by Claire Peate
I saw my laptop on the window seat and grabbed it. I checked my watch; it was almost ten. Gwyn would be wondering if I was staying at the Hen House to clean up. Maybe he’d be starting to think about making a move on his own if I wasn’t back soon. After all, with so much police interest in the cat he’d have to move quickly. If he or Tomos were caught harbouring the animal then they’d been in all sorts of trouble.
I sneaked down the hallway clutching my laptop. Louisa’s door was open and I could hear muttering coming from inside her room. Really I ought to go and explain myself to her. I owed her that.
I knocked. The muttering stopped.
“Yes?”
“Lou, it’s Rach! Can I come in?”
A few seconds later the door opened and a red-eyed James smiled weakly at me and walked out. I went in. Louisa was sitting on a window seat staring out over the valley to the river beyond. She was still dressed in last night’s party dress and I was pretty sure from the look of her that she hadn’t slept at all.
We sat in silence together on opposite window seats, watching a large brown bird circling near the valley floor. I surreptitiously checked my watch. It was five past ten. I ought to get moving.
“Listen hon, I’m really sorry things haven’t worked out quite how they were planned to,” I began.
She continued staring out into the distance. “S’OK.”
“Were you up all night talking to James?”
“Yes.” She sighed. “And listening to everyone shagging.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I noticed that last night.”
She looked up from the window. “I thought I heard you talking to someone in the middle of the night. Were you with Gwyn?”
I nodded.
“Where did you guys go? Did he come over to the party? I didn’t see him.”
I took a deep breath. “I went over to his farm.” I watched her expression to see if she’d be cross, betrayed, disappointed or glad, but she remained impassive; in all likelihood she was emotionally spent from having talked to James all night.
“Don’t worry,” she said eventually, examining her nails, “I don’t mind. So why were you over there? If that’s not a stupid question?”
I leant forward. “Well, promise you won’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you?”
She still looked on, expressionless. “Jesus, what did you get up to with that man? Go on then, I promise I won’t tell a soul.”
In a voice barely above a whisper I revealed my weekend’s secrets, from noticing Tomos’ wounded arm in the pub to spying him covered in blood walking away from the direction of a cat attack. I told her what I’d learnt from Gwyn about Tomos’ past, and what the policeman had told me about the cat being manipulated. Then I described that terrifying walk up to Gwyn’s farmhouse once I’d pieced everything together.
“Fucking hell Rach!” Louisa was staring at me agog, a pinch of colour now in her cheeks. “What happened at Gwyn’s?”
She actually laughed when I told her how we went up to the pub and interrogated Tomos, and her eyes widened when it came to the bit about capturing the puma in the trailer. It was an ideal time for me to run through the slightly improved scenario that I was planning on delivering to Marcia in a few days. But I just couldn’t do it, not to Louisa. Instead I tried to describe to her the smell of the blanket which made her laugh.
The door creaked open and James crept in looking hopeful at the sound of laughter. He walked over and carefully laid a black tea on the seat beside his fiancé. Ex fiancé? Louisa stopped laughing and turned to face the window again. He grimaced and walked out.
“The thing is, Lou,” I whispered when I heard him go down the staircase, “we actually caught the puma and she’s currently in the back of a trailer waiting for us to take her to somewhere safe.”
“No way!”
“I know. And I said to Gwyn that I’d go with him to help him.”
“Help him?”
“Yeah, I know. I can’t drive the Land Rover, I can barely navigate and I’m certainly not getting involved in the cat. But I’ll be a sort of trucker’s mate, keeping him company. And I can always call for the ambulance if he gets hurt. Suppose he gets attacked when he lets the cat out in the middle of nowhere? At least I’ll still have fingers to dial for help with.”
She nodded. “You’d better go, then.”
I put my hand on hers. They were icy cold, clenched in her lap. “Oh hon, I’m so sorry that I’m going now and not helping with the clean-up. Are you going to be OK?”
She nodded. “You go. And it’s fine. Honestly. At least it’ll be one of those weekends to remember. I certainly haven’t had a dull hen weekend.”
I smiled and stood up, picking up the laptop. “Don’t say a word to the others though.”
“My lips are sealed. Talking of which, give Gwyn a kiss from me. You lucky thing.”
I walked towards the door. “So I’ll see you…”
“At the wedding. Yes.” She sighed. “Probably.”
I blew her a kiss and shut the door behind me.
Henna was still huddled on the same stretch of landing, poised with a dustpan and brush in her hands, delicately trying to sweep up the same bits of china without moving too much. In the cold light of day her face looked very, very bad with the oozing toxins adding a horrific dimension to her hung-over appearance.
“See you at the wedding,” I whispered to her. She looked up, half-drunk, trying to make sense of what I’d just said.
“Oh. Right. Still on, is it?” She stared at me blankly. “Oh! What? You’re not going are you? What?” she mumbled, putting her dustpan down and scattering china all over the floor. “Oh fuck.”
“Yeah. Someone’s in trouble and they need my help.”
“Does Laura know?”
I winked. “Anyway, sorry to leave you.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it. You weren’t even at the party, were you? Where did you go?”
I waved my hand and walked down the stairs. “I’ll tell you another time. See you soon.”
She held up a hand in a sort of salute and turned to her sweeping again. I trampled down the stairs, glancing at the grandfather clock. It was half ten.
“Rachel! I need you to get that red wine stain out of the curtains.” Laura appeared from nowhere, brandishing the mop.
“Mm yes sure, I’ll get right on it. Just let me pop this laptop in to my car so it doesn’t get in the way of all that cleaning.” I bounded past her, heading outside into the clean air and brilliant sunshine, heart pounding with the guilt of my deception. I would make a crap spy.
Once out in the driveway, I opened up the car, threw the laptop on the passenger seat, jumped in to the driver’s side, gunned the engine and in a dramatic wheel spin, gravel spraying out just like in the films, the car screamed out of the driveway and up the track. Before I reached the gates I saw Laura leap out of the house and sprint towards me, still gripping her mop.
“RACHEL!”
Shit! I dropped down a gear and tore up the lane.
31
I pulled up abruptly round the back of Gwyn’s house. I checked my rear view mirror. No Laura. Should I try to drag hay over the car or was there some camouflage tarpaulin lying about that I could use to disguise it? Laura would now be on some sort of mission for me, undertaking a reconnaissance of the area looking for the deserter. And when she found my car God only knows what she’d do with it. I could see her now, like a Terminator she wouldn’t stop until she had hunted me down and made me pay for not having fulfilled my duties as listed in the Sunday Emergency Rota 1.
“Don’t worry about it,” Gwyn said, laughing rather unkindly, when I told him what I wanted to do, “your friend won’t come looking for your car.”
“She’s not my friend. And she will. She’ll hunt me down! She’ll hunt me down and then she’ll exact some sort of revenge on me for not helping to clean up at the Hen House. You don’t know her. She’s in the TA. She scares me.”
&
nbsp; “Rachel, calm down, you’re being ridiculous. She won’t come looking for the car or for you.”
“Please can we put some hay over it?”
“No!”
“Just a bit?”
“No,” he laughed, “but if you’re that bothered about it why don’t you park it in the barn and I’ll close the barn doors?”
“Can you lock the barn doors?”
“For goodness sake!”
“Territorial Army…”
“Is this the girl I met in the pub the other night? The one with the very short hair?”
“Yes. That’s Laura.”
“She doesn’t look scary to me.”
“Which barn is it?” I said, deciding to distract him, as I just wasn’t going to convince him about Laura’s inevitable settling of scores. I parked the car in a vast empty barn and pulled the doors to, Gwyn slotting a bolt through the latch and looking at me, amused. I shrugged my shoulders. He would never understand.
“Are you ready now? Shall we go?”
When we arrived at Tomos’ farm, Gwyn drove round the back of the yard and reversed until he was tight up against a knackered old shed.
“Shouldn’t you leave some room behind the Land Rover to attach the trailer?” I asked, unclipping my belt and opening the door.
“This is the trailer.”
I slammed the door shut. “No. Seriously?”
“Yes, of course. What did you expect?”
Something roadworthy? Something at least remotely capable of holding a wild animal? This wheeled shed had to be the oldest most decrepit trailer I had ever seen. Did they make trailers in the sixteenth century? It certainly looked that old, and was battered and banged with deep dents along the left side and a gap along the right side. The thing was an antique.
Suddenly I had a bad feeling about the whole escapade. Suddenly it didn’t look like such a good idea any more containing a highly vicious animal in an Elizabethan casket on wheels.
“It’ll be fine, Rachel.” Gwyn opened his door and got out before coming round to my side and opening my door. “It’s sturdier than it looks.”
“Morning, young Gwynfor. Morning, English girl.” Tomos appeared from around the corner with Old Shep limping alongside him. I took a good look at the old farmer after the revelations of last night. Was he really such a lover of women? He must be in his late seventies, if not his early eighties. Grey wispy hair, tanned and weather-beaten face. Handsome? Maybe at a stretch. A long stretch. There was something of the very aged Sean Connery about him I suppose. If you squinted.
“Yes, it is bright, isn’t it?” Tomos looked at me. “Lovely sunny day. I’ve got some old sunglasses if you want to borrow them for your journey.”
“Oh. No thanks.”
“Is she all ready to go?” Gwyn asked, patting the trailer. I jumped back, expecting it to collapse into matchsticks at any second.
“Yep. She’s had some more food and water in there this morning and she’s as quiet as a little mouse. You won’t have any trouble with … her…” He sucked his lips and turned away from us.
“Now, Tomos, don’t you worry about her. She’ll be fine.” Gwyn laid a reassuring hand on the old farmer’s shoulders.
Tomos nodded and walked round to the trailer, eyes averted from us. “Better help you fix it on then,” he said in a small tremulous voice.
I stood around watching, stroking Shep who had come for some attention. His left ear was badly mangled, presumably from the cat attack. He seemed remarkably calm considering the animal that recently attacked him was a few feet away. Or maybe when you get as old as Old Shep then nothing really bothers you too much any more.
A couple of minutes later and the trailer was as secure as a knackered old trailer could be.
“Cup of tea?” Tomos offered.
“No, we’d better be off,” Gwyn said.
There was a pause.
“You know maybe…”
“No, Tomos. We’re doing the best thing for her.” Gwyn got into the driver’s seat.
Tomos nodded. “Right you are. Right you are. Well, goodbye, Rachel.” He held out his hand and I shook it. “Are you sure there’s no Welsh blood in you? You seem a nice girl.”
“No. None. Although I’m a quarter Scottish on my father’s side, I’ve been told.”
Tomos frowned. “Best keep that to yourself then. The Scots are as bad as the English. No, I’m convinced there’s a Welsh past to you.” He patted me on the back and leaning forward he said in a quieter voice, “Now, you look after young Gwynfor, won’t you? He needs a good woman does Gwynfor. Someone to look after him. Feed him up a bit. He’s looking thin. Anyway, no doubt I’ll be seeing you around here again very soon.”
I didn’t know what to say. So I nodded and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t worry about the cat. We’ll see she gets to her new home safely.”
We pulled away and drove off leaving Tomos behind, watching us go. He raised his hand in a wave and just as we made to turn into the corner and disappear from view, he pulled out a large handkerchief from his coat pocket, blew his nose and wiped his eyes.
32
“How long will it take us to reach our destination?” I asked, and then added, “actually, where is our destination?”
“It’ll probably take around three hours to get there, given the speed we can go at with this trailer in tow. And we’re heading to an area north-west of Newtown. Do you know around there at all?”
“Not so much.”
“Montgomery?”
“No,” I said again, rather embarrassed at my poor geography. Were these big cities? Should I know where they were?
Gwyn searched his brain for somewhere I might have heard of. “What about Birmingham?”
“Yes, Yes! I’ve heard of Birmingham.”
“OK, well, you go west of Birmingham and keep going west until you hit the Cambrian mountains.”
“Oh, OK,” I said. How was that supposed to help me work out where we were going?
I was about to say something, but as we turned the corner and reached the brow of the hill Gwyn slammed on the brakes and the trailer groaned ominously behind us.
“What?”
There were people everywhere. Milling in the streets, sitting on the walls, crammed into the tiny post office, the convenience store and the pub. The laid-back locals were jostling with suited media men and the armed police, all of them talking, shouting and gesticulating to each other, trying to get themselves heard over the commotion. There was a man with a News Cymru jacket who was interviewing two old men beside the bridge and over by the pub a man with a microphone branded with the BBC logo was talking to Angharad.
“What are we going to do?” I looked despairingly at Gwyn. There was no way through the crowds.
He bit his lip, thinking. “We can’t turn back now. The trailer would come unhitched if I tried to reverse and besides, we haven’t room to manoeuvre. We’ll have to press on through the people here. We have to go through the village, there’s no other route that the trailer could take.”
“But what if the puma starts yowling in the back?”
Gwyn started to inch the Land Rover forward towards the crowds. “Best get her out of here, then.”
I wound down my window as we made our way slowly down the main street, sticking my head out to get the breeze; it was hot in the cab. Two old men were talking to a policeman.
“I saw it the other day.”
“Well I saw it twice last week.”
Meanwhile the man from the BBC was asking Angharad, “So if you knew it was here all along, why did you tolerate it?”
“You know –” I settled back into my seat – “it’s actually quite funny when you think about it.”
Gwyn looked round at me briefly before focusing back on the road. “Why is it funny?”
“All these people are here because of the puma and not one of them knows that it’s right here in the middle of them! Come on, you must admit that it’s rathe
r funny how tantalisingly close they all are to her.”
“I suppose so,” he acknowledged, easing the vehicle into first gear again and edging towards the mass of people in the road, who one by one started to make way for us to pass. “I just hope to God that she doesn’t give us away. There would be hell to pay if we were found with her.”
“Oh I forgot to tell you!” I turned to face him but he was concentrating fully on the road, his black brows knotted in a frown of concentration. “One of those guys we saw at the party last night met the puma face to face!”
“Really? That explains all this sudden interest then.”
“He wasn’t hurt or anything. Actually, it was the guy that we saw throw up and collapse in front of the house. He passed out and apparently when he regained consciousness the puma was standing right over him.”
“Oh him.” Gwyn momentarily ground to a halt as an old man inched his way across the road. “She’s a tame little thing, isn’t she?”
I slapped my hand over my mouth.
Oh!
Oh my God!
“What is it?” Gwyn looked over at me, suddenly worried. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” My mind was working furiously. “It’s just that – we both saw the guy walk out of the Hen House and collapse last night, didn’t we?”
“Ye-es,” Gwyn said, turning back to navigate through the people around us.
“But by the time we got back to the Hen House and saw that happen…”
“…We’d already captured the cat!” Gwyn finished the sentence off for me.
“Oh my God!”
Gwyn started to laugh a hearty laugh.
“But does that mean there’s more than one of them?” I asked.
He nodded, still laughing.
“And do you think Tomos knows that?”
“What do you think?”
“Well, shouldn’t we be trying to catch the other one too?”
“One at a time, maybe,” he said, looking over at me and grinning. “We could do one each weekend. You’re not busy next weekend, are you?”
