A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [163]
‘Poor lamb,’ Clara said thoughtfully as they watched Dan walk down the street to the tube station. ‘I can see now why Fifi fell for him; he isn’t the cocky, on-the-make thug I took him for at all.’
Harry put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and drew her back into the hotel. ‘I’m proud to have him as a son-in-law,’ he said gruffly. ‘He’s made of the right stuff.’
As Dan was walking to the tube station, his cheeks still damp with tears. Fifi was sitting up rigid with shock at what Yvette had just said to her.
It was too dark to see her face; she was just a darker shape in front of her, with only the white of her teeth and the collar of her white blouse showing up faintly.
‘You can’t have killed Angela,’ Fifi gasped. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I did,’ Yvette insisted.
‘But why?’
‘It was how you say? The lesser evil?’
‘I don’t understand. I don’t believe you either; you couldn’t kill anyone, certainly not a child,’ Fifi said indignantly. ‘And what do you mean by “a lesser evil”?’
A deep sigh came from the Frenchwoman, as if she were gathering her thoughts. ‘Sometimes you ’ave to choose between two bad things. Like when you ’ave to choose to treat a very sick animal and maybe make it suffer more, or ’ave it put to sleep. Mama had to choose between sending me away or keeping me with her and maybe we both go to a camp. At theese times we try to choose the lesser of ze two evils.’
Fifi had a mental flashback to Angela lying naked on the bed with blood on her splayed thighs. She also had the image of Yvette being raped in the brothel in Paris.
‘So you thought Angela would be used like you?’
She felt a slight movement as if Yvette was nodding her head. ‘Right, well explain what happened that morning, from the beginning.’
‘Eet started the night before,’ Yvette said hesitantly. ‘I hear ze men arrive. It is hot, ze windows open. I hear everything like I am in ze room.’
‘Let’s lie down,’ Fifi said gently. ‘It’s too cold to sit here like this.’
She lay down and Yvette crawled towards her, then pulled the blanket over them both. Fifi waited patiently, afraid to rush Yvette because her breathing was laboured; whether this was because of the enormity of what she’d just confessed, or a symptom of her weakened condition, Fifi didn’t know. She thought she ought to be frightened, yet strangely she wasn’t.
‘Do you remember how hot it was that night?’ Yvette asked.
‘Mmm,’ Fifi replied.
‘On hot nights when they had those parties I hate it because the men often use the garden like a pissoir. The smell it comes in my bedroom and kitchen. I was thinking theese when I hear them drinking and laughing, Molly is cackling like a madwoman.’
It was Molly’s cackling that Yvette always found hardest to bear when they had these parties. The men’s laughter was no different to the sounds from any crowded bar, but Molly’s was shrill and maniacal.
At first the noise came from all the rooms on the ground floor, music from the front room, guffaws of laughter, shouted greetings from one man to another, clinking glasses and bottles from out in the kitchen, and now and then the children’s voices mingling with the adults.
Earlier in the day, Yvette had overheard Alan and Mary talking excitedly about the trip to Southend the following day and around ten she heard Molly order them to bed with a few choice swear words and the warning they wouldn’t be going if they came downstairs again tonight. She thought Dora and Mike went to bed too, as she didn’t hear their voices again.
At about ten-thirty the entire party moved into the back room, which was next to her bedroom, and apart from the odd man going out into the garden to urinate, the noise lessened as they settled down for a game of cards. Yvette didn’t mind the sound of cards slapping on the table, the odd creak of chairs, sighs and frequent expletives, at least that signalled this wasn’t going to be one of those nights when more terrible things went on.
Yvette couldn’t hear Molly’s voice any longer either, but this wasn’t in any way unusual