by Ruth Hogan
Later that afternoon, Laura went and found Sunshine, who was sitting on the bench across the green from the house.
“May I sit down?” she asked.
Sunshine smiled. A warm, welcoming smile which filled Laura with guilt and shame.
“I want to apologize,” she said.
“What for?”
“For not being a good friend back to you.”
Sunshine thought for a moment.
“Do you like me?”
“Yes, I do. Very much.”
“Then why do you hide?” she asked sadly.
Laura sighed. “Because, Sunshine, this is all new to me; living in this house; the lost things; trying to do what Anthony would have wanted. Sometimes I get cross and muddled and I need to be by myself.”
“So why didn’t you just tell me?”
Laura smiled at her. “Because sometimes I’m just a silly arse.”
“Do you ever get scared?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
Sunshine took her hand and squeezed it in her own. Her soft, chubby fingers were freezing. Laura pulled her up from the bench.
“Let’s go and have the lovely cup of tea,” she said.
CHAPTER 26
“I think he needs the biscuit,” said Sunshine, tenderly stroking the bundle of fur and bones that ought to have been a lurcher. He watched her with frightened eyes that mirrored the beatings he had endured. Tired of their torture, his tormentors had kicked him out to fend for himself. Freddy had found him the previous evening lying on the grass verge outside Padua. It was raining hard and he was soaking wet and too exhausted to resist when Freddy had picked him up and brought him inside. He had been clipped by a car and had a superficial wound on his rump that Laura had cleaned and dressed while Freddy had held him shaking and wrapped in a towel. He refused to eat anything but drank a little water, and Laura stayed up with him all night, sleeping fitfully in an armchair while the dog lay inches from the fire, wrapped in a blanket and never moving. As the first wraithlike light of the winter dawn seeped through the lace panels of Anthony’s study, Laura stirred. Her neck was cricked and complaining after a night spent folded awkwardly into a chair. The fire was reduced to a few struggling embers but the dog hadn’t moved.
Please, God, she thought as she leaned forward to check for the rise and fall of the blanket that would prove her prayer had been answered. Nothing. No movement. No sound. But before the tears that had filled her eyes could spill, the blanket suddenly twitched. There was a ragged intake of breath, and the sonorous snoring that Laura had somehow managed to sleep through resumed.
Sunshine had been ecstatic when she had arrived that morning to find that they had a canine guest. It was the most animated that Laura had ever seen the normally rather solemn and serious Sunshine. Between them, they had coaxed him to eat a little cooked chicken and a slice of bread and butter. Sunshine had gently examined his skeletal frame and was determined to feed him everything she could.
“We mustn’t feed him too much at once. His stomach will have shrunk, and if we overdo it he’ll be sick,” Laura warned.
Sunshine pulled a face which admirably communicated her disapproval of vomit.
“Maybe he needs another drink?” she suggested hopefully. Laura could understand her eagerness. She was desperate to do something to make the creature better; fatter, fitter. Happy. But sometimes not doing anything was what was needed, however hard that might be.
“I think he just needs to rest,” she told Sunshine. “Just tuck the blanket round him and leave him in peace for a bit.”
Sunshine “tucked in” very carefully for about ten minutes before Laura finally persuaded her to come and help with the website. Freddy arrived earlier than usual and found them all in the study.
“How’s the poor fella doing?”
Laura couldn’t bring herself to look up from the screen.
“A bit better, I think.”
Since the episode in the pantry, the awkwardness between Freddy and Laura hung in the air like smoke. Laura was desperate to clear the air and tell him what had really happened on her date, but somehow she could never find a way to begin the conversation. He went over to the fire and crouched down by the blanket. A pair of large, sorrowful eyes peered out at him. Freddy offered the back of his hand for the dog to sniff, but the dog’s flinch was instinctive, born from bitter experience.
“Hey, hey, steady lad. No one’s going to hurt you here. I’m the one who found you.”
The dog listened to his gentle voice and poked his nose out warily from beneath the blanket to take a tentative sniff. Sunshine was watching their exchange closely. With an exaggerated sigh she placed both hands on her hips.
“He’s supposed to be resting,” she said in a censorious tone.
Freddy held his hands up in surrender and came over to the table where Laura was in front of the laptop.
“So are you going to keep him?”
Sunshine replied before Laura could draw breath.
“That’s for double damn sure, cross my heart and learn to fly, we’re going to keep him! He was lost and you found him. That’s what we do,” she said, throwing her hands up in the air to underline and embolden her words. It took a little while for her thinking to catch up with her feelings, but when it did she added defiantly:
“But we’re not giving him back.”
She looked to Freddy and Laura in turn for reassurance. Freddy winked at her and smiled.
“Don’t worry, Sunshine. I don’t think there’s anyone to want him back.” But then he added, as though remembering his place, “Of course, it’s Laura’s decision.”
Laura looked across at the blanketed bundle still roasting by the fire, unaware that as soon as he had been carried over her threshold he was safe. From that moment he was hers.
“We’ll have to give him a name,” she said.
Once again Sunshine was already on the next page.
“He’s called Carrot.”
“Is that so?” said Freddy. “And that’s because . . . ?”
“Because he was hit by the car in the dark night because he didn’t see it.”
“And?” continued Freddy with an interrogative tip of his head.
“Carrots help you see in the darkness.”
Sunshine delivered her denouement speaking loudly and slowly like an English tourist in a foreign country.
After “the lovely cup of tea” which Sunshine permitted Laura to make while she stood guard over Carrot, Freddy went outside to work in the garden, and Laura and Sunshine returned their attention to the Keeper of Lost Things. Laura had begun the herculean task of entering the details of all the lost things onto a database that could be accessed via the website. Sunshine was selecting things from the shelves and drawers. Once Laura had entered the details of a particular object, it was marked with a sticky gold star bought in packets of fifty from the post office. They had bought ten packets, but now that they had made a start, Laura had a feeling that they might need a good few more. Sunshine placed the objects in a neat line on the table: a pair of tweezers, a miniature playing card (the king of clubs), and a plastic model soldier. The friendship bracelet remained in her hand.
KNOTTED-THREAD RED-AND-BLACK BRACELET—
Found, underpass between Fools Green and Maitland Road, 21st May . . .
Chloe felt her mouth water just before the first wave of vomit rose. The retching bent her double as she tried not to splash her new shoes. The concrete walls of the underpass reverberated with the sound of her shame and humiliation.
Everyone liked Mr. Mitchell. He was the coolest teacher in school. “The boys want to be him and the girls want to be with him,” her friend Claire had chanted only yesterday when he had passed them in the corridor. Chloe didn’t. Not anymore. She wanted to be anywhere other than with him. Mr. Mitchell (“Call me Mitch—I won’t tell if you don’t”) taught music, and at first she too would have danced to any tune he chose to play. He had the inestimable gift of plausib
ility. Coupled with a handsome face and slick charm, the adoration of Mr. Mitchell was inevitable. Chloe had begged her mother for the private singing lessons she knew Mr. Mitchell taught. From his home. Her mother was surprised. Her daughter was a quiet girl; happy to blend in with the chorus rather take center stage. She was a “good” girl. A “nice” girl. Money for singing lessons would be hard to come by, but perhaps her mother thought that they would be worth it if they gave Chloe a little more confidence. And Mr. Mitchell was such a brilliant teacher. He really seemed to care about his pupils, not like some of them at the school who simply put in the hours, took the money, and ran.
At first it had been exciting. The eye contact held just a little too long in class; the smile flashed in her direction. She was special to him, she was sure. On the way to that first singing lesson she was giddy with nerves. As she walked to his house she rubbed gloss onto her lips; pink and shiny, “Passionate Pout.” And then she had rubbed it off again. During the third lesson, he had made her sit next to him at the piano. His hand on her thigh was thrilling, arousing. But wrong. It was like taking a shortcut down a dark alley late at night. You know you shouldn’t. You know it’s dangerous, but maybe just this once it will be all right. The next time he stood behind her and placed his hands on her chest; gently, caressingly. He said he needed to check that she was breathing correctly. The childish fantasy of romance had been rudely replaced by the sordid reality of his groping hands and hot, ragged breath in her ear. So why had she gone back? Even after that, she had still gone back. How could she not? What would she tell her mother? She wanted it as much as he did. That’s what he had told her, and she was shackled by the precarious truth in his words. She had at first, hadn’t she?
The physical pain still echoed through her body, amplified by the action replays running through her mind. She had said no. She had screamed no. But perhaps just inside her head and not out loud. The body which had been hers alone was lost forever; taken or given she still wasn’t sure. She wiped her mouth again, and as she did the friendship bracelet caught her eye. He had given it to her at the end of the first lesson because, he said, they were going to be very special friends. She ripped it from her wrist and threw it away. Taken. Now she was sure.
Sunshine squeezed the bracelet tight in her hand. Laura didn’t see her wince. Her eyes were intent on the screen in front of her, her fingers rattling over the keyboard. Sunshine raised one warning finger to her lips for the benefit of Carrot and threw the bracelet onto the fire. She went back to the drawers to choose more things.
High on its shelf, the biscuit tin was still waiting for its gold star.
CHAPTER 27
“Shall I make the lovely cup of tea when the bored van man comes?” Sunshine inquired helpfully.
Laura nodded distractedly, her mind preoccupied with where they were going to put the enormous Christmas tree that was currently languishing prone and prickly on most of the hall floor. Freddy was insisting that according to his measurements, there would be a foot of clear daylight between the top of the tree and the ceiling once they had got it into position, and had gone to fetch the metal stand from the shed in order to prove his point before a full-scale argument broke out. Later that morning they were expecting a man who was coming to sort out broadband.
“We can’t give you an exact time,” the customer services woman had told Laura, “but we can give you a window of between ten thirty-nine A.M. and three fourteen.”
Sunshine had her eye on the clock in the hall, or at least as much of it as she could see beyond the branches. Laura had finally taught her to tell the time—more or less—and doing so at every opportunity had become her latest obsession. Curious about all the commotion, Carrot had left his comfortable bed by the fire to make tentative investigations.
One brief glance at the forestry lurking in the hallway was enough to send him scurrying back to the study. Freddy returned with the stand, and having decided that perhaps the hall was the best place to accommodate both the prodigious height and girth of the tree, he and Laura were trying to maneuver it into position under Sunshine’s rather erratic guidance, when the doorbell rang and Sunshine skipped off to answer it, leaving Freddy and Laura in an awkward embrace with a giant conifer.
The man waiting on the doorstep had an air of superiority entirely unjustified by rank, appearance, education, or talent. He was, in short, a supercilious git. A short, supercilious git. Sunshine didn’t know that yet, but she could feel it.
“Are you the bored van man?” she inquired cautiously.
The man ignored her question.
“I’m here to see Laura.”
Sunshine checked her watch.
“You’re too early. It’s only ten o’clock. Your window doesn’t open yet.”
The man looked at her the way the other kids had looked at her at school when they had called her names and pushed and shoved her in the playground.
“What the hell are you driveling on about? I just want to see Laura.”
He pushed past her into the hall, where Laura and Freddy were still grappling with the tree. Sunshine followed him in, clearly upset.
“It’s the bored van man,” she announced, “and he’s not very nice.”
Laura let go of the tree. Caught unawares, Freddy was almost toppled by its weight and let it fall. It missed the intruder by inches, causing him to yell angrily:
“Jesus Christ, Laura! What the bloody hell are you trying to do? Kill me?”
Laura faced him as she had never done before, with steady eyes and a steely composure.
“Now there’s a thought.”
The man was clearly not expecting this new version of Laura, and she appeared to be enjoying his discomfort. Freddy was intrigued by this unexpected turn of events but trying hard to feign indifference, and Sunshine was wondering how it was that, if Laura actually knew the bored van man, she had asked him to come to Padua when he was so horrid. And she certainly wasn’t going to make him the lovely cup of tea. Laura finally broke up the tense tableau.
“What do you want, Vince?” she sighed. “You’d better come through to the kitchen.”
As he followed her out of the hall he was unable to resist giving Freddy the once-over, and Freddy returned his gaze with a hard stare. In the kitchen Laura didn’t offer him anything other than a brief opportunity to explain his presence.
“Don’t I even get a cup of tea?” he asked in a wheedling tone she’d heard him use so frequently in the bedroom when they were first married and it wasn’t tea he had wanted. She shuddered at the thought. No doubt Selina from Servicing was horribly familiar with it too by now. She almost felt sorry for her.
“Vince, why are you here? What is it that you want?”
He flashed her a smile; intending seductive but executing sleazy.
“I want us to be friends.”
Laura laughed out loud.
“I do,” he continued, desperation beginning to whet the very edges of his words.
“What about Selina?”
He sat down and buried his head in his hands. It was so hammy that Laura was tempted to offer him the mustard.
“We broke up. I could never love her the way I loved you.”
“Lucky her. She left you, didn’t she?”
Vince wasn’t ready to give up just yet.
“Look, Laura, I never stopped loving you.”
“What, even while you were servicing Selina?”
Vince stood up and tried to take her hand.
“It was just a physical thing. Just sex. I never stopped thinking about you, missing you, and wanting you back.”
Laura shook her head in weary disbelief.
“So isn’t it strange that you never thought to contact me before now? Not a birthday card, a Christmas card, a phone call. Tell me, Vince, why is that? Why now? Nothing to do with this big house that I happen to have inherited, I suppose?”
Vince sat back down, trying to marshal a coherent argument. Laura had always been too clev
er for him, even when she was just a girl. He had loved her then, in his own way, even though he knew that, really, she was out of his league, with her posh education and nice manners. Back then, though, he could still find ways to impress her. Perhaps if their baby had lived, or they had managed to conceive again, things might have been different. He would have liked a son to play football with, or a little girl to take horse riding, but it wasn’t to be, and in the end, their fruitless efforts to become parents became another of the things that drove them apart. Over the years, as Laura grew up, she became more of a match for him, and so less of a match in the marital sense. She noticed his faults and he, in turn, exaggerated them to annoy her. It was his only defense. At least Selina hadn’t minded his elbows on the table or the toilet seat left up. Well, not at first.
Laura was still waiting calmly for his response. Her composure infuriated him and the mask of civility finally fell from his face, revealing the ugly truth.
“I heard about your date with Graham. You always were a frigid bitch,” he spat at her.
Before he came, he had promised himself that he would not lose his temper. He would show Miss Snooty Pants that he was as good as her. But as usual, she rattled him, just by being herself. By being better than him.
Laura had finally had enough. She picked up the nearest thing to hand—an open carton of milk, which as luck would have it was on the turn—and hurled the contents at Vince’s sneering face. She missed, but hit him squarely on the chest, splashing the rancid liquid all over his designer polo shirt and staining the dark suede of his expensive jacket. Laura was just looking round for further ammunition when the kitchen door opened. It was Freddy.
“Is everything okay?”
She rather reluctantly replaced the bottle of washing-up liquid on the draining board with a resounding thump.
“Yes, everything’s fine. Vince is just leaving, aren’t you?”
