by Vivien Brown
Phoning wouldn’t do. On the dot of nine, Madi walked up the lane and was the first through the doors of the surgery as Sian opened them up for the day.
‘Hello, Ms Cardew. Here about Flo? You can come through and see her if you like. Visiting hours are pretty flexible. Get well cards are fine, but I must tell you that we don’t allow flowers or grapes.’
It took Madi a moment to realise Sian was joking.
‘She’s had a good night. Ralph’s drained the abscess and started her on some antibiotics. She’s even managed a little bit of food this morning.’ Sian yawned, leading Madi through to a small room at the back of the building and to a row of wire cages, most of which were empty. Flo was right at the end, curled on a blanket, and lifted her head to look through the bars at them as soon as she heard their voices. ‘We can show you how to administer those yourself, ready for when you take her home.’
‘Home? Already?’ Madi pushed a finger through the bars and ran them over the little cat’s back, carefully avoiding her head. Amazingly, Flo began to purr.
‘Later today, I should think. As long as you keep her indoors for a few days. We can provide a litter tray if Prue doesn’t have one. If that’s okay?’
‘It does worry me, to be honest. I don’t know anything about looking after a cat, not a sick cat anyway. It was fine when she was taking care of herself, coming in and out through her flap, with me just putting down some food and water twice a day, but this is different, trying to keep her in, getting medicine down her. It’s quite a responsibility, when she belongs to someone else.’
‘Would you like me to call Prue?’
‘Oh, no, don’t do that. I’ll manage somehow.’
‘Ah, Madi, good morning.’ Ralph Barton had come in behind them. ‘I see our patient has perked up since yesterday. Thanks to you spotting something was wrong, we got to it quickly, and she’s going to be absolutely fine. I couldn’t help overhearing you just now, but really there’s no need to trouble Prue. If you feel uneasy, we can always keep Flo here for a while longer, or Prue’s mum would take her in, I’m sure.’
‘No, I’ll do it. Poor little thing needs to be in her own home, where she feels safe. Show me what to do, and I’ll give it my best shot.’
‘I’m sure you will. Pop back later, say around two, and we’ll sort out everything you need. And, there’s no charge, obviously, because Flo’s …’
‘Family!’ they all said together.
Chapter 15
I’m getting tired of this now. Sitting here, day after day, wondering. Where is the damned woman? The interloper doesn’t really interest me. Not in the same way. I hear her skipping about, in that carefree way young people do. Thundering down the stairs as if everything is so urgent, so important, as if everything has to be rushed.
I prefer to take my time, do things slowly. Carefully. Give everything more thought. I like to bide my time. Do things properly, do things thoroughly.
Revenge. Best served cold, so they say.
I can wait. I’ve waited this long to bring her down, so what’s a bit longer? Not too much longer though. My patience isn’t everlasting. It may stretch, but only so far, and one day it’s going to snap.
Chapter 16
PRUE
Prue could hardly believe she had been in London for ten days already. Ten days of near solitude as she passed the occasional fellow resident in the hall, exchanging curious nods, wandered the streets by herself, and spent her evenings with only the TV or a book for company. Thank God for Aaron, or she just might start to believe she was never going to have a proper conversation with anyone again.
She had decided to leave her camera behind for once and hit the shops. The real shops, rather than the little local parade she had been using for supplies. Shops that didn’t close their doors at lunchtime every Wednesday for ‘half day closing’ as they always had, and still did, in the village back home.
Oxford Street stretched out in front of her as she emerged from the underground at Marble Arch. It would be Mother’s Day on Sunday, the first she had ever spent apart from her mum. She wouldn’t be able to turn up on her doorstep with the usual bunch of daffodils and a box of her favourite coffee creams, but if she was quick enough she could find her a nice present, wrap it and get it into the post in time.
It was fun exploring the big department stores, riding the escalators, taking armfuls of clothes into assorted changing rooms and parading in front of mirrors. By two o’clock she was laden down with bags and her stomach was telling her it was time for a very late but desperately needed lunch.
She sat in a burger bar, at a small table in the window, working her way through a super-sized meal and a huge strawberry milkshake, and watching the crowds go by. Men in business suits, women trying to negotiate the bustling pavement while pushing prams and shopping trolleys, Japanese tourists huddled in groups taking selfies. So many people, and mid-week too. She could hardly imagine what this street must be like on a Saturday, or in the days leading up to Christmas.
For a fleeting moment she missed the village, its quiet lanes and sleepy pace of life, the uninterrupted green spaces and big open skies. When she peered upwards out of the window now, all she could see were buildings and streetlights and a dull all-over greyness that could have been anything from air pollution to dirty windows to clouds. But being here was new and different – and different was exciting. When had she ever done anything truly exciting before? She had finally managed to prise herself away and climb out of her rut. She must not forget that, even if it was only a temporary escape. And, most importantly, she was away from Joe. Joe, who she had foolishly believed was her future, but she was beginning to realise was the one thing that had been dragging her down and anchoring her so securely to the past.
She had tried to move on from him once before, to test the romantic waters with someone else, and it had worked for a while. Joe had been gone for months, years, head down and working hard for his degree, and his calls and visits home had become less and less frequent until they had dwindled almost to nothing. She should have known then that he was not as into her as she was into him, that he was in no hurry to rush back to her, but she had made excuses for him, to other people and to herself, kidded herself that he was doing it for the right reasons, solid career-building reasons, and that everything would change and be okay again once he was back for good. But he hadn’t come back, heading straight off to Leeds with one of his uni roommates as soon as he graduated, grabbing the first job he was offered.
That was when she had given in and succumbed to the charms of another man. Luke. They’d met through work, on a photo-shoot. His sister’s wedding. He had been dressed to the nines – grey suit, white shirt, shiny shoes, pink rose – and he had looked good, even more so when viewed in soft focus through the lens of her camera. He was what she would call photogenic. The camera loved him. And people did too. He was tall, handsome, funny, and more than a little drunk. He had deep brown eyes and slightly-too-long dark blond hair, and one of those sexy little-boy-lost smiles no girl could resist. And he was alone. No plus one. Until he had caught her eye and taken the camera from her hand, put it down on a table and led her onto the dancefloor. For an hour or so she had melted into his chest, moved with the music, wrapped up in his arms, stopped being the photographer and become … What had she become? Happy, carefree, besotted …
Luke didn’t live locally. They had tried to make it work. Five months of exhausting and expensive train trips, long lonely drives, meals in restaurants that had to be cut short because one or other of them had work in the morning and a long journey home, weekends in hotels that had been wonderful while they lasted, but always ended in the same way. Distance, absence, and neither of them sure enough or brave enough to make the move the relationship needed if it had any chance of survival.
It was Prue who ended it. She could picture him now, the sad puppy-dog eyes that showed regret but no sign of actual tears, the final wave as she drove away. Back to Shelling a
nd familiarity, and to waiting, as she always had, for Joe Barton to come home and claim her.
She finished her food and screwed up the paper bag, sucked hard on her straw, aiming for the final mouthful of milk and making a loud slurping noise that had the man at the next table looking up at her and laughing. She laughed back.
It was time to head back to Madi’s flat and wrap up her mum’s present. She’d found her a lovely silky square scarf, in a swirl of purples and reds, which reminded her, in some crazy way, of Madi’s décor. It was just the sort of big bold scarf that her mum would never have bought for herself, especially if she had seen the price tag, but would love anyway. And it would be easy to fold and wrap, and light enough not to cost the earth to post. Time to break the mould and be spontaneous, unexpected, surprising. She liked the idea of that. A new, surprising Prue Harris.
She spent the evening transferring her most recent photos onto the laptop and editing them, cropping and trying out various effects and filters, until she was happy enough to choose one as her new desktop background, and to earmark another couple for a competition she had been thinking of entering.
Tired from all the walking, and with her shoulders aching from carrying so many bags and hunching over a screen, she closed the software down and decided to get ready for bed, but not before trying on her purchases again. Yes, she had given in to another pair of dark blue jeans, a couple of plain T-shirts, and a pack of M&S undies, because she needed them for practical, day-to-day life, but she had bought a few other things too. Things that she would definitely call surprising. A long skirt with an uneven hankie-shaped hem that skimmed her knees at the front and almost reached her ankles at the back. A bright red top with zips on the shoulders – she had never worn anything quite so red! A pair of soft brown leather trousers which she was on the verge of convincing herself to take back in the morning until she realised how much of a rebel they made her feel, and that being a rebel was a whole new experience she felt suddenly ready to embrace.
Curled on the sofa and back in her cosy pyjamas, she put her romance novel aside and started on a psychological thriller, the tension building up as she turned each page until she worried that the dark and disturbing images it was conjuring up in her mind were getting a little too scary and might keep her awake. A cup of tea, a couple of slices of toast and a comedy programme on TV soon settled her thoughts back to normal levels, and she took herself off to bed with no further thoughts of Joe or Luke, just Madi’s mystery man gazing down at her from the photo frame beside the bed as she turned off the light. There was something about his face that seemed familiar. Something about the eyes, although it was impossible to tell if they were brown or blue. If only it had been a clearer image, better focused, or even in colour, she just might be able to work out why she thought she recognised him.
When she woke, later than usual, the sun was already slanting its way in through a gap in the curtains. She pulled them back and looked out over the small garden down below. Somehow, what with the typical chilly March weather and her being out and about during the daytime, she still hadn’t found her way down there to investigate, but the wonky wooden bench still stood there beneath the tree, looking for all the world as if nobody ever used it. Maybe today she could try sitting outside for a while. If she wore her coat and took a hot drink with her, she might manage an hour or so reading in the fresh air. It was the thing she missed the most in winter, that daily dose of warmth on her skin as she sat and listened to the birds and lost herself in a good book.
She never had identified what the third key on Madi’s keyring was for, and was banking on it opening a back door or a gate somewhere downstairs that would lead her out to the garden. Unless, of course, it wasn’t communal land at all, but belonged to one of the ground-floor residents. In which case, she would go out to that little park where she’d fed the birds and read there instead.
She dressed warmly, ate a leisurely breakfast and then took her mum’s present down the road to the post office. She had been right about the weather. There was a definite change for the better. She checked for post in the box in the hall on her way back, found nothing, then ran up both flights of stairs to make herself a coffee and collect her book.
Within minutes she was back at the foot of the stairs. Just as she had hoped, there was a small door hidden away in a corner behind the staircase, and the key fitted. The hinges creaked as if, just like the garden itself, the door was rarely used. Stepping through, clutching her mug and with her book tucked under her arm, she found herself standing in a shaded concrete side alleyway badly in need of a sweep, with a smattering of discarded cigarette ends around its edges. A crazy-paving path led around a corner to the back of the building and out onto the grass, which was going brown in places and was full of weeds. Prue wondered who was responsible for looking after it, or if nobody bothered. It certainly hadn’t been tackled for a while, and there was nowhere obvious to store a lawnmower or any garden tools.
She stepped back and closed the door behind her, retraced her steps along the path, then picked her way across the grass to the bench. Even though she was at the back of the building, she had been overly optimistic to have expected peace and quiet and the tweeting of birds. The traffic hummed and roared in the background. The bench was solid enough, but was littered with fallen leaves and encrusted with bird droppings, so at least she knew there were birds, somewhere. She put her coffee and book down on the edge of the path, took a tissue from her coat pocket, and did her best to clear a space to sit down.
It was such a shame that everything had been left untended. Yet this could be a lovely little haven in the middle of a bustling street if someone took the time to work on it. It wouldn’t take a lot. Cutting the grass, killing off the dandelions, a little trim of the overhanging tree branches, a few more chairs and a table, some shrubs and flowers in pots, a little bird feeder hanging from the tree …
But it really wasn’t her problem. In another three weeks she would be gone and Madi would be back, and for all she knew Madi was not the type to enjoy gardening or sitting in the sun. Aaron had said she was an actress, so it was highly likely she spent a lot of time away from home anyway. And there were, after all, eight other flats in the building. All those people, including at least one child if the buggy she’d spotted in the hall meant anything at all … did none of them care about the outdoor space they were so lucky to have? Somewhere they could sit, chat, read, have a barbecue, kick a ball or watch their kids ride a bike?
Sipping her coffee, which had already gone cold, Prue was so lost in thought that, at first, she didn’t hear her name being called.
‘Hey, Prue! You going deaf, or just ignoring me?’
She looked up to see Aaron hanging out of the window of the flat below her own and laughing at her.
‘Sorry. In a world of my own.’
‘Mind if I come down and join you?’
‘Course not. It’s your garden, not mine.’
The window banged shut and he disappeared from view, bounding out through the garden door a few moments later.
‘It’s ages since I’ve been out here,’ he said, plonking himself down on the bench beside her.
‘Careful. I haven’t wiped that bit.’
He lifted his bottom, inspected the seat of his jeans and sat down again. ‘Too late to worry now,’ he said. ‘They’re due for a wash anyway! So, you’ve found our own little Kew Gardens then?’
‘Hardly.’
‘It is a bit rundown, I suppose.’ He looked around it as if he hadn’t really noticed before.
‘Does nobody ever do anything with it?’
‘With it?’
‘You know, maintain it, look after it, plant anything …?’
‘Not so you’d notice. All too busy, I guess. Or all waiting for someone else to do it. That’s the problem with shared space, isn’t it? Like if one of the lightbulbs goes on the landing, or the hall doormat needs a shake. Everyone waits and hopes someone else will take care of it
, or that if they leave it long enough it’ll somehow happen by magic.’
‘And it never does?’
‘Oh, there is a sort of part-time caretaker. He’s a cousin, I think, or maybe it’s a nephew, of the landlord. Comes in a van from time to time and hoovers the stairs, washes the front step, runs a cloth over the banisters, that sort of thing, and the grass gets cut maybe three or four times a year if he remembers to bring the mower and it’s not actually raining on the day he comes … but day to day we’re pretty much left to our own devices. A bit different from your place, I presume?’
‘The village, you mean? Well, yes, it’s all cottages and houses, no flats, and most people make sure their gardens look neat and their nets are washed, if you know what I mean. There is a certain pride in keeping everything nice.’
‘Sounds idyllic. Like something off the lid of an old chocolate box, like the one my mum keeps her buttons in.’
‘Does she? My gran used to do that too, but hers were in a biscuit tin. In fact, I’ve still got it, not that I ever do enough sewing to need buttons, but I can’t throw them away.’
‘Funny, isn’t it? How people can come from totally different backgrounds, but there’s always something exactly the same?’
‘We’re all the same under the skin, I suppose.’ Prue finished her coffee and put her mug down. ‘So, not working tonight?’
‘No. I decided to take a few days off. I had leave owing and I wanted to be around, and wide awake, to do our river trip.’
‘You still want to do that?’
‘Of course. You?’
‘Sure. I’ll be glad of the company.’
‘Bodyguard, you mean?’