Pompomberry House

by Trevithick, Rosen

  “Wait, you didn’t proofread it?”

  “No. Initially I offered, but after I found out when it was due for release, I had to retract my offer.” She gasped, as if she had made an unforgivable faux pas and began hurriedly trying to explain. “You see, I’ve been in hospital on traction for weeks — that’s why I’ve read so many eBooks. My Kindle was a lifesaver! Anyway, I was discharged earlier than expected ...”

  “So you were too busy to proofread, catching up on life once you were out?”

  “Yes! Is that really bad?”

  “Not at all! It’s not as if they offered to pay you.”

  “I would have done it, if I’d stayed in hospital.”

  “How long were you in hospital?”

  “Over three months! It was so dull! Thank goodness I had my Kindle. Still, it is nice to be able to use a full-sized keyboard now that I’m out.”

  “Did you type your reviews on your Kindle?”

  “Yes,” she admitted, looking sheepish.

  So there it was, Emily Whistlefoot wasn’t a crazed stalker with poor English skills after all, she was just somebody who’d had a lot of time on her hands and a very small keyboard. A Kindle enthusiast perhaps, but no less sane than your average person, and certainly more together than many authors, especially those on that fateful weekend trip.

  “Hey, did you meet Rafe Maddocks?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Was he every bit as hot as he is in his pictures? I bet he’s a real hoot! I really don’t know why he hasn’t been picked up by a major publisher! He’s easily better than David Nicholls.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

  “Perhaps he’s too modest.”

  I tried to disguise shock as a particularly troublesome cough.

  “From what I’ve read in the forum, he seems very approachable. Was he?”

  What could I say? I should probably be honest, but how could I take this girl’s hero away from her? “He was interesting,” I said, truthfully.

  “What about Annabel Fleming? She sounds adorable in interviews.”

  “She has some sugary qualities.”

  “I love indies. I mean, what’s Enid Kibbler’s problem?”

  Enid Kibbler. The name was familiar — oh yes, the indie hater.

  “Did you read her review of The Book of Most Quality Writers? Honestly, it was brutal.”

  The range of emotions that I went through at that point was vast. Amusement — the anthology truly was terrible; fear — she may have criticised my story; anger — the cheek of the woman; acceptance — bad reviews happen. But even after reminding myself that criticism is an unavoidable part of being published, I was still fighting a powerful curiosity to search for the review on my phone, at once.

  “I’m really jealous of you!” explained Emily. “I’d love to meet those guys! Heck, I’d love to be an indie writer.”

  “You’re not a writer yourself then?”

  “Oh, I try. I’ve written a couple of short teen romances. I’m not much good though, not like Annabel.”

  Well, if she’s your inspiration, it’s no wonder you’re struggling.

  “You guys are so good, my efforts would look silly.”

  “You must believe in your work, Emily! I bet it’s the best you can do, and you can’t ask for more than that.”

  She beamed, the biggest smile I’d seen her crack so far.

  “In fact, I’d be happy to look at a couple of pages for you.”

  “You would?” she asked, almost leaping out of her chair.

  “Of course!”

  “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” she cried. “You’re my favourite indie now. It was Rafe Maddocks, but now it’s you.”

  “Um, thanks ...”

  “Actually, can I have your autograph?”

  What? Nobody had ever asked for my autograph before. I found myself blushing. “Erm ...”

  “Please?”

  “All right,” I said, shyly.

  With that, she disappeared into her large canvas bag, which appeared to consume her head and shoulders. When she emerged, she was holding a postcard with Edward Cullen on the back. No, please! Anything but that. But then she disappeared into the bag again, and came up holding a postcard depicting an arrangement of pencils. That’s better.

  She plonked the postcard and a silver-plated fountain pen on the table in front of me. “I’m really sorry. I should have brought my autograph book! I’ve already got David Wailing and Kermit the Frog.”

  “Kermit the Frog?”

  “It’s more of a print.”

  “What would you like me to do?”

  “Just your name, is fine. Unless you want to do a print ...” she joked.

  I began scribbling, ‘To Emily, Best of luck with your writing. Love, Dee’. I paused, wondering if it might be more appropriate to start using my maiden name and then, on feeling a hideous pain in my chest, added, ‘Whittaker’.

  “Thank you so much!” she cooed, unaware of my inner torment.

  “No problem. And I meant what I said about sending me a couple of pages.”

  “There’s a novel I wrote in Africa. It’s very short. Can I email it to you?”

  I inhaled. Since publishing The Red River, I had become accustomed to complete novels landing in my inbox. I longed to have time to give them all the attention that they deserved. Sadly, there weren’t enough hours in the day.

  “Of course,” I said politely, vowing that this really would be the one I found time to read in full. “Hang on, when did you go to Africa?”

  “Last summer. Family holiday of a lifetime.”

  “Is that where your profile picture came from? I mean, the meerkat?”

  “Yes! And the lion that I had before that. And the giraffe before that. And the elephant before that! And the other elephant before that! And the zebra before that! Hey, did you read this morning’s thread about Peter Pearson?”

  “Who?”

  “He’s the managing director of one of the big publishers.”

  “Which one?”

  “Um ... I can’t remember.”

  “What did the thread say?”

  “Oh, just that he was in the papers this week dissing Kindle. He said eBooks lack any form of quality guarantee.”

  “What, and paperbacks don’t?”

  “Exactly. That’s just what Rafe said. And Dawn. And Montgomery. And ...”

  “I imagine there was a fair amount of opposition on a forum dominated by indies.”

  “Isn’t the forum great?” she asked, bouncing in her chair.

  I nodded sadly. It had been great.

  “Actually, I haven’t seen you on there for a while. Where have you been?” she asked, her big green eyes wide and inquiring.

  “Life’s been difficult of late.”

  “Writer’s block?” she asked, sympathetically.

  If only.

  Chapter 11

  I’d become an avid reader of the news. I had never realised how depressing the world had become. I tried to skim over story after story about lives destroyed by the recession, but it could sometimes be difficult not to get sucked in.

  However, by far the most disturbing story in this morning’s paper was the one about an old lady who had been killed in her own garden. She was senile and immobile and had had few pleasures in life, besides enjoying the sun. So, her daughter had taken her out into their garden in North Cornwall, to enjoy her lunch under a little spring sunshine. As the younger woman watched from behind the kitchen sink, a seagull had swooped down to steal her pasty. The daughter had run outside as quickly as she could, only to find that her mother’s heart had stopped. It was heart-breaking.

  Then, I noticed the photograph. I recognised the poor victim. At first I couldn’t place her but then I remembered where I’d seen her before — Gulls Reach. She was younger in the photograph, and her features were less sunken, but it was still clearly the same lady. I found myself trembling. The seagulls around Pompombe
rry House were truly evil.

  The doorbell rang and I leapt out of my skin. Then Gareth let himself in.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded, more aggressively than I meant to.

  “Getting some more stuff,” he replied. A visit in itself was not surprising, but before midday? I wasn’t aware that Gareth knew the meaning of 11.12 am.

  “Gareth, you can’t just pop in whenever you feel like it.”

  This had to stop. He’d only seen me yesterday. He really wasn’t getting the message that we’d broken up at all. I couldn’t think why my words weren’t getting through to him.

  He went straight up the stairs into the bedroom — what presumption! However, then I realised that he wasn’t hopping into bed as I had hoped ... I mean, suspected; he was going into the wardrobe.

  “What are you doing? You can’t just come in here and root through my cupboards.”

  Then he did something so hurtful that he might as well have punched me in the stomach — he took his dressing gown out of the wardrobe and put it in a box.

  He was moving on.

  Ouch.

  Clearly, he wasn’t planning on spending the night here ever again. But wasn’t that what I wanted? Why did getting my own way hurt so much?

  “What are you doing?”

  “Packing up a few more of my things, like you asked me to.”

  “Of course,” I said. Then, trying to sound as casual as I could, I added, “I’ll be downstairs getting a cup of tea if you need me.” Where were my manners? “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “No thanks, Dee, I’ve got places to be, people to see.”

  What places? What people? At least he used the plural, which must mean he was seeing many people, not just one, potentially special, person. Or did it?

  Oh, pull yourself together, Dee, you want him to move on. I’d just always imagined that I’d be the first to meet someone else, after all, I’d known that we were going to break up first.

  “What about a coffee? There are biscuits ...”

  “Not today,” he said.

  I began descending the stairs, feeling rejected and glum.

  “Dee?” he added.

  I spun around.

  “Thanks though.”

  “No problem,” I said, choking a little on the words. Why did Gareth refusing a cup of tea feel so utterly devastating? Was I sickening for something? Was I pre-menstrual? Yes, that must be it. There was no chance that Gareth moving on could actually be upsetting. This was the path I’d chosen.

  I sat in the kitchen, looking out of the window and willing myself not to cry. I was not the weepy type and certainly not the type to get weepy about a man, even Gareth. I didn’t cry at our wedding, while everybody else bawled their eyes out. Even Gareth welled up. Being ecstatic makes me want to laugh, not cry. If only I was ecstatic now.

  There were loud footsteps on the stairs. How could such a skinny man make so much noise?

  “I’m off now, Dee!” he called.

  I wiped my cheek with my hand, just in case a tear had sneaked down there, and made my way into the hall. “Bye,” I said softly.

  “Bye!” he replied, and was gone.

  What, no kiss?

  My disappointment paralysed me for a few seconds, then suddenly I burst into action. I hurried upstairs as quickly as I could, and ran straight to the top drawer by the bed. I began grabbing handfuls of things and throwing them onto the bed.

  Where were they?

  I threw ChapStick, paracetamol, receipts, used lottery tickets and batteries onto the bed. I was looking for only one thing.

  And then I saw them. I relaxed.

  Condoms. Gareth hadn’t taken the condoms.

  I caught sight of myself in the bedroom mirror. What was I doing? I was losing the plot. I put it down to the distress caused by just finding out that a seagull had murdered a woman I knew. Admittedly, I’d only met her for a few seconds and she hadn’t seemed entirely aware that there was anybody there. Nevertheless, it was creepy. Thank goodness those birds were hundreds of miles away from me.

  Coupled with that, there was the stress of trying to save Netta Lewis

  Crap! Netta Lewis!

  I had tried a further three times to contact her: Facebook, email, leaving a message with the receptionist at Heart Africa. I had received not one reply.

  Would else could I do?

  Then I remembered watching Gareth walk out of the door without as much as a faint shoulder squeeze and I knew what I had to do. I had to call Rafe Maddocks.

  I mean, yes, he was a self-centred, arrogant twit, but he was also a man who was not Gareth. What better distraction?

  Rafe had scribbled his number on my pencil case, knowing that one day this moment would come. One day I would want to call a man, any man who wasn’t Gareth, and the obvious choice would be the man who’d vandalised my stationery.

  The rest of my brain caught up. Rafe was a suspect and a witness. Either way, he might know who planned to murder Netta. Of course, he was hardly going to confess, but perhaps he’d accidentally slip up and give something away.

  I grabbed my pencil case, hoping that the number was still clear — of course it was, it was written with permanent marker.

  Hurriedly, I tapped the number into my phone. Would he pick up? I tried to remember what Rafe did for a living. I couldn’t imagine that somebody as showy as Rafe Maddocks lived on royalties alone.

  “Hullo?” droned a smoky voice. The phone line emphasised its sexy, rumbling quality.

  “Rafe, it’s me! Dee Whittaker.”

  He was silent for a moment. Perhaps he’d forgotten me. “Dee! How you doin’?” he asked with deep, smouldering, flirtatious tones.

  “I’m good, thanks. Hey, we should catch up. How would you feel about going for a drink?”

  “I knew you’d come to your senses,” he chuckled. I could just see him, stretched out on a leather chaise longue, smirking to himself. “How about tomorrow? Saturday night! I’ll take you out for dinner! My treat.”

  “Well, actually I was hoping we could do something a bit sooner.”

  “Sooner than tomorrow night?” I knew his smirk was now so large that his insides were at serious risk of falling out of his mouth. “I can’t do anything tonight, I have a live Skype chat event. I’m this week’s featured writer!”

  “What about this lunchtime?”

  “Featured writer, Dee!”

  “Lunchtime.”

  “Lunchtime? What, this lunchtime?”

  “Please Rafe.” I was going to add, ‘It’s urgent’ but stopped myself and instead added, “I’m longing to see you.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes, my titillating turquoise ... eyeballs are weeping to catch just one glimpse of your ... er ... masculine man-stature.” I had difficulty holding back giggles.

  “All right then! This lunchtime it is!”

  Most men, most ordinary men, with heads the size of ordinary men’s heads, would smell a rat, but not Rafe. Rafe Maddocks’ head was so far up his own arse, that he couldn’t see a blatant lie waved in front of his face, at least not when it massaged his ego.

  After finalising the details, I nipped upstairs to freshen up. As I stood in front of the mirror, I told myself that the red lipstick was to trick Rafe into trusting me, the mascara was to lead him into a false sense of security and the eyeliner was to tempt a confession. All the while, I secretly wondered how Gareth would feel if he knew I was going for a drink with another man.

  But then it hit me — at some point, I was going to start having sex with another man. What would that be like after ten years with the same lover? The idea of it almost repulsed me. I felt a bit giddy, and not in a good way.

  Then I thought of Gareth. Where had he been going with that dressing gown? Why had he needed it tonight? Why had he seemed distant? Why hadn’t I gotten a kiss?

  I forced myself to imagine Rafe kissing me. No, that made me feel a little sick. I imagined him running his fingers th
rough my short tresses. Nope, that made me feel a little queasy. And was Rafe really a fingers-through-the-hair sort of man? He’d probably push me against a wall first or something domineering like that — oh, actually, that kind of worked for me. I imagined closing my eyes, depriving myself of one of my senses — that worked even better for me.

  * * *

  We met at a stupidly expensive bar. I knew the moment I walked in and saw a rotating spirits cabinet that I was not going to be able to afford as much as a mineral water. Why hadn’t I insisted on Spoons?

  The place suited Rafe. There was ornate ceiling plaster, a heavily varnished bar, and there were tall, fancy paintings. Beneath fancy packaging, everything was just ordinary — well-presented mediocrity.

  I sat at a table, watching the door apprehensively. Rafe might not wear women’s shoes, but he was still a suspect and I didn’t want to turn my back to him. The word of a delusional farmer only had so much clout. Rafe knew all the plots and Rafe was thoroughly unpleasant — it didn’t look good. But was he unpleasant enough to be a killer?

  As he swaggered in, I rather felt that he did have the qualities of a killer — at least, he matched the sort you see on TV — the handsome, white middle-class citizen that nobody suspects until the last fifteen minutes of the show. He bore a certain resemblance to Dexter from Dexter. I shuddered as he came over, beaming.

  I knew at once that I wasn’t going to sleep with him. Even if he could prove his innocence, his face, his walk and his slightly elevated nose reminded me what a thoroughly obnoxious chap he was. It wouldn’t be worth sleeping with him to save the species; it definitely wasn’t worth sleeping with him to punish my ex for a slightly tepid departure. Why had I even entertained the idea of squelchy time with Rafe Maddocks?

  Still, the realisation that this wasn’t going to turn into a horizontal hustle, meant that I could focus on the much more important business of finding out whether or not Rafe Maddocks was a cold-blooded killer.

  He tried to hug me with his big, firm arms. I went rigid, the way I often do when somebody thoroughly disagreeable tries to show me affection through the medium of touch. The fact that I didn’t actively beat him off felt (to me) like I was making a massive display of warmth.

  “Are you alright?” he asked.