Intruder

by Christine Bongers

  ‘Well, it does to me,’ I admitted. ‘Seriously, though, you really should go. Jimmy said he’d pop home after his gig.’ I glanced up at the old wooden-framed clock on the wall; it was almost midnight. ‘His shift at Crusty’s starts at three, so he can’t be too far away.’

  Al opened his mouth to argue.

  ‘Please, Al – he’ll freak out if you’re still here when he gets home.’ I held up my mobile. ‘I have this if I need you.’

  He stood up, but I could tell he wasn’t happy. His gaze roamed the room, as if searching for a way to change my mind, before locking onto the kitchen window.

  ‘Your neighbour’s still up,’ he said, raising a hand and waving. ‘She’s working late.’

  If she was still at her desk, she was probably trading on overseas markets. Making the fortune that, according to Jimmy, allowed her to work her own hours, in her own home.

  ‘She’ll work all night, so you don’t need to worry. Nothing goes on round here without her knowing about it. I’ll be fine.’

  He scratched at Herc’s ears.

  ‘It’s okay, really. You can go.’

  He sighed, pulled out his mobile and started thumbing in a text.

  I looked at him curiously. ‘Who are you texting at this hour?’

  ‘Just Mum. She said I could stay till the movie finished, as long as I was home by midnight.’ He hit Send and slid the screen closed. ‘Don’t you text your dad when you’re out?’

  ‘Uh, not really, I don’t go out much and Jimmy’s never home anyway.’ I stretched and stood up. ‘C’mon. Herc and I will see you out. He says thanks for the ice-cream, but next time he wants double mango sorbet or you’re in the doghouse.’

  The creaks and groans of the house settling onto its stumps kept me up long after Al left, and even longer after Jimmy had checked in and out again. He made a big fuss about the rabid barking that greeted him the moment he pushed open the gate. He kept telling Herc he was a good dog, a very good dog, oh yes he was. Me, he approached more cautiously.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Uh huh.’ I kept my eyes fixed on Elena and Katherine’s catfight in an old episode of The Vampire Diaries.

  ‘I called between sets, but the home phone was on the blink and your mobile was engaged. I had to ring Edie to make sure everything was all right.’

  I held my breath, waiting for the axe to fall. Instead he picked up the home line where I’d pulled it from the wall and held it up questioningly.

  ‘Gravity sucks,’ I shrugged. ‘That line hangs down from the socket and falls out all the time. You’re better off ringing my mobile. Just keep trying if it’s engaged.’

  He nodded and headed off to the shower.

  I let out a sigh of relief. If the evil witch hadn’t said anything about Al’s visit, no way was I admitting that he had turned up within minutes of Jimmy going to work, and stayed for hours. I wasn’t planning on telling Jimmy about the prowler’s call, either. There was no point. He’d just chuck a hissy fit and dump me next door, and I wasn’t having any of that.

  So I kept my eyes glued to the TV and my mouth shut when Jimmy returned in his Crusty’s uniform to take Herc out for yet another leak.

  ‘Keep him inside with you, Katty,’ he said, picking up his car keys when they returned. ‘I don’t care if he piddles on the floor. I don’t want you outside at night without me. Okay?’

  Then he left me and Herc, lying together on the couch, in front of a flickering telly, with the yard lit up around us.

  If I’d bothered to crane my neck to the left, I could have watched the evil witch through the window as she worked her magic on the computer, trading futures because she had nothing in her life at present.

  Instead, I clung to her dog and waited for the endless night to end.

  Sixteen

  I woke to a tongue lashing my face.

  Herc loomed over me, rank with morning breath, his face bathed in a barmy grin. I wrapped my arms around him, relieved that we’d both made it through the night.

  ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ Jimmy stood in the doorway, arms folded across the Crusty’s logo on his chest. ‘After nearly fifteen years, I’m still not allowed to drink out of your glass, but after just one day you’re letting that dog kiss you on the lips?’

  I sat up, stiff and grumpy, and scratched my hair into a chook’s nest. ‘What time is it?’

  He was still in his baker’s clothes. I was still on the couch. I hadn’t even made it down to my room.

  ‘Just after eight. I got an early mark. Want some breakfast? I’ve got all your favourites. Almond croissants and – hey, where are you going?’

  ‘Bed.’ I stumbled past him. ‘Herc and I had the first watch. You’re home now. You can take over.’

  He grabbed my arm. ‘Kat, don’t be like that. I told you, there’s nothing to worry about –’

  ‘You wouldn’t know if there was, would you, Jimmy?’ I pushed a fall of hair out of my eyes. ‘You’re never here.’ The hurt on his face followed me out of the room. Herc trotted alongside, casting anxious glances my way.

  ‘What are you, my conscience?’ I muttered to the dog as we hit the stairs. ‘Don’t look at me like that.’

  Part of me knew that it was unfair punishing Jimmy for not being there when I hadn’t even told him about the prowler’s call. But telling him wouldn’t be enough to keep him at home; he’d just duck-shove me next door and go on his merry way.

  ‘You can save the reproachful look, Herc,’ I told him, throwing myself onto my bed. ‘He deserves it.’

  It was well after midday when I woke, disoriented but pleased that I’d avoided Jimmy for the morning. He’d be sleeping now, and by the time he got up, I’d be at the dog park, neatly avoiding him for the afternoon as well.

  It took a moment to register the Herc-sized gap in my bedroom. I staggered off to find him, back-pedalling at the squeaky clean doorframes to my room. The filthy smears of fingerprinting powder were gone. Jimmy must have been busy while I slept . . .

  The clickety-click of claws gave a split-second warning before a whole lot of dog hurled himself at me.

  ‘You can keep that slap-happy tongue to yourself,’ I said, arching my face away from Herc’s. ‘I have a fair idea where it’s been, and it’s not coming anywhere near my lips.’

  An unwelcome voice cut in from the laundry. ‘He’s been whining for you all morning.’

  The evil witch leaned against the doorway, an orange bucket held between green rubber-gloved hands. ‘Jimmy locked him outside. He must’ve slipped past me when I came through the back door.’

  So, she had a key. Jimmy was going to pay for that when he woke up.

  ‘I didn’t know we could afford a cleaning lady,’ I said, fingers clutching at Herc’s silky ears.

  ‘You can’t,’ she said tartly. ‘Lucky I’m not charging for it. That fingerprinting powder was a bastard to get off. I couldn’t get it all out of the cracks in the laundry door. Jimmy might have to repaint.’

  An angry heat flushed through me. Jimmy should have been the one to scrub the prowler out of our lives. Instead he’d left it to her to clean up the mess. Again.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she said, tossing her braid over a shoulder and heading back into the laundry.

  The comment sliced cleanly through my defences; my hand curled into a fist. Herc yipped and I released his ear, the anger and fear of the past two days rushing out as I stormed after her.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  She emptied the bucket down the drain. ‘Those smears gave me the creeps. I thought –’

  ‘No, why are you here? Why do you keep coming round? You don’t even knock, you just barge in. I wake up and you’re already in my face.’ I clawed at the matted layers of my hair. ‘You’re worse than that prowler, coming in and hovering over me while I sle
ep. You have no right –’

  ‘Don’t I, Kat?’ She threw the bucket into the sink. ‘What do you want me to do? Ignore what’s going on? Jimmy never here, you left to fend for yourself? You’re fourteen, for Pete’s sake.’

  ‘I’ll be fifteen in –’

  ‘I know when your birthday is. I was there when they laid you naked and squirming on Yvie’s chest, and I’ve been there for every birthday since.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’

  She ripped off her rubber gloves and slapped them onto the bench, eyes sparking. ‘You can block me out of your life, but you can’t change the facts. Look at the photos, if you don’t believe me. Who do you think took all those shots of the three of you? On that red-and-white checked rug at Ballymore? On the beach at Stradbroke? How about that one of you vomiting vanilla ice-cream cake all over your mum?’ She caught a ragged breath somewhere between a laugh and a sob. ‘She looked like a giant pelican had shat on her.’

  Edwina pointed a finger at my chest. ‘Don’t you tell me I have no right – I was there every day for you, Kat Jones, not just every birthday –’

  ‘Not the last few, you weren’t!’ I flared back, wanting to hurt her. ‘Didn’t make those, did you? And you weren’t there when they stuck me in that foster house with the girl who cut herself and the boy who cried all night –’

  ‘I wasn’t there because you pushed me away. You wouldn’t have me in the house. You went hysterical if I so much as –’

  ‘BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU DID.’

  I faced her, white-lipped and panting. ‘Because of what you and Jimmy did.’ I could barely get the words out. ‘What you both did to my mother.’

  I hated her. Hated them both, right at that moment. ‘You couldn’t even wait till she was dead.’

  She recoiled as though I’d slapped her. ‘It wasn’t like that, Kat. You were too young, you couldn’t understand –’

  Oh, I understood all right. I knew the stories. Edie and Yvie, Yvie and Edie. BFFs since kindy, for more than twenty years before I was born. People would get their names mixed up, despite one being dark and the other one blonde. Yvie and Edie. Edie and Yvie.

  Inseparable, interchangeable . . .

  ‘You thought you could just take her place, didn’t you? Just take over – me, Jimmy, everything.’

  ‘That’s not what happened.’

  ‘It is what happened. I was there. I saw, remember?’

  I’d spent the past three years trying to block out the memory. Jimmy, naked and weeping in the evil witch’s arms; Mum, not quite dead, in the room above them.

  Edwina’s eyes took on a glaze, as if turning inward on the memory that had haunted me for three years. When she finally spoke, her voice was hesitant, barely a whisper.

  ‘I don’t know what you think you saw, Kat, but I can tell you grief does strange things to people. Me and Jimmy, we were crazy with it. We hid it from Yvie and we hid it from you, but we couldn’t hide it from each other. What you saw were two people, crazy with grief, clinging to the only thing –’

  ‘LIAR!’ I spat the word out.

  ‘Kat –’

  ‘You wanted what Mum had, and you couldn’t even wait till she was dead before you took it. First, you took me, and then Dad –’

  ‘No, you’re wrong. I loved your mum.’

  I turned away, her words lodging like stones in the pit of my stomach.

  ‘We were closer than sisters. I would have done anything for her. Anything. After she got sick, whatever she wanted I gave, whatever she asked of me I did.’

  I spun round. ‘She didn’t ask you to steal her husband.’

  A ripple passed over her face, erasing the frantic concern and leaving a weird calm in its wake that confused me.

  ‘No,’ she said heavily. ‘She didn’t. She asked me to look after you. To keep you safe and to be here for you when she couldn’t. She gave me her key and she gave me the right to be in your life.’

  She drew herself up and faced me.

  ‘I’ve waited long enough for you to forgive me. I’m not waiting any longer. I don’t care if you hate me. I’m back in your life, Kat, and you’d better get used to it.’

  Seventeen

  I slammed my bedroom door in her face, toppling a pile of books from the shelf onto the floor. I kicked them away and slid down against the door, propped my elbows on my knees and rammed my burning face into my fists.

  A moment later the scratching started, followed by a faint whimper from the hallway. As the scratching continued, the whimper wound up to a mournful whine.

  I thumped my back against the wood. ‘Shut up, Herc.’

  The noises stopped.

  I pictured him, his ears pricked, trembling and alert on the other side, and it took all my willpower not to wrench it open and let him in.

  ‘Just go away,’ I snapped miserably, letting my head fall back against the timber panel.

  The silence stretched out, then ended with the slam of the laundry door. I waited, wanting to be sure she was really gone, counting off the seconds in my head. One-one-thousand . . . two-one-thousand . . . three-one-thousand. At five-one-thousand, a tentative scratch vibrated through the door. I cracked it open, and Herc shouldered his way in.

  He clambered onto my lap, his claws digging into the flesh of my thighs, his nose snuffling dangerously close to my face. ‘You big baby,’ I whispered, ruffling his jowls. ‘Can’t stand the humans fighting, can you?’

  Herc made a shot at a tongue kiss then turned round and flopped on the floor, hanging his bulldozer jaw across my thigh. I stroked his back, an unwanted memory flooding back . . .

  Me, running next door. Burying my face in Edie’s lap, wiping snotty tears on the leg of her jeans. Who knows why I was crying, but my skin prickled at the thought of her reassuring fingertips, strumming the bony knobs of my spine.

  I shifted uncomfortably and Herc lurched up, trying to plant another kiss on my lips.

  ‘Ugh, no tongues.’

  He obligingly backed off, settling himself on top of the fallen books from my shelf.

  ‘And move your fat butt before you ruin Roald Dahl for me forever.’ At my half-hearted push he rolled off them, onto the carpet, proudly displaying his underbelly as his legs splayed out around him.

  Just to be on the safe side, I wiped the topmost book cover on the carpet. Matilda. They were all there, scattered on the floor – The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, Danny the Champion of the World – all gifts from the evil witch during Mum’s last year.

  Slotting them back on the shelf, I wondered for the first time if there had been something sinister behind their selection. Matilda had ended up much better off with Miss Honey to look after her than with her own hopeless and uncaring parents. James in James and the Giant Peach and Sophie in The BFG were both orphans, and Danny had only his dad to look after him. Just like me. Though I was way past thinking that my own dad was the most marvellous and exciting father that anyone could ever have.

  Herc snuffled and gagged – he was still upside down on the carpet and looked in danger of choking under the weight of his own jowls. I rolled him over, then lay down on the carpet beside him, scratching at his soft wrinkled nose. Being with him helped calm me down.

  ‘At least it’s out in the open now, Herc. She knows I hate her guts – and she knows why. No need to pretend anymore. She can scrub the walls bare, clean our toilets, come and go with the key she conned out of my mum, but that doesn’t mean I need to have anything to do with her.’

  I could shut her out. That was something I was good at.

  From now on she was dead to me.

  Just like my mum.

  I was determined to put Edwina out of my mind and concentrated instead on putting Herc through his paces.

  Sit. Down. BANG. Come. Fetch. Stay.

  Mulling over what to do ab
out the prowler . . . Maybe Bill would be at the dog park again this afternoon; he said he was working nights. He might’ve even caught up with Hoodie Guy. Inspected his knuckles. Checked his fingers for rings.

  The prowler had our home phone number. That meant he knew my surname. He’d probably snooped in our mailbox. It had no lock; anyone could just lift the lid and peek inside. A quick google of Jimmy’s name in Brisbane’s White Pages would have found our number.

  Last night’s phone call had spooked me, but in the bright light of day it didn’t seem such a biggie. What bothered me more was knowing that the prowler had gotten into the house once already. I couldn’t sit back and let him do it again.

  Herc’s whine jerked me back to reality. He’d had enough of the Stay command.

  ‘Come on, big fella, let’s get this day happening before it’s all over.’

  Yesterday’s drool-smeared cut-offs were officially dead. Time to liberate a clean pair from the floordrobe, and yet another singlet to go with them. The one advantage of having no clothes was never having to agonise over what to wear.

  Herc followed me into the bathroom and waited, jaw resting on his paws, while I showered and changed. I rubbed the fog off the mirror, and dragged a brush through the matted layers of my hair.

  ‘What do you think, Herc?’

  His ears pricked and one eyebrow lifted as I twisted my hair into a thick knot on the crown of my head. ‘Up or down?’

  I turned my chin, taking in the length of my neck, the angle of my cheekbone. The bumpy scar along my jawline. I sighed and pulled the knot free, then slung a protective mantle of hair over my right shoulder, partly obscuring my face.

  ‘Better, right?’

  His indecisive look didn’t fool me – it was definitely better. I tossed the hairbrush aside. It landed right on top of the Herc Instructions. I picked them up, my eye snagging on a sentence underlined at the bottom of the page.

  Herc is beautiful. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.