by Jo Verity
If Prosser were carrying on in his normal routine, he would only be able to come to the house when the Post Office was closed. During what would be his lunch hour, she sat on the bed, head resting on drawn-up knees, straining for the faintest sound from above – the creak of the back door, the scuff of a foot on the floor, the sound of the water running in the kitchen. She heard nothing but the swoosh of her own blood, pumping through her ears.
Her head ached continuously and she was lethargic. Her ankle was too stiff to contemplate exercising. The swelling and inflammation had crept up half way to her grazed knee. In fact all her joints ached. ‘Dehydration.’ She began to recite snatches of poetry and chunks of Shakespeare, learned at school. Her English teacher, Miss Brown, a formidable old woman (although probably younger than she was now) who employed ridicule to keep her pupils in order, gave them, every week, a poem to commit to memory. Over the years, these words, learned by rote without consideration of form or content, had surfaced at the least expected moments. In labour with Flora, ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ had run continuously through her brain, with attendant images of cherubic children, dancing towards their disappearance. Today the dirge favoured by lovesick girls flooded back. ‘Remember me when I am gone away…blah-de-blah …Better by far you should forget and smile, than that you should remember and be sad.’ How appropriate.
The evening hours passed and by nine o’clock she knew he wasn’t coming. There were five biscuits left now and maybe a pint of water and she ate two of them, took a reckless swig from the water bottle and tidied up her bed. This wasn’t to be her death day.
The headache hammered behind her eyes, sending pains shooting into her ears. If she leaned forward, it doubled in intensity. Her mouth tasted foul and her saliva had turned to glue, sticking her lips together. Today was Saturday and she scratched a mark beside the ‘S’ on her metal calendar. Saturdays used to be special. No school or work and a day to squander. When they lived in Bristol, they often went out for breakfast. Or they might take off down to Devon, to walk along winter beaches or sit on tall chrome stools, drinking milkshakes while they watched the waves. Sidmouth. Earrings. Babies. Bill’s wet kisses. What a shame.
She drank the last of the water and ate the remaining biscuits.
Yesterday she’d abandoned the regular can-banging. It was difficult to expend so much effort on what might be a waste of time. Now and again, she put her face near the air-bricks and yelled ‘Help. Help.’ It sapped her energy and aggravated her headache.
Today when she peered out of the tiny holes, it was in order to catch sight of the sky or feel fresh air moving across her burning cheeks. Alternately sweating and shivering, she was sure that the gash on her leg had become infected and that she was starting to suffer bouts of delirium.
‘I close my eyes, draw back the curtain…’ She worked her way through ‘Joseph,’ the songs popping out, one after the other, in the correct sequence. After six weeks of a rainy school holiday, when the girls had played the record non-stop, how could she ever forget?
The breeze cooled her damp forehead. She shut her eyes, savouring the sensation. And then she heard it. A faint voice coming from the side of the house, where she envisioned the mossy footpath dropping down from the ridge. From the intonation, she knew it was someone calling a dog. A pet not a police dog. ‘Oh, God. Oh, God. Please hear me.’ Grabbing the oilcan and bottle she beat out her SOS, shouting as loud as she could but her voice was feeble and she doubted that it would carry. After a couple of minutes she stopped, straining to hear whether the voice had been a figment.
There it was, closer now. ‘Here, girl.’ Someone whistled. Thank God for a disobedient dog. She made encouraging noises, dragging air in through her pursed lips hoping to intrigue an inquisitive animal with the seductive squeak. If the dog returned to its owner, she was sunk. They would clip on a leash, stroll on down to the road, and that would be that.
She’d finished the biscuits which might have lured the dog to her prison. Would human female urine be of interest? She held one of the jars against the tiny air vents, tilting it until the yellow fluid lapped the rim. Tipping it further, the liquid trickled back along the outside of the jar and down her arm, soaking into the cardigan. All the while she called to the dog. ‘Here, doggy. Good dog.’
A jar of pee was soaking into her clothing and none of it had passed through the holes. Perhaps it was a waste of time and she should concentrate on making a noise. She resumed her morse-coding on the can. But what if this frightened the dog away? Resorting to her original idea, she poured the contents of a second jar into a wine bottle. This might make it easier to direct the flow of pee out, through the holes. She tried again, pushing the neck of the bottle tight against the air-brick. This time the liquid flowed away from her.
Then she heard, close by, the yapping of a small dog. A Jack Russell maybe. It was difficult to gauge how far away it was but, a few seconds later, something obscured the pinpoints of daylight and she heard snuffling and yipping in the urine-soaked grass. All she had to do was hold the dog’s interest until the whistling owner came to find it.
30
The dog, a corgi cross, was called Flossy. During the days following Anna’s release, the papers fêted their canine heroine. Pictures of the ugly little mongrel sitting, standing, panting, covered the tabloids and broadsheets alike. Accounts of the circumstances surrounding the kidnapping ranged from the vague to the totally inaccurate. Tom tried his utmost to shield Anna from the crassness of the reports, but as soon as her fellow patients had identified her as ‘the victim, fifty-one year old Anna Wren’, it was hopeless. The old lady from the next ward hobbled down the corridor with several cuttings in the string bag suspended from her walking frame. ‘You’ll need these for your scrap book, dear,’ she said.
The ankle injury, coupled with the effects of shock and dehydration, required her to spend a week under medical surveillance. She had little, apart from heavy bandaging around her ankle, to show for her incarceration. The bruises on her arms and legs had faded, leaving one or two mustard-coloured patches. She longed to be at home, away from the tests and interviews with inscrutable psychiatrists and ponderous policemen. Many of their questions seemed pointless. ‘Did he actually say he was going to kill you, in so many words, or did you make that assumption?’
‘I can’t remember but he had a kitchen knife at my throat, so I don’t think I was jumping to conclusions.’ Their deadpan stares chastised her flippancy.
Hospitalisation afforded protection from the dozens of journalists who were descending on Cwm Bont. ‘You’re better off here at the moment, Mum.’ Flora did her best to convince her. ‘You wouldn’t be able to show your nose if you came home.’
Everyone in the family had made their way to Pen Craig when the news of her disappearance leaked out. Even her brother had taken time off work. Taliesin and Arthur came from Brecon to see whether they could do anything to help. When they ran out of space, Luke suggested that they use Bill’s empty house, with the summerhouse if they were still short of accommodation. Jenny and Celia had co-ordinated food for visitors. How irritating to think that whilst she was urinating in a jam jar and rationing digestive biscuits, they were having some kind of jamboree.
The medical staff insisted that there should be no more than two people at her bedside at any time, so Tom devised a visiting rota. Visitors brought flowers, fruit and useless things, like scented wipes and soft toys. Celia, looking more robust than Anna had ever seen her, presented her with a crocheted bed jacket, in a violent shade of orange. ‘I bought it at the W.I. Craft Fayre. I know you adore bright colours. We thought it would cheer you up.’
‘Mmmm. So … orange. Thank you.’
‘Oh, and guess what? My test results came through yesterday. They can’t seem to find anything at all…’
‘That’s marvellous…’
‘…so they’re going to repeat them. I’m definitely not right.’ Celia smiled, happy to remain a diagnostic mystery.<
br />
The Redwoods popped in, on their way to a Royal College of Surgeons dinner in Birmingham. Peter, out of place in the role of visitor, wandered around the ward, reading charts and hieroglyphics at the ends of the beds.
‘You poor thing, I don’t know how you survived without hot water. Ghastly.’ Jenny gave a mock shudder. ‘We thought this might help you relax.’ Her exquisitely wrapped parcel contained a triangular hop-filled pillow which could be heated in the microwave.
‘You could always have it for breakfast, if you’re desperate,’ Flora prodded it when she inspected the growing pile of gifts, stashed away in her mother’s bedside locker.
When the visitors left, Anna tried to read. It should have been an opportunity to catch up on her backlog of books but it was impossible to concentrate and she found herself flipping back through pages which she’d already read. The only book to grip her was one she found abandoned in the day-room – a grisly tale of serial killings, packed with forensic detail.
In the hospital, where they were under constant scrutiny, it seemed impossible to get anywhere near Tom and her conversations with him were polite and superficial. They might have been no more than acquaintances. ‘Dad’s feeling terribly guilty because he didn’t contact the police straight away.’ Madeleine came nearest to broaching the question which Anna was finding it impossible to ask.
Eventually, a perceptive young doctor spotted the anxiety this was causing her. ‘I don’t think we can do much more for you here, Mrs. Wren. Your ankle’s going to heal fine. There’ll be a scar, of course. But promise me you’ll see your GP, if things are getting on top of you. Counselling can be very beneficial. Don’t be too brave, will you?’ He shook her hand and discharged her to the care of her family and the district nurse.
‘How are you feeling?’ Tom helped her into Taliesin’s car for the drive home. The police had removed theirs from Prosser’s shed, on a low loader, and it was still undergoing forensic investigations, as if it could tell them something that she couldn’t.
‘Fine. OK, I suppose. Confused.’
‘Confused?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t feel ill, more sort of disconnected. Restless.’
‘You know Prosser can’t hurt you? He’s in a secure unit while they assess him.’
‘I’m not scared of Prosser, if that’s what you think. He never planned to kidnap anyone. I happened to walk in on him and the situation got out of hand. He was disgruntled.’
‘Disgruntled?’
‘Yes. He resented seeing us living in what he considered to be his rightful home. He wanted to rattle us. Steal a few things. Move things. Maybe that’s why the previous owners left.’
‘How can you be so bloody understanding? The man was going to let you die. If I ever see him, I’ll kill him.’
‘Great. That would be really helpful.’
He drove on. They sat side-by-side but were a hundred miles apart. He talked about the garden, the girls and Seren, bringing her up to date on domestic events, as if she’d been away on a holiday. ‘The Redwoods and the Webbers have been wonderful.’ What else would he expect?
‘Tom, where did you think I was that night? The only thing that kept me going was believing you had half the police force out, searching for me.’ There, it was out in the open. She watched the hedgerows flashing past the car window, determined not to utter another word until he had answered her question.
‘I thought you’d left me.’
‘What?’ She looked at him but he stared ahead, hands tight on the steering wheel.
‘I thought you’d gone to Aberystwyth.’
They were approaching a lay-by, set back behind a strip of grass and shielded from the road by a few dusty hawthorns. He veered into it, the drivers behind honking and gesticulating at his failure to signal. He switched off the engine and they sat in miserable silence. The sky was almost white and there was no breeze to stir the humid air.
‘It’s stifling in here.’ Anna got out and walked towards an open gate. The grass in the field beyond was long enough for a second cut of silage. Tom locked the car and came after her. Keeping close to the hedge, they followed it up the field, away from the road, until the traffic was barely audible. One of the hedgerow trees had grown bigger than the rest and its distorted trunk hung out, offering a place to sit. A swarm of black flies, ‘thunder flies’ her mother had always called them, whizzed around their heads, attracted by their salty sweat. She waited for him to continue.
‘I knew something was wrong between us but I didn’t know if it was my fault. Every time I got near to talking about it, asking you about it, I chickened out. Perhaps I didn’t want to know. Remember that time in Sidmouth? I thought if I confessed about that silly business with Celia, you might open up and tell me what was troubling you. Then things went back to normal again and I thought I must have been imagining it. Peter kept dropping obscure hints but I didn’t know what he was on about and I never quite trust him, anyway. Then I began to notice things myself. The way Bill looked at you. Some of his jokey remarks. How he always managed to sit next to you. It all fell into place.’
‘How did you think I was feeling? At first I thought I was imagining it, too. What was I supposed to do when your … our … best friend started getting … I don’t know what you’d call it. Fresh? Do we say that any more? I didn’t want to make a fuss in case it made things awkward. We’d moved here to support each other, not ruin each other’s marriages. And when Flora and Luke announced their engagement, how could I spoil it for them?’
‘I wondered if Sally left because she’d seen what was going on.’
‘Hold on a minute. “Going on.” What d’you think was “going on”?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me.’
To reveal that Bill had kissed her (twice) and touched her breasts, would be an accurate account of events but it had been more than that. How could she explain that she had been excited, aroused and consumed by a desire to experience sex with another man but that it had nothing at all to do with her feelings for him? She couldn’t understand it herself, so what would Tom make of it?
A jaunty ringing came from Tom’s clothing. ‘What on earth’s that?’ she asked.
‘Mobile.’ He produced a small, silver object from his pocket.
‘We haven’t got a mobile. You always said you’d never have one.’
‘I changed my mind. When you were … missing, I had to be contactable. Mark sorted it out for me. In fact, I was up in the wood when the police rang on Saturday. I couldn’t bear to be inside and I couldn’t bear to be with anyone. They all seemed so … so not you.’ He looked down at the number displayed on the tiny screen. ‘It’s quite clever, really. You can see who’s calling.’ He put the phone gingerly to his ear and it was lost in his shock of grey hair. ‘Flora? Give us an hour or so. We’ve just stopped for a breather. OK. Yes, she’s fine. ‘Bye.’
‘Please tell me they’re not doing a party.’
‘I’ve told them to leave the house to us. Anyway, wouldn’t you like a party?’
‘Of course I wouldn’t. It would be like celebrating a disaster which should never have happened. Like not getting run over or not getting burgled.’
He closed his eyes then puffed out his cheeks, letting the air escape slowly through his lips. ‘I’ve got something to say, before we get home, and I want you to hear me out. OK?’
‘Oh dear.’
‘To be perfectly honest, when you didn’t come home that evening I wasn’t totally surprised. I assumed that you’d gone away. I thought it was likely that you’d gone to Bill. Mind you, I was a bit miffed that you hadn’t left a message to let me know you were all right.
‘Maybe that’s because I wasn’t all right.’
He raised his hand to silence her. ‘That first night, in the house on my own, I tried to work it out. To put myself in your place. To think like you think. But I didn’t have a clue.’
‘That’s me. Enigmatic…’
‘Please l
et me finish, Anna. Then, the next afternoon, when I came back from the police station, I was up in the wood, sawing logs…’
‘Sawing logs?’
‘…I was sawing logs, when it came to me. You know those bits of music that get you right here?’ He pushed his fingers hard into his chest. ‘And here?’ He touched his throat. ‘I don’t understand how that works either but I simply accept it and enjoy it. So that’s what I’ve decided to do. Sorry. That sounds a bit wet, doesn’t it?’
‘Wet, yes, but wonderful too.’
‘So, I don’t give a flying fuck about Bill Davis, or anything else, as long as you come back with me. Will you?’
‘Yes, of course I will. And I’m so sorry I didn’t talk to you about it. I wasn’t…’
‘Ssshhh.’ He placed his finger across her lips. ‘That’s all over and done with.’
She buried her head in his chest and they clung together, until a spasm of cramp in her calf made her jump up, half crying, half laughing. He stood up, too, and took her in his arms, lifting her slightly to take the weight off her bandaged ankle and they danced an untidy polka, finally dropping to the ground, gasping and laughing.
‘All the time I was in the cellar, I kept asking myself ‘what would Tom do?’ I knew I was missing something obvious and that any idiot would have worked out how to get out.’ She lay on her back, staring at the colourless sky, squinting against the brightness. Overhead a kestrel circled lazily, ready to plummet down on any careless field mouse.
‘You did brilliantly, love, although I can’t understand why you didn’t try…’