by A J McDine
Tractor tyres had gouged deep furrows into the loamy soil. With only the car’s sidelights to guide me, it was almost impossible to avoid them, and the car threw me violently from side to side as it lurched towards the clearing.
‘This’ll do,’ I said to the empty car, yanking up the handbrake. I was about to reach for the keys in the ignition when I remembered there weren’t any. Leaving the engine idling, I picked up the petrol can and matches from the passenger seat and let myself out.
I felt another flutter of nerves. Using an accelerant to start a fire wasn’t just irresponsible, it was downright foolhardy. What if I spilled petrol on my clothes and set myself alight? Fire would race up my polyester trousers with the speed of an electrical current, and within seconds, I would be writhing on the ground in agony. No one would hear my screams, not out here. What if I just left the car without setting it alight? The police would assume joyriders had ditched it. A conscientious officer might have the steering wheel and doors swept for fingerprints, but I doubted it. The local PCSO was always lamenting how short-staffed they were. They’d certainly have no reason to scour the boot for forensic evidence.
But I’d promised Eloise I’d burn it, so burn it I would. It was worth the risk to make her feel safe. I doused the car liberally with petrol, but the first match fell from my fumbling fingers onto the ground before I could strike it. After a couple of strikes, the second match lit and I threw it towards the car, but it fizzled out mid-air. ‘Third time lucky,’ I muttered to myself, pulling another match from the box. I took a deep breath and, cupping the tiny flame in the palm of my hand, dropped it and sprinted out of the clearing, a whooshing sound ringing in my ears.
When I reached the trees, I stopped and turned back to inspect my handiwork. The windscreen and bonnet were already ablaze, and flames were curling towards the back of the car. As I caught my breath, there was a crack as loud as a gunshot and I clutched my chest in terror, fearing that any minute a gamekeeper would come crashing through the undergrowth towards me, a shotgun in his hand. But it was only the windscreen cracking in the heat.
Slowing my breathing, I watched the fire until I was satisfied the whole car was engulfed in flames. I turned for home, grateful for the cool air on my burning cheeks.
Chapter Eleven
SEPTEMBER 1988
* * *
My mother feigned a migraine the day I was due to leave for university, and that suited me just fine. I didn’t want her negativity colouring the first day of the rest of my life. I couldn’t bear the thought of her picking fault with my tiny room in halls, turning her nose up at my new flatmates and criticising my choice of university.
‘You’d think she’d be proud that her only child was doing medicine,’ I grumbled as my father drove at a steady sixty miles an hour along the motorway towards the campus.
‘She is proud. She just finds it hard to show it sometimes,’ he said, his voice mild.
‘Sometimes?’ I gave a bark of laughter. ‘She has a heart of stone. In fact, I bet if you opened her up and looked inside, there would be a cavity where her heart should be,’ I said, warming to my theme.
‘She’s a product of her upbringing,’ my father said, glancing at me. ‘We all are.’
‘I hope not.’ I shuddered. ‘I’d rather die than end up like her.’
‘Rose,’ he said reprovingly. ‘You don’t mean that.’
I did, but I hated the world-weariness in his voice, so I changed the subject and, before I knew it, we were turning off the motorway and following signs for the university and my new life.
My father was helping me unpack my stuff when there was a knock on the door. Not a timid tap-tap, but a confident rat-a-tat-tat. A knock that meant business.
I dumped the armful of sweaters I’d pulled out of my suitcase, but before I was halfway across the room, the door burst open and a girl breezed in. Tall and slim, with a shaggy blonde perm, a faded denim jacket and thin gold hoop earrings, she looked as if she’d walked straight out of the pages of Just Seventeen.
‘I’m Juliet,’ she announced. ‘I’m your next-door neighbour!’
‘Rose,’ I said with a shy smile.
Juliet glanced around the room. ‘God, they’re like prison cells, aren’t they? I wanted a room with an en suite but I had to go through clearing because I didn’t get my grades, so it was all rather last minute.’
She had the easy confidence and plummy accent that screamed public school. Old Rose would have felt intimidated, but New Rose wasn’t about to be tethered by her hang-ups.
‘Me too!’ I said. My father’s head jerked up. I shot him a pleading look and a flicker of understanding passed across his face. ‘What are you reading?’
‘History of Art,’ Juliet said with a dismissive shrug. ‘I couldn’t think what else to do. What about you?’
‘Medicine,’ I said, unable to keep the pride out of my voice. ‘It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do.’
‘Wow, a brainbox,’ Juliet said. ‘I couldn’t even pass my eleven plus. God knows how I’ve ended up here.’ She tipped her head back and laughed. A golden locket shimmered in the dip between her clavicles. Her suprasternal notch. An ugly name for something so beautiful.
‘Jules!’ a woman called from the corridor. ‘D’you want to show me where you want your posters?’
Juliet sighed. ‘Coming,’ she called. She paused in the doorway. ‘D’you fancy coming over to mine once the parents have gone? I pinched a bottle of Blue Nun from home. We can celebrate the start of our university life.’
I smiled again. ‘Thank you, Juliet,’ I said, liking the way her name tripped off my tongue as if we’d known each other all our lives. ‘That would be cool.’
‘God, they’ve lumped us in with all the mingers and weirdos,’ Juliet said, reaching for the wine bottle on her desk. There was a picture of a nun on the front of the dark blue bottle. Dressed in a royal blue habit and white wimple and carrying a basket of grapes, she reminded me of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.
‘The eponymous nun,’ I said, dipping my head towards the bottle as Juliet splashed wine into a glass and handed it to me.
‘You’ve lost me,’ she said, taking a slug from her own glass. Her hazel eyes, I noticed, were slightly glazed, and it occurred to me she had sampled some of the eponymous nun’s wares before my arrival.
‘Seriously though,’ she said, jerking a thumb towards the far wall. ‘The bloke next to me has long greasy hair and is wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt and filthy jeans. And I mean filthy.’ She pulled a face. ‘The girl opposite doesn’t speak a word of English, and the two on either side of her are complete saddos.’
I’d said hello to a couple of girls as I’d arranged tins of baked beans, spaghetti hoops and peaches into my allotted cupboard in the shared kitchen and they’d looked completely normal to me, but I pulled a face, too, and said, ‘God, yes, I know exactly what you mean.’
She stuck out her bottom lip. ‘My best friend went to Warwick. It’s where I was going, too, until I screwed up my A-levels.’ She took another long draught from her glass. ‘And now I’m stuck here, less than an hour from home. My parents are threatening to visit every bloody weekend, can you believe it?’
I took a tentative sip of the Blue Nun. It was lukewarm and fruity. Hiding a grimace, I took another. Better. It was obviously an acquired taste. ‘The whole point about going to university is to be independent. To cut the apron strings,’ I said with fervour.
‘Exactly!’ She pointed at me with her glass. Wine sloshed against the sides. ‘You get it, Rose. You totally get it. My parents are…’ she paused, searching for the right word. ‘They’re suffocating.’
‘I couldn’t wait to leave home, either,’ I said, my tongue already loosened by the wine. ‘My mother’s a grade A bitch. I wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire.’
Juliet frowned, then burst out laughing. ‘You’re so funny, Rose.’ She clinked her glass against mine and smiled. ‘Thank God I f
ound you.’
Juliet took to university life like she was born to it. History of Art seemed to involve few lectures and lots of leafing through the kind of books posh people had weighing down their coffee tables and waffling about ancient paintings and sculptures.
I’d known that by choosing medicine I’d be working harder than most, but that first term, the sheer tsunami of work caught me unawares. My days were packed with lectures and tutorials. There were essays to write, practicals to prepare for and lecture notes to digest. I had to work late into the night to stand a chance of keeping on top of my studies. While Juliet partied till the small hours, I sat hunched over my desk, working until my hand cramped and my vision blurred.
I worked extra hard during the week because Saturdays were our day. We’d catch a bus into town and have bacon sandwiches and coffee in a cafe before hitting the shops. I never had any money, and I certainly didn’t have time for a job, but Juliet’s parents gave her a generous allowance and she enjoyed spending it. I found the fact that she asked me - me! - for sartorial advice both flattering and amusing. Luckily, she was one of those people who looked good in rags, otherwise she might have realised my skills as a personal shopper were sketchy at best.
We spent Saturday afternoons back at our halls, readying ourselves for a big night out, and before we hit the town, we always played a game of Scrabble while sinking a bottle of Lambrusco or cider or Bacardi or whatever the drink of the day happened to be.
This was my favourite time of the week, not because I invariably won at Scrabble, but because I had Juliet all to myself.
Chapter Twelve
Funny, isn’t it, how the simplest, most pedestrian of acts can become so significant, so symbolic? Like making a pot of tea for two. Filling the kettle, warming the teapot, allowing the teabags to infuse for exactly long enough. Reaching for a pair of mugs that clink together pleasingly. Pouring the tea, adding a dash of milk. A final stir. Actions as automatic as breathing. The last time I’d made a pot of tea for two, I had no idea that my father was already growing cold in his bed above me, after suffering a massive heart attack in his sleep.
After I’d kissed his forehead, straightened his sheets and called the doctor, I’d washed up the teapot and stowed it at the back of the cupboard. I had no use for it any more. Every single morning since, I’d thrown a teabag into a mug of milk and hot water and stirred it half-heartedly a couple of times before fishing it out with a teaspoon. Making tea was no longer a soothing ritual, a gesture of kindness, but a necessary task to provide a hit of caffeine to start my day.
But that morning, as I dug out the teapot and two mugs, a rush of emotion almost knocked me for six and I had to clutch the sink and take a few calming breaths.
From her bed by the radiator, Dinah watched me, the end of her rabbit-grey tail flicking scornfully.
‘Rich coming from you,’ I told her, reaching in the cupboard above the cooker for my vitamins. I gave the bottle a shake and made a mental note to pop into the health centre for a repeat prescription. ‘You’d have welded yourself to her bed if I hadn’t shut you in here last night.’
Dinah yawned, stretched and stalked over to the back door, disappearing through the cat flap with another dismissive swish of her tail. I was pouring milk into a jug when the pips sounded. I darted to the radio and turned up the volume.
‘This is the eight o’clock news,’ said the Radio Kent presenter. ‘And these are the headlines: A Sevenoaks man has been given a life sentence after admitting the murder of his former partner. Police are appealing for witnesses after twenty manhole covers were stolen from a single Folkestone road. And birdwatchers are flocking to a Kent nature reserve following reports of a rare warbler in the area…’
I exhaled. There was no mention of a man being reported missing from his Rochester home. Eloise was right. Theo’s work colleagues would assume he’d returned to France. There was nothing to worry about.
Reassured, I carried the tea upstairs and knocked on Eloise’s door.
The springs of the put-you-up bed creaked, and the door opened. ‘Tea. How thoughtful,’ Eloise said, taking the tray.
‘I wasn’t sure how you liked it, so I brought the pot.’ I drifted over to the window. The rain clouds had retreated, and the sky was the same washed-out blue as the forget-me-nots that self-seeded themselves in the garden every spring, pervasive little blighters. My gaze strayed to the woods, and I wondered if Theo had managed to sleep trussed up like a turkey on the dusty floor of the pillbox. At what point would he realise there was no one outside guarding the door? And when he did, would he have the strength to kick it down and escape? What then?
‘Rose, did you hear me?’ Eloise said, dragging me back to the room.
‘Sorry, I really must book a hearing test. What did you say?’
‘I was asking what you’re doing today.’
‘I have an interview I can’t miss.’
‘For a job?’
I nodded. ‘The charity where I volunteer is looking for a new chief executive.’
‘The suicidal charity?’
I bit back a smile. It was exactly the kind of thing Juliet would have said. ‘Yes, Sisterline. I’m sure I don’t stand a chance, but the chair of trustees told me I ought to apply, so…’
‘You totally should. I bet it’s yours for the taking.’
‘You’re very kind, but we’ll see. You should come with me and have a wander around town. There are lots of nice coffee shops.’
‘Thanks, but I think I’ll stay here, if that’s all right?’ She ran a hand over her forehead. ‘I’m still feeling a bit under the weather.’
My thoughts flitted back to Theo. What if he forced his way out of the pillbox and came looking for Eloise? No, I mustn’t catastrophise. Everything would be fine.
‘Of course. I’m sure Dinah will keep you company. Oh, you’re reading Alice in Wonderland,’ I said, spying my childhood copy open on the chest of drawers.
‘I remembered you said I should, so when I couldn’t sleep last night, I went downstairs and found it. I hope that’s OK?’
‘It goes without saying. Though I’ll find you a bookmark, so the spine doesn’t get broken. I’ll be back by twelve. What do you fancy for lunch?’
‘Mum always made me chicken soup when I was feeling poorly.’
I smiled. ‘Chicken soup it is.’
I’d been lying when I told Eloise I didn’t stand a chance of getting the chief executive’s job at Sisterline. I was pretty sure I was a shoo-in.
It was almost thirteen years since I’d stumbled across an article in the local paper appealing for volunteers for a fledging support line specifically for women.
Sisterline was the pet project of a flamboyant woman called Edwina Armstrong, a provocatively misogynist-hating Guardian columnist who moved to Faversham from her Blackheath home in her late fifties, seeking a slower pace of life. When her youngest and favourite sister jumped from the Clifton Suspension Bridge after an acrimonious divorce, Edwina - or Eddie, as she preferred to be known - handed in her notice at The Guardian and formed the charity.
‘If I can stop one woman with suicidal thoughts and feelings from taking that final, irreversible step, then I will have achieved my goal,’ she’d been quoted as saying, and I didn’t mind admitting it had touched a nerve.
I’d joined the first cohort of volunteers answering Eddie’s call for help. She’d been looking for open-minded, empathetic, supportive, discreet, accepting and honest people and I’d been confident I was all of those things and more. But when I started taking calls, I discovered that although discretion and honesty came easily, some of the other qualities were another matter.
I had to bite my tongue when a nineteen-year-old with two children and an online bingo habit called in to lament her lack of funds because she’d gambled away her benefits. Refraining from passing comment when women phoned to say their husbands had thrown them out after discovering an affair was almost impossible. And the urge to tell t
he sad cases who hadn’t befallen any drama or tragedy but were still “struggling to cope” to get a grip was overwhelming.
So I had a quiet word with Eddie and asked if my skills would be put to better use looking after the charity’s admin, finances and fundraising, and she’d bitten my hand off. No one wanted a backroom job. They all craved the glory that came with talking a caller down from her literal or metaphorical cliff.
For over twelve years, I’d virtually run the organisation single-handedly, so when the well-meaning but ineffective chief executive took early retirement, the job had my name on it.
I was so focussed on the upcoming interview that I only gave a cursory glance left and right as I turned onto the A2. The long blast of a horn from behind took me by surprise. I checked my rear-view mirror. A dazzlingly white Subaru SUV was inches from my back bumper and the driver - male, overweight - was gesticulating madly at me, both hands off the steering wheel.
Lifting my chin, I looked him square in the eye and mouthed, ‘Irresponsible’. In response, he slammed a hand on the horn a second time, causing an elderly woman walking her Dachshund to stop and stare.
I drove sedately through the residential streets towards the car park in the centre of town with SUV Man still tailgating me. I tapped the brakes as I neared the zebra crossing just before the railway bridge, keen to send him a message that his bullying behaviour would not intimidate me. I was so busy staring into the rear-view mirror to see his reaction that I didn’t see the old man on his mobility scooter until his front tyres were on the crossing. I stepped on the brakes just in time, glad I’d only been crawling along. The old boy touched his cap in thanks as he trundled past. Behind me, SUV Man’s face contorted, and he waved his fist at me.
