‘What did Marcus say?’
‘The funny thing is, he hates shopping. But we were so much in Angela’s debt that he agreed. You have to laugh, really.’
‘And did it happen?’
‘Yes, it’s done. We’re all square now.’
‘Where did she choose to be taken?’
‘Paris, by Eurostar.’
‘Oh my God – and you allowed it?’
‘It was just for a day. They went early and got the last train back. She had boxes of goodies, he said.’
‘I hope that’s all she had,’ Paula said, and added quickly, ‘Sorry, darling. I’m sure it was all very proper.’
‘I trust my Marcus and we’re both very grateful to Angela. She’s more than ten years younger than we are. Poor little soul, why shouldn’t she have her treat? She’s worked a miracle with Rick. Did I tell you he passed his driving test and now she employs him part time?’
Later that summer, Rick asked his father how much it would cost to buy a van of his own. He was thinking of doing deliveries on a bigger scale, full time instead of the odd jobs he still did for Angela.
‘I think we should buy it for him,’ Sophie said at once. ‘We could get a loan, if necessary. It shows such good intentions on his part.’
‘I don’t know,’ Marcus said. ‘It’s still early days in his rehabilitation. A few months ago I wouldn’t have dreamed of letting him anywhere near a van. I’ll tell you what. I’ll ask Angela’s advice next time I see her.’
Secretly, Sophie was a little hurt that her opinion counted for less than Angela’s, but she didn’t say anything.
‘I saw your Rick driving his new van yesterday,’ Paula said. ‘He gave me a wave, which he would never have done in the old days.’
‘It isn’t new. It’s reconditioned,’ Sophie said.
‘Good idea.’
‘Angela’s idea, in fact. She’d heard about it going cheap. Rick spruced it up with Marcus’s help and he’s really proud of it. He’s found one or two regular delivery jobs, thanks to Angela knowing people.’
‘And he’s still on the straight and narrow?’
‘From all I can tell, he is. Instead of nightclubbing he does potholing.’
‘Does what?’
‘You know. Blokes in helmets with lamps going underground on ropes. There are some really deep holes and mineshafts out there. He puts his kit in the van and drives off and we don’t see him for hours and hours.’
‘Is it safe?’
‘They’re very professional about it.’
‘Some of those holes are so deep you wouldn’t stand a chance if you fell. And the mineshafts are notorious.’
‘He’s getting to know them all and he knows which ones to avoid. From our point of view it’s a lot less dangerous than clubbing, what with the drugs and everything.’
‘I’m impressed. I won’t go on about it, then. What a relief for you both. Is Marcus at work?’
‘Upstairs, catching up on his sleep. He’s working nights at the garage this week.’
‘All this week?’
Sophie nodded. ‘One week in three, nine till seven. I thought you knew.’
‘Well, I thought I did. I ran out of milk late yesterday and I always have a cocoa at bedtime or I can’t sleep, so I nipped round to the garage. About ten, it was. Marcus wasn’t on duty. That Asian guy was serving. I asked if Marcus was about and he said he was on a week’s holiday.’
‘He’s not. That isn’t true,’ Sophie said, her heart thumping.
‘You’d better keep an eye on him.’
‘I can’t understand it. He was gone all night, for sure.’
‘Somebody got their wires crossed, I expect,’ Paula said. ‘Don’t look so worried.’
She was deeply worried. She’d noticed Marcus behaving strangely in the last few days. Tight-lipped and twitchy, he almost seemed to shun her at times. She didn’t like to dwell on it, but her beloved husband seemed to be undergoing an alteration.
Of all the people to confide in, she chose Rick. He’d become so much more mature now, running his own delivery business, paying his way and being upfront with people.
‘I’m worried about your father. He’s been behaving strangely. It’s like a personality change.’
‘I’ve noticed,’ Rick said. ‘I didn’t want to interfere.’
‘I’m so unhappy, Rick. I think he’s having an affair.’
‘My dad? Get away!’
‘Really. I don’t think I’ve lost him entirely, but it could happen if I don’t do something about it. I couldn’t bear to let him go.’
‘Are you sure about this?’
‘There are too many signs. People who know me, customers in the coffee shop, drop hints that they’ve seen something going on, something they can’t discuss with me. And Paula from next door is more outspoken. She says she’s seen them together several times.’
‘Seen who?’
‘Your dad with Angela.’
‘Angela? That’s crazy.’
‘That’s what I thought at first, but everything points to it.’
‘It’s not possible,’ Rick said, flushing all over his fair skin. ‘I see her all the time. I’m running my business through her shop. We’re in partnership now. We share the profits and I’m part-owner. Of course I’d know if anything like that was going on with Dad.’
‘I couldn’t believe it myself for a long time,’ Sophie said. ‘He visits her when he’s supposed to be working nights at the garage. He pays Sanjit to stand in for him.’
Now the blood drained from Rick’s cheeks. ‘She’s my partner.’
‘Business partner. Her love life is another thing altogether.’
Rick was silent, seeming to bite back what he had been about to say. Finally he managed to speak. ‘But she was my discovery. I found her and she’s turned my life around.’
Sophie, too, bit back the words that were ready to spring from her. She didn’t care any more about Angela, but Rick would fall apart if he learned the truth about the arrangement.
Now the words poured from Rick. ‘Why would he want to take up with her when he’s got you? She’s far too young for him. I’m closer to her age than he is and she really put herself out to help me through a difficult time. I was on the skids heading for some kind of hell and she reached out to me and pulled me up. I owe everything to her. She thinks I’m young and still in need of help, but our relationship is changing day by day. We’re almost equals now. I’d move in with her if she asked me.’
Sophie was on the verge of tears. ‘I had no idea. I wouldn’t have mentioned it. Oh, this is terrible. I don’t want to hurt you. I shouldn’t have told you. I should have had the courage to take it up with Marcus.’
‘How could she be so cruel – to you and to me? She knows how I feel about her. She must.’
‘I’ll speak to him.’
‘Don’t,’ Rick said. ‘Leave him out of it. If this is true, I know exactly how to deal with it.’
‘How’s it all going now?’ Paula said towards the end of the year. ‘Got your life back together, have you?’
‘We’re doing fine now,’ Sophie said, and meant it.
‘Marcus came to his senses, did he? I see he’s pulling his weight at the garage these days.’
‘It was just a silly little episode and we’re over it.’
‘Men. They all need pulling into line at some stage.’
Sophie smiled, trying to think of a way of changing the subject.
Paula changed it for her. ‘She seems to have left the district, that Angela. Strange woman. Disappeared overnight. I don’t think anyone knows where she went. Rick’s the one who ought to know, but he doesn’t say a word.’
‘I don’t suppose he knows anything.’
Paula gave a faint, disbelieving smile. ‘It hasn’t done him any harm, seeing how he was in partnership with her. He can still use the shop for his own business. I see the sewing machine has gone. No use to a man running a transport comp
any. I wonder where it went, with the ironing board and the clothes racks. Down one of those old mineshafts where he does his potholing at weekends, I shouldn’t wonder. Has he stopped being a worry to you both?’
‘Completely.’
‘He’s made a success of his life, hasn’t he, after such a shaky start? Stunning, I call it. You and Marcus must be proud when you see the vans with his name on the side. And it sounds just right – Rick’s Removals.’
THE LAST RESORT
Claire McGowan
Claire McGowan was born in Northern Ireland, but later moved to England and worked in the charity sector after taking a degree in English and French. Her first novel, The Fall, was published in 2012, and she has followed it up with The Lost.
‘Do you think … You think they forgot about us?’
Neither of them wanted to say anything at first. Lucy’s voice was muddy and tentative in the silence of the hotel dining room.
Rob crossed the floor, his flip-flops slapping on the concrete. He was trying to walk purposefully, but he didn’t feel it. It was weird, really weird. Where was everyone? They’d woken up in their luxury tent as dawn broke; pink, worn-out. Safari dawn. And now it was breakfast time, but no one was here.
‘What about the safari drive? We were meant to go out today.’
‘I don’t know.’ He raised his voice. ‘Hello?’ The whole of the safari lodge was silent, the only movement the fluttering of the plastic tablecloth clipped to the buffet table. When they’d arrived last night, after a long drive round the park to the isolated northern side and this lodge on the hilltop, they’d been sweating in equatorial darkness. There’d been lots of staff, dark uniforms blending politely into the night as Rob and Lucy were led, exhausted, to their tented room. But this morning, no one.
Rob could see Lucy’s face slide. The whole time they’d been in Africa, it was as if she’d been holding herself together with both hands. He’d promised her that this, the last hotel, would be a nice one – not somewhere she’d have to shower under a thatched roof teeming with insect life, or pee in a darkened latrine that was full of the most alarming rustles. The last hotel was supposed to make up for the feeling he’d had the whole trip, as she lumbered behind him through virgin forest alive with chimpanzee hoots, or shrieked as a cockroach ran under the bed. The feeling he’d been trying not to name, until he woke up one morning to find it square on his tongue like an after-dinner mint: embarrassment. Even the clothes she wore, God. As if she’d coated herself in glue and run through a branch of Millets. The trousers that unzipped into shorts, the wilderness hat that tied under her chin. All trip he’d been watching her burnt face bob under it, anxious and scared. She always had one finger in the guidebook, as if putting it down would mean they’d be struck by civil war, or plague, or those worms that burrowed into your eyeballs which she’d once seen on a Channel 4 documentary. It didn’t help that she’d ignored the actually sensible advice of not eating the salad, and been stuck on the toilet for days, the smell of pumping sewage not adding to the atmosphere of their cramped room, where every corner scuttled with shadowy life.
Worst of all, it was the last hotel before they went home, and he knew somewhere in the shared mind space that all couples have she was expecting more. Why else after six years would you go to Africa, and see chimps and lions and walk in the bush, if you weren’t going to get engaged at the top of a waterfall? He’d even looked at rings in H. Samuel in Brent Cross, on yet another Saturday searching for jeans that would fit her ‘curves’, trips that left her tearful and needing to be soothed with Krispy Kremes and rom-coms starring Katherine Heigl.
Lucy stood before him now, six years together, four living in the flat they owned together in Harrow. There was nowhere else to go except the altar. Then have babies, die. Her first, or him. Him probably, since he was a year older and a man.
‘Are you listening? Where do you think they went?’
Rob dragged himself to the present, where he was 32 and Lucy was 31 and standing anxious in her safari shorts and sweat-stained T-shirt, size 14 (though she’d told him it was a 12). She perched on one trainer-sandal and with the other scratched at a bite on her calf.
‘Maybe it’s their day off.’
‘All of them?’ It was a small hotel, just the dining room/reception and the individual luxury tents, but there’d been lots of staff the night before. They’d just gone. A hose had even been left trickling into pink shrubs, and Rob had conscientiously turned it off on their way up.
‘Do you remember what they said last night?’
He shook his head. ‘I was too tired.’ She always expected him to remember, follow instructions, know the way. ‘I suppose it might be their day off.’
‘What should we do?’
‘Let’s just enjoy it,’ he soothed. ‘We’ve got the whole place to ourselves. They’ll be back later.’
On the first day, the power was still on, and they found the fridge full of food – ham, eggs, slices of pale European cheese. They sat in the dining room and ate rough sandwiches, the only sounds the cheep of the birds landing for crumbs, and the breeze ruffling the plastic tablecloths.
She giggled nervously. ‘I feel we should be whispering. Do you think there’s any way we can hear the news? A radio or anything?’
There was no TV in the hotel – it was meant to be a retreat into nature.
‘There might be. Hang on.’ He went into the kitchen, his voice echoing off the tiled walls. ‘Hello?’ No one. Some eggs lay in a cast iron pan, thick with congealed oil, as if someone had run off in the middle. ‘Hello?’ He searched the racks for a radio, something the staff might listen to while cooking, but there was nothing. The bar area had a CD player but nothing that received. Glancing outside, he could see all the Jeeps were gone, and there must be no other guests, because the parking space was entirely empty. He didn’t tell her this.
‘And your phone’s still not working?’ Lucy was keeping her voice light, curious, but he could hear the effort in it.
‘No. No reception.’ It hadn’t worked since the capital.
‘What can we do then?’
He slipped his hand into her clammy one; it was as much of an effort as her speaking. ‘Let’s relax. I’m sure there’s a reason.’
The first day they spent at the pool, helping themselves to beers from the bar. ‘Should we write down what we had?’ She was worried.
‘They left us.’
‘Good point.’
They went to sleep beer- and sun-drunk, like children without a babysitter. That first night, he was convinced all the way down to his ankles that the staff would be back come morning, with towels draped on their arms and glasses of fresh orange juice in which ice cubes clinked like jettisoned crates in a dirty river. But you weren’t supposed to have ice cubes, were you? Bottled water. He had to remember. He drifted off to sleep listening to Lucy’s snuffling breath, the rise and fall of her chest under her pyjamas, wondering as he often did at what point in a relationship you first undressed yourself, instead of tearing each other’s clothes off. The first time you didn’t have sex. The last.
The second day, nobody came. The resort was as silent and still as before. Tiny night-birds had pecked at the fruit platter from breakfast, so it was ruined, sticky and ant-eaten.
‘What should we do?’
‘They have to be here on Friday, surely? They’re supposed to drive us back to town.’
‘So we just wait till then?’
‘I dunno. What else can we do?’
She didn’t answer the question, but he felt she expected him to do something all the same. Anything. Just something.
The second day they were freer, going into the kitchen, taking beers from the bar. Two days without cleaning and the pool floated with leaves and insects, spinning delicate shadows on the tiled bottom. When she swam Lucy left in her wake an opalescent slick of DEET and suncream, like a wrecked tanker. The sun beat down, fierce, burning. Rob fell asleep at lunchtime and woke to
find an ant crawling over his damp foot. He jumped up, itching and grouchy. ‘I might walk to the village.’
She looked up from her paperback, flesh spilling over the sides of her bikini. ‘What village?’
‘Remember we passed through one on the way? It was only a few miles, I think.’ He recalled the colourful wraps of the women, and a row of tinpot shops, and the stares and the mutters of ‘Mzungu’. Whites.
She turned a page. He was expecting her to talk him out of it. ‘That might be a good idea. Be careful, though.’
Rob regretted it hugely after just ten minutes. He was so hot his skin had gathered a coating mixed of sweat and the red dust that rose up with every step of his hiking boots. He’d put them on in case of snakes, then slapped himself all over with corrosive DEET until his flesh stung. All through the banana-lined trail that led to the hotel, there was not a single person. He emerged onto the main road, such as it was. No vehicles. A sign for the resort swaying in the faintest breath of breeze. He was exhausted and sopping but he trudged on down the red road. How far had it been? Three miles?
It seemed to take hours. He’d never been so aware of time. Each second stretched and sloshing like a water balloon full of sweaty discomfort. His feet ached and chafed in the boots, and a band of black flies buzzed thickly round his ears. The cluster of shacks, which had seemed nearby, receded further and further with every bend in the cracked road. And the whole time he walked, not a single car passed, not a person was to be seen among the banana plantations. Eventually he came to the outskirts of the village, the ground littered with a strange collection of rubbish, from fish bones to bottle tops. ‘Hello?’ His voice sounded weak in the silence. On an empty shop, a metal Coke sign creaked to and fro.
Rob felt the sweat cool and prickle on the back of his neck. No one was there, not in any of the little shops or shacks. The only human figures were headless mannequins dressed in hideous nylon clothes. There was also no food in the shop, just a broken fridge full of Coke and Sprite, but he’d noticed this in other towns in the country. You could always get Coke. Some dusty shelves of biscuits, nothing that was fresh, no connection to the deep red earth outside. The till when he pinged it had money in. Why would anyone leave that behind? In one home a fire was still smoking, as if it had just been extinguished by running feet.
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