The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Thanks, Mrs Merry.’ Grudgingly, Steven Lawson clipped the borrowed lead to the terrier’s collar.

  ‘Thank you for saving my life, Mrs Merry,’ Megan announced.

  ‘Megan don’t be silly—’ Steven began.

  ‘I didn’t save your life, but your father did save Mrs Honeysett’s dog so I hope Mrs H is grateful. Careless to run off and leave it. In another few minutes it would have drowned.’ With this, Daphne Merry went off along the towpath. Steven Lawson took Smudge’s makeshift lead from Megan and led both dogs towards a pool of lamplight up ahead.

  The lamp-post lit a flight of worn stone steps that led to a narrow pavement of flagstones in front of the five cottages. Opposite, a little park was enclosed by a high privet hedge. The first cottage, closest to the towpath, was in darkness. The windows in the second house, upstairs and down, were lit. This was home to Steven and Bette Lawson and their two children.

  ‘You go in, I’ll take her dog back.’ Steven Lawson sounded weary.

  ‘I’m coming too.’ Megan let the Labrador into a small plot with a path lined with plastic pots in which weeds had died. She shut the gate and caught up with Steven Lawson as he was ringing the doorbell of number 4 Thames Cottages where the Honeysetts lived.

  Megan hoped that Helen Honeysett’s handsome husband was in too. She planned to impress them both with her dad’s bravery.

  The front door opened and light flooded the path. The dog scampered into the house.

  ‘Baxter old man, you’re disgusting! Bath for you, methinks!’ A man dressed in a baggy green shirt tucked into chinos and no socks continued munching a stick of KitKat.

  ‘Baxter ran away. My daddy—’

  ‘How often have I said to her, “Do not lose him.” My wife’s mind is a sieve!’

  ‘It could happen to anyone, especially while jogging,’ Steven Lawson said.

  ‘Nice of you to defend her, er…’ Honeysett nodded at Steven.

  ‘Steve.’ Steven Lawson didn’t remind Honeysett that the night before at his house-warming party, he’d been his ‘best buddy ever’.

  ‘My daddy rescued Baxter from drown—’

  ‘Thanks for scooting him round!’ Adam Honeysett was closing the door when Helen Honeysett appeared. In a silk kimono decorated in swirling gold and red, her hair in a towel turban, she bent to pet Baxter, who was weaving around her legs, dirtying the silk. Megan caught a glimpse of her cleavage. She glanced at her dad, and saw he had seen it too.

  ‘Steve, you saved Baxter!’ Helen Honeysett came out on to the path and kissed Steven Lawson’s cheek. Sashaying away down the hall, she began to sing, ‘Every Time You Go Away’.

  The door shut. Steven and Megan Lawson were plunged into darkness.

  5

  Monday, 4 January 2016

  Barking echoed around the auditorium. Stella shrank into her jacket; she would warm up if, like everyone else, she were chasing about the equine centre, but Suzie insisted on ‘working’ with Stanley. Stella didn’t mind, except that it gave the impression she was prepared to let her elderly mother run around the jumps and tunnels while she lounged on a chair.

  Stanley, Stella’s poodle of indeterminate age, had been attending agility classes for about a year. Occasionally, when he wasn’t driving a train or with Bella, Jack had come, but when her mum returned from staying with Stella’s brother Dale in Sydney she had insisted on accompanying her. Although it complicated the expedition – Stella had to collect Suzie and return her to her flat in Barons Court – Stella liked these evenings. They started with a takeaway pizza which they ate in the van outside the equine centre. Stella had supposed her mum would enjoy seeing Stanley dash over the sand, leaping over jumps, trotting along a plank called ‘the dog-walk’ and shooting through a polythene tunnel, but on her second visit, Suzie had wanted to take Stanley around the course. With her, he did everything perfectly, prancing along the seesaw that up until then he had ‘refused’ and weaving through a series of poles without touching them. At the agility Christmas party Stanley had won first prize for the dog who had learnt the most. His yellow rosette was fixed to Suzie’s computer monitor in the office.

  Every week, driving to the centre near Wormwood Scrubs, where her dad had grown up, Suzie Darnell would grouse about the man she had left when Stella was seven. Terry Darnell was her ‘wrong turning’. His death hadn’t lessened this dissatisfaction, if anything it had become worse – Terry might have annoyed her mum only yesterday.

  As Suzie whooshed around the expanse – which smelled of horse piss and damp sand – with the agility of a forty-year-old, Stella reran Suzie’s old gripe.

  ‘We met at the Hammersmith Palais. He was the best dancer – that man could twist for England. After we married, it was all work work work.’

  Suzie was taking few turnings now. She was no longer running about; as if directing traffic, she stood in the middle of the arena signalling Stanley over jumps, through the tunnel and a suspended hoop. If there was a rosette for dog handlers, her mum would win it, Stella thought as she watched Stanley perfect a flawless English Finish (circling her mum’s legs and finishing in a sitting pose facing her).

  That evening, munching on a slice of Margarita, Suzie hadn’t mentioned Terry. She had devoted herself to instructing Stella how it was about time she settled down. ‘You set your sights too high.’

  ‘You think I should make do?’ Stella had been surprised: Suzie never compromised. Jack reckoned that Suzie’s wrong turning was the day that she signed divorce papers and that Terry had been the love of her life. Stella conceded that there had been no one since and Suzie did talk about him a lot.

  Whatever the truth, watching the Darnells’ marriage fall apart had put their daughter off commitment; Stella was inclined to view any relationship as a wrong turning.

  ‘Mr Right could be under your nose but, blinded by pre­conceptions of what he should be like, you can’t see him.’ Suzie extracted an olive from her pizza and snapped it between her teeth. ‘Your biological clock is ticking.’

  ‘The clock has stopped, Mum. I’m nearly fifty. Too old for children.’

  ‘One is never too old. More women than ever are having kids in their fifties,’ Suzie had told her.

  Stella had begun to wish her mum would grouse about Terry and, to put her off, told her about the supposed ghost. It was a desperate move, but Suzie maintained the customer database so would find out soon enough. Suzie had embraced Stella’s decision to open a detective agency, but ‘ghostbusting’ might test her tolerance.

  ‘Those deep basements undermine the foundations,’ Suzie had retorted. ‘I’ve read about them: some go down more than one floor. Crazy.’ Taking on what Stella had said, she asked, ‘Why would this ghost be that estate agent? Why would she haunt Latimer’s basement when she lived a couple of doors along?’ She peeled the last slice of pizza out of the box and took a generous bite.

  ‘Natasha Latimer doesn’t believe it’s Helen Honeysett’s ghost. That’s her sister Claudia. Latimer is worried it’ll put off buyers. She bought to sell at a profit.’

  ‘Sisters! I’d have advised you to steer clear. As for the ghost, I bet it makes it worth more. There’ll be plenty of murder tourists who’ll snatch at the chance to potter about the house with a murdered estate agent. Mind you, the police never found her body; she might not be dead.’

  ‘Latimer wants a live-in housekeeper. Jack’s agreed.’ Any minute, her mum would grasp the significance of this. As Jackie had said, Jack could not be in two places at once.

  ‘If there’s a ghost, Jack will root it out,’ Suzie reasoned com­placently. ‘Is there a deadline?’ She flashed a smirk at the pun.

  ‘I gave them a fortnight.’

  ‘Is that a typical period for expelling ghosts?’

  ‘It’s all the leave Jack can take from the Underground.’

  ‘Where is Helen Honeysett’s ghost supposed to go after you cleanse the house of her?’ Suzie appeared to have accepted the ghost’s exist
ence. ‘Have you an exit strategy?’ She scrubbed her hands with one of the damp flannels she always brought along.

  ‘No.’ A detailed planner, Stella was appalled by this realization. Latimer might well use that as an excuse not to pay. Ghost or not, she shouldn’t have accepted the brief.

  Her mulling was interrupted by hectic barking. Across the arena Stanley was leaping around someone sprawled by the seesaw.

  ‘Mum!’ Soft sand hampered her progress and by the time Stella reached her, Suzie had draped herself over the dog-walk. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘We need to go to hospital.’ Suzie was calm. ‘I’ve broken my ankle.’

  6

  Friday, 2 January 1987

  ‘Those china bits should go. You’ll have a clear surface and an uninterrupted view of your garden. Let’s do the Three Reasons test.’ Daphne Merry smiled at the elderly woman who was ner­vously fingering a porcelain rabbit, one of a crowd of rabbits dressed as bishops processing across the window sill.

  ‘They were my mother’s. She collected them right from when she was a girl.’ The woman dotted her hand over the bishops, their long ears poking up each side of their mitres. Megan, perched on a leather pouffe out of the way, pondered how she would not be allowed to throw anything out that belonged to her mum. It would never be clutter. She had promised not to speak so she couldn’t say she liked the rabbits – they had friendly faces.

  Megan had come with Mrs Merry to De-Clutter. She was overjoyed when the lady – Megan had to call her Mrs Crockett – asked if she was ‘Mrs Merry’s daughter’. She’d been confounded when Mrs Merry had said ‘certainly not’. Her spirits raised when Mrs Merry explained, ‘Megan is my assistant.’ Mrs Merry –Megan thought of her by her first name, ‘Daphne’ – was Megan’s best friend. She had moved next door when Megan was six and made up for Megan’s first best friend Keith, who’d lived there before, going to Australia. Her dad had put a gate in the fence so that Megan and Keith could call on each other without going out to the pavement. Now the gate was the way through to the magic world of De-Cluttering.

  ‘This is about your life, Norma dear. Can you give them back to your mother?’ Daphne Merry said you had to be friendly, but firm. Mrs Crockett was in her mid-eighties, the question had been rhetorical, but she answered in good faith, her hand hovering on a china dancing maiden picking up her voluminous skirts.

  ‘Mother is no longer with us.’ Mrs Crockett did a squawky laugh which Megan found dreadful. If her mum – or Daddy – were dead she would never laugh again.

  ‘I do understand that it’s dreadfully hard to part with knick-knacks, but this is about shedding other people’s baggage – your mother’s – which will fill you with light and air.’ Mrs Merry’s notebook was divided into two columns, ‘In’ and ‘Out’. There was nothing in ‘Out’. ‘Are these ornaments useful?’

  ‘Not really…’ Mrs Crockett picked up a clay figure of a bearded man bending over one of the rabbits. A label on him read ‘The Good Samaritan’. Megan’s class had read the bible story last year. She had got into trouble for saying her dad was a Good Samaritan because he mended taps and things for people and he had saved Baxter the dog. The Good Samaritan couldn’t be clutter.

  ‘Are they beautiful?’ Mrs Merry scowled at the Good Samaritan.

  ‘Not exactly, although Mother loved—’

  ‘They are not!’ Mrs Merry shook her head. ‘Do they make extra work for you, all that dusting?’

  ‘Oh, yes they do.’ Mrs Crocker seemed pleased to be able to agree wholeheartedly.

  ‘Fail! We need three out of three or it’s clutter. You think I’m brutal, but that’s why you called me in. Sometimes we need others to make these tough decisions.’ Mrs Merry gestured at one of the plastic removal crates she had brought. ‘Megan, time to declutter!’

  Megan snapped to, her sadness that the rabbits and all the other ornaments were clutter overtaken by delight in having a job. With tongue-biting care, she wrapped each piece in newspaper and placed them in a crate.

  ‘This cupboard has a few lovely items lost in a mêlée of nonsense. If you had three things per shelf – say that shepherd­ess, or just the vase and the jug – they’d have pride of place.’ Mrs Merry was scrutinizing a cluster of sundry ornaments through the glass-fronted door of a teak cabinet. ‘Were these your mother’s?’

  ‘They were her mother’s. My grandmother died before I was born, these help me to know her…’ Norma Crockett shook her head.

  ‘Out!’ Daphne Merry scribbled ‘Misc. figures, clerical and period’ in the right-hand column of her notebook.

  Mrs Crockett tipped her head to one side. ‘Those sweet little koala bears are mine.’

  Megan stifled the notion of taking the pottery pig and the fluffy bears on a trip around the cupboard. She was a De-Clutterer. She wasn’t there to play.

  ‘Remember, three good reasons why you should keep them.’ Mrs Merry underlined the word ‘Out’ in her notebook and stabbed at the page.

  ‘It’s like throwing away my mother.’ Mrs Crockett pulled a face at Megan. The girl couldn’t hide her horror at this idea.

  ‘Your mother has passed; she has no need of these.’ Daphne Merry pursed her lips. ‘When someone is dead they are beyond our protection.’

  She must be thinking about her dead little girl and husband. Megan tried to think of something to deflect her. ‘They are very sweet.’

  ‘If our ancestors had kept everything that belonged to their fore­bears, we’d be hemmed in. I’ve had clients who cannot move for stuff.’ Daphne Merry had told Megan the biggest stumbling block was persuading customers their treasured possessions were clutter.

  ‘If you keep one item of your mother’s on that shelf, once you’ve cleared all those books out, you will have light and air.’ Smiling at Mrs Crockett, Daphne Merry waited for this to sink in.

  Megan heard an Underground train pass underneath the house. The ornaments in the cabinet jiggled.

  ‘Could I keep the koalas?’ Mrs Crockett wheedled. Her voice was like a little girl’s, Megan thought.

  ‘It’s up to you,’ Daphne Merry replied pleasantly, then arched her eyebrows. ‘Three reasons. One…?’

  Megan imitated Mrs Merry cupping a hand under her chin, her other arm folded across her chest.

  ‘It stupid, but they’re sort of… well, they’re my friends. I’ve had them since I was eight. Yes, you are right, they are sweet.’ Mrs Crockett looked to Megan for support. But Megan, a would-be devout De-Clutterer, met her with a steely gaze.

  ‘Once you make exceptions...’ Daphne Merry warned.

  ‘You’re right!’ Mrs Crockett rounded on Megan. ‘Would you like my bears? I bet you’d give them a good home.’

  ‘Yes, I—’

  ‘We don’t keep clutter disposed of by clients.’ Mrs Merry was peremptory.

  Megan looked wistfully at the koalas.

  ‘I want light and air!’ Mrs Crockett gasped.

  *

  Megan was saying goodbye to Mrs Merry at the garden gate when her mum called across from the kitchen doorstep, ‘There you are! Daddy’s been down the river looking for you.’

  ‘Megan was with me, Mrs Lawson.’ Mrs Merry stepped into the Lawsons’ back garden and, frowning down at Megan, said, ‘I assumed she told you.’

  ‘I told Garry,’ Megan muttered, scuffling her fringed suede boots on the grass.

  ‘Telling your brother is like telling the wind, you know that, Megs,’ Bette Lawson said.

  Mrs Merry said, ‘Megan’s been a great help this afternoon.’

  ‘Has she?’ Bette Lawson sounded sceptical. ‘Megsy love, go and wash your hands and next time, ask me before you wander off.’

  ‘It wasn’t Mrs Merry’s fault,’ Megan told Bette Lawson when they were in the kitchen.

  ‘She should have checked with me. Of all people she should know we have to know what our kids are up to.’

  ‘Why of all people?

  ‘Cos her kid died in a car crash.�
� Garry wiped tomato sauce off his chin with his sleeve.

  ‘Garry!’ Bette Lawson made a shooing motion as she put a plate of beans on toast on the table for her daughter. ‘Hands. Wash. Now!’

  Drying her hands on a scratchy towel, Megan decided it didn’t matter about the koalas. When you were a De-Cluttering Expert all that mattered was light and air.

  7

  Monday, 4 January 2016

  Stella used Google Maps on her phone to find Thames Cottages. With the audio muted, Stanley snuffling at her side, the blue line on the map took her down an alley off Kew Green, left, then right. Thames Cottages was a terrace of five houses – she was outside number 5 – set back from narrow front gardens. The app showed the Thames at right angles to the steps at the end of the pavement as a cheery lighter blue ribbon as if it was the seaside. The towpath ran to the left and the right of the little street.

  Late at night was hardly the best time to scout out Natasha Latimer’s ‘haunted house’, but after a long wait in Accident and Emergency – Suzie’s ankle was badly sprained – Stella needed to clear her head. She would scope the ghost-hunting escapade – her mum’s term – from the outside.

  St Anne’s Church clock struck eleven forty-five. The chimes, floating on the cold air, seemed to come from all around. The cottages, essentially one building subdivided, were in darkness, chimneys black against the orange-mauve sky. Stella had relied on the occupants being asleep; she hoped to go unnoticed.

  Keeping Stanley close, she trod softly to a lamp-post at the top of the steps. Natasha Latimer had said her ‘property’ was nearest to the river.

  Latimer had decamped to a flat she owned in central London – Stella had gathered the impression that Latimer owned several properties – until ‘you’ve done the business’. A gust of wind swished through a hedge on her left. The map showed a park. Stella felt a frisson of unease. At night with only Stanley for company, she couldn’t so easily dismiss the possibility of ghosts.