Free London Transports by Maeve Binchy Page A

Nad’s.”
    Kevin stood up. He was very handsome in a definitely shabby, ungroomed way. Pat could see that his nails, his unwashed hair, wouldn’t have fitted into the elegant furniture back in the flat.
    “I was just looking around, and I remembered that this is where the girl who lived in the flat where I’ve just moved in used to work…” said Pat apologetically.
    “Have you moved in there?” asked Kevin flatly.
    “Yes, a few days ago.”
    “Have you moved all your stuff in?” he asked.
    “Well yes, yes I have,” Pat’s voice trailed away. She felt unreasonably frightened.
    “Did she tell you it’s worth buttons, peanuts?”
    “No,” said Pat defensively. “Marigold said it’s very nice furniture and I must take care of it. Why, anyway?”
    “Will you tell her you’ve been in here?” he asked very unemotionally.
    “I might, I might not. Why do you ask?” said Pat. She was definitely frightened now, which was ridiculous. She also knew that she would never admit to Marigold that she had nosed around Nadia’s old place of employment and nosed out Nadia’s silly young man.
    “I don’t think you will,” he said. “Nadia never told her anything towards the end, she was absolutely terrified of her. So was I. It’s her eyes, they’re not human.”
    “They’re just too blue,” said Pat. “She can’t help that.”
    “No, but she can help a lot of things. Do you know that she hasn’t polio at all?”
    “I don’t believe you,” said Pat, feeling her legs getting weak.
    “No, she hasn’t, that’s why none of them ring her at home. She goes out, you know, when everyone’s at work.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous.”
    “No, I saw her several times running down the stairs, and taking a taxi. I took a photograph of her once to prove it to Nadia, but she said it was trick photography.”
    “But she’s paralysed,” said Pat.
    “So she says. It’s nice being paralysed if you get everyone else to do all the work, pay all the bills, and live in fear of you.”
    “Don’t you think that someone would have to be mad to pretend to have polio, just to get out of carrying out the rubbish?”
    “Marigold is mad, very mad,” he said.
    Pat sat down on a reproduction sofa.
    “Didn’t you guess?” he asked.
    “I don’t believe it,” said Pat.
    “Nadia doesn’t to this day,” said Kevin.
    “Is that why she went to Washington?” asked Pat.
    “She’s not in Washington, she’s back in my flat. In Clapham,” he said. “She told them she was going to the States, that was the only reason that Marigold let her go.”
    “You mean she has no job, and just lives in your flat because she’s afraid of Marigold?” Pat said. “I don’t believe a word of it.”
    “Go down there and see,” he said. “She’ll be sitting there complaining about the noise, and saying how little light there is, and how cramped the place seems to be. She doesn’t even bother to get dressed properly, she hangs about all day complaining. That’s what Marigold has done to her.”
    “Does she want to be back in the flat?”
    “She wants it so much I think she’s becoming as mad as Marigold. ‘It was so peaceful. We were so gracious. We had such lovely music, not the neighbours’ trannies.’ That’s all she says, day in, day out.”
    “Why did she leave it if she liked it so much?” asked Pat, almost afraid to hear the answer. Everything Nadia said about the flat was so true, there might be some truth in Kevin’s whole terrible tale.
    “She left it because I told her that she had given all her lovely furniture to this woman, that she had turned herself into a prostitute for her, that she had cut off her whole life for her, that she was working to support her. I told her to examine all these statements and if she thought they were true to move out. So she did and they were and she moved. But not without tissues of lies of course about Washington, which that nice silly Joy believed but Marigold saw through at