by Tammy Cohen
The cashier on duty was the eccentric one who sang at the top of his voice and engaged in long chats with the customers. The woman in front of me was talking him through all the different times she’d tried to give up smoking while he fetched her a pack of twenty Marlboro from the shelf behind him. One of the times, she’d given up for over a year then someone offered her a fag and she took one just to test herself. ‘Because I was so sure I was over it. I thought I’d take one puff and be all, like, disgusted, and chuck it away on the floor. But instead it was the most fucking lovely thing I ever had in my life.’
When it came to my turn, the paper ran out in the till receipts machine and a manager had to be summoned to bring a replacement roll. Then it turned out the barcode sticker had come off the avocado I’d picked up so someone had to be dispatched to fetch another one. By the time I picked up my bag to leave, my good mood of earlier had all but evaporated and I was looking forward to getting back home and closing the front door behind me.
A couple with a buggy walked ahead of me through the automatic doors, blocking my view. As I followed them out I expected to hear Dotty’s high-pitched, excited whine – she always smelled me before she saw me. The realization that there was no whine came at the same moment as I stepped through the doors and saw the empty bike rail.
No lead.
No Dotty.
I didn’t panic straight away. Instead, I looked around, certain there’d be some obvious explanation. Maybe someone had let her off the lead and she was nosing around at the base of the shop’s outside wall, where discarded food generally ended up. Then I started doubting myself. Had I even tied her up properly? Or had I perhaps looped the lead around the bike rail and then, just like at the police station, neglected to clip it on, in which case Dotty had probably taken herself home?
That would be it. I ignored the bubbles of alarm that had started to pop in the pit of my stomach. She’d be at home, I told myself firmly. I’d walk down the street and see her strangely proportioned black-and-white spotted form sitting dolefully by the front door.
But when I arrived, panting, there was no dog.
Now I did start to panic. Dropping my bags down inside the gate, I ran back to Tesco. Why hadn’t I properly searched around before haring off back home? Crossing the supermarket forecourt, I turned left into the car park. Might she be there, sniffing around the bins, blithely unaware? But there was no small black-and-white dog. No red lead. Nothing.
I charged into the shop.
‘My dog’s been stolen from outside,’ I said to the security guard.
‘Stolen?’ he repeated back to me, after a delay.
‘Yes. Or else she got free. Anyway, she’s disappeared. Has anyone reported anything?’
He shook his head slowly.
I ran back outside again and stood next to the rail, looking up and down the street.
Now I could no longer ignore the fear shooting up from the base of my stomach in long, fizzing streaks.
Where was she?
I ran back home and burst through the door. Powering up my laptop, I googled the number for the Haringey dog warden, leaving my details when I was told no dog matching Dotty’s description had been brought in. Then I rang around all the vets in the area. Nothing.
I called the police, once again holding on the phone for what seemed like hours, and made an official report into what had happened, priding myself on how steady my voice was, only to crack when I admitted I couldn’t be a hundred per cent sure I’d tied her up properly. ‘So she could have run away?’ the woman said. ‘But she wouldn’t have,’ I said. ‘She just wouldn’t.’ There was a silence from the other end. Then: ‘Still, it’s a possibility, isn’t it?’
When Em came home from school I was posting a picture of Dotty on the Facebook page of the local dog walkers’ group. MISSING! I typed in capital letters over the top of the picture, then felt nauseous at the sight of the word in all its awful uncertainty.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Em, freezing in the kitchen doorway.
‘Darling, I’ve got bad news.’
Em was inconsolable.
‘Why did you leave her there? Of course someone would take her.’
She insisted on ringing around all the vets again, just in case. And the rescue centres. When it started getting dark, she became hysterical in her grief.
‘She’s out there all alone,’ she sobbed. ‘She’ll be wondering why we don’t come to find her.’
Em had always been soft on the dog, but this felt like something more. As if Dotty’s disappearance had opened a valve inside her and all the pain and fear she’d been storing up since the attempted abduction were gushing out.
She rang Phil and he came over after spending half an hour driving around the streets looking for her.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said wretchedly. ‘It’s all my fault.’
‘You drowning yourself in a vat of self-blame is not going to help anyone,’ he said, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand, as he sometimes did when he was upset or agitated. I glared at him. Did he think I enjoyed feeling so guilty?
After he’d left and Em had finally gone to bed, where I heard her sobbing softly into her pillow, I went back on to the dog walkers’ Facebook page to see if anyone had any information. There were no sightings, only a barrage of recriminations. Why are people still leaving animals tied up outside shops? Was it really worth putting your pet in danger, just to save yourself the few minutes it would have taken to drop her off at home? Someone else just commented, Shame on you.
That night I hardly slept at all. Every slight movement or noise outside – the slamming of a car door, the sound of footsteps further up the road, one time a pair of cats fighting two houses up – brought me rushing to the window, hoping I might see a flash of white and black or hear that distinctive excited, high-pitched whine.
In the morning we overslept without the usual alarm call of a wet nose nudging bare hands or a plaintive yap from outside closed bedroom doors.
Downstairs, I tried to ignore the empty basket in the corner of the kitchen.
Making my way to the front door, I paused for a minute. When I open the door, she’ll be sitting outside on the doorstep, tired and hungry and happy to be home. Positive visualization. Wasn’t that supposed to work?
I turned the key in the bottom lock then opened the latch and flung the door open.
The doorstep was empty.
I scanned the tiny front garden, craning my neck so that I could see behind the wheelie bins. Then, with fading hope, I looked up the path to the gate.
And cried out.
Tearing down the path, I stopped just short of the gate, my breath coming from me in short, shallow, horrified gasps.
There, buckled to the gatepost, was Dotty’s padded pink collar. Except it wasn’t really pink any more, because splattered all over it were sickening, spreading patches of red.
18
I’d hidden Dotty’s collar in a drawer in my bedroom so Em wouldn’t see, but still I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’d tried telling myself it wasn’t blood, but I knew it was. When I’d first found it and pressed my finger to one of the stains, it had come away smeared with something dark red and glutinous. I’d had to run to the bathroom to wash it off, but the sick feeling had lasted way after the blood had disappeared down the plughole.
Em, though blissfully ignorant of the collar in the drawer, was heartbroken. She insisted she didn’t blame me, but I didn’t entirely believe her.
‘But who would have taken her?’ she kept asking.
I’d shake my head, as if stumped. But the truth is, I had a pretty good idea.
He must have been following me. The knowledge was a tight metal band around my skull.
He must have followed me when I walked Dotty and then when I went into Tesco. I imagined him watching me loop her lead around the bike post, give her a quick rub behind the ears and walk away without a backward glance.
I remembered that pho
to in the anonymous email. Dotty framed in the window, peering out over the sofa back.
PEEKABOO
‘Surely the police will listen to you now?’ said Frances over the phone. She was the only one I dared tell my fears about Dotty. I’d kept so much from Kath and Mari by this stage that, for the first time in thirty years, it felt like there was a disconnect between us, like jigsaw puzzle pieces that ought to fit together but were marginally misaligned.
I thought about Detective Byrne’s face the last time I’d seen him. The disapproval in his voice when he’d used that word, vigilante.
‘I don’t have any proof,’ I told her. ‘We told the police when Dotty went missing, of course, but quite honestly, they’ve got bigger things to worry about.’
‘But this isn’t missing. This is—’
‘Yes, I know,’ I cut in before she could finish. I didn’t want to hear her say it. I didn’t want to face up to all the things that might have happened.
Two days after Dotty’s disappearance, I went down to breakfast after a virtually sleepless night and looked first at Em’s red-rimmed eyes, then at Dotty’s empty food dish and water bowl, and something in me snapped like an elastic band.
Em only had one class on Thursdays, in the afternoon, so all morning I waited, this ball of burning fury building in my gut. As soon as she’d left the house I set off on foot, habit making me pick up the ball thrower from the terracotta pot by the front door. When I realized, at the corner of the road, that I had it in my hand, I laid it down on top of the nearest garden wall, walking away quickly with my hands in my pockets and my head down, heavy with guilt, as if it were Dotty herself I was leaving behind.
By the time I arrived outside number 17A Regency Parade I was overheated, fired by a fury that boiled the very blood in my veins. Em’s tear-stained face was imprinted on my mind, along with Dotty’s bloodstained collar. Without stopping to question myself, I pressed on the white plastic doorbell to the right of the door. A shrill bell sounded somewhere up above. When there was no sign of response, I pressed the bell again. I was ringing for a third, desperate time when I finally heard movement inside. Footsteps slowly descending the stairs.
I stiffened, fortifying myself. Here it comes, I thought. Now we will get this over with.
From inside the door came the sound of a metal bolt being slid across. Adrenaline came funnelling to the surface in anticipation of release.
But when the door finally swung open, in place of Stephens’s bulky frame and mocking eyes, there stood one of the smallest women I’d ever seen. My fury drained away in the space of time it took to take in her cloud of white hair, domed shoulders and walnut-wrinkled face.
‘Yes?’
There was no smile. The greeting of someone who resented having negotiated the stairs to find a complete stranger on the doorstep.
‘I was looking for James. James Stephens?’
Still no smile.
‘He’s at work.’
‘Oh. Right.’
For a moment we stood staring at each other. Sizing each other up. I knew I should leave the old lady in peace. But then I thought about Dotty, and about Em’s red-ringed eyes, and my resolve hardened.
‘Look, are you related to James? His grandmother, maybe?’
She nodded warily, as if I’d forced the confirmation out of her against her will.
‘I’m Mrs Stephens,’ she said eventually.
‘I wonder if I could come in and have a quick chat with you. It’s about James. It’s … well, it’s personal.’
She looked me up and down then, as if wondering how personal I was going to get. Her brown eyes were sharp and I realized she wasn’t as old as I’d first assumed.
She folded her arms and leaned against the door frame. She did not let me in.
‘Let me guess. This is about your daughter.’
Shock slammed the air clear out of my chest.
She knew.
This woman knew what her grandson was and did nothing.
‘How did—?’
‘You’re not the first mother who has come to see me.’
There were others. What kind of monster was I dealing with, who could talk about her grandson’s victims so casually? The blood was rushing so loudly in my ears I couldn’t believe she couldn’t hear it.
‘He’s a good boy, really,’ she went on, oblivious. ‘I can see you don’t want to believe it, but I brought him up since he was little and I know what’s in his heart. Now, that’s not to say he can’t be a little bastard where girls are concerned …’
Now, finally, the rage came.
‘A little bastard? Your grandson tried to abduct my sixteen-year-old daughter, dragged her off the street and beat her up when she resisted, and you act like he’s some kind of naughty kid who needs his wrist slapped.’
Now it was her turn to look like she’d been physically struck, her head jolting up, the knuckles on the hand gripping the door turning white.
‘What are you talking about? James would never … Look here, he’s no saint. I know that. He got into a bit of trouble with the police when he was younger – plenty of boys do. It wasn’t his fault. Wrong crowd. He’s always had a quick temper on him. When that poor man died after that fight, no one was more cut up about it than James, especially when he found out he’d left a baby behind. He tried to make amends, but the wife refused to hear him out, wouldn’t have anything to do with him. But it was an accident. The CPS said there was no case to answer.’
Now the old lady narrowed her eyes. ‘You aren’t his mother, are you? The man who died?’
I shook my head, confused. ‘I already told you. My daughter—’
‘Oh yes. Well, like I said, James doesn’t always play fair with girls. I’ll hold my hands up to that. If you’d come to tell me that he’d broken your daughter’s heart, I’d say, Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. You know, he has a lovely young girl about to have his baby, but that hasn’t stopped him running around like he’s a free man. But this, what you’re talking about now. Nuh-uh. That’s not him. That’s not my James.’
She was wilfully blind to his faults. I could see it instantly. Yet still I persisted.
‘I understand you don’t want to believe it, but I’m afraid it’s true. Your grandson is a very dangerous individual. I also have reason to believe he has done something to my dog.’
The old lady blinked.
‘Your what now?’
‘Dog. I tied her up outside Tesco. I was only gone a matter of minutes. And when I came out she’d vanished. Then someone left her collar on our gate, covered in blood.’
My voice tailed off towards the end, conviction wavering as I recognized the relief dawning on Mrs Stephens’s wrinkled face. Mentioning Dotty had tipped the balance of credibility. Now I could be dismissed as a crank, some nutter her grandson had done work for, perhaps, who had an axe to grind.
‘You’d better go,’ she said, drawing herself up to her full height, which was still hardly level with my shoulder.
‘But—’
The old lady started fumbling in the pocket of her dress and produced an ancient phone.
‘I’m callin’ the police,’ she said.
I had a momentary flash of Detective Byrne’s serious brown eyes when he’d warned me to stay away from James Stephens. That word again: vigilante.
‘Don’t. I’m leaving.’
The encounter had left me rattled and I found I couldn’t face going straight home to that unnaturally silent house. There was a pub further along Bounds Green Road that I’d never been in before. Trendy, with high ceilings and walls painted the dark grey of wet concrete. It wasn’t really on my way home, but it wasn’t too much of a detour. There were only two other customers in there, both sitting alone, an older man reading a newspaper and drinking a pint of something cloudy and another woman my age, at the bar ordering a gin and tonic. Not her first, judging by the empty glasses and bottles on the table where she was sitting.
I eyed the drink greedily,
imagining the bite of the gin as it slid down, that faint aftertaste of lime. But I knew I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Then I ordered myself a sparkling water, asking for ice and lime as an afterthought. When the woman left not long afterwards I slipped into her table, which was the only one with a clear view out of the huge pub window, allowing me to gaze out across the narrow strip of grass that separated the pub from the busy main road. As I sipped on my drink I started to reframe what had just happened in my mind.
Stephens was out of control. That much was clear. The assault convictions. Someone had died, for God’s sake. Wasn’t it better in the long run, I told myself, that Stephens’s grandmother was made aware of exactly what her precious grandson was capable of? Even if she chose not to believe me now, at least the seed had been planted and she’d be warier from now on. On the lookout for anything amiss.
By the time I reached the front door, I’d almost convinced myself I’d done a good thing. At least I’d acted, I told myself. I’d taken back control.
I blocked out the doubts that tugged at my skirts, telling me I’d overstepped a line, taken things too far. Asking how I could be sure it was him, what proof did I have.
Entering the house, I was hit all over again by the absence of a welcoming bark at the sound of my key turning in the lock and the unwanted novelty of being able to hang up my coat and take off my shoes without a hot, furry body throwing itself against my legs, desperate for attention.
At first I thought the low voices I could hear were coming from the television in the living room, but then I recognized Em’s soft laughter and someone else talking, fast and animated.
When I walked into the room Frances was sitting on the sofa with Emma on the rug on the floor across from her. The coffee table that lay between them was littered with the detritus of tea and biscuits. I noticed that Em had dug out the teapot we hadn’t used in over a year and the cups that used to belong to my grandmother.
