Wickedness (10 page)

“What’s that about Claire’s ring?” her mum said, trying to sound upbeat and cheerful, “And who had their finger chopped off?”

Micky told her.

“Oh, so does that make Claire Sekhmet’s priestess too, then? And does the ring protect her from ALL sorts of plague?” Her mum was joking, had started to laugh, but looking from Claire’s face to Robert’s, she stopped, taken aback to see how neither of them was smiling. She tried to lighten things up by saying and half meaning it, “So Claire’s okay, but what about me? What about Micky? What’s going to protect US from this bird flu? We haven’t got any fancy rings.”

It was then that he’d taken them up to his study, with its shelves of boxes and bottles and books. And as they climbed up the stairs, Claire trailing reluctantly behind, he talked about the clear tincture, the ‘medicine’ he made up himself, “Just three drops, every day, straight onto the tongue. It’s perfectly safe… So safe, even pregnant women can take it.” Robert reached out and touched her mum on the arm. The briefest of contact, but it made Claire want to knock his hand
away and shout
Don’t touch her!
“And you’ll be protected against every kind of plague. It’s always worked for me. Because really you know I’m over four hundred years old!”

Micky and her mum laughed and her mum said, “You look amazing for four hundred. You haven’t got a magic cream have you? Only I’d kill for some of that.”

“Who wouldn’t? No, just the medicine. I’ll give you some to take home…”

Claire could see her mum was going to be sucked right in by it. She had a dressing table overflowing with pills and potions.

When Robert opened his study door, Claire’s mum and Micky went straight in. Claire meant to follow on, but the smell hit her… whoomph… and stopped her dead in her tracks. Cinnamon and flowers. Her mum and Micky didn’t even notice it or see her reaction. But he did. Their eyes locked.

He held out his hand to her. “Come in,” he said, his fingers lacing through hers and pulling her towards him.

“No!”

Claire’s mum turned, smiling. “What’s the matter?” But Claire couldn’t answer, because she didn’t know. Couldn’t say why a smell should fill her with such fear.

She pulled her hand free and turned and ran and didn’t stop running until she was out of the house and had slammed the door behind her. Now she was in the open air, she felt better, though the smell still clung to her. She dropped down onto the top step and sat there, her heart racing. And when the door opened behind her, for a minute she was terrified it was him.

“What on earth’s got into you?” Her mum sounded concerned, but exasperated and bewildered too. “You silly girl,” she said, bending down, enveloping Claire in a curtain of hair, the smell, THAT smell clinging to her and intense in the heat. “Robert wants you to come back inside. He’s worried he’s upset you… all that stupid joking about the ring.” Her hand rested on Claire’s shoulder, rubbing it as if she was a child again and needing to be soothed.

Claire shook her head and felt tears prickle at the back of her nose.

“Well stay here then.” Her mum’s voice
sounded flat and tired. “You know where we are.”

But there was no way Claire was going back inside. She would stay out here, move along the step until she was in the shade, rest her back against the warm brick of the house and wait.

When they came out of the house at last, the heat was still suffocating but had lost some of its fierceness. The noise of traffic had reached a deafening crescendo. It was rush hour and people were on the move. Masses more people in cars now. Safe, isolated, cocooned from everyone else.

The drive home took a long time and there was hardly a word spoken the whole journey. Robert had insisted on driving them back home too. “Too risky for your mum to be travelling on the tube in her condition,” he’d said, looking at Claire and smiling conspiratorially, as if they shared a secret.

Micky was asleep on the back seat, her mouth open and her head lolling against Claire’s shoulder, making it damp with sweat and dribble. In one hand she was clutching a little figure which
he
had given her as a parting present; a genuine
Ancient Egyptian magical figurine (he’d said): a wax doll, with a fragment of papyrus inserted in its back, strands of dull red hair pushed into its head. He’d explained there was a spell written on the papyrus, which would protect the bearer from harm. He’d given Claire’s mum one too, which she’d popped in her bag for safe keeping. Nothing for Claire though. He’d said she didn’t need it. She had the ring. And it was then that she’d done something really stupid. Had blurted out, “
One
of the rings!” And he had taken her arm and tucked it in his and leaned in and whispered, “Ah, yes… the little rope-walker at the Cirque du Sekhmet.”

So he
had
followed her.

Claire’s mum sat in the front passenger seat, her hands folded in her lap and with her head turned to look out of the window.

He
seemed to be concentrating on the traffic now, but when Claire glanced up, their eyes met in the rear-view mirror and in that second, panic rose up in her so fast she struggled to control it. She felt he sensed that and was pleased by it.

Breathe
, she thought.
Deep breaths and steady your thoughts. Don’t let him win. 

Then he half turned towards her mum and said something, in a low voice that Claire couldn’t catch. But it made her mum laugh and that startled Claire. She should have been pleased her mum was happy, but she wasn’t. Not one little bit. And she was even less pleased when they got home and Robert helped her mum out of the car and then opened the back door and went to lift Micky out
as
if he was part of their family.
She was still fast asleep. Claire moved roughly, deliberately, letting Micky’s head fall awkwardly from her shoulder, hoping it would wake her up. “Thanks. I don’t need your help. I can manage.”

And it must have been while Claire was busy getting Micky out of the car and inside and onto the sofa, that her mum had fetched it for him. Sold it.

Once the front door was closed and they could hear his car pulling away, her mum had exploded. “The man you’ve been so spectacularly rude to all afternoon has just paid an enormous sum of money for your Grandma’s old box. I
told
you he would. Look!” She pulled out a huge wodge of money from her handbag and waved it under Claire’s nose.

Not an enormous sum of money
, she thought.
He would have paid more
. “How could you?” Anger welling up inside Claire and spilling out. “Wait till I tell Dad what you’ve done. It was MY box.”

Claire’s mum quietly tucked the money back in her bag. “We need the money… and that’s that.”

“You’re a stupid cow. No wonder Dad left you.” Tears were streaming down Claire’s face now. She turned on her heel, ran upstairs, went straight into Grandma’s bedroom, saw the empty space on the chair where the box ought to have been and threw herself down on the bed.

It was still happening. Things being done to her and she had no control over any of it. But she could
take
control. She could. Robert might have the box now, but as far as she knew, he still had no way of unlocking it. He still needed her for that. She was sure of it. Or Zacharie. Maybe his ring? She sat up and wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. She had to talk to Zac. Warn him. She looked at her watch. He wouldn’t answer. There was the evening performance at the circus and he would be high up on the wire. That was okay. She’d leave a voice message. “Don’t think I’m mad, but there’s this man who knows about our rings. He scares
me. And there’s a box, a very special box my grandma left me and the ring is the key. Only it won’t open it. Not yet. And now
he
has the box. And he followed me to the circus. And he knows about you. And that you have a ring, too. And I don’t know what any of it means. Can you call me?”

Now all she could do was sleep. Just sleep. Sleep was good.

Micky shook her awake. She was standing next to the bed, still clutching the little wax figure in her hand. “My stomach hurts,” she said. “I feel ever so sick.”

Claire opened her eyes, tried to focus on her sister’s face closing in on hers. “Tell mum. She’ll sort you.”

“She’s being sick. She said to get you. I feel ever so hot.” Micky had hold of Claire’s hand and was pressing it against her forehead.

She does feel hot
, Claire thought.
Really hot.

“Okay. I’m coming.” She sat up, still holding Micky’s hand, which felt clammy, and swung her
legs over the side of the bed. “Let’s go and see how Mum is.”

For a second, Claire just stood in the doorway and looked at her mum rolling around the bed, clutching at her stomach and moaning. “Mum?” Claire was beside her now.

“Oh God, Claire,” she whispered. “It feels like I’ve got ants crawling all over me. My tongue’s tingling. It’s so weird. I feel really weird.”

“Shall I get you some paracetamol?”

“No good,” her mum whispered. “Can’t keep it down.” Her eyes started to roll up into her head and she was making a noise as if she had swallowed her tongue and was choking on it.

Micky crawled onto the bed and buried her face in her mum’s side. She was wailing horribly. A high-pitched, grizzling, liquid noise that set Claire’s every nerve on edge.

“I need to get a doctor,” Claire was muttering to herself. They hadn’t registered with one yet, so she would need to call Grandma’s old one, though she knew in her heart that it was too late for that. Her mind just didn’t want to accept it. “Number. Number. Where’s the number?”

She ran downstairs and started scrabbling
around in the hall table drawer, looking for Grandma’s address book. It wasn’t there. But the more she panicked, the worse things got. She flicked desperately through the Yellow Pages, her mind a blank. Name? She couldn’t remember the doctor’s name. Would her mum be able to tell her? Back upstairs she looked down at her mum lying there, her face all sunken and grey. And Micky had stopped crying and her breathing was ragged and harsh.

Claire picked up the phone and called 999. Seven minutes. The ambulance would be there in seven minutes. Bear with them… the services were very stretched. She rang her dad’s number, then his mobile. No reply.

She ought to stay with her mum and Micky. But she couldn’t bear to. Terrified she would look down at them and know it was too late and they were both dead.

She mustn’t think about that. She’d go and open the front door instead. At least she’d be ready when the ambulance came. But, oh God, there on the step was a black rat, stiff and cold with a trickle of blood coming from its nose. She shuddered and pushed it away with her foot. Then she saw
another, lying on its back at the side of the path; its eyes closed, its mouth open in a perfect ‘O’ and its tiny paws stiff and supplicant as if it were praying.

She ran back upstairs now and looked helplessly at her mum and Micky. Then she started to cry, whispering, “Please, please, please,” over and over. She took her mum’s hand and it felt cold. “Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.” Anger and frustration and hate started to bubble up inside her. Her dad. Why wasn’t he here? Where was he? Then she heard a voice call out in the hall. She ran to the top of the stairs.

“Claire?”

The relief of seeing someone,
anyone
, was just so great that she didn’t stop to ask what he, Robert, was doing there. And anyway the ambulance arrived then and everything was forgotten in the rush to get her mum and Micky, still clutching her wax doll, onto stretchers and into the ambulance.

Claire would have climbed in as well, but the ambulance men were firm. No room, they said. They looked at
him
standing close beside her, his hand on her elbow, supporting, restraining.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take her.” She ought to have done something then. Taken control. Got a taxi to take her to the hospital. But she didn’t. Felt… and it seemed ridiculous later… that it would be impolite to refuse his help, even though he made her feel afraid. So they stood together, on the pavement, in the pool of light from the street lamp. And watched as the ambulance doors were shut and the ambulance, blue light flashing, pulled away. Then Robert turned to her and asked if there was anything that needed to be fetched from the house.

“My backpack,” she whispered, still in a daze. “Can I have it? It’s under the kitchen table, I think. It’s got my phone in it. Oh, and mum’s handbag. Upstairs by her bed.”

Her mum never went anywhere without her bag. Everything went into it. Everything. Even the little wax doll.

“I’ll get them. You sit in the car.”

She allowed herself to be tucked up in the passenger seat. “And keys. On the hall table…”

He disappeared into the house and came out just a few minutes later, carrying both bags and locking
the door behind him. She saw him stop on the path; look down at where the rats were lying. He pushed one with the toe of his shoe. He was still smiling when he slid into the driver’s seat.

The journey to the hospital only took five minutes. There was very little traffic that late at night. But every one of those minutes felt like ten. And when they stopped at a red traffic light she cried out in frustration and hit at the dashboard with her fist.

He reached across and rested his hand on hers. It felt heavy. Hot and dry and heavy. She kept her eyes fixed ahead. “Do you think they are going to die?” she asked.

He took his hand away and said nothing and they drove on in silence, until at last they pulled up outside the hospital entrance. He leaned across her to push open the passenger door. She pressed herself back into the seat; held her breath, not wanting to breathe in the smell of him.

“You go in,” he said. “I’ll find somewhere to park.”

She jumped out, clutching her backpack.

“Wait!” Her mum’s bag. He was holding it out for her. She took it and slammed the door shut. He drove off. She felt the relief of it turn her legs to water.