by Daisy Waugh
She hears him behind her, clearing his throat. It’s a sound she would recognise anywhere, half-contrite, half-confident – it’s the noise he uses to attract her attention whenever he tips up to surprise her. As he loves to do.
He loves it because each time it has the same effect. Her face breaks into a smile, she spins around – just as she’s doing now…
…and Fanny sees him looking back at her with that same sexy, easy smile. She feels her heart leap and more than that, the familiar lurch of desire. She doesn’t return the smile.
‘Hey, Louis,’ she says, sounding bemused. She walks the few steps towards him.
‘I missed you, Fan,’ he murmurs. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘You should be…’
‘I mean, what I meant to say is—’
‘What did I do wrong?’
‘Nothing. I’ve been a jerk.’ Hands both deep in his back pockets, shoulders hunched, he falters, suddenly uncertain, insecure. She’s never seen him look so ill at ease. A gurgle of laughter escapes her. ‘What’s up, Louis? Are you OK?’
‘Fine.’ Suddenly, in one swift movement, he pulls his hands from the pockets and pitches towards her, grasping her head in both hands –
‘Hey!’
– and kissing her.
It takes a minute to adjust, after so many years of not, but then Fanny lets the photographs flutter to the ground and within moments they are both lying on top of them, a tangled mess of limbs and long-repressed yearnings. They are tugging at each other’s clothes, oblivious even to the front door, still half-ajar behind them.
After so long waiting for each other (and imagining it) neither lasts too long. A glimmer of time, and then they have both collapsed into a heap, the one on top of the other, both scarcely undressed, and the front door still banging softly in the breeze behind them.
‘Well!’ laughs Fanny, lying back on the wooden floor beside him, her body still glowing. ‘Hi, Louis. Nice to see you, too. How’s life with you?’
Louis doesn’t reply. He traces a thumb over her cheek, down her neck. ‘I love you,’ he says simply.
Fanny sits up. ‘Oh, Jesus, Louis. The door!’
Louis turns to it incidentally, without interest; maybe he saw a figure flitting by, maybe he didn’t. It doesn’t matter. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he says to Fanny. ‘I love you. I’ve loved you for years.’
She smiles. ‘What? Me as well? As well as all those others? Are you sure? What about…’ She looks at him gazing levelly back at her, with such certainty. And of course she loves him too. And she has for years. But she can’t say it. Yet.
His hand slides under her T-shirt, strokes the small of her back ‘What about…?’
She realises she doesn’t want to mention names. Not right now. She doesn’t want to mention all the women he’s declared he was in love with over the years. ‘It doesn’t matter. For God’s sake, Louis. Close the door!’ But then she can’t stop herself. She half-sits up. ‘I mean – I suppose I mean what about Kitty?’
‘Kitty?’ he laughs, kicks the door closed with his foot and pulls Fanny back down to the floor again. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’
Later, when they’re upstairs – Fanny in the bath, Louis sitting on the edge of it, sharing the champagne and one of Louis’s oversized spliffs – Fanny mentions her aborted trip to Spain which was meant to have started tomorrow.
‘But Mum and the new boyfriend are both sick,’ she says.
Louis isn’t really listening.
‘She gave me half an hour’s worth of details about the state of his’n’her bloody bowel movements, which I could have done without.’
Louis pulls on the spliff, watches the Badedas bubbles sliding slowly between her breasts. ‘I bet,’ he says vaguely.
‘And then she cancelled me!’
He holds the cigarette to Fanny’s lips. She inhales, flinches slightly as the hot smoke hits the back of her throat.
‘So,’ she says, exhaling, ‘what was I saying?’
‘Bowel movements?’ Louis says politely.
‘That’s right…Waste of a ticket, really.’
‘Ticket to where?’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Spain, of course. Weren’t you listening?’
‘I most certainly was,’ he says.
‘What?’
He laughs, slightly uncertain. ‘What?’
‘You…’ she frowns, trying to remember. Louis’s spliffs are always too strong. ‘Most certainly was what?’ She giggles suddenly. ‘Scarlett Mozely reckons we’re all wild flowers.’
‘Mmm?’
‘So what does that make her mother?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Deadly nightshade! Geddit?’ She slaps her thigh, spraying water around the bathroom.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘If we’re all flowers…see?’ she giggles pointlessly.
‘Flowers?’ Louis repeats.
‘Wild flowers. I’m a dog rose. You’re a – dandelion, let’s say. OK? Or a pimpernel. Tracey Guppy’s probably a buttercup.’
‘What’s a pimpernel?’
‘Geraldine Adams is obviously a thistle. And Kitty Mozely’s deadly nightshade…’
‘You’re talking crap, Fanny,’ he says amiably, leaning forward to kiss her. But she’s still laughing. She can’t stop, and then neither can Louis.
In the morning Fanny wakes to see him, head propped up on one arm and gazing down at her. He smiles. He says, ‘Were you saying something last night about going to Spain today? Or did I dream it? Or was everything that happened between us last night a dream?’
‘I bloody hope it wasn’t,’ she says, pulling him towards her. ‘Oh. And by the way,’ she pulls back, takes his head in her hands, ‘Louis, you never actually answered. About you and Kitty Mozely – or Deadly Nightshade, as I shall now be calling her.’
He smiles. ‘What about us?’
‘Are you and she having a – thing?’
‘Come on, Fan. Don’t be disgusting,’ he says mildly, moving on top of her, his words muffled as his lips work down her body. ‘Oh.’ He looks up. ‘And I finally worked out she was jerking me around about you and that skinnyass teacher from school, right? I was right, wasn’t I? To decide that?’
‘Robert White?’ Fanny laughs in disbelief. ‘Kitty Mozely told you Robert and I were—And you believed her? Louis! You met him! He’s repulsive!’
Louis considers her for a second. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Stupid of me.’
‘It certainly was.’
‘I guess I should have asked you earlier.’
And then, later still, while they’re lying in each other’s arms, Louis suddenly frowns. ‘What was that you were saying before, about Spain? It’s pretty damn goofy, you know, us starting conversations over and over…’
‘I said,’ she says, ‘several times, in fact, but I don’t think you were listening—’
‘Sure I was! I hang on every word you utter, Fanny Flynn. You know that.’
‘I was saying that I was meant to be flying to Malaga this afternoon.’ She looks at the clock beside her bed. ‘In five hours and forty minutes, to be exact. But Mum’s ill. So…’ She shrugs. ‘It means we can spend the week together. Which is nice. Which is much nicer. Isn’t it?’
‘You’ve got a ticket to Malaga?’
‘Yes. Well, I did have.’
‘And you’ve got a week’s holiday?’
‘A week and a day. Not due back until next Monday.’
‘So what are we waiting for?’ He leaps out of bed. I’ve got…’ he pauses, ‘three jobs lined up so far this week, and I can cancel them all on the way to the airport.’
‘Louis, I said I’ve got a ticket. You haven’t. Anyway—’
‘I’ll buy a ticket when we get there. Come on, Fan! Hurry up. Get it together. Stop lazing around! Let’s get going!’
They had both forgotten to recharge their mobiles overnight, so they plugged them in while they packed, and carefully arranged them
, so they wouldn’t forget them, side by side at the foot of the stairs, right in front of the front door. Half an hour later they both stepped right over them. They climbed on to Louis’s bike and sped away.
36
Sunday morning. The church bells of St Nicholas ring out across the village of Fiddleford, calling its small congregation to matins.
Clive and Geraldine Adams, all togged up in their Anglican finest, sit in the car outside Kitty’s cottage, their engine still running. The vicar is once again expected for pre-lunch drinks, and Geraldine is adamant that she, Clive and Kitty should arrive at the service on time. As a mark of respect, if not for her own faith, which is non-existent, then for everybody else’s. She honks her horn impatiently, waiting for Kitty to emerge.
Solomon Creasey, in grey silk dressing gown open at the top to reveal a dark, hairy chest, and with the usual faint and delicious suggestion of expensive cigars, and Czech & Speake’s lavender and sandalwood aftershave around him, sits in his breakfast room drinking thick, black coffee. The Silent Beauty is upstairs, expertly emphasising her lovely features with some light, subtle make-up. His three youngest children are outside, squabbling merrily on the trampoline, and Solomon, for once, has a little time on his own. He is thinking about his children’s new headmistress, Miss Fanny Flynn. After speaking to Grey in Safeways Fanny had left a brisk, not especially friendly, message on his Fiddleford answer machine, agreeing to welcome his children to the school Monday week, and to tackle related formalities later. Since when Solomon has repeatedly tried to speak to her, without success. It’s his first weekend as a full-time Fiddleford resident, and he realises he hasn’t made a great beginning.
General Maxwell McDonald, meanwhile, hair spruced, blazer pressed, is walking briskly across the Manor park, in perfect time for morning matins.
Charlie and Jo, having had their good-morning shag rudely interrupted, are lying in bed pretending to sleep while their young twins clamber over their heads.
Messy McShane, exhausted, is sending a disgruntled Grey downstairs to fetch a freshly sterilised baby’s dummy from the kitchen.
Macklan Creasey, lying in bed beside Tracey Guppy, at number 3 Old Alms Cottages, is running a worshipful hand over her sleeping body – and pausing, briefly, at her belly. She’s getting a little tubby, he thinks. Not that he cares, of course. (So long as she doesn’t end up like her mother, whispers a tiny voice.) But she is. Getting a little tubby.
In a tiny pueblo up in the hills behind Fuengirola, southern Spain, Louis and Fanny have woken simultaneously. They have opened their eyes, smiled, reached across for each other…
And outside the girls’ cloakroom at Fiddleford Primary School, a hand strikes a match, puts it to the petrol that has been spilt all over the windows and door and stands back, mesmerised. He watches the flames licking greedily at the dark red paint; licking higher, higher, higher…
The church bells fall silent. For half an hour nothing further disturbs the pretty peace which is Fiddleford. The sun shines. The birds sing. The vicar delivers a sermon about renewal. Clive and Geraldine sit quietly side by side, worrying about money. Mrs Hooper sits quietly behind them, worrying about death. The General peers through his glasses and wonders whether the vicar has shaved properly that morning.
Kitty Mozely thinks about lunch, and then about Louis, and then about the contact sheet he put through her door yesterday morning. The images on it were mostly of her and Scarlett after the press conference. Her belly rumbles. She smothers a yawn. But the other images…What the hell was Fanny doing, rolling around in front of a bonfire with a bloody schoolboy? She chortles, a little too loudly. The old bag from Glebe Cottage turns around to scowl.
‘I say, Geraldine,’ Kitty whispers noisily.
‘Shhh.’ Geraldine frowns.
‘Remind me. I’ve got something bloody funny to show you afterwards.’
Later, inside the church, the small congregation hears the fire engines racing by, sirens briefly drowning out their reckless singing. They glance at one another – ‘Morning has broken, like the first morning’ – but keep belting it out – ‘Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird’ – and surreptitiously try to calculate where, exactly, the sirens might be stopping.
Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven
Like the first dewfall on the first grass;
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden—
Dane Guppy bursts into the church, soot all over his face, greasy hair on end, eyes glazed with excitement.
‘Vicar!’ he shouts. ‘I can’t find Miss Flynn nowhere. But it’s all burning up out there. You got to come!’
PART FOUR
37
Morning matins are brought to an abrupt end and the twenty-strong congregation move as one, following the smell and then the billowing smoke, out through the churchyard, through the village, to the scene of the fire.
They find three fire engines and two police cars parked up in front of the school and smoke engulfing the whole west half of the building – the girls’ cloakroom, the stationery cupboard, Robert White’s classroom, the assembly hall, and above it, Fanny’s and Mrs Haywood’s offices. In the middle of the chaos, Dane Guppy, giddy with excitement, jumps between firemen offering help and suggesting causes.
It was Dane who called the emergency services half an hour after that match was struck, and he is proudly announcing it now to the gaggle of horrified churchgoers.
‘I saw the flames,’ he says. ‘Well, no. I smelt them first. Then I looked out the window—’ He turns and points to Uncle Russell’s bungalow: ‘There. That window there. See it? I looked out the window, and I think to myself, crumbs.’ Dane pauses to wave at one of the firemen. ‘I know him. I know the other fellow, too, the one behind him. See?’
Nobody replies. Dane Guppy’s exuberance is embarrassing. With the exception of the vicar, on his mobile telephone trying to get hold of Fanny, and the General, who nods at Dane, eyeing him thoughtfully, the gaggle from church stare at the flames as if they haven’t noticed he was there.
Dane doesn’t seem to mind. ‘They came round to Mum and Dad’s not so long ago. That’s how I knows ’em. I knows a couple of the others, as well. So I’m thinkin’, Oh, my crumblin’ Mondays!’ he continues. ‘Because the school’s on fire. And I call the emergency services. I pick up the telephone and I call 999. That’s what I done…’
‘Good thing too,’ says the General. ‘Dane, isn’t it? Aren’t you Ian Guppy’s boy?’
‘That’s right!’ Dane says a little skittishly. He was killing time throwing conkers at passing cars not long ago when he made the mistake of aiming one at the General’s Land Rover. The General slammed on his brakes, wound down his window, and bawled at him so loud it actually gusted Dane’s greasy hair off his forehead. They haven’t spoken since. ‘All I done was call 999, Mr Maxwell McDonald. That’s all I done. I was with Uncle Russell. I looks out the window. And then it’s 999.’
The General shakes his head sadly. ‘Lovely old building,’ he says. ‘Don’t you think, Dane?’
Dane glances at him foggily, with maybe a fraction less respect. ‘Lovely, General Maxwell McDonald?’ He laughs. ‘I don’t know about that.’ He feels a tap on his shoulder.
‘Mr Dane Guppy?’ It is a policeman.
‘That’s right. What do you want? All I done was call 999. That’s all. You can ask General Maxwell McDonald.’
‘Do you mind if we have a little word?’
38
Geraldine spots Kitty, her white clothes flowing behind her, sloping off down the lane towards the pub.
‘Are you off to fetch Scarlett?’ Geraldine shouts over the roar of the flames. ‘I thought you said Scarlett was making her own way?’
Kitty turns back. ‘Her own way to where?’ she asks guiltily. She had been hoping the fire might be a good excuse to skive out of the vicar’s drinks.
But Geraldine says they have ovolini awaiting them at the Old Rectory, and quail’s eggs,
and baby artichoke hearts wrapped in prosciutto. And champagne on ice. ‘Plus the vicar’s bending over backwards to get us on to that governing body. I do think the least we can do is spare the time to have a drink with him to celebrate. I also think, actually, Kitty, that with the school in obvious crisis, and with bloody Fanny Flynn completely vanished, it’s our duty as almost-governors to put our heads together and come up with some sort of a rescue package. Don’t you? So it’s drinks at the Rectory, as per before. We’ll just be running a little late.’
Kitty gets snappy when she’s hungry. She likes the idea of the ovolini, but her empty belly is demanding urgent satisfaction.
‘Well, how long are you going to be?’ she asks plaintively. Flakes of debris from the fire rain down on her. ‘Can’t I go on ahead?’
Geraldine looks across at the vicar, bent into a mobile telephone, still trying to track down Fanny. There is a policeman standing by waiting to speak to him, and also a fireman. She itches to get back to them, back into the thick of the action. ‘Let’s give it half an hour, shall we?’ she says distractedly. ‘I’ll see you there. Oh, I say, General—’ She catches him just as he’s taking a sad last look and turning away. There is nothing he can do. ‘I’m pleased I caught you. I wanted to thank you, on behalf of Kitty and myself.’
He looks blank.
‘I understand that as a member of Fiddleford PCC you’ll be very kindly voting us on to the school’s governing body tomorrow evening! And I’m so terribly grateful.’
‘Mmm? Oh, yes. Yes, of course. Well, well. Welcome aboard,’ he says, not with overwhelming enthusiasm. ‘We’ll need as much help as we can get after this.’
‘Absolutely. Quite. In fact, I was wondering—’
He indicates the burning building. ‘Hard to see how much damage has been done beneath all the smoke. But it’s a bloody awful mess, whichever way you look at it.’ His son Charlie, and his late, much loved daughter, Georgina, had both briefly attended the school, many years ago. Until his wife had died, and they had both been packed off to boarding school. ‘Ah well,’ he sighs, to himself rather than to Geraldine, and turns slowly away.