A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [94]
It seemed to Fifi that everyone needed to be alone but her. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But if you change your mind, you know where I am.’
A little later Fifi went along to the corner shop to get some bread, and walked into a coven of half a dozen middle-aged woman all gossiping about Angela’s death. None of them actually lived in Dale Street, but all their faces were ones she’d seen around the area.
A woman with a headscarf tied round her curlers and a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth was holding forth about Alfie. ‘He’s been doing it to his girls for years,’ she said with authority. ‘He got the two older ones up the spout and then threw them out. A man that does that ought to be hung up by his feet and a bit chopped off him every day.’
When she saw Fifi, her eyes lit up. ‘You found the kid, didn’t you? What did she look like? How did he kill her?’
Fifi could understand curiosity, but the phrasing of this woman’s questions was utterly repellent and ghoulish. ‘If you’ve got any questions, go and ask the police,’ she said snootily.
The woman was so surprised that the cigarette fell out of her mouth on to the floor. ‘Hoity-toity,’ she said as she picked it up. ‘I suppose your shit don’t stink either.’
Fifi turned on her heel and left the shop without any bread, her face burning. Until yesterday she had felt at home here, now it was as though she was an alien. If it was true that Alfie had got his two older daughters pregnant, why hadn’t someone reported it? What was the matter with everyone round here? Why were they all so spineless?
As she marched indignantly up the street she could see a man at the door of number 3 talking to Mrs Blackstock who lived on the ground floor. She and her husband were frail and elderly, and Fifi had only spoken to them once or twice as they rarely came out of their house.
She guessed the man was a journalist. He was short and thin, with glasses and a very cheap baggy suit.
‘I don’t know anything,’ Mrs Blackstock was saying. ‘My husband and I keep ourselves to ourselves.’
Fifi could see Mrs Blackstock felt intimidated. She was holding on to her walking stick so hard that her knuckles were white.
Fifi tapped the reporter on the shoulder. ‘Leave her alone,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think you should be pestering people for information when a little girl has just died,’ she added as he turned to face her.
‘Would you be Felicity Reynolds?’ he asked, his eyes lighting up behind his glasses. ‘You found her, didn’t you? Would you like to tell me about it?’
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Fifi said. ‘Now clear off back to whatever cesspit you crawled out of and leave this lady in peace.’
He looked surprised and backed away. Mrs Blackstock quickly shut her front door and Fifi went home.
As she closed the front door behind her and walked up the stairs she began to cry.
She couldn’t cope with all this, the horror in her own head, police questions, journalists and now other people trying to put their anxieties on to her. She’d lost her baby, got a broken arm, her parents had disowned her, and even Dan wouldn’t stay home to look after her.
What had happened to her life? Before she met Dan it was all so easy and nice. She liked her job, she had good friends, she came home every evening to a hot dinner and even her clothes were washed and ironed for her. Now she was living in a slum, and everything was falling around her ears.
And it wasn’t going to get any better either. She’d have to go to court when the trial began, forced to give evidence with that monster Alfie sitting there in the dock looking at her.
Why was all this happening to her? Cut off from her family just because she chose a man they didn’t approve of, no one to turn to for comfort or advice. She wanted Patty, but she couldn’t even phone her and tell her what had happened without having to go through her mother and she knew she wouldn’t get any sympathy from that quarter.
Once upstairs she flung herself on to her bed and cried bitterly.
She was still lying there sobbing when Dan came home. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ he