Pompomberry House

by Trevithick, Rosen

  I googled ‘Bognor Regis Gnomes’. After negotiating ludicrous quantities of gnome puns, I ascertained that the gnomes had appeared during the early hours of Saturday morning. Nobody knew who was responsible, but a member of the public had seen somebody dressed as a giant dog, carrying boxes down to the beach.

  The idea of delicate Annabel dressed as a dog made me laugh. Perhaps she wasn’t the precious little princess that she had first seemed.

  Unexpectedly, the doorbell rang. I almost jumped out of my skin. People never visited without texting first. Had I ordered any parcels?

  Then I recognised the unmistakable, lanky, slightly hunched shape of my husband.

  “Why didn’t you use your key?”

  “It didn’t seem right ... now.”

  “Right, well what do you want? I’m very busy.”

  An advert for incontinence pads ended, and Noel Edmonds began introducing Deal or No Deal.

  “You said I should come and pick up some boxes.”

  “Three weeks ago, Gareth! Three!” See, this is exactly why I kicked you out.

  “Well, I’ve been busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Where are the boxes?”

  “They’re in the spare room.”

  He nodded and began climbing the stairs. Although I had asked him to collect the boxes five times, I didn’t feel the sense of satisfaction that I had anticipated.

  “Gareth?”

  “Yeah?” he began reversing his steps, walking backwards down the stairs in a comedy fashion.

  I forced myself not to smile. “Do you think, if somebody writes fiction, and it comes true, it’s a coincidence?”

  “How could it be anything else?”

  “Well, come and look at this.”

  I showed him the article about Bognor Regis, and winced as he chuckled at every single gnome pun. “I don’t understand, what’s this got to do with your writing?”

  “Not my writing. Annabel’s writing.”

  “Which one’s Annabel again? Have I seen her on the forum?”

  “The sex doll.”

  “And she writes what...? Gnome porn?”

  “It’s not porn! It’s a wedding.”

  “And she wrote about it?”

  “She wrote a story about a china doll that fell in love with a gnome and got married on a beach. Then, suddenly, people have found a whole stack of gnomes and a doll, hanging out on the beach at Bognor Regis.”

  “She put them there. Obviously.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. But why would she do that?”

  “Maybe she wanted a cover photo.”

  “It’s for an anthology that already has its own cover.”

  “Publicity photo then. Or maybe she thought the gnomes themselves would make great publicity.”

  “What if it was the same scenario, but a lot more sinister?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If a plot came true, and it wasn’t a few gnomes on the beach, but something much more sinister.”

  “How sinister?”

  “Animal cruelty.”

  “How cruel?”

  “Throwing a pig off a cliff.”

  “Smeg a leg!”

  “Quite.”

  “You think Annabel threw a pig off a cliff?”

  “Not Annabel. Dawn.”

  “So Dawn wrote about throwing a pig off a cliff?”

  “Well, no. In the story, the pig falls.”

  “How many times, in your lifetime, has a pig fallen off a cliff?” he asked, looking at me with his serious eyes.

  “I don’t know ... Maybe once there was a cow ...”

  “Never! It’s never happened. Pigs don’t fall off cliffs. If they did, we’d have heard about it.”

  “So you’re saying she must have staged it?”

  “Yes! No doubt about it.”

  “Well, I think she’s in Spain and it only just happened.”

  “She is? Well, she must have got somebody else to do it then. From what you’ve told me about Dawn, she doesn’t sound terribly mobile.”

  “I have to call the police.”

  “Why?”

  “Somebody tried to murder a pig!”

  “Is that illegal?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s sick.”

  “Agreed. Look, Dee ...” he began. Then, he paused and looked at me kindly.

  “What?”

  “Remember the last time you called the police?”

  “Vividly,” I said, grimly.

  “They didn’t take you seriously, even when you reported a murder.”

  “I know!”

  “Well, how do you think they’re going to react if you tell them that you think somebody may have thrown a pig over a cliff, on the basis that somebody else put some garden gnomes on the beach.”

  Was Gareth right? It sounded crazy. I imagined myself telling D.I. Taylor, his pale, condescending eyes expanding with disbelief. I couldn’t go through that again. Besides which, the police had better things to do with their time than chase pig-tossers, no matter how unpleasant the act might seem.

  “I mean, don’t let me stop you from calling them if you want to. I’m just trying to prepare you, in case you get another knob like Taylor.”

  “No, you’re right. I sound demented.”

  “You don’t sound demented. I just think that police are busy people, and they might not take you as seriously as you deserve to be taken ...”

  “Why did you take me seriously?”

  “Well, I know you, don’t I?”

  “Even so, it all sounds a bit ludicrous. I witnessed a murder that nobody thinks happened and now I’m reading sinister goings-on into the afternoon news.”

  “Come on, Dee. Nobody has a firmer grip on reality than you do. If you say somebody threw a pig over a cliff, then somebody threw a pig over a cliff.”

  “You really have faith in me, don’t you?” I asked, looking at him with a smile, realising too late how it might be taken. Could it possibly look as though I was doing the look of lust?

  Oh no! He was looking back at me with the look of acknowledgement. Oh good, was that the look of reciprocation? I mean, oh no, not the look of reciprocation!

  Must not have sex with my estranged husband again. Must not ... Dammit.

  * * *

  I lay on my lilac cotton sheets, listening to Gareth splashing about in the bath. I pictured him with his knees poking over the sides; his legs were so long and gangly that he had to bend them out of the water to fit in. I wondered if he was playing with the rubber ducks again. I’d been given two as novelty hen-party gifts and I still frequently found them sitting around the plughole after Gareth had used the bath.

  He came rushing in, dripping bath water everywhere. “Dee!” he cried. I noticed how cute his nose looked with a little droplet of water hovering indecisively off its tip.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Did you know that Bob has a battery compartment?”

  “Who’s Bob?”

  He held up the larger rubber duck — the one wearing a ball gag. When Susan said it was a naughty duck, I thought she was referring to its attire.

  I chuckled. “Well, that doesn’t surprise me, it was from Susan.”

  “Can you get some batteries for next time I come around?”

  Oh no, he thinks this is going to be a regular thing. I wanted to remind him that we’d broken up and that regular sex wouldn’t be a feature of this particular break up. However, as I watched him run Bob along the windowsill, making ocean noises, I didn’t have the heart to break his.

  He disappeared back onto the landing and emerged a few minutes later wearing the stripy, blue towelling dressing gown that I’d already packed for him. He must have taken it out of the box.

  He perched on the bed next to me, and scooped me up in his big, orangutan arms. Then he just held me, for ages. I looked over his shoulder, gazing around the room, trying to work out what was happening. Usually he was only affec
tionate before sex.

  Eventually, his arms loosened and I inched back onto my pillow. He got up, removed the dressing gown and began getting dressed. I took a peek at his cute bum as he bent down and searched for his socks.

  Then something weird happened. He picked up the dressing gown, hung it on a hanger, and put it away in the wardrobe.

  I was absolutely flabbergasted. Gareth hadn’t picked up after himself for years. I hadn’t realised that he knew what hangers were for.

  I realised that I was smiling. Having his dressing gown back in the wardrobe felt comforting. It showed me that he planned to come back.

  Tell him to take his dressing gown with him! He saw me looking at him and made a silly face. Tell him it’s over! I couldn’t help laughing. He leant over and kissed me again.

  “Call me if there are any new developments,” he told me.

  “There won’t be,” I replied, resolving to be more independent (again).

  “I hope not,” he said. He studied me for a few moments and I wondered what he was thinking, but ‘penny for them?’ wasn’t really my style.

  “Goodbye.” I kissed him again.

  “Goodbye Dee-light.”

  It had been a long time since he called me Dee-light. I waited until I heard the front door open and close, then I grabbed his navy and turquoise striped dressing gown from the wardrobe, held it close to me and sniffed. It smelt of Gareth, bubble bath and familiarity. What was that subtle undertone? Did I also detect the scent of happiness?

  * * *

  After Gareth left I was calm — or at least, calmer than I had been for a long time. I’d been on edge ever since that damned seagull had peeled itself off my windscreen.

  In fact, I was feeling perky enough to write. Since the writers’ weekend, I had spent a lot of time getting acquainted with my shiny new laptop and my confusing latest version of Word. However, most of those hours had been spent hopelessly gazing at a blank page.

  But not today. Today I felt inspired. Today I felt talented. Today I felt special. Oh, pull yourself together Dee, one shag does not make you William Shakespeare.

  Naturally, I stopped to check Facebook before embarking on my burst of creation. How could I be expected to produce great things if I hadn’t eliminated the possibility that there were notifications pending?

  Little did I know that checking Facebook would kill every creative vibe in my body — well, perhaps not kill, but certainly knock unconscious.

  Somebody had posted a news article of epic significance. The sort of thing that would have made me drop my teacup, were I holding one, letting it smash onto the floor shattering into a thousand pieces. It would probably happen in slow motion and the sound of breaking china would seem distant and muffled.

  After reading the headline, I was no longer calm and relaxed, but shocked, confused and very frightened.

  ‘Foot washes up on Bournemouth beach’ it said.

  Chapter 8

  A pig fell off a cliff, a gnome wedding was discovered on a beach, and now a foot had washed up on the seashore. There was no way that all three of those could be a coincidence. The short time frame in which the discoveries had happened, made the ghastly situation even more suspicious.

  Not only did the discovery of the foot confirm my belief that the storylines from the anthology were coming true, but it told me that the happenings were far more sinister than I’d first imagined. The gnomes were harmless enough, but the animal cruelty had been a step too far, and now, a human foot — well, whatever was doing this was clearly revolting, unadulterated evil.

  Interesting that I said ‘whatever’ and not ‘whoever’. Did I really believe that there might be some sort of mystical force at work? No, of course I didn’t. Somebody was doing this. Somebody was making the anthology come true. But who?

  Well, I could think of one person who was capable of revolting, unadulterated evil — Biff’s killer.

  Oh hell! Could it have been Biff’s foot?

  Then I remembered the other piece of writing that had come true — the prediction in the hat. ‘I die tomorrow’. If the ‘I’ in that sentence had been Biff, then that made four unlikely coincidences.

  I had to call the police. They might not care about the gnomes, but surely they would care about a human foot. The police needed to be warned about what would happen next. I tried to remember the other stories. Wasn’t there one about a private detective? Oh no, Rafe had used the other idea, hadn’t he? What was that again? I strained my brain to remember. Cannibals!

  Oh no! Why had I persuaded him to tell the story about cannibals and not a private detective? Somebody was going to get eaten and it was all my fault.

  I had to tell the police. However, I imagined Taylor looking at me over his long, bony nose. “Eaten?” he would ask, with a scoff.

  What was Montgomery’s story? Was that something the police would take more seriously? Hadn’t he written about a vigilante tax lawyer? A tax lawyer who killed his colleague’s guilty clients. Another death!

  If the stories kept coming true, then two more people were going to die. I had to do something. I had to call the police.

  I thought back to my last meeting with Taylor and Forrester. Why hadn’t they taken me seriously? I concluded that it was because I’d been too vague. I hadn’t known the witnesses’ real names or even the most commonly used name for the island.

  This time I had to approach the police with as many specifics as I could. I darted over to the coffee table and grabbed my Kindle. The Book of Most Quality Writers was there, unopened.

  Hurriedly, I clicked on it and was transported to a copyright message. ‘Don’t copy this book or else! Karma kills pirates, like cannons. If you wake up in the morning with cancer, you will know why.” It did seem a little aggressive.

  I turned the page to find a foreword by Dawn Manning and Montgomery Lowe.

  ‘What happens when the best writers in the country get together? This book happens! We are delighted to have been able to work with greats such as Rafe Maddocks and Annabel Fleming and to introduce the talent that is Danger Smith. We also have a short by lesser-known writer, Dee Whittaker ...’

  What? In what way was I a lesser-known talent? I’d sold almost a thousand books! Annabel’s Falling for Flatley had only sold 200.

  Then the more pertinent issue struck me, like a badly handled cricket bat — my story was in the anthology!

  I hadn’t shown anybody my submission. The only copies of that particular story, were on my laptop and ... Oh my giddy aunt! There was a copy on my stolen memory card! Somehow, that card must have ended up in the other writers’ hands.

  After the initial, ‘How dare you use my story without permission?’ I began to feel slightly smug. They liked my story so much that they decided to use it even without my blessing. Some work just demands to be read.

  But wait! My story wasn’t finished! I buried my blushing head in my hands as I remembered the first draft. It was rubbish! It was just a basic outline of the ideas. I hadn’t had a chance to correct typos, add witty metaphors or enhance my character descriptions.

  Oh hell’s chickens! This was the worst moment in my writing career. Perhaps they knew that, perhaps that’s why they used my story — to punish me. The others must have been furious when I left the island to call the police, instead of going along with their harebrained self-preservation scheme. Was this their revenge?

  I navigated to the contents page. Where was my story?

  ‘I Shot Five Men’

  ‘Hungry’

  ‘Foot’

  ‘Busty and Giving’

  ‘Gnome-man Art More Lovely Than Thou’

  ‘The Pig and the Cliff’

  Oh, maybe they hadn’t included mine after all. I read through the list again. Oh no! Surely they hadn’t called my story ‘Busty and Giving’! I felt my heart rate increase and anger rise from the pit of my stomach. I saw my name next to the title. How could they? They’d made my story sound like cheap erotica!

>   I clicked on my story in the contents page, pretending that I wasn’t secretly impressed that they had got the hyperlinks working smoothly.

  Oh blooming Nora! They hadn’t even proofread it. There was a typo in the first sentence. My writing career was almost certainly over. Nothing in the world could be worse than somebody publishing my story with mistakes in it.

  Then I remembered the murder. One of my characters chased another across Waterloo Bridge, before being thrown to a watery death! Of my characters — three charity workers — the girl in second place murdered the winning girl. If my story was going to come true, that meant that somebody was going to die.

  * * *

  I sat on my bedroom floor shaking. I doubt I’d have enjoyed The Book of Most Quality Writers at the best of times, but knowing that the stories were coming true made it terrifying, not tedious. Worryingly, the pig, the gnomes and the foot were the least disturbing of the stories. Of the remaining three, a vigilante tax lawyer killed a guilty client, half-a-dozen people ate the weakest member of their group for survival, and then there was my story.

  How could I go to the police and tell them that somewhere, somehow, a charity worker was going to be murdered? That was just the sort of unfocussed information that had gotten me into trouble last time. But how could I be any more specific?

  I thought back to my inspiration for the story. There had been an actual competition, which I had seen online only a few weeks ago. Its cynical side had riled me. Was the competition still running?

  My corporation, Porker and Millface, had been based on the real, multinational Porter and Miller. I hurriedly stuck ‘Porter and Miller’ into Google, but the first link took me to a bland corporate website. I tried again with ‘Porter and Miller charity contest’. Sure enough, there was the competition I’d seen before. The photographs of three girls were lined up on the screen — all over made-up, all taken in professional studios, and all with snazzy, professionally styled hair. I cringed — the competition had nothing to do with the charities. Of course, the causes were labelled in a large font and their blurbs clearly displayed. The event was, after all, designed to make Porter and Miller look ethical.

  As I looked at the three attention-seeking media whores, grinning at me with lips pumped with botty fat, I knew that this competition had to be the copycat’s target. It would be the perfect match.