by cass green
‘No,’ he says hurriedly, ‘I mean, I don’t and thank you, but are you quite sure? He’s a bit overly enthusiastic sometimes, as you’ve seen for yourself. I mean, he’s quite old, but even so.’
They both regard Jarvis, who stands up and pads over, tail a blur of excited wagging.
‘I’m sure,’ says Neve. ‘You’re a good boy, aren’t you? Aren’t you?’ She laughs as Jarvis places his heavy head on her knee and gazes at her adoringly.
‘Well, if you’re sure, then I am very grateful,’ says Richard. ‘I’ll pay you of course.’
‘Oh no need,’ says Neve hurriedly.
‘No,’ says Richard and his voice has gone all tight again. ‘I absolutely insist on that. It’s twenty-five pounds a day around here and I am going to be away for at least three days so is seventy-five pounds alright?’
Neve opens her mouth and is about to argue. Then she thinks about the work that’s needed on the windows, and her current lack of employment.
‘That will be fine,’ she says.
They make a plan.
Neve will leave with Jarvis now, and Richard will drive over later with the dog’s basket and bag of food. Richard hands her a leather lead, soft and cracked with use, and offers a filthy towel, which she regards suspiciously and then asks him to put it in a carrier bag.
They swap mobile phone numbers and, a few minutes later, Neve is walking, or rather being walked by, the dog, who pulls and yanks on her arms and then stops abruptly when he finds an interesting patch of ground to sniff. When they reach the lane and Jarvis stops to munch on a pile of manure, Neve starts to wonder whether she has done the right thing.
Still, she thinks, she might feel a bit less lonely with a dog for company, although she can’t imagine Jarvis is much of a guard dog. And let’s face it, she needs the money.
As they approach the cottage, Jarvis almost pulls her off her feet in his haste to get to the property.
‘Jarvis!’ she yells ineffectually. ‘Stop it!’
She isn’t strong enough to stop the forward momentum of the dog, who is now barking in a frenzied way and almost pulling her arm out of its socket. She has no choice but to run to keep up.
‘What is it, you silly animal?’ she cries.
It’s as she reaches the front of the cottage that she sees what the dog is barking at.
23
‘Oh my God.’ Her stomach heaves.
The magpie is lying neatly on the doorstep. But this time there is no head, just a ragged hole at the top of the plump black and white chest.
The same one as before? Or another? The gorge rises in her throat.
‘Nature, red in tooth and claw.’ The Tennyson line comes into her head then and she tries to breathe slowly to stop herself from being sick.
Must calm down, she thinks. Think. Think how this happened.
It was a cat, or maybe a fox. Yes, that’s it. An animal found the badly wrapped bird and played with it, then left it here as a gift. But do foxes do that kind of thing? A cat then. Maybe the cat belonging to the Gardners. The thought that cats generally don’t play with dead things churns uneasily in her mind. Isn’t the point that they like to play with them before going in for the kill?
It’s a different magpie. It must be.
But the more she looks at it, with its twisted wing and rusty bib, she is sure that it is the same one. How can it have moved?
Jarvis keeps taking little steps forward, barking, then jumps back as if scalded. Oh God, she thinks. Will he try and eat it?
Neve looks on, hopelessly. She wishes fervently that someone else could help her.
But there is no one. She’s going to have to deal with this. First though, she needs to get past the thing to get inside. But what about the dog?
Looking around, she sees a rusty piece of fencing in the bushes and she pulls a still-resisting Jarvis over there. Slipping the lead off his collar, he almost gets away and she yells at him to stay. He flattens his ears and is submissive for long enough for her to loop the lead through the fence. With a plaintive whine, the dog lies down and regards her, head on his paws.
‘Right,’ she says a bit breathlessly. ‘That’s a good dog. Just need to …’ She looks doubtfully at the magpie and with a shudder leans across the step to begin the laborious process of unlocking the door.
The lowest one is almost within hand-brushing distance of the oily feathers of the decapitated bird.
‘Oh shit, shit, fuck,’ she whimpers. The smell is unspeakable. Her stomach shudders with nausea and saliva floods her mouth.
Inside the house she gathers bin bags and rubber gloves. There’s a plentiful supply, under the sink. Isabelle seems to have been a strange mix of disorganized flake and tidy housefrau. But thank God for it. At least she won’t have to touch the disgusting bird.
Jarvis stands and barks in indignation when she emerges from the house, armed with cleaning products.
‘Let me do this,’ she says, ‘and then you can come inside.’
It hasn’t taken long, she thinks ruefully, for her to start talking to the dog like an equal. She’s dimly aware that this is a slippery slope leading to the animal sleeping in her bed and eating all her food.
Although at the moment, it is hard to imagine eating anything ever again.
Holding her breath at the rotting fish smell, she opens out a bag and then uses another to nudge the bird over into it. It rolls sickeningly and as it flops into the top of the bin bag she sees something that makes her peer closer, despite the smell.
There’s a small rusty hole in the bird’s chest. It’s chaotic with maggots that twist and wriggle and she suppresses a small moan of horror. But she is sure she is looking at a bullet hole.
Why would someone shoot a magpie? Surely they aren’t considered vermin like foxes, despite their sinister reputation. Something is yanking insistently at her instincts, telling her the situation is all wrong.
The stain on the chest looks identical to the one on the bird from two nights ago, she realizes. She is suddenly sure it is the same bird.
If the bird had been shot dead, then it’s hard to imagine how it could have come crashing through the kitchen window so neatly. The one window in the cottage that isn’t protected by bars.
This suggests the truly unthinkable thing.
That someone deliberately smashed the window and threw the dead bird into the cottage. Someone who doesn’t want her here.
Wasn’t that what Isabelle had been convinced of? That someone was trying to intimidate her?
She thinks again of that man in the lane. Of the destruction at the graveside.
Neve’s heart ba-booms in her chest and she looks around wildly. The thin, tall trees across the lane sway and whisper. The cottage waits silently behind, door gaping open.
Shivering, she forces herself to continue with her grim task.
Finally, the dead bird is cleared away in the bin at the back of the cottage. She takes Jarvis into the house, where he immediately climbs onto the sofa with a proprietorial sigh.
‘Make yourself at home why don’t you?’ she grumbles gently. Really, Jarvis’s presence is a great comfort, even if he is unlikely to be much of a guard dog.
Neve goes into the bathroom, washes her hands then uses the toilet.
Afterwards she flushes absent-mindedly.
There’s another deep gurgling sound and then water begins to pour out of the lid of the cistern and onto the floor, soaking her feet.
Neve shrieks and jumps back. The water is gushing now, unstoppably, and it seems like a malign version of that fairy-tale about the magic soup pot that keeps on filling.
‘Fuck it, fuck it!’
Throwing the bath towel down on the floor, she rushes to the airing cupboard and grabs another. But the water still gushes. Neve dimly remembers Lou once mending the toilet in the flat by lifting off the lid of the cistern and doing … something. Something that magically sorted everything out.
Stricken with this new horror
, she forces herself to slosh through the water on the floor and to lift the lid of the cistern. Screwing up her eyes she pushes her hand into the shockingly cold water and roots about, unsure what she is meant to be looking for.
Among the mysterious architecture there she feels something like cloth and pulls at it with the tips of her fingers, muttering obscenities as she does so. There’s a strange sucking sound and the cistern dramatically empties of water. Neve stares at the balled-up piece of material and can’t seem to make the necessary mental leap required that will tell her how it got there.
Miserably she throws it into the bin and gives the toilet an experimental flush, but nothing at all is happening now beyond a disappointing sort of clanking thud.
Furiously, she washes and dries her hands and mops up the rest of the water on the floor, using two more bath towels, which she ultimately dumps in the bath in the hope that they will magically wash and dry themselves later. The bottoms of her jeans cling miserably to her ankles and her socks are sodden.
Finding her mobile, she jabs in Sally Gardner’s number.
‘Hello?’ Sally’s voice is low and faint.
‘Um, Sally, it’s Neve,’ she says.
‘Oh hello,’ Sally brightens. ‘What can I do for you?’
Neve tells her about the flooded toilet, while the other woman makes a series of sympathetic noises.
‘So I wondered if you had a number for a local plumber?’
‘A plumber …’ says Sally, a bit vaguely. ‘Let me see …’
The line goes quiet for a moment and then Sally is back, speaking in a rush.
‘I can’t seem to find the number … can I call you back in a little while?’
‘Oh, okay,’ says Neve doubtfully. ‘It’s just that I can’t use the toilet at the moment and it’s a bit urgent.’
‘Leave it with me,’ says Sally and hangs up.
Neve changes into a pair of tracksuit bottoms. They’re bagged at the knee and have a tomato sauce stain on the thigh. She pulls on her last remaining pair of socks. Then she drifts into the sitting room, where Jarvis is now sleeping and emitting small snores that sound like popping bubbles.
Scooching in next to him, she strokes his soft ears, making him thump his tail against her thigh.
‘I’m going to be straight with you, boy,’ she says. ‘I don’t really know what I’m doing here. I don’t like the cottage and I don’t think it likes me either!’ This causes her to emit a high-pitched laugh that is watery with rising emotion. She wipes her hand across her eyes and glances at her phone, which still hasn’t buzzed with the information she needs from Sally.
‘Come on,’ she murmurs.
Neve thinks about the sodden floor and the broken toilet; the ugly bars on the windows. The loneliness of this spot and the feeling that the cottage is choked by secrets she can’t begin to fathom.
The knock at the front door brings her to her feet in one fast movement. Jarvis follows on behind her, barking excitedly.
She opens the front door to see Richard, holding a dog’s bed and a bulging carrier bag. Frowning deeply, he’s staring down at his mobile. He almost thrusts the contents of his arms at her and she says, ‘Oh,’ foolishly, then, ‘I mean, thanks.’
Neve wants to throw herself at him and beg him to help with the overflowing toilet. But she can just imagine how sneery he would be about this. And he might also think she was ruining his sister’s house with her presence.
Richard absent-mindedly pats the fussing dog’s head and then turns to leave, evidently feeling no need to say anything. He hasn’t really looked her in the eye since he arrived.
‘Oh, before you go!’ she says.
He turns and looks at her with barely concealed irritation.
‘Do you have a plumber’s number? It’s nothing major. Just a problem with the toilet that needs sorting. Um, fairly urgently.’
Richard regards her as though she speaks some other language entirely, as seems to be his way. Then he reaches into his pocket.
‘I know a bloke, Finn, who does everything like that. Hang on a minute …’
A few moments pass as he sends the contact by text. She waits for its arrival and thanks him, and then he is gone.
Neve rings the number and lets out a wail of frustration when it immediately goes to voicemail.
‘Finn, hi, I got your number from Richard, um …’ she has a moment’s panic in which she can’t remember this family’s surname before it comes to her ‘… Richard Shawcross. I’m in his … his sister’s cottage and have a plumbing emergency. Please, please can you call me back straight away. I’m desperate! Thank you!’
Slipping her phone back into her pocket, she moves as though walking through slurry to the bedroom, where she begins to gather up her dirty clothes. She’s unsure whether she should use the washing machine while the toilet is blocked; maybe the plumber will want to turn off the water. She feels a thrill of panic run through her at the prospect of being stuck here with no water for any length of time. But she can load the machine, at least.
She shoves the bundle of clothes into the washing machine and looks around the kitchen, wondering what to do and fretting that the plumber won’t return her call.
The clothes problem is really pressing now and Neve pictures the wardrobe in the bedroom, which she hasn’t been able to bring herself to open. But having dealt with a decapitated magpie and been up to her neck in toilet water, she is now in no mood for superstition. She brings her phone with her and plays music on shuffle through the small speaker. It is tinny and unsatisfying but better than the thick, dusty silence in the bedroom.
Neve opens the dark wooden doors of the wardrobe, which are inlaid with small rose carvings, and a musty smell, tempered with something flowery, enters the room. Running her fingers over the rails she begins to look at the clothes hanging there and sees a small cloth bag with a bow at the top. She twists it around and sees it is some sort of handmade lavender bag, embroidered clumsily with the words ‘Best Granny’. Her heart twists as she pictures a young Isabelle, for surely it was her handiwork, painstakingly sewing the scented bag together. She imagines a little girl with skinny arms and maybe blonde plaits, the tip of her pink tongue poking out as she concentrates on her task.
She can’t throw this away, it’s clear.
Neve forces herself to assess the contents of the wardrobe systematically, pulling out items of interest and throwing them onto the bed. Lots of the clothes on hangers are in slippery dry cleaning shrouds. The implications of this make her shiver. Did Isabelle systematically clean these clothes in anticipation of her own death?
She can’t work out whether the idea of this utter certainty makes her feel better or worse about owning the cottage.
When she has done the bed is covered in piles of clothes she plans to explore. There are lots of cotton tea-dresses and floaty chiffon numbers. Some are clearly vintage. Neve guesses these weren’t bought from the charity shop, but belonged to the ever-present Granny.
Some of the dresses have full skirts and cinched waists and Neve experiences a little burst of girlish delight. One is stiff pale cotton with green spots and has a green sash around the middle. She fingers the thick material, remembering the joy of playing dress-up with her mother’s seventies knee boots and bags, kaftans and miniskirts.
Before she can stop herself, she is tugging off her tracksuit bottoms and pulling off the long-sleeved T-shirt and jumper dress she had worn the night before. Shivering in her bra and pants, her pale skin mottled with goose bumps, she tugs the green dress over her head and pulls it down over her body. It smells only faintly of washing powder and, as she struggles to reach the zip at the back, she begins to hum the song that has come on to her phone: her mum’s all-time favourite, ‘Dancing Queen’ by Abba. She presses the volume button to its maximum capacity and the tiny speaker strains to fill the room with sound.
She can’t reach the zip but despite all the drama of the morning, she can’t stop herself from humming
along to the music.
When it finishes, something slow and moody by Sita comes on. Neve jabs at the phone to pause as a memory washes over her, so powerful she has to sit down to absorb it.
It was a family wedding. Mum was singing the Abba song with slightly drunken abandon, holding Neve by both hands so they danced together. Neve had been eleven and pretending to be mortified. But really she loved the spinning sensation and the wide, happy smile of her dancing mother.
Soon she is a mess of snot and tears, her nostrils red and her eyes piggy. She reaches for a tissue from the box at the side of the bed and finds there are none left.
Neve experiences a bright, hot moment of anger at the unfairness in her life.
She might have had a cottage fall into her lap, but other people her age would have a mum and a dad ready to offer help; to come down laden with decorating equipment and legal advice about what to do with the place. They would bicker good-naturedly and then head off to the pub for an evening meal, where they would complain about tired limbs and gently make plans for the summer.
Neve stands up and goes to the sitting room for her handbag, in search of tissues. Jarvis is standing in the hall, staring at the front door with his tail a blur, and she dimly wonders what’s up with him. In the sitting room she blows her nose and then lets out a squeal of pure shock when she sees the dark silhouette of a man peering in the window.
24
She runs to the front door, somehow convinced any delay will mean he has simply dissipated, like smoke, or worse. However often she tells herself she doesn’t believe in ghosts, it doesn’t seem to penetrate the frightened, superstitious core of her.
As she flings open the front door she is confronted by a man in his mid-thirties, with short dark hair and a small beard. He is carrying a large tool box and his expression is one of complete mortification. Neve swallows, realizing what a sight she must look like and attempts to stand taller.
‘Yes?’ she says frostily.
‘Uh, you called me,’ says the man. ‘I’m Finn.’ He has a soft Irish accent and a low, quiet delivery. ‘I’ve been knocking but you didn’t hear me. I’m a plumber.’