by Jenny Oliver
Right now though, as she was dragged through the austere furnishings of the de Lacy residence – a place she’d only glimpsed through the windows or open front door – and engulfed by the musty scent of dust and sun-warmed polish, it all reminded her of voices she didn’t want to hear and views that made her want to simultaneously stare and avert her eyes. She had never been more grateful for the inane verbal diarrhoea of Ruben de Lacy’s estranged daughter.
Chapter Five
Dolly King spent most of the little spare time she had exercising or at home. Her flat was like a little haven. A microcosm of the Amazon rainforest, plants everywhere, hanging from the ceiling, in pots up the stairs, trailing along shelves and cupboards and down over the kitchen table. Her cat, Tabitha, appeared occasionally because she wasn’t actually Dolly’s cat, she was her elderly neighbour’s, but her neighbour had five cats and Tabitha seemed to appreciate her own space. Dolly’s bed was always made with fresh linen and her washing put away the minute it was dry because the flat was too small to have anything hanging around. Her clothes were just an endless cycle of police uniform and gym kit. She’d done triathlon for a couple of years before it got trendy and all the competitors became really annoying with their slick next-gen suits hunched over iPads obsessing over biofeedback that told them nothing more than that they simply didn’t have enough grit.
Nowadays, Dolly preferred to train at Roy’s boxing gym down the road where the idea of recording your data on an iPad would have you laughed out of the dirty, sweaty ring. Roy was about a hundred and four, was missing one of his front teeth, and sat on a folding chair hollering obscenities at anyone who wasn’t puking with exhaustion by the end of a session.
Even a dislocated shoulder injury was no match for Roy, who stood her in front of a wooden bench and gave her sets of repetitive leg exercises that left her muscles trembling with lactate and exhaustion.
That was how Fox Mason found her. Sweaty and shattered.
‘Oh, you have got to be kidding me!’ Dolly shook her head in disbelief when she saw him striding up in black tracksuit bottoms and a threadbare white sweatshirt. She stood up from her scratched plastic chair, sweat streaming down her temples, hair slicked back damp. ‘Seriously, you can’t follow me places. We are not on duty. We aren’t partners at the moment.’
Fox held his hands up like he was innocent. ‘I’m just here to train.’
Dolly towelled her face dry. ‘Yeah right!’ she said, and then with faux surprise added, ‘I just came to train at the exact same gym as the woman I’m stalking.’ She rolled her eyes.
Fox shrugged, hands in his pockets, wearing his normal deliberately unthreatening half-smile. ‘Coincidence is a funny thing.’
‘Don’t even try it.’ Dolly couldn’t believe he’d followed her there. ‘Look,’ she said, chucking the towel on the chair and smoothing her hair into place. ‘I know you seem to have this knight in shining armour thing going on. And I know you want to prove to Brogden that you’re some kind of hero, but you are not going to use me to get there. OK? So just back off. Go and do your weights at whatever swanky gym you usually go to and leave me the hell alone.’
She was just turning to get her water when Roy creaked to his feet and shouted, ‘Fox! You old dog, get over here!’ It was the first time she’d ever seen Roy crack a toothless smile.
Dolly’s face fell.
Fox grinned at her. ‘Sorry, what was that you were saying?’
Dolly knew she was blushing a shade of scarlet that no amount of sweaty exhaustion could hide. ‘I, er …’ She was so embarrassed, she didn’t know what to say. ‘I didn’t know you trained here.’
‘Likewise,’ he said, yanking his sweatshirt over his head as he strode straight past her in the direction of Roy and the sparring partner he was lining up.
Dolly looked down at the scuffed black floor, mortified as she replayed everything she’d accused him of in her head. Her heart thumping in her ears.
‘Get on with it, Dolly, stop wasting my time!’ Roy hollered.
Dolly jumped to attention, catching the wry smile on Fox’s face as he started to warm up.
The gym was dark and dirty. Spiderwebs swung in the corners of the roof as the kicks and punches vibrated through the air. It was all grunts and groans. Droplets of blood and sweat on the floor. A kettle with a bunch of dirty mugs and a table with a couple of folders made up Roy’s desk, along with a shelf of garish gold trophies from his younger days. There were black-and-white photos of various boxers who he’d trained, and a signed photo of Muhammad Ali that he’d bought from the side of the road in Vegas but claimed was a bona fide gift from The Greatest.
Fox was in the ring.
Dolly did her step-ups with gusto, trying not to notice. He was in a black vest and shorts and old red gloves that were faded almost to pink. He was fighting Bruno, Roy’s brightest young star. A few people in the gym had paused what they were doing to watch. Dolly carried on with her routine. But as the fight got going and more people ventured ringside, she found herself pausing, unable not to look.
Bruno always drew a crowd but in this instance, she hated to admit it, Fox was equally mesmerising. By the ropes, old Roy couldn’t keep the grin off his face. He was loving it.
Dolly forced herself to focus on her squats and lunges, up and down, over and over again, stubbornly determined to keep her eyes off the ring.
There was an ‘oooh’ from the crowd and she glanced over to see Bruno was down. Pride stopped her from looking at Fox and she found herself annoyed that she wondered if he was looking at her.
Her legs were like jelly by the time she finished. The match was six rounds down. The cut on Fox’s cheek had opened up and blood was dripping down his neck, shoulder and onto his arm. There she noticed a tattoo of a fox’s face, staring beadily at her. Dolly had to roll her eyes. Typical.
Chucking her towel over her shoulder, she headed over to the changing rooms. When she’d joined, despite there being at least a handful of women who trained at the gym, there hadn’t been female changing rooms, and when Dolly had complained, Roy had cleared out a store cupboard and drawn a stick figure of a girl in a dress on the front of the door. Some hilarious joker had added massive boobs. Dolly had pulled her police card and told Roy she’d report him to Trading Standards, after which he reluctantly expanded the store cupboard, added a shower and bought a cheap sticky sign from Homebase that read ‘Ladies’. He’d blanked Dolly for three weeks and then put her in the ring with one of his toughest, up-and-coming seventeen-year-olds and watched as she’d beaten Dolly to a pulp. But it had been worth it for the shower afterwards.
Now, washed and changed into canary-yellow tracksuit bottoms and a black T-shirt, Dolly hoisted her bag over her good shoulder and left the gym deliberately not turning round to see what had happened in the ring but she could hear a lot of laughter, heavy panting and congratulations. That type of stir round the gym would only have been caused by Fox beating Bruno, which made Dolly even more determined not to look.
Outside the sun was piercing compared to the dungeon darkness of Roy’s. She slipped on her sunglasses one-handed as she let the door slam behind her.
When it didn’t slam with its normal heavy thump, she glanced over her shoulder and saw a sweaty, bleeding Fox propping it open. ‘What’s the rush?’ he asked.
‘What do you think?’ Dolly replied, starting to walk away.
To her annoyance, Fox laughed and jogged after her. His white sweater was slung over one shoulder and a towel was over the other, which he used to stem the bleeding on his face. ‘Don’t you want to know who won?’ he asked as they walked side by side.
‘Not particularly,’ she said. ‘But I’m assuming you’ll tell me.’
‘Not at all,’ he said, and carried on in silence.
Dolly now wanted to know but wasn’t going to ask.
As if Fox could tell, he chuckled.
Dolly was determined never to know.
‘So what happened to your
treasure hunt?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said and caught him smirk.
‘What?’ she asked, stopping as he paused at an ice-cream van to buy a bottle of water but the guy didn’t have any, so Fox ordered a 99.
‘You want anything?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank you. Why were you just laughing?’
‘I wasn’t laughing.’
‘OK, smirking.’
‘I never smirk.’
‘You smirk,’ she said, watching the ice-cream guy hand over a really tempting-looking 99 with a Flake. ‘And I’ll have a Calippo, actually.’
Fox sucked in a breath. ‘Well, seeing as you asked so nicely, one Calippo,’ he said to the vendor.
Dolly took the orange lolly. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘You’re more than welcome,’ he replied.
After a couple of seconds, Dolly said, ‘Did you know I was going to be at the gym?’
Fox bit the Flake in half, seemingly buying time, before glancing across at Dolly a little guiltily and saying, ‘I had an inkling.’
‘I knew it!’ she said, the dripping Calippo in her hand somehow making her victory have less impact. ‘I can’t believe you followed me to Roy’s.’
‘I didn’t really follow you,’ Fox countered. ‘I’ve known Roy for years, I was meant to pop in sometime soon. I just made it sooner rather than later.’
‘Why won’t you leave me alone?’ Dolly asked. They’d arrived at her flat. It was the basement of an old Victorian house just around the corner from a giant car wash.
Fox crunched the last of the 99 cone and said, ‘You got me suspended yesterday. I want some good to come out of it.’
‘Well, learn to cook or something,’ Dolly said, stopping, still slurping the Calippo.
‘I can cook,’ Fox replied, propping himself up on a street sign.
‘Seriously, you don’t have anything better to do?’
‘No. As you’re well aware, I’m serving suspension, because of you. And like you, I live for my job. Why have we stopped?’ he asked. ‘Do you live here? I really need a glass of water.’
Dolly huffed as she walked round the corner and down her basement stairs, past her mishmash of terracotta pots filled with ferns and geraniums and one lone Stargazer lily. Fox’s presence behind her was unnerving. No one came to her flat.
She unlocked the door and went straight to the kitchen where she poured him a glass of water then thrust it into his hand, hoping he’d drink it and go.
But Fox’s attention was elsewhere. He was walking round slowly admiring the artwork, pausing before a painting of a vase of peonies. ‘This is good,’ he said.
Dolly nodded. To any normal person she’d have said that her mother painted it.
Fox carried on. He perused the books on her bookshelf. Nodded. Carried on. Glanced down at the rug her sister, Olive, had brought her back from a work trip to Bangladesh. Ran his hand over a patchwork throw on the sofa. Dolly crossed her good arm over her bad. She waited. Fox sipped the water. ‘Nice place,’ he said.
‘It’s OK,’ she replied.
He looked up, eyes vaguely amused. ‘I pictured you living somewhere different.’
Dolly walked away into the kitchen, she’d had enough of his analysis. ‘I don’t want to know how you pictured me,’ she called, getting her own glass of water; the Calippo had made her thirsty.
The doorbell rang as she was gulping down tap water. ‘Hang on a minute,’ Dolly shouted, putting the glass down and jogging through to the lounge, but Fox had already answered the door.
‘Ooh, well who are you?’ Dolly’s Aunt Marge was standing in the doorway, dressed in polka dots and a Gucci bumbag, giving Fox a very appreciative once up and down. She was tiny, in her late sixties with sinewy arms and hair so red it almost glowed.
‘Fox Mason, madam. Colleague of Dolly’s.’ Fox thrust out a hand to shake.
‘Marjorie King. Aunt of Dolly’s,’ Marge drawled with a coquettish moue. ‘I hope you don’t mind being sized up by a woman twice your age?’
‘I’ll take it where I can get it,’ Fox replied, and Marge cackled appreciatively. Then she saw Dolly. ‘Oh, hello darling, how are you? What’s happened to your arm?’
‘Nothing,’ said Dolly warily. Her aunt never just dropped round unannounced. Her social calendar was busier than anyone Dolly knew. ‘What’s happened? Why are you here?’
Marge scoffed. ‘Can I not just see my favourite youngest niece?’
Dolly narrowed her eyes with suspicion. ‘No.’
‘OK, very well,’ said Marge, making her way into the lounge. ‘I can’t actually stop for long because I’ll be late for aqua aerobics, but I’m here because no one can get hold of you and’ – she started absently flumping Dolly’s cushions and rearranging objects on the coffee table – ‘I think it’s really important that you go back to Willoughby Park for your dad’s treasure hunt. You are my responsibility and I think it would be good for you.’
Dolly could almost see Fox’s ears prick up with interest.
‘Aunt Marge, I’m a grown woman,’ said Dolly, slightly exasperated that this was happening. ‘I’m not your responsibility any more.’
Marge’s phone buzzed with a message that she read immediately with a wry smile, then glancing up occasionally as she tapped out a reply, said to Dolly, ‘You’ll always be my responsibility. And I think your dad would have wanted you to do it.’ She put her phone in her bag, arms now folded across her chest. ‘When you were children, it was his favourite thing to watch you lot hunting down his clues.’
Dolly hadn’t thought of it for years. The times when her dad would arrive, always unexpected and unannounced from whatever exotic trip he’d been on, in his khaki shorts and beaten-up backpack, to squeals of delight. The hero’s return. He’d make them all wait in the house, baying like dogs to be set free as he laid clues all round the grounds, then he’d sit back, his tanned arms wrapped possessively around their adoring mother, as they bounded off with wild excitement. Her overriding memory after that was of always being the one at the rear, struggling to catch up with Olive and Ruben.
‘And as far as I know,’ Marge added, bracelets clacking as she refolded the quilt over the back of Dolly’s sofa, ‘it’s gold at the end.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘As I’ve ever been,’ said Marge, eyes wide and knowing. ‘My brother had finally struck it lucky, apparently. I remember him telling me, crystal clear.’
‘I don’t think it’s gold,’ said Dolly, unconvinced.
‘Suit yourself.’ Marge shrugged. ‘See it as a last hurrah then, darling. When I spoke to Ruben, he said he’s planning to sell the place. I think you need to see it, don’t you? Think of all those memories.’
Those memories were exactly what Dolly was trying not to think about, furiously trying to stop any emotions playing out on her face. Just the mention of Ruben de Lacy and she saw herself, all frizzy-haired and puppy-fat non-boobs, in dreadful flowery dungarees her mum had made her that she thought were the coolest things ever, swinging in and out of trees like a little monkey, perching on the high brick wall watching as Ruben lay in the sunshine like a bronzed Adonis, trying to get him to notice her by doing the coquettish big eyes she’d seen on Dawson’s Creek but failing miserably. That scrap of memory alone was enough to make her whole body inwardly flinch, her insides bunching up with a shiver of pinpricks. She had learnt over time and with a great deal of self-discipline to avoid the sensation of vulnerability. Puberty, for Dolly, had felt like one of the crabs they found at the beach, cowering under a rock waiting for its new soft shell to harden. Unknowing. Nervous. A wobbling jelly of exposed emotion just waiting to be trodden on. The feeling, in retrospect, was as unpleasant now as it was then.
She remembered one time as a kid, sitting on the old living room rug, her head resting against her mum’s knees, cheeks wet from crying about something – probably the hated sounds of the shots from the annual deer cull in the park
or just simply having to go upstairs on her own for fear of what lurked in the wardrobe in her room. Her mum had stroked her hair by the warmth of the fire, musing, ‘You’re just like me, Dol, you feel things more than other people.’ Dolly had stared into the flickering flames, the soft touch of her mum’s hand on her head, the smell of her perfume, the cotton of her dress beneath her cheek, cocooned, momentarily safe from the world. ‘Like most special things in life, it’s a blessing and a curse.’
Dolly found herself feeling suddenly claustrophobic and overcrowded in her flat. Aunt Marge had turned to Fox and was saying, ‘I think it would help her very much to go. It was a funny time for them all back then—’
‘Marge!’ Dolly cut her off.
‘Sorry, darling.’ Again Marge turned to Fox, who was watching with bemused enjoyment, and said, ‘She’s always like this. Very snappy, but it’s just her way. Very soft underneath. That’s why I—’
‘Stop it!’
‘Sorry, sorry!’ Marge slapped herself on the wrist. ‘Bad Marge.’
‘Look, Marge, thanks for coming by but,’ Dolly steered her towards the door, ‘I don’t think I’m going to go.’
‘Why not?’ Marge frowned, face powdery with make-up.
‘Yeah, why not, Dolly?’ Fox interjected with an expression of mock-confusion. ‘You said yesterday that you absolutely were going.’
Dolly wanted to kill him. Fox’s eyes sparkled.
‘I’m sure they’d give you the time off work,’ Marge pushed, to which Fox started to reply – most likely to tell her that Dolly had been suspended – but before he could get any further, Dolly clamped her hands onto Marge’s shoulders and bustled her out the front door. ‘It was lovely to see you, but I don’t want you to be late for aqua aerobics.’ Once outside, Dolly added, almost pleading, ‘Marge, I just don’t want to go to Willoughby Park. OK?’
Marge looked her in the eye for a moment and then smiled softly. ‘I know you don’t,’ she said. Then she reached up and touched Dolly’s cheek with her cool, slim hand. ‘But you should go, darling. I want you to see it, to see Olive. She’s already there.’ Dolly didn’t want to see Olive. Marge said, ‘It’d be good for you.’
