‘She’s welcoming you to our flat,’ Emma said.
Jane smiled and said, ‘Thank you.’
The kitchen was to the right and opposite it a cupboard storage space, next to which was a bathroom, then a separate toilet and another room, which Jane suspected was a bedroom. Opposite was a room with the door open, in which Jane could see two single beds with handmade multicolored patchwork throws on them. At the end of the hallway Emma opened a door, which led in to a reasonably sized living room. As Jane walked into the room, she recognized the musty smell of dampness and could see a small area of black mold on the wall under the large wooden-framed double window. Emma turned on the electric fire.
‘Sorry about the damp smell — once the room heats up it goes away. Rainwater’s been leaking in through the window frame, which is starting to rot. We keep cleaning the mold off with bleach and water, but it always comes back.’
Rachel looked at Jane and mimed drinking a cup of tea from a saucer.
‘That would be lovely,’ Jane replied, and Rachel went to the kitchen.
‘Let me take your coat and I’ll put it in the hallway cupboard for now.’
While Emma helped Rachel make the tea, Jane looked around the neat and tidy carpeted living room. In front of the two-seater settee was a small wooden coffee table. On it were some colored sketches of different styles of skirts, dresses and women’s blouses, which Jane assumed were sewing designs. On the wall above the fireplace were some small black chalk figure drawings; there was one of a young girl kneeling and cleaning a floor, a similar one with an older woman doing the same thing and another of an old man digging in a field with a spade. The drawings looked familiar, but Jane couldn’t remember where she’d seen them before.
At the back of the room was a four-seater drop-leaf wooden dining table with two wooden chairs. Up against the far wall were three tall mahogany bookshelves, which, like the dining table, looked as good as new. The shelves were filled with an array of books: classics by the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, as well as Shakespeare’s plays and The Canterbury Tales. There were also books by Agatha Christie and horror stories by Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley, next to which were the twenty-three children’s tales written by Beatrix Potter and some Enid Blyton stories.
‘Do you take milk and sugar?’
Emma put a tray with tea things on the coffee table. Rachel followed behind with some biscuits and vanilla slices. Jane took one of the slices and sat down on one end of the settee, while Emma sat next to her in an armchair. Rachel moved the other armchair into a position where she could see their lip movements and sat down.
‘You have a lot of books,’ Jane remarked.
‘We’ve always liked to read since we were very young, and haven’t bothered with a TV due to Rachel’s deafness. We like to go to book fairs and buy second-hand ones.’
‘Did you make the furniture covers yourself?’ Jane asked Emma.
‘Yes, do you like them?’ She poured Jane a cup of tea.
‘They’re lovely — and so are the sketches of the dresses and blouses.’
‘Rachel’s the artist — I explain my ideas to her and she brings them to life on paper, then I make them.’
Jane looked at Rachel. ‘You are very talented.’
Rachel smiled. She held her closed right hand to her chest, then extended her index and middle fingers in front of her face before moving them downwards in a snake-like motion and proudly pointing to the chalk drawings on the wall. Emma was about to translate, but Jane instinctively knew what Rachel had signed.
‘You did all those sketches.’
Rachel did a thumbs-up, then a scissors motion with her fingers by her left ear and pulled a sad face.
‘I thought they looked familiar — are the sketches copies of Van Gogh’s paintings?’
Rachel nodded.
‘I remember them from art studies at school when I was sixteen. Your drawings are as good as the real thing!’
Rachel signed ‘Thank you.’
Jane thought it strange that were no individual or family photographs in the room.
‘Do you have any family in London?’ she asked, and Rachel shook her head.
‘Not that we know of. Our parents died in a car crash when we were six, then we stayed with our uncle in Wood Green before we were put into a care home,’ Emma said, showing no sign of emotion.
‘I’m sorry — I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like to lose your parents when you were so young. It must have been awful for you both.’
‘It was worse for Rachel. She was in a coma after the crash and not expected to survive. It wasn’t until she came around that the doctors realized the injuries to her head had made her permanently deaf.’
Jane was surprised. ‘You were both in the crash?’
‘Yes. Not being able to hear anything after the crash made Rachel withdrawn and she stopped communicating with anyone, even me at first.’
Rachel nodded, then made some signs to Emma, and ended by touching her left wrist and holding her hand in a bent fist shape like Emma’s. Jane thought she’d grasped what she was saying.
‘Did you injure your hand in the accident?’ she asked Emma.
‘Yes, I had an open fracture, which, as you can see, never healed properly. But although my wrist movement is restricted, I can still use it well enough to work and do my sewing.’
Rachel made some signs to Emma.
‘She’s asking if your parents are still alive.’
Jane nodded.
‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’
‘I had a brother, but he died when I was four. My sister Pam is married and has a little boy.’
Rachel held her hand open in a vertical position in front of her nose and mouth, and moved it downwards while making a sad face.
‘She’s sorry about your brother; it must have been very upsetting for you,’ Emma said.
Jane felt she could be open with them after what she’d learned about the sisters’ parents’ death.
‘I’d just turned four and he was three when he fell into a neighbor’s pond and drowned. I didn’t really understand what had happened at the time but my parents were devastated. Sadly, I have very little memory of Michael, but I do have some photographs of him. Do you have any of your parents?’
Emma shook her head. ‘Memories are all we have, Jane. When our uncle was looking after us, he cleared all our parents’ belongings out of the house and didn’t give us any pictures of them. Looking back, I think he thought it would be best for us to try and erase them from our memories.’
‘Have you ever tried to trace him?’
‘No. He never made any form of communication after putting us in care, so as far as we were concerned, he didn’t want to know us,’ Emma said bitterly.
Jane was curious about the twins’ childhood, their time in care, and what had happened after that, but time was pressing, and she needed to get a result, be it positive or negative, for DCI Murphy by the end of the day. She got out her pocket notebook and pen and looked at Rachel.
‘I’m not from Tottenham CID — I actually work for the Flying Squad. We investigate robberies and your details were passed to us by the sergeant Emma spoke to on Tuesday. Are you still happy to talk to me about what you saw and lip-read in the cafe on Monday morning?’
Rachel nodded and did a hand movement as if she was holding a pen and writing on her hand, then jumped out of her chair and left the room.
‘Did I say something to upset her?’
‘No, she’s just going to get the pad that she made notes in.’
Rachel returned to the room and offered the notepad to Jane. Jane signaled for her to keep it.