Naomi's Room Read Online Free Page B

just to the north. More narrow streets and brick terraces were built by Addenbrooke’s Hospital and other landowners between 1820 and 1835.
    But to the west and south a wealthy family called Pemberton owned a site looking out on Brookside, in those days an open space. There, larger houses were slowly erected for the middle-classes, among which ours was one. It was built in 1840 for a doctor and his family, a man called Liddley, a graduate of Downing. I shall have more to say of Liddley in due course, of Dr John Liddley and his family.
    Suffice for the present to note that the house remained in Liddley’s keeping until 1865, when it passed into the ownership of one Professor Le Strange, the Ambrosian Professor of Greek at the University. Much of the modern garden was, I understand, laid down by the good professor and his wife. She died at an early age from tuberculosis, and the professor soon afterwards vacated the house to return to a bachelor existence in Caius. A succession of other families, mainly academic, had it in their keeping until our day. In a manner of speaking, it is ours for ever now.
    The house consists of three storeys and an attic space. It has been altered, of course, but the basic layout is intact. On the ground floor there is a spacious living room that looks out on to a short front garden. The garden is luxuriant, with tall trees and thick shrubbery; in the summer, it is impossible to see more than the upper storey of the house from the street. The path leads directly to a high wooden gate on which the number of the house is set. There was a name once, but it faded long ago and I have not had it renewed.
    At the rear of the ground floor is a room I once grandly called the library. It is merely my study, though the walls are indeed lined with books. I am seated at my desk, looking through the velvet-curtained window on to the back garden, Professor Le Strange’s garden. It is not much to look at now, but when we bought the house it was its greatest attraction. It covers a large expanse of land and was laid out once with care and attention. One part is a walled garden where there were trellises and climbing plants. There is a broad lawn running down to a little pond bordered by willows. A monkeypuzzle towers over the path. But it is overgrown and gone to seed now, a tattered relic of what it once was. If I close my eyes, I can see Naomi playing there among the trees. Sometimes I do not have to close my eyes.
    On the first floor are a small sitting-room, a television room, a bathroom and what was once Laura’s study. It is my bedroom now. The second floor is given over entirely to bedrooms: the main bedroom, where Laura and I used to sleep, two guest rooms, a guest bathroom, and the nursery, where Naomi slept and played.
    The bumping has stopped. Everything is quiet again. I may have been mistaken, of course. It may not have been Naomi I heard. There are others.

4
    My memory of what happened in the hours immediately following Laura’s arrival is hazy. The police questioned me, but there was so little I could tell them. Mr Money-penny took his leave, full of sympathy, promising to keep in touch. I knew he would. He was genuinely upset, Naomi’s disappearance had spoiled his Christmas. That sounds unkind. I mean only that, in some profound sense, his joy in the season had gone. He spent his life supervising the sale of toys to children and cannot have been immune to the happiness his marvels brought. Christmas must surely have been the high-point of his year.
    A policewoman showed us to a room where we could wait, then brought us strong tea and, later, fish and chips. We couldn’t eat, we let the food grow cold and greasy in its wrapping, pages from the
Evening Standard
of the day before. What did we talk about? I do not remember. I do not think we talked at all, not really, beyond the reassurances people in that situation offer one another as a matter of course: ‘She’ll be all right, they’ll find