The Promise You Made

by A J McDine

  ‘A mutation?’

  I nodded. She was side-stepping my question, but there was no point pushing her if she wasn’t ready to talk. ‘The mutation’s recessive,’ I said. ‘So, both her parents must have carried the mutated gene for it to show in her coat.’

  ‘So, it’s her defect that makes her so beautiful,’ Eloise said softly, stroking Dinah under her chin. Her purrs increased in volume.

  ‘More a genetic blip than a defect,’ I said. ‘They’re called dilute calico cats in America, I believe. Quite unusual. Anyway, that’s enough about Dinah. Her ego’s already big enough as it is. Tell me why you came.’

  Eloise bit her lip. ‘I didn’t know where else to turn. I don’t have anyone, you see. Not now Theo’s…’ A sob caught at the back of her throat.

  ‘Theo?’

  ‘My boyfriend,’ she said, taking the handkerchief I offered her. ‘Well, he was.’ She shook her head and blew her nose.

  Everything was starting to make sense. Eloise had had a bust up with her beau and didn’t have anywhere else to go. I pictured her flinging clothes into a suitcase, hefting it down the stairs and storming from the house in a flood of tears, Theo watching silently from the hallway.

  And the cut I’d so carefully washed and dressed? Had he lashed out in a fit of anger? My blood ran cold at the thought.

  ‘You can stay here until it all blows over,’ I found myself saying.

  Eloise turned her red-rimmed eyes to me. ‘I can?’

  ‘I’ll make up a bed.’

  ‘I’ll help,’ she said, her hands on the arms of the chair. She’d stopped shivering, but her face was still waxy-pale.

  ‘I won’t hear of it. You stay by the fire with Dinah. I won’t be long.’

  As I left the room, she gave me a wan smile. ‘Thank you, Rose,’ she said in a quiet voice.

  I bobbed my head. ‘You’re very welcome.’

  I dithered at the top of the stairs, unsure which direction to turn. There was my mother’s room, still looking like a shabby side room in a poorly funded NHS hospital, with its hospital bed, mobile commode, walking frame and grab rails, and an underlying smell of piss. On the wall, my mother’s extensive collection of stuffed birds. Kingfishers, jays, woodpeckers, yellow hammers and chaffinches, each frozen in time in their glass-fronted cases. She’d collected them for as long as I could remember, scouring boot fairs and antique markets for new pieces. According to her, Queen Victoria had amassed a vast array of stuffed birds over her lifetime and there was no shame in preserving our feathered friends for posterity, but I’d always found her fascination with dead creatures disturbing. There was no way Eloise could sleep in there.

  Across the landing was my father’s room. Apart from a monthly hoover and polish, I hadn’t touched a thing in there since the day he died. I opened the door and scanned the room. What would Eloise make of the heavy mahogany furniture, the masculine striped wallpaper, the folded pyjamas on the bed, and the ivory shaving set on the dressing table? Was it even legal to own ivory these days? I made a mental note to check. It wouldn’t do to be seen breaking the law. The room was as I’d left it - immaculate and fragrant with beeswax polish - but it was no place for a young woman in emotional turmoil.

  My bedroom wasn’t an option, so that left the box room at the back of the house. It was tiny - just about big enough for a narrow put-you-up bed, a chest of drawers and a Victorian balloon dining chair. But it had done the job when my mother’s carers stayed over, and it was better than the sofa.

  I opened the window an inch to air the room and found sheets, pillows and a couple of blankets in the tallboy on the landing. Bed made, I headed back downstairs. Eloise was examining the collection of photographs on the sideboard.

  ‘Is this you?’ she said, holding up a thin wooden frame.

  It was a school photo, taken in the summer of 1982. I was wearing a blue and white gingham dress and a glum expression. My hair was cut in an unflattering pudding-basin style - if style was indeed the right word. An army of freckles marched across my nose and forehead and I had an angry-looking pimple on my chin. I was coming to the end of the first year at my girls’ grammar school and already I was persona non grata. A social outcast. The class pariah. Billy No-Mates. Call it what you will. A rose by any other name….

  ‘Yes. That’s me.’

  She smiled. ‘Your hair was such a pretty colour.’

  My cheeks flared red. ‘Your mum thought so, too. Everyone else called me carrot top. Or worse.’ Once, in the fourth year, the class bully and two of her sidekicks dragged me into a toilet cubicle, lifted my skirt and pulled down my pants just to see if I had a ginger minge. I didn’t tell Eloise that.

  ‘Well, I think it was beautiful.’

  ‘I’m more strawberry blonde these days,’ I said, self-consciously patting my greying locks.

  ‘What’s this one?’ Eloise asked, fingering an ornate silver frame.

  Even after five years, I felt a little swell of pride deep in my chest. ‘It’s me with my MBE.’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘MBE. Member of the Order of the British Empire. Prince Charles gave it to me for services to charity.’

  Eloise seemed underwhelmed.

  ‘Ed Sheeran got one the same day.’ Now I had her attention. ‘Actually, he made headlines because he touched Prince Charles’s arm as they shook hands, which is not the done thing at all. Straight to the Tower and off with his head, I say!’

  Eloise looked bemused.

  ‘Breach of royal protocol, you see.’

  She nodded her understanding and peered at the photo, as if she was expecting to see Ed Sheeran loitering in the background with his guitar. ‘Which charity?’

  ‘Charities,’ I corrected her. ‘I’ve given my time to so many over the years. The RSPCA, Asthma UK, The Stroke Foundation. At the moment, I volunteer for Sisterline. We provide a listening ear to women in emotional distress. Our phones are manned three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and we’ve just launched a new texting service which is proving very popular.’

  ‘Popular?’

  ‘Sorry, poor choice of words. What I’m trying to say is that it’s been in great demand. We’ve helped a lot of women.’

  Women like you, Eloise, I thought, as I tried not to stare at the red stain that was already seeping through the dressing on her collarbone. What kind of mess was she caught up in?

  We were both silent for a moment, then Eloise replaced the frame carefully on the sideboard. ‘Please could I use your bathroom?’

  ‘You could, but may you?’ The words spilled out of my mouth before I could stop them. ‘Sorry,’ I said again, clocking her raised eyebrow. ‘It’s something my mother used to say. The difference between can and may. Anyway, it’s not important. Of course you can use the bathroom. Up the stairs, third door on the right.’

  I busied myself throwing another log on the fire and straightening cushions until Eloise reappeared. She’d washed off the smears of blood and colour was returning to her cheeks.

  ‘I can lend you one of my nightdresses for tonight, if you like?’ I said. ‘We can pop into Canterbury in the morning to pick you up some things.’

  ‘It’s OK. I brought an overnight bag.’

  Outside, the wind whistled, and the rain battered the windows and Eloise shivered as if a ghost had tiptoed across her grave.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I said.

  She frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘Your fight with Theo. I’m a good listener. And you know what they say about a trouble shared. Bottling things up is not good for anyone.’ She was silent, so I tried another tack. ‘Your cut,’ I said, touching my own collarbone. ‘Did Theo do it?’

  She closed her eyes and gave the faintest of nods.

  I leaned forwards and took her hand in mine. ‘You poor girl. Have you reported him?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You must, Eloise! The cut’s inches from your throat. He could have killed you!’


  ‘But he didn’t.’

  ‘This time, maybe,’ I muttered. ‘Has he ever hurt you before?’

  ‘He was very… protective of me.’ She looked at me with a haunted expression. ‘But only because he loved me.’

  I snorted in a most unladylike fashion. I knew all about men like Theo, thanks to a brief spell as a trustee for a women’s refuge. Men who controlled their partners’ finances and dictated who they saw, who manipulated and lied and cheated and bullied. I’d seen first-hand the mental toll their emotional abuse left on the women they claimed to love.

  ‘It’s true, he really did,’ Eloise insisted. ‘He wanted to keep me safe. At least that’s what I thought. But yes, you’re right. I saw him for what he was today.’

  I squeezed her hand. ‘And what was that?’

  ‘He’s a bully.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  She took my other hand, so our fingers were entwined. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  Touched she’d come to me in her hour of need, I gave her a reassuring smile. ‘I promised I would help you, and I will. I am nothing if not a woman of my words.’

  ‘The thing is…’ Eloise fiddled with a strand of her hair, winding it round and round her finger. ‘Theo’s in the car.’

  The smile slid from my face. ‘You brought him here? But I thought you said he’d attacked you?’

  ‘I mean he’s in the boot.’

  My chest tightened. ‘The boot? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I killed him, Rose. I killed Theo,’ she said, breathlessly. ‘I panicked and I didn’t know what to do. But you promised you’d help me.’

  ‘Yes, but —’

  ‘Please, Rose, I need your help to get rid of his body.’

  Chapter Four

  The earth tilted on its axis, and I stared at my goddaughter in disbelief.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt him. It was self-defence.’ Eloise pulled her hand from mine and fingered the dressing over her collarbone. ‘He said he was going to kill me.’ She was trembling violently now. A long-buried memory from med school surfaced and my face cleared.

  ‘Your mind’s playing tricks on you,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think you might be hypothermic. Early signs include confusion and memory loss.’

  Hope flared behind her eyes.

  ‘I expect Theo’s sat on the sofa with a beer in his hand watching football right now,’ I told her.

  ‘Do you think so? But it seems so real.’ She thought for a moment, then leapt to her feet. ‘Can we, sorry, may we check?’

  I glanced at the window. Rain was still coming down in buckets. I shook my head. ‘You’ll catch your death. It’ll wait until morning.’

  ‘Please, Rose?’ she implored. ‘I won’t sleep a wink until I know you’re right.’

  I sighed. ‘All right, all right, but you must promise me you’ll wear a raincoat and hat.’

  She was across the room, as nimble as a sprite, before I’d hauled myself out of the armchair. In the hallway, I handed her my knee-length waterproof coat and wellies and shrugged on my father’s old Barbour.

  As Eloise pulled a rain hat on her head and gave me a tentative smile, a memory assuaged me, and my stomach flipped.

  Glastonbury, June 1989.

  It was my first and last experience of a music festival, and my memories of it were hazy, blurred by pints of cloudy scrumpy and suspiciously fat roll-ups. Juliet had talked me into going. She’d said it was a rite of passage. And I’d agreed, because I would have done anything Juliet asked.

  It had been hot that year, almost eighty degrees, and as we’d headed across the parched festival ground to watch the Pixies’ set, she’d dragged me to a stall and picked a denim hat with daisies embroidered on the sides from a pile on the table. She tucked my hair behind my ears and, placing the hat on my head, took a step back and regarded me, one hand under her chin.

  ‘It suits you,’ she said at last. ‘And it’ll stop you from getting heatstroke. You should buy it.’

  ‘I’ll buy you one, too,’ I said. ‘That way we’ll always be able to find each other.’

  She pulled a hat on and twirled on the spot. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Yeah, not bad,’ I said, because Juliet didn’t like it when I got all heavy.

  We made our way to the Pyramid stage, but it turned out the Pixies weren’t my kettle of fish, although Juliet seemed to like them, swaying to the music with her eyes closed as if she was in a trance.

  ‘Are you OK?’ said a voice, and I looked up, startled to see Eloise, not Juliet, standing next to me.

  ‘Sorry, miles away.’ I picked up my torch and glanced at her. She gave another nervous half-smile and I squeezed her shoulder.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ I said.

  ‘And if it isn’t?’

  My breath caught at the raw vulnerability in her voice.

  ‘If it isn’t, we’ll fix it.’

  I tramped across the sodden garden to the top of the drive and waved the torch around. The beam picked out the coal bunker, the wheelie bins and my elderly Land Rover, but no car.

  ‘Where did you park?’ I shouted to Eloise over the wind.

  ‘In a layby next to a water pumping station about a mile away.’ She pointed towards the village.

  ‘No wonder you were soaked to the skin. Why didn’t you drive to the house?’

  ‘I didn’t want to link you to my car because of the… because of Theo.’

  Bless. She really thought she’d killed him.

  ‘We’ll cut through the woods. It’s quicker,’ I said. She nodded and followed me through the gate in the back fence. ‘This way.’ I plunged into the trees where it was darker, and the wind whistling through the branches sounded like the crazed whispers of a dozen gossipmongers spreading their poison. As a child, I’d been terrified of the woods, convinced they were home to all manner of ghastly creatures. Later they became my sanctuary and now, in my middle age, we lived comfortably alongside each other like an old married couple.

  ‘People with severe hypothermia often take off their clothes,’ I said as I puffed and panted my way up the steep track to the ridge. ‘It’s called paradoxical undressing. It’s when the body’s blood vessels contract to prevent loss of heat from the extremities. They think they’re burning up, even though they’re actually dying from the cold.’ I stopped to catch my breath. ‘Do you see where I’m going with this?’

  ‘You think I’ve imagined everything,’ Eloise said.

  I smiled, even though I knew she couldn’t see it. ‘I do.’

  We trudged down a flinty track before turning onto a bridleway that led to the road and the pumping station. Every so often a branch whipped my face, or a tree stump sent me stumbling forwards. Beside me, Eloise was as graceful as a deer, just like her mother.

  Finally, we reached the gate onto the lane. The yellow beam of the torch lit mud-splattered black metal. I followed the line of the vehicle from bumper to bumper.

  Eloise must have pressed the key fob as there was a bleep and the hazard lights flashed orange in the darkness. She grabbed my arm.

  ‘Wait!’ she said. ‘A car’s coming.’

  I turned off the torch and scuttled back into the shadows as the sound of an engine grew louder and headlights appeared at the top of the hill. Eloise shrank back and, after a moment’s deliberation, I put a comforting arm around her shoulder.

  The car reached the bottom of the valley, but instead of accelerating up the hill, it slowed and pulled into the layby alongside Eloise’s car. It was a small red hatchback, the kind favoured by boy racers. The driver killed the headlights. The passenger door clicked open and a lanky frame in a hoodie and jogging bottoms let himself out.

  ‘Fuck,’ Eloise hissed, drawing away from me.

  The youth glanced up and down the road. Then, apparently happy the coast was clear, he sidled over to the driver’s side of Eloise’s car, cupped his face against the
window and peered inside.

  ‘Anything?’ the driver demanded.

  ‘There’s a sat nav and a wallet. And a coupla bags on the back seat.’

  ‘Nice. We’ll have them alloys, too. Reckon they’re worth at least fifty quid.’

  The first youth grunted his agreement and pulled on the door handle. When he realised the car wasn’t locked, he crowed in triumph. ‘This is gonna be a piece of piss.’

  ‘Wait, bro. You don’t reckon it’s one of them police traps, do you?’

  ‘Nah, mate. You worry too much.’ He turned his attention back to the car. Eloise bent down, her hands laced behind her head, and groaned softly.

  I had to do something. Before I could talk myself out of it, I switched the torch back on, stepped out of the trees, and cleared my throat.

  ‘You two look lost. Can I help?’ I said pleasantly, pointing the torch in the hooded youth’s face. Shielding his eyes, he jumped back in surprise, colliding with the hatchback’s wing mirror and cursing loudly.

  ‘Have you broken down? I can help you with a bump start if you like.’ I had no more idea how to bump start a car than how to build a rocket and fly to the moon, but they weren’t to know.

  ‘Nah, miss, we’re good. We was just checking everything was OK here, weren’t we, Jaden?’ the youth said, slipping his hand in his pocket.

  In the hatchback, the driver nodded vigorously.

  ‘If you say so,’ I said. ‘Only we’ve been having problems with car thefts in the village. The local Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator sent out an email only yesterday, asking us to report any suspicious behaviour. We’re supposed to dial 999 if we see a crime in progress,’ I added with a disarming smile.

  The youth in the hoody felt behind him for the door handle, yanked it open and jumped inside. Jaden floored the accelerator, and the hatchback sped off up the hill in a fog of exhaust fumes. Only once the taillights had disappeared did Eloise leave the cover of the trees to join me.

  ‘Jesus, Rose, what were you thinking? They could have had a knife.’