Nearest Thing to Crazy (11 page)

When I went downstairs I found him sitting in his usual place, remote control in one hand and the
Observer
in the other. He looked up from the paper and seemed to want to read my mood before speaking.

‘You okay?’ I asked.

‘Fine. You?’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Oh just walking, clearing my head. You feeling better now?’ I nodded. ‘Walking?’

‘I went back down the track to see if I could find the dog. Then I bumped into Nick Gale’s boy taking pot shots at the rabbits with his air rifle. I was worried he might have shot the damned dog. But he’s a sensible lad so I can’t believe he’d do anything like that.’

‘God, I hope not.’ I went over to the sofa and perched next to him.
‘That would have been too awful. Imagine having to tell her
. . . just horrid.’ I shuddered, and then moved closer, so that my leg pressed against his, relishing the cosy feel of his body against mine.

‘She’ll come back, I’m sure of it. Probably just having fun exploring her new territory.’

‘I hope so. It’s a shame the way it messed up lunch, though. The lamb was like leather.’

‘It was fine.’ He folded the paper in half and laid it over the arm of the sofa and then placed his arm around my shoulder.

‘I should have done something cold . . .’

‘Well, perhaps. But I love roast lamb. You know I do.’

I put my hand on his knee and he placed his hand over mine and gave it a squeeze. ‘I’m really sorry, Dan, about the way I reacted . . . if I behaved badly. I just felt so thrilled that I’d got a new friend, and then she seemed to go all weird on me. I was confused. I should have made more allowances for her, and now I feel really mean for the things I said. Silly, aren’t I?’

‘A bit.’

‘She’s quite complicated, though.’

‘You are a one for over-analyzing, aren’t you? Now, can we stop talking about her? Because I don’t know about you, but to be honest I feel as if she’s already occupied far too much of our day.’

‘I agree.’ God, wouldn’t it be nice to be like a man, so simple and straightforward. Instead of, as Dan said, always looking for the worm in my perfect apples, like I do. I kissed his cheek and nuzzled my nose against his scratchy skin. ‘You smell of nicotine.’

‘Do I?’

‘Yep.’

‘Sorry. She led me astray.’

I punched his arm playfully. ‘I’m the only person allowed to lead you astray!’

He grabbed my wrist and pulled me tighter to him, laughing softly. ‘That’s very dull of you.’

‘Yep, dull and safe, that’s me. But talking of leading you astray
. . .’ I stroked the tip of my tongue across his ear lobe and blew into his ear.

‘Eeeeugh, that tickles,’ he laughed.

‘Why don’t we have an early night?’ I said, trying to make my voice sultry and suggestive.

‘Do you know, that’s just what I was thinking.’ Dan grabbed hold of me and pulled me across his lap, and then he leaned forward and covered my face with his. His chin, as it closed against mine, felt scratchy and hard, but to me it was just the best feeling in the world as our lips met. I sighed, and all the tension of the day, and of the previous week, and Ellie and the bloody dog, and Dan and our bitter words melted from me.

Dan drew back and I opened my eyes to find he was gazing directly into them. ‘I love you, Mrs Burton,’ he said. ‘Just remember that, when you start getting arsey about other women who can’t resist throwing themselves at me. It’s you I love . . .’

‘I know. I’m just being stupid. And I love you, Dan.’ I hugged him as tightly as I could, and then I stood up and took his hand.
‘Come to bed with me.’

‘I’ll follow you up. I’ve just got to check my emails and then I’ll be with you.’

‘Don’t be long,’ I said.

He came up to bed about half an hour later and he made love to me more tenderly than he had in many weeks. I felt safe and reassured that everything was all right, and the last thing I remember is drifting towards sleep in his arms.

That Sunday lunch with them both was the first time I realized there was another side to her. She made some reference to uncovering secrets, and it was just the way she looked at me. It was really strange, like she was threatening me or something. I thought she was being really mean at that lunch. I’d just lost the dog and I was upset. Honestly, I thought she’d be suffocating down some rabbit hole. You hear about that all the time, don’t you? So I thought it was a bit unnecessary to be so hostile. So, as she was being so tricky, I concentrated on Dan. He’s such a sweetheart. I don’t think she really appreciates him at all. Can you believe he’d never even told her he was interested in writing . . . that he’d started to write a book at university? I mean, what was she
on?
Still, other people’s marriages are none of my business – but to be honest I do find them fascinating, don’t you? I reckon you can distil all the problems into either money or sex and I reckoned they’d got both.

I would have liked to carry my post-coital euphoria over into the following day, but sadly Mondays were never my favourite day and this one was stacking up to be a stinker. First I’d set off to muck out the hens and found one of my black Orpingtons missing. I had to do a head count of the remaining nine ‘girls’ twice over. I couldn’t understand it because the gate to the pen was securely closed, and I remembered going out after my bath and counting them all on the perch in the dusk. They
always
put themselves to bed at sunset without fail. I suppose I must have just assumed that she was in there.
Could she have nested down in the garden, maybe sneaked into one of the sheds and was now foraging around somewhere and would turn up later? But in my heart I realized that she’d probably served as Mr Fox’s dinner, poor little girl. I was stupidly attached to my hens and loved the way they all had their individual characters. I’d had Nina – they were all named after divas – for over three years and she was spectacularly beautiful with her beetle-black, iridescent feathers. I felt miserably irresponsible for not taking more care of her.

Then I carried out my morning check-up of the vegetable garden and discovered my baby purple sprouting broccoli plants all bitten down to the soil. I couldn’t believe it. Somehow all my carefully spread and pinned netting had come adrift and so the birds had managed to get in and feast on my lovingly nurtured seedlings. And I’d only checked them over yesterday morning. All those weeks spent propagating the seeds, pricking them out, growing them on in pots and then finally positioning them in the vegetable bed – all that effort gone for nothing overnight. Still, I wasn’t giving up that easily. I’d buy some ready-grown seedlings from the garden centre and try once more. I guess it all added to the satisfaction in the end. Nothing rewarding ever came without effort, did it? And I was not going to let some fat bloody pigeon beat me. Sometimes gardening could be a depressing business.

Never mind, to cheer me up I had the dirty laundry to deal with, and then the kitchen to tidy; all before I hit the supermarket shelves. As usual when I gathered together my bag, purse, list, phone etcetera I couldn’t find my keys. More and more these days I seemed to spend ridiculously large chunks of time trying to find lost ‘stuff’. I was still searching when the postman’s van pitched up. It wasn’t Brummie Bob, our usual postie, but a woman I didn’t recognize, which explained why she was an hour later than normal.

‘Morning,’ I called out. ‘Bob on holiday again?’

‘Gone to see his daughter in Australia.’

‘Lucky chap,’ I said. I knew that ‘the daughter’ had had a baby a couple of months back so Bob and his wife had been itching to go and meet their new grandson.

‘Do you know the people down the road – in the barn conversion?’

‘Ellie Black.’

‘She got a dog?’

‘A little Jack Russell. Why, have you seen it?’

‘I nearly ran over it. It ran straight out in front of me just as I got to her place. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. It’s going to get itself killed, or cause a nasty accident.’

‘I’ll pop up there now and see what I can do.’ That dog was managing to cause an awful lot of bother. I hurried along the lane and was outside her house in under five minutes. Her car wasn’t there, but the dog was bouncing up and down at the front door as though it had got a spring in its backside. ‘Coco!’ I called softly. Considering she’d been out on the tiles she looked remarkably clean and tidy, apart from some rather muddy paws.

‘Coco,’ I repeated, bending down towards her. She shied away from me nervously, and then tentatively sniffed my outstretched hand. ‘Good girl,’ I said, gently. ‘That’s it, good girl.’

Now what? On the off chance I tried the front door handle and was surprised to find it unlocked.

‘Hello!’ I called out through the open doorway, though I
don’t know why I expected an answer when her car wasn’t there.
‘Hello . . .’ I called out again, ‘Ellie!’

‘Come on, Coco. Good girl.’ I grabbed her collar and hoiked her in through the door and shut it behind me. Now what was I going to do with her? I didn’t fancy being responsible for muddy paws all over Jules Gale’s new beige carpets, or Ellie’s beautiful sofas. The kitchen. That’s where she’d been shut in last time. Coco’s claws scraped noisily over the waxed floorboards as I dragged her towards the door.

‘Come on,’ I coaxed. She was obviously wise to being locked up and tried to resist, but I pulled her in and closed the door. Then I checked for a water bowl and told Coco that she was a good girl once more, which was a big lie as she’d caused everyone so much trouble, especially me. Bloody little dog! More than anything else I would have liked to give her a giant kick up the backside, but that would have been cruel, and I certainly wasn’t cruel.

The sitting room was open plan so Ellie’s desk was just two paces from where I was standing with my hand on the kitchen door handle. The computer was switched on, flashing Ellie’s life story at me. I took the two steps over to the desk and watched the display of Ellie form in front of me. I leant forward to get a closer look and my pendant swung down onto the keyboard, crashing into it. The computer started whirring and clicking and the slide show dissolved from the screen, revealing a page of double-spaced typing. I wasn’t snooping; well I wasn’t meaning to snoop. I couldn’t help it, my eyes just tripped over the words and I couldn’t help but read them. Halfway down the page, a phrase leaped out at me and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stiffen.

‘Thought I was going to be the next Salinger,’ Tim says, bitterly. It’s as if all the disappointment of his life, his marriage, everything, is condensed into that one statement and I look at him and I know that he wants me as much as I want him.

The words swam out of focus. Those were the words Dan used. Wasn’t that what he’d said? About wanting to be the next Salinger? What the hell was I reading? I scanned the lines once more, just to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me. No, there was no doubt. There it was, in black and white, on her screen. But what did she mean, the disappointment of his marriage? Him wanting her? This couldn’t be right. She couldn’t be writing about Dan, about
us.
Why? Why on earth would she do that? My eyes galloped over the rest of the page:

Later, when lunch is finally over, I leave. I feel sure he’ll follow me so I dawdle along the footpath pretending to search for the ‘lost’ dog. But I am almost home by the time he catches up with me. We walk back to my house in silence, each of us savouring the thought of what’s to come. And when he sees the dog, safely confined in my little kitchen, he says: ‘What a pair of clever girls you are.’

My hand was trembling so much the mouse rattled beneath my fingers. The dog! Was she saying it wasn’t really lost? That it was just a scam, to get time alone with Dan? I needed to read more, to be sure, to convince myself that what I was seeing was real. Could this be some kind of fluke? But no, this wasn’t a coincidence. She was writing down what had happened. But was it true? Was she inventing this stuff, or was it real? I had to read more to find out just what the hell she was playing at.

I knew there was a chance she might come back and catch me, but so what if she did? Didn’t I have every right to confront her? Wasn’t there some law against this? Was she insane? I had no choice but to risk it. I tried to calm my shaking hand in order to slide the mouse pointer up a few pages and I read as fast as could.