by A J Waines
‘Stuart,’ he said, swinging the cap off his head and bending forward into a ludicrous bow. ‘Stuart Wishart at your service, Madam.’
I laughed. ‘I’m Alice Flemming.’ We shook hands in an awkward fashion. I noticed his eyes lingering on my face and then felt my cheeks heat up from the inside.
He put his cap back on and adjusted it, then zipped up his jacket, clipping the poppers into place.
‘Well – I’ll leave you to rest. Have you got painkillers?’
‘Yes – thank you.’
‘Right then…’ He slapped his pockets, seeming reluctant to go.
‘You’ll come back, won’t you?’ I said, craning my neck as he moved away. ‘I feel like I haven’t thanked you properly at all.’
‘Sure.’ He sent me a glowing smile that made me feel like I’d been kissed – and left.
‘What happened to you?’ said Mark, creeping towards me shortly afterwards, as though afraid he might catch something. He was holding his mobile.
‘Hurt my ankle – that’s all. I’m fine.’
‘You need a stiff brandy. Have we got any?’
‘No, I don’t and no, we haven’t,’ I said playfully.
‘Are you able to get a signal on your phone?’ he asked, serious for once. His phone had been glued to his hand since he arrived.
‘You have to go down the track to get any reception. Even then, if the weather’s bad, it doesn’t work. I’ve tried to ring home, but I haven’t been able to reach them yet.’
‘Bloody nuisance,’ he said.
I heard the putter of Karen’s car and Mark helped me to my feet. She came in with Melanie asleep in her arms. ‘False alarm,’ she whispered.
‘Thank God,’ I whispered back, squeezing Karen’s arm.
Melanie gurgled and Karen took her straight upstairs. ‘Freezing out there…’
Karen settled Melanie in the cot and joined us by the fire. ‘She’s had another thorough check over and it turns out she’s got a slight throat infection, but it’s nothing serious.’ She sank back into the cushion that had erupted earlier. ‘I’m knackered – waiting around in hospital is such a trial.’
I moved over to sit beside her and she noticed my limp.
‘It’s nothing – just slipped in the snow,’ I said.
She looked at her hands, as if trying to figure out what to say next and, for a second, I had an edgy feeling that she was playing a character on stage and that none of this was real.
She rubbed my back and I made the thought go away.
Mark cracked open a can of lager and pushed a Pink CD into the player. He put his feet up on the rocking chair, his trainers dripping pools of slush from standing on the back step to smoke his latest cigarette. I reached over to turn the music down. ‘Melanie’s asleep,’ I said.
Karen barely seemed to register; she was resting her elbow on the arm of the sofa, watching the fire.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he grunted. I hobbled over to the pile of newspaper by the hearth, beckoned to him to lift up his trainers and slipped a sheet underneath to soak up the mess. ‘You’ve turned into a proper bossy boots,’ he said sniggering, but nevertheless he leant forward to unlace them and left them on the tiles.
‘I’ll make some tea,’ I said, as Karen went upstairs again. As I brought in the pot, Mark looked like he’d fallen asleep. Echoey voices came through the monitor on the sideboard.
‘…I know – you were a long time at the hospital,’ said Jodie. She must have met Karen on the stairs. I heard a door closing, then Karen spoke.
‘I’m going to be such a paranoid mother.’
‘Of course you are. That’s only natural. But it’s a good thing. It’ll make you extra careful with her so you don’t put her at risk.’
‘Is her breathing regular do you think? I can’t tell anymore.’
Silence. ‘It sounds okay to me. Let’s just leave her be.’
I could hardly believe Jodie was uttering such wise words for a change. When Mark wasn’t with her she seemed to be a nicer person.
Chapter 12
It’s all moving so fast. Can hardly believe it. I’m still desperately nervous about it all. I have to keep going over what I need to do to see if I’ve left anything out and make sure I don’t make any mistakes.
Alice is her usual clumsy self – she took a tumble in the snow, but she seems fine. I’m relying on her loyalty to hold everything together. She was never one to break rank and I’m hoping she’s still under my spell – enough to stick by me if there’s any trouble. I need her to vouch for me when the time comes.
Dear Alice has always had illusions about our relationship. Felt sorry for her back then – did what I could to help her out, but never thought of her as a friend. It was more like looking after an injured animal; you have to take it in, you can’t leave it by the roadside. Of course, I’d never tell her that – it would break her heart.
When I think back to those early days and how gooey and grateful Alice was, I feel a bit crap actually. But my ‘affection’ for her wasn’t entirely phoney. My sisterly instinct kept kicking in; she was so lost and helpless, but my main motive was to make sure she did what we wanted.
No one else I know would have worked as well in this current situation – my real friends are too smart. That’s why Jodie and Mark are good, too – they’re too self-obsessed to see what’s really going on. We all have our parts to play.
Chapter 13
We’d settled into a routine by now, where I was the one who did most of the cooking, which didn’t seem quite fair under the circumstances. I’d agreed to it when there were only two of us; now there were four. So, I drew up a three-day rota with Mark and Jodie’s names on it and Blu-tacked it to the fridge. I waited for a big showdown, but the backlash from Jodie and Mark was minimal.
‘I see you’re taking it in turns,’ Karen said to me, later, when I began preparing the veg for that night’s chicken risotto. ‘I hope that’s going to work.’ Her tone was clipped and she made me feel like I was the hired help. She must have been overtired. I looked the part, standing at the kitchen sink with my rubber gloves on and my hair scraped back. It seemed like any chance of sharing any special time together was rapidly evaporating.
Without warning, my blinding headache was back, like a thick metal band squeezing my temples and I reached into my pocket for another painkiller.
After supper, I bumped into Mark at the bottom of the stairs, putting his jacket on as I came down from the bathroom.
‘We’re going to the pub,’ he said. ‘That wailing kid is doing my head in. You can come if you like. Karen said we can use her car.’
‘Thanks – but I need a cocoa more than anything.’
Jodie flapped her mittened hand at me by way of a goodbye, and they disappeared into the night.
I checked the fire was safely dying, made two hot chocolates and took them upstairs.
Karen was lifting a bawling Melanie out of her cot in the half-light as I eased open the door. ‘Can you pop into their room upstairs and bring another towel down from the linen cupboard? One of the soft white ones? She’s just been sick.’
‘Go into their room?’ I asked. ‘Shouldn’t we—?’ I glanced downstairs. I’d already heard the car leave.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘They know I need access – they’re fine with it. It’s the thin white cupboard in the far corner.’
I felt highly uncomfortable invading Jodie and Mark’s private space. When I pushed open the door, the room was a shambles. How could they have made that much mess in such a short amount of time? Clothes were plastered over the bed, shoes littered across the floor and there were open jars of potions and creams left out on the dressing table, the chair, the window ledge.
I snapped open the cupboard in the corner and scanned the shelves. There were sheets and pillowcases near the bottom, a squashed up counterpane, spare pillows, and at the top, under a canvas sports bag, the spare towels. I tried to drag one out without dislodging the ba
g, but it came down too, landing with a thud at my feet. There was a ripping sound as it fell and I stopped to inspect it, concerned I’d damaged it. I discovered it was only the zip that had made a sound – it had opened at one side and the contents were spilling out.
There were CDs, a tatty paperback, aerosol cans. Then I took a sharp breath and stood back.
Poking out at the bottom was a wad of fifty-pound notes.
Chapter 14
I’d rarely seen a fifty-pound note before and gave the bundle a closer inspection, tracing the silver line inside the top two. Curiosity got the better of me and in one swift yank I whizzed the zip open along its full length and took a good look inside. Salmon-coloured fifty-pound notes – a lot of them. Five batches, maybe forty notes to each one, held together with elastic bands. I worked it out in my head. Crikey – that was a heck of a lot of money – ten thousand pounds! Surely not. What the hell was anyone doing carrying that amount of cash around in a holdall?
I closed the bag and flung it back over the towels on the top shelf, backing out of the room. I held the towel I’d taken comfortingly against my face.
I tapped on Karen’s door and she called to me. ‘Can you leave it in the bathroom, Alice?’
‘Sure…need a hand?’
‘No, I’m fine. Don’t worry.’
I draped the towel over the edge of the bath and left the mug by the sink so she’d see it. Melanie was wailing now and I could hear Karen trying to sooth her. ‘It’s okay, sweetheart – we just need to get you cleaned up a bit.’
I didn’t relish Karen’s task of re-establishing the bond between them after so many interruptions. I sat on my bed with the door open and drank my cocoa, waiting for her to finish so I could tell her what I’d found.
Karen eventually appeared in the doorway with a sleepy Melanie tucked into her breast. Karen seemed fraught, her sleeves rolled up, barely looking at me.
‘Thanks for the drink. I’m shattered. G’night.’
I beckoned her inside, but I was too late. She’d gone.
Chapter 15
The front door knocker rapped just as I was thinking of having an early night. The others wouldn’t be back this soon. I answered it. A firework ignited inside my chest. It was Stuart.
‘Hello again…’ I said. I thought he was just being polite earlier, when he said he’d come back; I didn’t expect to see him again.
‘I wondered how the patient was getting on.’
I waved him into the warm. ‘I didn’t even come down with pneumonia,’ I said. ‘But, I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t turned up when you did.’ He followed me into the kitchen. ‘Thank you again, for getting me back here safely.’ I held up a mug in one hand and an empty wine glass in the other. ‘Which one?’
‘Actually – I came over to see if you fancied the local pub,’ he said.
There was a tiny flash between us. ‘I’d love to.’ The blanket of tiredness that had been wrapped tightly around me slid to the floor.
Stuart looked pleased with himself. I scribbled a note and left it under the sugar bowl on the kitchen table.
A khaki Land Rover was parked where Karen’s 2CV had been. It looked like an old army-style model with thick tread on the tyres and a spare wheel clipped onto the bonnet. We bundled inside and chugged down the track, onto the lane. It was a bumpy ride, the clanks and thuds made it noisy, but made me laugh, too. It was like being thrown around on the mechanical bull at the funfair. I was glad of the seatbelt.
The Cart and Horses was surprisingly busy. There must have been dozens of landowners, farmers and holidaymakers from little hamlets, tucked away from the main roads. This wasn’t simply a rustic country pub; it looked as though it acted as a kind of community centre. There was a group of men in tweed caps playing chess, another playing Trivial Pursuit and a game of darts was well underway at the far side. Best of all, it had a raging log fire. I expected to see Mark and Jodie, but they must have gone somewhere else.
I was going to stick to apple juice because of all the painkillers I’d had during the day – then thought what the hell – and chose a brandy instead. Stuart had the same and we swilled the drinks around in our glasses in unison. We had the whole cavernous hearth to ourselves, so I took off my boots and put my feet up on a padded stool. No one batted an eyelid.
I felt a shiver of emancipation. No one knew me here; I was just another tourist-stranger. I could even afford to reinvent myself a little – try out a bolder Alice; one who wasn’t frightened to close her eyes at night for fear of reliving the trauma she’d been through in September.
‘It’s my birthday, tomorrow,’ I announced.
‘Ah – so that’s why you’re on holiday at this time of year. Doing anything special?’
‘Very low key, I think,’ I said. I was anticipating the contrary, but didn’t want to get my hopes up. Karen wouldn’t make a point of highlighting my birthday then forget all about it, would she? I swiftly shunted the conversation on to other subjects. ‘So what brought you to this particular area? Do you know people here? Have you been here before?’
‘No,’ he said simply. ‘I came across it browsing online. I wanted somewhere remote and quiet – mainly to try birdwatching.’ I didn’t tell him about my mother’s interest in wild birds; I didn’t want to bring my parents into the discussion, just in case I let slip that I hadn’t yet left home.
Stuart asked what I did for a living. I skipped the bit about being an administrator. ‘I’m starting a teacher-training course soon.’
‘Ah.’ He looked pleased. ‘I’m in teaching too.’
He told me he lived on his own in a crescent of Georgian houses near Edinburgh railway station and worked at the University as a lecturer in Classics and Archaeology.
‘It’s revision week for students right now, followed by exam week, so I’ve been able to sneak away. I usually spend this period with my brother or take off somewhere warm, but I fancied a change.’
He was probably in his forties and dressed like a TV ‘lord of the manor’, but he was affable and charming. More to the point, he was disarming. It made me realise that even though we were all getting on at the cottage, I found myself walking on eggshells a lot of the time, partly because Melanie wasn’t yet stable, but also because Mark was so changeable. It was a relief to let my guard down a little.
As we spoke, I began to sense something else; I could only describe it as an aura of sadness around him. It came from the lines around his eyes, the way his mouth flickered into a smile and then died quickly. From time to time I caught him looking into the distance, squinting, as if he was looking for someone.
‘How long are you staying for?’ he asked. I’d told him this already, I noted, when he’d found me in the snow.
‘Until a week on Saturday at the latest.’
I took it as a good sign that he was keen to confirm how long I’d be around for.
‘Well, then – if you’re stuck for things to do, we can always team up together and go for walks.’ He stopped himself. ‘That’s if – you know – you haven’t already made plans with your friends or—’
‘No…thank you. I’d like that. I’ve brought my camera and was hoping to take plenty of pictures. I’m not very good – but I do love trying to capture a moment, an atmosphere.’
‘You’ve come to the right spot.’
A few feet away, a man tripped over someone’s rucksack and my mind flitted back to the money I’d found in the holdall. Stuart seemed like someone I could trust, but it felt like an odd thing to bring into the conversation when we’d only just met.
Stuart asked me whether I went to art exhibitions in London and we chatted about an odd combination of subjects: the O2 arena, escalators, crinkle-cut crisps, the pros and cons of electric blankets. By then it was getting late and we stood to go.
As I got up I spotted a local paper folded over on the table behind us. There was a photograph of a man staring out at me. He’d been arrested for shoplifting and was
wearing a hoodie. The same kind of hoodie that had plagued my nightmares. He looked older and broader than the man at the centre of that dreadful day, but I knew in an instant that I hadn’t beaten back the demons he’d left me with. They were still alive and kicking under the surface, waiting to climb out and terrorise me when I was least expecting it.
*
Three months earlier
It had been raining. Mum had sent me over to East Street Market to buy net curtain material and I was minding my own business, heading back to the bus stop when I saw what I thought was someone in pain down an alleyway. I thought he was hurt, doubled over next to two industrial-sized wheelie bins, clutching his stomach.
I called out to him; I couldn’t see his face. I thought perhaps he’d been mugged or a gang had beaten him up. Then I thought perhaps he’d been stabbed. I should have alerted other people; I should never have drifted down there on my own.
He didn’t seem to see me when I got closer, he was still holding his stomach and moaning. I tapped him gently on his shoulder and asked if he was okay. Then it all happened so quickly. One moment he was bent double, the next my umbrella went flying and he dragged me behind the bins, his arm was around my neck. He’d tricked me.
I’d been partly right; there was a knife, but it was in his grip at my neck. I could feel the point of it pressing against my skin as he pulled me further back into the shadows – we were invisible from the street. He told me in a deliberately rough voice to hand over my purse. I dropped my bag trying to do as he said and at that moment a dog came trotting into the alley.
I’ve asked myself the same question over and over since it happened. What if the dog hadn’t come along at that precise moment? What if my attacker hadn’t freaked out, thinking the owner was right behind it?
He spotted the dog, grabbed my purse and bolted.
