Gifted and Talented (9 page)

Diana’s knees were knocking beneath her trousers. She cast a quick glance behind her; there was a heap of bricks and rubbish in the corner of the garden. She could, even now, hide behind that . . .

The door, after some tugging and cursing from within, rattled open. The burst of heat that issued forth was powerful enough to steam up the spectacles that Diana wore for driving and still hadn’t – she now realised – taken off. The mist cleared to reveal, in the light of the hall – a bare bulb like her own – the huge young woman she had occasionally seen, but never like this. Her neighbour had clearly just taken a bath, or was about to. Her bulk was divided, sausage-like, by the belt of a pink towelling bathrobe. Her face was large, red and shiny with the heat and wore a belligerent, suspicious expression.

‘Yeah?’ she said, looking Diana up and down and evidently unimpressed with what she saw.

Diana forced a smile across her face. She was shaking with fright, but now she was actually here, facing what she most feared and resented, she felt a vague lessening of the tension that had dogged her. ‘I’m your new neighbour,’ she began.

To her intense surprise, the woman’s expression changed. Before Diana’s astonished eyes, it softened; the mouth changed direction and stretched sideways into what might have seemed, in any other circumstance, a smile. ‘Oh,’ she said, shuffling forwards in a pair of electric-pink fluffy slippers. ‘So it’s you, is it? We’ve been wondering. Well, nice to meet you, Mrs Whatever-yer-called.’

‘Diana.’ Diana was grateful for the ingrained instinct that now compelled her to hold out her hand. The woman looked at it in puzzlement at first, evidently unused to performing the ceremony, but then recognition dawned and she grabbed Diana’s fingers in her hot, damp paw and gave them a convivial yank.

‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Debs. Wanna come in?’ The woman turned her huge pink bulk slightly to the side, stretching a large arm into the sauna-like interior behind her.

‘Thanks, but I can’t,’ Diana gasped. ‘My daughter’s next door; she’s eight . . .’ she added, not knowing quite why.

The information quite transported Debs, however. In her sweaty face, her large eyes shone. ‘Aaah, got a little girl, ’ave yer? Shanna-Mae could babysit for you, y’know, anytime.’

The name meant nothing to Diana; she had not heard it before. Was it male or female? she wondered before concluding that Shanna-Mae must be the large teenager she had seen getting into the people carrier. Female, then. ‘Thanks, that would be great, but actually I came to ask you about . . . Well, Rosie’s got school tomorrow,’ she announced in a rush. ‘She needs a good night’s sleep and—’

‘School? Where’s she go to school, then?’ Debs interrupted, warmly interested.

‘Er, Campion.’

‘Shanna-Mae goes there. To the senior bit. What’s yer little girl’s name?’ Debs’ head was on one side, inquiringly.

‘Um, Rosie. Rosie Somers. Er . . .’ The conversation was straying from the subject. In a moment, blindsided by Debs’ unexpected friendliness, she’d lose courage altogether. As it was, the implied criticism was going to put a dampener on things. Diana swallowed and raised her chin. ‘Er, I came about the noise,’ she said.

‘Noise?’ Debs repeated in apparent surprise, over a burst of pumping music from the room next door, followed by televisual cheers and clapping.

‘Um, yes. I’m really sorry,’ Diana ploughed on, ‘but because your TV’s on the wall, we can hear more or less every word in our house and . . .’ Her voice broke finally under the strain. She looked in dumb misery at Debs, who was staring back at her, her face a picture of puzzlement.

‘You can ’ear every word? In your ’ouse?’ she repeated incredulously.

Diana nodded, eyes locked to Debs’ shiny face, expecting to see the fleshy mouth turn suspiciously down again and issue a robust and possibly aggressive denial, followed by the loud slam of the front door. Instead, Debs lurched away from the door and roared over her shoulder to persons invisible. ‘Turn that bloody thing down! Next door can ’ear it!’

The noise halved in volume immediately.

‘Sorry about that, love,’ Debs said. ‘Me ’usband can’t function unless he’s making so much noise it makes ’is face fall off. I’m so used to it, I don’t notice.’

Diana was simultaneously trying not to cry and searching for the words to express her profound gratitude when the large husband hove into sight behind Debs’ shoulder. In the confined space of the narrow hall he looked larger than ever, his belly straining under a black T-shirt bearing the legend, ‘Are You Looking At My Cock?’ under an image of a chicken.

Diana swallowed.

‘’Oo’s that yer talkin’ to?’ he demanded, looking Diana up and down suspiciously.

‘Next door,’ Debs told him.

He shuffled closer. ‘That your car outside, is it?’

Diana nodded.

‘Bit of a wreck, ain’t it?’

‘Yes, I’m sorry. It
is
a bit scruffy.’

‘Didn’t mean that. Yer door won’t lock, will it?’

Diana shook her head.

‘Can’t yer ’usband fix it?’

Diana reddened and looked away. ‘I don’t, um, have a husband,’ she muttered.

‘Aww!’ murmured Debs, sympathetically. She looked expectantly at Diana, but Diana stared hard at the ground and did not elaborate.

The ensuing silence was broken by Debs’ husband. ‘Well, y’don’t want a car that don’t lock. Not round ’ere.’

‘There’s nothin’ wrong with round ’ere,’ Debs put in quickly, indignantly.

‘Well, no,’ her husband agreed. ‘But y’don’t want a car that don’t lock anywhere.’

‘I suppose not,’ Diana agreed, although there was little prospect of anything else. She should, she supposed, brace herself for the break-ins.

‘I’ll fix it for you, if y’like.’

Diana stared at him in delight. ‘That would be . . . wonderful. Thank you.’

‘’S’all right. Might look at that exhaust too.’

Debs, arms folded, was looking at her husband in cheerful exasperation. ‘But what she really wants is for you to turn yer telly down, Mitch. Why don’t you take it off of the wall? Gives me neck-ache, looking at it up there.’

As Diana, her wildest dreams verbalised by the last mouth on earth she had expected, wondered if she were hearing things, Mitch shrugged his well-padded shoulders. ‘Yeah, s’pose I could. The stand’s in a box somewhere. S’pose we got used to next door being empty. Since . . .’ He seemed to stop himself.

‘Oooh, yeah!’ Debs’ eyes swung back to Diana, large with excitement. ‘Old Mrs Minion! Four weeks it was before they found ’er, you know! Four weeks!’

Mitch, catching Diana’s expression, laid a hand on his wife’s shoulder. ‘That’s enough, love. Well,’ he added, addressing Diana, ‘I’ll try and sort out that car for you tomorrow, if I can.’

‘Th-thank you,’ Diana stammered.

‘Sorry about the noise,’ Debs shouted as Diana swayed back down the path on wobbly legs. ‘Just say if it gets too much, yeah?’ she bawled cheerfully. ‘Don’t suffer in silence!’ The door shut. Only a muffled noise came now from the front room of the house. Diana, looking up to the foggy, imprecise night sky, suffused with the orange glow of the streetlamps, sent up a silent and heartfelt prayer to whatever deity had overseen the exchange. Her relief was overwhelming, and she felt triumphant too, having successfully defended her daughter and herself against what had seemed a hostile and uncaring world. As she reached Mitch and Debs’ broken gate, Diana felt herself smiling broadly in the dark. She had prevailed!

Reaching out for the gatepost, she gasped in horror as her hand came into contact with living flesh. She recoiled, shocked and fearful. What new danger was this? Was it what Mitch had meant when he said that you didn’t want a car that didn’t lock round here?

‘Rosie!’ she exclaimed, realising that, after all, the figure was too small and slight to pose a danger. And that, also, it looked familiar. ‘What are you doing here?’

Her daughter was clasping the gatepost, swinging on it. Her face, in the lamplight, was guilty.

‘Were you listening?’ Diana demanded, half angry and half inclined to be indulgent because the interview had gone so incredibly, unexpectedly well.

Rosie nodded. ‘They sound nice, Mummy,’ she said. ‘The new neighbours.’

‘Yes, they do, don’t they?’ Diana agreed, feeling suddenly exhausted by it all and thinking with sudden longing of the special-offer cut-price rosé. ‘Come on, let’s go in.’

‘Mummy?’ Rosie’s precise little voice was thoughtful as they reached their own front door.

‘Yes, darling?’

‘What had old Mrs Minion being doing for those four weeks before they found her?’

As Amber had not returned from her party, Isabel had been obliged to put Coco up for the night. She had considered turning the dog in to the porter after all, but the scene earlier in the evening not only made the prospect hideously embarrassing but also ensured she could not emerge creditably from the situation. She was stuck with Coco, a nervous and ill-trained animal who not only threatened to incriminatingly howl the place down if not the focus of absolute attention at all times but repaid her hospitality by peeing copiously on the carpet.

As a consequence, Isabel had missed supper altogether. She had been obliged instead to go out and find a corner shop where she could buy pet food for Coco. When she returned, slipping uneasily by the porter – who studiously avoided her gaze – the Incinerator had been closed.

Isabel felt resentful about all this, as well as hungry, but was uncertain about how she would tackle Amber when she saw her. Something about Amber made her feel rather out of her depth, as well as intimidated. Amber was unpredictable, dangerous even; she had been rude and aggressive to Kate and to whomever she had been shouting at on the phone in the bathroom. Isabel quaked at the thought of Amber speaking like that to her.

She felt she would like to avoid her, from now on.

Heavy eyed after a sleepless, worried night, Isabel had left Coco asleep on her bed while, at the earliest possible opportunity, she went to find some breakfast in the Incinerator.

Inspiration had dawned as she ate her bacon and eggs. She returned to her room, picked up the sleeping Coco, bundled her into her coat and – again avoiding the porter’s eye, although shifts had changed in the night, thank goodness – carried her out of the college front entrance and tied Coco loosely up to the bike racks with a piece of rope from her backpack. Here, within the bounds of the law, she could await the return of Amber.

Thankfully, it was a warmish autumn day and, even though Coco whined and shivered, the weather was as propitious as could be expected. Thankfully, too, no one was around to witness the deed. A relieved Isabel had returned to her room and left a note under Amber’s door explaining the whereabouts of her pet. Hopefully Coco would not be left waiting too long. And that, she vowed, was the end of it.

Isabel wanted to forget about the whole thing. She wanted to rewind to what she was doing before Amber had materialised. She thought about the evening she’d spent with Ellie. They were scheduled to visit the freshers’ fair together that afternoon. Ellie would be amazed to hear about Amber and what had happened. But then, Isabel thought, what could she say about the porter, Kate and Coco that did not reflect badly on herself? She had lied, even if she had been forced to. Whichever way you told it, it didn’t sound good. Best, Isabel decided, to say as little as possible. She left a note under Ellie’s door suggesting they meet at her room at lunchtime and go to the fair from there.

Meetings with new tutors filled up the morning. But, as the English group stood outside the office door of Dr David Stringer, tutor in metaphysical poetry, Isabel realised that forgetting would not be easy. She and Amber were studying the same subject and Amber should be at the meetings too, even if she hadn’t turned up yet.

And then there was Kate, who of course was studying English as well. The meeting between her and Amber was hardly likely to be friendly and Isabel feared finding herself somehow caught between the two, as yesterday. How had everything become so complicated so suddenly?

Isabel stood miserably in the corridor, insides clenched in anticipation of the moment, any minute surely, when Amber would hove into view, heels clacking and hair swirling. But the minutes went by, the time for the meeting approached, and still she had not materialised.

Isabel was full of a wild hope that she wouldn’t. Perhaps she had been caught with her dog and sent down already. The prospect was liberating, almost dizzyingly so. She could start afresh.

Kate seemed in no mood to let bygones be bygones, however. Her only response to Isabel’s friendly greeting was to shoot her an acid look.

Isabel could hardly blame her. She longed to explain to Kate how the situation had come about, but it seemed unclear even to herself. Besides, Kate’s fierceness at the time had frightened her almost as much as Amber’s. Her efforts to set the record straight would be bumbling and nervous, and Kate might refuse to listen to her anyway. Perhaps, Isabel thought hopefully, Ellie might be able to help.

There were four others in the group: Paul, Lorien, Harry and Bethany. They seemed friendly and mercifully low-key, but Isabel was too conscious of Kate’s simmering presence to make any overtures. She propped up the wall on the opposite side of the corridor from them and hoped they didn’t think her haughty and distant.

They were too busy chatting to notice. Catching words like ‘Prince Harry’ and ‘Mustique’, Isabel gathered they were discussing Amber. Bethany, a northern blonde with a big nose, was grinning and waving a newspaper about and Isabel caught glimpses of the latest edition of the social page she had read on the train. It seemed like years ago, but was in fact just a mere two days. The main illustration was, as before, of Amber, this time clad in the silver dress Isabel had seen her putting on last night. She was beaming and holding a glass of champagne.

Paul, who had dark hair, glasses and the serious manner of the head boy he had only just stopped being, was reading out the accompanying paragraph.

‘. . . 
The demands of academia haven’t, it seems, dimmed The Hon. Amber Piggott’s famous party-going appetite. Last night saw her on – literally
–
glittering form in a shimmering minidress by aristo-eco designers GreenLady, at the launch of high-end stationery emporium Smootheson’s Belgravia flagship store. Accompanied by fellow student, Jasper De Borchy, Amber trilled, “They’re working me terribly hard at uni and a girl deserves a night off every now and then.
”’

Harry gave an incredulous, high-pitched giggle. ‘Terribly hard!’ he snorted, while Lorien pondered, ‘Can you actually
dim
an appetite? Is that the word?’

Isabel stared at the floor. She would have liked to join in the laughter, longed to be able to see Amber as the others did, as a joke. Had she really gone all the way to London for a party last night? Hardly surprising that she wasn’t here; although where, Isabel wondered, did this leave the dog?

The door to David Stringer’s room now flew open. ‘Hi, guys! Come on in!’

He gave the group a friendly and slightly anxious smile. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Isn’t there another one of you?’

‘Yes, but she hasn’t turned up,’ Kate said.

‘Better things to do,’ Paul added, as Bethany handed over the newspaper. David Stringer looked at it and frowned. ‘What’s a high-end stationery emporium?’ he asked.

‘Quite literally the opening of an envelope,’ Kate sneered, shooting a nasty look at Isabel.

Stringer shook his head dismissively and closed the door behind them all. To Isabel’s relief, he seemed disinclined to discuss the matter. In fact, Stringer himself was relieved; seeing the paper, he had imagined yet another flattering article about his archrival, Dan Bright. That it only concerned some stupid AWOL female student was good news – faculty discipline was Gillian Green’s department.

Like all the tutors’ offices at Branston, Dr Stringer’s was circular and built of concrete. They sat self-consciously at a round table. The room was not terribly warm. ‘All your supervisions will be in my house from now on,’ Stringer told the group. Isabel, relieved, imagined cosy armchairs and a roaring fire. ‘This is just a preliminary powwow.’

Dr Stringer was as Isabel remembered him from the interviews: thin, bearded and agitated. She liked him; there was something very warm and human, if chaotic, about him. He wore an ancient baggy T-shirt with the slogan, ‘Will Power’ in scratchy writing beneath a screen print of Shakespeare’s head.

They talked through some verse and, in Dr Stringer’s encouraging, enthusiastic presence, Isabel felt confident enough to launch a defence of a favourite poem against Kate’s criticisms. Afterwards they made reading lists and took down essay topics. Isabel filed out last; about to close the door, she looked over her shoulder to see Dr Stringer beaming at her. ‘You did very well there. Keep it up.’

Outside, Kate spotted Isabel’s flush of pleasure. ‘What did he say?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘Oh . . . nothing. Nothing,’ Isabel assured her. If Kate was competitive as well as not liking her, things would be even more difficult.

The final meeting of the morning was with the director of studies. Gillian Green read the account of Amber’s party going with thin lips. ‘I’ll keep this, if you don’t mind,’ she said to Bethany, pushing the tabloid into a large, book-stuffed woven bag at the side of her chair. The meeting then proceeded much as the Stringer one had but, at the end, Professor Green sent the others out and signed to Isabel to remain.

Left behind, Isabel glanced apprehensively up into the academic’s handsome, high-cheekboned face. The fear that it was something about Amber’s dog jabbed uncomfortably about her insides.

‘I just wanted to say,’ Professor Green said in her deep rumble of a voice, ‘that we have expectations.’ She gave a wintry smile. ‘High expectations. You must work hard. Make the most of your time here.’

‘I will work hard,’ Isabel assured her in a daze of delight. Professor Green had high expectations! The world, she felt, was back on its axis.

The route back to her room took her across the front of Branston and near the place she had tied up Coco. Reluctantly, she decided to check on the dog’s wellbeing. She was relieved to see that the bike rack to which she had tied Coco was empty. Amber had obviously returned from London, seen the note and retrieved her pet. It was perhaps unexpected that the piece of rope remained attached, but Amber had probably thought it was scruffy and rejected it on aesthetic grounds.

Isabel took a deep, relieved draught of air. It struck her, for the first time, how lovely the day was. From its mild beginning it had continued warm and now the air had a faint spicy scent of bonfire smoke and sweet decay. The sun filled each leaf with light so that it glowed.

Now to meet Ellie, Isabel told herself. Time for some fun, at last. Time to go to the fair, join the interesting-looking societies and make enough new friends to form a barrier between herself and Amber Piggott for the rest of her university life.

Turning into her own corridor, Isabel felt a stab of shock when she spotted, at the bottom of Amber’s door, the small white tongue of the untouched note she had slotted under earlier.

The ghastly implications sank in. If Amber had not read it she did not know where Coco was. And Coco was no longer tied to the bike rack . . .

Isabel’s heart boomed in her chest. Had someone stolen her? Had she run away? Had Isabel lost Amber’s pet?

And Amber would be furious! A hot wave of horror broke over Isabel as she imagined herself on the receiving end of Amber’s formidable rage. Being required to replace Coco, even. She had no idea how much a dog like that cost. And then there was the collar . . . Were those jewels real?

In the middle of Isabel’s panic, someone, suddenly, rounded the corner. As if in a living nightmare, she now saw, heading towards her, the person she least wanted to see. Without the dog she now most wanted to see. No small white canine head stared malevolently from under Amber’s thin brown arm.

Her hair was tangled and her make-up smeared. A pair of silver shoes with red soles was tucked under one tanned arm. She was barking into her mobile – it had a pink, glittering case that caught the light. ‘But
why
has it gone? It can’t have!’

Isabel’s stomach surged violently. Amber was clearly talking to someone about her dog.

‘It’s a
disaster
,’ she wailed. ‘It meant everything to me! What? The signal’s going now.’

Isabel stared helplessly into the large, brown, dewy eyes. Tears hung like diamonds in the thicket of Amber’s lashes.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she began, before Amber could say anything.

‘It’s a tragedy,’ Amber cried.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Isabel confessed, truthfully.

‘How dare they cancel it?’

‘Cancel it?’

‘I’ve just been talking to my agent. The bloody TV series has been canned,’ Amber wailed. She stamped on the carpet with one bare tanned foot. ‘A film crew was supposed to be following me everywhere during my first term,’ she raged. ‘Fly-on-the-wall documentary. Like
Made in Chelsea
, only about me starting at uni. But now some guy, the head of the college or whatever, has put a stop to it.’

Isabel was having trouble registering what she was hearing. ‘I thought,’ she stammered, ‘that the tragedy was Coco.’

Amber’s face was utterly blank.

‘Your dog,’ Isabel prompted.

Recognition dawned. ‘Oh, yeah,’ Amber said casually. ‘My dog. I left her with you, didn’t I?’ Her attention was now back on her iPhone. ‘Bloody agent’, she was muttering.

Isabel cleared her throat. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m awfully sorry, Amber,’ she began, her voice high and rushed. ‘But I’m afraid I’ve lost your dog.’