Love, Honour & O'Brien

by Jennifer Rowe

  Abigail nodded casually, wrapped the deck of cards in the black silk again and took the little bundle back to the shelf. As Holly stood up too, she saw that instead of putting the bundle back in the box, Abigail was arranging crystals on top of it. Disinfecting the cards of me, I suppose, thought Holly, and felt oddly insulted.

  She watched Abigail’s profile, wild-haired and witchy in the candlelight.

  . . . secrets and lies around you. Shadows. And a snake.

  Not anymore, Holly promised herself. Her stomach gurgled.

  ‘Well, the casserole should be hot enough by now,’ Abigail said cheerfully, turning away from the shelf. ‘Come through and we’ll eat.’

  She led the way through a door at the back of the consulting room. Holly followed, and to her surprise and relief found herself in a large, welcoming, brightly lit space that was part kitchen and part living room, and had a broad view of the dark back garden. A sturdy wooden table stood in the centre of the room. It had been covered in a blue gingham cloth and set with two places. The air was filled with a savoury smell. Holly’s heart sang.

  Abigail’s vegetable casserole was a dark brown mush that tasted of fennel and not much else. It was impossible to tell what was in it, though Holly was fairly sure the orange lumps were sweet potato, and the black bits were mushrooms. Not that she cared. The food was hot and filling, and that was all that counted as far as she was concerned. She had eaten a third of what was on her plate without drawing breath.

  ‘I don’t know where the cauliflower went,’ said Abigail, trawling through the sludge on her plate with her fork. ‘And I can’t taste the garlic at all. Maybe I should have left out the juniper berries. What do you think?’

  ‘It’s great,’ said Holly sincerely. She was feeling better. Much, much better. She had feared that Abigail might want to talk about the consultation—ask her questions, maybe, or give her advice. But to her relief, Abigail hadn’t referred to her predictions, or the tarot cards, at all. She had just busied herself getting the meal on the table with all possible speed.

  ‘My first husband, Fergus, said I had no feeling for food,’ said Abigail. ‘He insisted on doing all the cooking. He only used fresh ingredients—no processed food at all. That’s how he died, really.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Holly, swallowing hastily.

  ‘Yes, it was very sad,’ sighed Abigail. ‘Fergus had aich-mophobia, you see. That’s a morbid fear of knives. He’d had it for as long as he could remember—only ever ate with a fork and spoon. Or chopsticks. He wouldn’t have a knife in the house. So if a recipe called for ingredients to be sliced or diced, it was tricky.’ She helped herself to salad.

  ‘I suppose he could have used a food processor,’ Holly suggested tentatively, wondering how this story was going to end.

  Abigail shook her head. ‘Fergus started hyperventilating if he even saw a picture of a food processor. All those blades, you see. Scissors were out for the same reason. It made things a bit awkward.’

  ‘It must have.’

  ‘He managed quite well, really, just tearing things apart,’ said Abigail, her eyes growing a little misty. ‘He had his mortar and pestle. And very hard things he broke up with a little hammer. He was very stubborn—wouldn’t let anything beat him. He was a Taurus, of course.’

  She paused. ‘I did wonder about that—the Taurus thing—before I married him. But I thought it would be good for me to have a steady, reliable partner, and I convinced myself that the brick walls I kept seeing in front of me when I was with him meant security. Ah, well. More casserole, Holly? Salad? Bread?’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Holly, gratefully accepting all three. ‘What happened? I mean, how did Fergus . . .?’

  ‘It was a pumpkin,’ said Abigail. ‘A Queensland Blue. A man was selling them out of the boot of his car near the station—practically giving them away. Well, Fergus loved a bargain, so he bought one. He must have chosen the biggest one the man had. It was enormous! It’s a wonder he didn’t give himself a hernia carrying it home. He’d been planning to bake it whole, but it wouldn’t fit into the oven. So he tried to break it up with his hammer, but he didn’t have a chance. That pumpkin was hard as a rock.’

  She took a celery stick from her plate, propped her chin on her hand and chewed thoughtfully.

  ‘I begged him to give up on it. I told him I had a really bad feeling about it. But he wouldn’t listen. He worked on that pumpkin for hours. He must have thrown it down the front steps a dozen times. They were stone, but they didn’t make a dent in it. He tried to run the car over it, but it just kept rolling away. It was getting dark by the time he hauled it up to the roof.’

  ‘And—he fell?’ Holly prompted, unable to bear the suspense.

  ‘Yes,’ Abigail agreed. ‘Two floors, into the vegetable garden. I saw him come past the kitchen window. It was amazing. He wasn’t hurt at all. Sat up, good as gold, spitting out lucerne mulch. Then the pumpkin came rolling down after him and landed on his head. Killed him instantly. And do you know, it didn’t break even then?’ She took another celery stick.

  ‘That’s . . . awful,’ Holly said.

  ‘Oh well, it was a long time ago,’ Abigail sighed. ‘I got over it in the end. Mind you, I swore I’d never eat pumpkin again. Or marry a Taurus, for that matter. And I never have. Carl, my second husband, was a Scorpio. He was a salesman. Very magnetic. He swept me off my feet, and we married a month to the day after we met. I didn’t have a moment’s doubt, because the first time I saw him I heard wedding bells as clearly as I can hear you now.’

  She sighed. ‘Of course, it turned out that I’d misinterpreted that. What it really meant was that he was married already. Very married, in fact. He had five wives, including me. All in different states.’

  She registered Holly’s appalled reaction, and shrugged. ‘You’re probably thinking I can’t be much of a psychic if I made such hopeless marriages,’ she commented, with devastating accuracy. ‘But I seem to be able to help other people quite well. It’s just that when I’m emotionally involved, my gift can lead me astray. My third husband—’

  ‘You married again?’ Holly gasped, then bit her tongue.

  But Abigail just laughed. ‘Oh yes. I was a sucker for punishment in those days. I know better now. Anyway, my third husband, Prosper—who strictly speaking was only my second husband, really, since Carl was a quintigamist—was an older chap, and an Aquarius. I honestly thought I was safe with him. I met him at ballroom dancing class. He wasn’t very passionate, but he was very gentle and sweet, and he loved dancing. I could sense a redheaded female in his life, and I was going to ask him about that, but then I went to his house and met his red setter, Lucinda, so I thought, well, that’s all right.’

  ‘But it wasn’t?’ Holly asked, absent-mindedly taking the last piece of bread.

  Abigail shook her head.

  ‘It turned out there was more to his relationship with Lucinda than met the eye,’ she said primly. ‘In fact, if only he could have danced with her, he wouldn’t have needed to marry me at all, if you know what I mean. Coffee?’

  Holly gulped, and nodded. As Abigail pushed back her chair and went to fill the kettle, she stood up herself and mechanically began to clear the table.

  ‘Just leave that,’ Abigail called over the sound of the running water. ‘I’ll do it in the morning. I haven’t got a client till ten. It’s a man, for a change—I hope he turns up. I found him hovering around in the corridor this afternoon, too nervous to knock, I suppose, and more or less forced him to make an appointment. You’ve never been married, have you, Holly?’

  ‘No,’ said Holly, carrying the plates to the sink and glancing out the window into the darkness that had fallen outside. ‘I’ve been engaged twice but . . . it didn’t work out. Well, you know that.’

  And suddenly, with no warning, hot tears welled up in her eyes. She struggled to hold them back, but it was no use. Her throat was burning and aching. There was a terrible, bursting pain in her chest.


  She heard a sound behind her and felt an arm around her shoulders.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she heard Abigail say. ‘Oh, poor Holly!’

  And the next minute she was sobbing on Abigail’s shoulder, and Abigail was patting her back murmuring, ‘Never mind, Holly. Never mind . . .’

  Holly just wept. She wept because Andrew McNish had deceived her and left her. She wept because Andrew was a conman and a thief. She wept because Una Maggott had lost something money couldn’t buy. She wept for the old, safe times in Perth, and her friends, and Lloyd, who had never done anything to deserve her betrayal, except to be boring.

  And then, at last, the terrible ache in her chest and throat eased. The storm of tears subsided into snuffles and shuddering breaths. She drew away from Abigail, accepted a tissue, and blew her nose.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m—I’ve been a bit stressed out lately.’

  That was the understatement of the year, she thought, and almost smiled. She blew her nose again, avoiding the other woman’s eye.

  ‘Do you really want a coffee?’ said Abigail. ‘Or will I open a bottle of wine?’

  So Abigail opened a bottle of wine. Then she remembered a box of orange peel dipped in chocolate that one of her grateful clients had given her. Carrying this booty between them, she and Holly moved to the enormous, old-fashioned three-piece lounge suite that almost filled the far end of the room. And there, sitting in an armchair so comfortable that you could have slept in it, at a pinch, Holly told her story, from beginning to end. The only thing she instinctively kept to herself was her total lack of funds. She shrank from the thought that Abigail might think she was asking for a loan.

  ‘Well!’ said Abigail, when she’d finished. ‘You have had some fun, haven’t you?’

  And Holly laughed. It was the first time she had laughed since finding Andrew’s note on the fridge. Actually, she realised, it was the first time she had laughed properly for months. It had been a strain, preserving the casual, cool, confident persona she’d invented to please Andrew McNish. It had been very stressful, preparing to run away and marry a man she hardly knew. This discovery amazed her.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve been in my right mind for ages,’ she said aloud.

  ‘Probably not,’ said Abigail, draining her glass. ‘We’re all a bit unhinged when we’re first in love. And obviously this Andrew was offering something you wanted. Obviously you weren’t happy with the way things were in your life, and were looking for a way out. Otherwise you wouldn’t have suspended your judgement like that.’

  She was right, of course. Holly leaned back in her chair. Suddenly she was having trouble keeping her eyes open.

  ‘Would you like to sleep here, on the couch, tonight, Holly?’ Abigail’s voice sounded as if it were coming from a long way off. ‘You’re very welcome, and I’m sure the parrot will be okay on its own.’

  ‘Oh, no, thanks very much, but I’ll be fine. Truly.’ Holly struggled out of the warm embrace of the chair. The idea of the empty flat upstairs wasn’t appealing, but she knew she couldn’t impose on Abigail any longer. She had to gather the shreds of her independence together and act like a grown-up. She had a bed, at least for tonight, and she should sleep in it.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Abigail said doubtfully.

  She took Holly back through the front room and opened the door into the passageway. The door to the street had been closed. A single light hanging from the ceiling at the foot of the stairs did little to relieve the prevailing dimness. The passage with its grinning daisy faces reminded Holly of the interior of a ghost train.

  ‘I can’t thank you enough for dinner and—everything,’ Holly said, and had never meant anything more sincerely in her life.

  ‘Oh, it was nothing,’ said Abigail. ‘But, Holly, I’ve been thinking. There’s nothing to stop you staying here, you know, while you decide what you want to do. Enid and I would be pleased to have you.’

  Holly blinked. ‘What about the landlord?’

  ‘Oh, what old Droopy Drawers doesn’t know won’t hurt him. He won’t be here till the rent’s due again. Never comes near the place between times. He kept the whole of Skye and Deirdre’s bond, you know, because of those gorgeous murals, even though they paid for all the paint themselves.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Holly temporised. The offer was strangely tempting, but she knew she couldn’t accept it. Abigail’s revelations over the tarot cards had made one thing very clear to her, at least. She had to get away from poor, mad Una Maggott, and while she stayed here Una could always find her.

  ‘Sleep well, then,’ said Abigail. ‘See you in the morning.’

  As the rainbow door closed, Holly felt a pang of regret. She trudged along the corridor, reached the stairs and wearily began to climb. There was a line of light showing under Mrs Moss’s door, through which TV screams and gunshots drifted. She found this oddly comforting.

  Her own landing was dark, and the only sound was a soft, repetitive buzzing. The cockatoo snored, apparently. Smiling wryly, Holly moved forward, and ran straight into a dark figure sitting slumped at the top of the stairs.

  13

  With a strangled scream, Holly staggered back, grabbing the flimsy banister for support. The dark figure snorted, shook itself and lurched up, revealing itself to be a small, weedy, balding man with a prim, stubborn little mouth and very large ears.

  ‘Oh, my arm’s gone to sleep!’ the man said, making an anguished face. He cradled his left arm with his right and eyed Holly resentfully. ‘I must have dropped off. I’ve been waiting a very long time.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Holly demanded, taking a cautious step down. The man looked harmless, but she’d seen enough movies to know that looking harmless was the serial killer’s secret weapon.

  ‘Purse,’ the man said incomprehensibly.

  Holly gaped at him.

  ‘Trevor Purse.’ Wincing, the man felt in the inside pocket of his anorak, pulled out a black vinyl wallet and extracted a card. He held the card out to Holly. She took it and strained to read it in the gloom.

  TREVOR PURSE. PEST EXTERMINATOR.

  BEDBUG SPECIALIST.

  Holly’s skin crawled. ‘I don’t need a pest exterminator,’ she said, hoping very much that this was true.

  Trevor Purse clicked his tongue impatiently. He leaned towards Holly. ‘Keith Bone sent me,’ he muttered out of the side of his mouth.

  ‘Keith Bone?’ The name meant nothing to Holly. She wondered if she’d been having blackouts.

  ‘Keith said I should come straight away or else I’d miss you,’ the man mumbled. ‘So I did. I haven’t even been home. I’ve missed the news.’ He lowered his voice even further. ‘Keith said you could help me with . . . ah . . . with a small personal problem.’

  And suddenly Holly saw the light.

  ‘You’re the butcher’s friend!’ she blurted out. ‘His friend from the club, with wife problems.’

  She felt graceless as the man shrank back into his anorak like a tortoise retreating into its shell.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Purse,’ she said, making an effort to sound friendly, despite her instinctive dislike of the man. ‘But I’m afraid—’

  ‘We’ll talk about this behind closed doors, if you don’t mind,’ Purse mumbled, snatching up a bag that strongly resembled a doctor’s medical case. ‘I do understand that you modern, professional women have been forced to develop a hard carapace in order to survive, but it’s beyond me to be so cavalier about discussing deep personal feelings in public, I’m afraid.’

  Oh really, thought Holly, very irritated. She folded her arms, remembered this was a classic defensive gesture, and unfolded them again.

  ‘It’s after business hours, Mr Purse,’ she said. ‘And I’ve had a very long day . . .’

  Long day? It seemed like a week since she’d set out for Mealey Marshes.

  ‘I could inspect your rooms for bedbug infestation while we talk,’ Trevor Purse suggested cunni
ngly. ‘I gather you’re only visiting, and you can’t be too careful about strange beds, believe me. Bedbugs are multiplying to plague proportions internationally, and it’s not a matter of simple hygiene. There have been cases of bedbugs in four-star hotels, you know.’

  Holly thought of the sagging bed in O’Brien’s flat. Her skin crawled again. She made a lightning decision.

  ‘It’s a deal,’ she said, sounding hard, brittle and modern even to herself.

  Trevor Purse drew back, clutching his bag to his chest, as she moved up to the landing and strode past him to the door with the red heart.

  ‘I couldn’t help noticing you’d left the radio on in there,’ he said, following her. ‘You think it will discourage burglars, I suppose, but I really should warn you that there is always the danger of an electrical fault. I insist on my wife unplugging every power point when she has to leave our home unattended.’

  ‘Really,’ said Holly, through gritted teeth. She pushed the door open and switched on the light.

  ‘Howdy!’ screeched the parrot. ‘Give us a biscuit!’

  Holly scowled at it. It raised its crest and regarded her roguishly. ‘And the hairs on her dicky-di-do hung down to her knees,’ it crooned.

  ‘Oh, dear, dear, dear!’ exclaimed Trevor Purse. ‘A bird! I would never have a bird in my home. The seed attracts vermin.’

  He placed his bag on the red desk and looked around, narrowing his eyes at the sight of the bulging garbage bags propped against the wall.

  ‘That’s not garbage, just clothes and things,’ Holly said instinctively, then gave herself a mental slap on the wrist.

  Purse made no comment. He glanced through the open bedroom door and a fanatical gleam appeared in his eyes. He snapped his bag open and withdrew a pair of polythene gloves.

  ‘The light’s not very good in there, I’m afraid,’ said Holly.

  Purse shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that,’ he said, pulling on the gloves. ‘People will insist on subdued lighting in the bedroom. They’ve got no idea! Darkness conceals, light reveals, that’s what I always tell them. It’s not just bedbugs, you know. I’ve seen it all— clothes moths, fleas, cockroaches, silverfish, crickets, carpet beetles, mice, rats, white-tailed spiders . . .’