Since Alice vanished Kathleen didn’t go to funerals, but she decided she would make an exception for Doctor Ramsay, as she had for Steve. She would buy herself a new outfit especially. So this was why on the Monday afternoon following Mark Ramsay’s death, Kathleen was in Marks and Spencer.
That night Kathleen told Alice what she was doing, certain she would approve. Alice had liked Doctor Ramsay. Kathleen would always be grateful to him, because busy as he was, in those last few days that Alice spent with his family, Doctor Ramsay had given up some of his precious time to her.
Eighteen
Alice leaned her forehead against the front door and counted down from ten. Somewhere, perhaps on a quiz programme, she had heard that the Russians considered it good luck to sit for a moment on their travelling bags before embarking on a journey, and contemplate the expedition ahead. Today she needed all the luck she could get.
…four, three, two. One.
The door made no sound as she opened it. Once on the landing she used the key to close it. She was taking no chances.
She had planned her journey, calculating travelling time, including delays and unforeseen events. Two weeks ago, when she had decided to go to the funeral, Alice had lain awake mentally mapping out the churchyard, working out where she would stand during the burial. She couldn’t risk going into the church. She must be vigilant and not make assumptions about people’s focus of attention being on the coffin. There would be interest in a stranger.
She was not a stranger.
She would make sure to blend in, and meet any glance without looking away, as that attracted more suspicion. She would stay by the bank of nettles under the oak tree where the graveyard dipped away towards the downs. If necessary she could nip over the wall there. When it was all over, she would hurry away and come home. She had been taken aback to see the square-headed detective, grizzled with age and frustration, on the evening news. Of course, very quickly the media had made the connection with Doctor Ramsay and June 1968. Richard Hall ought to have been dead, but these men never let unsolved cases go. The police saw funerals as an opportunity, and from his interview the other night she knew he was still looking for Alice. She would have to be extremely careful.
She had been shocked to see the photographs of the two girls in the papers. She had not followed the story from an adult’s perspective before and it jolted her to see how many people were involved in the search. It had been the biggest manhunt on record. A gruesome record that Alice was sure would be broken one day.
She had felt winded when she read the Punch and Judy roll-call of participants: the Hanging Judge, the Kind Doctor turned Dead Professor, the Jackie Onassis look-alike, the Reckless Tomboy and the Innocent Schoolgirl who liked playing with dolls and might have been a ballet dancer if one day she hadn’t vanished off the face of the earth. Her eyes swam with tears as Alice read of the loving Dad who had died of grief. And last of alclass="underline" long shot footage of Kathleen Howland combing the beach with a metal detector in the eighties, and more recently trawling through a black and white CCTV tape, or patrolling the Churchill Square shopping centre in Brighton while daily eroded by Parkinson’s Disease. Alice had folded up the paper unable to read more. The papers made the story seem real.
The press had got a perfect summer story.
Charbury had not changed. On the BBC news the reporter had broadcast from beside the red telephone box where Eleanor had called Gina, pretending to be a boy that Gina fancied, with the deep and panting voice she used for singing ‘I was born under a wandering star.’ She had sounded stupid, rasping into the phone, that he was desperately in love with Gina and had to see her at once. How could she have thought Gina would be taken in?
I will kill you! Gina had promised in a matter of fact voice when they got home. She had been taken in. She told Alice and Eleanor that the boy’s mother had just died of cancer, which ruined the joke. Then the report had cut from the Ram Inn, bathed in sunshine, to pan out over undulating countryside – a natural home to Shredded Wheat or butter adverts – where cows pranced in unison upon green, green fields and people laughed in ceaseless mirth and slipped farm-fresh strawberries between white, white teeth.
Paradise. Lost.
Alice tried to tackle the ironing as the voices went on about what a lovely man Doctor Ramsay was.
How did they know?
Later she had cut out the articles about Professor Ramsay from the papers and spread them out on the living room table.
Alice had thought all the games Eleanor wanted to play were silly. She didn’t approve of pretending.
Just before Chris was due home, Alice gathered up the cuttings and shoved them under her pillow in an old envelope. She had become practised at flourishing sewing materials or watercolour sketches as alibi activities to avoid suspicion of her secret self. She couldn’t afford to arouse the attention of her ever-curious daughter. Alice had already pushed the bounds of normality by asking Chris to get three different newspapers for several days in a row. There hadn’t been that much coverage; the Ramsays were no longer important. Out of habit she still peered out through the lace, but he wasn’t there crouching behind a wheelie bin or sitting in the snug at the World Turned Upside Down. As she leaned against the front door, preparing after so long to leave the flat, she reflected that now she need never look to see if he was there. Now he would never come again.
Finally in The Independent she had found what she was looking for:
Ramsay, Mark Henry. Died at his home 6th June 1999, missed by Isabel, Gina, Lucian and Eleanor. Funeral 11.30am, Monday 28th June St Andrew’s Church, Charbury, East Sussex. No Flowers. All donations to the Parkinson’s Disease Society.
The date of the funeral rang a bell. Alice had simply written the number: ‘11’ in her diary. She did not need the address. The service was well timed; she could be home by the afternoon. It was just possible that Chris would return early; now that she had finished her exams she came and went as she pleased. That was a risk Alice had to take.
The funeral would be a huge risk, but now Alice was used to pretending, so wedded to her fabrications she mistook them for reality. Now a real event had interrupted her complex weavings.
As Alice reached the ground floor and trod lightly past the door of the last flat, a latch clicked. In a second the door would open.
It was over.
She prepared herself for the neighbour’s amazement that the recluse-lady from upstairs was out and about, for the supposition that she had escaped. Call her daughter, call an ambulance. Alice had time to run, but she couldn’t move. Then she realised the door hadn’t opened. Instead, someone had double locked it from the inside. Footsteps receded.
As she was going to step out into the quadrangle, Alice saw Jane arriving for work. She couldn’t believe her stupidity: how had she not considered Jane?
One morning last November Alice had been gazing listlessly out of the window when her attention was caught by a woman striding towards the estate office. The woman was smartly dressed, in a dusky blue suit, and carried a slim brown leather briefcase. She looked too well heeled to be one of the housing association’s tenants and Alice watched keenly as she put her case on the ground while she jangled through a large bunch of keys to open the door.