Even Stranger

by Marilyn Messik

  So yes, perhaps it was a foolish decision to head over the lake, but we’d all be better off with hindsight, wouldn’t we? Slipping my bag strap over my head and shoulder, I checked quickly behind me to make sure no-one else was in sight, but other than the side lights, inadequately lighting the road surface, it was nearly pitch black and I couldn’t hear anyone. So I focused on the ground letting me go, felt the familiar release and floated gently upwards, heading out across the lake. As I mentioned earlier, I’d got halfway across before I fell in.

  Rachael, tutting in exasperation at my soaked and spread-eagled form was extending an impatient hand to haul me up, when we were both rocked back by Glory’s shock.

  “Rachael,” she said, “We’ve just knocked someone down. I think we’ve killed her.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Well, you knocked her down extremely thoroughly, but you haven’t killed her, there’s a mercy!” Rachael pushed away an inquisitive Hamlet, with a firm knee, as she straightened from the girl on the ground. “We really shouldn’t move her, until we’re sure nothing’s broken. On the other hand, we can’t stay here. Ed, what do you think?” The girl on the ground was groaning and stirring in the light of the torch Ed was holding. He handed it to Rachael and took her place, kneeling and gently placing his hands, either side of the girl’s head. With hands so big, his fingers met in the middle, over her skull, it looked like she’d acquired an odd sort of helmet.

  “What’s he doing… ?” I asked, shivering, dripping and miserably freezing, from my involuntary dip.

  “It felt like we hit her so hard. She just shot out of nowhere and under the wheels.” Glory sounded as shaken as I’d ever heard her. “And we were only going slowly.”

  “Shush, both of you.” Said Rachael. “Let him concentrate.” I subsided and waited, shooting the question at Glory again. She answered me aloud, speaking softly.

  “Sam, showed him how to do some stuff. Ed can’t do what Sam does, but he’ll be able to tell if anything major’s happened, whether we can risk moving her.” Ed was already rising,

  “Nothing broken, far as I can tell,” he said, “She took the main bump on her side and didn’t hit her head too hard when she went down, I can’t find any bleeding inside. Bruises in the morning though.”

  “But you can’t be sure. We’ve got to call an ambulance.” I said. Rachael shook her head,

  “Can’t, we’d have to go back into the hotel to do that, not a good idea. Ed, are you pretty sure?” Ed nodded, and just for a minute, let down his barriers, to show us what he’d been working from – it was the same sort of circulating, 3D holographic image I’d seen before in Sam’s head. Rachael nodded,

  “OK, good enough for me. Get her in the van.” As she spoke, she was already opening the back door for Hamlet. Ed bent at the knees and very gently lifted the girl, sliding her carefully onto the back seat. Rachael followed with another blanket, I could only assume she must travel with a stack of them, for unexpected turns of event. She tucked it in as securely as she could, slipping a firm arm round the shoulders of the still dazed girl, to keep her upright.

  “Well, don’t just stand there gawping,” she said to me, “Get in, and try not to make me as wet as you.” I wrapped my blanket more firmly round my sodden self, and climbed in next to her, as I did, the soft light of the van’s interior, confirmed what I already knew.

  The girl had opened her eyes and was trying to work out what the heck had happened. Poor Diane, one way and another, she wasn’t having a good day. Guilty, shaken and appalled, she hadn’t felt at her best, back at the hotel. The fact she’d subsequently been knocked down, and now found herself surrounded by a rather odd set of people, she’d never clapped eyes on before, wasn’t making her feel any better. Still, there’s always a bright side, and at least current bewilderment had temporarily over-ridden all the other rotten stuff going round in her head, including the spiteful, festering seed planted by our mutual mate Martha.

  “Ed. Go.” Said Rachael.

  “Where?” he asked, reasonably.

  “Just get out of here, then we’ll decide, I believe,” she said, “We might be getting company.” And sure enough, a few seconds later, there were headlights heading in our direction. Ed turned the van, in a slick three-point move that caused me a distinct moment of driving envy, and we headed, sharpish down the service route and from there, onto the main road to blend with a reassuring amount of other traffic.

  Our newly acquired passenger was pulling away from Rachael, struggling to sit up and make some kind of sense of everything.

  “Stop this car right now.” She demanded, her voice rising sharply. “I want to get out. Who are you anyway? What happened? I don’t know what’s happened. Where are you taking me?” and then, as Hamlet stuck his head enquiringly over the back seat, “Oh my God, what’s that?”

  “Diane.” I reached over and touched her arm. She turned her head sharply towards me, squinting to see my face, in the now dark interior, intermittently lit by the street lights we were passing.

  “How do you know my name? I don’t know you.”

  “I was at the meeting.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “There were a lot of people.”

  “Yeah, yeah there were. Hey, you’re soaking wet.” Odd, isn’t it, how stressed people often fix on the least important things?

  “I am,” I conceded, “A little damp. I fell in the lake on the way out.”

  “Oh, for goodness sake, we don’t have time for chit chat, do we? Young lady, you left the hotel and ran, hell for leather, straight under our wheels.” said Rachael severely. “You could have been very seriously hurt indeed. Only the prompt reactions of my friend here, prevented that.”

  “I don’t remember. I’m sorry, I was… in a bit of a state. Where are you taking me?”

  “Well, I think home would be best, don’t you?” said Rachael, “Where do you live?” We could all read the jumble in Diane’s head and for a moment, none of us, her included, could pin down the information we needed, then she finally dredged it up and gave us a Rickmansworth address.

  “Will somebody be there? I don’t think you should be on your own.” Glory had turned from the front seat.

  “It’s my Mum’s – she’ll be there.” Diane, I thought, under the circumstances, was holding it all together rather well. For moment there was silence in the van, although not in her head. She was going over, and we all shared, the utter bleakness of despair she’d felt, as she fled the meeting. She knew the hotel, knew the lake was there, had thought – maybe, to ease this pain, it would be better, to be like Lizzie?

  “No.” said Rachael firmly. Diane didn’t question the comment, but relaxed a little against Rachael’s arm, which was still around her.

  “I feel so tired.” She murmured.

  “I know,” said Rachael gently, “I understand, that tonight’s little gathering was more than a bit dramatic? Not what you expected, eh?” Diane nodded slowly, eyelids drooping. “And then you ran into us. Shock can knock you for six, you know.” Although there was no perceptible change in her conversational tone, Rachael had taken the girl down to a different level. She was locating the dreadful Lizzie images in Diane’s mind. She probably couldn’t eliminate them completely, they were very strong, painfully powerful, but she did something that blurred and faded them, making them less of a horror. And then she did exactly what Martha had done earlier. She planted and pushed, tipping the mind-set into another position, although this time, it was an entirely different thought – that in the long run, none of us can ever be entirely responsible for the actions of others. I flashed a query to Glory.

  “Will it work?” She answered silently.

  “Don’t know. It should, but you can never be sure. Rachael’s cancelled out what Martha did, but there’s not much she can do to change what actually
happened. This kid’s always going to feel guilt, but maybe now she’s got a chance to deal with it in a more rational way – Rachael’s done that much. Diane was now slumped heavily against Rachael’s shoulder, she didn’t stir, when the van drew up and stopped outside a house on the outskirts of Rickmansworth. Rachael shook her gently and she sat up, yawning and embarrassed.

  “I’m so sorry, I think…”

  “You dropped off. Hardly surprising, you’ve had quite an evening of it. This is you, isn’t it,” Rachael nodded towards the house. Diane looked out and nodded, her mind was still swirling, but the hysterical edge had quietened. Now she was just tired, sad and utterly confused. “That your mother?” said Rachel. From the downstairs front room of the house, someone was looking out, no doubt with some alarm, at the large van with blacked out windows, parked outside, engine idling.

  “Yeah. I’d better go in, she’ll be wondering. Thank you for bringing me home.” I saw that she’d rather forgotten who’d knocked her down in the first place. Clever Rachael.

  “I’d suggest, straight to bed with a hot drink,” said Rachael, “You’ll feel better in the morning and you know what?” Diane, halfway out of the van, turned back to look. “In future, my dear, steer well clear of the sort of thing you went to tonight. Do you understand, it will do you no good?” Diane nodded slowly.

  “But…” and she looked past Rachael, at me. “You were there too weren’t you? What did you think, she’s for real isn’t she? Martha I mean, she sees things?” I shook my head firmly and smiled at her.

  “I’m a bit of a cynic I’m afraid, just went along to see what I thought, because I’d heard a lot about her.”

  “And?”

  “She puts on a good show, but then, so do a lot of people. Actually, I didn’t take to her, did you? Bit too slick and showman, for my liking.” Diane thought about that, and we could already see the erosion of what had happened, as she started to question, remember and misremember what she’d actually seen and heard. She was wondering just how much of it all had been due to her being, as her mother so often put it, ‘all over the place’.

  A woman, in a pink track suit and slippers, had opened the front door and we could all see and sense her acute relief as Diane climbed out of the van and paused by Glory’s passenger window, Ed obligingly pushed a button on his side and glass slid soundlessly down.

  “Look, thanks for bringing me back.” She said awkwardly to all of us. “Sorry if I seemed a bit rude, I thought… oh, you know, I don’t know what I thought. Thank you anyway.”

  “In future,” Rachael said “You watch yourself, young lady, no dashing under the wheels of passing cars.” At the same time and silently, she added, “We can never be responsible for other people’s choices, understand that.” and then aloud again, “Ed, we need to get off now.” Ed nodded, let out the brake and we moved away, as Diane turned slowly towards her mother, who was coming down the path to meet her.

  Heading back to my office, where my car was parked, we had the usual Peacock, post-mission debrief, which was indeed brief and as frustratingly unsatisfactory as I remembered.

  “So, what happened to that subtle, low-key approach we discussed for tonight?” Rachael folded her lips at me.

  “Hardly my fault,” I protested, “Things just kind of took off.”

  “As they so often do with you.” She commented. I felt this was extremely unfair, and said so, she continued as if I hadn’t. “We do though have to put a stop to the vicious little games that woman likes playing. Tonight will have given her pause for thought, she won’t know who you were or whether there are others like you. But I’m not sure it’s enough. We’ll just have to see.”

  “And if it’s not enough?” I asked. She shook her head.

  “We’ll have to frighten her a bit more.”

  “How? What’ll you do?”

  “Nothing you need know about, or be involved in.”

  “But I am involved.”

  “You didn’t want to be.”

  “Agreed, but now I am, and I want to stop her as much as you do.” I was aware, as so often before with this annoying woman, my tone had skidded from firm to peevish. Glory and Ed in the front seats were silent, they’d sat through a lot of similar spats. Rachael turned to look at me.

  “I’m sorry.” She said. I was astonished enough, that I completely forgot what I was going to say next. Sorry wasn’t a word I’d thought was in her vocabulary. “I’m well aware,” she continued, “How you feel about steering clear of all this sort of thing, although, let’s be honest, you’re not above using what you’ve got when it suits, are you?” She forestalled me, “I know, I know, that’s your affair, none of mine. We all do what we need to get by, with as clear a conscience as we can.” She paused before she went on, “Fact is Stella, your heart’s in the right place, even if your head often isn’t, and you’re perfectly capable of making your own decisions, as to what will and what won’t work for you. We all of us,” a head nod, included Ed and Glory, “Think you’ve done well, setting up the business the way you have – there’s no doubt it’s something that suits your talents.” She paused. “Whichever of them you choose to use.” I opened my mouth, but she held up a hand, “Let me finish. You made a firm decision, back when you got Sam out, and we agreed it was the right one for you.”

  “So why haul me in again, now?” I grumbled. In the darkness, I couldn’t see her expression.

  “Perhaps, we wanted to check we had it right.” She said. “And I think we did, “You’re not really suited to subtle, are you?” The wretched woman wasn’t wrong. I could feel the agreement of the other two. In this company, there was no point in trying to put on a face – it was one of the things I both loved and hated – there was no question, honesty was the name of the game. Or was it? There was something she was holding back, I had no idea what, and for a moment I tasted guilt, hers not mine.

  “Suppose you’re right.” I conceded. “As usual.” I tacked on, ungraciously.

  “Indeed.”

  The rest of the journey passed mostly in silence, and any probing I did, hit nothing but a blank. Ed drew up, just behind where I’d parked my car.

  “Get yourself home and dry quickly, or you’ll catch your death.” Glory said.

  “No, keep it,” Rachael said, turning up her nose, as I started to peel off the damp, somewhat smelly blanket. “And do what Glory says. Do you want us to follow you home to make sure you’re OK?” I was taken aback, by this sudden maternal turn and shook my head.

  “No, I’ll be fine…” I paused. “Will you let me know? What happens with Martha?

  “Trust me, if anything does, you’ll hear.”

  “Who’s Boris?” I asked, it was a name she had in her head.

  “My, my,” she said, and I’m not sure I wasn’t relieved to get the sarcasm back. “You’ve come on apace haven’t you? Never mind about who he is or isn’t. Go on now.” Halfway out the van, I turned,

  “Will you give my love to Ruth and wish her better.” For just a second I felt again, Rachael’s acute concern about her sister and that coppery guilt tang, then it was gone.

  “I will.” She said. “Now scat.” As I closed the door, they were already moving away.

  “Wait.” I yelled. The van stopped abruptly, and I ran to the window.

  “At least, give me your phone number. I don’t even have that. It seems a bit ridiculous.”

  “Probably right. Here.” Rachel scribbled a number quickly on a piece of paper from the pocket of the seat in front of her. “Not,” she said, “For casual chit-chat, understand?” I nodded, folding it in my hand. I couldn’t think why I’d asked, I certainly couldn’t imagine I’d really need it and should I, at any time, feel in need of a bit of chit chat, I was more than certain, Rachael Peacock probably wouldn’t be my first choice.

  Part Two


  STILL CHASING NORMAL

  You can plan as much as you want, but

  don’t count on anything!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It came as a relief, over the next couple of months, after not exactly covering myself in glory, with the Martha Vee affair, to get back to normal in the office. A place where I felt, even if only nominally, in charge.

  The agency was gradually building up a satisfactory head of steam, and Kitty and Brenda seemed to have established, a reasonably workable, modus operandi. There were still aspects, of course, which needed ironing out, one of these being my family members popping in, whenever they were passing, for a cup of tea and an analysis of how everything was going. This was all very nice and sociable, but I felt, in no way contributed to our professional edge. My mother and Aunt Edna, were by far the worst offenders. They’d charmed Martin and Hilary downstairs, and would spend a few moments exchanging news and views with them, before trotting up to the second floor, hallooing cheerfully,

  “Only us. Put the kettle on.” I felt I had to take a far firmer stance, and this was only underlined when I arrived back at the office one afternoon, a few minutes late for a session with Professor Lowbell. I could hear, as I hurried up the stairs, what sounded like a party in full swing. As indeed it was. Ensconced cosily on our outer office, two-seater sofa, between my mother and Aunt Edna, who luckily were both small statured, was Dorothy Lowbell, whilst her husband was holding forth, from one of the office chairs, wheeled out from behind a desk. Hilary, cigarette in hand, was propped against a filing cabinet, blowing copious smoke and Brenda and Kitty were flitting back and forward, refilling cups and distributing mini Danish pastries from Grodzinksi’s, down the road. A convivial cheer greeted me as I opened the door.