by JL Merrow
Over the ford, the road at present bone-dry as much of the river water was channelled underneath. Then a right turn down a narrow path bordered by the dual hazards of prickly, red-berried hawthorn to the right and stinging nettles to the left, and I was back in the park, this time higher up by the tennis club. Cautious glances yielded neither Sean nor the twins.
Of course, they’d recognised me. They’d been chanting my name—more or less. So Sean must have known who I was before he followed me down to the river.
Oh, bugger it. He’d probably just taken them down to the river to play Pooh-sticks on the bridge. Everything, I told myself firmly as I padded down Mill Lane and back to the High Street, is not about you.
The Old Hatter’s Cottage, I was pleased to see as I kicked off my running shoes, appeared unburgled. As it was starting to get chilly now, I shut the back door. The kitchen still smelled a bit charcoal-y, but that was probably because I hadn’t had the nerve to open up the oven yet and deal with whatever was left inside. I supposed I ought to bite the bullet and get it over with, but… No. Shower first. After all, I could hardly clean the oven when I wasn’t clean myself, could I?
Procrastination successfully justified, I jogged upstairs for a shower.
Thirteen minutes later, scrubbed, shaven and smelling faintly of sandalwood, I wandered back into the living room. My stomach reminded me with a rumble that I’d never actually managed to have lunch. There probably wasn’t a lot of point, now. I might as well wait until teatime. After all, I’d eaten my Weetabix—which, I had to admit, had tasted an awful lot like mush—several hours later than usual this morning.
I threw myself at the sofa—and remembered at the very last minute I’d hidden my laptop under the cushions. Twisting midair to avoid crushing it, I bounced off the edge of the sofa and landed on my arse on the carpet.
Ow. I rolled my eyes at myself, darted a quick glance at the window to make sure no passersby were gazing in at me in concern or, as it might be, mockery, and heaved myself to my feet. As I did so, I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. It had been by the fireplace. I jerked my head round to look more closely—and a small, furry, brownish-grey blur streaked across the carpet and through the open door into the kitchen.
Oh God.
I’d got a rat.
Chapter Eight
I’d got a rat. In my kitchen. No doubt even now nibbling at my chocolate Hobnobs and doing unspeakable things on the work surfaces. I was never going to eat again. I slammed the kitchen door shut to at least keep the wretched creature out of the rest of the house, and went to collapse on the sofa.
And nearly sat on my laptop again. Damn it. I pulled the thing out from under the cushion and quickly looked up rat infestation on the Internet.
Six queasy minutes later, I shut the laptop with a snap, my skin crawling. Possibly it had been a mistake to search images. At any rate, it was clear I needed to do something about my uninvited guest before I was knee-deep in droppings and/or got nibbled to death in my sleep. But who should I call?
There was an obvious answer. Obviously. But calling Sean would be…awkward. After all, only a couple of hours ago, I’d found it necessary to run several miles to get away from having to speak to him. And if I called him, he might read things into it. Things like I wanted to see him.
Which I didn’t, of course, I told the tight feeling in my chest.
Did I?
Why did relationships have to be so complicated?
No, I told myself. I’d merely be calling upon Sean in a professional capacity. I could just picture his look of bemusement if I accused him of reading into my plea for help things which were not, in fact, there. He’d frown, a crease appearing between those copper brows. Why on earth would you imagine I’d infer something like that? he’d ask.
Well. He probably wouldn’t say why on earth. Or, for that matter, infer. But the principle still stood. Decision made, I grabbed my phone—and realised I didn’t, in fact, have Sean’s number. Or the name of the company he worked for. Both those pieces of information would undoubtedly be available in a file somewhere, listing Sean as emergency contact for the twins, but said file was now firmly locked up in school for half term.
Sighing, I called Rose.
“Well, what are you calling me for?” she demanded after I’d explained my situation. “Why aren’t you calling Sean?”
“I haven’t got his number. And anyway, I don’t want to call Sean,” I added, my resolve having faltered in the time it had taken to make the call. “That’s why I’m calling you. There must be other rat-catchers in the area.”
“Yeah, but he’s right in the village. You want prompt service, don’t you? Are you telling me you’ll sleep tonight if you don’t get it sorted?”
Oh God. She had a point. “I could stay with you?” I suggested hopefully.
“No way. Last time you stole the blankets, and we weren’t even sharing a bed. ’Sides, I’m not enabling your avoidance tactics.”
“Have you been reading self-help books again?”
“Might have been. Stop changing the subject. Just call Sean. You want someone you know and trust, don’t you? And it’s not like he’s still going to be peed off about that date you went on. He’s not the sort.”
“I suppose…”
“Look, have you got a pen and paper? I’ll give you his number.”
“I’ll remember it.”
“Weirdo.”
“Having a good memory for numbers isn’t actually a failing, you know.”
“It is when it’s weird. Are you sure you’re gay? I’m beginning to think you’re mathmosexual.”
“You mean I’m an arithmophile. Which, for the avoidance of all possible doubt, I’m not. It would make teaching maths extremely embarrassing. Are you ever going to give me this number?”
“Hang on, don’t get your bow tie in a bunch. Let me find it… Here you go. Ready?”
“Go on, baby,” I growled. “Talk dirty to me.”
I should have known. Rose proceeded to recite the phone number in the sort of voice Fordy would have called “porntastic”, punctuating each digit with a breathy moan and ending on a long-drawn-out two-ooo-ooooh.
“Enjoy that, did you?” I asked drily.
“Oh, yeah. Think I’m going to have to go and do some sums now. Some really long, hard sums. How about you?”
“I think I’m going to call Sean.”
“See? I knew that’d get you in the mood. Good luck finding your lowest common denominator. Just remember, no multiplying until the third date.”
“I think we’re going to have other things on our minds. Rat, remember?”
After I’d hung up, I stored Sean’s number in my phone and was about to hit Call, but my finger veered off to one side. Was it fair to call him in after the way I’d hurt his feelings? After all, he’d stayed off the school run for so long. Perhaps he’d been avoiding me?
Then I realised what an idiot I was being. “Yes, Emsy,” I said to the phone in my hand, “he’s been pining for you so pitiably he dragged his sister out of her sickbed to take the twins to school, all to save his delicate little feelings. Which, by the way, he was merely repressing manfully when he spoke to you earlier with absolutely zero appearance of romantic woe.” I rolled my eyes and hit Call.
“Yeah?” Sean’s voice sounded cautious.
“It’s me. Robert. Emeny,” I explained, cringing. But at least I’d managed to avoid putting the automatic “Mr.” in front of my surname. “Rose gave me your number.”
“Oh, yeah?” Now he sounded intrigued. And slightly mocking, although maybe that was just my paranoia.
“I’ve got a rat.”
There was a beat of silence so loud it nearly deafened me. “Okay,” Sean said briskly, and this time his tone was all business. “So you want me to come round?”
“If you’re not too busy…”
“Nah, I’m not working today, and the twins are back home with Debs. I can come straight over.”
“Thank you so much—”
“Not a problem,” he cut me off. “See you in five minutes.”
It was, in fact, nearer eleven minutes before he turned up, but I’ve noticed people always underestimate these things, so it was actually sooner than I’d expected him. I heard him before I saw him, but while I’d been listening for the roar of a motorbike, it was a quietly purring van that pulled up in front of my house.
I had the front door open before he could knock. “Thank you so much for coming,” I greeted him. “Especially on your day off.”
“No problem,” he said, still with that off-puttingly businesslike tone he’d had during our phone conversation. I’d wanted to open with an apology, but his manner wasn’t encouraging. “Right. Did you see the rat? Or have you just seen where it’s been?”
“You mean, its droppings?”
“Yeah. Rule of thumb—if they’re the size of a grain of rice, it’s mice. If they look more like raisins, it’s rats. So if you show me where you found them, I’ll—”
“I didn’t,” I said quickly. “I mean, I didn’t see droppings. I saw the rat. By the fireplace.” I led him into the living room and pointed. “There,” I said, in case he was having difficulty identifying the hearth.
Sean looked. “Well, it’s not there now,” he said after a few exceedingly long seconds. He gave me a teasing look. “You know, I was planning on giving you a call anyway, seeing as you were too busy to stop running earlier. You don’t have to make up excuses to call me.”
Fabulous. So now he suspected me of compounding my errors from the other night by dragging him out here on a wild-goose chase.
“I didn’t make it up! The rat was there.” I jabbed a finger at the fireplace, as if by pointing hard enough I could somehow summon the recalcitrant rodent. “Obviously it didn’t stay there. I startled it.”
Wait a minute. He’d been planning to call me? Why?
“So where did it go?” Sean asked. Damn it, I’d missed the chance to question him.
“Into the kitchen.” I was sure on that point, at least. “I shut the door behind it,” I added, to show I hadn’t been completely useless.
“How fast?”
I frowned. “As fast as I could, of course.”
“How fast was the rat going?” Sean asked with infinite patience.
I stared at him. “At the speed of rat? I don’t know. I don’t actually keep a radar gun handy for measuring rodent velocity.”
“Did it look like it knew where it was going?” He held a hand up to forestall whatever I was going to say next. “You see, rats like to stick to their usual routes. And they don’t see too well. So if it was moving quick, it was probably taking its route in and out of the house. Which means it’s long gone now.”
“Oh. Um.” I suddenly felt very small and rather hot. “I, well, I only saw it out of the corner of my eye. I think it was moving fast, but, well…”
Sean was nodding. “Not to worry. I’ll give the kitchen a thorough check before I go, anyway. Even if I don’t find the rat itself, hopefully we’ll be able to see where it’s been coming in.”
“You mean, you think it’s been in more than once?”
“Oh yeah. Most like.”
I shuddered. Then I frowned. “Wait a minute, wouldn’t I have noticed something? Raisins, so to speak?”
“Not always, if it’s rats. In some ways, you’re better off with rats than mice. Mice are incontinent little sods. They’ll pee and crap all over the place. Rats, now, they often have their own toilet area. And a separate eating area.”
“Oh? I’m surprised they’re held in such low regard, then. They seem the perfect houseguests.” I thought about it. “Bubonic plague notwithstanding.”
“Yeah, not to mention Weil’s disease, TB, foot-and-mouth and a whole load of other nasties. Plus there’s the damage they cause. Had a case once where they’d got into the loft and gnawed a hole in the water tank.”
“Shall we get on and look for it, then?” I said quickly, making a mental note to boil all water before washing in future.
“Well, if you’re sure you don’t want to keep it as a pet…” Sean grinned.
“Positive,” I said firmly and led the way into the kitchen. The subtle aroma of eau de charcoal wafted into my nose, and I realised guiltily I still hadn’t dealt with the failed focaccia. I casually tiptoed to the back door and opened it wide, hoping Sean wouldn’t notice.
We looked everywhere for that bloody rodent. Sean even removed all the kickboards from the bottom of the kitchen cabinets, got down on hands and knees and risked life and limb by shining his torch underneath. All to no avail.
“No sign of it,” he reported, getting back to his feet. I shuffled hastily back and tried to look like I hadn’t just been ogling certain parts of his anatomy. Specifically, those parts that filled out a pair of denim jeans rather nicely. “I’ll shift the cooker out—sometimes they like to hang around behind those. It’s nice and warm for them, and you get food spillages.”
I didn’t like to admit that my cooker didn’t, as a rule, see a lot of either warmth or food. And after all, it had been in use today. “Need a hand?”
“Nah, I’m good.” Sean crouched down and took hold of the bottom of the cooker.
More from a feeling that I ought to be doing something, rather than just standing around being useless while “man stuff” was being done than out of real expectation I’d find something, I started shifting stuff around on the worktops. There wasn’t, to be honest, a great deal of stuff to shift; most of my groceries, such as they were, were in cupboards. I was not looking forward to helping Sean search their dark corners.
The family-size box of Weetabix, which would probably last me until retirement, however, had been too big to fit, so it squatted on top of the fridge-freezer. I reached out a hand to pick it up. Wasn’t it a little heav—
In a greyish blur, something erupted from the top of the box, ran up my arm, over my head, down the other arm and, with a leap, scurried to the floor and out through the open kitchen door.
There was a long moment of absolute stillness. I was rooted to the spot, physically unable to move. Unless you counted the shaking. I could still feel its little claws skittering across my skull.
“Well, he’s gone, anyway,” Sean said into the silence.
“R-r-r-r…” I forced out through chattering teeth. “R-r-r-r—”
“Actually, it was a squirrel,” Sean said. “Sorry.”
“Sq—” I caught myself before I could get stuck in another Möbius loop of stuttering, and took a deep breath. “Squirrel?” It came out a little squeaky, as if I’d decided it would be amusing to mimic my rodent visitor.
“Yeah.” Sean shrugged and moved forward to give my rigid shoulder a cautious pat. “It had a pretty thin tail, mind, for a squirrel. And some people reckon they’re just rats with better PR.”
I shuddered. “Are you trying to make me feel better or worse?”
He smiled. “Better. Seriously. You want to sit down?”
“Not sure. I, er, I’m not entirely certain I can move.”
Sean squeezed my shoulder, and warmth pulsed through me from the point of contact, freeing me from my paralysis. I had the ridiculous urge to pull him closer, so I covered it with a cough. “Um. Tea?”
“Yeah, that’d be great.” His hand dropped away.
Feeling bereft, I went to fill the kettle—then did an about-turn to shut, bolt and lock the back door en route. For some reason, my hands weren’t really cooperating, seeming to favour a sort of localised Saint Vitus’s dance over actually doing what I asked them to, so by the time I’d finished rattling the key against the lock and was able to return to
the kettle, I found it already steaming. Sean had also had time to get out a couple of mugs and locate the teabags. He gave me a kind smile and poured in the water. “Milk?”
“Yes. Please. Sorry, I’m being a terrible host.”
“Scare up a couple of biscuits and I’ll let you off. Come on, I’ll take these through.”
It was just as well Sean was carrying the drinks. I fumbled the packet of chocolate digestives and almost dropped it twice en route. The first time was because my hands were still shaking; the second because I saw something move on the floor out of the corner of my eye.
I was mortified when I realised it had been my foot.
“You must think I’m an absolute wimp,” I muttered sadly as I dropped onto the sofa. “A squirrel. Any of the little girls in my class would think all their Christmases had come at once if they found a real live squirrel as the hidden surprise in their Weetabix. And here I was, practically wetting myself in terror.”
Sean sat down beside me. “Nah, don’t be so hard on yourself. You were just startled, that’s all. And you were expecting a rat. ’Spect I’d have screamed like a girl too if one ran over my head like that.”
Oh God. “I screamed like a girl?” I’d have been quite happy to continue in ignorance of that.
“It’s just a figure of speech. You sort of yelped. A very manly sort of yelp. Almost a grunt, really. Or a growl.” Sean’s smile was teasing.
I glared at him and pointedly took a chocolate biscuit without offering him one. “Now you’re patronising me.”
“If it helps, I once saw a bloke go into a dead faint when he saw a rat running straight at him.”
“They do that? Rats, I mean?”
“Not really. Like I said, rats keep to their usual routes, even when there’s danger around. So it was actually going for the doorway, trying to escape. It wasn’t the rat’s fault he was standing in the way, though the bloke swore blind when he woke up the rat had been going for his throat.” He cocked his head to one side. “Feeling better?”
