The Girl in the Gallery Read online

  ‘But what on earth needs doing? Your place is perfect. Oh no, actually, it’s not,’ said Beth.

  ‘It’s not?’ Katie wrinkled her brow. She and Beth were among the few that could pull off this feat in Dulwich, since Botox had become a hobby of the mummying classes.

  ‘Nope, it’s not. I distinctly remember seeing a hair out of place on Scabbers. And wasn’t there a speck of dust in your spare room the month before last?’

  Katie laughed in relief. Beth knew how cordially she loathed Scabbers, her son Charlie’s beloved hamster, who had the temerity to chuck straw out of his cage onto her pristine floors. And her spare room was a hermetically-sealed area where no dirt ever gained admittance. ‘Anyway, you can’t talk about cleaning, Miss OCD,’ she said pointedly to Beth.

  There was some truth in what Katie said. Beth had been known to alphabetise her spice rack in times of stress, and Marie Kondo’s Life-Changing Magic of Tidying was a permanent fixture on her bedside table.

  ‘Well, cleaning, I concede. But my whole house could definitely do with a lick of paint. And it’s not going to get it, unless we win the lottery.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Katie, with the airiness of someone with the whole of Farrow & Ball, and a team of decorators, at her disposal whenever she snapped her fingers.

  ‘Well, time, money, stuff like that.’ Beth shrugged her shoulders briefly, and set about shipwrecking the last of her cappuccino’s foam with a vigorous stir. While Katie theoretically understood her friend’s struggles as a single parent, the day-to-day reality was so far removed from her own silky-smooth existence that Beth sometimes felt she was like Cinders, picking dried peas out of the fire, in front of her alter ego, already clad in her ice blue frou-frou ball gown, complete with crystal coach at the door. Kind, tender Katie was all sympathy; she’d just never known struggle. At least she was a million miles from the ugly sisters, thought Beth fondly.

  Over on the next-door table, a mere hand span away, Belinda Mackenzie held court. The Queen Bee of Dulwich mothers was in full flow as usual, this time about her youngest daughter’s flute teacher, who was not coming up to scratch. Her acolytes sat in reasonably contented silence, glad just to be in the chosen band that accompanied Belinda everywhere. Belinda owned the best babysitters, she threw the best playdates, and her kids’ birthday parties lasted days and put the son et lumieres of Versailles in the shade.

  While space in the café was at a premium, and the ladies at her table jostled thighs and shoulders, Belinda’s handbag took its rightful place on a chair of its own, its fixtures and fittings gleaming like bright copper kettles. Beth sighed with envy. She loved handbags. She kicked her own ratty old number surreptitiously as it skulked under the table, shamed by its neighbour’s magnificence.

  ‘So, what are you having done in the house?’ Beth asked Katie, and let her mind wander a little as her friend outlined plans to paper the upper reaches of her house’s hallway in a striking Osborne and Little print, and change the paintwork from the current custard cream to a more Dulwich-friendly biscotti shade.

  ‘I just feel that, now Charlie’s getting older, we don’t have to have everything so child friendly, if you know what I mean,’ said Katie earnestly. Beth, though nodding, felt a little sorry for Charlie, who was still very definitely only nine and probably not yet ready to put away childish things. Though, having said that, Katie had gone a bit nuts when he was born – after an exhausting and pricey struggle with IVF – and for a long while she could only really see in triumphant primary colours. When Beth had been invited round for her first bonding cup of coffee at Katie’s after they met at the St Barnabas playgroup in the Village, she had slightly wished she’d been wearing dark glasses, though it must have been November. Maybe it was time they junked the alphabet-themed tiles in the master bathroom.

  It made Beth think. Perhaps she could have a little revamp of her own at some point. Nothing super-fancy, a couple of cans of B&Q’s finest magnolia, and the most reliable worker she knew – herself. She could definitely afford that. She was so used to counting the pennies that sometimes she forgot things weren’t as tight, money-wise, as they had once been. That was all thanks to the job at Wyatt’s. Despite the stickiest of sticky starts – so sticky that, if she’d been face-down in a vat of molasses wearing a jumpsuit full of honey, it could hardly have been worse – her job had developed into a source of real joy.

  Initially, her role had been to sort out the archives of the venerable school, which had been relentlessly collecting play programmes and other chaff, as well as the odd genuinely important document, for three hundred-odd years and counting. Rapidly, with all the hoo-has that had occurred, her role had morphed into something she was eminently better suited for – curating and developing a permanent exhibition exploring the way that Thomas Wyatt, the school’s founder, had become involved in the slave trade.

  Although the exhibition was going to be a life’s work – there were so many elements that Beth intended to draw into it, that sometimes her head was spinning – the initial phases were shaping up nicely, and she was almost ready to unveil her progress to the headmaster and school board. This week was going to be dedicated to finishing touches. Next week would be the big reveal – of the outline of her plan, at least.

  For Beth, finally getting to use her history degree was a dream come true. She had pootled along since her son Ben was born, doing whatever freelance journalism work came up, as long as it fitted in with all the pick-ups and drop-offs that today’s maximum-security parenthood required. Ben, nearly ten, had still never walked anywhere on his own – though he did have his own scooter, as of a couple of weeks ago. According to him, he was the last child in Dulwich to get one. Now, he was just a distant dot on the horizon that she was theoretically accompanying.

  They talked about separation anxiety, but these days it often seemed to be the wrong way round, with the parents clinging on while the child did its best to break free. She tried hard not to go down this cul-de-sac herself. She worried about him, of course she did, but she knew he couldn’t be clamped by her side forever, even if he wanted that.

  She remembered there had been a massive furore a few months ago, when it was discovered that a five-year-old was cycling to school on his own. It was no exaggeration to say that the Village’s pitchforks were sharpened. Five did seem very young, but it was up to the parents, she supposed. The miasma of disapproval had taken its toll and the family had suddenly upped sticks to Blackheath, where standards were rumoured to be lower – making a tidy profit on their desirable Dulwich property, of course.

  Beth couldn’t disagree with the current predilection for locking down childhood – her absolute worst nightmares centred around something bad happening to her boy – but it was tough maintaining the required standard of vigilance when you were a lone parent. At least couples could act as a security guard tag team, even if in practice one parent often got the lion’s share of the crap job of hanging around judo class or tennis lessons for hours waiting for them to end. Beth also found it impossible to imagine racking up the hours that any employer now expected of their full-time workforce. When she had last held a big office job, people had often gone home jacketless, just so their chairs wouldn’t look empty all night long. Even in her child-free days, Beth hadn’t been that dedicated.

  Yes, Wyatt had been a lifesaver. And even her deeply inauspicious start there had worked out for the best. She was loving delving into the murky background of Thomas Wyatt, even though what she found was often disturbing.

  But Wyatt’s had somehow managed to come out of the whole slavery debacle without too much tarnish clinging to its beautiful wrought iron gates. By admitting so openly that the school had been founded on a tainted fortune, Wyatt’s had pulled off a reverse public relations coup as miraculous as Hugh Grant’s rehabilitation after that grubby Sunset Boulevard hooker incident. The excoriating – and sincere – apologies Dr Grover had made so fluently and heart-searchingly had bumped the school up a bushel
of places in the rankings, and the fees had increased by more than the rate of inflation.

  He’d looked flamboyant yet penitent on News at Ten, and grave yet slightly twinkling on Newsnight. Thomas Wyatt himself couldn’t have pulled off the feat with any more chutzpah. It didn’t hurt that Oxford was still wrestling, much less successfully, with its own Rhodes problem, now that everyone’s collective amnesia about the man’s white supremacist views had worn off. Even Princeton and Yale turned out to have very unsavoury founders lurking behind their ivy-clad facades. In fact, it was now almost fashionable to have an off-colour benefactor in the closet, like an ageing relative spouting politically incorrect views at Christmas lunch.

  Once Beth had found the first horrifying ledger detailing Wyatt’s slave ownership, she’d then uncovered a whole cache of documents. Thomas Wyatt, or his clerks, had been meticulous. At the time, there had been no stigma attached to slave owning – rather the reverse – and Wyatt had shown great pride in watching his fortune accumulate. It was a delight which showed in every exuberant curlicue etched onto the series of vellum-bound ledgers by his managers’ quill pens as they recorded the sums piling into his coffers. His ownership of men, women, and children was as diligently registered as every plantation he’d bought.

  It meant Beth could now lay bare all the fascinating – and revolting – facts, which made for compelling reading. The Board was considering opening a permanent museum in the school grounds and even, possibly, charging admittance – though there was lively debate about whether, in all conscience, Wyatt’s could be seen to be profiting from slavery again, even if the proceeds went to increasing the number of bursary places it offered.

  The tinkling of Katie’s spoon against her now nearly empty coffee cup brought Beth back to the present. She had missed quite a lot of Katie’s explanation of the new colour scheme, but she felt sure she’d see enough swatches between now and the finished upgrade to comment intelligently if necessary. There was other urgent business to discuss, though, as Katie had a new neighbour, with a boy who had just started in Ben and Charlie’s class. Already there were rumours swirling the playground. The family were Swiss, they owned a ski resort, they were Spanish and into bullfighting, they were French and ate nothing but offal…

  ‘She’s an Italian doctor, he’s Belgian, and their son, Matteo, is just lovely. There’s a daughter as well, Chiara, fourteen-ish I think, got straight into the College School. Perfect English, the whole lot of them,’ said Katie.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘They were in Kuwait before; the kids went to one of those international schools. They have a sort of transatlantic accent.’

  ‘Like 1990s radio DJs?’ said Beth.

  ‘Exactly,’ laughed Katie. ‘I think he’s something in the City.’

  Beth nodded. The husband would, indeed, need a job in one of the big London banking houses to afford Court Lane prices – houses were changing hands for upwards of £3million these days.

  On the neighbouring table, Belinda was still in the middle of an anecdote in which her latest au pair was coming off a sorry second. Belinda had nothing to rush back for: her children safely being minded by the best teachers in south London; her house being groomed to within an inch of its life by the much-maligned au pair and a cleaner; her lawn being manicured by the gardener; and her dogs were towing their long-suffering walker around Dulwich Park. Later, her personal trainer would stop by to make sure she expended equivalent calories to dog walking/cleaning/gardening in the latest carefully selected fitness fad, before her husband staggered home at 8.30pm to hear how relentless her day had been.

  Katie, meanwhile, was off to give an exercise class. And Beth – well, she had ten thousand things to do, and didn’t really want to think about any of them. Katie had wound her airy red georgette scarf around her neck, and they had both stood up to go.

  ***

  It was the red of that scarf which Beth was remembering, she realised. Her pulse slowed a little from its frenetic pace as she repeated to herself that it was probably nothing, absolutely nothing. She’d dragged this reluctant gallery assistant with her for no reason, and they were bound to find nothing more sinister than a lost scarlet scarf, forgotten by some ditsy Dulwich mum, abandoned in the mausoleum niche. She was about to feel so silly. That’s what she was hoping, anyway.

  As they approached the mausoleum, their footsteps instinctively slowed until they were mimicking the pace which Ben adopted every night, when he was being forced up the stairs to bed. Beth wasn’t quite dragging her feet, but the unwilling assistant at her side really might have been. It didn’t help that, as soon as they stepped into the small, circular room, the temperature dropped by about ten degrees – this portion of the gallery was constructed entirely from solid marble, and the coldly coloured glass high above them shut out the bright Dulwich day as effectively as the fanciest designer sunglasses. Beth shivered.

  But the mystery was solved. Right in front of them, and hardly over the threshold of the room, was the splash of red that Beth had seen out of the corner of her eye – a scrunched-up, empty-looking backpack in the brightest of vermilions. It lay in a bit of a tangle, long straps left lying anyhow, not far from the simple wooden bench which had been placed incongruously in the centre of the space. Beth supposed that you could plonk yourself down on this basic structure – no better, really, than the sort of garden bench you might pick up in Ikea – and sit and contemplate the dead founders of the museum. Why anyone would want to do that, though, was entirely beyond her.

  Beth turned to the gallery girl and they both tittered a bit nervously out of sheer relief. ‘Well that’s all it was!’ said Beth, with forced jollity. Her delight at avoiding a grisly discovery was rapidly giving way to embarrassment. ‘Just some lost property. I’m so sorry to have made you…’ she started.

  But the girl’s expression, all smiles the moment before, had become strangely fixed, while the corners of her mouth trembled and dropped. Her gaze was on something over Beth’s shoulder, something that was causing her stare to become more and more saucer-sized by the second. Her mouth opened in horror, but no sound came out, and she stuffed a hand, complete with grubby, chipped black nail varnish, into it.

  She started to back away, out of the mausoleum. She reached the archway that they had just come through, and sagged against it, still making no sound, still gazing over Beth’s shoulder.

  Beth didn’t want to turn round, but knew she had to. She did it slowly. Behind her, set at an angle away from the bench, and following the curve of the circular wall, was the long, low box of smooth dull maroon marble, about six feet long – the stone coffin housing Margot Devereux’s bones. And then there was no mystery at all about what was terrifying the intern.

  Lying on top of the coffin was the body of a girl. She was dressed in a white slip dress, sequins shimmering slightly in the half light, her skin as pale and lucent as the material. One tiny spaghetti strap had fallen off her shoulder, which would have lent a casual air to her look, except that both arms had been crossed over her chest, and her hands lay still as death, fingers fanned. Her eyes were closed. Her hair was dark and wavy, blonder at the tips. It rippled down the marble and onto the cold floor. Her feet were bare, electric blue painted toenails garish against the pallid flesh.

  Beth stared in horror. It was Millais’ Ophelia come to life, but so much more bleak. Millais had garlanded his corpse with greenery; this girl lay starkly abandoned, in this cheerless mausoleum, with only the long dead for company. It was horrifying. Rooted to the spot, Beth gazed helplessly. Then the girl’s chest moved. Not so much Millais, whose model had died of pneumonia after posing for months in baths of cold water, as Sleeping Beauty.

  Chapter Two

  Eighteen Hours Earlier

  Sophia Jones-Creedy sucked in her cheeks and looked deep into the lens of her smartphone, flicking on the saucy smile that had won her thousands of Instagram followers. Way more than her nearest rival, Louisa, thought Sophia smugly. Not s
urprising. Wet little Louisa was in her class. Her Instafeed was all outdoorsy rubbish, with great chunky captions under every shot: ‘this weekend my family and I walked 15k up a mountain for charity, blah blah blah.’ Meh. Who frigging cared? Maybe it was because Louisa was still only thirteen. A child. Sophia’s own fourteenth birthday had been months ago.

  Louisa’s trouble was that she had no idea what people really wanted, Sophia reflected as she pointed, pouted, and papped in her cluttered bedroom in the largest house on Court Lane. She then ran the pictures through a couple of apps to make minor adjustments – it wasn’t cheating to plump up her lips a bit or airbrush that spot coming up on her chin, it was just editing. Everyone did it. Or everyone with any sense. She had a duty to make sure that she was looking her absolute best. When she was completely happy, she uploaded the picture.

  A minute later, the likes started rolling in. Her party pics always got the most hits. Well, let’s face it, she thought, in this little number, she looked hot. She smoothed the pale, sequinned dress down her slim body, the silk sliding cool against her skin. It was Armani. Her mum had bought it for her as an apology for being away in the States that time, literally for ever, lawyering away on some huge case or other.

  Mum had made a really big deal about the dress, so Sophia had Googled it to see if she could make some money out of it on eBay later, once she’d worn it. It was some old-school design classic, and yes, really pricey, but she would have preferred something a bit racier from Asos. And, to be honest, she’d have preferred her mum being around for all that time, instead of any dress. Like that was going to happen, though. Her mum had always made it clear – her career was a big deal. And she wanted Sophia to have a big deal career, too. That meant slaving away for ever, exam after exam after exam, and then getting a really super-dull job. Sophia didn’t see the point. Not when people her actual age were making lorry-loads of money just becoming influencers and writing blogs and… ok, she wasn’t a hundred per cent on how all this translated to hard cash. But she knew it did. Look at Zoella. All she did was put on make-up at home and say ‘craycray’ a lot, like she didn’t even have time to pronounce things properly. Sophia could totally do that.