desk. Over it hung a large painting of a red horse on a white ground, and he realized that nowhere in the house had Sandra displayed her own collages.
The desktop was a jumble of notebooks and loose papers, and he saw at once that it would take more time than he had that evening to go through the clutter. But he picked a few things up idly-a sketchbook filled with drawings and jottings, a folder of press cuttings from gallery shows, a bound album filled with photos and handwritten captions. When he looked more closely, he saw that the photos were all of Sandra’s installations, with the captions noting the place.
A school, a library, several in what appeared to be corporate offices, a local clinic, some private homes and businesses-Kincaid had flipped through to the end of the album, now he went back more carefully, looking for the notation that had caught his eye.
There. The collage was more representational than most, and depicted a narrow, canyonlike street, its wall of buildings broken by the flower-draped facade of a pub, and by recesses that held small sculptures of various traditional tradesmen, and incongruously, a tilting cannon.
The caption read:
Lucas. Lucas Ritchie. In the photo, the collage hung in an elegant, high-ceilinged lounge.
Kincaid recognized the pub, the Kings Stores, in Widegate Street, near Artillery Lane. He vaguely recalled the sculpted tradesmen set into the recessed alcove on the front of the building next door, but he was sure there was no cannon. Had that been a private joke between Sandra and Ritchie-some play on
In any case, that gave him enough to go on. If the collage was a representation of the club, he would start in Widegate Street.
Only then did Kincaid examine the photos tacked to the corkboard on the far wall, and he stood there for a long moment. Sandra Gilles-for it was obvious that Sandra had been the primary photographer-had not posed her subjects, but had captured the family in a testament to the ordinary: eating, talking, cooking, playing, reading. His throat tightened and he swallowed, blinking as he gazed at a snap of a little curly-haired girl, her faced pinched tight with concentration as she drew with a crayon.
A thought struck him and he looked round the studio, examining Sandra’s worktable and desk, shelves and baskets. It was obvious that Sandra had been an avid and talented photographer. Where was her camera?
Gemma pulled up in front of Betty Howard’s house just as Hazel walked out of the door and started down the steps. She’d tried ringing Hazel once more and, getting no answer, had asked Wes to wait for the boys, then bolted out of the house.
Now, she pulled the Escort awkwardly into the curb and jumped out. “Hazel!”
Hazel looked up. “Gemma. I was coming-”
“What are you doing here?” Gemma found she was trembling with a surge of anger mixed with relief. “Why didn’t you answer your phone? Tim’s been worried sick about you. I’ve been worried sick about you-”
“I didn’t mean…I forgot I’d turned it off.” Hazel dug in her bag for the phone and switched it on. Then her eyes widened in horror. “Oh, god, is Holly all right? I didn’t think-”
“No, no, she’s fine,” Gemma assured her, regretting her outburst. “I just saw her an hour ago. But you’ll have fifty million voice messages from Tim and me.” Gemma noticed that although her friend still looked gaunt, her hair had been washed and her clothes were clean. “Are
“I’m not sure, to tell you the truth,” Hazel said haltingly. “I think I might be.”
Gemma stared at her, baffled. “We need to talk.” Looking up and down the street, she saw rows of cars baking in the still-brittle evening light, but nowhere to sit. “Let’s go back to the house. Or we can get something to drink at Otto’s.”
“No, I-Not yet.” Hazel swayed a bit. “My knees feel a bit like jelly, all of a sudden.”
Gemma thought for a moment, then linked her arm through Hazel’s. “Let’s just walk for a bit. I have an idea.” She guided them round the corner into Portobello Road and turned north. Their steps fell into a rhythm, and after a few minutes she felt some strength return to Hazel’s stride. At Tavistock Road, the trees provided welcome shade, but Gemma led them on, under the cavernous shadow of the Westway.
“We’ll get some juice,” she said, leading Hazel into a natural foods store, one of the small shops built under the motorway.
Gemma bought them both plastic bottles of mango-orange juice and thanked the proprietor. Then she led Hazel out the far side of the underpass and into the rectangular green of Cambridge Gardens.
The small garden looked deserted without the jumble of its Saturday market stalls, but farther down the parallel arcade, kids were taking advantage of the empty pavement to skateboard. The hum of the overhead traffic meshed with the whoosh of the boards’ wheels in a comforting symphony of white noise. Gemma picked the bench that seemed to have the least accumulation of pigeon droppings and sat, pulling Hazel down beside her.
She popped the top off the juice bottle and sipped, then turned to face her friend and said, “Tell me.”
Hazel drank, then closed her eyes and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “It’s good. So mango-y. I never realized that mangoes don’t taste like anything else.”
“Hazel-”
“I know-It’s-It’s just that I don’t know how to explain-talking about how I felt-how I feel-seems horribly self- indulgent now. I’ve done enough damage thinking about me as it is.”
“Don’t go all therapist on me. Just tell me what happened,” said Gemma patiently. “Start with the phone. Why did you turn it off?”
Hazel shook her head. “I-You’re going to think-” She saw Gemma’s fierce expression and went on hurriedly. “All right, all right. It was Sunday. After I got ho-back to the bungalow, from Islington. I was so angry. At you, at Tim, at myself.”
“At me?” said Gemma, surprised.
Hazel gave a small smile. “You didn’t want me there on Saturday night, at the house in Fournier Street.”
She hadn’t, Gemma remembered with a flush of guilt. “But, Hazel, I didn’t know what had happened. I had to-”
“Oh, I know you had good reasons, professional reasons. But the truth was that you could have worked round them if you’d had the mind. I was being a bitch and you didn’t want me there. And I knew it.” When Gemma started to protest again, Hazel touched her arm. “No, let me finish. I knew it, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I was jealous of that family, those poor people. And Sunday, even when I knew he was dead-Tim’s friend-it just got worse. I felt like-oh, I don’t know-like I was sinking under a weight of black oil, suffocating in it.
“And then, when I got home, and I realized I had done nothing to comfort that little girl…and that I had been so mired in my own nasty, seeping bitterness that I hadn’t even cared for my own child’s feelings…I-” Hazel stopped, drinking a little more juice and watching the skateboarders, and Gemma waited.
After a few minutes, Hazel went on. “That was when I turned off the phone. I couldn’t bear the thought of talking to anyone. I couldn’t explain myself. I sat for a long time, in the dark. And it began to seem as if it might be better for everyone if I just…disappeared. Like Sandra Gilles. I wanted to just step into the street and vanish. I wanted to find some way-”
Gemma felt cold. “Hazel, I-I should have realized. I should never have let you-”
“It’s all right.” Hazel took Gemma’s hand and squeezed it. “I don’t think you could have helped me. You’re too close to me, to everything that’s happened.”
Gemma shook her head. “No, I should have called you-I should have checked-”
“No. Listen. It wouldn’t have helped. What I needed was the kindness of strangers.”
“What?” said Gemma, not making sense of that at all.
Seeing Gemma’s look of bewilderment, Hazel gave a shaky laugh. “My neighbor ministered to me, with vegetable rice and dahl. You remember two of the boys you met? They’re brothers. Tariq and Jamil. They live in the council flats at the end of the road. I told you they look out for me. They saw me come home, for the second night, and sit in the dark-they can see the bungalow from their bedroom windows. They told their mother they were worried. She worried, too, and after a bit she came with the food she had made, and knocked on my gate. She’s very shy and she doesn’t speak much English, but she kept knocking until I answered.
