by Vivien Brown
Still, getting better had to take priority now, and that meant taking it easy, letting her body, and her mind, recover for a while, so she could bounce back and have all of those things again. Time, that was all she needed. And they did say a change was as good as a rest, didn’t they? She pulled off her wig, closed her eyes and tried to decide what to do with herself for the next month.
Chapter 3
I hadn’t expected her to be there.
I was sure I’d heard the door slam earlier, her feet on the stairs, the bumping of bags, her car driving away. Usually that meant a few days, a few nights, at least, when the place would be empty. She’s a creature of habit. And tidy. I’ll give her that. No dirty mugs left in the sink, no stuff scattered around the floor. Just the lingering smells of furniture polish, good coffee and posh perfume.
I suppose I’m a creature of habit too, in my way. I never go in during the day. I prefer the evenings, or the dead of night. Never when I might be seen. Or heard. No noisy shoes on the creaky stairs. No dirty marks left behind on her immaculate carpets. And I never put the light on. No need to. I can feel my way around that flat as if it’s my own.
It’s been different lately though. There had been talk of her not being well, a hospital stay, an operation, but she keeps herself to herself, that one, so nobody really seemed to know for sure. I had wondered if it might be serious, if she was going to die like he did, at the back of some stage somewhere, and how I might feel if she did.
But she survived it, whatever it was. Came back, holed up, stayed at home a lot more. Which curtailed things for me, for a while, until she started venturing out again. No visitors though. Or none that I’d noticed. No flowers either, which you’d expect, wouldn’t you? If someone’s sick? Except the tulips. I found them this morning, in the dark, touched the petals, felt a couple of them fall.
But then I heard her, shuffling about in the bed. The rustle of the pillows. I had no idea she was there until then, and it unnerved me a bit, I can tell you. I was sure the place was empty.
There was a raincoat on the back of a chair. Damp, its belt trailing on the carpet. I brushed against it on my way out. Could have tripped over it. Not like her, that. She’s usually so tidy. So I hung it up for her, on a hook. I like to do little things like that when I’m here. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to help her out or anything like that. I just like to make her wonder. How this has happened, or that. It makes me smile, to think of her wondering. Just a little game I play. Seeing how far I can go, to worry her, maybe even scare her a bit. Like that time I put the plug in and left the tap on, just dripping, that was all, but what fun if it had flooded the place, knowing she would rack her brains, struggle to remember how it could have happened. How she had made that sort of stupid mistake. Well, who else could it possibly have been? She lives alone, and she knows, just as I do, that there’s nobody to blame but herself.
Still, this morning, I should have just left. Stopping to move the coat was a stupid idea, when she was showing signs of waking up, nearly catching me. It was bad enough the door clicking the way it always does, no matter how gently I pull it closed behind me, but there’s not much I can do about that. But I know I’ll have to be more careful. The coat could have stayed where it was. There will be other occasions. Other chances. It’s not worth taking risks.
She has no idea about me. Utterly oblivious. And I’d like to keep it that way.
Chapter 4
PRUE
Monday mornings in London were nothing like those at home. A strange clicking sound had woken Prue while it was still dark, her eyes flying open in semi-panic. She had half expected to see someone leaning over the bed, it had been so real. She lay still and listened, hardly daring to move, waiting for her heart rate to slow back down, but there was nobody there. Of course not. Just the creaks and clatters of the walls and floors and plumbing system of what was still an unfamiliar building talking to her in its own peculiar way, no doubt. Coming from an old cottage like hers, she was only too aware of any number of those, although they had all faded into their own kind of regular routine in time, so she no longer heard them.
Once she was awake though, she couldn’t get back to sleep. The growing rumble of passing traffic throbbed through her head, even though she was sleeping at the back of the building and had pulled her pillow over her ears. And then various clunks and slams as the other residents got up, ran showers, turned on radios and TVs, banged doors and clomped noisily down the stairs on their way to work. Prue was more used to the chug-chug sound of occasional tractors trundling by, the chink of milk bottles being left on the step, and the old cockerel’s crowing call from a nearby farmyard so much a part of her life that she hardly noticed it any more, all in all a much quieter, more solitary start to her day.
But then, since losing her beloved gran, that’s how her life had seemed lately – more and more solitary. If it wasn’t for work, having to drive to the local newspaper office every day and then head out to see the people making the news, even if only briefly, and mostly through a lens, she knew she could quite easily hide away indoors and not speak to another living soul for days. As long as she had one of her cameras for company, and a book to read, and her cat, she didn’t really need anyone else. Oh, she had thought she did, had started to imagine how her future might be as half of a proper couple … but that was not an option any more. If it ever had been, of course, apart from in her own head.
Her parents were nearby, of course, although constantly busy. And she had friends – good friends she’d had since school – but most had moved away from the village now, for exciting new jobs and adventures and marriages, and only kept in touch occasionally, largely by email. There was still her best friend Sian, and Joe and his older brother Ralph, all of whom she had known for ever, all still living in the village, the four of them thick as thieves, as Gran used to say, since their early days at primary school. She remembered them all doing their homework together, Ralph reluctantly helping the others because he was three years older, having fun at various birthday parties, playing games of Twister or Monopoly on snowy stay-indoors days, watching kids’ TV or listening to music in each other’s bedrooms.
She allowed herself a nostalgic moment, picturing them all together as kids, curling up and rolling side by side down a grassy slope, turning faster and faster, racing their way to the bottom, and then crashing into each other, all squealing loudly and her giggling so helplessly that she’d wet her knickers. It was a flash of memory that made her smile, before reality crept back in. Joe. Oh, God. Joe. No, she really didn’t want to think too much about Joe right now, or that night in The Brown Cow just a week ago when she had got things so horribly wrong.
It was going to be hard staying friends with Joe – the comfortable, easy-going kind of friendship they had had before. Since he’d rented the small ground-floor-extension flat in her parents’ old house, they lived within yards of each other and she ran the constant risk of bumping into him, unexpectedly and often. How would she cope with that? She couldn’t bear the thought of him avoiding her, pitying her, perhaps even laughing at her. But she had stepped over a line, and stepping back behind it again, as if nothing had happened, would be pretty much impossible, for both of them. She had not only lost him as a boyfriend, and quite probably as a friend too, but embarrassed herself, publicly and spectacularly, in front of just about everyone she knew. Short of either staying indoors for ever or packing up and moving away permanently, she had no idea how to deal with that. Still, this month away would help, even if it really was just a temporary solution. She was running away. She knew that. And she also knew that, once the dust had settled, and with all her remaining annual leave used up at work, she would have no alternative but to go back.
She stretched out her arms and legs, yawning. Thankfully, there had been no dreams, just a long lovely slip into oblivion that she had needed even more than she had realised. Sticking a foot out from under the covers she was surprised at how warm the
bedroom was. Perhaps she should think about modernising the cottage, putting in some central heating with instant hot water any time she needed it, and one of those hot towel rails in the bathroom. Having lived here for just a few hours, she could already see what a difference they made.
The tulips on the chest of drawers had lost a few more of their petals overnight but they would probably last another day. She might buy herself some more when she went out. She did love fresh flowers. And fresh air, fresh bread, the fresh fruity tang of homemade jam. All the joys of a village existence she had known all her life and had never walked away from before. She hadn’t even gone to university, so sure had she been that the life, and the job, she wanted could be found right on her own doorstep. But, of course, she would be able to find real fresh bread if she wanted it. This was London, not Timbuctoo.
She had only brought a few basics with her, food-wise. Biscuits to eat on the way, a sandwich she’d eaten last night before bed, a couple of bananas already turning black, some chocolate, and the last two mini boxes of cereal from a variety pack that had been hanging about for months in the pantry. Any more would have been too much to carry on the train and she knew London would be choc-a-bloc with shops, many of them probably open late into the evenings. Madi had told her to help herself from the kitchen cupboards and, as promised, had left her some milk and a few other bits and pieces in the fridge, including a bottle of white wine, which she probably wouldn’t drink, but it was a generous gesture and one she wished she had thought to reciprocate.
After a long hot shower, a bowl of cereal and a cup of tea, she went looking for her raincoat. It was odd, but she could have sworn she had left it drying on the back of a dining chair but now it was hanging on the coat hooks by the door. How could that have happened? She shook away a shiver of unease. She’d never had a problem with her memory before. It must just be the new surroundings, so much to take in, or she’d been more tired last night than she’d realised. The coat was still slightly damp but she pulled it on, locked the door behind her and headed down the stairs to get some air and start exploring the neighbourhood.
It was a lot easier going down the two steep flights than it had been going up, and Prue quickly found herself back in the dusty communal hall. The postman had already been and someone must have sifted through the letters as there were now three in the box marked 9 that hadn’t been there before. Should she forward them on to Madi at Snowdrop Cottage, or just leave them alone? She and Madi hadn’t discussed things in that much detail but, thinking about it, she would probably quite like to have her own mail sent here. A month was a long time to risk ignoring anything that might be important. What if there was a bill she’d forgotten to pay, or a photography commission she’d kick herself for missing out on? She’d have to email Madi later and make some arrangements. It would give Prue the excuse to ask after little Flo as well. The poor thing might be feeling a bit uneasy, finding a stranger tucked up in her mistress’s bed, especially if Madi threw her off onto the floor or shut her out on the landing. Not everybody liked the idea of an animal, and its shedding fur, sharing their bed.
It was a bright morning. Prue had done her homework before leaving Norfolk and had printed off a street map covering the immediate area. London was a huge place, pretty daunting for a girl like her, and the last thing she wanted was to get lost. She’d looked up the local bus routes too, to find out what landmarks might be within easy reach. But first she fancied a stroll along the main road outside and a peek down a few of the side turnings, to get her bearings and track down the nearest shops and cafés.
She closed the front door and hovered for a moment on the steps. Should she try to the right first, or to the left? A bus was coming into view. A real, red London double decker, so different from the little green local bus that came through the village just twice a day, and went into town and back again on Saturday nights. She gazed at it in awe, whipping her small digital camera out of her pocket and taking several photos in quick succession and from different angles as it came closer. Although the bus was red she could already imagine how it might look in black and white, an iconic, unchanging image of a city she had only ever seen in pictures. Oh, wow! There was going to be so much here in the capital that she would love to capture, as a reminder, a record. Who knew when, or if, she would ever spend time here again? Next time she came out she would bring her bag with her proper camera, and some of her lenses, although just the thought of it made her shoulder ache after yesterday’s struggle with the suitcase.
She watched the bus sail by, the occupants mostly staring ahead or busy reading papers, just one small face pressed against the glass and sticking its tongue out at her as it passed. She laughed and stuck her own tongue out in reply, then stepped down onto the pavement and set off in the same direction.
There was a row of shops on the first corner she came to. An off licence, currently closed, but it was only half past nine. A newsagent’s cum post office and card shop, with a pillar box outside. A small Co-Op, with a lottery advert on the door. An old-fashioned hairdresser’s with a price list stuck to the window, offering cheap cuts for pensioners and half-price perms on Tuesdays. And, across the road, a kebab place with faded pictures of its meal choices, showing that they did chips and burgers too. She didn’t stop, but it was good to know that anything she was likely to need in a hurry was within yards of her door.
Five minutes later she came to the first of several coffee shops, dotted among lots of larger shops and offices. She went into the third one, which looked cleaner and brighter than the rest, and bought herself a cup to take away, baffled by the enormous range of what, when it came down to it, was just coffee by different names, in varying strengths and degrees of milkiness, and shocked at the prices. She chose a bun with icing on top to go with it, the filling effect of her meagre portion of cereal having already worn off. A black iron gate to her left led through to a small square park, hidden away behind the buildings, mostly laid to grass with some cut-back rose bushes in neatly weeded beds and a series of wooden benches placed at regular intervals along the circular path. She sat down on one at the far end and shared some crumbs from her bun with a hungry pigeon and a couple of sparrows brave enough to venture right up to her feet.
She had always loved animals. From the old spaniel, Molly, who had been such an important part of her childhood, but now long gone, to her parents’ latest dog, a little white poodle called Noodle. And there was Flo, of course, the twelve-year-old sweetheart of a cat she had taken on after her gran died. In between, there had been a pair of green budgies, Chirp and Cheep, that they’d kept in a cage in the kitchen, and a goldfish who came home in a plastic bag from the funfair and never did get itself a name. It had only lived for a few weeks but had been given a proper shoebox funeral in the garden, just the same. And, of course, all the village pets that had come through the doors at her dad’s old vets’ surgery tacked on at the back of their house, and the farm animals in need of visits, when she had spent her school holidays helping her dad out around the place or, to be honest, mostly just getting in the way.
Prue was no scientist. She loved English and art. From the day she had been given her first camera, she had known she wanted to become a photographer and that’s exactly what she’d done, even if so far it was only working for the local paper, with the occasional wedding job at the weekends. Much to her dad’s disappointment, she had never wanted to study chemistry or biology and follow in his footsteps to become a vet but, slowly and surely, as her friends spent more and more time hanging about at the surgery with her after school and in the holidays, it became clear that her school friend Ralph Barton did. Her dad had taken Ralph under his wing, given him work experience and paid him to help out during his holidays from uni, sat with him for hours at a time, helping with revision and essays and practical tasks, then taken him on as his assistant. By the time Ralph was qualified, her dad had been more than willing to accept him into the business as a junior partner, getting him ready to ta
ke over one day when the joys of retirement started to beckon, which couldn’t be that far off now he was in his sixties.
It had caused a lot of jealousy between the brothers when their father had invested so heavily in Ralph’s future, mortgaging the family home to help Ralph raise the money to bring the practice into the modern world with a website and brand new premises. Prue could see that Joe had felt side-lined, as if his own accountancy career, and perhaps even he himself, was regarded as less important when measured against his big brother. Perhaps if their mother had still been alive it might have been different, but she had died when the boys were still at school. Their dad just didn’t seem to have the same natural intuition when it came to his sons’ feelings, finding it easier to concentrate on the practical side of things, as if chucking his money around, buying bigger and better Christmas presents and bikes and computer games, and then ploughing so much cash into the vets’, could somehow compensate for the loss of a mother’s love.
Prue had seen Joe’s initial hurt turn to anger and resentment as he moved out of his dad’s home and took on the tenancy of the small self-contained flat that had once been the surgery behind her mum and dad’s house. Her heart had gone out to him. As an only child, and an only grandchild, she had never had to vie for attention, never had to share, certainly never seen herself as second best, and she found it hard to imagine how it must feel. Poor Joe.
He’d lived away from the village long enough, he’d said, what with uni and then that job up north that he’d left only a year ago. Why had he come back home? Certainly not to spend more time with his brother and his dad. Had something gone wrong with his job? His life? Prue wondered why he had never explained, or even tried to. Still, he was back in Norfolk now, where he insisted he belonged, and he wasn’t going to let his family problems drive him away, even if it meant living alone. She’d foolishly allowed herself to believe that she might be the reason he had come back home, that his heart was telling him he belonged with her, but of course that wasn’t true. She knew that now.