White Bodies: A gripping psychological thriller for fans of Clare Mackintosh and Lisa Jewell. Jane Robins
able to breathe. But, from somewhere, my sister summons up her courage and starts to let rip with the Peter Pan voice, loud and clear. Soon she’s dominating the stage, jumping around as though the floor were on fire, waving her sword about. And it becomes clear that it’s Liam, not Tilda, who is shaken by the occasion. He was dynamic and swashbuckly in rehearsal, but is now somehow diminished by the spotlight. In every scene he’s out-acted by Tilda. Sometimes she does little asides to the audience that have everyone laughing, and her performance causes several bursts of spontaneous applause. At the end, when the parents clap and whistle, she glows as she bows, with Liam glancing at her, half-admiring, half-puzzled. Afterwards, Mrs Brookes comes over to Mum, and I’m surprised to see that she’s one of the obese mothers from the Nelson Mandela estate, and she has a row of fat metal hoops that go all the way up one ear-lobe.
‘Right little actress, your Tilda,’ she says, with a smile as wide and open as Liam’s. ‘I could see her going professional.’
She turns to me. ‘What about you? Didn’t you want to be in the play?’
I shrug. Liam joins us, and Mum says he gave Captain Hook a soulful side, and he must come to our house sometime. As she’s speaking, Tilda arrives and we all go out to the car. ‘See you Monday,’ Liam says. And Tilda beams, as though he’s mended everything between them.
Later, when we’re back home, I go upstairs to our bedroom and rummage through the clothes in a drawer that is jam-packed full of my tops and t-shirts. There’s an old red woollen jumper, too small for me now, that I keep right at the back, well hidden. I take out my dossier, which I keep wrapped inside the jumper. It’s no longer in the Princess book I had when I was seven, but a smart notebook that I bought in W H Smith with my pocket money. I open it up and see that I haven’t added anything for six whole months. But now I get writing, with the words coming into my head furiously and hard, like I’m under a waterfall that’s packed with words. I set out the details of how she fell in love with Liam and how it made her obsessed with him. Then I write about how she fell apart when she thought he didn’t like her any more, crying herself to sleep at night and violently hurting herself, going nearly mad. Everything got better when she was acting, I add. She was an amazing Peter Pan and the whole audience loved her; I even think it made Liam want to be her friend again.
I wake up queasy, remembering that Tilda’s meeting me for lunch today. Partly I’m nervous about screwing up, and scaring her off. Also, I’m angsting about Daphne, who sits by the shop doorway, watching everything. My boss has a habit of irritating people with her inquiring, nosy personality, so I suppress thoughts of work while I shower, and instead concentrate on the questions I’ll ask Tilda. I tell myself, don’t antagonise. Be subtle.
The bookshop is a five-minute walk away, on Walm Lane, just past the Samaritans charity shop. It’s Daphne’s baby – that’s how she describes it – and is called Saskatchewan Books, which looks peculiar in the middle of Willesden Green, which is international but more in a Halal-meat way. But Saskatchewan is Daphne’s birthplace, so that’s a good reason, and she likes to say it’s a suitable name because the shop is spacious and empty. Not empty of books, but of customers. I don’t mind. I like the quiet. I work there three days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
I tell Daphne that I’ll be going out to lunch, instead of my normal routine of a cheese sandwich in the stockroom.
‘Lunch out, sweetness? That’s nice. Is it a special day…? It’s not your birthday, is it?’
I get the truth out, and done with. ‘No, I’m meeting my sister.’
‘Tilda? Coming here?’ Her tone has flipped from soft to sharp.
She gets up, walks around awkwardly, tidying the shelves, re-arranging the nonfiction table. Then, ‘What’s happening with your sister? She was so successful, with all that TV, then Rebecca – but it’s been ages, hasn’t it, since she’s been in anything? A year or something?’
The shop fills with silence. Eventually I reply with, ‘She’s fine.’
‘It’s absolutely right that you should be discreet. But I’m thinking an autobiography would sell well. I could see that being snapped up. And it would get her face back in front of the public.’
She carries on tidying, then settles at her desk near the window display, lining up her purple Moleskine notebook and Virginia Woolf coffee mug and opening her laptop. She looks like a giraffe-woman she’s so long and thin, her legs stretched out under the desk, her feet poking out. It’s always the same – she inhales on her electric cigarette with a little snorting sound, then starts bashing the keyboard for a novel called The Lady Connoisseurs of Crime, which is a sequel to The Primrose Hill Murders and A Death Before Breakfast. She calls the books her ‘cosy murders’ and they have quite a following, which subsidises the shop. Daphne says that other people have a business to support their vanity publishing – but she writes books in order to do vanity business. I’d say she spends half her time on her novels and the other half on internet-dating sites in her doomed quest to find a boyfriend.
My job is to look after any customers who come in – like Mr Ahmed, who buys one hardback P G Wodehouse a month for the collection he’s building, and wants to put in his will for his son. Also Wilf, who works in the estate agent across the road and likes thrillers, especially Harlan Cobens. When Wilf comes into the shop he always looks out of place; he’s big with ginger hair and he walks with a long untidy stride and he always looks like he wants to make a big announcement, but he’s not sure what about. Daphne calls him ‘the sack of potatoes’ and a ‘clutz’, but I can tell she likes him. She always mentions it if he hasn’t been in for a few days.
When the shop’s empty I take care of orders and returns and bring Daphne cups of coffee, which she likes strong and black, no sugar. Sometimes, she gets up and paces around thinking about what she is going to write next, and I like the sounds she makes clacking her heels on the wooden floor. Then she’ll stop suddenly and say something like, ‘Hell’s teeth I haven’t got a clue. Fancy an iced bun?’ And I’ll go along to the baker’s. This morning, though, she stays sitting, legs stretched out, gazing at her screen like she wishes the novel would write itself. Daphne is about fifty, and wears mini-skirts and a leather biker jacket, so I guess she really is mutton dressed as lamb. Which suits her, by the way.
Maybe it’s because I know Tilda is visiting that time goes by so slowly. Only half a dozen customers come in and three of those don’t buy anything, so they aren’t technically customers at all, and one only buys a Good Luck In Your New Job card from the display-stand by the counter. Customers walk past Daphne like she isn’t there which, given her length and her obviousness, makes me think they would walk past a baboon. Daphne’s pleased, though, that she isn’t interrupted. She likes the combination of activity and anonymity and feels that she has purchased her own personal coffee shop. Nicer than Starbucks, because of the books, and there are no crumbs on the floor.
Just before one, Wilf comes in to tell me he’s finished Tell No One and to ask if I have any more recommendations. Daphne calls out, ‘You again,’ and he just shrugs and says he’s a fast reader. Then he tells me that he’d like to branch out and asks if I’ve read John Grisham. He’s kind of looking at me intensely and then inspecting my hair, then looking away unhappily. I feel myself blushing and looking at his chest rather than his face and I feel horribly embarrassed. But I try to act normal, saying he should try some Scandinavian writers. While I’m telling him about The Artist, our door bell jangles and Tilda comes in, wearing a long tweed coat, a man’s coat I think because it’s too big on the shoulders, and a man’s trilby hat. She would have looked ludicrous in any circumstances, but in the summer heat she looks mad. Because Wilf and I are busy with our conversation, she starts browsing the books, picking up something in the self-help section, though she really isn’t an Eat, Pray, Love sort of person. As I feared, Daphne stares at her intensely like a dog who’s spotted a rabbit, then she gets up and says, ‘Hi, I’m Daphne, I own the bookshop.’
Tilda