The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  Helen Honeysett snatched up an Olympus Trip camera from a table laden with dishes – lentil bakes, sausage rolls, mince pies – brought by the neighbours. In a ringing voice that briefly muted the room, she called, ‘Ste-eve, say cheese!’

  Steve Lawson grinned at Helen Honeysett, eyes twinkling.

  Helen lowered the camera. ‘You’re Paul Young’s double!’

  Steve toasted her with the Guinness that he’d brought himself and crooned the first few lines of ‘Wherever I Lay My Hat’.

  Bewitched, Megan watched Helen flit about the room, chat­ting to the neighbours. Flash light bleached faces as she weaved between her guests clicking the camera shutter, catching them unawares.

  There was something on the floorboards by the piano. Megan squatted down and picked it up. It was one of the Christmas cards by Adam Honeysett. It looked different to their card, but she couldn’t tell why. Tapping Garry’s picture she told him, ‘You’re on the same branch as me. It’s like a family tree!’ Megan glanced at Garry, but he had gone. She peered through the press of bodies in time to see her brother slipping out of the front door. About to go after him, she saw what had caught her attention. One of the balls had been blackened out so that you couldn’t see the face.

  She counted the faces on the tree. Her dad was at the top above the Honeysetts. Daphne was opposite her and Garry, which was nice. Megan was unhappy that her mum was at the bottom near Mr Rowlands, even if he was a sweetie. She should be next to her dad. Who was missing?

  She scanned the low-lit room and got her answer. Miss Lofthouse was going out of the door after Garry. She opened the card and read the writing inside: ‘To Sybil, the lovely lady at number 5. Helen and Adam’.

  A cold draught drifted in. The fire flickered. A candle on the window ledge went out. By the time Helen Honeysett glanced into the passage, the front door had closed behind ‘the lovely lady at number 5’. Vaguely she registered that Sybil Lofthouse had left her party without saying goodbye.

  3

  Monday, 4 January 2016

  ‘One, two,

  Buckle my shoe;

  Three, four,

  Open the door…’

  The chanting was eerie at three in the morning.

  Jack leant against the tunnel wall, oddly soothed by the cold from the tiles penetrating his coat. Above came the sporadic scrawl of a passing car or lorry. The Great West Road, a major route into London and to Heathrow Airport, was never quiet. But in the dead of night, he had the subway to himself. He shut his eyes and concentrated. He didn’t have to wait long for the ghosts.

  …here’s your cocoa, drink that and you…

  Mum, you are a…

  …I’ll put the dog out, you get that down you…

  I love you, Mum…

  In the 1950s, streets of houses had been demolished to extend the Great West Road. Jack was standing on the spot where the kitchen of 27 Black Lion Lane had been. At night, he caught snatches of chatter, the bang of pots and pans, cutlery clinking, a phantom domestic soundscape. He imagined himself in the warm kitchen, windows fugged with steam from washing on a drying rack while someone’s mother made him cocoa.

  I love you, Mum.

  Get on with you. Drink that and get yourself upstairs!

  Had he ever told his mother that? Had she ever made him cocoa? Oblivious to the tang of urine, Jack strained to hear what came next, but the voices were silent. He resumed his chant:

  ‘Five, six,

  Pick up sticks;

  Seven, eight,

  Lay them straight…’

  Jack lifted the iron knocker on the front door. It was fashioned as a short-eared owl and he stroked its feathery chest with a finger. ‘Hey, you,’ he whispered as he lowered it. Swiftly he inserted his key in the lock and went inside. The piano lid was up. A music book was open at Beethoven’s ‘Pathétique’, the second movement, his mother’s favourite piece. Jack wandered into the dining room and dreamily traced the music notation. Modulated notes, poignant and haunting, filled the room. He flicked the page over, but was too late, the music stopped, the quiet like a rebuke. When his mother played, Jack had turned the pages for her; he’d never missed a beat. Now climbing the staircase, he remembered – or supposed he remembered – that he couldn’t have done this. She had known the sonata off by heart. She hadn’t needed him.

  ‘Nine, ten,

  A big, fat hen;

  Eleven, twelve,

  Dig and delve…’

  At the turn in the stairs, he hunkered down and peeped through the banister spindles down to the hall.

  Jack had left Bella, his erstwhile partner, an hour ago. (Erst­while, because they had agreed they didn’t want something serious.) She grumbled that he behaved as if he was having an affair with her, sneaking out of bed before morning to go home. At forty-nine, Bella Markham had declared herself in the ‘monstrous grip of the menopause’ and was suffering from what, post a trawl of the internet, she called ‘mood disturbances’. Jack’s sympathy cut no ice with Bella. ‘Don’t be some pony-tailed tosser in socks and sandals trying to be down with the girls!’ Jack, who would never dream of having a pony-tail, couldn’t explain about needing to leave to hear the Great West Road ghosts. Or his other ghost…

  His mother was craning over the table peering into the mirror. From this angle he couldn’t see her face. He ran downstairs to her. There was an oval outline where the mirror had hung. It had broken years ago. His mother wasn’t there.

  The piano lid was shut and the music book closed. He hadn’t touched the piano or closed her book. The room was icy. Not the grounding cold of the subway tiles, but profound, like bones in a winter grave.

  ‘Thirteen, fourteen,

  Maids a-courting;

  Fifteen, sixteen,

  Maids in the kitchen…’

  His mobile phone was ringing. It was half past nine. He’d been sitting by the fire in his room – once his mother’s den – for several hours. He was sure he hadn’t been asleep, but time had slipped away. He looked around the room, vaguely taken aback that he was alone. Assuming it was Bella calling, upset that he’d left, he was surprised to see the name on the screen.

  ‘Hey, Stell!’ He was bluff and hearty. No point in telling Stella about his mother’s ghost.

  ‘Are you OK? You sound strange.’ While tending to miss subtleties of expression or mood, Stella could surprise him with sparks of perception. Jack kept himself hidden, but Stella always found him.

  ‘Yes. Is it another case?’ He and Stella had solved several high-profile murder cases. The last one was over a year ago. They rarely met socially and even less since he’d started seeing Bella. He missed her. He got up and going to the window, surveyed the square below.

  ‘Not as such.’ Stella sounded cagey.

  Jack pressed his face to the glass. A woman and a little boy were pottering along the pavement towards the church. The boy had a toy steam engine. Jack blinked and looked properly. The pavement was empty.

  ‘…sure you’re all right?’ Stella was concerned.

  ‘Perfectly sure.’ If he told Stella he had seen his mother’s ghost – or worse, his own ghost as a boy – she wouldn’t be reassured. When Stella worried about him, she offered him cleaning shifts, her cure-all. When he wasn’t helping Stella solve murders, Jack took time from driving the Dead Late shift on the District line to work for Clean Slate.

  ‘I have a job for you.’

  ‘Murder or cleaning?’

  ‘Neither.’

  After he hung up, Jack sat in his mother’s armchair watching the dying fire. He realized with a jolt that it wasn’t his Great West Road ghosts, the real reason he’d left Bella’s was that he didn’t want Stella to call while he was in bed with someone else. Stupid. Why should she care? And Stella could call any time.

  It was utterly unlike Stella to accept a job that entailed a ghost. In his head, clearer than his thoughts, more distinct than all his phantoms, Jack heard singing, light as spring air,

&nb
sp; ‘Seventeen, eighteen,

  Maids a-waiting;

  Nineteen, twenty,

  My plate’s empty.’

  His plate wasn’t empty, Stella had offered him the ideal job. He would leave his ghosts behind and live with someone else’s.

  4

  Christmas Day, 1986

  The setting sun sent orange rays over the river, turning its surface to gold. Shards of light speared through leafless branches. It was freezing; the muddied towpath by the River Thames was as hard as concrete.

  Two people made their way along the path towards Kew Railway Bridge. A tall thickset man in a donkey jacket, Dr Martens and jeans. A little girl, her cherry-red Puffa jacket slipping off one shoulder, skipped by his side, swinging her hand in his. Sometimes he raised his arm to give her hopping and jumping more scope. They walked in companionable silence. Behind them a brown Labrador sniffed among scrub at the edge of the bank.

  Megan had been happy when Steve Lawson agreed she could walk Smudge with him. Mostly he liked to be on his own. Garry said she was too old to hold her dad’s hand. She loved to be her dad’s ‘best girl’. Mostly he was a plumber, mending pipes and installing baths and toilets, but it was Christmas Day and he didn’t have to work. She was happy Garry hadn’t wanted to come because he would have gone on about football and other important boy’s business.

  Still Megan felt disappointment. The walk wasn’t as she’d planned. She saved until they were under the bridge to tell her dad that Garry was giving her one of his baby budgies when Topsy had her babies. But when they got to the bridge, a train had gone over and she’d had to shout. Her dad hadn’t understood.

  ‘Daddy, Garry’s giving me one of Topsy’s—’

  ‘You be careful. Garry’s put a lot of work into those budgies.’

  Megan felt hot with dismay at his response and nearly told him that Garry said the word ‘budgie’ was babyish. ‘I’ll put a lot of work into it too!’ She decided to give up her other great news of the day, hoarded up since the end of last term – the arrival of the new class hamster – there and then. Her dad had only said, ‘That’s nice, darlin’.’ After she’d told him, Megan didn’t think it quite so amazing either.

  Her disappointment deepened when, long before they even reached Chiswick Bridge, Steven Lawson announced they must go back since it was getting dark. Blinded by the low afternoon sunlight, his daughter nearly asked where the dark was. She couldn’t know it was inside him.

  Absorbed in their thoughts, neither of them heard the footsteps. ‘Hi, you two!’ Helen Honeysett, kitted out in tracksuit and leg warmers, jogged up to them. Her wire-haired terrier darted about in front of the Lawsons’ Labrador, who ignored it.

  ‘Oh, hi, Helen. All right?’ Her dad let go of Megan’s hand. ‘How far did you go today?’

  ‘Just to Hammersmith. Need to step up for the marathon, I’m number one weed!’ Helen Honeysett was running on the spot.

  Steven pulled a face. ‘Don’t know how you do it.’

  ‘In your business you work up a sweat!’ Helen stopped jogging as if to visualize this image. ‘I exhaust myself showing yuppies round over-priced houses!’ She flashed him a smile. ‘I bet you’d do the marathon in record time. Hey, you should join me!’

  ‘I wish!’ Steve gave a low laugh and pinched the collar of his donkey jacket together.

  Megan was sure she could race to Hammersmith Bridge and back again and would say so if Helen wanted to know. She liked their beautiful neighbour, whose name, like the lady herself, belonged in a fairy tale. She scratched the lady’s dog under his chin. ‘Hello, Baxter,’ she told him.

  ‘You did brilliant work rescuing our ridiculously fangled sound system at the party last night. Adam bodges everything he touches. And as for your fancy footwork! God, if you hadn’t fixed the amp, we’d have been stuck with dear Daphne Merry’s litter-collecting lecture. Makes me long to come here and toss our rubbish on the towpath. Am I terribly bad?’

  ‘You are.’ Steven Lawson frowned, and then broke into laughter. Megan tried to make her face smile, although she didn’t see why it was funny. If that happened there would be more litter to collect. She wished her dad had listened as hard about the budgie and the hamster.

  ‘You take a nice photo. Remind me to show you the pics I took when they’re back from the developers. Ignore the ones of me, I always look an absolute fright.’ She began doing leg lunges.

  Steven Lawson was quick to contradict her. ‘You could be a glamour model.’

  Megan remembered that at the party the evening before Mrs Honeysett had stuck a record on the turntable and pulled her dad off the settee next to her and made him dance. Her mum said they were ‘half cut’. Garry said dancing was ‘stupid’ so it was just as well he’d already gone.

  Her dad said Helen Honeysett was a welcome ray of sunshine to Thames Cottages. Megan considered Adam Honeysett very handsome and that if he was her husband, she would be called Megan Honeysett. Hoping Helen would hear, she repeated loudly, ‘Hello, Baxter.’

  ‘Me a model? Crap, Steve! Oops!’ Grimacing at Megan, Helen Honeysett clamped a hand over her mouth. ‘You can talk. Like I said last night, you’re a spit of Paul Young on a bad day!’ She launched into ‘Come Back and Stay’; crooning into a pretend mike, she leant across Megan to Steve.

  ‘Get away with you!’ Steven Lawson did a funny dance on the towpath.

  Megan saw that his boots had got muddy. ‘Dad…’

  ‘I’d better be off.’ Helen Honeysett darted forward and gave Steven Lawson a peck on the cheek. She jogged away, her dog bounding after her. It seemed to Megan she must have wings because in seconds she had completely gone.

  Megan Lawson saw that her dad was right about the dark. The sun had dipped below a band of cloud. Kew Railway Bridge was lost in gloom. The river was grey. Thinking about him saying Helen Honeysett was a ray of sunshine, Megan imagined she had taken the sunlight with her.

  ‘We need to get a move on.’ Her dad gripped her hand; this time Megan didn’t like it because he was hurrying and she couldn’t keep up.

  At the lamp-post for Thames Cottages, Megan heard distant barking. ‘Daddy, it’s Baxter!’ She pointed into the gathering dusk and, tugging free of his hand, scampered along the towpath. She stopped at Kew Stairs, a set of steps that led to the river. The stone was worn and slippery with slime. With the river no longer a highway, few had reason to use the old access point. A wire-haired terrier, whitish in the dim light, ignoring the steps, was trying to go up the cobbled slope to the towpath. It kept slithering back down. As it did, it emitted a dreadful drawn-out bark, hollow and bleak.

  ‘Watch it, Megs.’ Steven Lawson grabbed his daughter.

  ‘He’s stuck, Daddy!’

  ‘He’s a dog, Megs. He got down there, he’ll get up.’

  ‘He doesn’t understand about climbing stairs. We can’t leave him. Helen Honeysett will be very, very upset,’ Megan insisted. ‘We must rescue him for her.’

  ‘Don’t move Megs!’ Steven Lawson began to descend. Slipping and sliding, clutching at bushes, he kept his balance down the steps to a beach dotted with bricks and glass. Slathered in mud, the dog had stopped barking and was yelping piteously. Lawson swished Smudge’s lead from around his neck and went towards it. Impassive, the Lawsons’ Labrador sat beside Megan up on the towpath watching Baxter, frightened now, flounder at the edge of the incoming tide. Steve Lawson’s feet sank into the claggy ground. Mud sucked at his boots. He staggered to firmer ground and heard a cry. Megan had fallen on to the first step. He yelled, ‘Megsy, stay up there! Keep hold of Smudge.’

  Megan got up and yanked her Brownies belt from her jeans. She looped it through the Labrador’s collar. She heard her dad swear and was uneasy. ‘What’s the matter?’ Darkness was all round. She couldn’t see him. Peering back the way they had come she saw something on the towpath. She looked properly, but only saw shadows.

  ‘He won’t come, he’s scared.’ Her dad sounded far away. ‘I’ll go
out further.’

  Megan heard water trickling. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘The river’s filling. Fucking shit!’

  ‘Daddy!’

  Smudge whimpered and tried to go down the steps. It took all her strength to hold him. She heard a whine and felt goose-bumps rise on her arms. Smudge jerked her and, flailing, she pitched forward. ‘Help!’ Megan cried at the top of her voice. A hand grabbed her.

  ‘It’s me.’

  Megan smelled lavender.

  ‘Megan love, it’s Mrs Merry.’

  ‘Megs!’ There was more scraping and swearing. Steven Lawson clambered up the steps, Helen Honeysett’s terrier lolling in his arms like an overgrown baby. ‘Oh, it’s you.’ He fumed at Daphne Merry: ‘You scared the living daylights out of her!’

  ‘Megan is made of sterner stuff.’ Daphne Merry let go of Megan and smacked mud off her long oilskin coat.

  ‘Mrs Merry saved me from the river.’ Megan’s voice wobbled. ‘I thought you’d died, Daddy.’

  ‘I nearly did.’ Lawson lowered the dog to the ground and held its collar.

  ‘People should be careful, letting their dogs run wild.’ Daphne Merry tsked. ‘It hasn’t been trained, that’s the problem.’ Like Steven Lawson, she was in her thirties; her auburn hair, coiled into a bun, gave her an authoritative air confirmed by her decisive manner.

  ‘They’ve got minds of their own.’ Steven pushed back his hair. ‘What did you do with Smudge’s lead, Megsy?’

  ‘You had it.’ Megan said it quietly. ‘I think you must have dropped it by the river when you rescued Baxter.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go looking for it, Mr Lawson. It’ll be floating past Hammersmith Bridge by now,’ Daphne Merry advised. ‘Have this. I always carry a spare.’ She handed Steven a lead and taking off her glasses began vigorously to wipe the lenses with a cloth.

  ‘The river’s flowing towards Kew because the tide’s coming in.’ Megan piped up proudly. She had just done about tides at school. ‘His lead will be going towards Teddington Lock.’