Outside, the weather had turned gloomy as if reflecting her mood. The clouds had rolled in over Dandelion Close and the colour had drained out of the neat, square garden that her mother lovingly maintained. A single gnome stood near the gate, jerking its arms and humming, “Heigh–ho, heigh–ho…” she had always thought it adorable, but now she hated it. Why had her father ever dreamed up the stupid thing? Why couldn’t he have started a business that actually worked?
During the course of the day, the bids climbed rapidly. By tea-time, Jennifer was worth £4,500 – which is what Ethan Kyte and his witches were prepared to pay to summon up the devil. Nobody else was interested. Jennifer was thinking of packing her bags and running away. She had nowhere to go and the police would probably find her and bring her back, but she had to do something! Maybe she could make it to the south coast. She could stow away on a ferry bound for France…
And then, just after six o’clock, a fourth bidder appeared.
The bid was £4,600 and the customer profile read talltreesEastcott. With a sense of excitement, Jennifer returned to Google. This one wasn’t hard to track down. Eastcott was a village in Wiltshire, and Tall Trees had its own website.
Her heart leapt. An image had appeared on the screen of a beautiful country house in its own grounds. There were two people standing in front of it. They could have been anybody’s grandparents, white-haired and smiling. Underneath them stretched a yellow ribbon and written on it in flowing letters were the words Orphanage in the English countryside.
There was just one paragraph of text, but it told Jennifer everything she wanted to know.
“After travelling around the world, Gerald and Samantha Pettigrew founded the Tall Trees Orphanage in 2001 with funds raised from private charities. They aim to provide a healthy, natural environment for orphans who might otherwise be exploited or even killed, taking in babies and young adults and caring for them on their extensive estate. Gerald and Samantha were both awarded the OBE in 2003 and have written extensively on matters relating to their work.”
Jennifer felt a flood of relief. She wasn’t an orphan – at least, not in the strictest sense of the word – but she was certainly being exploited and in danger of being killed. Quickly, she pulled up some pictures of Eastcott. Although it wasn’t the prettiest of villages, it was situated in glorious countryside, right on the edge of Salisbury Plain. It had a village green and a handful of shops. Jennifer could already imagine herself growing up there. There would be other orphans. She would make new friends. And in time she would forget all about Watford and her parents.
But would the Pettigrews bid enough to save her? The auction was due to end on Sunday night at ten o’clock. It was now almost seven o’clock on Saturday and they were only one hundred pounds ahead of the competition. The bidding didn’t change again, and at nine o’clock Jennifer was sent to bed. Her mother, still clutching a tissue, read her a bedtime story, but her eyes never left the book and when she kissed her daughter, she avoided her eyes. Jane Bailey was ashamed of herself. And, Jennifer thought, she had every reason to be.
Jennifer hardly slept at all that night. Once, at one in the morning, she got up and rebooted the computer; it only confirmed her worst fears. Dr MacNeil, the man who wanted to cut her up for medical experiments, was back in the lead at £5,000. The Pettigrews hadn’t returned to the auction and Jennifer was certain they had forgotten her.
The next morning, at first light, she returned to the screen but nothing had changed. It was Sunday, her parents went to church as usual but Jennifer stayed behind, pretending she had flu. All day, she sat at her computer and watched as Dr MacNeil, Ethan Kyte and Sawney Bean fought over her. By the evening, it looked as if her future lay in haute cuisine … the London restaurant had raised the bidding to £7,500. At least the coven of witches had dropped out. After their £4,500 bid had been beaten, they hadn’t bothered to come back. Presumably they would just have to find someone cheaper for their blood sacrifice.
At eight o’clock she was on the operating table.
At nine o’clock, with a price tag of £9,000, she was the main course.
Still nothing from the orphanage.
At twenty past nine, she was back under the dissecting knife.
The restaurant had one last try at half past nine. With thirty minutes until the end of bidding, he went to £9,500.
Dr MacNeil didn’t respond.
Five minutes to ten. Jennifer had cried so much she thought she was empty, but even so more tears came from somewhere. She could imagine herself tied up in an oven. Maybe they would put an apple in her mouth. She just hoped she would give whoever ate her food poisoning.
And then, with one minute to spare, the miracle happened. The Pettigrews returned with an offer of £10,000. Jennifer could imagine her father gloating at that sum of money. She had reached five figures! But that wasn’t what she cared about. Surely this had to be the last word. The orphanage was taking her. Somehow they had found the necessary funds and she was going to be saved.
The minute hand on her Barbie alarm clock ticked to ten o’clock. The sheBay screen flashed red. The sale had closed. Gerald and Samantha Pettigrew of the Tall Trees Orphanage in Wiltshire had won.
Things happened very quickly after that. The very next morning, Jonathan Bailey received an email from his bank, notifying him that payment had been made. Jane Bailey packed her daughter’s bags and bought her a single rail ticket to Pewsey – apparently Eastcott was too small to have a station of its own – then a taxi came to the house to take her to Paddington, where she would board the train.
Her parents stood awkwardly by the front door.
“Well, goodbye, my dear,” her father said. “Don’t think too badly of us. We did try to be good parents.”
“We did everything we could,” Jane sobbed.
“Maybe things will go a bit better for us and one day we’ll be able to buy you back…”
“I don’t want to come back!” Jennifer cut in – and her voice was cold. “I don’t ever want to see you again and I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done.”
Her father went pale. Her mother began to cry all the harder.
“I’ll have a much happier life without you, if you want the honest truth,” Jennifer went on. “I always thought your garden business was stupid. And I hated living here. I’m really glad this has happened. I’d much rather be with the orphans than with you. I’m an orphan now myself. Goodbye!”
She got into the taxi and was swept away.
The journey to Pewsey took a little over an hour. Jennifer had brought a book with her, but she spent most of the time looking out of the window, watching as the greyness and graffiti of London were replaced by the lush green of the English countryside. She wondered if there might be any other orphans on the train but although she went up and down the corridor a couple of times, she seemed to be the only child travelling alone.
Pewsey Station was delightful with its two long platforms, a single footbridge and neatly arranged tubs of flowers. Gerald and Samantha Pettigrew were waiting for her outside the ticket office and she liked them immediately. He was a short, round-shouldered man with a thick crop of untidy white hair, dressed in an old pin-stripe suit missing some of its buttons. Samantha was taller than her husband, wearing a loose dress and Wellington boots. She had a rather long nose with a thin pair of spectacles balanced half-way down. They were both smiling, both with a twinkle in their eyes, and they looked even sweeter and kinder than they had in their photograph. Jennifer was bursting with questions as they put her suitcases in the back of their car – a rather muddy Land Rover – and drove her through Pewsey and on towards Devizes.
“Is it far?”
“Not far now.”
“Is there a swing in the garden?”
“Under the chestnut tree!”
“Do the orphans know I’m coming?”
“Oh yes. They’re very excited.”
They reached Salisbury Plain which sloped up, h
uge and empty, on their left. Ahead of them lay the village of Urchfont with its pretty duck pond and thatched cottages. The road twisted through open fields and centuries-old woodland, with Eastcott ahead of them, until at last they turned into the driveway of Tall Trees. And there it was, an old black-and-white manor house with oak beams and roses climbing up between the windows. The car pulled up. The Pettigrews got out.
“Shall I bring my luggage?” Jennifer asked.
“No. Just come inside, dear,” Mrs Pettigrew trilled. “We can see to all that later.”
Jennifer hurried through the front door. Several things struck her at the same time. The house had very little furniture. The walls and the floor were bare. There was a strange smell in the air. And she could hear something, a sort of deep grumbling, coming from somewhere further inside.
“This way!” Mr Pettigrew exclaimed. He threw open a set of double doors. The grumbling became louder. In fact, it was more like growling.
“What is…?” Jennifer began.
But she had already seen what lay on the other side of the doors. There was a deep pit and, far below, a dozen animals were pacing back and forth, their vicious claws scratching against the straw-covered concrete, their eyes glowing hungrily, their bones rippling beneath their orange-and-black fur.
“Here they are!” Mrs Pettigrew waved a hand over the pit. “Our family of orphans.”
“Orphans?” Jennifer quavered.
“Orphaned Bengal tigers,” Mr Pettigrew explained. “Babies and young adults. It’s terrible how they’ve been neglected. They would die if they were left on their own. But we look after them, Samantha and I. We let them roam in the grounds. We watch over them. And sometimes, as a special treat, we even give them fresh meat.”
“But … but … but…” Jennifer began.
The Pettigrews grabbed hold of her. They were surprisingly strong. She felt herself being lifted off the ground.
“Feeding time!” Mrs Pettigrew exclaimed.
A moment later, Jennifer was hurtling through the air, diving head first towards the waiting pack below.
ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY?
I NEVER LIKED DENNIS TAYLOR, not from the start. I didn’t like the way he dressed, with his blue blazer and silk cravat. I didn’t like his moustache. I didn’t like the way he laughed at his own jokes. But the very worst thing about him, the thing that made me squirm and wonder how I was going to survive the next ten years, was the fact that he was about to become my stepdad. How could Mum do this to me? Had she gone completely mad?
I had never known my father. He’d left home when I was very young and I never found out why. I’m sure my mum would have told me if I’d asked, but I never did. You may think that strange, but the truth is that the two of us were happy together. The life I had was the only one I knew. Why go digging up the past when all it will give you is dust in the eye?
We lived in a small house in Orford, which is right on the coast in Suffolk. There were only two bedrooms, but we didn’t need any more as I didn’t have any brothers or sisters – just a load of cats that came and went as they pleased. Mum worked part-time in a local hotel. She’d been left quite a bit of money by an eccentric aunt years back and she’d put it all in the bank for when she needed it. So although we weren’t exactly rich, we weren’t hard up either.
Mum was actually working at the hotel when she met Dennis. He was looking for a house in Orford … he planned to move up from London. Well, one drink led to a chat, a chat led to lunch and soon they were seeing each other on a regular basis.
They got married at St Bartholomew’s Church, which was much too big and draughty for the little congregation that turned up. I was there with my best friend, Matt, and a handful of villagers. Mum’s parents were still alive, but they lived in Scotland and she didn’t invite them because she was afraid the journey would be too much for them. Dennis hadn’t been married before. He produced a sister, who was plain and sulky, and a best man who apparently sold shares in the City. That was what Dennis did, by the way. Stocks and shares. He described himself as an entrepreneur. He liked sprinkling his language with French words.
After the service, they flew to Barbados for their honeymoon. Mum would have been happy just going to Cornwall or the Lake District, but Dennis persuaded her that they should do something more special. He also persuaded her – he was short of cash – to pay. I watched them leave, their car almost crashing into a white van as it turned the corner, coming the other way. At the time, I wondered if there was an omen in that. And in a way, as you will see, I was right.
I stayed with Matt and his parents while Mum and Dennis were away, and when they got back I was a little ashamed of myself for being so mean about it all. I was against Dennis. I hadn’t wanted Mum to get married. I hadn’t wanted them to go to Barbados. But here was Mum, sun-tanned and as happy as I’d ever remembered her. She’d bought me lots of presents, including earrings, a straw hat, a wrap, a carved wooden tortoise and all sorts of other stuff. She’d also taken hundreds of photos on a camera that Dennis had bought her at the duty-free. Seeing her like that, I made a resolution. I wasn’t going to complain. I was going to adapt. I had a stepfather now. I was going to make him feel welcome.
It wasn’t easy. Dennis didn’t buy a house as he had planned. He simply moved into ours – which made sense because selling and buying would have been so expensive and anyway the market was pretty dead. I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t as if I was going to have to move out of my room or anything like that. But from that moment, everything changed.
You see, a house has a rhythm. The way people move around in it … it’s a bit like the workings of a clock. Suddenly, when I wanted to have a shower, Dennis would be there ahead of me, and I had to get dressed for breakfast. I felt uncomfortable watching TV in the evening. If Dennis and Mum were together in the living room, I felt almost like an intruder. And then there were unfamiliar smells and sounds. Dennis’s aftershave. Classic FM blaring out of the radio every morning and the latest Netflix boxset every night. The house was full of Dennis’s things lying around the place. The dirty clothes that he never put in the laundry bin. Curled-up cigarette ends (yes – he smoked) in the ashtrays.
I’ll get used to it, I told myself. I tried to get used to it. Over the next few months I never complained. Christmas came and we had a pleasant enough time together. I had my GCSEs to think about. Mum still seemed happy, although I noticed she was working longer hours at the hotel. Apart from that, Dennis seemed to be looking after her OK.
I forget exactly when I began to realize that things were going wrong. I suppose money was the start of the slide downhill. Isn’t it always? Dennis had sold his house in London, but after he’d paid off the mortgage he hardly got anything out of it. Also, his business wasn’t going very well. I know that Mum had lent him money from her savings – she’d mentioned it to me – but of course the stock market had taken a dive and all of it had gone. I noticed that bills weren’t being paid. There was a pile of them stuck in a corner of the kitchen. Some of them were printed in red ink. Final demands.
At the same time, Dennis was spending more and more. He’d bought himself a new car, a BMW which was parked on the street outside. There had also been other brief holidays – weekend breaks in Paris and Rome, at five-star hotels. I’m not saying my mum hadn’t enjoyed these trips. But there was always the question of who was going to pay, and it followed her around like a cloud.
The biggest expense of all was Dennis’s study. He needed somewhere to work, he said, so he had an ugly conservatory built at the back of the house and used it as an office. It completely spoiled the garden and it cost thousands – and worse still, there was a problem with the construction (he’d used builders who had been recommended by one of his friends), so we had to spend thousands more putting it right.
My mum was paying for everything. She had never even been paid back for Barbados. I know because one morning they had an argument at the breakfast table. It came as
quite a shock to hear their voices raised, and it made me wonder if there hadn’t been other arguments when I was at school, or in whispers when I was asleep.
Mum had just opened a bill from a company that supplied fine wine. That was another of Dennis’s extravagances. He loved expensive clarets. Some of the bottles cost thirty or forty pounds.
“We can’t pay this!” my mother exclaimed. She was staring at the bill, completely shocked.
“How much is it?” Dennis glanced at the total and raised an eyebrow.
“I really don’t think you should have bought so much, Dennis. Not in the current climate. We’ll have to send it back.”
“We can’t send it back.”
“Why not?”
“It would make me look ridiculous. Anyway, I’ve already opened some of the bottles.”
“But we can’t afford it!”
Dennis scowled. “You really have no understanding of money, do you, Geraldine,” he said. “It’s true we’re going through a bad patch. But I’m chasing one or two very interesting deals and everything will sort itself out in time. We just have to keep our nerve, that’s all.”
“But we’ve got dozens of bills…”
“Don’t you trust me?” Dennis looked offended, but at the same time there was something else in his face, something I hadn’t seen before. He looked threatening. “I’ve told you about this share opportunity in London. If it comes off…”
“But what if it doesn’t?” My mother sat down and for a moment she looked close to tears. “We’ve gone through nearly all my savings in less than a year! I’m working extra hours…”
“I’m working too!”
“I know, dear. But sometimes I wish you’d work a little less. Your work is actually bankrupting us.”
Scared to Death--Ten Sinister Stories by the Master of the Macabre Page 11
