A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [158]
Nora Diamond heard Dan and his in-laws’ footsteps going down the stairs and went over to the window to watch them come out of the house. She wished she had gone into work today. She knew only too well that she only felt sick out of guilt, and staying home was making it worse. Especially when she heard Dan’s visitors arrive.
She guessed who they were by the way they spoke. And she doubted they would have come here to see Dan unless they were frantic with worry about Fifi.
When Dan came down to her on Wednesday evening and asked when she’d last seen or spoken to Fifi, she had been a little offhand, but then she just assumed Fifi had taken herself off to a friend’s because Dan had left her. Last night, however, she’d heard him telling Frank about all the places he’d been to search for her, and all at once she sensed the girl really was in danger.
Dan and his in-laws were walking up Dale Street now, and the mother’s strong resemblance to Fifi was remarkable. It wasn’t just the blonde hair, the height and slender figure, they also both walked with the same graceful glide. The woman took her husband’s hand as they crossed the street, and there was something about the gesture which made Nora’s eyes prickle with tears.
‘Stop thinking about yourself and go to the police about Jack Trueman,’ she said to herself.
But another voice inside her said that was a bad idea. She couldn’t afford to risk her past getting out, and maybe he had nothing to do with this anyway.
‘Talk to me, Yvette,’ Fifi whispered in the dark. She was so cold, hungry and thirsty that she wasn’t even sure whether it was Sunday night or Monday, and Yvette hadn’t spoken or even moved for hours.
‘What is there to talk about, Fifi?’ Yvette replied, her flat voice reflecting her feelings of utter hopelessness. ‘Except perhaps deciding’ ow much longer we wait before doing it.’
Fifi had been horrified when Yvette had suggested hanging themselves. While she could see her point that a quick death was far better than a slow one from starvation, she still had some hope it wouldn’t come to that. It worried her too that Yvette had suggested she help Fifi do it first. While she understood that was meant in a kindly way, so Fifi wouldn’t have to see Yvette dying, it still sounded so ghoulish.
‘I’ll never be able to do that,’ Fifi said resolutely. ‘Someone will have reported us missing by now. For all we know our pictures may have been in the papers, and someone may have spotted the car driving up here.’
‘What is that expression you English are so fond of? “Pigs might fly!”’ Yvette said scornfully. ‘You tell me this place is hidden away and you see no one near!’
‘I know, but there’s still hope yet.’
‘I’ave no hope. Do you know what starvation is like? We will become too weak to climb those bars, and we will lie ’ere looking at them wishing we did it while we still’ad the strength.’
Fifi already felt too weak to climb the bars, and even a whole twenty-four hours since Yvette first suggested it, when she was even colder, hungrier and more distressed, she still wouldn’t entertain the idea. But then she still had some absurd faith left that Dan would find her.
It was so strange that now when she thought of Dan and her family, she could only think of the most endearing and lovely things about each of them. She could see Dan coming home with his wage packet and handing it to her trustingly. As long as he had enough for some cigarettes and the odd snack while at work, he never questioned where the rest of his wages went. She thought about how he wrapped himself around her in the night, how he smiled as soon as he opened his eyes. He didn’t sulk, complain or envy other people. He was a truly happy man.
She remembered how intuitive and sensitive her father was. He was the one who made the best nurse when one of his children was ill; he got to the kernel of a problem immediately, and knew how to solve it. He was the quiet, calm one in the family, who