‘What’s going on?’ Josie asked, looking from Annie to Sandra and back again.
‘He followed me,’ Annie said, in a sort of injured wail. ‘All the way from Beech Street.’
‘You cut me up,’ the man said. ‘You never even bloody looked.’
Sandra said, ‘Oh just eff off, you big buggering bully.’
Josie laughed, she couldn’t help herself, and Annie, desperate now to broker peace, said, ‘Whatever it was I did, I apologise.’
‘No you don’t,’ Sandra said. ‘If anyone should be sorry it’s him.’
‘You’re all fuckin’ mental,’ said the man. He rubbed his ear then moved his head left then right and the bones in his neck clicked. ‘You,’ he said, pointing at Sandra, ‘should be fuckin’ locked up and you’ – pointing now at Annie – ‘shouldn’t be fuckin’ drivin’.’
‘And you,’ said Josie, narrowing her striking green eyes, ‘should be ashamed of yourself, terrorising this lady.’ She pulled Betty along behind her and walked right up to him, staring into his face as if committing every detail to memory. ‘I don’t like the look of you,’ she said, ‘and I never forget a face.’ For a moment the man looked likely to resume hostilities, opening his mouth and drawing a single long breath as if there were more insults to hurl. But then he closed it again and, like a wounded grizzly bear, lumbered unsteadily to his van where the driver’s side door still hung open. He hoisted himself up, shut himself in, started the engine and reversed away down the drive, scattering stones and dust and flicking one last rigid middle finger at them as he went. Sandra whooped and shouted, ‘Girl power!’ and Josie grinned, folding her arms and watching the van’s retreat. Annie, frail with utter relief, only closed her eyes and tried to calm her breathing.
2
They sat in Sandra’s kitchen, the women and their dogs. Finn was possessed by post-incident excitement and he skittered and spiralled idiotically across the floor with his tail in his mouth. He looked like a mutant crab. Betty sat primly looking the other way and Sandra’s elderly Alsatian paid nobody any mind. He lay on his big stained cushion in an alcove that had long been his alone, and snored. Now and then he emitted a silent gust of foul wind that even Sandra noticed.
‘Jesus, Fritz,’ she said, and wafted a hand ineffectually. Annie sat mute and pale and Josie only smiled.
Breakfast detritus was all across the table, including a bottle of milk and an open plastic tub of butter, its surface soft and littered with toast crumbs. A late wasp, survivor of the recent Indian summer, performed listless sorties through the clutter. Sandra didn’t apologise for the mess because she didn’t see it. Josie saw it but didn’t mind it. Only Annie, whose own domestic life was rigorously ordered, noted the squalor and felt uncomfortable. Her tea was untouched because there were traces of an earlier brew on the rim of the mug; dried droplets of someone else’s brown drink. And although Josie and Sandra were talking nineteen to the dozen about the drama, Annie only sat, consciously quiet, wondering if they’d noticed she wasn’t joining in; wondering when they could leave. Then Josie said, ‘So Annie, he followed you all the way?’
Annie looked up and nodded.
‘And what do you think got his goat?’
‘You see, I couldn’t find Finn’s lead.’
This was no answer at all.
‘Nutters like that don’t need much of a reason to blow their tops,’ Sandra said.
Josie nodded. ‘It’s true,’ she said. She rubbed Annie’s back and Annie managed a watery smile.
Sandra gave a sudden spurt of laughter. ‘Your face,’ she said to Josie. ‘You thought I’d gone mad.’
‘I couldn’t believe my eyes,’ Josie said. ‘And you, a librarian.’
Sandra smiled grimly. ‘What a brute though! He called Annie a bitch.’
Annie winced.
‘He thumped her window as if he wanted to smash it.’
‘What if he’d hit you?’ Josie said. ‘What if he’d had a knife?’
Sandra shrugged.
‘He could’ve hurt you.’
‘Well what was I supposed to do?’ Sandra was starting to feel nettled now, and she looked at Annie, expecting some form of support, if not actual acclaim, but Annie was hunched in her chair feeling sorry for herself and even when Finn crashed into the dresser and rattled the plates on his mad progress round the kitchen she just sat on, silent and suffering.
‘Annie,’ Sandra said.
Annie looked up again, slowly, as if it required an effort. Her pale blue eyes were rimmed with red.
‘You okay? You’re not saying much.’
Annie stared at Sandra.
‘You haven’t even said thank you,’ Sandra said.
‘Oh, but didn’t I?’ said Annie, startled into finding her voice.
‘Nope.’
‘I’m sure I did.’
‘Well then,’ said Sandra. ‘As long as you’re sure you did, I suppose that’s the main thing.’
She stood up and stomped to the sink, where she jettisoned her tea and dumped the mug among the dirty breakfast pots.
‘Well anyway, thank you, Sandra,’ Annie said, anxious now, and Sandra said, ‘Sure, whatever.’
There was a silence, and it might have turned prickly except for a terrific clattering on the stairs and the crash of a door hurled open. A teenage boy plunged into the room then drew back in some confusion when he found the kitchen full of women and dogs. His face coloured instantly.
‘You’re late,’ Sandra said, without turning round. ‘The bus comes by in three minutes.’
His blushing face now took on an injured look. ‘You didn’t wake me,’ he said.
‘I did, but you went back to sleep.’
‘Well, you didn’t wake me again.’
‘Correct. I said I wouldn’t, so I didn’t.’ She was pulling on some old woollen socks now, which she seemed to have found in the folds of Fritz’s bed.
‘Hi, Billy,’ Josie said. He turned to her and smiled, and Annie could see now what a handsome boy he was, dark haired and brown eyed with a lovely smile that she gathered was reserved at this moment for people other than his mother.
‘Hey, Josie,’ he said.
‘This is Annie,’ Josie said. ‘And that’s Finn,’ she added, pointing. The boy nodded pleasantly at Annie, and she nodded back. She could see nothing of Sandra in him, except perhaps his unkempt appearance, and that surely was nurture not nature.
Sandra said, ‘Seriously, Billy, you’ll miss the bus, and I’m not driving you to school.’
‘I’ll walk if I miss it.’
‘Right, good luck with that.’
Josie laughed and said, ‘Billy, just leave, that’s your best bet, sweetheart.’
He grinned at her. ‘Yeah, right, I’m outta here.’ As he passed Sandra he punched her softly on the shoulder and said, ‘Bye, Ma,’ and Sandra said, ‘Bye, hon, see you later,’ in a voice that no longer had any harshness in it, only love. Annie, watching and listening, thought about Michael, who even now could sulk for days at the least provocation, and herself, who could never ignore him, only fuss and worry and make him worse.
‘Okey doke,’ Sandra said, standing up. ‘Let’s walk the dogs.’
Annie tapped the tub of butter. ‘Shall you put this away?’ she said.
‘I’ll clear up later,’ said Sandra. She gave Fritz a jiggle with her foot. ‘C’mon, Fritzy, stir yourself.’
‘But it’s melting,’ Annie said, because she couldn’t help herself.
‘It’ll be fine – the heating’s gone off now.’
She swung out of the room and Annie, easing herself up out of the chair, wondered how Sandra’s mind worked. When she’d first met her and Josie, she’d thought perhaps the regular company of younger women would be good for her, stop her turning into so much of a stick-in-the-mud. But if anything, Sandra made her cling harder to her own habits. Oh, it would be a snowy morning in hell when Annie Doyle left a pat of butter to melt half the day on the kitchen table
.
Annie and Finn were ahead and Josie, whose car was with the mechanic again, put Betty in Sandra’s boot with Fritz. The old Alsatian couldn’t jump in these days; Sandra had to heave him up in her arms where he hung, heavy as a sack of wet sand, waiting to be shovelled into the car. Sandra had rescued Fritz when he was a youngster, a malnourished, dull-coated creature who’d been picked up on the hard shoulder of the M1 with bloodied paws and terrified eyes. He was about fourteen now – they could only ever guess at his age – but still he looked at her with fathomless gratitude, as if she could never be repaid. Nobody knew his story, and there were more attractive, less motley-looking specimens in the line-up of rejects at the dogs’ home. But Fritz had stepped forward in his cage and pushed his face side on against the bars so that Sandra could scratch the back of his ear. After that, she couldn’t leave him there to be spurned again and again by people seeking the more obvious charms of perky terriers and spaniels with liquid chocolate eyes.
Now, when she looked in her rear-view mirror, she could see the sharp white tips of Betty’s pointed ears but there was no sign of Fritz and she knew that he’d be lying like a huge draught excluder against the door of the boot.
‘She is a terrible driver,’ Josie said. She meant Annie, who was keeping them to a twenty-five-miles-an-hour creep along a wide, clear highway; she braked at the approach to corners, and she braked at the appearance of oncoming traffic. ‘I expect she wound that brute up, driving like she’s driving now.’
‘The boot of her car is all dog,’ Sandra said.
It was true. Annie kept her back seats down flat to make more room, but still Finn seemed to fill all the available space. When she braked, his bulk lurched a little forward before settling back again. He faced Sandra and Josie through the rear window and panted; it looked as though he was laughing at them. Now Annie slowed still further and her right indicator came on, although the turning to the reservoir was still some way off, and on the left.
‘I might overtake,’ Sandra said.
Josie shook her head. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘That’d be hostile.’ She yawned. ‘I ordered five hundred daffodil bulbs from Marshalls and they came this morning in four sacks.’
‘God. Five hundred?’
Josie nodded. ‘I know.’
‘Lovely though. Where you putting them?’
‘That bank at the side of the house.’
‘The grassy one?’
Josie nodded.
‘God,’ Sandra said again. ‘It’s not even soil then.’
Ahead, Annie turned left with infinite care onto the track that led to the reservoir car park. Sandra followed. Josie said, ‘I might get Mr Dinmoor to put them in.’
‘The old man?’
She said this in the way a person might say ‘the clown’, as if behind the words was a barely concealed snort of laughter.
‘He’s not old,’ Josie said. ‘I mean, he is, but that’s not all he is.’
‘If you say so.’
Josie opened her mouth to reply but Sandra had parked alongside Annie and was already getting out of the car.
The reservoir path was only two miles around and completely flat, but it was still a bit of a push for Fritz so their pace was slow, more a meander than a walk. They passed a row of anglers’ platforms, empty at this hour on a weekday morning, and a tatty yellow board erected years ago by the Samaritans, with a number to call before you took the final plunge. The further you walked from the car park the wilder the water’s edge, until at the far end the tangle of reeds, bull rushes and low-slung willows formed a mini-reserve for water birds, which nested in the shadowy interior. Now and again coots, moorhens or crested grebes exploded in a maelstrom of fuss and feathers. Often they’d be dodging Finn, who kept charging into the shallows then standing there as if he’d forgotten what it was he’d come for. He wasn’t supposed to disturb the birds but Annie didn’t like to restrain him on his walks, and besides, this morning she didn’t have a lead: a fact she was currently explaining to Sandra and Josie.
‘So anyway,’ she said at last, ‘I’m thinking that it might’ve slid off my neck in the woods last week.’
Sandra yawned. ‘I don’t know why you’re fretting,’ she said. ‘It hardly matters, given how rarely you use it.’
‘Well …’ said Annie.
‘We can look for it next time,’ Josie said.
‘Oh it’ll’ve been swiped by now for sure,’ said Sandra.
‘Still, let’s look.’ Josie hooked a companionable arm through Annie’s. ‘You can borrow Betty’s today if need be,’ she said. ‘She won’t miss it.’ Leashed or unleashed, Betty never left Josie’s side. If Betty were a working collie, Josie said, she’d be worse than useless. She’d pick her favourite sheep and stick with it, and all the rest could go to the devil.
There was a wooden bench about a quarter of the way round and without consultation the three women stopped at it, because they always did. The dogs milled about and sniffed the legs of the bench, deciding where to sit. Josie had a tatty woven knapsack, which she’d bought in Kabul twenty years ago and had carried with her, by and large, ever since. Today it held a flask and three small mugs and these she lifted out and placed on the bench. Sandra sat down heavily and the flask wobbled.
‘It might be a bit strong,’ Josie said. ‘I lost count of the dose.’ She made her coffee in a scarred metal stove-top percolator that sent a geyser of boiling water up through freshly ground beans and into a jug. It came out like mud, in Annie’s opinion. Bitter? She was hard pressed not to spit it out the first time she was given a cup.
‘Plenty of milk for me please,’ she said now, watching Josie pour.
‘Oh Annie,’ Josie said. ‘I forgot it this time.’
Annie looked at her and wondered how milk could ever be forgotten in the preparation of coffee. But Josie could drink it black or white and she just shot Annie a rueful smile as she passed a cup to Sandra then sipped at her own.
‘Sorry,’ Josie said. ‘Try it without?’
Annie shook her head. She felt inordinately disappointed. If anyone deserved a nice coffee this morning, she did. She cast a glance at Sandra, who she knew liked lots of milk too, but Sandra caught her eye and grinned cheerfully. ‘Cheers then,’ she said, and though she sniffed the contents of her cup a little cautiously, she drank it anyway. Annie felt excluded, which she knew was silly and which she put down to the earlier horror. It’d left her feeling raw, thin-skinned.
‘Look,’ Josie said. She pointed across the reservoir. A huge bird sat on a rudimentary wooden jetty holding out glossy coal-black wings to dry in the feeble autumn sunshine. Their great span, together with the bird’s long neck and stumpy black legs, gave it a primitive, prehistoric appearance.
‘A cormorant,’ Sandra said.
Annie shuddered. ‘It’s watching us.’
‘Watching the water, more like,’ Sandra said. ‘It’s after the fish.’
‘Aren’t they sea birds?’ This was Josie. She was standing now, shading her eyes with one hand.
‘It’s a long way from the sea,’ said Annie.
‘Magnificent creature,’ Josie said.
Annie stared hard at the bird, trying to see something other than its raptor’s neck and sharp, curved beak. Then Finn ran pell-mell into the water barking, and even though it was some distance away from him, the bird beat its wings once, twice, then rose into the air with a sort of grave dignity, which only emphasised the dog’s foolishness.
‘That’s that then,’ Sandra said. At her feet, Fritz opened one eye, but there was nothing to see now so he closed it again.
3
By the time she drove away from the reservoir Annie felt almost cheerful. She turned on the radio and tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, keeping time with Tony Christie’s search for Amarillo and at the chorus she joined in. The reasons for her lifted spirits were threefold. One, it was Wednesday, which meant Michael had choral practice as well as school commitments, so he’d be
out until the evening, leaving her free to please herself: watch a panel game, start a jigsaw puzzle, she hadn’t decided yet. Two, she was calling at Fletcher’s on the way home for a custard slice or a fresh cream éclair; she didn’t know which, she’d see when she got there. Three, apart from the coffee and the vaguely unsettling sight of the cormorant, she’d enjoyed today’s walk. In the end they’d just turned around and dawdled amiably back to the car park because Fritz had been lying down too long at the bench, and when he got up again he was dragging a hind leg; it had stuck out behind him, useless as a stick, as he lurched and hobbled on the other three. So the walk was curtailed, which Annie didn’t mind because she wasn’t one of life’s natural hikers: built for sitting, she always thought. She shifted in her seat and trilled along with Tony, dreamin’ dreams and huggin’ pillows in what Michael called her old lady’s warble.
Old lady indeed! There were times when Michael behaved more like an old lady than she did, with his pernickety ways. The trouble with Michael, thought Annie now with a pleasurable shiver of disloyalty, was that he never had to please anyone other than himself. Oh, he thought he was busy, certainly: thought he was pulled in all directions with his music lessons and his choirs. But all of that, really, was for himself. He never – not now, not ever – did anything he didn’t want to do. Annie absolutely didn’t mind sharing her home with him; she didn’t mind it at all. Shopping for him, keeping the house tidy, washing his clothes and his sheets in the detergent he liked – these small services made her feel useful. But oh dear, he had no idea what it was to act unselfishly. And the older he got the more deeply ingrained ran his belief that the world revolved around his needs.
Thinking of Michael made her think of Andrew, who lived all the way across the globe in Australia, in a coastal town called Byron Bay: a name so lyrical, a place so far away, that Annie couldn’t hold an image of it in her head, even though he kept posting photographs to her of an azure sea and tropical sand and lush, abundant vegetation. Andrew had gone to Australia aged eighteen and never come back. Well, never come back for good. In fact he did come, once in a blue moon, to visit, but the houses in Beech Street were small, and close together, and staying with Annie and Michael seemed to induce in Andrew a sort of nervous twitch in his arms and legs, as if he needed to stretch but didn’t have the space. In Byron Bay he had space. He also had an Australian wife and two little Australian boys, and they all had surnames in place of first names: Bailey, Blake and Riley. Once and once only, all four of them had visited, when Blake was three and Riley nine months. Vince had had gastro-enteritis so none of them had gone to see him for fear of catching the bug, and the weather had been so atrocious that they were cooped up together for a fraught and cheerless week of disrupted nights, early starts and interrupted meals, none of which would have mattered quite as much if Michael hadn’t been so difficult. He had either been entirely silent – the sort of silence that intruded just as effectively as noise – or rudely outspoken. ‘I’m jiggered,’ he had said on the evening of their fourth day, standing at the door of the sitting room in his paisley dressing gown and burgundy slippers with a hot water bottle under one arm, ‘and if these two make so much as a peep tonight, I’ll wring their necks.’ This, to their mother! But being Australian, Bailey had only laughed. Annie remembered a pleasant-looking girl with a high, childish ponytail, a wide tanned face and a scattering of fine freckles across her little nose, like cinnamon on a bun. She laughed a great deal, Annie recalled now. She’d laughed when Andrew swore at Michael and called him – now what was it? Annie couldn’t remember. They’d left the next day though, two days before they were due to go.
This Much is True: How far will a mother go to protect her shocking secret? Page 2
