You Only Live Once Read online

  ‘That was intense, man,’ she said. She shook her head and rubbed her eyes. ‘Intense.’

  ‘Why?’ I ventured in now, and took a seat on the end of the bed.

  ‘She, like, really, really wanted to talk to her husband,’ Vicky said. ‘More than any of the others. And she was on it, you know? On it. She was asking me all these questions like “How tall is he?” and “Does he have any distinguishing features?” And I wanted to be like, “Lady, he’s your hubby. You tell me.” But that’s the point, isn’t it – she was testing me.’

  ‘So what did you do?’ I asked. ‘How did you get through it?’

  ‘I blagged it, but only just,’ Vicky said. ‘I had to keep changing my mind about everything I said and telling her that the signals weren’t strong today. I tried to win her over but she was hardcore.

  ‘And the worst bit is, as she was leaving, I said, “I’ll see you next time,” and she said “Maybe”. Maybe! What if she doesn’t come back? I need to up my game, kiddo. Otherwise we’re throwing those five hundred big ones down the drain.’

  When Spider returned half an hour later, Vicky recounted the story of her difficult session to him.

  ‘How did you manage with the others?’ he said, as he put the beers away in the fridge. ‘You haven’t had any trouble convincing anyone else.’

  Vicky shrugged. ‘I dunno, I just did. Those other guys gave stuff away. They were always mentioning little details or getting excited when I said something right. And they were happy with everything I said. Anything! Not Carol Gunn though. Not Mrs C Gunn. That chick is tough. She didn’t say anything. I was completely on my own in there. I had to blag like a good ’un.’

  Spider frowned as he was thinking and rubbed the back of his head. ‘I suppose we need to be more organised.’

  ‘How so?’ Vicky asked.

  ‘We need to know more about her,’ Spider said. ‘We need to do some research. We need to know who she is and who her husband was and more about her whole situation so you can wheel out some genuine facts and get her believing you’re really in touch with the other side.’

  ‘So, like …’ I said, ‘we need to spy?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Spider said with a helpless shrug. ‘If we want the cash, that’s what we’ll have to do.’

  PART 7

  During which my three-year-old brother and I form an unlikely private investigation partnership

  Google

  Naturally, the first thing we did to try to get the measure of Carol Gunn was look her up online.

  Spider sat in the corner on Vicky’s laptop carrying out search after search, and I did the same from the corner of the sofa on my phone.

  Carol Gunn

  Carol Gunn Brighton

  Carol Gunn husband

  Mrs C Gunn husband accident

  On and on we went, but it quickly became apparent that Carol Gunn’s online profile was virtually non-existent.

  ‘Old people can never get it together to do social media properly,’ Vicky moaned.

  We had just started to consider the possibility that, despite the name on the cheque, Carol Gunn wasn’t called Carol Gunn at all, when we came across the one mention of her online.

  It was on the website of a place called Tiny Tigers – a kids’ activity centre up near Preston Park. Carol Gunn was listed as a ‘Group Assistant’ and along with her photo – so we knew we definitely had the right person – there was a short passage saying she had a Level 3 Diploma in childcare.

  ‘Oh great,’ Vicky whined. ‘What am I supposed to do with that?’

  ‘You can mention children,’ Spider suggested. ‘It might somehow lead her to reveal something about her own children, if there were any. And that might lead onto her husband … I don’t know.’

  Vicky looked unimpressed.

  ‘We could ask someone else,’ I said. ‘Now we know where she works. And who she works with.’

  Vicky and Spider looked at me and then Vicky nodded slowly.

  ‘Yeah. I get your thinking. Go down there, see what there is to be found out.’

  I shrugged. ‘I guess.’

  ‘Oh and also,’ Vicky said, getting more enthusiastic now and sitting forward on the edge of the sofa. ‘You’ve got your kid brother you can take – the perfect cover story.’

  ‘Me?’

  Vicky nodded. ‘Yeah, totally, babe. Think about it. I can’t go down there, she’ll recognise me straight away as Madame Violet and that’ll look totally suss. And you can’t exactly have some hobo like Spider hanging around a kiddy centre. He’ll get arrested. You’re a good clean young thing. You go down there with little Teddy –’

  ‘Paddy.’

  ‘Yeah, him. You go down there with him and no one will bat an eyelid.’

  I thought about this. ‘She’ll recognise me, though,’ I pointed out. ‘She’s seen me here.’

  Vicky dismissed this concern with a wave of her hand. ‘Nah, she probably barely looked at you. Anyway, so what if she does? You have a part-time job as an assistant to Madame Violet and you also have a little brother who likes to play with the toys at the kids’ centre. Nothing wrong with that. It’s got to be you, kiddo, I’m afraid. No two ways about it.’

  Tiny Tigers

  One perk of being assigned a mission that involved going to Tiny Tigers kids’ centre was that it got me back in Mum’s good books.

  We’d all agreed that I would need to take Paddy with me, as a teenage girl hanging around a play centre for the under-fives would be likely to raise suspicions. When I casually mentioned that I’d like to take Paddy to Tiny Tigers the following day, Mum had looked at me, her head on one side for a moment. Then she’d put her hand on mine and said, ‘That would be lovely, Grace. I’d really appreciate it.’

  She’d said it in a deliberate, earnest way that I knew was her way of saying, ‘I recognise you’re trying to make amends for being such a poor member of this family, and I graciously accept your efforts.’

  I felt guilty that this was all just part of my plan, but I told myself, what did it matter, really? The end result was the same. Mum and Dad could have an afternoon off looking after Paddy and he’d have a great time rolling around with all the other little kids.

  It was five pounds for Paddy to join in a session at Tiny Tigers. The centre was essentially a big church hall-style room, set up with various stations of children’s toys and entertainments – a sandpit, a small paddling pool filled with wooden boats and water wheels, a plastic sheet spread with brushes and powder paints.

  I knew which station Paddy would head for as soon as we entered the room.

  ‘Sandwiches!’ he cried and delightedly sprinted towards a round plastic table where a man – a member of Tiny Tigers staff, judging from his black-and-orange T-shirt – was handing out pieces of white sliced bread and supervising clumsy children as they slathered them with jam and cut them into triangles.

  Paddy clambered onto a plastic stool at the table and said, ‘Make sandwiches!’ to the Tiny Tigers man.

  The man chuckled and handed Paddy a slice of bread and a plastic knife and Paddy immediately got to work, his brow furrowed in concentration. I hovered around just behind him, not quite sure what to do with myself. I thought I should probably help Paddy with his task but there wasn’t much room around the small plastic table.

  ‘My name is Paddy,’ Paddy told the man, without being asked.

  ‘Cool name,’ the man said. ‘And who’s this?’ He nodded up at me, shooting me a knowing grin.

  Paddy spun around to see who he was looking at, already forgetting who had accompanied him on his outing.

  ‘Oh, that’s my daddy,’ Paddy said, inexplicably.

  The man laughed loudly.

  ‘I’m his sister,’ I clarified. ‘Grace.’

  The man nodded and patted a plastic stool. ‘Take a seat, Grace. I’m Neil.’

  I did as I was told and I busied myself passing Paddy spreads and fillings for his sandwich and trying to keep them chiefly on the
bread rather than on his clothes.

  As Paddy worked, I looked around the stations to check out the other members of Tiny Tigers staff present.

  A young blonde woman was helping a boy about Paddy’s age wipe blue paint from his forehead. An older woman with a long French plait was helping a mother wrestle her naked toddler back into the clothes that he’d chosen to discard for some reason.

  None of them was Carol Gunn. She wasn’t here.

  This wasn’t a huge surprise in itself and, actually, I’d already decided that this would be preferable. It would be easier to try to get the measure of her situation by talking about her rather than to her. I still hadn’t formulated an exact plan for how I was going to carry out this conversation though.

  I looked at Neil as he was busy putting lids back on jars of peanut butter and jam.

  ‘Does …’ I began tentatively, ‘Does Carol still work here? Carol Gunn?’

  The man looked up, surprised. ‘Carol? Yeah, she does, yeah. You know her?’

  I nodded. I was prepared for this suggestion. ‘Yeah. Sort of. Haven’t seen her for ages though. She’s a friend of my dad’s. I just knew she used to work here, that’s all.’

  The man nodded. ‘She does still work here. Officially, anyway. But she’s been all over the place since her husband slung his hook.’

  I thought that was a strange way of talking about someone’s untimely death. Neil misread my perturbed expression as disapproval.

  ‘I mean, sorry, if he was your dad’s mate as well or whatever. But he has stitched her up a bit, hasn’t he, packing his bags like that.’

  Now I was really confused. Packing his bags is surely never a euphemism for death. Were we even talking about the right person?

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, shaking my head quickly. If in doubt, play dumb. ‘Sorry, I must have heard it wrong from my dad. I just thought her husband had died … not sure where I got that from … must’ve got the wrong –’

  I stopped because Neil was groaning and rubbing the sides of his head. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘That’s what’s got round, is it? Crikey.’

  I just looked at him, confused.

  Neil sighed. ‘I don’t fully know the ins and outs of it myself, but I believe the long and short of it is they had an almighty row, he stormed out, took his little dingy, his little fishing boat out, never came home. So Carol’s convinced he’s lost at sea. Had the coastguard out and everything, but there’s nothing to be found. Meanwhile, a few people reckon they saw him later that night in a bar in Kemptown. She’s reported him as missing but police aren’t having any of it. The only person who thinks he’s actually missing is Carol, but I think – I mean, we all think really – that it’s easier for her to believe that he was devoted to her his whole life and is actually dead rather than to think he’s run off with some barmaid.’

  ‘What barmaid?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Could be anyone. Old Leroy was always at it. Only person who thought he was a saint was Carol. Being honest with you, she’s better off without him.’

  Tension

  The story of Leroy the philandering fisherman put a whole different spin on my mission, and I didn’t know quite what to make of it. Neither did Vicky when I took the news back to her.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ she said, sitting down on the sofa and staring into the middle of the room. ‘How the bejesus am I supposed to talk to a spirit if there might not even be one?’

  I shrugged. ‘Well … you’re pretending anyway, aren’t you? You were never actually going to get in touch with Leroy – that’s his name by the way, that’ll be useful at least – you were never going to pass on any real messages. Carol still thinks he’s dead. Or wants to think that, so it’s all the same. In fact,’ I said, realising something that was probably totally obvious for the first time, ‘that’s probably why she’s so keen to have the sessions with you anyway, isn’t it? To get some kind of proof that he’s dead. That he hasn’t just left her for someone else.’

  Vicky nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right. And I know he’s called Leroy and I’ve got this boat situation to work with. You done good, kiddo.’

  She came over and ruffled my hair then went to her bedroom to work on her latest painting – an unsettling depiction of a circus made up entirely of headless performers.

  Later that evening, Spider and Vicky had both had a few beers, the flat was hot and stuffy but no one could be bothered to go out. Vicky was stretched across the sofa and Spider was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, trying to stick the cracked TV remote back together with superglue. The TV was on – something about decorating houses – but no one was really watching.

  ‘Oh for god’s sake,’ Spider snapped suddenly, pushing the remote away from him in frustration. ‘It won’t stick. It’s pointless.’

  I looked at him, alarmed. Although Vicky was prone to outbursts and temper tantrums, Spider was not.

  Vicky turned her head to look at him. ‘What’s up, Spidey?’ she said without much concern. ‘What’s up your bum?’

  Spider sighed. ‘I’m too hot,’ he said, flapping the bottom of his T-shirt. ‘It’s stifling in here.’

  ‘Open the window then,’ Vicky said, yawning and turning back to her phone.

  ‘It’s just,’ Spider said, getting up and throwing the window open with force. ‘What are we doing? Why are we trapped in this box, watching rubbish on the TV?’

  ‘We’re just chilling,’ Vicky said. ‘Settle down.’

  ‘We’re always chilling!’ Spider said, throwing his hands up. ‘We never do anything.’

  Vicky sat up now and looked at him. ‘What are you on about, Spidey? We do loads. We go to the beach and we drink beers and you play your bongos and we …’ She turned to me for support. ‘… We do loads of stuff! Remind him, Gracie.’

  ‘Um …’ I searched back through the things we’d done, although I realised it had been a while since we’d done anything worth reminiscing about. Ages since we’d done anything from the list. ‘Body-boarding,’ I said. ‘We did that. And we ate a squid. And there was that memorable evening we turned the whole phone book into paper aeroplanes.’ I’d been joking, being flippant, but it turned out this was exactly the wrong thing to say.

  ‘Exactly!’ Spider said, throwing his hands up. ‘You see what I mean? We are literally killing time. We’re throwing our lives away. That’s what I felt when I was working in that cabin in Solihull. That I was throwing my life away. So that’s why I got out. But now here I am, down here, not doing anything better. We’re barely making enough money to eat. Unless something changes we’re never going to be able to do all those things we’ve planned. Bucharest. The Taj Mahal. We can all pretend that money doesn’t buy you happiness but experiences do. But how are we meant to have experiences without any money?’

  ‘So I’m worse than filing invoices in Solihull? Thanks a bunch, Spider,’ Vicky snapped.

  Spider sighed. ‘I just thought I’d do something with my life. I didn’t want to work filing invoices forever, but I did want to achieve something. I still do.’ He turned to me. ‘I used to think about law, you know. I never talk about it any more but that’s where I always saw myself.’

  Vicky laughed a hard laugh. ‘Oh yeah, that’s totally you,’ she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘All dolled up in a suit, making deals in the boardroom with the city boys. You wouldn’t last five minutes, mate.’

  ‘Not that kind of law,’ Spider said quietly. ‘Immigration, maybe. Human rights.’

  Vicky laughed again, loudly this time, like she was genuinely amused. ‘Human rights! Oh god, give me strength! What has happened to you, Spider? Who do you think you are!’

  Spider didn’t even look at her. He crossed the lounge, picking up his keys from the bowl on the shelf on his way out.

  We heard him thunder down the stairs, and a few moments later, the front door of the building slammed, making the windows shake.

  Further Investigations

  On the day
of Carol Gunn’s next appointment with Madame Violet, I decided to keep my sunglasses on. I knew it would look a little strange, but I also knew I would be returning to Tiny Tigers kids’ centre in the not too distant future and it would keep things altogether cleaner if she didn’t recognise me as Madame Violet’s assistant when I was there.

  As before, Carol was quiet and calm. There was certainly nothing about her manner that suggested she was a woman who would prefer to delude herself into thinking her husband was dead rather than admit he’d left her. I led her up the stairs, showed her into Vicky’s bedroom and waited.

  When Vicky showed her out and Carol once again declined my offer to see her to the front door, I went in to see Vicky at once, keen to hear if the fruits of my investigation had proved helpful.

  ‘How did you go?’

  Vicky nodded carefully. ‘I think it was OK. I think I pulled it off – the boat stuff didn’t go down as well as I hoped but there was a flicker, like she realised I must really be in touch, to know that. I think it’s enough to get her back, but we’re going to need more. I haven’t got anything to say next time. Not enough to keep her interested anyway.’

  The following day I returned to Tiny Tigers with Paddy. Mum was delighted that I was putting effort into the family again and Paddy was delighted to be able to go on his first outing with his new companion, a stuffed camel in a blue T-shirt whom, in keeping with his naming conventions, he was calling Big Dick.

  Paddy spotted Neil, this time manning the sandpit and, always a sucker for a familiar face, headed over. I scoured the room for any signs of Carol, but once again, she was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘You’re back!’ Neil said, smiling.

  ‘He just had such a great time the other day!’ It wasn’t a complete lie; Paddy had been talking incessantly about making sandwiches ever since.

  I spent fifteen minutes or so playing in the sand with Paddy. I didn’t want to look strange by interrogating Neil immediately. Paddy was anxious to keep Big Dick the camel with him at all times, but was frequently distressed by the amount of sand clinging to his fur, so was causing ripples of giggles to go around the adults present by shouting ‘make Big Dick clean now’ every few minutes and thrusting him towards me.