I Spy. Claire Kendal
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‘And your grandmother raised you?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s sad about your parents. What a thing to happen.’
‘It was a long time ago.’
‘You were two?’
She’d got it wrong on purpose. I was certain of it. ‘Three.’ Was I right to correct her? Should I have let it go? What was the best response? I needed to quit second-guessing what she wanted to hear and just say what was true.
‘It was a car crash?’ Maxine didn’t have any notes. She didn’t need any notes. She was in command of my ‘facts’ without having to write them down.
‘Yes.’ It was crucial to keep it brief.
‘I apologise for the personal nature of some of the questions I have to ask you.’ Had she really used the word ‘apologise’? Maxine?
The lights in the room were unnaturally bright. The wall behind me was extremely white. But the wall behind Maxine, which I was facing, was a mirror of glass. It was a safe bet that it was one-way glass, and my performance was being assessed from the other side of it, in a darkened room. I imagined Maxine’s boss, Martin, behind the glass, enjoying the peep show but appearing bored.
‘You’ve known the Hargrave family for how long?’
‘Since I was four. Most of my life.’ I felt my lips trembling. My body was not under my control. I was losing it. Why did this woman scare me so much?
‘Tell me about them.’ Maxine settled in her chair, ready to be entertained.
‘Peggy is the mother, James is the father. They have a daughter.’
There was that smile again. The indulgent kind you give to a difficult child. ‘And the daughter has a name, I presume?’
‘Sorry. Yes. Milly.’ Maxine knew this already, despite the pretence. I’d given permission for them to interview friends and family. I’d had to, though there weren’t many. Peggy, James, and Milly. My list of three, because my grandmother hardly knew what day of the week she was living any more.
‘You and Milly are very close, aren’t you? Best friends, as they say.’
‘I’d never tell her’ – I flapped around for the right phrase – ‘anything I shouldn’t.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t. Milly’s family moved next door when you were four?’
‘Yes.’ Elaboration was not my friend.
I reminded myself that these were the easy questions. The seemingly innocuous warm-up questions to lull me into the false sense of security that would get me to mess up and reveal every vulnerability I’d ever had. My stomach knotted, and I tried not to let myself panic about what might be coming.
‘And you moved in when?’
‘I was born in that house. My grandmother moved in to look after me when my parents died. Milly’s family bought the house next door just before the two of us started school – she and I are the same age.’
‘Your grandmother was quite old when she became your guardian, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
Maxine smiled again, and I shivered so hard it must have been visible on the other side of the one-way glass. ‘That can’t have been much fun for a small child.’
I tried to think of what to say to this, but I took too long, so Maxine went on. ‘You are close to Milly’s mother? Peggy, you said?’
‘Yes.’
‘Peggy must have seen you as a poor little neglected orphan.’ Maxine was a combination of effortful glamour and mess. Her hair was bottle-blonde but lank. Pieces of different lengths hung in front of her face, as if she’d hacked at them herself.
‘I think she probably did, yes.’
‘Tell me more, Holly.’ That jagged curtain of hair was one of Maxine’s tactics for hiding, though I managed a glimpse of hooded eyes that were grey that day but could easily be changed with contact lenses.
‘I think Peggy wanted – she still wants – to protect me. To mother me, even.’ I was saying too much when I needed to be spare in my answers. Part of what Maxine was testing was that I could be reserved, even under pressure.
‘And Peggy’s husband is around – James Hargrave. What is he like?’ Maxine pushed her hair behind her ears. Not a Maxine gesture. Her mascara and eyeliner were heavy. She had gone for her usual indigo. No ordinary black for her. The foundation was caked on. Maxine was a woman of many faces.
‘He runs the town pharmacy.’
‘And?’
‘James is very kind, but he doesn’t say much.’
I didn’t explain that it was as if Peggy had such a lot to say there was nothing left for James – and they both seemed to like it that way.
‘Very kind? That’s mild. You aren’t damning by faint praise?’
‘There is a lot to be said for real kindness.’ As soon as the words were out, I wanted to take them back – she was going to think I was judging her, that I was rebuking her.
‘I agree,’ she said, but this didn’t make me relax. ‘And your grandmother is fond of the Hargrave family? As fond as you clearly are?’
‘My grandmother hates pretty much everybody.’
Maxine laughed, something I hadn’t seen her do even once during the residential phase of the recruitment process, which she was leading. Along with the other aspiring intelligence officers, I watched Maxine as if she were a superstar.
‘But she worships James,’ I said.
‘You are admirably loyal, Holly, aren’t you? Am I correct in thinking that you gave up your place at Exeter University to look after your grandmother? You were going to read Modern Languages?’
‘I couldn’t leave my grandmother alone. I’d been trying to delay putting her in a nursing home, so I enrolled on a BA in English at Falmouth instead of the Exeter course – I can commute to Falmouth pretty easily from our house. I’m due to graduate this summer.’
‘You’re predicted a first.’
‘Yes. And I took every evening course they offered in French, Spanish, and German, to try to compensate for not being able to do Modern Languages. I’m fluent in all three – I studied them in school too.’
‘You got As for all three at A level, and an A in English Literature. Correct?’
‘Yes. And I can get by in Italian. I’ve been working towards a career in the Security Service for as long as I can remember.’
I had been obsessed with spies since I was a very little girl. My grandmother told me that my father used to play ‘I Spy’ with me, using the game to show me the world. I liked to imagine him in his blue-grey RAF uniform, pointing into the night, where he would soon be flying.
I Spy with my little eye, something far up in the sky …
… Moon.
When I was five, I tiptoed into the sitting room and hid behind my grandmother’s brown-velvet wingback chair to peek at a film she was watching. I sat, cross-legged, on her scratchy brown carpet, so perfectly still and quiet she never knew I was there. To this day I don’t know what the film was called. Only that it was about a spy who pretended to his family he was a boring businessman. Then, a bad spy injected him with truth serum, and this made him confess to his wife about his double life as an intelligence officer.
With the reasoning of a five-year-old, I decided to make my own truth serum and administer it to my grandmother, using the best available