by Clare Boyd
‘Well, we’re all the same. I spent such a lot of money on new curtains from John Lewis for our lounge, to match our cushions, you know? And as soon as Barry had put them up I hated them. What a waste. Silly, isn’t it?’
I was so grateful to her for being kind, I laughed, a little too loudly and enthusiastically, and relaxed a little. She grinned and took another sip of wine. Her hair was bouncing back as it dried, shooting up from her widow’s peak.
‘Yes, it is silly. Very silly,’ I agreed. I decided that I had been paranoid to suspect she had come round because of Rosie. A fast-forward replay of my row with Rosie pricked my consciousness, but only briefly. All young children screamed, and Mira of all people would know this. At Woodlands, she would be surrounded by screaming children all day long.
‘Gosh, sorry Mira, I was supposed to get Peter for you, wasn’t I? He’s in the den. You can’t hear the doorbell from there. I’ll be back in a minute.’
I nipped down the corridor, feeling swimmy from the wine. While pregnant with Rosie and Noah, I had never allowed myself more than a few sips of champagne on special occasions, and I was reminded of why.
Peter was lying stretched out on the sofa with his hand down his trousers, scratching his balls. The sound of racing cars screeched from the television.
‘Peter, didn’t you hear the doorbell?’ I whispered.
‘No, who was it?’
‘It’s Mira, from next door. She’s here in the kitchen having a drink.’
‘What? What the hell?’ he said, sitting up and untwisting his shirt.
‘She wanted to talk to you about borrowing our lawnmower.’
‘Oh hell. Can’t you talk to her about it?’
‘I didn’t know we even owned a lawnmower.’
‘How d’you think Luke mowed our lawn? With nail clippers?’ he asked, cocking an eyebrow at me, plainly amused, plainly half-cut already.
‘Oh, stop it, I don’t know, just come through will you?’
He padded after me in his socks with his empty wine glass in one hand.
‘Hello Mira! What a lovely surprise!’ he bellowed, pushing his hand into hers affectionately.
‘Hello, Peter. Sorry, I’m not staying,’ she said, not moving an inch.
‘A drop more?’ He topped up her glass and poured another one for himself. ‘What were you two gassing about?’ he asked, as though we were long-lost friends.
‘Kitchens,’ Mira laughed.
‘Oh Lord. You don’t want me to pay for another one, do you darling?’ Peter said. The mischief lit his eyes. I was the one who had paid for the kitchen.
‘No, no, I was just telling Mira how much I loved slaving over a hot stove for you darling, night and day. Filled with gratitude for all that you provide, my Lord and Master.’
Peter and I laughed together. The hell of bedtime, and Rosie, and my rage, slipped away into the background.
‘Us women know how to keep our families happy, don’t we just?’ Mira laughed.
‘Right, indeed,’ Peter said, clapping his hands. ‘Now, I’ll just get you the keys for the shed. The code for the gate is 2211. So you can nip in to get it any time you like.’
‘Oh, that is very kind, thank you,’ Mira said, looking over to me as she stood up.
I forced out a smile out and nodded. ‘Yes, of course, brilliant, that’s fine,’ I said, irritated by Peter’s gesture. I didn’t want her wandering into our home any time she liked. I hadn’t even given the gate code to my mother, or Rosie.
‘Mummy?’
My smile dropped away. Rosie appeared in the doorway in her pink nightgown like a ghostly apparition. I wanted to scream.
Mira turned to see who it was.
Peter caught my eye briefly. ‘Rosie, darling. What are you doing up again? Come on, up to bed,’ he said, trying to lead her away. Rosie wouldn’t budge.
I pushed Mira’s chair under the table and straightened it to match the other chairs. ‘I’ll see you to the door Mira. Off to bed, now, Rosie, poppet. Daddy’ll take you up,’ I said, trying to sound flippant, unfazed.
‘But I want you, Mummy. I can’t sleep.’
‘Why can’t you sleep, pet?’ Mira asked, crouching down to her level.
‘My wrist is hurting.’
‘Oh dear. What did you do to it?’ Mira said, pulling up her sleeve to inspect it.
The red groove looked angrier than before.
‘Nothing,’ Rosie said, glancing up at me.
My heart was in my mouth.
From her haunches, Mira twisted her head, still holding Rosie’s arm, and frowned at me. The kitchen down-lighters cast long eyelash shadows on her cheeks, like clown tears.
‘She slammed her bedroom door on her hand. Isn’t that right, Rosie?’ I said, looking to Rosie for confirmation.
Rosie looked up at me as though she was looking up at an ogre. Her blue eyes were wide, smudges of tiredness ringing them. Her skin glowed a frightening white. Her chin wobbled and dimpled.
Trying to hide my agitation and my guilt, I rolled my eyes at Mira, about to say, ‘Look at this madam, with all her drama!’
Mira did not give me the chance to say anything. She dropped Rosie’s arm and fled, towards the front door, past Peter who was pulling the shed key from the hooks in the boot room.
‘I’ll come by for the lawn mower tomorrow,’ she said from behind her fingers, which were pressed to her mouth, and she disappeared into the gloom outside.
Peter emerged from the boot room dangling the keys on one finger. ‘What an earth spooked her?’
‘You shouldn’t have given her the gate code,’ I barked, storming past him. ‘Get upstairs Rosie, or there’ll be trouble. Up, up, up,’ I said, smacking her bottom gently as she ran upstairs.
Before she turned the corner at the top of the stairs, I caught a satisfied smirk on Rosie’s pretty little face.
* * *
Finally, after settling her again, Peter and I were at the kitchen table with our supper in front of us. I chewed with my head bent low, shattered.
‘The one thing I dreaded most about moving out to the country was the idea of busybodies like Mira interfering in our business.’
‘It’s just good community spirit.’
I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not.
Sometimes I regretted that Peter and I had moved out of London to this house. Technically it was perfect, a dream house, a dream location, tucked away in a bucolic market town in an expensive enclave of the Home Counties. Most days Rosie and Noah ambled to and from their school on their own, across the green expanse of the recreational ground, past cricket or tag-rugby matches, straight to our sweet garden gate at the bottom of the garden. They breathed clean air and their bellies were filled with fruit and vegetables and wholegrain. The crime-free fields of green were a hop-skip-and-a-jump down a country lane. The views of treetops and shimmering lakes – and the odd swimming pool thrown in – would be the backdrop to their childhoods. If suits of cotton wool were available at John Lewis, I would have clicked and collected, and wrapped them both up tightly in them. I worked bloody hard to pay for our exclusive spot on this hill. But often I loathed it and everything that it represented.
‘We’re extremely community spirited,’ I protested. ‘We have Vics and Jim two doors down for starters.’
‘We only know them because we send our kids to the same private school,’ he said, spitting ‘private school’ as though it was a dirty phrase, adding, ‘New Hall Prep isn’t exactly inclusive, let’s face it.’
‘It’s a really good school,’ I said, knowing Peter had never liked it. He thought they pushed them too hard. He had wanted Rosie to go to the picturesque Woodlands Primary on the green, with the forest school and the front door that was covered in children’s colourful handprints, reminding him of the school he had been to as a child.
‘But we lead such separate lives from all those other parents. We don’t even see Vics and Jim that often, and they’re our best friends.’
‘We’re all too busy paying for the school fees.’
I glanced over at the whiteboard, scribbled on in blue and red marker – blue for Noah, red for Rosie – to find an hour when we might have time to nip round to someone’s, anyone’s, house spontaneously. Unless we dropped an afterschool club or decided that homework could be skipped, there was no spare time. Even at the weekends, both children had tennis club on Saturday morning, followed by Rosie’s tap class, and our family trip to the gym for swim-time, which would be followed by more homework. On Sundays, I would take Noah to mini-rugby training first thing, while Rosie and Peter would go on a bike ride. And then we’d head to our regular table at the pub in the next village, where we’d eat a roast next to the roaring fire, often with Vics, Jim and Beth, and usually play chess tournaments on the sofas afterwards, unless I had work to do.
Peter looked out of the window whimsically. ‘It was like a free-for-all at my house growing up. Aunt Sophie lived two doors down and Uncle Teddy lived in the next street and my cousins ran into our garden through the back hedge.’
‘Your family is weird.’
‘I’m sure it was easier bringing up kids back then,’ Peter reflected. ‘When Granny Cilla lived with us, Mum used to nip over to Aunt Sophie’s for a cup of tea and she’d leave me with Granny and I’d sneak out without her noticing and trike round to Mrs Denbigh’s for some squash and a soggy digestive.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Four, five.’
‘Couldn’t your granny’ve got you a drink and biscuit herself?’
‘She thought elves lived in the biscuit tin.’
‘And your mum didn’t worry about leaving you with her?’
‘She was normal a lot of the time.’
‘My worst nightmare,’ I said, absent-mindedly, thinking about where the instructions were for the electric gate so that I could change the code.
‘Having dementia?’
‘That too. But living with my mum would literally be my second worst nightmare.’
‘Probably hers, too,’ he snorted.
I laughed. ‘She’s always said Jacs and I should stick her in a home if it comes to it.’
‘Strange that,’ Peter mused. ‘You’d think she’d want to hang out with the kids and help out.’
‘I don’t need any help. I’ve got Harriet,’ I said, flicking through the stack of manuals in the kitchen drawer.
I heard him open the fridge and pour more wine into his own glass.
‘It might be a good idea to take a cake round to Mira or something. Show a bit of old-fashioned neighbourly spirit, no?’ he said.
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Go round?’
‘Yes, if you’re so keen.’
‘Just thought it would be a nice thing to do, that’s all.’ He looked hurt and I wished I were more magnanimous.
‘You know, I would go round but I’m always so knackered when I get home.’
‘Maybe I will go round,’ he mumbled as he padded off across the heated floorboards in his socks, probably to watch sport on television.
We both knew he wouldn’t go round.
‘Found them!’ I cried triumphantly to myself, brandishing the instructions to nobody.
The night air was damp up my sleeves and licking my collar. My mobile phone torch lit the way to the black gates, which loomed larger in the dark. A bat flitted high in the sky above my head as I tapped away at the keypad. Mira could probably hear the blue neon keypad beep away as I reset the entry code, and I felt embarrassed at the thought of her watchful eye, as though she saw me in a way that no others saw me, as though she had found me out.
While both Peter and I had done anything and everything to keep her at arm’s length up until now, Peter’s fresh desire to make an approach unnerved me. I wondered if there was more to it. Just as a criminal with pockets stuffed with stolen goods might be particularly well mannered or chatty around a suspicious shopkeeper, I wondered whether Peter sensed danger.
Chapter Six
Mira felt her way through the shadows of furniture to the kettle, which she switched on in the dark. The rushing noise competed with the sound of blood coursing through her ears. A little girl from school had told her that without ears we wouldn’t be able to stand up properly. She held her hands at her ears, to check, to find balance somehow. Her fingers felt cold, and she tucked them into her underarms, wet through her fleece. When the white steam from the boiling water billowed up into the ceiling, she pictured putting her fingers onto the spout to stop it.
At the foldout table, she cradled her mug. There was a stack of opened letters and bills lying in front of her. The knife that Barry had used to open them was lying on top. Barry would systematically slip into and slice through every envelope that came through the door, regardless of the addressee. It was a habit that infuriated Mira, but he insisted he couldn’t read the small print of the names written on the front. Mira did not believe him. He liked to know everything. How little he really knew. There had been a time when she had intercepted the post every day. He hadn’t known that, now, had he?
The tea tasted watery and too milky as she sipped it.
She reached into the pocket of her fleece for her mobile phone and scrolled through her contacts list. The As, the Bs, down to the Ps. She stopped at ‘Police Station’, listed simply as ‘Police Station’, just as she had ‘Health Centre’ and ‘School’ and ‘Hairdressers’ listed. It wasn’t necessary to call 999, was it?
Rosie’s wrist had been soft and light in her hands. She had wanted to kiss her better. She had wanted to be sick onto Gemma’s pristine shiny floors.
What was happening over there now?
Cold to hot, her mobile slipped with sweat. She knew PC Yorke worked nights on Mondays. If she talked to him, she could talk to him off the record, as a friend, describe what she had seen: her suspicions, her doubts. Did ‘off the record’ exist in a policeman’s life? Were local policemen ever allowed to make their own judgment calls? He was part of a chain of command. He would lose his job if anything happened to the girl. Then again, if she told PC Yorke, she would be passing the responsibility over. It was an appealing thought.
But what would she tell him? What had she actually seen next door? Her heartbeat escalated. What had she seen? She had seen guilt in Gemma’s eyes. She had seen fear in Rosie’s.
She sipped her tea and listened out, as though her hearing could hone in on Rosie’s bedroom. Dead silence. Deadened perhaps.
She felt a draft down the back of her neck from the open window. Then a numbing sense of cold engulfed her. A dress-strap fell from her shoulder. But when she touched her arm to pull it up, she realised she was still wearing the fleece she had put on earlier this evening. She was disoriented, fearful. Her mind was playing tricks on her, dragging her somewhere she didn’t want to go, like the tides sucking at a pebble on the shoreline. The tides. The beach. What was her memory trying to retrieve? She wanted to push whatever it was back down, but she was unable to. A vivid recollection came to her of a thud against her bare right shoulder. A hot circle of pain. Another stone hit her lower back. Doubled over in agony. Her knees grazed by the sand, the tiny brown flowers of her dress flattened wet against them. The blur of the flowers through her tears.
She remembered covering her head with her arms, waiting for another attack.
‘Get up! Your dress’ll be wet for the party!’ her mother had screeched. ‘You stupid girl,’ she had cried, pulling her to standing by a strand of hair. ‘You stupid, stupid little girl!’ Her mother’s words echoed through the wind, around her head in gusts as she was dragged back over the dunes. Stumbling and tripping, she saw the Natterjack toads leaping away from her feet, scared away, free to escape. Her sister was scampering ahead, knowing she had got away with it.
Mira stood gasping at the open window of her kitchen, drinking in the fresh air, as though she had just experienced a surge of pain that was now subsiding.
It was stil
l now. Blissfully silent.
She was too tired to make the call to PC Yorke tonight.
Her phone lay redundant on the kitchen table as she climbed the stairs up to bed. Her head lolled forward, the effort to raise it was too much for her.
The light was still on in the bedroom. Barry’s detective novel was propped in his hands. His eyes were closed. She slipped under the covers next to him.
‘Did I fall asleep?’ he said, suddenly sitting bolt upright. ‘I hadn’t meant to fall asleep! What happened?’
‘Don’t worry, everything’s fine. Nothing to worry about. Go back to sleep.’
He rubbed his eyes, but left his glasses on the side table. ‘Did you ask them what was wrong with the girl?’
‘Yes, yes, nothing to worry about,’ she repeated. ‘She hurt her arm in the door.’
‘Oh phew. I was worried about you,’ he said, before crashing down again. ‘Come in for a cuddle.’
She lay blinking in the dark for hours, feeling his chest move up and down against her back, comforted by his ability to sleep deeply.
* * *
The next morning she found a Post-it note stuck to the kettle:
Early start at Brook House. Talk later at bath-time. Barry x.
She was restive, tense about last night, and she felt desperately disappointed that he wasn’t there to talk to.
On the tin of teabags, she found another post-it note:
Love you, Mira Meerkat.
She smiled. It was the nickname the children in Year Two had given to her. On the first Forest School Tuesday of the winter term, she and the Forest Team Leader and fifteen seven-year-olds had sat on wood stools around the fire to choose forest names for each other. Little Oscar became Oscar Ostrich, and Bella was Bella Badger. When it was Mira’s turn, she had worried they would choose Mira Moose, which she would not have been able to laugh about. The very thought of the nickname gave her a twinge of her old self.
‘You old softie, Bazzer,’ she said out loud, tucking the Post-it into her skirt pocket. ‘Now, let’s get that egg on,’ she added.
