by Nina Milton
Back then I used to talk all the time about lowering my carbon footprint without ever doing much more than chucking plastic bottles into a recycling skip. I’d looked at the photo of the garden—almost quarter of an acre of good land—and come to the conclusion that Bridgwater might be the place to settle down. Bristol rents were sky high, but around the River Parrett they were affordable, and I’d be closer to Glastonbury, a place I loved but knew I’d hate to live.
I’d cut out the ad and slipped it into my purse, contemplating how magic can work so quickly it leaves you vibrating like a tugged spring. It’s three years later, and I still believe that: you don’t have to wait for magic; it either hits you in the eyes or it hasn’t worked at all.
The first sign for Finchbury flashed past the car. I started to take glances at the printout map I’d lifted from the Internet. My route for Caroline Houghton’s house took me through the oldest part of Finchbury, quite close to the medieval marketplace, past the Tradecraft shops and pretty boutiques that now lined the ancient square with its gothic church tower. I drove over the River Cary, swollen from the recent rain, and into a back-street area that seemed forgotten by everyone but those who had to live there. I checked the addresses on the back of the map. Mrs. Houghton was on the other side of the river, but I intended to put in an extra stop before reaching her. I was in the street where Cliff lived.
I locked the car, even though I wouldn’t be going far. I was outside a depressing local post office, which surely would be shut down before much longer. Faded cans of food were pyramided as a window display, with cheap children’s toys pinned wonkily behind on bile-green plasterboard. A bell rang out as I opened the shop door, a real-live brass one dangling over my head.
“Morning,” said the woman behind the counter.
“I just want some stamps.” I couldn’t bring myself to ask about the tenant who lived upstairs without putting something into the coffers first.
“First or second class? Large package or letter?” She fingered the pages of a worn-edged stamp book.
I was beginning to see why the place looked so deserted. This was not the most friendly post office clerk I had ever bought stamps from. She glowered at me from behind two layers of glass—the bulletproof stuff that fronted the counter and spectacles the shape and thickness of TV screens.
“The chap who lives upstairs,” I began and faltered as she gave what came close to the evil eye.
“I should’ve guessed you’re here for that. I knew I didn’t recognise you.” The woman slammed her stamp book shut. Dust puffed out and danced in the strip lighting. “I want you out of my shop, now.”
“I’m not the press,” I said.
“You’re not official, either.” She turned and walked towards the end of the counter, where she pulled back a bolt to let herself into the shop. I backed towards the door. “They’ve taped it all up,” she said, advancing on me. “No one goes up there that’s not official. They’ve left an officer in charge.”
I’d thought the brass bell had a merry chime as I’d entered, but as I legged it back to my car, it sounded like the tolling bell of fate.
I checked my watch. It was gone ten. As usual, I would be late for my date, and I fancied that was not the best way to curry favour with Mrs. Houghton.
There was no doubting which house Cliff’s mother lived in, so I didn’t have to check the number. Even though the crowd must have dwindled somewhat since last night, a row of cars was parked tight to the kerb, and some well-wrapped reporters were stamping their feet on the pavement, warming their lungs with cigarette smoke.
Cliff’s childhood home was a well-heeled, detached affair. Its porch welcomed guests with ivory pillars and a sunray fanlight, and the picture windows were wrapped around the corners of the house in Art Deco style.
I drove by without stopping and pulled to a halt farther down. I dialled Mrs. Houghton’s number into my mobile and got the engaged tone. Naturally. I’d told the woman myself to take her phone off the hook.
There was nothing for it but to brave the mob. As I drew closer, the gang clocked me, surrounding me as I approached the double gates, which were made of foreboding slats of heavy wood, charmingly painted a rich red-brown.
“Are you a friend of Caroline’s, dear?” asked a woman in a woollen hat, pulled low. She looked blue around the chin—she must have been standing for ages. “Are you one of the family?”
“D’you know Cliff well?” asked a male reporter, flashing his press badge at me. “Have you seen him? Has he confessed yet?”
I tried not to make eye contact. Surely they couldn’t stop me from moving on. I grasped the metal ring that operated the latch to the gate. As I turned it, I realized they had no intention of stopping me—they were planning to follow me right up to the door. I tried to slam the gate shut, but I’m just not made of the right material to cause unnecessary concussion in sentient beings. I fled along the long, wide gravel drive and hammered on the door, forgetting to even look for a bell, then stuffed my card through the letterbox. As always, it read:
SABBIE DARE
Shamanic Healing
Reiki, Reflexology, Aromatherapy
& Tarot Readings
The door took a long time to open. Quite soon, the entire pack of journalists were squashed into the porch with me, opening up new meanings to the phrase members of the press.
Finally, through the glass panelling, I saw the undulating image of a middle-aged woman. Her voice, shaky and compressed, floated out.
“Sally?”
“Sabbie!” I yelled back.
The door opened until the chain caught it with a metallic clang. She peered out at me through the gap.
The mumbling from the tight-packed bodies around me grew.
“Mrs. Houghton, tell us if you think Cliff is guilty!”
“What was he like as boy? Was he a handful?”
“You’ll want us to publish something you’ve actually said, Caroline.”
“Come on dear, cough up …”
I turned my head round and hollered. “SHOVE OFF! NOW! GO AWAY!” Those anger nodules that grew round my heart when I was a kid come in useful at times.
As I hadn’t spoken a word to any of them until that moment, they reacted quite dramatically. They shuffled backwards, falling over each other. A larger, older man was pushed out into the rose bushes, but I tried not to focus on what was happening behind me, because Caroline Houghton had taken off the chain. I slipped into her magnificent hallway.
The woman who faced me could have been Cliff’s sister. Her spongy cheeks showed no signs of aging through the carefully applied makeup, although there was a thin line of grey roots at the edge of her blond bob. She was well padded but wore a long-sleeved belted dress that slimmed her bust and hips. A silk scarf was draped around her neck, hiding any chicken-wrinkles.
I looked down at the clothes I’d chosen to wear for this occasion—one of my best “visiting outfits”; a long plain skirt in a shade fairly close to the colour of Caroline’s front gate and a warm jumper—but they made me feel dowdy and out of place in this hall, where gilt-framed family portraits hung on the walls. On closer inspection, these did turn out to be canvas-backed studio photos, but I bet they cost a lot more than my weekly earnings.
“Oh yes, I’m sure Cliff mentioned you,” Caroline was saying, “now I’ve had time to think about it.” A moment before, Caroline had been panting with the horror of the siege at her door, her beautiful eyes, as grey as Cliff’s, wide and unblinking. But she quickly regained her poise. This was a woman to whom appearance, in all its guises, meant everything.
She opened a door on the other side of the hall and gestured me into a room of caramel-cream softness. There was a smell of rose petals. The carpet sank under my feet. The sofa I was directed to sucked me down into feather-stuffed cushions. My mouth formed a round “O,” but I was too s
tunned to worry if I looked stunned.
Caroline went straight to the window. She stood behind the half-closed curtains, which had the sheen and quality of an ivory wedding dress, and peered out.
“Have they gone?” I asked.
“Only as far as the gate.” She turned to me and lost her balance, toppling against the window. I was on my feet to rescue her, but she righted herself with a military shake of her shoulders. “The coffee’s percolating,” she said. “D’you like it milky? That’s what I usually have about this time, café au lait.”
“Are you sure you’re all right, Mrs. Houghton?” I said. “All this attention. The whole situation must be harrowing.”
“You will call me Caroline, won’t you?” She patted my arm as if I was the one in need of consolation. “Have you known Cliff for long, dear?”
“Not very long. He—”
“How did you both meet?”
“I’m a therapist, Mrs. Houghton.”
“How intriguing!” gushed Caroline. “Is it the sort of new age stuff?”
“A lot of people think that. But it’s older than—”
“Cliff needs a steady relationship,” she said.
“I agree.”
“He was knocked for six when his father died. Did he tell you about his father?”
“Yes. I’m so sorry.”
“Had all the treatments, went through the chemo, only to die anyway.”
I shook my head, unable to think of anything to say, other than, I’m your son’s shaman, which didn’t feel at all appropriate.
“I think I recovered far better than either of the children. But my daughter’s got her own life, whereas Cliff …”
“He does seem unhappy at times, Caroline.”
She sat opposite me, her back as straight as a Victorian spinster’s. I could only marvel at how she was keeping her composure in the desperate circumstances. I’d sort of been imagining that she would weep all over me; having psyched myself up for that scenario, I felt a wincy bit nonplussed. I was also secretly hoping that she’d bob up again soon and make the drinks. Now she had promised me milky coffee, I was desperate for a cup, and visions of the fragrant, steaming brew—with froth and possibly even cinnamon powder on top—kept swimming in my head. I squeezed my eyes closed for a second.
“It’s so nice we’ve had this opportunity to meet,” said Caroline, as if she’d already forgotten about the baying outside her door and the fact her son was right this moment being transported in handcuffs up the motorway to Bristol to the remand wing of Horfield Prison. She got up and walked towards the door, stopping on the way to slide a finely spun glass ballerina along a wall shelf, presumably back to the position it should never have left. “Although I suppose Cliff would have got round to introducing us in the end.”
“Mrs. Houghton. Caroline—”
But she floated out of the room. I was left, torn between exploring everything in sight and staying put on the sofa, which seemed to have swallowed me whole. I was glad I chose the latter, because she was back in no time, pulling one of those ornate tea trolleys that look like they’re going to tip and spill at every turn of their wheels.
Caroline brought out a couple of side tables from inside a larger one and set them on the Chinese silk rug that graced the area between the sofas with a swirl of pastel flowers. Then she shook out two crocheted doilies and laid them centrally on each table. To this arrangement she added a coaster of filigree silver, on which she placed a bottle-green saucer lined with a circular, quilted paper mat, followed by a gold-rimmed cup brimming with coffee.
“No sugar, thanks,” I said, in a hushed voice. This was gentility taken to extremes. I thought only people with butlers behaved like this.
She returned from the tea trolley with matching plate, napkin, and dessert fork. “Which would you like, Sassie? Carrot and cream or plain chocolate sponge?”
“Caroline.” It was time to clear up the mess before it tangled into a spider’s web. “It’s Sabbie … short for Sabrina.”
“My dear, what a pretty name.” Her lips twitched into a smile, accentuating the fine lines that branched from them like an imprint of trees. I wondered if these lines were caused by pouting; on first impression she looked the sort of woman who might sulk if she didn’t get what she wanted. “I’m so glad you came today. I’m feeling under siege, if you understand.” I watched as Caroline finally made herself comfy on the opposite sofa and took a dainty sip of coffee, little finger extended.
I delved into my shoulder bag, a shapeless, patchwork thing made of various old coats that probably told Mrs. Houghton all she needed to know about me. “I forgot, in the fuss of getting into your house. I brought you this. Just something to say sorry all this is happening, really.”
She pulled off the paper I’d wrapped the package in. “Oh,” she said, turning the glass bottle round in her hand. “Why, thank you.”
“It’s a blend of essential oils in jojoba. You can pour it in your bath or smooth it onto your skin. They should help you relax a bit, that’s all.”
She pulled off the stopper and gently sniffed. Her eyelids did a sort of ecstatic flutter. “It’s divine.”
“Caroline. Cliff’s been seeing me in a professional capacity.”
“Sorry?”
“Cliff’s been coming to see me because he’s feeling a bit down at the moment.”
“Down,” Caroline echoed. “That’s true. I blame the place he’s living. He was so sure he wanted to move out and I didn’t stop him, but that dreadful flat would depress anyone. And he doesn’t even push a Hoover around. I’ve started doing all his cleaning. I couldn’t bear it any longer.”
A thought dropped into my mind. “You tidy up for him? Did you notice his collection of things around Josh’s kidnapping?”
She took several seconds to put the top back on the bottle of oil and place it carefully on the table. I knew this was because she had found things at her son’s flat that had unnerved her. “People often keep bits of local interest,” she said.
“I was wondering if you’d ever seen a toy there. One of those spacemen types.”
“No, nothing like that. Why would Cliff have toys? All his old ones are in my attic.”
“It’s the reason the police have arrested him, Caroline. They found Josh Sutton’s Slamblaster figure in his flat.”
Caroline opened her mouth, but no sound came from it. Possibly she’d been unable to comprehend the full situation properly until this moment.
I was silent too. I didn’t want to interrupt whatever came next. I was hoping that she would reiterate her statement about seeing no such thing in the flat.
Finally she talked. Words flew from her mouth like pigeons from a loft. But she seemed to have forgotten about Cliff. As I sipped my coffee down to its milky bottom, I learnt everything I’d ever wished to know about Cliff’s father, from how he could row a boat and throw a line to the gruesome details of his illness.
“He was running his own business when the diagnosis came,” she said. “Plastic mouldings. It was really getting established, and he loved the work. Gave it his all. Fourteen-hour days. That changed when he got ill, of course. The only good thing that came out of it was that we all saw him so much more.”
“Cliff enjoyed his dad’s company, then?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” Caroline nodded, her eyes misting with past memories. “Little Cliff looked after his father like a man.”
“It must have been hard for him. When his father died.”
Caroline shook her head, her over-sized teeth hidden behind tight lips.
“Cliff was devastated by his father’s illness. It tipped him out of the boat, as Robin would have said. They both changed right in front of my eyes. Cliff got quieter as Robin got thinner until he was too sick to do anything but lie in bed.”
Although the memories mus
t have been upsetting, Caroline seemed to relish the tale. I know this is true of a lot of people, this enjoyment of the macabre, but it made me feel unaccountably angry, and I did a cruel thing, something in the style of the bitter teenager I thought I’d left behind.
“I suppose there’s one good thing.” My teeth were set like steel traps. “Mr. Houghton never saw Cliff charged with murder.” As my odious words hit home, Caroline’s face blanched. I struggled out of the sofa cushions and rushed to grasp her hand. I wanted some teacher to give me a hundred lines … I must keep my stupid opinions to myself … or slap my knuckles with a ruler.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That came out wrong.”
“No!” Caroline pulled out the tissue that was hiding in her sleeve and pressed it to her face. “No.” She shook her head from side to side. “No, you’re right. I’m glad. I’ve never been able to say it before, but I’m glad Robin’s dead.” She pulled the tissue away and looked down at me, kneeling on her carpet in penitence. “No, that’s not true. I still wish he was here. He’d be such a support.”
“Is there anyone else? Cliff’s sister? Friends?”
“Yes, I’ve got some lovely friends. They made these cakes. I’m in the local Women’s Institute, you see, and they’re all supporting me, they all say it can’t be Cliff, but they’re very torn.”
“Torn?”
“I know Aidan Rodderick, most of the women in the Women’s Institute and Townswomen’s Guild do. His grandma is a member, you see.” She gave a hollow laugh. “Yesterday, I baked her a cake, her and her daughter, Aidan’s mum. It’s what we do. Just a token. I was baking away, blissfully unaware of what was about to happen.”