Catch Your Death (26 page)

Miranda wanted to ask if Jennifer would be there – in her mind’s eye, the veterinary nurse had long, dark, lustrous hair and a cleavage that men daydreamed about diving into it – but just said, ‘Fine.’

Would she ever feel brave enough to leave Pete in the same way Kate had left Vernon? Well, she knew she would never run away. That was far too dramatic. Though if she were married to the dreaded Vernon perhaps she would run away. She could never understand what Kate saw in him. Okay, so he was very clever, academically, but there was something about him that gave her the creeps. He was the kind of man who fancied himself a ladies’ man but came across more as a knicker-sniffer. A man who stared at the breasts of flat-chested women, as if willing them to grow boobs for him to lech at. Yuk.

Pete wasn’t like that. Except with Jennifer perhaps. Did their fingers touch when she passed Pete the worming tablets? Had their eyes ever met over a sick hamster? Did she wear a tight white uniform that stretched perfectly across her pert bottom? There was another cry from above, then a thump, shaking her from her green-eyed reverie. She stood up, noticing as she did that the wine glass was empty, just a smear of red at the bottom like a bloodstain, and she felt a little woozy and unsteady on her feet. She stood at the bottom of the stairs and called up. ‘Is everyone alright up there?’

Before any of the children replied, the doorbell rang.

Vernon took the wrong exit – nine instead of ten – and spent the next fifteen minutes cursing the British motorway system before getting back on track. He’d just been to what had to be the worst ‘restaurant’ in the known world, something called a Little Chef. It made Taco Bell seem like cordon bleu. Most Americans would be shocked if they saw the real Britain and realised it wasn’t all castles and stately homes. It was just like America, all endless roads and wretched fast food joints, but with worse customer service and more sex on TV. The bad teeth clichés were true though. What if Jack had to grow up here? He’d end up looking like a Brit, teeth like yellowing tombstones, with a drink habit and an addiction to soccer. The rain clichés were true, too. It was raining now, and this was supposed to be summer.

Most of his fellow Americans would love this village, though. Churchill. Good British name, too. The village was – what was the expression? – chocolate-box pretty. Quaint as hell. He could see the curtains twitching as he drove down the main street.

He smiled to himself. He had this strange feeling that Kate and Jack were going to be at Miranda’s. There’d be a scene, no doubt. But he relished the thought of the confrontation, Kate trying to justify what she’d done. Just watch her try to take the moral high ground.

He found the address the man at Miranda and Pete’s old house had given him, and parked outside. The wipers squeaked back and forth across the windscreen before halting. Vernon got out of the car, rehearsing what he was going to say, and rang the doorbell.

The SPEED KILLS sign almost made Sampson smile. He screeched round the corner by the pretty little church, roaring on past the neat little hedgerows and the quaint little graveyard. The pink teddy bear on the back seat toppled over. A cat was crossing the road up ahead, trying to escape the rain, and Sampson put his foot on the accelerator, but the animal darted to safety with a split second to spare.

He felt good. More alive than he could ever remember. It must be the proximity of Kate’s blood, he thought.

He found the street he was looking for and pulled to a halt a few doors away. He stood in the rain for a few seconds, enjoying its feel on his face. He held the pink teddy under his jacket. Then he walked up to the door and pressed the bell.

Miranda opened the door.

The man standing before her had damp hair and a strange smile on his face, the look of a man who is about to get what he wants.

‘
Hello Miranda,’ he said. Before she could reply, he darted past her into the hallway.

‘
Hey,’ she said. ‘What are you...?’

He cocked his head, listening, and looked up the stairs. Then he turned back to face her. She folded her arms protectively across her chest.

‘
Where is she?’ he demanded.

‘
Who?’

‘
Who do you think? Kate. Is she here?’

Miranda shook her head. ‘No…no, she’s not. Is she – is she in England?’

He gave her an incredulous glare. ‘I take it from the smell on your breath that that was a drunken question. I’m sure you know I’m not stupid, Miranda.’

‘
Oh yes, I know that very well, Vernon.’

‘
So don’t treat me like…’

There was a cry from upstairs. A squeal of laughter followed by a happy outburst from Amelia. ‘Well done, Jack. You beat him.’ Then George cursing.

Vernon dodged past Miranda and ran up the stairs. ‘Jack? Jack?’

Miranda listened in horror from her position frozen at the bottom of the stairs as Jack came running out of the bedroom, short of breath, gasping, ‘Daddy?’

‘
Jackie.’ Vernon swept him up into an embrace as George and Amelia poked their heads out of the bedroom and gawped. ‘I’m here to rescue you.’

Jack said, ‘Like Superman?’

‘
Yes, son. Just like Superman. Where’s your mother?’

‘
She’s gone on an adventure with Paul.’

‘
What? Who’s Paul?’

‘
Mummy’s new friend.’

‘
Her boyfriend,’ giggled George, who immediately pulled his head out of sight.

Vernon stomped down the stairs, still holding Jack in his arms. He pushed past Miranda then swung round to face her. ‘What’s all this about Kate and some guy called Paul? Where are they?’

Miranda shook her head. ‘I can’t tell you.’

Vernon felt the blood in his veins heat up. This stupid drunk slut. How the hell could Kate have left their son with this unfit mother? Because Kate was an unfit mother herself – that was the truth. He was going to take Jack so far away from here, and make sure that Kate never got her hands on him again. She’d blown it. Jack would be a million times better off without her.

‘
It doesn’t matter anyway. Come on, Jack. Let’s get out of this place.’

Jack’s little blue wheely suitcase was standing by the front door, still packed, minus the pyjamas and toothbrush he had taken out at bedtime the night before. Vernon could see the boy’s passport sticking out of the front zip pocket, where Kate always kept it. He picked up the case.

Miranda stepped in Vernon’s path as he carried Jack and the suitcase towards the front door. Blinded by a flash of anger, Vernon pushed her aside, using Jack’s case as a shield. She banged her hip on the side table and fell to the floor, staring up with shock. Vernon pointed a finger at her. ‘Don’t try to get in my way.’

Upset by the violence, Jack started crying and wriggling, and Vernon had to struggle to hold on to him. ‘Come on, Jackie. We’re going on an airplane. Soon you’ll be home and you’ll see all your friends again. You’ll like that, won’t you?’

Jack shook his head, his face red, tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘I want to stay here with George. I want mummy.’

‘
Shush. Come on, stop wriggling.’

But Jack wouldn’t stop. As Vernon opened the front door, Jack screamed, ‘Billy. I want Billy.’

Vernon clenched his teeth, trying to bite back the intense irritation that crawled up through his veins, trying to ignore the veins pulsing in his temple. ‘Who the hell is Billy?’

‘
My robot.’ He stretched out his hands towards the open door of the living room, where Billy had been left on the sofa.

Vernon ignored his pleas. He carried the bawling Jack out to the car, wrestled him onto the back seat, threw in his case after him, and locked the doors, ignoring the persistent pleas for Billy the robot. What was it? Some present that Kate’s new boyfriend had bought Jack as a bribe? Well, fuck it. Jack would soon forget all about Billy and Paul and his mother.

Miranda stood in the doorway and watched them drive off, Jack pressing his tear-soaked face to the window.

Miranda shut the door and ran to the phone, dialling Kate’s number. It went straight to voicemail.

She sat down on the bottom step, her head in her hands. George went back into his bedroom to obliterate memories of what had just happened by playing videogames, while Amelia crept down the stairs and sat next to her mum, leaning against her, whispering, ‘I don’t like Uncle Vernon.’

‘
Neither do I, sweetheart,’ Miranda said.

The doorbell rang again. Miranda sighed.

‘
It’s okay, Mummy,’ Amelia said. ‘I’ll get it.’

CHAPTER 33

The hypnotherapist was called Doreen, which Kate thought seemed incongruous. She half-expected a caricature of a stage hypnotist, called something like Wanda, who, in her mind, would be a cross between a fairground fortune teller, with a fringed headscarf and too much eyeliner; or else a male showman, cummerbunded and pomaded, waving his hands around and saying ‘You are feeling sleepy, look into my eyes, look into my eyes.’ But that, she reflected, was probably only because she’d seen a character like that in a show called Little Britain she and Paul had watched in bed the previous night, sandwiched between bouts of great sex. She realized how much she’d missed English TV. She realized how much she had missed great sex.

However, television and sex were the last things on Kate’s mind as she stood nervously with Paul outside Doreen’s house, a tiny modern terrace backing onto a busy ringroad in Twickenham.

Paul had looked on Yell.com for hypnotherapists in the Richmond area, near his flat, and Doreen was the first one who had come up with an available appointment. Kate hoped it wasn’t because Doreen was a charlatan and hence had no clients. But she had a respectable-looking website, and numerous glowing testimonials from satisfied customers, whom Doreen had mostly helped with problems like quitting smoking, or confidence boosting. There weren’t, however, any testimonials of people whose memory Doreen had helped restore after having been reconditioned by rogue scientists using the Pimenov technique…but that would probably have been a bit much to hope for.

When Doreen opened her wavery glass front door and greeted them, Kate wanted to laugh at how normal she looked. She was a grey haired, friendly-faced lady in her mid-fifties, a little stout around the middle, wearing a nondescript blouse, glasses on the end of her nose, and a pleated woollen skirt.

‘
Come in, come in,’ she said, ushering them through a narrow hallway and into a small living room too cluttered with furniture: a large velour three-piece suite fought for supremacy with an over-large dining table and eight chairs. In combination with a swirly carpet, the overall effect was somewhat claustrophobic.

‘
Do you live around here?’ Doreen asked, pointing Kate towards the armchair, and gesturing for Paul to take a seat at the dining table. She herself settled on the sofa, with her back to Paul.

‘
I don’t,’ said Kate. ‘I’m just staying in the area with my – um – with Paul here.’ She found she couldn’t quite bring herself to say ‘my boyfriend’, and hoped Paul wouldn’t think it was because she didn’t want to think of him that way. The truth, she realized with a shock, was that she did – too much to articulate it. She blushed.

‘
You didn’t mention on the telephone what it was you wanted to see me about. How can I help you?’

Kate glanced at Paul. ‘It’s…kind of complex,’ she began. ‘I mean – it’s possibly not something you’ll have come across before. I’m not sure that you even will be able to help me.’

‘
Go on,’ Doreen said.

‘
Well. We’ve got reason to believe that – oh, it sounds mad – but we think…’

She stopped. Suddenly the whole idea seemed preposterous. ‘Paul, could I talk to you a minute outside?’

Doreen raised her eyebrows. ‘I assure you, Kate, anything which takes place inside these four walls will remain confidential, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

You might not be so sure about that when you have Sampson coming after you with a gun, demanding to know what went on in here, thought Kate, shuddering.

‘
I’d still like a quick word first, if that’s OK,’ she said.

Paul stood up. ‘Could we go out into your back garden? Sorry about this. But like Kate said, it’s rather complicated.’

He sounded casual, but Kate could tell by the set of his shoulders that he was frustrated with her. She followed him out onto a tiny patio that comprised Doreen’s garden. There was barely room to stand out there – pots of different shapes and sizes crowded round the edges, overflowing with rampant foliage and elaborately flowering shrubs. It was as cluttered as Doreen’s living room. Through the fence next door, they could hear the sound of a couple bickering over some domestic issue. A plane flew overhead, on its way in to land at Heathrow, drowning out the neighbours’ voices

‘
What’s the matter?’ Paul asked, under cover of the aeroplane noise. ‘I thought we’d agreed what you were going to say?’

‘
I can’t,’ Kate hissed back. ‘She’ll either think I’m insane, or she’ll call the police, and if that happens, Sampson will definitely kill us before the truth gets out. How is she ever going to believe that I’ve been “reconditioned”? It sounds like some crappy B movie!’