happened was my fault, I think you're very cruel.' She looked as if she were trying to suppress the moisture in her eyes. 'In any case, I don't agree with you. I really think I relieved some of the strain on their marriage. Derek came to me for things he couldn't get from Jane.'
'I'm sure he did.'
'It's true, however awful you try and make it sound. Do you know that she hadn't let Derek touch her since she was pregnant? Jane didn't kill Georgie because of me, she did it because she should never have had a child. I know we don't like to think of it happening to someone we know, but it happens all the time. You can hardly pick up a newspaper these days without reading of another case.'
Liz hid her fists under the table; her nails were tingling again. 'Do you honestly think it was just another case of a mother losing patience – another battered baby? Have you any idea what Jane did?'
