by Sarah May
Kate put Flo inside the Little Tikes house they’d brought up to the allotment for Findlay to play in, which doubled as a shed. She waited to see if the rain drumming on the red plastic roof tiles was going to wake up Flo, who was sleeping soundly, then took the fork balanced against the cooker and went back out into the April storm. Descending into the mud, she started to dig. OthersRosmight be making tortilla as well, but was anybody making it with home-grown potatoes? Before having Flo, her dinner parties had acquired quite a reputation on Prendergast Road and now people had expectations of her.
She was unable to stand for more than a minute in one place without her feet sinking into the now liquid mud, and the potatoes weren’t as far on as she thought they were when she checked on Sunday. The earth yielded nothing she could transform into tortillathe four potatoes she pulled up looked as if they’d been manhandled by O. J. Simpsonso she hauled herself out of the mud and onto the grass pathway, staring bleakly into the rain for some sort of inspiration, and trying to ignore the sound of a dog whining somewhere nearby.
Inspiration came to her, at last, in the shape of Letitia’s plot. Letitia’s plot had the best potatoes in a 2,000-mile radius, and she only needed three medium-sized ones. There were no lights on in the Nissen hut and still no cars other than the Audi in the car park. Stumbling along the grass verge, she slid behind the old metal Conway container just to the side of Letitia’s plot and checked the Nissen hut and the car park again, peered warily into the forest and even up at the skyafter all, Letitia had been waiting for Gordon five nights in a row ON THE INSIDE of a padlocked shed.
She waited another minute before making a dash for Letitia’s potatoes, slipping on a Savoy cabbage, thinking she heard a car, freezing, realising it wasn’t a car, only the rain battering the roof of the old scout hut five hundred yards or so away, then pulled up three of the best-looking plants, her hands shaking.
Without even checking them, she broke into a lopsided run, still shaking, tripped over some stones in the car park, threw the potatoes in the boot, slammed it shut, then got into the car. She sat, panting, staring at the misted windscreen, the water streaming off Robert’s coat down over her wrists and hands, filling the creases in the leather covering the gear box.
In the back, Findlay was concentrating hard on trying to block out his mother’s frantic breathing and the way the rain was running off her, out of heras if it had somehow got inside her.
With her hands slipping over everything she touchedthe ignition, gear stick, steering wheelKate finally got the car into gear and reversed almost into the Nissen hut before swinging the wheel round and pushing the gear stick violently into first. The wheels spun and skidded in the mud before they pulled away, shooting past the scout hut and the entrance to the golf club.
‘Mum!’ Findlay said.
Kate was about to respond when she was confronted with Letitia’s Volvo coming towards them, doing what it had been manufactured to do: course smoothly through rain and mud. The headlights flashed on and off in an improbable Morse code and the horn sounded. Letitia had seen them.
Knowing she didn’t have a choice, Kate skidded to a halt and slid the window down.
Letitia was smiling the smile of a fanatic, her faceher whole head, in factlooked as if it had been involved in some intense physical activity, like driving a herd of cattle across a flooded river in Brazil’s Pantanal.
‘Undeterred,’ she hollered at Kate, through the rain, ecstatic at the thought of people maintaining their plots during storms. ‘That’s what I like to see,’ she carried on, swallowing gallons of water as her mouth opened wide. ‘UNDETERRED,’ she hollered again before banging on the steering wheel and accelerating up the hill towards the allotments.
After Letitia had accelerated out of sight, Kate sat there listening to the Audi’s frenetically capable wipers dealing with the flood on the windscreen. She ran her wet hands over the wet steering wheel, trying to find a grip, and didn’t even notice the rain coming in through the still-open window, soaking the upholstery and what was left of her to be soaked.
‘Mum!’ Findlay said again. ‘You forgot Flo.’
Slamming the gear stick into reverse, she drove the car at high speed back up the hill, got out, opened the boot and clicked the back shelf into place to hide the potatoes; then started to slip and stumble her way back towards their plot, past Letitia’s Volvo, which was already parked, and the wet, hulking figure of Letitia herself, crouched at the edge of her plot, the rain hammering onto the resinous back of her body warmer.
Letitia was grunting and didn’t seem to notice Kate slipping and sliding across the soaked grass behind her until she skidded to a halt outside the Little Tikes house.
Kate wrenched open the door and stuck her head inside.
There was Flo in her car seat, awake now, giving her the same wet, blank look she’d given her earlier when Kate picked her up from Village Montessori.
With difficultymuch more difficulty than she’d had when putting her inKate hauled the car seat, with Flo inside, out into the rain. This time, no longer asleep, Flo started to cry as soon as the drops as big as her fists started hitting her face.
Kate tried holding the bottom of Robert’s coat over her, but there was as much water coming off this as there was out of the sky, so in the end she just decided to make a run for it, only now Letitia was standing, watching herwaiting for her?
‘Where did you get that?’ Letitia said, jerking her rainsodden head at screaming Flo, suspended from Kate’s arm in the uncomfortably heavy car seat.
‘This?’ Kate laughed, staring down at her daughter. ‘Just over therein the Little Tikes playhouse.’
‘Oh, I thought I saw you heading downhill in your car.’
‘I wasthen I remembered I’d left Flo up here.’ Kate laughed again.
They both stared at the screaming Flo, then Letitia turned away, back to her plot.
‘Some bugger’s been up hereransacked my plot.’
‘Ransacked it?’
‘There!’ Letitia cried impatiently, oblivious now to Flo’s wailing. ‘And thereand therewhoever it was got away with three prize potatoes.’ She shot Kate a quick look then stalked off round the boundary of the plot. ‘No other damage, far as I can see.’
‘That’s terrible,’ Kate said, over roaring rain and Flo’s hysterical tears: a traitor’s commiseration.
‘It’s bloody sacrilege, that’s what it isdidn’t see anything when you were up here earlier?’
Kate shook her head slowly, the rain running in rivers off the end of her chin.
‘Can’t rememberI think I was the only one up here.’
‘Didn’t notice anything amiss?’
‘I can’t say I was looking,’ Kate said.
Letitia grunted. ‘I’m not having this. I’m not having it,’ she yelled into the rain. ‘I’m going straight to the police.’ She walked heavily off in the direction of the Nissen hut and Kate managed to get back to the car.
‘Where was Flo?’ Findlay said, leaning forwards in his seat, guilty he hadn’t thought about this earlier before they’d started driving down the hill.
‘Over therein the Little Tikes house,’ Kate said.
‘Does she like the playhouse?’ Findlay asked.
‘I don’t knowwhy don’t you ask her?’ Kate threw her head back into the rain and laughed, suddenly.
Findlay, worried, stayed silent.
Through the window of the Nissen hut, Kate saw Letitia on the phone, her body jerking as though somebody was trying to jumpstart her as she attempted to interest the Brixton policemost of them fresh from another fatal shooting in McDonald’sin her three missing potatoes, currently in the boot of the Hunters’ car as it slid past the illuminated hut back down the hill, towards the South Circular.
Chapter 13
Half an hour laterafter picking up Arthur Palmer from Village Montessori and dropping both boys at the leisure centreKate, exhausted and soaked to the skin, tripped over the recycling ba
g in the hallway for the third time that day as she made her way towards the kitchen with Letitia’s potatoes in her left hand and Flo, still in her car seat, swinging from the right arm. Leaving the potatoes on the surface next to Margery’s pie line-up, she went into the lounge with Flo.
The TV was on loudshe’d heard it from the front garden before even getting round to opening the front doorand Margery was asleep on the sofa. She was leaning rigidly over to one side with her hands pushed between her thighs and her chin tucked neatly down. As Kate stood there, she let out a shuddering whimper and slipped another inch sideways, but didn’t wake up. For a moment, Kate felt uncharacteristically protective towards Margery; then the moment passed.
Before losing consciousness, Margery had been watching Bid-TV and a man on screen was trying to shift 200 CD players shaped like electric guitars priced at £49.50 each. Kate watched the number of remaining CD players go down to 195, momentarily fascinated, and it took her a while to realise that the persistent dripping sound she could hear was in fact excess rainwater running off the coat she was still wearing onto the carpet.
Leaving Flo in her car seat down on the floor by Margery’s feet, Kate hung her coat up in the hallway and went into the kitchen. She’d gone into the kitchen for a reason and now couldn’t remember why…until she saw the potatoes on the bench. Tortillafor tonight’s PRC.
Over the next twenty minutes she made a small, immaculate amount of tortilla. This was a tried-and-tested PRC trick, given that plates were expected to be empty by the end of the evening orbetter stillthe middle.
She moved quickly and efficiently round the kitchen, not doing anything that would sidetrack her or break up her rhythm. This was how most food preparation took place at No. 22 Prendergast Roadon borrowed time, and borrowed time wasn’t something she had any control over, so thirst and the need to urinate were compartmentalised because at the moment Margery was having an afternoon nap and Flo was quiet and this was the only way she was going to get the tortilla made and not suffer the shame of turning up empty-handed, which basically amounted to a public declaration of not being able to cope.
She was just pouring the eggs into the pan when the phone rang. It was Jessica.
‘Hello,’ she said, distracted, as she slid the dish under the grill and the sound of scraping metal drowned Jessica out. ‘What’s that?’
‘I said I was just phoning to make sure that Arthur was okay after nursery.’
Kate, preoccupied by the tortilla, had barely any memory of leaving two small children at the crumbling leisure centre the Lib Dem council was forever promising to regenerate.
‘He seemed fine.’
‘Fine?’
What sort of details was Jessica prompting her for?
‘He didn’t seem quiet or anything? I mean, like, too quiet?’
Kate slid the tortilla out, satisfied herself that it was bubbling in all the right places, then slid it in again.
‘Jessica, he was fine.’
‘He seems to have become quiet latelyand he’s started biting his nails. I noticed that the other day.’
In the silence that followed, Kate turned off the grill.
‘Did he have everything he needed? I kept thinking I might have forgotten something. So Robert’s picking the boys up from swimming still?’
Kate had completely forgotten to phone Robert and remind him. ‘Of course.’
‘Brilliant,’ Jessica breathed out, relieved.
‘And don’t forget about the PRC meeting tonight.’
‘I’ll see…it depends on—’
‘Ellie. I know.’
Kate rang off, passing her face over the tortilla and inhaling. She was about to phone Robert when she heard Flo in the lounge.
Margery was still asleep and the man on screen had sold nearly all 200 CD players. Trying to imagine the sort of people who were buying themthen giving upshe took Flo upstairs into her bedroom. Once there, she stared absently out through the window at a eucalyptus they’d planted two years ago that was already over fourteen feet tall, thrashing about in the wind and rain. The house the Hunters backed onto was being painted white, but they’d only got half of it done before the rain must have started.
She watched Ivan make his way unevenly along the fence that separated their gardens and jump onto the shed roof, certain he was limping. Lying Flo under her baby gym, she pulled up the sash window, which was difficult because the wooden frame was swollen with rot at the bottom and got stuck after about four inches, and called out Ivan’s name.
He stopped, settled onto his haunches and looked up at her. After a while he licked at one of his front paws and looked away, distracted.
Sighing, Kate watched Flo pull off one of her socks.
A cloud must have shifted then, as late afternoon sunshine broke through into the room, the trees still blowing outside, making it move restlessly round the walls and ceiling. Even though it was only April, the sun had warmth in it and, where it fell on her, Kate felt warm. When the sun vanished the room was suddenly much colder and darker.
Overcome with exhaustion, she went through to their bedroom and, without thinking, rolled under the duvetpulling it up over her head and curling her body round her clenched fists. There was something she needed to do that she kept forgetting to do. What was it?
In less than a minute, she was fast asleep.
Chapter 14
When she woke up just over an hour later she couldn’t even remember falling asleep. The house was silent and dark and, lying there, Kate wasn’t entirely convinced she was awake. It was too quietas though the entire city had been evacuated while she slept. Rolling onto her side, the events of the morning came slowly back to her. The St Anthony’s letter. She sat up in a sudden panic. Where was the St Anthony’s letter? Her hands groped instinctively around the bed, remembering the suit jacket she’d worn to work and left on the bedwas almost certain she’d left on the bedbefore going to the allotments.
She threw the duvet off and slid awkwardly out of bed without bothering to put the light on. A vague trace of migraine remained and it felt as though blood wasn’t being pumped evenly round her head, so that she kept losing her balance and falling suddenly into things as she staggered over to the wardrobe it had taken Robert and her five nights to build, and that they both hated, ignoring her mobile, which had started to ring. There was the jackethanging up. She felt the envelope in the inside pocket and pulled it out. The envelope was empty. Had she taken it out at work and left it there? Maybe it was in the caror downstairs somewhere.
She ran downstairs into the kitchen, walking into just about everything there was to walk into on the way, including Flo, who was there on the floor in her bouncy chair, reaching out excitedly for the furry stars hanging from the bar above.
And there was Robert, standing at the bench by the cooker with a screwdriver in his hand and the motor from the old Morphy Richards blender in pieces beside him.
He was wearing his favourite T-shirt, which said he’d run the New York Marathon in 1998only he hadn’tand smiling.
‘Kate’ he said, sounding pleased to see her. ‘I heard you stumbling around up theredon’t worry, she’s down here with us.’
‘Who is?’ she said, distracted, her eyes scanning the kitchen surfaces. No letter.
‘Flo.’ He paused. ‘She’s got some kind of bruise on her forehead.’
Kate stared down at Flo, then back at Robert. ‘Nursery. When did you get home?’
‘About forty-five minutes ago.’
‘What’s the time now?’
‘Almost six.’
‘I didn’t hear you come in.’ She yawned.
‘You were out cold so I just left you.’
Upstairs, her mobile started to ring again. Kate yawned and took in the scene in the kitchen. The light was falling strangely on Robert, making him look guilty, as though he was trying to make amends for a crime he hadn’t committed yet.
‘Was my suit jacket on the bed when you went up earlier?�
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He shook his head. ‘Haven’t a clue. Heywhere are you going?’ he said as she grabbed the car keys from the rack below the cupboard.
‘I left something in the car,’ she called out, disappearing through the front door.
Outside, the rain hammered on her back as she searched the car with forensic precisionand failed to find the letter.
She went back indoors. It had to be somewhere.
In the kitchen, Robert was standing with the screwdriver still in his hand and the abstract, easy-to-please look on his face that he assumed when he was concentrating intently on something his future didn’t depend on. ‘Find it?’
‘Robertwhat are you doing?’ she said, irritably.
‘Just mending this.’ He nodded at the motor on the bench, nonchalant, pleased with himself. Something was wrongcarrying out impromptu repairs, midweek, just wasn’t something Robert did. Ever.
‘But that broke over two years ago.’
‘Did it?’ He looked at the motor again, less confident now, but still enthusiastic. ‘Oh.’ He started smiling again.
‘Why now? Why tonightwhen I’ve been going on to you about that blender for over two years?’
Robert shrugged. ‘I thought I’d have a go at mending it.’
‘I don’t even use it any morewe bought the red KitchenAid instead because I got sick of waiting for that one to be mended.’
He stared blankly at her as she walked over to the units and opened the cupboard door, and he carried on staring blanklyat the red KitchenAid this timeon the shelf inside. ‘I didn’t know we had that.’