Barefoot in the Dark (21 page)

She lifted up her secret key-hiding stone and popped her door key underneath it.

‘D’you want to put your car key under here?’ she asked him.

He glanced beyond her, towards the house. ‘Oh,’ he said, looking confused. ‘Oh. Righty ho.’ He bent down to do so, and as he did she could see three inches of pallid stomach bulging between his stringy running vest and the top of his shorts.

She tugged her own T-shirt down extra hard.

But Simon, it turned out, was the least of her problems.

‘How odd,’ she panted.

‘What’s odd?’

‘That.’

They’d been on the move for a little over ten minutes, and were both, by now, out of breath. Hope’s running had come on in leaps and bounds now she was motivated not to make conversation.

Running to the park, as opposed to around it, took them through a number of footpaths that criss-crossed the area, which in turn took them through the close Paul and Suze lived in. And, naturally, past Paul and Suze’s house. As they did so Hope had noticed a large transit van parked outside. Which would have been of no consequence (except to Suze, who had standards) except that it had the words ‘Pest Arrest’ written down the side. There were various illustrative decals, too. Of wasps. And cockroaches. And rats.

‘What about it?’ puffed Simon, as they ran on past. Hope explained that it was her brother’s house. ‘I presume they’ve got pests,’ he shrugged, re-entering the footpath. ‘My mother had an infestation last year. Silverfish, I think it was.’

Hope smiled to herself. Well, hey nonny no. The squeaky-clean Suze with her very own infestation. She wondered what she’d say about that.

When she got home, and had seen Simon swiftly off, Hope picked up the phone to ask. Despite her earlier indignance, she did feel a little bad about Suze and her casseroles. Not least, cross with herself, for doing what she always did, letting things get out of hand in the first place.

‘Suze?’

‘What?’

No hello. Just a bark. Which should have told her something. Her sister-in-law never answered the telephone with a bark. Always the number. And the area code.

‘I’ve just been past, on my run,’ she explained. ‘I saw the Pest Arrest van outside. Is everything OK? Have you got a wasp’s nest or something?’

There was a silence. Then a sigh. Then another silence. Then a sigh again.

‘Suze?’

‘No
,’
she snapped. ‘We have
not
got a wasps’ nest.’

Hope waited but Suze obviously wasn’t going to elaborate. ‘Well,’ she said at last. ‘That’s a relief. Something else, then?’

‘Yes,’ came the toneless reply. ‘Something else.’

‘Well, what something?’

The line went silent again, then Suze exhaled loudly. ‘Moles, if you must know.’

‘Moles? In the garden?’

‘Of course in the garden!’

‘Oh, dear. But, oh, bless!’ said Hope. ‘Oh, moles are so sweet! Have you seen one?’

Another silence.

‘Suze? Are you still there?’

The silence continued. And then, suddenly, it was broken.

‘That’s right!’ Suze hissed. ‘You laugh, why don’t you? Well, you can just sod off and laugh somewhere else!’

‘Um… ’

‘You heard me! Just leave me alone! This isn’t bloody funny,
OK
?’

Chapter 22

Hope was woken abruptly the next morning. By Chloe, who was standing at her bedside, in pyjamas, and pummelling her shoulder with both hands.

‘Mum, wake up. Auntie Suze is on the phone!’

Suze? Hope groaned and swung her legs from under the duvet. She’d thought about calling Suze back. Several times, in fact. But she hadn’t. If Suze wanted to slam down phones and immerse herself in histrionics – make a mountain out of her wretched mole hills – then she could bloody well get on with it. Hope was done with pussy-footing around her. She glanced blearily at the bedside clock. It wasn’t even seven. She sent Chloe back to bed and padded irritably down the stairs.

‘I mush apologise,’ said Suze as soon as she picked the phone up.

At least Hope thought that’s what she said. She was still half asleep.

‘Pardon?’

‘I
mush
. Apologise to you.’

She hadn’t imagined it. Suze’s voice sounded strange. Really strange. If she’d got little sense out of her last night – and she hadn’t – then this was something else again. ‘Er… what for?’ she said at last.

‘For last night. For swearing.’

‘Oh, forget it. You don’t have to apologise –’

‘And for everything!’ Suze’s voice rose ten decibels. ‘I do. I see it now.’

Really
strange. ‘See what?’

‘That’s why they’ve come for me.’

No. Not strange. Hope was fully awake now. Drunk. Suze sounded come for you?’
drunk
. But that was impossible. Suze didn’t drink. She rubbed her spare fist against her eyes. ‘See what?’ she asked again. ‘Who’ve

Suze’s voice dropped so far now that it was barely a whisper.

‘The moles, of course!’ she hissed.

A moment passed before Hope could gather her thoughts into any response to this statement.

‘What, the moles in your garden?’

‘Of course the moles in our garden!’ The voice was still a barely audible hiss. Hope was dumbfounded. Was this some sort of joke?

‘You’re not making any sense, Suze.’

‘I am. You know there’s new ones now, don’t you?’

‘New what?’

‘New mounds! Right at the edge of the lawn. Right by the patio!’

‘Suze, I –’

‘D’you think they’ll get under? D’you think –’ She stopped speaking then, and emitted a loud sob.

‘Suze?
Suze
?’

Hope heard the phone knock against something. Then Suze’s breathing. It sounded laboured.

‘It’s all right,’ Suze whispered. ‘It’s all right. I’ve got a plan.’

This was becoming more alarming by the minute. ‘Suze, where’s Paul?’

‘Not here, Paul. No.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Away, of course. Always away. So
I’m
going to deal with them.’

She was becoming indistinct now. The words becoming soupy. Merging into one another. Then the silence returned.

‘Suze?
Suze!’

‘You won’t tell him, will you?’ She sounded suddenly alarmed. ‘You won’t, Hope, will you? You promise?’

‘
Yes!
’ But the line had already gone dead.

Hope called straight back but the line was now engaged. What on earth was going on? She’d never heard her sister-in-law sound so peculiar. It didn’t make any sense. And what on earth was all that stuff about the moles coming to get her?

Chloe was heading down the stairs.

‘I’m awake now,’ she announced. ‘Can I go and watch telly?’

Hope was busy rummaging in the hall table drawer for her address book. Paul’s mobile number was in there. ‘Yes, you can go and watch telly,’ she said.

Chloe started off down the hall and then turned.

‘Did she sing to you, as well?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Auntie Suze. Did she sing to you?’

‘No. Did she sing to you, then?’

Chloe nodded.

‘What?’

She shrugged. ‘Some mad song about holes.’

Paul’s mobile wasn’t responding, and after several more fruitless attempts with the home number, Hope was becoming increasingly anxious. She’d have to go round there. It was almost seven-thirty now and Tom was up, too. The two children, by now dressed, were already installed in the kitchen, spooning cereal into their mouths on automatic pilot, while they gaped at some rubbish on TV. Another quarter of an hour and her mother would be here, and she could get over to Paul’s and find out what was going on. She ran upstairs and showered as quickly as she could, and was fully dressed and ready when her mother arrived.

Hope let her in and kept her in the hall while she explained about the phone call. And the one the night before. And the moles.

‘You know,’ said her mother, looking worried. ‘She called me last night, too. I thought she sounded a bit odd then. What did she sound like to you?’

‘Drunk.’

Her mother frowned.

‘And I can’t get Paul on his mobile.’ Hope pulled on a jacket and picked up her car keys.

‘I’d better come with you.’

‘No, no. We can’t both go, can we? You stay here and look after the kids.’

‘I really think –’

‘Mum, I’ll deal with this, OK? I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s going on.’

It only took ten minutes to drive over to Paul and Suze’s house, but when Hope got there there was no sign of life. Suze’s car wasn’t on the drive, and for a minute she worried that she’d upped and driven off somewhere, but, no, if Paul was away somewhere on business, he might well have taken it. He generally did if he was parking at the airport. He left Suze with his.

She swung into their drive and peered up through the windscreen. There were a couple of upstairs lights burning. Another thought struck her. Where on earth were the children?

She climbed out of the car and strode up to the front door. The sound of the bell reverberated round the hallway, but no-one came to answer it. She peered through the letterbox. She could see the telephone receiver dangling from its wire. She tried the bell again, unsure what to do next, then took herself off round to the side of the house. But the side gate was locked, and she couldn’t see through it. She frowned as she looked around her. She couldn’t climb over it. It was made out of vertical planks of wood. Where the hell was Paul?

She fished in her bag. Perhaps his mobile was on now. If not, she would just have to call the police. But the phone started ringing as she got her hand around it. It was her mother, anxious for news.

‘I can’t even get in!’ she said. ‘She’s not answering the doorbell. And the gate’s locked. And what about the children? Where could they be?’ She felt the first stirrings of panic welling inside her. ‘I think I’m going to have to call 999.’

‘Ah!’ said her mother. ‘You
can
get in! They’ve got an emergency key.’ She told Hope where to find it, and having instructed her mother to keep trying Paul, Hope went off to track the thing down.

Gaining entry to the house did nothing to quell Hope’s unease. Not because it looked like any sort of chaos had been wrought there, but because, as she jogged from room to room, all the little details were wrong. The phone, of course, which she had placed back on its base, Suze and Paul’s unmade bed, the children’s neatly-made ones, the empty glass on its side on the floor on the landing, the general sense of mild disarray, that would have been normal in most people’s homes, but not Suze’s. But there was no sign of either her or the children. Perhaps she’d been wrong. Perhaps Suze
had
gone off somewhere. But her handbag, its contents disgorged on the kitchen table, was still there, as were her car keys. All this Hope absorbed in the thirty or so seconds it took to do one circuit of the house, calling out Suze’s name as she ran. The next thing she took in, and took in with dismay, was a big Bacardi bottle, almost empty, in the living room. Her heart sank. She’d been right, then. Suze
had
been drunk.

She picked up the bottle and ran back out to the kitchen.
Was
drunk. Was very drunk. And was nowhere to be found. She placed the bottle on the draining board and gazed out across the garden. There were indeed a great number of molehills, punctuating the lawn like an outbreak of acne.

And then she spotted her. Or something like her, at any rate. A wraithlike form, emerging from behind a hedge at the far end of the garden, and bounding at some speed across the grass. Hope made for the back door, turned the key and yanked it open. She could see Suze now, an indistinct figure in the drizzle. She was on her knees, in a nightie, soaked to the skin, and stabbing violently at the ground with a very large fork .

It took Hope mere seconds to cross the sodden lawn. By this time, Suze, who had jerked up, startled, when Hope called her name, was up on her feet, her soaked nightie clinging to her small frame like wet paper, and her hair, which was usually so neatly tied back, hanging in slimy brown ropes around her face. She looked, if such things were actually possible, as if the real Suze, the one Hope knew, wasn’t at home. Seventeen years. A whole seventeen years. She’d never,
ever
seen her like this.

Hope eyed the fork, unsure what to make of it. It was a big kitchen one. The kind you used when carving roasts. A foot long, twin pronged, and no doubt very sharp. She swallowed. But at least it wasn’t a knife.

‘Suze, what are you doing?’ she asked, in what she hoped was a calming voice.

Suze swung the fork in an arc, sending globs of glistening mud winging through the air.

‘Killing them, of course. Whaddya think?’

Hope took a step towards her, noticing with alarm that there was a rip in the nightie and a ruddy reddish stain around it, over Suze’s left knee.

‘OK,’ she said softly. ‘OK, Suze. I see… ’ God, she really didn’t have the first clue what to do. Suze was still brandishing the fork and now glancing around. ‘OK,’ Hope said again. ‘Now, how about you and I going inside in the warm, and we’ll get you out of those wet things, and… ’

She proffered a hand. Suze lowered her arm and seemed to consider it for a moment.

‘No! I haven’t finished!’ she barked suddenly. She sank to her knees again and started stabbing at another mound.

‘Suze –’

‘I haven’t finished!’

Hope moved towards her. Got a hand on her arm.

‘Come on… ’ she coaxed. But Suze shook her hand off. Then suddenly she leapt up, swung round, and was off down the garden, moving like a terrier in a novelty dog coat, hair streaming out behind her like jellyfish tails.

Paul and Suze had a very large garden. Just how large, however, was only now becoming clear. Suze was running at great speed across it, with Hope, blinking raindrops, in pursuit. It wasn’t just a very large garden, it was a very complicated garden as well. As with most things, Suze didn’t do her gardening by halves. There was a pond, and a pergola, and an assortment of shrubberies, and, at its end, like most of the gardens around here, it had an area that, while it couldn’t really be called woodland, was tree-filled and dark and unkempt. The houses here all backed on to a strip of real woodland that circled the reservoir beyond. Quite a selling point, Hope remembered, as, panting, she approached it. So lovely for the little ones, their very own fairy glen. Hope jogged towards it. Like others nearby, Paul and Suze had installed a Wendy house in here, and it was behind this, having zig-zagged her way round all the bracken and wild garlic, that Suze’s nightie-clad form had now plunged.

There was no choice but to follow her, and as soon as Hope did she realised with relief that Suze was effectively cornered; the fence that separated the garden from the woodland was tall and topped off with a robust stretch of barbed wire. Added to which, the little area she was in now was hemmed in by two substantial and aggressive-looking shrubs. Suze saw this too and looked petulant and cross.

‘Leave me alone!’ she called out. ‘I haven’t
finished
.’

Hope could see that a firmer approach was required.

‘Yes you
have
,’ she shouted back, in equally firm tones. ‘So just put that fork down right now, or I’m coming in there to get it off you.’

Suze glared out from beneath her frondy fringe.

‘Go away!’

‘I will
not
! Now put down that fork!’

To Hope’s utter surprise, she did so. But just as she was taking a step closer to her, Suze wheeled around and started off again, tracking along the line of the fence, her nightie catching on the branches as she went.

There was nothing else for it. If Hope wanted her she’d have to go right on in and get her. She pushed up her sleeves and strode in.

But Suze was determined otherwise. She seemed oblivious to the thorns and was inching further away from Hope with every step.

‘Go away!’

‘Come back here!’

‘Go
away
! Go AWAY!’

Hope pulled in frustration at a thorn caught in her jacket. Suze must be covered in scratches though she obviously wasn’t feeling them. Hope could hear the snap and thwack of the branches, as the thorns alternately gripped and then relinquished the fabric of the nightdress. She stopped a moment, a pungent onion smell sour in her nostrils. It was pointless trying to follow. Suze was going nowhere. She should go back to the house and call someone for help. But even as she decided this, Suze began whimpering, and Hope could see she was now stuck and in pain. She was pulling ineffectually at a fretwork of branches that criss-crossed her torso and had pinioned her there.

Releasing her was easier than she expected. The silence now punctuated by Suze’s increasingly hysterical cries, Hope cast around and found a fallen tree branch, and, thus armed, was able to make much more efficient progress through the undergrowth. Once close enough, she managed to free the tangle of branches, while keeping a firm grip on Suze’s left arm, in case she tried to escape. But she didn’t. All the fight seemed to suddenly go out of her, and Hope was able to pull her out of the woodland with a great deal less effort than she’d expended getting in.

They emerged onto the lawn to find Hope’s mother jogging across it towards them.

‘Gracious me!’ she called out, almost gaily. Hope blinked at her. Almost jolly
,
in fact. ‘What a palaver!’ she declared as she reached them ‘What a to do! Come on. Come on, chicken. Let’s get you inside.’