Tell Me Everything (24 page)

“You honey-bunny,” Miranda said the first time she came into the shop and saw Mata lying in state on Mrs. Roberts's cushion. She crouched down, knees creaking, to get onto Mata's level. “You little bunchy-munchy. I could eat you all up, oh yes I could. You're like Shirley Temple, you are. I'm going to put ribbons in your curls, and—”

“Give over, Miranda,” I said. “She's blushing.”

“Are you turning reddy-red then?” Miranda did a bouncy thing with her head, and I was pleased to see Mata look to the side as if in disgust. “Pinky-winky, doggy-dog. Oh, she's a poppet. Bring her home. Let Mum see her.”

“I'd like that.”

“Oh you,” Miranda cooed at Mata. “You're coming to Miranda-wanda's homey-womey to see my mummy-yummy.” Mata put her tongue out to lick Miranda's cheek and Miranda squealed. “Do you love me?” she said. “Do you love your Miranda then?”

Mrs. Roberts and I both stood with our arms folded, watching Miranda as she stood up, still beaming. “It's almost as if she can understand,” Miranda said. “I'm sure she smiled at me then.”

“If she could understand, that dog would vomit right here and now,” Mrs. Roberts whispered to me. “You have to keep your dignity with animals. Otherwise they have no respect for you. Animals and men, both the same.”

“And before it's too late,” I said, just so she'd know I'd been listening to her lessons.

She went into the kitchen then to have a few minutes quiet.
She looked pointedly at Miranda while she announced this, leaving the two of us alone.

“She hates me,” Miranda said.

“No, she doesn't,” I lied. “It's just that she's more reserved than other people. She's been through a lot.” I wasn't giving any of Mrs. Roberts's secrets away, just hinting that I knew a lot more than I was letting on.

“I suppose so.” Miranda looked doubtful. “And all these financial worries can't help too.”

“What worries?”

“Oh you,” Miranda sighed rather than cooed. “You've your head in the clouds. This shop isn't exactly a hive of activity, is it? The big shops in town are clearing up nowadays. People want more choice.” She gestured round the half-empty shelves. “And all Mr. Roberts's medical care will be costing a pretty penny too. My boss reckons she'll only last a few more months before she'll have to sell up. She's losing all the business customers too. She's not exactly the right type for them, is she? All those airs and graces.”

I hadn't thought about any of this before, but now I remembered coming back from a walk with Mata just earlier that week and noticing Mrs. Roberts through the shop window. She was sitting at the cash till, reading a letter. When she put her hand up, I thought she was going to wave at me until I was forced to see the truth. I watched her rub her forehead again and again, before she pulled out a perfectly ironed white lace handkerchief and started mopping her eyes.

I'd turned and pulled Mata after me. I just thought Mrs. Roberts looked as if she needed some time on her own. I imagined her reading an old love letter from Mr. Roberts. By the time I got back she had her face on and I'd forgotten about it until now.

“She'd have said if there were serious problems,” I pointed out to Miranda.

“Would she? She doesn't give much away, does she? You're two of a kind. Regular mystery women. Made for each other.”

“If she sells the shop, I lose my home,” I said. I could feel myself icing up inside.

“Oh ducks. It won't come to that. Besides, it's hardly the Hilton here, after all.”

I ignored this. “And there's Mata now too,” I said.

“Oh, you can come and live with me.” Miranda dived down to rub noses with Mata. “Can't you, doggy-dog? We'll be happy-wappy, cozy-dozy.” Miranda stood up and saw my face.

“What about me?” I asked.

“You're not really worried are you? Couldn't you go and stay with your parents until you find somewhere else?”

“No.”

“I'm sure it will turn out for the best,” Miranda didn't sound convinced. “Och, don't you fret, I wouldn't see you out on the streets. And especially not Mata, would I, lovely-dovey?” And Mata rolled over and exposed her stomach, as Miranda started petting her all over again.

I
went to the park and sat on the Seize the Day bench. My head was hurting. A dark-haired man stopped to pat Mata, but I just yanked on her lead and he walked off. I rested my face in my palms and rocked backward and forward. I could think of nowhere to go, no one to help. It was as if a chasm had opened and swallowed up everything good.

There must be something I could do.

Without hope, I went to stand outside the pub and rested my open palms on the rough bricks. Nothing. I even put my ear hard against the wall. My head was completely empty.

All I had to look forward to was silence.

And what made it worse was that because I'd told no one that Tim had gone, there was no one to tell that I
had
seen him recently. Just the once.

On the evening of Mrs. Roberts's birthday, Mata had been restless and yippy. I put it down to too much cake and tried to ignore it, but eventually I gave in, pulled on my coat and went downstairs to take her for a walk.

There was a note slipped under the door of the shop. It must have been what was troubling Mata.

Meet me in the pub at seven-thirty, Tim.

Tim was back and he wanted to meet me. Not even at the bench. No, he was going to take me for a drink at the pub. A proper drink in a proper pub. This was what I'd dreamed of. At last I was going to be normal. At seven-thirty. I looked at the shop clock. I had twenty minutes to get ready.

I ran back upstairs, sat on the edge of my bed and tried to breathe. On the wall above my bed, a series of penciled gates marked off the days since I'd last seen Tim. I counted them. Twenty-two.

I stood up and went over to the mirror, ruffling my hair so it looked even more boyish. My eyes seemed huge. Mrs. Roberts had shown me how to put on black eyeliner, to brush rouge not just on the apple of the cheek but in a sweep across the cheekbone and up to the sides of the face. I'd stolen some of her makeup, some French cosmetic brand in heavy gold packaging that I'd never be able to afford on my own and I guessed she wouldn't miss. She had even plucked my eyebrows one day when the shop was quiet.

I thought Tim probably wouldn't recognize me. I could creep up behind him in the pub without him noticing, show him how much work I'd been doing on the program he taught me, impress him enough so that when he went away next time he'd take me with him. Charlie Canterbury, special agent.

Oh Tim, my special adviser.

My only.

You.

The shortest love poem in the English language.

You.

I'd paused for a moment outside the pub, trying to breathe normally. I could hear the laughter from inside, the snatches of conversation, lines of pop songs from the jukebox. I stood to one
side to let a man go in front of me. As he entered a gust of warm air came back outside to hit me. I could have stood there forever.

Once inside I spotted Tim immediately. He was sitting in the corner, wearing a heavy black overcoat I hadn't seen before. His hair was unbrushed, and he was staring into an empty pint glass in front of him. When I came over he shifted up to make room on the bench next to him.

“This is nice,” I said and he nodded.

“Sorry, can I get you a drink?” he asked after a few seconds of silence. I asked for a tomato juice but when it came I wasn't sure what to do with the plastic stick in the glass. Every time I took a sip it pierced my cheek. Eventually I took it out and put it in the ashtray. Tim watched all this with a grave, slow interest.

“So,” I said, “how have you been?” I was determined not to ask him anything about the mission or his advising. Let him come to me. Let him tell me everything. With animals and men, it is important to retain your dignity. That way they respect you.

The pub was more folksy than I had imagined from the outside. It dripped with authentic-looking photographs of village cricket teams and old music-hall posters you know have been bought from some out-of-town warehouse. The rest of the customers looked as if they'd been bought by the yard too: their golfing sweaters and silk scarves fit in so well with the non-threatening atmosphere. I huddled with Tim in the corner. Far from melting in with the atmosphere, I was half-afraid the other drinkers would be angry if they noticed how much we spoiled the picture.

“Miranda's well,” I said. “She goes to college one day a week now. She comes here, I think, with some of her new friends.” She'd told me this casually, obviously forgetting how often I'd begged her to come with me.

“And Mrs. Roberts has got the shop shipshape.” I started to
laugh. “The shipshape shop,” I explained when Tim looked puzzled. “It's almost a poem.”

Tim fiddled with the coaster, shredding the edge with his thumbnail. I picked up the swizzle stick and tapped it a few times against the ashtray. What did we used to talk about? Maybe normal was overrated.

“When the kids at school used to go to the pub at lunchtimes,” I said, “they'd always come back talking and laughing, smelling of smoke and alcohol. The teachers would turn a blind eye. Sometimes they even went with them. They said it was just part of daily rebellion.”

But I wasn't in the mood for storytelling tonight and Tim didn't seem to be listening. I sipped my juice and looked round.

Suddenly he spoke. “I've been having badminton lessons,” he said.

I snorted into my drink so violently that the juice came out of my nose. It was a strange feeling, as if my nostrils were fizzing. I roared with laughter, clapping Tim on the back, looking round proudly because I thought at last he'd proved himself to be stronger, more exciting, than the rest of them. He'd shown he couldn't be beaten back by the normality of everyone else. But he wasn't smiling. In his hands, he held the pub menu advertising Christmas meal specials.

“Perhaps we could have a game sometime,” he said, and he looked, his face puffy and square, like someone I'd never met before.

Keep your face on. Don't let anyone know what's going on on the inside. Tim kissed me on the cheek when it was time to go, and I walked away from him across the park, head and chin up. I didn't look at the Seize the Day bench and I definitely didn't turn round to see if he was watching me to make sure I was safe.

L
iz was the only one not joining the Mata fan club.

“You can't bring it in here,” she said, tapping the “No Dogs” sign on the door as she shepherded me out of the library quickly.

“She's a her, not an it,” I protested.

“No difference. Still no dogs. Tie her up if you want, although she'll be safe. No one would take a mongrel like that.” “But it's cold. She'll freeze.”

“It's the rules,” Liz said, rubbing her hands together to warm them up. “Now, are you going to come in or not? I've got the kettle on.”

When Liz bustled around like this I knew things weren't going well with the accountant. As we walked through the library to her office, she stopped to yank a book away from a toddler who'd been left in the children's section while his mother hovered round the romance paperbacks, picking herself out some of what Liz usually called paper Valium.

“He was eating it,” Liz told the woman defensively as the child started screaming. “Please don't bring your kids into the library if you're not going to look after them properly. We are not a creche.”

“So what's happened?” I asked when we were sitting down
having our tea. I'd quickly put aside all hope of Liz being sympathetic about Mrs. Roberts's and my predicament.

Liz spent some time straightening everything on the desk, making sure that the ruler was aligned perfectly with the pencil sharpener. “I told him I was going away for the weekend,” she said eventually. “I even booked myself into the hotel, left out the card on the desk here”—she pointed to a spot on the surface—“so he could see it, acted all mysteriously and a little bit sexily.”

I looked at Liz's tightly curled hair and tightly buttoned-up cardigan. For the first time I noticed that the lines at the side of her mouth were drooping downward, giving her the look of one of those puppets with hinges on their jaw. She twiddled with the string on her glasses.

“Sexy, that's good.” I was as enthusiastic as I could be.

“Well,” she banged her tea mug down on the desk and then had to get some tissues to mop up the spill. “I went, and only spent the whole bloody weekend on my own. Even if I wanted to leave the hotel I couldn't because I'd only brought a certain type of clothing with me. They'd have thought I was some kind of tart, in town to pick up business.”

I tried not to look too startled at the thought of Liz as a traveling tart.

“And it cost me a fortune, what with the single supplement and all that room service. Money which, I don't need to remind you, would be better off put to my retirement fund.”

“Did he say why he didn't come?” I asked. “Maybe something terrible had happened.”

Liz spoke icily. “He decided to take advantage of me being away by treating his wife to a night out. He said she deserved to be spoiled for once. Apparently, they both enjoyed it enormously.”

This wasn't going well. I racked my brains for something useful to say. “Still, in the long term it shows you have another life,”
I said, throwing back words I'd picked up from Mrs. Roberts. “Appearances are vital; you can never be sure when you're being looked at. Even small gestures could build up the bigger picture.”

Although Liz was staring at me, her hands were still busy tidying up the immaculate surface of her desk. Her fingers traced the perfect edge of the pile of books in front of her.

I carried on, hoping something I said would stick. It was harder work than I thought. “Maybe he's only pretending not to mind. He could be tossing and turning now thinking over exactly how you spent the time away. He may even be ringing up the hotel now, asking for the exact same room you had so he can visualize the scene more.”

“He's playing golf with two retired lawyer friends this afternoon,” Liz interrupted. “And he knows just how I spent the weekend. I told him.”