by Gina Rossi
Amy’s awesome. Once the writing appeared on the dinky, blackboard-paint wall of Hampers, I made an appointment to see someone at Clarkson’s Careers and—lucky day in six months of disastrous ones—I ended up with Amy. Imagine Oprah, but Asian, with a chignon, and you’ve got Amy. She’s calm, professional and immaculate. She puts the world to rights—that’s if it could ever get to wrongs with Amy in it.
The music gives way to a bit of promo. “Clarkson’s Careers is here to help you. Give us your problems, and we will solve them. Relax, while we partner you with the perfect solution for your care requirements.”
“Bear with me,” Amy says, super-calm.
“Whether your loved one requires live-in or live-out care, professional nursing or merely a caring, responsible companion, we are here to meet your every need.”
“One moment.”
Music again, then, “Contact us now, without delay and put your mind at rest—”
Amy wails. I almost drop the phone. Amy is so not a wailer.
“Hello?” I say. “Amy? Hello?”
“God!” she cries. “I am so sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry!”
“What?” I know what. My sweet old lady friend dissolves—finally and forever—into the mist along with her little dog. I miss them badly.
“Just a moment.”
How long is a moment? How much is this call costing? I hear the furious tapping of laptop keys. Lucas gets up, tosses his beer bottle onto the foothills of the recycling mountain and goes to the fridge for a second one. He stands at the sink, tapping the neck of the bottle against his chin, one hand sunk in his jeans’ pocket, staring at the mountain range of dirty dishes.
“I have totally fucked up.” Amy groans. “Totally. I had such a crap day that day you and Lucas exchanged contracts. I knew something would go wrong. I knocked someone off their bicycle on the way to work that day. No damage done, and he admitted it was one hundred percent his fault, but it really tipped me. Worse, come lunchtime, I get a call from my hubby telling me he’d been bloody retrenched. Then, a call from my son’s school to say he’d been suspended for selling cigarettes. It’s not professional to let these things intrude, but it was just one of those ghastly days when everything, everything, went wrong. And now this comes along to haunt me.”
OMG, Amy swears? Amy has a life? A messy life, a bit like mine? Amy has problems?
“Look,” I say, “it’s not a big issue.” How, exactly, did that remark arise?
“It isn’t? Thank God! Will you be able to help Lucas out? He’s a great guy, honestly, our best client.”
I hesitate. Amy, during the worst time in my life, made me feel like I could rule the world—my pearl-crammed oyster—from a gilded balcony; all this through the humble calling of care, while paying off my sordid debts. She made me feel like a rare, precious resource, like my total failure at Hampers was a mere, yet necessary stepping stone to greater and glorious things. She never looked at me like the bank manager did. She complimented me, built me up when I’d felt like a sorry drudge. Amy made me feel better about me. Because of all this, because it’s Amy, who also has a life, who is normal, I say, “Yes, I’ll do it. No problem.”
For a moment, I’m sure she’s fainted, but her voice comes back, wobbly. “I’d better speak to Lucas.”
I hand him the phone, confused. What have I done? More important, why? I’m regretting it already. But I won’t go back on my word because I’m not stumbling, again, on something that’s behind me.
Lucas chats away to Amy, smiling like they’re the best old mates, smiling until his eyes crease so much he’s got deep crinkle-grooves way past his cheekbones. I can’t follow what he’s saying, his back’s half-turned now, and he’s wandered to the far end of the room, talking softly. He looks pretty happy with himself, one way or another. Me? I’m wondering what the hell I’ve let myself in for.
“Right.” Lucas hangs up and drops the phone on the table. He rummages in a pile of papers on the counter next to the fridge and comes back to the table with a red file.
“Lis’s program, day by day. Emergency numbers, various contacts, all the info you’ll need. Any questions?” He checks his watch.
I bend my head to the file. Poor little Alice. She’s already at school five mornings a week and has after-school activities on three of those five days. Art, tennis—tennis?—and Green Club. Is Lucas a tiger-dad?
“What’s Green Club?” I ask.
“A nature group thing run by the school. They go on mini-hikes, learn about the environment, collect stuff. Lis is mad about it.”
“No more than two play-dates per week,” I read.
“There’s a list of Lis’s special friends and their numbers on the next page.”
“Does Alice go to their homes, or do they come here?”
He hesitates a fraction. “She always goes to their houses.”
I look around the kitchen. If I were a mother I’d probably worry about my child coming here and catching something. It’s hardly hygienic. Blame me for working in the food industry. I know about health and safety.
“What day does the cleaner come?” I ask.
He looks straight at me. Do you get brown diamonds? Because that’s what his eyes are—smoky-topaz gems. They’re large for a man, but deep set, so, at first, you don’t notice their size and colour. It’s more of a gradual discovery. Heavy lashes cast shadows, deepening the darkness.
“Cleaner?” he says. “There’s no cleaner.”
I sit back in my chair. This seems like a pretty big house. “So…” I wave a hand at the kitchen.
“I’ll fix this up before I go.”
“And the rest of the house?”
He shrugs. “Lis and I pick up as we go along. There’s nothing to do, really.” He smiles and the brown diamonds sparkle. “Leave the doors open. Let the wind blow through.”
“I’m not cleaning this house.”
“You don’t have to.”
I like to live, and prepare food and—lately—care for a four-year-old in a clean environment. It’s a prerequisite.
He clocks the way I’m looking at him. “If you can get anyone to come up here and clean this place, good on you.” He holds out a card. “Here. It’s a debit card. Cash, basically. Use it for household expenses and—” he grins, but it’s a mocking kind of grin—“that cleaner you’re going to find.” He grabs a pen off the counter and scribbles the pin code in the front cover of the file. “Anything else? I must go pack.”
“Do’s and don’ts regarding Alice? Anything specific?”
“The usual. It’s all in here.” He taps the file.
Usual? I have no idea. I mean if I were looking after a dear old lady, she could tell me these things. Can Alice do that? I flip the pages in the file, scanning.
• Brush teeth after meals
• Maximum one hour of TV per day
• Two bedtime stories and lights out by seven thirty
And so on. It’s common sense, really. My eyes fall on the last page, the very last item on the list, typed in capital letters. I read it aloud: “NB. ALICE MAY NOT GO TO THE COVE. THE COVE IS OUT OF BOUNDS.”
I look up. “What’s the cove?”
He looks through me. “The private beach below the house. Bonny drowned there.”
I frown. Bonny? Another dead person?
“Bonny. My wife.”
“I’m sorry. It must be very dangerous.”
“Was for her.” He pauses, opens his mouth to say something else, clams up, thinks a moment, and then goes for it. “You should know…you should know some people in this town think I killed her.”
I wait for him to say I didn’t.
He doesn’t.
“Why?” I ask.
He rubs his eyes that way he does, like he’s clearing his vision, like he’s a man so tired he can’t see straight. “Did you eat anything tonight?”
“No.”
He goes to switch on the oven and open the freezer. I hear the crack and cr
unch of ice as he rifles through the contents. He pulls out a couple of pizzas and prises them out of their frozen boxes. While the grill heats, he loads a few more things into the already over-full dishwasher and switches it on. He slides the pizzas into the oven, pulls a third beer out of the fridge, pops the lid and places it on the table.
“More wine?”
My glass is half-empty. Or is it half-full? “No thank you. Can I help?”
He looks at me, calculating something, and then he picks up his beer and pulls at the label with a fingernail while the kitchen fills with the smell of an oven that hasn’t been cleaned in a long, long time.
Why? There must be good reason, but the moment’s gone. He’s not answering that question. He leans against the counter and picks, picks, picks at the label, lost in thought, easing the corner off the glass.
The oven’s smoking. He switches it off, slides the pizzas onto plates and brings them to the table. They cool for a minute or two, during which time we don’t talk. In the uneasy silence—or is that just me?—he slices pizza into equal wedges. Judging by his expertise, something tells me there’s too much pizza eaten in this house.
Who knows why, indeed? Why would you murder someone by drowning them? I’m not an expert, but surely that’s one of the messiest, noisiest ways to kill somebody? Would Amy know anything about this? Is it the best idea in the world to be sharing a house with a possible murderer? As long as he doesn’t murder me, I suppose. Anyway, murderers are shoved in jail, so it’s likely a rumour.
“Help yourself,” he says.
I take a slice and nibble, ignoring the calorie intake. The silence stretches.
My phone rings. It vibrates across the table. It’s Holly, checking up on me. “Hey, Jazz!” Whoops, it’s on speaker. “You sounded very low, in your text.” I fumble with the keyboard to mute the call, spreading cheese. “I wasn’t! I’m not! Everything’s great. Awkward to talk now. Let’s talk tomorrow.” I ring off.
He’s looking at me, pizza wedge drooping at the point, halfway to his mouth.
“Jazz?”
“A nickname.”
“Why are you low, Jazz?” He eats the slice in three bites, watching me.
I hesitate. Here is a man, a single father, whose wife is dead, whose mother is dead, and who surely, whatever happened, carries a burden of loneliness, sorrow, guilt and regret. Trouble shadows his eyes. Eyes that are as dark now as one of those brown sugar crystals you get on a stick—in posh Italian cafés in West London—right after you’ve dipped it in black coffee. “I’m not low. Perhaps a little homesick, that’s all.”
He pushes his plate away, folds his arms on the table and leans closer to me. “I’m sorry. I hope it passes soon. And I hope you like Lobster Cove.”
If nothing else, murder is off the agenda. However, there’s bound to be gossip down in town. I’ll get Sally to elaborate, after all she let slip.
We finish, not saying much, apart from the odd stuff about Alice and various housekeeping issues.
He talks me through the keys. “These are the important ones. Keys for my Jeep, the back door key and—” he singles out a strange, long, curved key and holds it up. “—don’t lose this one. It’s the only one. There used to be a second, but it’s lost.” His voice cracks.
“What’s it for?”
He clears his throat. “The sea horse door.”
“The what?”
“The front door. It’s a special design with a unique lock. There’s not a locksmith in the world, apparently, who can make a replica.”
“I’ll take great care of it,” I promise, smothering a yawn. I’m more than ready for bed.
“Anything else?”
“Um, can I do anything?” I survey the kitchen, doubtful. Frankly, I wouldn’t know where to start.
He stands up, hands on hips, and looks at me. “You must be beat. Go to bed.”
“Are you sure?”
“Go on. Up the stairs, turn right and it’s the third room left, next to Lis’s.” He turns away to tackle the recycling pile.
I tramp up the stairs, defeated. Meet me—business owner to babysitter in a few short weeks.
Chapter Three
Bam! Bam! “I’ll be back in forty.”
Whazzat? I sit up, startled and disorientated. Who’s that American shouting in my dream, bashing on my door? Mmmh, right, I remember. Four is to seventy-four as Lis is to Liz. I hear Lucas—I suppose—bounding down the stairs and the resounding crash of a front door slamming in a house with hardly any furniture. I guess that means I’m on duty. I look at my phone to check the time. Six a.m. On a Sunday.
However rudely, I have—glory be—woken in heaven. I fell asleep last night in this giant double bed with the inside shutter-things open because I couldn’t find any curtains and was too pooped to wrestle with the hooks and hinges once I’d pinched my finger on the first attempt. Now, tempted by the bright, golden light streaming into the room, I get out of bed and go to the window.
Oh.
The drippy mist’s gone, and the sun’s coming up over the sea. The sky is pink and gold, and the sea is silver. It’s possibly the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. I open the window to the fresh, cool, salt air and the sound of surf on rocks and that first-day-of-holiday sensation fills me with such excitement I break out in goose bumps. A deep breath brings a warm rush of memories—rock pooling with my grandparents at Belcroute Bay, on Jersey, in the Channel Islands.
But holiday it isn’t. I wallow for a moment, turn away from the window, and go next door to Alice’s room, still in darkness. She’s fast asleep on her tummy, legs and arms splayed, toys and books all over the bed. I walk away quietly. Better shower and get dressed before she wakes up. When does she wake up? I wonder if there’s a child-rearing book somewhere in the house? Something tells me there isn’t.
Half an hour later—showered, hair washed, dressed—I’m finishing my unpacking when a movement in the doorway catches my eye. It’s Alice in her blue pyjamas, carrying a storybook.
“Good morning, Alice,” I say, in my best, bright voice. “What’s that you’ve got?”
She holds out the book. “Story?”
Is it story time? I thought bedtime was story time. I read in bed at night, but then again I read on the train, at the bus stop, in the bath and everywhere in between, so I reckon six-thirty in the morning is as good a time as any for a body to read.
“Okay.” I take the book. Alice climbs on the bed I’ve just made, pulls back the duvet, bringing the cushions with her, tosses them about into a crooked pile against the headboard, wriggles under the bedding and tells me to get in.
I do, and it occurs that I haven’t been in bed, fully clothed at six-thirty in the morning, since my student days. Alice, shy, kneels next to me, a skinny little knee poking through a hole in her pants.
“What’s this?” I put a fingertip on her kneecap.
“Broken,” she says, mournfully, stroking the frayed fabric.
“Shall we mend it?”
She nods, smiling, eyes huge and bright and happy, and pushes the book toward me.
It’s Winnie the Witch, and I adore Winnie. I could be her, no problem. She’s got a fabulous house and hair not dissimilar to mine. She’s so together it’s not fair. Magic helps, of course. We read the story about how she offends Wilbur—her black cat—by making him rainbow-coloured because she keeps tripping over him in her black house and falling down the stairs. Alice absorbs the story like it’s the first time she’s heard it, but I can see it’s a well-read, well-loved book, falling apart at the binding.
“Shall we fix this too?” I run my fingers up and down the battered spine, after we’ve read the book three times.
“And pyjamas.” She smiles at me, puts her arms around my neck and hugs. “More story?”
“Have you got another one? Another Winnie book?”
She jumps off the bed and runs out of the room. I wait, staring through the window at the blue sky, listening to the sound
of the sea.
I could do with a little magic in my life.
Alice’s back with an armful of books, dropping one on the floor with every step. She climbs into bed, dumps the remainder on my lap and we read, showing each other Winnie’s hat, her stripy stockings, her pointy toes, her curly eyelashes and Wilbur’s whiskers, which Alice calls “whispers.”
“Must fetch friends,” she says, when we have read every book. She scrambles out of bed and runs to her room.
I get up and look through the window. There’s a solitary runner on the distant shore, coming closer. Lucas. He’s leaving today, enjoying the last of beautiful Maine before he holes up—I imagine a narrow, steel-walled cabin in a rig like a storm-tossed lobster trap bobbing on the vicious ocean, with no landscape to love, incarcerated between dark, hostile skies and spitting seas. How can he leave this? How can he leave Alice? Why?
He disappears behind the low headland to the east of the house. Is that the location of forbidden cove? Does he spend time there, reflecting on the tragedy that changed his and Alice’s lives forever? No, not today, because he’s popped up on the lawn—or whatever you call the shaggy half acre or so of wild and weedy grass between the house and the sea. He’s in good shape, is Lucas Dalton. I force my imagination into neutral. My mind blank, I merely witness the fitness until he disappears from sight, pulling back from the window as he approaches the big porch along the front of the house. I wouldn’t want him to see me.
“Who are you waiting for?”
I jump. Turning, I see Alice, arms full of teddies, bunnies and a knitted sea horse with stuffing oozing out of a hole in his tail.
“Get in bed,” she says. “We not finished.”
I obey. Seconds later Lucas strides past my wide-open bedroom door, head back, downing a carton of juice as he goes.
“Daddy,” Alice says, without looking up, arranging her toys around the bed.
We turn our attention back to Winnie and are halfway through a repeat routine when Lucas roars, “Alice?” I look up at the doorway. He sounds terribly close, and cross.
With a little shriek, Alice dives under the duvet. A moment’s silence. I’m not sure what to do.