Page 84 of The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
When are you free? I can make any day this week.
Amanda
Note posted through my letterbox before sunrise on 15 July 2021:
Amanda,
It’s been 26 years since you decided to leave. This family never recovered from the lies you told about it. The stressof it all killed your mother. Robin and Jacquie had to go through school with the stigma of being your sister. Even Mark and Joanna felt it as your cousins.
Nonetheless, what you say about grudges holds some water. Where family is concerned it should never be too late to mend broken bridges – even when there could never be enough water flowing beneath them to wash away the damage.
I don’t want you in my house. There’s a Costa in Harrow. I’m there today and most Thursdays after 11.
Patricia Bailey
A scan of my handwritten note to Aunty Pat that I posted through her door, also before sunrise, on the morning of 15 July 2021. Welcome to my family:
Dear Aunty Pat,
Thank you. Your willingness to forgive and forget is much appreciated.
Just one thing: you will have retired by now, but I remember you taught secretarial skills to Plymouth Brethren women at a college somewhere in Hertfordshire. You explained that they reject modern technology, but still use typewriters and other old-style office equipment to run their businesses so, unlike other colleges, your department kept its secretarial teachers. I wonder, if I showed you some pages of shorthand, could you translate it?
Amanda
A meeting between Amanda Bailey and her Aunty Pat at Costa Coffee, Harrow, 15 July 2021. Transcribed by Ellie Cooper.
AB:Ellie, I’m in Costa waiting for my Aunty Pat who I haven’t spoken to since a traumatic family showdown and slanging match twenty-six years ago. She is the last person I want to see on this entire earth. But I need something and there’s no fasterway to get it. I found a stack of old spiral notebooks in Gray Graham’s flat, full of shorthand, which I can’t read. Hopefully she can. Ignore everything she says, and everything I say, except for when she translates these notebooks. [Sound of a heavy thud on a table. EC] The things I do for this job.
[I cut out stuff I can’t unhear. OMG, Mand, I’m so sorry. EC]
AP:Why should I do this for you?
AB:Because I’m family?
AP:You never even admitted it. You’re not admitting it now!
AB:Admitted what?
AP:That it was all lies.
AB:Well, because it … [You take a deep breath here. EC] Well, OK it was all lies.
AP:I knew. I knew it was.
AB:Every last word. [Awkward silence. You obviously didn’t lie. She must know that. EC]
AP:[Huffing sound. EC] Well, are they Pitman or Gregg?
AB:There’s more than one type of shorthand? [Shuffling of paper and flicking of pages. EC]
AP:There is, and everyone develops their own style over time. Ah, it’s Pitman. [Mumbles. EC] I might have known you’d show your face when you wanted something.
AB:It’s a cold case, Aunty Pat. You might uncover something that changes the course of history.
AP:This here. She summarises the contents at the top of each page. [I can hear a page is flicked over between each headline. EC] ‘Seagull flies into old folks’ home, stays three weeks, outlives two residents.’
‘Woman stabbed to death in flat, boyfriend on run.’
