Cuckoo (39 page)
Spitting out the last dregs of bile, she felt redeemed, purged, and ready for action.
She stood and reached down her Barbour, slipping her feet into her overshoes. Taking the torch, with sour breath and lumps of vomit still catching in the back of her throat, she tiptoed up the garden steps to the Annexe. She snapped the torch off and stood completely still, holding her breath, straining to hear any sign of Polly being awake. As seemed to be the way with this night, there was no sound. Good. Rose went to open the door at the bottom of the steps that led up to the living area. She didn’t know what she wanted to do, nor indeed, fully why she was doing it, but she felt something needed to be proved. Something needed to be made definite.
A sting of shock jolted her. The door was locked. It had never, to Rose’s knowledge, been locked before. Even when she, Gareth, Anna and Andy had slept up there, and she had been so paranoid about the silence of the countryside, it had never been locked. What was it with all the door-locking that was going on right now?
‘Fuck,’ she said to herself. ‘Oh fuck.’
She rattled the door a little, thinking perhaps that in doing so she might accidentally wake Polly. If she did, and if Polly came down, Rose would find an explanation for being there at four in the morning, and everything would be all right. The sound of the loose handle on the other side of the door would surely bring her down. It seemed to ricochet around the walls of the darkness of the night. But there was nothing, no response. Except that somewhere, not too far away, a couple of hedgehogs screeched their frenzied, birdlike mating racket.
Rose hurried back up the steps and turned to look into the Annexe window, scanning it for movement. But it just returned her stare blankly, calling Flossie’s gaze to her mind.
Her nerves were on the edge of her skin. Was she going to do this all over again? Was she once again going to creep around to the back of her house and spy in on Gareth’s studio? Even as she asked herself these questions, she found herself tiptoeing over the black lawn to the hulking shape of the studio. Again, the door was locked, the blinds drawn. She pressed her ear right up against a windowpane. Nothing. It was as if everyone had left in the middle of the night. For a moment that thought had her by the throat – it might be true. Then she remembered seeing the car in the driveway up by the Annexe. They must still be here. Surely?
A chill got her, like an invisible shapeless thing that was swooping at her, behind her head. She had always been afraid of the dark, afraid of the silence of the countryside. Until the Hackney mugging, she had been happy, with a little caution, to walk about city streets at any hour of the night or day. But she had always held a deep fear of the dark of the rural night. This moment, here, right now in front of the studio, was the first time she had remembered this in all the time of their escape to the countryside. Once, long ago, before Anna was born, she and Gareth had stolen away to a small cottage in North Wales. The cottage backed onto a lake that, by day, was glorious, blue and lightly whipped by the mountain breeze. But at night, it took on, for Rose, a malevolent presence. One warm, still night, Gareth had picked up a rug and suggested they walked down to the lake. Rose, keen not to let her weediness be revealed to him at such an early stage in their relationship, had gone along with him. On the way down to the water, he sang ‘Blanket on the Ground’ in his best Country and Western accent.
But halfway there, even with him by her side, Rose had been seized by an overwhelming urge to run to the cover of a building. She had found her feet taking her away from him, and she was charging back up the path, slipping on the grass, stumbling on stubs of rocks, unable to stop until she was back inside the cottage with all the lights on.
And she was feeling that urge now, outside the studio, in her own back garden. She turned and, not worrying about making a noise, she fled back up towards the house. On the way, she tripped up onto the York stone terrace, barking her shin badly on the hard edge. Undeterred in her flight, she picked herself straight up and hurried towards the kitchen door.
She threw herself inside and slammed the door shut, leaning her back against it, panting, not knowing quite what had propelled her so quickly back up the garden. Looking around at the detritus that covered what had been her kitchen, she had no compulsion to tidy up. Instead she felt a sense of defeat that bordered on relief. Scanning the worktop, she saw Gareth’s studio coffee tin. She went over and opened it, smelling its warm interior. It was empty, waiting for a refill.
Something hit her. It was a plan, of sorts, for proving something. Moving quickly now, Rose went to the fridge to get the sealed Tupperware box that Gareth kept his special blend of beans in. Americans are so particular about their coffee, she thought. She moved over to Gareth’s beautiful old coffee-grinder and tipped the beans into the funnel contraption at the top, positioning the tin underneath to catch the grindings.
Then she slipped into the pantry and climbed on a stool to reach the secure, high cupboard where the home medications were kept. After Flossie had been born, Rose had suffered from piles so big that they had hit the bed before her backside when she sat down. Not wishing to disrupt her breastfeeding with drugs, Rose sought the help of a herbalist, who had provided her with some dark green tablets that had rocketed through her system so violently that she had only used one. She had left the others tucked away in the medicine cupboard.
Finding the bottle, Rose climbed down and skipped across the kitchen to the grinder. The tablets, she remembered, had a dark chlorophyll taste, but she thought that a smoker like Gareth, who liked his coffee strong and bitter, wouldn’t be able to detect it. She tipped the whole bottle into the coffee-grinder funnel and turned the chrome handle, shaking the studio tin to mix the dark green powder of the pills with the brown coffee.
She put the tin up on the dresser shelf, hiding it behind Anna’s egg basket. Some part of her needed to think about what she had done in the cold light of day before she unleashed it on her victims. She buried the empty pill bottle at the bottom of the recycling bin, and put the kettle on for a cup of tea. She felt good now. Good enough to have a go at the kitchen. She did her usual, methodical tidy, moving clockwise from the most northern part of the kitchen, clearing, wiping and sweeping; putting some things away and straightening others. She knelt down and wiped the kitchen floor with the dishcloth from the sink. Normally she wouldn’t do that in a million years, but the devil had got her. To her it was a subversive act: the best sort, in fact – one that only she would know about.
It was only when she moved backwards to clean the bit she had knelt on that she noticed the blood. For a second she sat back on her haunches and looked at it, wondering where it came from. But then she felt the sting in her shin, and brought her leg forward to inspect it. It was covered in blood that was oozing from a split in the front about three inches long. She must have done that when she tripped on the terrace. She rinsed and wrung out the dishcloth and, deliciously, wiped away the blood from her leg. Squinting and contorting herself to get up close to her injury, she noticed with a sense of detachment that the split went right down to the bone. She must have really bashed herself.
Going back to the medicine cupboard, she reached down her well-stocked first aid box. She poured TCP on a gauze wipe and marvelled at the sting as she cleaned the wound. She found the paper stitches she had bought when Gareth had cut his hand during the build, and pulled the edges of the wound together, binding them tightly to each other. Then she covered the whole thing with a big plaster. She would have to wear trousers from now on. This wound, too, would be her secret. She should probably have stitches, she thought, but she wasn’t going to the hospital. There was no way she was going to leave the house now, not when there was so much to watch out for.
She went back to the kitchen and got the mop and bucket. She had made quite a mess, she noticed now. There was blood everywhere, as if someone had taken a newly slaughtered corpse and dragged it around the place, smearing sanguine evidence on every surface.
It took a while to clear up. It was nearly dawn when Rose took herself up to her bed and climbed back in between her daughters. It was extraordinary to her that they had both slept while she had been so busy. She reached across Flossie to open her bedside drawer. Kate’s prescription was there, tucked under a tube of hand cream.
She unfolded and studied it. Then she lay back, staring up at the ceiling with its exposed beams that Andy had said probably came from an ancient ship.
Here begins the endgame, she thought. I’ll see the end of all of this.
Thirty-Six
For a second when Rose woke, she panicked as she realised she was alone in her bed. Her daughters were gone. She glanced over at her alarm clock and realised that it was gone ten. Of course they were up. Anna would be at school. She lay there in the grey light of the curtained room and tried to recall what had gone on in the night. Her throat was sore, and her shin throbbed. She turned onto her back and felt the creak of her spine and pelvis. It felt as if she had been beaten up.
There was the distant sound of music from the kitchen. Someone was downstairs. It wasn’t Gareth, because he always had Radio 4 on when he was in the house. So who was with Flossie? A sudden panic propelled Rose out of bed, wafting her staleness around the room. She grabbed her dressing gown and fled for the stairs.
What she saw from the landing above the kitchen was beyond horrible. Polly was in the armchair, curled up with Flossie, reading a picture book. They both looked utterly contented, as if they had been born to end up just there. Rose gasped and brought her hand to her chest. Hearing the sound, Polly looked up, the smile she had shared with Flossie freezing on her face.
‘You shouldn’t be up,’ she said to Rose.
‘I’m fine,’ Rose said.
‘You don’t look fine,’ Polly said, not getting up.
Rose went down the stairs and crossed towards Polly, holding out her hands.
‘Give me Flossie,’ she said.
‘I don’t think that’s necessary. She’s fine, look, aren’t you, Floss?’
Flossie turned and looked up at Rose, a smile breaking her face open. She looked more present than she had for weeks.
‘Besides which, you should rest. You’re still ill. And Rose – please don’t come down and tidy up in the night. I’m on the case. I can cope, you know. People just do things differently from you sometimes, you know?’
Rose stood there, her mouth opening and closing like that of a fish plucked from its bowl.
‘Where’s Gareth?’ she finally brought herself to ask.
‘Out.’
‘Oh.’ Rose moved to the kettle. ‘I’ll make myself a cup of tea, then I want Flossie back.’
‘If you must, then. Sorry, Floss.’ Polly stood up and put Flossie down on a play mat that Rose didn’t recognise. ‘Mummy wants you back.’
Seeing her opportunity, Rose picked her daughter up from the floor and fled back upstairs, her tea forgotten. She grabbed a couple of books from the nursery then went back to her room and climbed into bed. She cuddled Flossie up to her side and started to read to her. She could do this better than Polly.
For a while, the bright colours and bold shapes kept Flossie amused, and Rose started off enthusiastically, pointing out the ducks and going ‘Quackity Quack Quack!’ in a suitably raucous voice. But soon they both ran out of steam. Thankfully, Flossie started rooting and beating at Rose’s breast, and she was only too pleased to let her back onto her nipple. She vaguely remembered Kate saying something about breastfeeding, but she chose not to recall it in detail. Besides, this was what they both needed so much. After a couple of days off, it took them both a while to fall into a rhythm, but it came back quickly enough.
Rose was just feeling the familiar tingle of milk letting down when the door opened sharply, shocking Flossie into a bite, which made Rose yelp, which in turn set Flossie off crying.
‘See? I said you couldn’t cope.’ It was Polly, with a mug of tea. ‘I brought this up for you. You seemed to forget to make it for yourself. Now let me have her.’
‘Thank you for the tea, but Flossie and I are just fine,’ Rose said.
Polly put the tea on Rose’s bedside table, her mouth set into a sharp little pout.
‘Drink this then. You need to keep your fluids up.’ She turned and left the room sharply, shutting the door behind her with a bang.
‘Phew, Floss. I’m not quite sure what we’re going to do about her,’ Rose said. She sat there silently and sipped her tea. The curtains were still drawn and the warm pool of her bedside light made her feel cocooned there. This was her refuge, for herself and for her baby. When Anna got back from school she would go and scoop her up and bring her back to this safe place.
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