I inspected my hand. I felt a curling of unease, thinking of my own wild damp garden. ‘How can you tell it’s not cow parsley?’
‘You just can. If you look closely enough. It’s a slightly darker green, and the leaves are more feathery. Also’ – she bent to study the stem – ‘you see those purple blotches on the stalk? Cow parsley, which flowers earlier in the year, is pinkier and also slightly hairy. If you were to crack it open, you’d see the cow parsley stem is triangular, while hemlock is round and hollow. And it has a nasty smell.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘It smells of mouse.’
Mouse. I wish it hadn’t stuck with me, but it did. Mouse.
Chapter Seventeen
Wonders of the World Top Trumps
Nocturnal, adjective. Of a person: that engages in an
activity or occupation by night; preferring to be
active at night.
The house was bustling with activity when we got back. Wet footprints criss-crossed the terrace and over chairs were draped various towels and teenagers. Voices came from the kitchen and Rose, in a sundress and a large hat, came out holding a mug in one hand and a biscuit in the other. ‘Oh, two more for tea,’ she called when she saw us. Music was playing – what I have since learnt was the soundtrack to Hamilton the musical; though there was also something tinnier emanating from the direction of Bea, who was on her phone at the top of the steps.
Rose, finishing her biscuit, gave me a one-armed hug and Maudie her hand to sniff before stroking her: the sure sign of a dog person (possibly that’s also why I give her the benefit of the doubt). Tom and a man who must have been her husband, Gary, came out of the house to greet us too; both pale and fleshy in shorts and slightly too small polo shirts, sunglasses strapped across their heads. Tom appeared to be letting his beard grow. He winked at me, clearly putting all threats and intimidation aside for now. ‘Tea?’ he said. ‘Or something stronger?’
‘I’ve just used the last of the milk.’ Delilah had followed him out of the kitchen. Her hair was loose and crinkly and she was wearing a frothy 1950s-style swimsuit, a towel around her waist.
Ailsa smiled brightly. ‘I’ll pop back to the shop,’ she said, in a resentful sing-song. ‘Keys? Tom? I’d better go now; it’s getting late. A meal for eleven won’t cook itself.’
‘Or maybe Verity would like a drink? We could crack open a bottle? DL [he named a famous British actor] has sent me a rather special bottle of champagne.’
Ailsa cleared her throat.
‘I’ll fetch the milk.’ Gary hung his arm over Rose’s shoulder as if to say, Look, happily married couple, helpful husband, grateful wife.
Ailsa smiled. ‘Well, that would be so sweet of you. And let’s save the champagne, shall we, for later? Verity’s got to tutor those horrors so she needs to keep her wits about her.’
‘We get it.’ Tom rolled his eyes. ‘Too early for champagne.’
‘So kind of you, Verity,’ Rose said. ‘I’ve been hearing about how much better Max has been doing since you got your claws into him. Boys! Are you ready?’
I had sat down at the garden table but I stood up quickly. I hadn’t realised the ‘work’ would be starting today – though I supposed, if we were to fit in more than one comprehension, we did need to crack on. Also: claws?
‘Dinner’s at eight,’ Ailsa said.
Max and Ferg, who had been playing Top Trumps, were not particularly enthusiastic about the new direction of their day. I recognised Ferg from the picnic on the common. A good foot taller than Max, he was wearing slip-on sandals with sports socks, a combination so ugly and pointless it must have been dictated by fashion. I realised quickly he was one of those earnest fact-collecting boys, whose life’s work was to compare his own knowledge of things with that of the person next to him. Before we’d even arrived at my room, he had caught Max out twice, once by declaring the Devil’s Causeway to be in Northumberland not Wales and the second time by asking him what he would find if he went for a walk on Jupiter.
Max looked doubtful.
‘It’s called the red planet, isn’t it?’ I volunteered.
‘It’s not the red planet.’ Ferg looked even more pleased with himself. ‘No. That’s Mars. Though Jupiter does have the Great Red Spot.’
‘Red soil?’ Max suggested.
‘Nope.’
‘Red rocks?’
‘No.’
‘I give up.’
‘You couldn’t go for a walk on Jupiter,’ Ferg responded with glee. ‘It has no solid surface.’
‘Oh.’
‘So you couldn’t go for a walk on it because you couldn’t actually walk.’
‘Oh right.’
‘So you couldn’t go for a walk even if you wanted to. Do you see?’
Neither of us answered.
‘So when I said if you go for a walk on Jupiter, you couldn’t.’
‘Yup,’ I said. ‘You’re very clever.’
We’d reached the door to my room, and I stretched my arm past them to turn the handle and let them in.
‘Ugh, what’s that smell?’ Ferg said.
I slipped past them and scooped the remainder of my egg sandwich from the desk, crumpling the greaseproof paper into a bundle in my hands, and putting it in the small pedal bin in the bathroom. ‘Crumbs from my lunch,’ I said. ‘Tomato and egg.’
‘Why would you have tomato and egg?’ Ferg asked, venturing into the room.
‘Egg because I like it. Tomato for one of my five vegetables a day,’ I said, pulling out chairs to indicate they should sit.
‘A tomato’s a fruit!’
‘Five a day can be fruit or vegetables,’ Max said. ‘So it doesn’t matter.’
I could have kissed him.
‘Right, we’re going to do a comprehension,’ I said. ‘Luckily I brought two copies – one for myself – but you can have that one, Ferg, and I’ll read it over your shoulder. We’re going to use PEA. Point. Evidence. Analysis. Max, you remember? It’s that method we found on that prep school website. Yup? What about you, Ferg? Is it a system you’re aware of?’
He said he wasn’t, shifting in his chair as I explained it to him, not happy to have been found wanting in the knowledge department. In his set, Sharks, apparently they follow ‘the 1234 method’.
His eyes shifted to Maudie, who had leapt up onto the bed.
‘Right, well we’re using my method today,’ I said.
‘The dog shouldn’t be on the furniture,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘She’s a stray,’ he said.
‘No, she’s not. She’s mine. A stray’s a dog that doesn’t have an owner. She was a rescue when I got her. But she’s not a stray. She’s got a microchip and I think that is the definition of a non-stray.’
I shouldn’t have contradicted him. I don’t know what got into me.
He brushed his fringe away from his forehead. ‘She is a stray. Tom was telling my mum and dad about her when you were walking.’
‘She’s not a stray,’ I said, reaching into my suitcase for the copies of the comprehension.
‘Tom said she was. Tom said Ailsa was always collecting wayward strays.’
The pages of the comprehension, which I’d printed out from the internet, were doubled and I carefully divided them into two sets. The air in the room felt acrid; my mind focused on the ball of clingfilm resting at the bottom of the bathroom bin.
‘Waifs and strays,’ I said, laying the print-out on the desk in front of him. ‘I think you’ll find that’s the correct phrase. It’s “waifs and strays” Ailsa collects, not “wayward strays”.’
The term originates from the fourteenth century, from a legal privilege granted under the Crown to lords under Anglo-Norman law, a ‘waif’ being an item of unclaimed property found on a landowner’s property while a ‘stray’ any domestic animal – a cow, say – that had wandered onto that land.
I knew Tom and I hadn’t warmed to each other. But I didn’t like the thought of him talking abou
t me. Who wants to be thought of as a waif – a thin, shoeless ragamuffin? Or a stray – cow or dog or otherwise? Well, I was anything but. I had my own house, thank you very much. And, even if I were a waif and a stray, I’d like to know what long ranks I was joining. Who else had she ‘collected’? And who was he to dismiss what I assume were nothing other than unlikely friendships? It said more about his contempt for Ailsa than it did about me.
I almost didn’t go up to the house at 8 p.m. In the end, hunger won out. I had only had that one sandwich all day; even the promised cup of tea had never materialised. These days, I am very well aware that I irritate Ailsa. ‘Stop fussing,’ she said to me this morning, when I asked if I could bring her a piece of toast. But in my opinion it’s better to bombard one’s guest with offers of nourishment than to neglect them.
The low murmur of voices reached me as I climbed the steps; a burst of laughter, the chink of glass on stone. A bird, clucking, flew low across the lawn. It was still light, but the house was lit up and fairy lights were strung over the bushes. Bea, Melissa and the other teenage girl were in the kitchen – I could see them through the window at the table on their phones – but everyone else was outside on the terrace, around the fire pit. Gary and Rose were next to each other on the bench, opposite Delilah and Tom on wooden chairs. Max and Ferg were crouched between them, poking sticks at the smouldering logs. Ailsa was closest to me, on one of the deckchairs, lower than the others, and at a necessarily backwards recline.
I hesitated at the top of the steps. I hadn’t realised a change of costume was in order. The women were in dresses, both men in brightly patterned shirts. Ailsa was wearing a neon pink cotton kaftan. It was tighter than her usual decorative sacks.
She startled when she saw me standing in the shadows. ‘Not Maudie,’ she said – too quickly. ‘She’s not smelly.’
‘I like Maudie,’ Rose said. ‘We’re talking about someone else’s dog.’
‘The farmer’s,’ Delilah said.
Tom smirked.
‘How’s life in the pigsty?’ he said.
‘The piggery,’ Ailsa corrected.
‘That’s what I meant.’ He stood up and dragged another chair across from the table. ‘Tutoring go OK?’
‘Very good,’ I said, sitting down in the chair and nodding my thanks.
Gary looked up from his paper. ‘I hope Ferg acquitted himself.’
‘He certainly did.’
Tom let out a mannered groan. ‘I expect he showed Max up.’
Max, sitting on his hands, hunched forwards. I resisted the temptation to stroke his head. He threw his stick in the fire, and watched it burn.
‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘They were both equally focused.’
Tom poured a glass of champagne from a bottle on the ground, and handed it to me, balanced on the palm of his hand. ‘There we go, my dear,’ he said, putting on a posh voice and bowing obsequiously. ‘Thank you,’ I said, trying to match his tone, but getting the intonation wrong and sounding like a schoolmarm putting a naughty child in their place. Ailsa caught my eye and winked.
Tom sat back down on the chair next to Delilah. Her dress had a long slit and she was rubbing the side of her thigh as if massaging the muscle.
One of the logs sent off a spark.
Rose apologised to me for their presence, ‘for gate-crashing’. They were heading down to Cornwall the following day, where Gary and the kids were to spend the summer. She herself could only take two weeks out of the office. ‘Muggins here has to work,’ she said, ‘to keep the rest of my family in the manner to which they are accustomed.’
Ailsa asked a few questions about the Cornish house. Had they knocked through to make a bigger kitchen in the end? What had they decided about the barn? Planning permission was OK for that, was it? Even in an area of outstanding natural beauty?
‘How lovely,’ she kept saying, even when Rose had just mentioned the need for a new roof. ‘How love-ly.’
Gary was sitting on the other end of the bench from his wife. The Saturday newspapers were in a pile next to him, the sports section on top. He looked up, aware maybe of having not been part of the conversation, and said, ‘Verity, Rose tells me Ailsa’s been helping you do some work in your house?’
I took a sip of champagne. ‘Yes. Not a new roof. She’s been helping me declutter.’
‘Declutter?’ Tom let out a derisive laugh. ‘Sorry,’ he said, catching Ailsa’s eye. ‘Sorry. Not funny I know.’
‘Oh, but it’s quite the thing now,’ Delilah said. ‘Decluttering. There’s that programme on Netflix that everyone’s watching.’
‘Marie Kondo,’ Rose said. ‘You have to hold each object in your hand, and work out if it sparks joy.’
‘Or rage,’ Ailsa said.
Rose lay her arm along the back of the bench and smoothed down her husband’s collar. ‘ “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.’’ Isn’t that what William Morris said?’
‘Apparently so,’ Ailsa said. ‘Though we all have different ideas of both beauty and utility. And Verity’s don’t always coincide with mine.’
She smiled at me. She didn’t mean to be sharp. She was playing to the gallery. I thought about Faith again, how when we were young she could be lovely to me when we were alone, but when people were around I was often the butt of her jokes. I sat on my hands, the wooden chair rough beneath my palms. I curled my fingers until I felt the flesh catch on a splinter. ‘You never know when something might come in useful,’ I said. ‘A hammer isn’t useful until you have a nail to bang in. Tweezers aren’t useful until you have eyebrows to pluck. And you might not realise the utility of something – an iron rod, say, or a piece of rope – until for mending purposes you’re looking for an item of that exact nature. And of course,’ I was stuttering but I needed to carry on, ‘beauty is relative even to the individual. One day one might profess oneself ready to die for ferns and palms, the next cornflowers and daisies.’
Ailsa stood up and said she had to get the food on. I offered to help, but she shook her head. ‘I’m in control,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you when it’s ready.’
She went through the open doors into the kitchen and we heard the oven opening and the hiss of hot fat.
I felt Tom’s eyes on me. He said: ‘Verity’s house is apparently an absolute treasure trove of useful and beautiful items, as well as items that are perhaps less useful and less beautiful. But what I want to know is what she keeps in the upstairs back bedroom. No one is allowed in it at any cost. It’s kept locked.’ He lay his finger beneath his nostrils and turned to look at each of the others in turn.
‘We all need a room of our own,’ Rose said. ‘I don’t like anyone coming into my study. Not even Gary. In fact, if I have a home office in Cornwall – which is the eventual plan with the barn, it’s going to be kept locked at all times.’
I looked across at her gratefully. I said, ‘It was my sister’s room, is my sister’s room. No big mystery. No dead body, or Gothic torture chamber or whatever it is you imagine is in there.’ I let out what I imagined to be a tinkling laugh. ‘Just my sister’s room.’
‘And your sister doesn’t let anyone in?’ Gary lifted his eyes again from the newsprint.
‘Her sister doesn’t live there,’ Rose said. ‘They’re not on speaking terms.’
Gary groaned. ‘Oh God, family fall-outs, awful.’
‘What did you row about?’ Delilah rested her elbows on her knees. ‘Anything in particular?’
‘Yes.’ A low pain spread beneath my ribcage. My breath had started coming in constricted bursts. ‘No.’
Ailsa came out of the kitchen then, carrying a big plate of food, her pink kaftan covered by a large blood-stained apron. ‘À table,’ she said in French.
I stood up, with relief, and followed the others over to the garden table. Tom sat me on his right-hand side, like the guest of honour, and Ailsa carved the meat. It was delicious – thick slices of beef, with a
watercress sauce, and several salads. The night darkened slowly and more wine was poured. I didn’t talk much, but I felt included that evening. Nobody mentioned Faith again, or my house, or my garden. It was just light-hearted easy chat about children and animals, village fêtes and local castles, the seaside, bread-making, everything and nothing.
At one point the conversation turned to the next day’s lunch guests.
‘They’re charming,’ Tom said. ‘Both of them.’
Rose raised an eyebrow. ‘As well as rich. How convenient.’
‘I hear he’s a terrible shagger,’ Delilah said.
‘That’s an ambiguous comment,’ Gary said. ‘If ever I heard one.’
‘Either way,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t bode well for Pippa.’
And when everyone laughed, I felt their warmth and fundamental kindness.
‘She’s sharper than she looks,’ Tom said.
I dropped off quickly – in this case aided by the champagne and the red wine – but woke up, wide awake, an hour later. I lay there in that strange bed, mind curled around horrible thoughts and memories. I kicked off the sheets, my nightdress damp with sweat, and eventually got up and opened the door. It was dark outside, the shed opposite a low black shape. I stepped out, aware of my own breathing, of small rustles and creaks; the scrape of my own feet; and crossed the small yard. The house above me loomed against the inky sky. I sat down at the bottom of the flight of steps, my knees against my chin, enjoying the cool of the stone. The garden wasn’t quiet, but full of little rattling, rasping sounds: scurrying nocturnal beetles, or leaves falling. It was a moonless night but my eyes began to adjust. The curtains were drawn at all the windows. I could see a small fractured glow from the fire pit, and over to the right, a distance from the house and in a patch of shadow, the glisten of a single fairy light.
It was moving slightly in the breeze and for a moment, I wondered why it would shine on its own like that. Perhaps it was solar-powered and it had a stronger internal mechanism or battery than any of the others. But, as I stared, it swung violently to the right, and was extinguished. And the bulk next to it shifted, too, and it came to me, with a sharp intake of breath, that it hadn’t been a fairy light at all but the end of a cigarette.
Finders, Keepers: The mesmerising new thriller from the author of LIE WITH ME Page 19
