His mother pushed him out of the way and located a plaster. She wound it around her finger. Daniel noticed that there was jam under her fingernails as well. ‘Hang on,’ he said, his head tilted, ‘wasn’t the ISP guy coming to fix the connection today?’
Rosemary was still.
‘I think I saw his van outside,’ Danny said.
‘Oh, the repairman?’ Rosemary said. ‘Yes, he’s in there now. He’s having a few problems. The line is faulty. Best to leave him be for a while.’
‘But you turned the light out,’ Danny said.
‘No I didn’t,’ Rosemary said. ‘I passed him his screwdriver. He must have dropped it.’ She turned back to the sandwich, pulling the cover from the cucumber.
‘You did,’ Danny said. ‘I saw you. You turned the light off.’
Outside, in the middle of the cul-de-sac, Aaron sat tied to the leather chair. He was waiting for someone to notice him. His glasses had fallen from the top of his head in the rush to escape. They’d landed in front of his eyes, the lenses still covered in jam. All he could see was the dirty fish-tank light of the outdoors, like being buried in a big jar of Vaseline. The bird song was muffled. The cold breeze bit at the insides of his thighs. The trousers were stuck to him like a fourth layer of skin.
He tried not to think about the damage to his skin. Instead he listened to what he could hear, or at least what he thought he could, car tyres whipping on tarmac, children playing in a park. The source of the noise seemed to come from a distance and those two hours bound up in a windowless room had confused his senses. He couldn’t remember where the entrance to the cul-de-sac was. He was afraid to wheel the chair any further across the street in case he planted himself in the middle of the nearby dual carriageway, but he knew that very soon that woman was going to realise that he was gone.
It was like one of those nightmares where, while being pursued by some mad axe-man, your body became completely paralysed. But the mad axe-man was a woman, and Aaron wasn’t asleep. A new overwhelming sense of frustration attacked him and he pulled at the handcuffs. By now his wrist was so swollen he wasn’t able to measure the strength of the metal. All he could feel was the stinging of his skin.
He felt so bloody stupid! He had attended many courses designed to teach him how to deal with these situations. Anyone who spent most of their working lives visiting members of the public needed to risk-assess the property, as well as the client, on arrival. He remembered some of the questions on the official check list. Does the customer appear to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs? Does the property appear to be a dangerous environment? For example, is there any evidence of drug paraphernalia (needles) or dangerous weapons (knives) present? Are all pets, particularly guard dogs, locked securely in another room? He had been very aware of these sorts of issues when he did work on sink estates but this was a wealthy area of the city and nothing had seemed out of place. The woman had been slightly irritable, but well spoken and well dressed. Everything had seemed ordinary until it was too late.
He had realised he had a chance to escape the moment the woman turned the light off. She didn’t want her son to know that he was there. That meant she had to keep her son busy for a period of time. Aaron had dragged the chair across the floor with the soles of his feet, as if pushing a skateboard. The door handle was at waist height. Luckily it was a handle, not a knob, and he was able to push it down with his elbow. The door burst open with an abrupt pop and he sat under the frame for a few seconds, wondering if the woman, or the boy, could hear or see him. They were at the back of the house and they were talking, but Aaron couldn’t hear what they were saying. He heard them the way he heard his music while lying in the bath, a non-stop drone. The stifled sound seemed to continue without pause, so he carried on along the hallway, the plastic wheels scraping against the laminate floor.
In his head he said a prayer. ‘Please God, let me make it out of here alive. If I get to the front door undetected, I promise I’ll never dupe another customer for an extra bit of cash.’ What do I need money for anyway, he thought, I only spend it on computer games. When he reached the front door, he was able to stand for a moment and lift the chair over the threshold. As he blindly made his way across the drive and over the kerb, he kept repeating the prayer. ‘I’ll never dupe a customer for any extra cash ever again. I promise, I promise, I promise.’
Now Aaron felt a hand pressing on his shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’ It was a woman’s voice. The urgent need to identify who it belonged to forced Aaron to shake his head until his glasses fell from his face. They landed on the ground with a tinny rattle.
An elderly woman was leaning down in front of him, frowning. He pointed at the tape on his mouth, asking the woman to remove it. The woman took the corner of the tape. Aaron nodded hard, encouraging her. It came away with one pull. He spat the tampons out and they landed on the ground next to the old woman’s pink slippers. She stared at them with worry. ‘Just a practical joke,’ Aaron said, taking a gulp of the delicious new air. ‘Can you help me cut myself free? My keys are in my pocket here.’ He thrust his chest out, showing the woman his breast pocket. ‘There are scissors and bolt cutters in the van.’
‘Shouldn’t I ring 999?’ the old woman said.
‘No,’ Aaron said. He couldn’t risk involving the police. There’d be an investigation into the incident. They’d ask him why the connection had taken such a long time to repair. They’d ask him why he hadn’t rung them earlier. They would ask all sorts of questions. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘It was just a joke.’ He cocked his head at the bloated tampons on the ground. ‘I’m getting married at the weekend,’ he said. ‘It was my stag party last night.’
The old woman looked unsure. She reached towards his pocket but then hesitated, her soft, crinkled fingers frozen in mid-air. ‘You’re not playing a trick on me?’ she said. Aaron shook his head, eyes fervent. No more tricks. He felt her fingers fumbling against his chest. He heard the clatter of his keys as she lifted them out.
Daniel walked carefully towards the office, his job application seized in his hand.
‘Wait,’ Rosemary said, following him, the paring knife gripped in her fist. She tapped his shoulder blade to try to slow his pace, but he continued anyway along the hall. ‘It’s not what it looks like,’ she said.
The office door was wide open. Danny reached around the frame and turned the light switch on. ‘There’s nobody here,’ he said, puzzled. Rosemary squinted over his shoulder. The room was empty. The miniature screwdriver was on the floor, next to the upturned, jam-stained plate. The mug sat innocently on the desk. There was a faint, electrical snore from the PC, the monitor blank. Daniel turned to look at his mother.
Rosemary shrugged. ‘He must have popped out for a tool,’ she said. ‘Unless he’s finished. Is the Internet connected?’ She pushed past her son and went to the computer. She pressed the space key on the keyboard and the screensaver started up with a photo of the Eiffel Tower. I should change that screensaver, she thought, too much of a giveaway. She leaned against the desk and pressed the space bar a second time. When the desktop appeared, she saw the Internet icon at the bottom left of the monitor. It was flashing bright green. ‘I think it’s done,’ she said excitedly. She double-clicked on the purple and red ISP emblem.
Daniel picked up the plate and put it down on the desk. He picked up the screwdriver too. ‘What did you mean when you said it isn’t what it looks like?’ he said.
Rosemary was staring at the screen, her body bent over the keyboard, her elbows on the desk. ‘What?’ she said, voice prickly.
‘That’s what you said,’ Daniel said. ‘You said, “It’s not what it looks like.” Are you having an affair with the Internet man, Mum?’ He was rummaging around in the drawer looking for the book of first-class stamps.
Rosemary laughed. ‘Me? An affair?’ she said. ‘Who would I have an affair with? I hardly leave the house!’
‘But that Internet guy is here all the time!’ The
re was a playful quality to his voice. He was joking.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Danny,’ she said. From the corner of her eye she could see that he was holding a piece of paper with her spidery handwriting on it.
‘What’s this?’ he said. He held it up to the light. ‘Oranges, for Cézanne, are more than just juicy fruits,’ he read, his eyebrows knitted into a squint. ‘Heavier than reality, by far, they are dense geometric forms, individual beings, symbols of Eden or perhaps eternity. In this great counting game, the picture is more than the sum of its parts.’ They were the notes Rosemary had made at the National Museum, according to André’s instructions on how to look at art.
She plucked the paper out of her son’s hand and glanced at it briefly. ‘Can’t remember,’ she said. ‘Might have been some translation work I did once for a gallery.’ She scrunched the paper into a ball and flicked it into the wastebasket.
‘I like Paul Cézanne,’ Danny said unexpectedly.
‘Do you?’ Rosemary said.
‘Yeah, I saw that Still Life with Apples and Teapot one at the museum. Dad took us there a few months ago, one night when you were working late. He liked it as well. He misses you, Mum. He doesn’t like it when you work late. He takes extra clients on just for something to do.’
Rosemary stared at her son’s face, wondering if he was telling the truth, or trying to catch her out. He was standing next to her, his elbows leaning on the desk. He slowly stuck the stamp on the envelope, making sure that the edges were precise, his tongue poked out in concentration. His face was a perfect blend of her and her husband. He had his father’s broad nose, and her blue, emotion-filled eyes.
‘Really?’ Rosemary said. ‘I thought it was the other way around.’
‘That’s what he told me,’ Danny said.
Rosemary turned back to the screen. She quickly typed her password into the space provided. Her e-mail inbox opened quickly. Unread messages 0. Spam messages 47. It was what she had come to expect. She closed it again.
‘Hey, Mum,’ Danny said, glancing around the room. ‘Where’s your chair?’ Before she could think of an answer, he was out of the room, heading towards the post-box at the entrance to the cul-de-sac. She followed him to the front door.
Her computer chair was in the middle of the road, the parcel tape still sticking to its arm. The repairman was standing next to his white cab, the door open, wiping his face with a cloth. The broken handcuffs were still attached to his wrist. He glanced at her before stepping into his cab.
Aaron could see the woman in his windscreen mirror. She was standing on the doorstep with her son, their voices the same muffled drone he’d heard from the kitchen. His heart was thumping, but he fought the urge to turn the key. He was safe now. His mobile phone was on the dashboard. The old woman who had snipped the handcuffs with his bolt cutter was standing on her own doorstep on the other side of the street, still baffled by the incident.
He leaned down in the seat and lifted the waist of his trousers, gingerly unzipping the fly. He pulled the material away from his skin, and it came away without any pain. He lifted the elastic of his underpants and squinted down inside. His skin was flamingo pink, clashing with the dark mound of his pubic hair. He touched it lightly, expecting some of it to come away on his fingers. It didn’t. There was a sudden knock on his window. The woman’s face was pressed up against the glass. He jumped. He pulled his trousers up.
‘You’re not going to go to the police, are you?’ she said, shouting, her knuckles rapping on the glass. Aaron put his seatbelt on and started the engine. As he did the woman became more frantic. ‘Please?’ she said. ‘Don’t go to the police. It was a mistake. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sorry.’
Aaron forced himself to look into her eyes. They were the same eyes he’d seen in the photograph in her office, happy but tinted with a spongy sadness.
‘Are you?’ she said. ‘Please don’t.’
Aaron put the van into first. He looked ahead. Let her stew, he thought.
About the Author
Rachel Trezise was born in the Rhondda Valley in 1978. She studied at Glamorgan and Limerick Universities. Her first novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl was a winner of the Orange Futures Prize. Her first collection of short fiction Fresh Apples won the EDS Dylan Thomas Prize. Her documentary about Welsh rock band Midasuno, Dial M for Merthyr, was published in 2007. Her second novel Sixteen Shades of Crazy will be published by HarperCollins in 2010.
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