“Close but no banana,” he said. “Ros called.”
I flumped down into one of the armchairs. I could feel my mouth hanging open but couldn’t close it.
“Seriously?” I said. “She called here?”
“It’s not that much of a shocker, is it?” he said. “She doesn’t want her job back, if that’s what’s worrying you. Yeah, she phoned and said she’d just decided to make a clean break. She met someone else, got a chance of a job up north, took it.”
“Someone else as opposed to who?” I said.
“Becky,” said Gus. “You were right about that. Don’t know why I didn’t see it for myself. Years ago.”
I nodded. “What did she say when you told her Becky died?” I asked. Gus whistled and shook his head again. A big reaction, he seemed to be saying. But what a weird way to signal it, far too light-hearted for how it must have been.
“She took it pretty hard,” he said. “Obviously. I told her she wasn’t responsible. If she didn’t know Becky was feeling that bad, how could she have guessed? But Ros is one of those people, you know. Takes care of everyone. Really—what’s the word?—conscientious.”
I nodded slowly. The sort of person who wouldn’t leave a friend from home stranded in an empty caravan when she knew he was in trouble. None of this made sense to me.
“Well,” I said. “That’s that then. That’s one mystery solved.”
He had bent his head to carry on writing, but he looked up at me now.
“That’s all the mysteries solved,” he corrected. “Unless you’re talking about the thing you’ve still got to tell me.” I tried not to let my eyes grow wide. “Did you ever think, Jessie, that if you let it all go, tell me everything, the whole pteronophobia might just blow away like a … ”
“Feather?” I said. Just like that. I was amazed at how much easier it was than even a week ago.
“I was going to say puff of smoke, but okay. Come here,” he said. I hauled myself to my feet and went to sit on his knee. He squeezed me so hard my bra squeaked. “I heard what Dill called you. And Ruby’s talking rubbish, you know. He doesn’t call babysitters that. Just you.”
I stood up, stretching—he really had squeezed me quite tight—and he ran his hands up and down my body. Big strong hands. Safe hands. I remembered Kazek catching the camera before it hit the floor.
“It’s not called rubbish now,” I said. “Ruby’s talking recycling.”
He laughed again even though it wasn’t really funny. “So, what do you fancy for tea?” he said. “T-bone steak or Lobster Thermidor.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Not sure I’m hungry enough to do justice to a T-bone. And I had lobster for lunch … ”
“In that case, then, maybe I can interest you in some tuna, pasta, and sweet corn?”
“Perfect!” I said. “As served in The Ivy. I think I’ll just take a wee stroll along the beach first, mind you. Cooped up all day, you know.”
“Want company?” said Gus.
“You finish your letter,” I said. “But can I ask you a question?” He nodded. “Why aren’t you typing it? Is it to make it more personal?” To me, letters on writing paper were so unusual that they seemed kind of weird now. Like only stalkers would send them.
“Haven’t got a word processor,” said Gus.
“You haven’t got Word on your computer?” I said.
“What makes you think I’ve got a computer?” said Gus, looking around as if he expected to see one magically appear. Right enough, I hadn’t seen it around, but I knew he had one.
“You said you looked stuff up,” I reminded him.
“It’s in the workshop,” he told me. “I use it for graphics. No need for Word.”
“Right,” I said. I thought Ruby would feel left out if she was the only one at nursery who didn’t use a computer, but then maybe she got a shot when she chummed him to work—when he was working, that is, when he didn’t have sculptor’s block. I thought of what Steve had said and put it out of my mind again as quickly as it had come in there. I said no more. Dill might be calling me Mummy, but they were Gus’s kids and if he didn’t think they needed a computer yet, I wasn’t going to argue.
It was nearly completely dark outside, too dark to walk on the track with its tufts and potholes, but okay down on the beach with the long sweep of empty sand. I put my hands deep in the pockets of the coat I’d borrowed—it had looked so much warmer than mine—and with my head down against the wind, I took off along the bay.
So Ros had phoned. If no one else had called since and I went back now and dialled 1471, I could probably get right on to her. Tell her to call her sister, ask her what she was planning to do to help Kazek. How could I explain it to Gus, though? Say I wanted to get some cleaning tips? But she wasn’t really much of a cleaner, was she? Gizzy had said as much. What was that word Kazek had used—the magic word that described her powers? It was written down on the scrap of paper tucked in my jeans, but too dark to read it now.
Well, I’d try the phone later if I got the chance, when Gus was out of the way. And even if I never got through to her, I could tell her sister she was okay. I’d as good as told her anyway—that she had packed her stuff and taken it with her—but it wouldn’t hurt to follow up with some actual news. Via Gus. Like the news about her taking her things had come via Gus.
And that’s why I was out on this walk, even if I didn’t want to think the thoughts out loud. Maybe Ros had phoned Gizzy too, and I could ask her. I could check that the cops had really been on to Gizzy about Ros’s things. I was just making sure. As I turned up the rise towards the office and shop, I was glad to see a light still shining. I knocked on the door and tried the handle.
“We’re closed,” she bawled. “Ring the emergency number and leave a message.”
“It’s Jessie,” I bawled back. I could hear her sigh right along the passageway and through the closed door.
“What do you want?” she said, opening up on the chain.
“Has Ros called you?” I asked. “Oh, gonny let me in, Giz. I’m freezing.”
“Ros?” she said. “What makes you think that?”
“She phoned Becky’s house,” I said. “Got the bad news.” Gizzy sat back down at the computer and pushed her hair back with her hands. Whatever she was trying to do, it wasn’t going well by the look of her. “Do you think we should tell the police?” I went on. “I know they weren’t going to pursue it but … ”
“Eh?” said Gizzy. She was only half-listening, looking between a manual cracked open flat by her keyboard and whatever mysteries were on the screen. “Tell them what?”
“Since they took the trouble to phone,” I said.
“Did they? What did you tell them? Oh bloody hell, I have! I did! I just did that!” She stuck her middle finger up at the screen and picked up the manual to give it a closer look. I was glad she wasn’t looking at me. I’m sure my face fell.
“The police didn’t call here to ask about Ros disappearing?” I said.
“Who told you that?” she said. “They’ll say anything to shut you up.”
The strict truth was that no one had told me that. Gus had told me that police had said Ros took her things, and when I asked him if they’d heard it from Gizzy, he said they must have. Maybe they were “just saying anything” to shut Gus up too.
“I tell you what,” said Gizzy. She pushed her glasses up onto her head and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “If she’d phoned here today, I’d have reached down the line and dragged back by her scrawny wee Polish neck. She’s left me in total bleeding chaos.”
“Can I have a go on the computer, Giz?” I said. I was feeling in the pocket of my jeans for the scrap of paper.
“Can you do spreadsheets?”
“No,” I said. “I just want to Google something.”
Gizzy rolled backwards in h
er chair. “Be my guest. See if you can pick up a virus that’ll melt the whole thing down so I’ll never have to look at it again.”
I Googled translation devices, picked the first one, hit Polish to English and copied in prawnikiem from the note. Lawyer, it told me. Ros was a lawyer? Working as cleaner in a caravan site? Jesus, Kazek might be a brain surgeon working as a … it occurred to me then that I didn’t know what Kazek and Wojtek had come here to do.
“Cheers,” I said. “See you Friday.”
“Get ready for Armageddon,” said Gizzy. “After the October half-term break’s the worst clean of the year. Site’s full and the weather’s so crap that they’re all in their vans mucking them up. I’m just warning you.”
“In your own special way,” I said, but she was back to the manual again and didn’t hear me.
Ros was a lawyer. I could sort of see how that would help Kazek, although if Gary the Gangster was the sort to cut someone’s throat, he didn’t seem to have much respect for the law. And if Ros did respect the law, then how did she square the wads of fifties away? And why did she leave? Why didn’t Gus ask her? Nothing he had told me made any kind of sense at all.
But I had to trust Gus. He had turned my life around, made me hope that it was going to be something worth living. Damn Steve for making me doubt him! I shoved my hands even deeper into the coat’s pockets, and that’s when I felt something I hadn’t noticed before. Right deep down in the lining, there was the unmistakable cold jagged shape of a bunch of keys.
My heart beat harder at the very thought of it. He was so secretive. He’d been so weird that night when he took me there. But I just wanted to see the pram again, maybe take a look at the replica house in the workshop next door, just to set my mind at rest. I wasn’t checking to see if there really was a computer in there. Why would he lie to me about that anyway?
I hunched into the collar of the coat as I passed the cottage, sure that if he looked out the window he would see me and know where I was going. Know that I was spying on him. Then he’d ask me to leave and I’d be back to my lonely wee flat—with Kazek, of course. I shouldn’t be snooping round after Gus. I should be 1471-ing Ros and telling her to get her arse in gear and help her friend. But since I was here …
Which side would I look in? Pram was in one and House was in the other. I’d seen Pram. I hunched over the padlock on the other door and started searching for the right key. It took a while, and then once the door was open, it took me a while to find the string that pulled the light on too. At last my fingers fastened round it and I tugged. Blinked, stepped back, nearly stumbling. The wall was right in front of my face, less than two feet away. A breezeblock wall right to the ceiling and all the way to both sides. It filled the space completely. How would he ever get it out? And where were the windows? The door? It was supposed to be a copy of the cottage, but it was just a block. It made me think of a tumor, sitting there inside the byre. Solid and ugly. No wonder he didn’t want me to see. And no bloody wonder he couldn’t face coming here and working on it. It was monstrous. It made me feel queasy. Or it and the smell of the cattle drain combined. I wanted to lock the door again and run away.
But, I told myself, on the other hand, here it is. Okay, he’d embellished a bit about how far he’d got. He hadn’t skimmed over the blocks or done the windows, but still. There it totally was. And no wonder the other room was such a mess. There was no room in here for anything else besides this. Nothing in the two-foot-wide passageway between the front of House and the byre wall. Nothing, that is, except for a sack—an old-fashioned hessian sack, tied shut with string, leaning against the corner. I couldn’t help myself. I tiptoed towards it. There was a bit of a smell coming off it, hard to say what kind of smell, but it stirred some kind of troubled feeling in me. I bent over and touched it. It gave and resisted both. It was squashy but there were wiry little points too. I knew I’d felt that before, the give and resist. What the hell was it? I pulled a bit at the string around the neck and peered inside.
Then I was out, banging off the stone and the breezeblock, ricocheting like a pinball, back out into the dark of the field.
A sack of them. A whole brown sackcloth bag of them and I had felt them. Put my hand right on them and felt the curled ends give and the spike ends squeak and prickle. I retched and bent over, but my heart was thumping too fast and my throat was too tight. I had touched them! I had pulled the string. And it might have come loose and they’d all have burst out and I’d have been trapped in there with them flying around me. I’d never have got them back into the bag and Gus would know and—
Gus.
I was drenched in sweat but as cold as a corpse as I stumbled back, pulled the light switch, and closed the door. I locked up and dropped the keys back into the pocket of my borrowed coat.
Why would Gus have nothing at all in the same workshop as the piece except for a sack full of them? How could that be innocent? How could that just happen to be?
It couldn’t. He must have collected them and put them there deliberately. He must be keeping them there as a way of scaring me if I ever stepped out of line. He’d tie me up in there with them, or he’d go to the workshop in the night and get them and empty them all round the room while I was sleeping and tie me down and …
I could hear a voice, and it was Lauren’s voice, telling me to breathe in and breathe out. In for four and out for five. In for five and out for seven. In for six and out for nine and catch a hold of my racing thoughts and start to fold them up and put them away.
Of course he collected them. He didn’t want me to walk on the beach and see them. It was just the kind of thing Gus would do. And they were in a sack in his workshop because … he didn’t want to put them in the wheeliebin and upset me. He’d even taken the very first one—off the end of the novelty pen—he’d taken it out of the wheeliebin, taken it right away. That was last Tuesday night. A week ago today. I stopped short. Why did that thought bother me?
Or. Maybe he had a sack of them like he had all that other stuff lying around. Maybe he’d had it for years, lying about with the light bulbs and lamps, but last week when he knew I was coming, he moved the sack to the other room in case I saw it. And that was why he didn’t want me to follow him through when he went to get Pram. Maybe that was the whole reason why he was so peculiar that night. Poor Gus. Worrying about me. I was glad I’d had that fright before I could look for a computer; he didn’t deserve me spying after all he’d done for me.
I let myself in at the cottage door and went to find him. He was in the kitchen eating pasta with the children. He looked like he hadn’t a care in the world. The same way he’d looked in Marks and Sparks with Ruby that day, before he smashed his phone. I smiled at him.
“I was just going to send out a search party for you,” he said. “You okay?”
“Party!” said Dillon. “Happy Birthday!”
“Your pasta’s cold,” said Ruby. “And we ate all the top bit with the crispy cheese.” She waved her fork at the dish in the middle of the table, a wodge of pasta and, right enough, no top bit at all.
“I don’t mind,” I said, sitting down. “I’m just happy to be here. I’d eat anything so long as I could eat it with here with you.”
Gus screwed up his nose and laughed. “Oh, kids,” he said. “This is too good to be true. What will we give Jessie if she’ll eat anything, eh?”
“Liver,” said Ruby.
“Yum, yum,” I said.
“Rice pudding and gooseberries,” said Gus.
“Rice pudding and bogies!” said Ruby.
“Bogies,” said Dillon. And then he went straight for the big one. “POO!”
“No, no, don’t make me eat poo,” I said. Gus leapt to his feet and went rummaging in the larder, came out with a jar of Nutella. He opened it, put in a finger, and then came towards me waving the brown goo like a snake’s head, to and fro.
“Jessie eats POO!” said Ruby. I took a tiny nibble, no way I was going to suck his finger in front of the kids.
“Yum, yum,” I said.
“Not poo, not really,” said Dillon, troubled now by the thought of how often he’d had toast and Nutella maybe.
“Not really, baby,” I said.
“I’m a baby too,” said Ruby. “Dillon’s the second baby. I’m the first one.”
“You’re a beautiful baby, baby,” I said.
“But I’m a big girl,” said Ruby. “Bigger than Dillon.”
“Oh Ruby, I love you,” I said. “You’re just brilliant.”
“I am actually,” said Ruby. “That’s okay for you to say that. That’s actually true.” Under the table Gus had reached out both his feet and grabbed one of mine between them. The pasta was lukewarm and under-salted—for the kids, probably. But I’d never tasted anything so good in my life. And when we bathed the kids together, me washing Ruby’s hair and Gus playing subs with Dillon, I felt as if my heart had steel bands round it, it ached so much from wanting this to be my future. It was the happiest night of my life. Before or since. It was the best, most hopeful, most innocent moment I’ve ever had or ever will.
It lasted about half an hour. And it was my own fault. I pulled it to pieces single-handed.
“My turn,” said Gus, once the kids were in bed. “If you don’t mind.” He had his coat on, the same one I’d borrowed, and his wellies too.
“You going to the workshop?”
His face clouded. “My turn for a walk,” he said. “I told you—I can’t face the workshop just now.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “Know the truth? That night we were there, I thought it was kind of creepy.” I thought he looked amused, and I even thought I knew why. How creepy would I have found it if he hadn’t hidden that sack away?
As soon as he was out of the house and I’d followed the bobbing spot of yellow torchlight until it was far away down by the water’s edge, I made for the phone in the hall and dialled 1471. There were so many clicks and buzzes I thought for sure it wasn’t working, and the ring sounded funny too, but after a minute a woman answered.
The Day She Died: A Novel Page 22