Good Neighbours, page 10
Richie’s father had handed his son the kind of old-fashioned cloth handkerchief men of that generation carried, but Nia noticed that was the only comfort he offered. It was Elvira who went to Richie and asked him if he was all right. She gently eased the hanky away from his face, felt the bridge of his nose. ‘It’s not broken,’ she said gently. ‘Just pinch it here, keep the hanky there until it stops bleeding.’ Her gesture was tender, maternal, and helped defuse the anger hanging in the air.
‘I think it might help us all if you could tell us, Nia, about that last evening you spent with Ruby,’ said Jade. ‘Would you be able to do that? Or is it too painful?’
They were all waiting for her answer. ‘The police say my memories of that evening might be muddled.’
‘Hmm, maybe so, but I think we’d still all find it a comfort to hear what you remember.’
She nodded. ‘I’d like to tell you all. The burden of knowing I might have been the last person Ruby spoke to has been huge. I’m worried I should have said or done something to help her.’
‘No one has been thinking that,’ said Ian.
Nia was grateful for his words. ‘Thank you,’ she replied.
She heard a crunch on the pebbles and saw Richie’s father quietly leave them. She swallowed hard and began. ‘I came down with Romeo, about ten o’clock. Ruby was sitting just here.’
Nia paused and they listened to the waves quietly breaking on the beach, and it took her back to her evening with Ruby. Suddenly it was as if she were there.
‘I’m afraid Ruby was very unhappy.’ She glanced at Richie.
‘It’s OK. You can tell us what you remember,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to embarrass you, but she did tell me that you and she had rowed. She said she was hoping to sort things out.’
‘That’s right. We’d talked that morning. It was just a misunderstanding, nothing important. We loved each other—’ his voice broke.
‘Did she say any more about the person who made the phone call to the helpline? It obviously had upset her,’ asked Ian.
‘Ruby was very concerned about them.’ Nia glanced around, but no one was giving anything away. ‘Because they’d not been to see her, she decided to write them a letter. She had it with her, she showed it to me.’
‘And what did the letter say?’ Ian asked.
‘Just that she wanted to help this person. Then I think I remember her sealing the letter with red wax, using the larger of her sealing rings.’
‘What do you mean, you think you remember? Aren’t you sure?’ asked Ian.
‘The problem is the colour of the wax and the seal. The letter I saw when I went down the next morning, and the one the police found, had a green seal and the small ring had been used. In fact, the larger ring wasn’t even on her finger. The police noted what I said, and they think I must have been mistaken.’
‘I suppose it was very dark. It must have been very difficult to see or make out specific colours,’ said Ian.
‘But you don’t think that?’ Jade asked Nia.
Nia shrugged. ‘I don’t know any more.’
‘I am concerned about the ring,’ said Richie. ‘I have been looking everywhere for it. I hate the idea of something so precious to Ruby going missing.’ His voice cracked with emotion. He wiped away a tear.
Elvira put her arm around him. ‘Hey, it’s all right. It will turn up. You wait and see.’
‘But what if it’s got lost down here?’ he said.
‘I think the police would have found it. They did a thorough search,’ said Nia and then added, ‘One other thing, a week before she died, Ruby showed me this doll thing she’d been sent back in February. A kind of voodoo doll. It had pins sticking in it. Ruby was sure the voodoo doll had been made and sent to her by someone in the close.’
‘So that is why they asked me about it,’ said Joe. ‘I thought they’d gone mad. Ruby never mentioned it to me.’
‘They asked me about it as well,’ said Lucy. ‘It was made with the kinds of materials I use, blue silk, driftwood, but of course I had never made anything like they described. I also told him none of us in our little craft sessions had made such a thing.’
‘Of course not, it sounds horrible,’ said Elvira. ‘Why did she think someone in the close would do such a thing?’
Nia explained about the wooden button.
‘Did Ruby really feel she’d been cursed or something?’ Elvira asked.
‘Well, she wasn’t exactly frightened of it, but she was upset about the hate she felt was behind it.’
Joe frowned. ‘It’s a horrible thing to do. Poor Ruby.’
‘I think she might have been overreacting,’ said Elvira. ‘Those dolls are all over the place now. It’s nothing, but certainly no one in the close would do anything so childish.’
‘It doesn’t sound like Ruby saw it like that,’ said Jade.
‘I heard Ruby was drinking a lot,’ said Ethan. ‘Is that true?’
‘She was drinking whisky, but I wouldn’t say she was really drunk. Of course, the bottle was empty when I saw it the next day, so maybe she drank a lot more after I left.’
‘How come you didn’t notice she hadn’t come home that night?’ Joe demanded of Richie.
‘We had separate rooms for when Ruby was on shifts. I got back from swimming, went to bed. I thought maybe she’d gone into the helpline after all. Our car is over in the car park, so I wouldn’t have seen if it was still there or not.’
Jade sighed. ‘I think that’s enough for one evening, don’t you? Thank you for coming, but let’s go home.’
Nia bent down and scooped a pile of pebbles from where Ruby had lain. Maybe she would make a small memorial for her in the garden.
Ian, using the torch on his phone, led Lucy off the beach. Nia walked behind them. As they approached the steps she saw Ian lean down, kiss the top of Lucy’s head, and speak in words barely louder than a whisper. ‘It’s over now, it’s finished.’ The two of them went up the steps; from behind Nia felt someone grab her elbow.
She turned and saw Jade; they smiled and walked home together.
Once home Nia let Romeo out into the garden. No long walk this evening. She looked up at the black sky. What a strange evening it had been. The vigil had been very moving and she was sure it had given many people in the town a sense of communal grief and support. But it didn’t mean there was closure.
Nia was confused. When she’d been talking at the vigil, her mind had been clear. And yet the officer had been so convincing.
Back in the kitchen she emptied her pockets of the stones before she hung up her coat. Returning to the stones, she started to sort through them. Then she saw it.
On one stone, a fossil, was the shape of a heart made of red wax. It had to be the heart Ruby made: the ammonite fossil. It had been her ‘love letter to the sea’. And the sea had kept it safe to pass it to her. It was telling her she was right.
Nia burst into sobs. ‘Oh, Ruby, it’s red wax. This must mean I really saw that red candle.’
She hugged the fossil. This was important: if she was right, then someone must have been down on the beach after her. She had to tell the police; she would ask Jade for a number to contact them. She paused. Hang on, could this have come from one of the candles at the vigil? She shook her head. No, they had all been white, she was sure of that. Anyway, this was the fossil, the shape Ruby had made.
If she was right, of course, it meant someone else had taken down the green candle. And, of course, they must have changed the seal on the letter. It was all very odd.
After making a cup of camomile tea, Nia went upstairs with Romeo. She went over to the window and looked down on the close. She remembered her first impressions the day she’d arrived, smug, content, a cat curled up in the sunshine. It wasn’t what she saw tonight.
Now she saw darkness and shadows, that smug smile had morphed into something less friendly, something threatening. She knew that one of the people at least was hiding a dark secret that they’d unintentionally confided to Ruby, someone had created that horrible doll, stuck the pins in its eyes and heart, someone out there had hated Ruby. Ruby had said, ‘No one here is quite what you think.’ Nia shivered. Those words had been spoken the day she died, almost as if Ruby had had some kind of premonition of danger ahead. But surely her death on the beach couldn’t be to do with anyone here, could it? One thing Nia was sure of, however, was that there was a lot hidden out there in the shadows.
‘It’s over,’ Ian had said. ‘It’s finished’. Nia didn’t agree; she felt very much that things had only just begun.
13
It was pouring with rain the next day. Nia decided to catch up on emails and set up her laptop on a small table facing the window. There were signs of normality returning to the close. The vets were as busy as ever, but Joe had also reopened Wight’s and Nia noticed a few people pass her window on their way to find shelter and an early coffee.
Opposite she saw the lights on in the salon. Jade was clearly preparing it to restart business. Nia felt for her, it must be very hard with so many poignant reminders of Ruby.
Nia was just going through her emails when she noticed two police officers walking up the close. She recognised Ben, but not the woman with him. Suddenly alert, she wondered if they were coming to her, but they walked past, and she saw them enter the gallery. Sometime later, they went to the salon and eventually left again and then she saw Jade leave the salon and walk up to the gallery.
The visits had seemed significant, and Nia was longing to know what news they had imparted. However, she also knew that frustratingly she would have to wait for the news to come to her.
At lunchtime the rain eased off and she took Romeo out for a walk. On her return she glanced over at the salon and saw Jade at the reception desk close to the window. Their eyes met and Jade gestured to her to go in. In a complex mime exchange, Nia explained she would take Romeo in, dry him off and then come over.
The rain had started again by the time she left, and even in that short distance Nia could feel the rain penetrating her ‘showerproof hood’ and bouncing off the cobbles soaking her feet. She entered the salon bearing a tin full of Welsh cakes, and quickly peeled off her wet coat.
Jade was sitting at the far end of the salon nursing a cup of coffee. She was very pale, very still, her eyes staring at the floor. The rain was attacking the windows now, and despite the lights the salon felt dark and gloomy.
Nia approached her quietly, as if visiting a sick person in a nursing home. She placed the tin on a table and sat down close to Jade.
‘I noticed the police came to see you.’
Jade nodded, slowly raised her head. ‘Sorry, do you want coffee?’ Her eyes drifted to the kettle and mugs standing close by.
Without asking, Nia went and made herself a cup and then opened the tin. Jade picked out a Welsh cake but put it down untouched.
Jade raised her mug to her lips, sipped slowly, and then looked at Nia.
‘They have done the post-mortem and are starting to put together what they think happened to Ruby.’ Jade took another sip of her coffee. ‘They think—’ Jade sniffed; tears started to fall down her face. ‘Oh, Nia, they think Ruby killed herself.’ She burst into sobs. Nia leant forward and took her mug away.
Jade grabbed a handful of tissues and wiped her face. ‘I’m sorry, I suppose this was always going to be a possibility, it’s just such a shock when they say it. They are not sure if it was accidental or if she did it on purpose, but apparently they found a letter. She said life had become impossible, she couldn’t go on.’
Nia shook her head. ‘Oh, no. I knew she was unhappy and very upset about the voodoo doll, but she was talking about making things better. There had been some row with Richie, but she felt that could be resolved, and then she’d written to the caller, suggesting they meet. I’m shocked, Jade. It never entered my head she might be thinking of doing anything like that. If I’d known, I’d never have left her down there.’
‘At least you listened to her. If this is what happened, then Richie or I should have seen it coming.’
‘So, had Ruby been drinking more than we thought?’
‘No, it wasn’t only alcohol, she’d taken drugs as well. Ketamine.’
Nia gasped. ‘Drugs? But I never saw anything – and anyway, Ruby never took drugs, did she?’
Jade’s shoulders relaxed, her expression calmer but deadly serious. ‘Ruby was a complicated person. She had these high moral standards, but there were times when even she lapsed. She drank sometimes, not very often, but I knew she went to the beach on her own to drink when she got very down. It was her only way of escape.’
‘But drugs?’
‘As far as I know it was only the once and that was recently. It had been a very rough few months for us all after losing Mum last year. It was Ruby’s birthday at the beginning of February and everyone in the close decided to go out for the night. We went to a large pub in town. It was quite late, and I realised Ruby had disappeared. I went to look for her, found her in the toilet in a right state, crying hysterically. She’d bought some pills off a girl in there, taken them. I was shocked. Ruby never did things like that. Anyway, Gwen suggested we take her to A & E. They said it was ketamine, but she was OK, came home that night. She promised me she would never do it again.’
‘But why did she do it?’
‘Ruby talked about her grief over losing Mum, how she felt she’d disappointed her, and then about some lie she felt guilty about. The trouble with Ruby was she gave herself impossible standards to live up to.’
Nia was stunned.
‘I thought that night that maybe she’d turned a corner,’ continued Jade. ‘She seemed to see it as a fresh start, and she was happier for a while, but I guess nothing was really resolved. I should have seen it at her outburst at the party. We all got so cross with her, when really it was a cry for help. I had my own problems, I guess, but I should have seen beyond them. She was my sister, for God’s sake.’
They sat quietly with only the rain battering the windows breaking the silence. Nia slowly tried to take things in.
‘Where was the letter saying she couldn’t go on?’
‘It was in her bag; it had a green seal.’
Nia frowned. ‘But there was only one letter and that was to the caller on the helpline. Ruby read it to me.’
Jade shook her head. ‘The police never mentioned that one.’
‘That doesn’t make sense – even if I got the colours and seal wrong, I know what she read to me. I looked in her bag the morning I found her – there was only one letter. That must be the one the police found, so where is the one Ruby read to me? By the way, I’m pretty sure I was right about the red candle and the wax – I am sure she used that to seal the letter.’
‘How come you are so sure now?’
Nia told Jade about the fossil. ‘I was excited when I found it, but now I don’t know what to think.’
Jade shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Nia, I don’t understand it either. Maybe you should talk to the police, tell them about the fossil.’
‘I don’t want to mislead them or waste their time.’
‘It’s their job to decide what is right. Your responsibility is to tell them what you know.’
‘I guess you’re right. OK, I’ll ring them, maybe you could give me the number. By the way, did they say if they’ve found who sent the voodoo doll? From what people said at the vigil, it sounds like they have been asking everyone.’
Jade explained that the police hadn’t been able to trace the doll back to anyone. In fact, it had been suggested to them by someone that Ruby could have sent it to herself.
‘But that’s ridiculous… who said that?’
‘They wouldn’t say, but they certainly appear to have been given the message from the others in the close that Ruby had serious problems. This suggestion apparently was that Ruby gave herself this doll thing because she hated herself. It was like she was cursing herself.’
‘And do you think that?’
Jade shook her head. ‘No, I don’t. I think she was unhappy, and I think she had been badly affected by her upbringing that made her believe that she and others should live to some impossible standard, but she wasn’t going round doing things like that. Actually, after you mentioned the voodoo doll at the vigil, I was trying to remember back to the time it must have happened. Ruby didn’t say anything to me, but I do remember her telling me about losing a button off her cardigan. She was annoyed – she didn’t have that many clothes. She was going to ask Joe if he’d found it. If the police are right, then Ruby would have had to remove that button herself and therefore been making up some story to me. I honestly don’t think that is what happened.’
‘It all seemed very genuine to me as well. She was very upset.’
Jade screwed up her eyes in concentration. ‘I think we are right; I think the doll was sent to her and that is awful. Who on earth did such a thing?’
‘You should have a better idea than me – you know the people here.’
‘My first thought, to be honest, was Elvira. There’s been tension between her and Ruby for a long time now, but even so…’
‘Ruby herself suggested Elvira or Lucy, but she dismissed them.’
Jade sighed. ‘It’s all so horrible, isn’t it? I always thought of our close as somewhere safe, cosy. Boring even. What has happened?’ Jade sipped her coffee, started to nibble on a Welsh cake. ‘You know, what with the candle, the ring and now the letter, it’s a lot of things to be mistaken about – what if you’re right?’
‘But the police have explained them all away, and they did look into them. It’s not as if they just dismissed them.’
‘No, true, but I have to be honest, Nia, the more we talk, the more I realise that in my heart I can’t believe she killed herself, intentionally or by accident.’
