I managed the water changing business myself, the next couple of days, which at least kept me busy, and when Gary came back he was full of apologies.
‘I meant to do it before I went away. I just got so busy … I’m so sorry to have given you a problem.’
‘No worries. Rob was … very helpful. But I’m really sorry Freckles – I mean, the spotty fish – didn’t make it. At least Nemo – um, the other one – recovered.’
He smiled at me. ‘You gave them names too? I called him Smartie – the one that died. And that one there is Stripey.’
‘Tiger,’ I said.
‘Right. The big orange one? I call him Mango.’
‘Oh. Close. Tango.’
He nodded, looking pleased. ‘That little one – Titch.’
‘Tiddler.’
We laughed together. Who’d have thought it? I’d ended up quite liking those fish. What next? Tortoises? Owls? Stick insects? Primrose Pets was nothing if not versatile, I told myself with satisfaction as I made my way home.
I decided, that Sunday, to have a walk past Bilberry Cottage again. I wanted to cheer myself up and try to recapture my delight about living in Crickleford. The uneasy feeling I’d had since I’d imagined seeing Shane there had dissipated over the weeks, and now I just felt silly for taking too much notice of the hallucination, or whatever it was, that I’d had while I’d been feeling ill.
It had been raining all morning, but as I turned into Moor View Lane, the rain suddenly stopped and there was a break in the clouds. In the sunshine, the wet leaves on the trees gleamed, the flowers in the front gardens and the daisies and buttercups on the grass verges sparkled, and everything looked pretty and bright again. Feeling more cheerful, I hurried round the bend and stopped outside my favourite cottage, sighing with contentment. I knew it was strange to feel such a connection to a house that didn’t belong to me and never could. But it just looked, somehow, perfect – so exactly what I imagined for myself. Perhaps it was a good thing I was never likely to go inside, I thought, as I stared at the two apple trees in the overgrown little garden and the stepping-stone path up to the blue front door. It might be absolutely awful – gloomy and dark with horrible wallpaper hanging off damp walls, chipped and stained bathroom fittings and an ancient unworkable cooker in a kitchen where every surface was impregnated with decades of grease. But try as I might, I couldn’t talk myself out of my infatuation with the place.
I was so engrossed in my daydream that when I first glimpsed a movement in the front room of the cottage, I didn’t even react. I blinked, and the movement became a figure, and for a minute I thought I was experiencing déjà vu.
‘Shane?’ I muttered to myself, my heart beginning to race. But this time, I wasn’t ill, I wasn’t feeling dizzy and feverish and about to faint in a heap. I looked a little closer, watched as the figure turned around, and gasped with surprise. It wasn’t Shane, of course. It was Matt.
I didn’t wait to see whether he’d noticed me loitering outside. I bolted back down the lane, annoyed with myself for doing so, but at the same time annoyed with Matt – for being there, in my special cottage, for looking so similar to Shane from behind that he’d scared the life out of me and … and this was the thing, I realised as I slowed down and walked back over Crickle Bridge with my heart rate finally calming down: I was annoyed with him for not telling me the truth! When I’d asked him why I’d seen him outside Bilberry Cottage before, taking photos, he’d seemed really awkward, and just made some excuse about liking the place. And hadn’t I thought it was a coincidence that he just happened to turn up there on the day I collapsed outside? What was he doing there? Was he moonlighting as a decorator, or maybe doing the place up for a friend? Why lie about it?
I slowed down a little more. It had started to rain again, and I put up the hood of my jacket and sighed to myself. Who was I to talk about telling lies? I’d told everybody here, including Matt, a pack of them. I’d refused to tell him anything true about myself whatsoever – no wonder he’d given up on me. Perhaps it wasn’t just because I wouldn’t let him write a story about me that he seemed to have gone off me. Maybe he’d have liked to know more about me, and I didn’t suppose it was much fun hanging around with someone who was a complete mystery, never revealing anything more personal about themselves than the colour of their hair. Come to think of it, even that was fake!
If only there was somebody I felt close enough to, somebody I could trust implicitly here in Crickleford, so that I could be myself with them and tell them the truth. But even Lauren would probably throw me out if she found out. Why would she want someone with such a whiff of scandal about them lodging in her lovely home, with her lovely family? Why would anyone! It was no good. I’d just have to carry on keeping my secrets to myself.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I tossed and turned in bed that night, wondering about Matt. Did he see me lurking outside Bilberry Cottage? Why hadn’t he told me he was doing DIY or whatever, there? And more to the point, was I ever going to swallow my pride and ask him if we could be friends again? I missed his easy company, missed his smile and his teasing and his hugs. All through the following week, I looked out for him around the town, stared fixedly at the Chronicle offices when I walked past them, willing him to suddenly appear out of the door and give me a wave. If I saw him now, I decided, I’d try to make up with him. I’d apologise for refusing him his story, try to give him some sort of explanation – or should I say excuse – even if it meant telling more lies. But it was as if he’d gone into hiding.
I looked after Pongo the Alsatian again, enjoying my healthy walks in the sunshine and did a good job, this time, of chasing the vicious tabby cat out of the garden before it frightened Pongo. I chatted to the people I’d got to know in the town, enjoying their country accents and their shameless gossip. But every day when I went home, despite Lauren’s cheerful chatter as we enjoyed the warmth of Primrose Cottage’s little walled garden while Holly played outside, I felt an inexplicable emptiness. It felt like there was something missing, and it wasn’t just about the ache for Kate and my family.
One evening I gave in and composed the email I’d been thinking of writing for weeks. It would have to sit in my ‘drafts’ folder, anyway, until there was a spark of internet here to send it on its way. It had been hard to know what to say, but I kept it short, if not sweet. This was the gist of it, very roughly:
Ezmerelda: (who the hell calls themselves Esmerelda, let alone with a ‘z’?)
I’m only asking you because I’m sure you will know the answer and nobody else will. Where is my cat? Who has him, and are they looking after him? In spite of everything, I think you should let me know. I think you owe me that, at the very least. Please reply, and I will never bother you again.
Candice
OK, I suppose you could ask who the hell calls themselves Candice, too. Well, I did. For the entire time I lived in New York, I was Candice Nightingale. Living with someone as famous as Shane Blue, and hanging around with people like bloody Ezmerelda Jewell, who of course was a top model and didn’t she just know it, I couldn’t very well be plain boring Emma, could I. That was my mistake, or just one of them. I turned myself into somebody else, somebody whose image I could never live up to. If I’d stayed myself, silly little Emma from Loughton, perhaps I’d have survived the whole celebrity experience and come out of it unscathed. But no, I couldn’t hack it, and in the end I turned back into Emma from Loughton anyway, in the most spectacular and ugly way possible.
I felt a bit better after writing the email. At least I’d finally done it, and perhaps at last I’d get some answers about my lovely Albert. If I knew he really was in a good home I could stop worrying about him, however much I’d always miss him.
My next assignment was a hamster called JoJo. I was looking forward to it. I liked hamsters – Kate and I had had one, briefly, when we were children, although I couldn’t remember what had happened to it. As with the Koi carp, I didn’t imagine there would be mu
ch work to do for JoJo. For a start, I knew he’d be asleep during the day, so once again I should have booked in another pet to look after during the same week. I only needed to care for JoJo in the evenings when he woke up. At least I’d be able to play with him then, after I’d fed him and cleaned out his cage. That was more than I could say for the fish!
I’d already met JoJo and his owner, Billie, who lived with her family in Castle Hill House, a very old detached house just below Castle Hill. Billie had shown me how to put my hand into JoJo’s cage and let him come to me.
‘He’s very tame,’ she said. ‘My kids were desperate for a pet, and I’m not very keen on cats or dogs. I’m nervous of them, to be honest.’ She shuddered. She struck me as a very nervy person in general. ‘But JoJo’s OK, he’s cute,’ she went on. ‘Just remember when you clean his cage out, to put him in his hamster ball. He can roll around the room in it, without the risk of getting lost.’
The children, two boys aged about six and eight, were very noisy and boisterous, so I reckoned if JoJo was happy to be handled by them, he wouldn’t mind me too much. He was a nice, cheeky little thing with bright eyes, a twitchy pink nose and an inquisitive expression on his face. I went to the house every evening after I’d had dinner, by which time he was awake and, after the first couple of days, he seemed to be getting used to me. He’d be sitting up, looking at me expectantly, hoping for a treat – a piece of apple or some sliced carrot or banana – as well as his normal pellets of hamster food.
When I cleaned his cage, JoJo seemed perfectly happy to be lifted out and popped into his hamster ball. In fact he seemed eager to get started on his exercise – as if the lounge was a great wide world that was his to explore, rather than the same old room he rolled around every time he was out of his cage. In fact he rolled the ball around so wildly, his little beady eyes bright with excitement, that it was great fun to watch him, and for a while I almost forgot the whole idea was for me to clean out his cage while he was out of it. He’d roll himself under the table, then out again and zip across the carpet at an astonishing speed, as if his life depended on clocking up as many hamster-miles per hour as possible. One evening while I was cleaning the cage, he actually bashed his ball really hard into the skirting board, giving a little squeak of surprise.
‘Are you all right in there, JoJo?’ I asked anxiously – but he must have been, because he was already rolling off in another direction, the glint of determination back in his eyes.
I brought in a bowl of soapy water, turned on the TV and started watching the first part of a new thriller series while I worked. Once everything had been washed and left to dry, I turned my attention back to JoJo. The ball had stopped rolling around after a while and I’d guessed he must have finally tired himself out.
‘Come on, lazybones!’ I sang out cheerfully as I bent down to talk to him. ‘Let’s get this ball moving again, shall we?’
I gave it a little push, and immediately realised something was wrong. The ball moved too easily. It felt too light. I knelt down and picked it up, and to my horror it was empty. No hamster. Ridiculously, I turned it upside down and shook it, as if I expected JoJo to come tumbling out. Then I saw it: a long crack in one side of the ball. It looked only just about wide enough for a spider to crawl through – but JoJo must have somehow squeezed himself out of it.
‘Oh my God,’ I muttered. ‘Where is he?’ I scanned the room, panic mounting. ‘JoJo!’ I yelled. ‘Where are you? Come on, boy – look, I’ve got you a lovely slice of cucumber!’
I found myself whistling, like I would for a dog. But how else were you supposed to get a hamster to come back to you? And how far could they travel in … perhaps half an hour? I stopped shouting and whistling, and listened carefully. I could hear a little squeak coming from the corner of the room, behind the television. I tiptoed over there, pulled a few things out of the way and knelt down carefully. Squeak, squeak – there it was again, but I couldn’t see JoJo anywhere. I pulled back the corner of the rug, lifted the edge of the curtains and listened again. Squeak, squeak.
‘JoJo!’ I whispered. ‘Where the hell are you?’
I stared around the room, trying to work out where a little hamster could be hiding. The room had a wooden floor – they looked like they might be the original floorboards, polished up and made to look attractive in a vintage chic kind of way – and expensive-looking rugs scattered around. But looking more closely, I could see there were gaps between some of the floorboards, and particularly between the floor and the skirting boards. Gaps that were, in places, wider than the crack in the broken hamster ball. I might not have been Einstein, but it didn’t take much to work out from this that there was one obvious answer as to where my little fugitive might have gone.
‘JoJo!’ I called again, bending close to the widest gap – and the answering squeak told me I’d guessed correctly.
Relief washed over me. At least he was alive. At least I knew where he was. Phew!
But that was only half the problem. Now I had to coax him out. My adventurous little friend was probably quite happy exploring a whole new world under the floorboards, free from the constraints of his ball, and would doubtless be in no hurry whatsoever to be captured. I went to get the piece of cucumber I’d been trying to tempt him with, but then thought better of it.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Emma,’ I told myself. ‘Cucumber hasn’t got much of a smell to it.’
But how much of a sense of smell did hamsters have, anyway? I had no idea. I discarded the cucumber in favour of a slice of apple, wafting it across the gap in the floor, crooning about a lovely juicy apple for JoJo and getting nothing, not even a squeak now, in response.
Over the next couple of hours I tried everything Billie had left in the kitchen and in the fridge for the hamster’s treats: banana, celery, red pepper, lettuce, even his special hamster choc drops. I knelt on the floor, begging and pleading with him until my knees hurt and my voice was getting hoarse. He gave the occasional little squeak in response, but even when I lay down and put my eye directly to the hole, I didn’t get a single glimpse of him.
By half past nine that evening I was close to tears. I couldn’t go home and leave him underground. I’d have to try to take up a floorboard – but how? I wasn’t exactly experienced in DIY, never mind un-DIY-ing. What tools would I need? Would Billie or her husband have them here? Where could I get them from? I didn’t want to call Lauren and Jon – it wasn’t fair to disturb their evening, and little Holly would be asleep in bed. For some odd reason, there was just one person I wanted to call for help. In the end, I gave in and called him.
‘Matt, I’m really sorry. I’ve got a problem.’ I was trying not to sound too pathetic, but I was tired and worried, and felt guilty for letting my little charge get lost. ‘I need to take up a floorboard or two, and I don’t know how to do it. Have you got any tools?’
‘Where are you?’ he asked, sounding a bit bemused. ‘What’s happened?’
I wondered if he’d refuse to help me. After all, it wasn’t as if we’d been on the best of terms recently. But as soon as I explained the situation, he said he’d come straight round.
‘Don’t worry, it won’t be difficult. Keep talking to the little chap, won’t you, to make sure he doesn’t run off under there, to a different part of the house.’
This didn’t exactly make me feel any better. While JoJo stayed reasonably close to the spot where he’d slipped down under the floorboards, I felt fairly sure we could get him out – somehow – but if he started exploring further afield, what was I supposed to do? Take up more and more boards until I found him? I lay down on the floor and started talking to him again.
‘Listen, JoJo. You trust me, don’t you? I thought we were friends. Please don’t start running around down there. Stay right where you are, OK, or I’ll be in dead trouble.’
He squeaked a couple of times. Maybe he understood Human. I needed to keep talking to him but what on earth could you talk to a hamster about for any l
ength of time? Well, I supposed I could just tell him a story …
When the doorbell rang I nearly jumped out of my skin. I’d made myself comfortable on the floor with a couple of cushions and had been on the point of dozing off, mid-story.
‘Thanks for coming,’ I said when I opened the door to Matt. He was carrying a bag with some tools in it.
‘Well, we can’t have a poor little hamster stuck under the floorboards forever, can we,’ he said lightly. ‘Where did he get down? Show me the gap.’
We went back into the lounge, as I explained what had happened in more detail.
‘I didn’t notice his hamster ball was cracked,’ I said. ‘He did bash it into the skirting board but I can’t believe it was enough to break the thing right open.’ I pointed to where I’d left my cushions on the floor. ‘See that little gap? It’s hard to imagine it’s big enough for him to have squeezed through, isn’t it?’
‘I see you’ve been sitting comfortably down there,’ he said, with a flicker of a smile.
‘I’ve been telling him a story.’
‘Right.’ The smile widened a little. ‘A fairy story?’
‘No. My life story, if you must know.’ Too late, I realised this was a bit of a sore point. He was probably thinking I’d told the hamster a lot more than I’d been prepared to tell him! ‘Not that it was very interesting,’ I added quickly. ‘It even made me fall asleep.’
He laughed out loud now and, although I was relieved, because it seemed he wasn’t too cross with me any more, I put my finger to my lips and warned him: ‘Ssh! We need to listen for JoJo squeaking.’
He nodded solemnly, and we both sat down on the cushions and waited in silence for a moment.
‘JoJo!’ I called gently. ‘Are you still there?’
Trust Your Heart Page 3