The Pets at Primrose Cottage

by Sheila Norton

  I looked after Pongo the Alsatian again, enjoying my healthy walks in the sunshine and did a good job, this time, of chasing the vicious tabby cat out of the garden before it frightened Pongo. I chatted to the people I’d got to know in the town, enjoying their country accents and their shameless gossip. But every day when I went home, despite Lauren’s cheerful chatter as we enjoyed the warmth of Primrose Cottage’s little walled garden while Holly played outside, I felt an inexplicable emptiness. It felt like there was something missing, and it wasn’t just about the ache for Kate and my family.

  One evening I gave in and composed the email I’d been thinking of writing for weeks. It would have to sit in my ‘drafts’ folder, anyway, until there was a spark of internet here to send it on its way. It had been hard to know what to say, but I kept it short, if not sweet. This was the gist of it, very roughly:

  Ezmerelda: (who the hell calls themselves Esmerelda, let alone with a ‘z’?)

  I’m only asking you because I’m sure you will know the answer and nobody else will. Where is my cat? Who has him, and are they looking after him? In spite of everything, I think you should let me know. I think you owe me that, at the very least. Please reply, and I will never bother you again.

  Candice

  OK, I suppose you could ask who the hell calls themselves Candice, too. Well, I did. For the entire time I lived in New York, I was Candice Nightingale. Living with someone as famous as Shane Blue, and hanging around with people like bloody Ezmerelda Jewell, who of course was a top model and didn’t she just know it, I couldn’t very well be plain boring Emma, could I. That was my mistake, or just one of them. I turned myself into somebody else, somebody whose image I could never live up to. If I’d stayed myself, silly little Emma from Loughton, perhaps I’d have survived the whole celebrity experience and come out of it unscathed. But no, I couldn’t hack it, and in the end I turned back into Emma from Loughton anyway, in the most spectacular and ugly way possible.

  I felt a bit better after writing the email. At least I’d finally done it, and perhaps at last I’d get some answers about my lovely Albert. If I knew he really was in a good home I could stop worrying about him, however much I’d always miss him.

  My next assignment was a hamster called JoJo. I was looking forward to it. I liked hamsters – Kate and I had had one, briefly, when we were children, although I couldn’t remember what had happened to it. As with the Koi carp, I didn’t imagine there would be much work to do for JoJo. For a start, I knew he’d be asleep during the day, so once again I should have booked in another pet to look after during the same week. I only needed to care for JoJo in the evenings when he woke up. At least I’d be able to play with him then, after I’d fed him and cleaned out his cage. That was more than I could say for the fish!

  I’d already met JoJo and his owner, Billie, who lived with her family in Castle Hill House, a very old detached house just below Castle Hill. Billie had shown me how to put my hand into JoJo’s cage and let him come to me.

  ‘He’s very tame,’ she said. ‘My kids were desperate for a pet, and I’m not very keen on cats or dogs. I’m nervous of them, to be honest.’ She shuddered. She struck me as a very nervy person in general. ‘But JoJo’s OK, he’s cute,’ she went on. ‘Just remember when you clean his cage out, to put him in his hamster ball. He can roll around the room in it, without the risk of getting lost.’

  The children, two boys aged about six and eight, were very noisy and boisterous, so I reckoned if JoJo was happy to be handled by them, he wouldn’t mind me too much. He was a nice, cheeky little thing with bright eyes, a twitchy pink nose and an inquisitive expression on his face. I went to the house every evening after I’d had dinner, by which time he was awake and, after the first couple of days, he seemed to be getting used to me. He’d be sitting up, looking at me expectantly, hoping for a treat – a piece of apple or some sliced carrot or banana – as well as his normal pellets of hamster food.

  When I cleaned his cage, JoJo seemed perfectly happy to be lifted out and popped into his hamster ball. In fact he seemed eager to get started on his exercise – as if the lounge was a great wide world that was his to explore, rather than the same old room he rolled around every time he was out of his cage. In fact he rolled the ball around so wildly, his little beady eyes bright with excitement, that it was great fun to watch him, and for a while I almost forgot the whole idea was for me to clean out his cage while he was out of it. He’d roll himself under the table, then out again and zip across the carpet at an astonishing speed, as if his life depended on clocking up as many hamster-miles per hour as possible. One evening while I was cleaning the cage, he actually bashed his ball really hard into the skirting board, giving a little squeak of surprise.

  ‘Are you all right in there, JoJo?’ I asked anxiously – but he must have been, because he was already rolling off in another direction, the glint of determination back in his eyes.

  I brought in a bowl of soapy water, turned on the TV and started watching the first part of a new thriller series while I worked. Once everything had been washed and left to dry, I turned my attention back to JoJo. The ball had stopped rolling around after a while and I’d guessed he must have finally tired himself out.

  ‘Come on, lazybones!’ I sang out cheerfully as I bent down to talk to him. ‘Let’s get this ball moving again, shall we?’

  I gave it a little push, and immediately realised something was wrong. The ball moved too easily. It felt too light. I knelt down and picked it up, and to my horror it was empty. No hamster. Ridiculously, I turned it upside down and shook it, as if I expected JoJo to come tumbling out. Then I saw it: a long crack in one side of the ball. It looked only just about wide enough for a spider to crawl through – but JoJo must have somehow squeezed himself out of it.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I muttered. ‘Where is he?’ I scanned the room, panic mounting. ‘JoJo!’ I yelled. ‘Where are you? Come on, boy – look, I’ve got you a lovely slice of cucumber!’

  I found myself whistling, like I would for a dog. But how else were you supposed to get a hamster to come back to you? And how far could they travel in … perhaps half an hour? I stopped shouting and whistling, and listened carefully. I could hear a little squeak coming from the corner of the room, behind the television. I tiptoed over there, pulled a few things out of the way and knelt down carefully. Squeak, squeak – there it was again, but I couldn’t see JoJo anywhere. I pulled back the corner of the rug, lifted the edge of the curtains and listened again. Squeak, squeak.

  ‘JoJo!’ I whispered. ‘Where the hell are you?’

  I stared around the room, trying to work out where a little hamster could be hiding. The room had a wooden floor – they looked like they might be the original floorboards, polished up and made to look attractive in a vintage chic kind of way – and expensive-looking rugs scattered around. But looking more closely, I could see there were gaps between some of the floorboards, and particularly between the floor and the skirting boards. Gaps that were, in places, wider than the crack in the broken hamster ball. I might not have been Einstein, but it didn’t take much to work out from this that there was one obvious answer as to where my little fugitive might have gone.

  ‘JoJo!’ I called again, bending close to the widest gap – and the answering squeak told me I’d guessed correctly.

  Relief washed over me. At least he was alive. At least I knew where he was. Phew!

  But that was only half the problem. Now I had to coax him out. My adventurous little friend was probably quite happy exploring a whole new world under the floorboards, free from the constraints of his ball, and would doubtless be in no hurry whatsoever to be captured. I went to get the piece of cucumber I’d been trying to tempt him with, but then thought better of it.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Emma,’ I told myself. ‘Cucumber hasn’t got much of a smell to it.’

  But how much of a sense of smell did hamsters have, anyway? I had no idea. I discarded the cucumber in favour of a slic
e of apple, wafting it across the gap in the floor, crooning about a lovely juicy apple for JoJo and getting nothing, not even a squeak now, in response.

  Over the next couple of hours I tried everything Billie had left in the kitchen and in the fridge for the hamster’s treats: banana, celery, red pepper, lettuce, even his special hamster choc drops. I knelt on the floor, begging and pleading with him until my knees hurt and my voice was getting hoarse. He gave the occasional little squeak in response, but even when I lay down and put my eye directly to the hole, I didn’t get a single glimpse of him.

  By half past nine that evening I was close to tears. I couldn’t go home and leave him underground. I’d have to try to take up a floorboard – but how? I wasn’t exactly experienced in DIY, never mind un-DIY-ing. What tools would I need? Would Billie or her husband have them here? Where could I get them from? I didn’t want to call Lauren and Jon – it wasn’t fair to disturb their evening, and little Holly would be asleep in bed. For some odd reason, there was just one person I wanted to call for help. In the end, I gave in and called him.

  ‘Matt, I’m really sorry. I’ve got a problem.’ I was trying not to sound too pathetic, but I was tired and worried, and felt guilty for letting my little charge get lost. ‘I need to take up a floorboard or two, and I don’t know how to do it. Have you got any tools?’

  ‘Where are you?’ he asked, sounding a bit bemused. ‘What’s happened?’

  I wondered if he’d refuse to help me. After all, it wasn’t as if we’d been on the best of terms recently. But as soon as I explained the situation, he said he’d come straight round.

  ‘Don’t worry, it won’t be difficult. Keep talking to the little chap, won’t you, to make sure he doesn’t run off under there, to a different part of the house.’

  This didn’t exactly make me feel any better. While JoJo stayed reasonably close to the spot where he’d slipped down under the floorboards, I felt fairly sure we could get him out – somehow – but if he started exploring further afield, what was I supposed to do? Take up more and more boards until I found him? I lay down on the floor and started talking to him again.

  ‘Listen, JoJo. You trust me, don’t you? I thought we were friends. Please don’t start running around down there. Stay right where you are, OK, or I’ll be in dead trouble.’

  He squeaked a couple of times. Maybe he understood Human. I needed to keep talking to him but what on earth could you talk to a hamster about for any length of time? Well, I supposed I could just tell him a story …

  When the doorbell rang I nearly jumped out of my skin. I’d made myself comfortable on the floor with a couple of cushions and had been on the point of dozing off, mid-story.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ I said when I opened the door to Matt. He was carrying a bag with some tools in it.

  ‘Well, we can’t have a poor little hamster stuck under the floorboards forever, can we,’ he said lightly. ‘Where did he get down? Show me the gap.’

  We went back into the lounge, as I explained what had happened in more detail.

  ‘I didn’t notice his hamster ball was cracked,’ I said. ‘He did bash it into the skirting board but I can’t believe it was enough to break the thing right open.’ I pointed to where I’d left my cushions on the floor. ‘See that little gap? It’s hard to imagine it’s big enough for him to have squeezed through, isn’t it?’

  ‘I see you’ve been sitting comfortably down there,’ he said, with a flicker of a smile.

  ‘I’ve been telling him a story.’

  ‘Right.’ The smile widened a little. ‘A fairy story?’

  ‘No. My life story, if you must know.’ Too late, I realised this was a bit of a sore point. He was probably thinking I’d told the hamster a lot more than I’d been prepared to tell him! ‘Not that it was very interesting,’ I added quickly. ‘It even made me fall asleep.’

  He laughed out loud now and, although I was relieved, because it seemed he wasn’t too cross with me any more, I put my finger to my lips and warned him: ‘Ssh! We need to listen for JoJo squeaking.’

  He nodded solemnly, and we both sat down on the cushions and waited in silence for a moment.

  ‘JoJo!’ I called gently. ‘Are you still there?’

  Squeak, squeak.

  ‘Phew,’ I whispered to Matt. ‘Sounds like he’s still in the same spot.’

  ‘Must be waiting for you to carry on with your story,’ he whispered back, a note of sarcasm in his voice. ‘Right. Look, the floorboards are just nailed down. It won’t be a problem at all to get this one up. But can you just keep talking to him while I do it? I’ll be as quiet as I can, but I don’t want him to get spooked and run away.’ He hesitated, giving me a little grin now. ‘If you want to carry on with your life story, I promise not to listen.’

  ‘Nah. It’s a bit boring,’ I said. ‘I’ll sing to him instead.’

  ‘Got any earplugs?’ he joked as I started singing. I nudged him and pulled a face and he chuckled as he got up to get his tools. It felt good to be back on friendly terms with him. It was a few minutes, though, before I realised what I was singing. It was Shane’s first number one hit – needless to say, my favourite song once upon a time. Not any more. I stopped singing abruptly and started reciting the Lord’s Prayer instead.

  ‘Are you religious?’ he asked me, as he carefully pulled out the first nail.

  ‘Not really. But I went to a Church of England school so we learnt it off by heart. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done …’ I continued.

  ‘Let’s hope we don’t need prayers to help us find this hamster,’ Matt muttered as the next nail came out of the floorboard.

  I frowned to myself. I couldn’t believe I’d inadvertently started talking about my childhood. Before I knew it, I’d be telling him all about what happened at school and how I went off the rails as a teenager. Then it’d only be a short step to telling him about meeting Shane, and then it’d be too late. I really, really needed to guard my tongue around him if we were going to be friends again.

  ‘There,’ he was saying. ‘That’s the nails out. Now, I’ll just prise the board out from this end. Can you still hear him squeaking? Hold his cage ready to catch him when I lift him out.’

  But it seemed the prayers might be needed after all. As the floorboard was lifted clear, we just caught sight of JoJo’s tail as he scampered off.

  ‘He’s only just out of reach,’ Matt said, lying flat on the floor next to me and shining his phone’s torch under the floorboards. ‘He’s sitting there staring at me. Can you sweet-talk him back again? Try a different prayer. Perhaps he’s a Methodist.’

  By midnight, we’d had to take up five floorboards. There was a gaping hole in the floor of my clients’ home. But JoJo the runaway hamster, after leading us a merry dance moving from one spot to another as each board came up, was finally back safely in his cage, rewarded with all the bits of fruit and vegetables I’d been trying to tempt him with earlier. I put the broken hamster ball in the kitchen out of the way.

  ‘Phew.’ Matt wiped his brow. ‘Put the kettle on, can you, Emma? I think we both deserve a cuppa before I nail these boards back down. I’ll just retrieve my phone. I left it down there …’

  He lay down and reached under the floorboards again. I went out to the kitchen to make the tea, and a couple of minutes later he joined me, carrying what looked like an old tin box.

  ‘What have you got there?’ I asked.

  He set it down on the kitchen worktop. ‘I’ve no idea. I was reaching for my phone when I found it. It looks pretty old and rusty, though.’ He raised his eyebrows at me. ‘Shall we have a look inside?’

  He opened the lid. And we both gasped with surprise.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘So what was in the box?’

  Lauren was sitting opposite me at the kitchen table the next morning. It was a Saturday and I’d slept in late, after being at JoJo the hamster’s house with Matt until the early hours. I didn’t even stir until Holly peered r
ound my bedroom door and called me a lazybones, and I was still in my pyjamas now at ten o’clock, eating a late breakfast while I told Lauren all about the drama.

  ‘About five hundred quid in cash, for a start!’ I said. ‘And some jewellery …’

  Lauren’s eyes widened. ‘What kind of jewellery? Gold, silver, pearls?’

  ‘Yes. All of those. Plus what looked like a diamond and sapphire ring, and a brooch with … I think … rubies set in it.’ I shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea how valuable any of it is, of course.’

  ‘But do you think the couple who live there know about this – that they hid it there?’

  ‘Well, it’s a good hiding place, but it seems very strange, particularly as they’ve got a safe! It’s hidden behind a picture on the wall. Billie showed it to me, in case I needed the keys to the garage for any reason. She apparently always puts them – and absolutely everything else – in there when they go away. She seems a really nervy, jumpy kind of person. I can’t imagine she’d feel happy living with a cache like that under the floorboards when she even locks her car keys and chequebook away in a safe.’

  ‘No. How very odd.’

  ‘It is. But that’s not all …’ I wiped the toast crumbs from my mouth and leant closer to her across the table. ‘There were some old papers in the box too.’

  We’d nearly missed the papers. They were folded at the bottom, under all the cash and jewellery. Matt pulled them out, handling them carefully – they were dog-eared and yellow with age. But when he opened them up and spread them out to read, he fell silent.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked him.

  ‘Listen.’ He lifted a sheet of faded and smudged close-typed text, which looked like a carbon copy of something written on an old-fashioned typewriter, and started to read it to me.

  ‘The haunting of Castle Hill House is well documented. Many cases have been reported over the years, including sightings of specific supernatural embodiments. I have documentation referring to several appearances of a young man dressed in military uniform, with one arm severed at the elbow and a gaping hole in his neck, who floats across what would once have been the back parlour, moaning and calling out for “Florrie”. Another apparition mentioned more than once is that of a small blonde child wearing a Victorian style of nightgown and carrying a candle, crying “Mama! Mama!” in a distressingly pitiful voice. Other reports detail voices calling through keyholes and a blood-curdling scream coming from the fireplace in the sitting room.’