by Heide Goody
“Is there something I can do for you? Tell me.”
“You’re a crook,” said the intruder. “You’re a cheat, you’re a swindler and a bully. You have robbed people of their homes and their livelihoods.”
“Now, I don’t know who you’ve been talking to,” said Greg, “but I have been nothing but scrupulous, fair and honest.”
“You have made people’s lives a misery,” said the intruder.
Greg opened his mouth to argue further but what would be the point of that? “I should atone?” he suggested. “We could go to the police. I could confess. Is that what you would like?” He pointed up vaguely to indicate the wall speakers. “I could record a confession on the HomeHub. We could call the police now.”
“I unplugged it,” said the intruder.
“So it wouldn’t record this conversation,” said Greg. “Always listening. Very smart.”
There was a headshake from the intruder. “I needed the plug socket.”
For the first time, Greg saw the intruder was holding something in the other hand. He frowned.
“Is that my NutriBullet?” he said, feeling a misplaced indignity that the intruder had been in his kitchen.
The intruder stepped forward. The NutriBullet’s power cable was linked to a long orange extension cable that snaked into the utility cupboard. With acute clarity, Greg saw what the intruder intended.
“Wait!” he cried. “You can’t do this. You can’t murder a man in his own hot tub.”
The intruder turned the little blender on. Its whir echoed coldly in the sparsely decorated space. “They’ll assume it was an accident.”
Greg screwed up his face. “Who in their right mind would take a NutriBullet into a hot tub?”
“Maybe you wanted a smoothie while you’re in there.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
There was a minimal shrug. “Catch,” said the intruder, and tossed the electric blender to Greg.
He instinctively stood to catch it, saw his own dripping wet hands and pulled them aside, only to see the blender arcing into the water. He froze, he panicked, he slipped as he tried to turn away. He screamed as the blender plopped into the tub and his whole body braced for a pain he couldn’t imagine.
His scream eventually faltered when he realised nothing had happened. Gasping, he looked round. The power cable and good few feet of orange extension hung in the hot tub. Nothing had happened. He hadn’t been electrocuted.
A small brown sausage bobbed on the froth of the roiling water. He’d shat himself in fear at the moment of impact.
But he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead.
He looked at the intruder. The gun was still pointing at him.
“Is this a joke?” Greg gasped.
A headshake. “It doesn’t always work. If the electricity can earth itself through the water and the tub there’s no reason why you’d be electrocuted. It’s about the path of least resistance.”
“You gambling with my life?”
“We can try again?” suggested the intruder.
“You mad fuck!” Greg hissed. “I was properly scared there.”
Greg’s toe brushed against hard plastic – The NutriBullet. Damned thing. Nearly killed him.
Irritated, infuriated, Greg scooped it up and pulled it out to toss it safely away. As it cleared the water, his body snapped taut with the electric shock. His arms, his legs, his torso were suddenly no longer his own. An immense vibration – too forceful, too painful to comprehend – shook him. He was a piece of glass being fed into a belt sander. Shards of fire spat inside him. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even exhale to scream. He could only stare with rapidly blurring eyes. He saw the hairs on his arms burst into flame along his steaming skin. He saw the turd bobbing on the surface of the water.
Through the agonies of his final conscious moments, a nugget of embarrassment similarly bobbed on the surface of his thoughts before it sank into the heat and the darkness.
14
Late evening and Hilde Odinson was still at the Otterside old folks home.
After a long, jocular conversation between her granddad and the loud man in the hat, Strawb, hands had been shaken and a space in one of the external storage buildings next to the main building was given over to them with the understanding that a ‘crazy golf’ course would be built.
Hilde had heard of crazy golf. She had seen it played, at a distance, by Saxon holidaymakers. She understood the basics and had earnestly set to making plans for the task she’d been given. She hadn’t been given it directly, of course. Farfar Ragnar was the front man. People liked to deal with him. He had an air about him. She’d heard it said it was an air composed largely of stale tobacco, illegal hooch and body odour, but he commanded the sort of presence that was useful in business negotiations.
As she understood it, the Saxon residents of this place enjoyed the sort of lifestyle which came with active retirement in a relatively good state of health. They went on trips, organised workshops and social events, and were the main patrons for evening courses at the college in the town. In the past, Ragnar had suggested some of Uncle Bjorn’s beehives might do well in the grounds of Otterside. There were beds of lavender planted by the pathways, and Bjorn had often waxed lyrical about the honey (and of course the delicious mead) that lavender helped to create. Ragnar had come up with the idea that elderly hobbyists might enjoy learning a little bit about beekeeping, but there had been some residents who were fearful about stings. Still, there were opportunities here, and the latest one was crazy golf. Strawb made it clear they wanted something much more interesting than the standard, pedestrian seaside crazy golf. This was the sort of project that Hilde enjoyed.
The challenge of simply constructing something was not enough for Hilde; it had to be something extra, something above and beyond. Creating something unique and innovative while staying within the set budget was the true challenge. Keeping costs down was something her family would definitely get on board with, but generally they acknowledged that Hilde knew what she was doing and let her get on with it in her own way.
There was a pile of old household items and assorted junk Ragnar had found about the site and which she was keen to incorporate into the finished item. She added sketches to her pad as the ideas came to her.
“What does tha reckon to this?” said Ragnar, entering from the night with an aged vacuum cleaner in his hands, cradling it like a dying swan.
“Superb. We’ll use that for sure,” she said, gesturing for him to lay it down on the table.
The vacuum cleaner had components, like the ribbed hose, that would be really useful for sending a golf ball on its way. She could also harvest all of the electrical flex, knowing from past experience she could use it in a multitude of ways. She could coil it up into a bouncy mat, she could glue lengths of it to a flat surface to channel the ball, or she could use it to suspend a swinging component. The motor from the vacuum cleaner would be a different matter.
“We could take the innards home,” she said. “I need a new motor for my belt sander.”
“Aye,” said Ragnar. “Always hold some stuff in tha back pocket.”
Hilde pulled out an old toy garage from the pile of junk. It was the sort with a spiralling plastic ramp for the cars to go down, which she could definitely use. It also had a pulley lift to take the cars back up to the roof. She mulled over that for a few minutes. She’d need to examine the pulley, but she hoped she could extract the basics, extend the height to at least a couple of metres, and then add a fun way to wind it up. Motorising it would be easy, but she could do something less obvious.
There was an old and unloved exercise bike in the corner.
“Reckon the Saxons’d like to pedal their golf balls to the ceiling?” she said.
“Mebbe,” said Ragnar.
“Then it could roll back down through some guttering or summat.”
“I saw some rotten guttering on one of the other outbuildings we could use.”
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“Rotten?” she said with a sideways look for her granddad.
Ragnar gave her a look of hurtful surprise, his bearded mouth a round hairy ‘O’.
“I’m still doing community service for the last trouble I was in,” she said. “We’re not ripping down owt just so we can use it.”
“Rotten, I says. And we’ll get the contract for fitting some new.”
She chuckled. With a bit of luck, the Odinsons would be paid to fix the guttering and she would get to use the old and leftover pieces of guttering in this project. The Odinsons were very switched on when it came to upselling their services.
“Time for summat to eat, I reckon,” he declared and reclined in a folding garden chair.
“Cheese toastie?” she suggested.
“Aye.”
“And a glass of mead?”
“Sounds grand.” Her farfar Ragnar was a man of simple pleasures.
Hilde poured him a glass of mead and then put the heat resistant mat on the workbench. She lit the blow torch and unwrapped the foil around the cheese sandwich she’d brought. She played the flame over the bread, careful to keep the perfect distance, so she didn’t burn the bread before the cheese melted. She flipped the sandwich over and did the other side before sliding it onto an enamel plate.
“Here you go,” she said. “What’s that thing there?” She pointed at the pile of discarded things they’d been given.
“That’s a record player. Tha’s seen one o’ them, surely?” Ragnar said.
She shook her head, bewildered.
“For playin’ records? Vinyl?” he said.
“Music?” she asked.
“Aye, lass. I s’pose it’s all CDs and suchlike nowadays?”
“I don’t really remember CDs. Before my time.”
“Aye, like I said.”
She fetched the turntable over to the workbench. “Why’s it so wide? What do all these other parts do?” she asked.
Ragnar swivelled in his chair to look. “Used to call these music centres. Proper swanky, back in the day. You could play tapes an’ get the radio on ’em an’ all.” He rootled in a box near his feet. “Here.”
He passed her a huge cardboard sleeve. She tilted the cardboard cover and an inner sleeve came out. This was protecting the record, which was a glossy black thing, attractive in its own way.
“Keep tha fingers off the surface,” said Ragnar. He showed her how to hold it cupped by the edges. There was clearly a ritual to be observed. Did everyone do this or was it a Ragnar thing? Her grandad did love a ritual.
She placed it on the turntable.
“Not going to play it, are ya?” he said distastefully.
“What’s wrong with this? These people look like they’re having a good time,” said Hilde, holding up the cover, which featured a cheerful couple holding a trumpet. “Herb Alpert’s Tij-u-ana Brass.”
“It’s Tijuana,” he said. “It’s a silent ‘J’. Mexican. And don’t play it. You know I can’t stand Saxon music.”
She frowned. “I thought you said it was Mexican.”
“Mexican Saxon music,” he grumbled and took a bite out of his sandwich.
Hilde ignored him and plugged in the record player. Various parts of it lit up. She could see the arm that was held in place by a tiny clamp was intended to ride upon the record. She released its clamp and flipped the adjacent lever. The arm rose up and moved across to the edge of the record, then it sank gently into a groove. There was a gentle hissing sound from the speaker. After a few seconds trumpets blasted out in a cheery tune that was slightly familiar, although Hilde had no idea where she’d heard it before.
Ragnar shook his head and pretended to hate it, but Hilde noticed that his foot was tapping.
“Oi oi, Ragnar, how’s it going?”
Hilde looked up from the record player and saw Strawb enter the workshop and slap her granddad on the shoulder. She turned down the volume on the record player.
“I love a bit of cheery music,” said Strawb, grinning. The man was as relentlessly cheerful as Ragnar was guarded.
“You got everything you need, mate?” Strawb said, strutting round. “Nice that you’re looking after young Hilde while you work. Send her in for a hand of gin rummy if she gets bored. You know she’ll get spoiled by everyone.”
Hilde rolled her eyes. It didn’t matter if she was wielding a drill or a spot welder, the people here always assumed she was along for the ride, kept entertained by Ragnar. She was twenty two years old, but they treated her as if she was twelve.
Ragnar nodded along.
“Didn’t you say that you’d need the keys to the bin store, farfar?” said Hilde.
“Aye,” said Ragnar.
“And you wanted to warn everyone there would be noise between eleven and twelve tomorrow while you were drilling.”
“Aye.”
“And you wanted to see what golf clubs people were using so we’d know how hard they’d be hitting the balls.”
“Aye.”
“Not a problem,” said Strawb. “Easy as. We can sort all that out for you. Any thoughts on what you’re going to do with this? Everyone’s keen to hear your ideas.”
“Oh, granddad’s got some great ideas,” said Hilde. “He’s thinking that we’ll have themed stations. So one of them will be futuristic, with a space theme. Spinning planets and so on. One of them will be a forest theme, so it’ll be decorated with trees and animals. One will be like the beach, so it will have donkeys and stuff.”
“You’re all over this, I see Ragnar,” said Strawb, impressed. “Great ideas, I don’t know where you come up with these things, I really don’t.”
“Well,” said Hilde. “Granddad said the racehorse game in the amusement arcade was what inspired the beach idea. He really wanted to do something that’s got the same visual impact as those horses moving along. He’s hoping to do that with the beach donkeys.”
“Clever. Always got those eyes open for inspiration. A true artist.” Strawb saluted Ragnar.
The music came to an end.
Ragnar clapped his hands. “Ah, ’fore I forget, Strawb. Must have a word with that fool Chesney about the guttering on one of the buildings.”
“Oh?” said Strawb.
“Aye. It’s clearly rotten. Let me show thee.”
15
Polly Gilpin sat in the south lounge, a half-finished cup of tea beside her. The south lounge had a large many-paned skylight but the sky above was grey, although the morning drizzle outside had stopped. A scrunched up bourbon biscuit wrapper was in her cardigan pocket, the crumbs carefully swept off the table to leave no trace.
Erin, her niece, appeared at the door, saw her and approached through the minor maze of chairs and tables. “I’m not staying long,” she said.
“Jack and Iris not with you?” said Polly.
“It’s a school day,” said Erin. “They’re at school.” She pulled out a chair and inspected its seat before sitting down. “You do know it’s a school day, don’t you?”
Polly gave her a convinced nod. Lapses in memory might be a symptom of dementia. The thought of Polly developing dementia would upset Erin. Polly tried to look alert and bright as a button. “It’s Iris’s birthday tomorrow,” she said.
“I know that.”
Polly took the present from the seat next to her and placed it on the table.
“What’s that?” said Erin.
The present was wrapped in silver-blue paper and decorated with cartoon unicorns.
“I was going to give it to her. If not today, then maybe tomorrow. You could—”
Erin frowned. “Bring her here? On her birthday?” She looked around. “It’s her birthday. Her seventh birthday.”
Polly tried to ignore the hurt. “Got big plans for the day?”
“We are having a party at the house for her classmates.”
“Jelly and ice cream and cake. That’s lovely.”
“You sound like Cesar. It’s not the nineteen eighties
you know. There will be fruit segments and carrot batons.”
“Carrot doesn’t sound much fun.”
“But batons. Batons are fun.”
“If you say so.”
“And there’s dips and vegetable crisps.”
“Humous?”
“Precisely. Humous is fun.”
“That’s nice,” said Polly because she felt it was expected.
“And on Sunday we’re going up to Seal Land.”
“Seal Land. That place still open? I remember going there with you and your mum when you were just a nipper.”
“I don’t.”
“We did. You gave a fish to one of the penguins.”
Erin adjusted her posture stiffly. Mentioning her late mum rarely drew a positive reaction. “Sounds unsanitary,” she said.
Polly looked at her cautiously. “Of course, if you’re passing this way up to Seal Land…”
“I said we’re not coming here for her birthday.”
“It would be the day after her birthday.”
“And we’ve clearly got plans.”
Polly tried her best smile. “I could come with you.”
“It’s a five-seater car.”
“I could sit in the back.”
Erin leaned sideways and took a deliberately long look at Polly’s waist and hips, mentally measuring them against the back seat of her car. “How’s the aquarobics going?”
Polly nodded.
“And the fitness class? You’re going to that?”
She nodded again.
Erin looked away and out the window. “Don’t lie to me, Polly. You’ve not been to either.”
“I…”
“I asked. At the desk. It’s not difficult. You’ve not been to any of them. Even the aquarobics. It’s just jiggling about in water, for goodness sake.”
“I don’t like getting wet.”
Erin sniffed. “You need to make an effort.”
“I do.”
“Look at you.” Polly tried to follow Erin’s sweeping and critical gaze. She felt a perverse need to explain that the fat folds in her cardigan were the wool, not her belly. “If you want to spend time with the children you need to be presentable.”
