Meanwhile Gardens (12 page)

To keep the demons away Rion began to whistle and then
sing one of her favourite songs. It was a chirpy number by Candi Staton that always lifted her spirits, but this time her voice struggled hoarsely with the tune.

Before she got to the end of the second line her foot met with one of the stones around what was once the fire. With her toes well and truly stubbed Rion did a hop of pain. She momentarily lost her balance, slipped and landed bum first in the unfortunately refreshing water.

A second later she heard a small splash which, with a sinking feeling, she realised was the torch.

Deciding it would be useless to look for the torch which, in any case, would now be completely unworkable, Rion made for the dimness of the opening. Thinking she couldn’t get any wetter she pushed through the dripping saplings, realising once more, how wrong she could be.

Now completely soaked Rion found her way to the fence, squeezed past the broken railing and entered the cemetery. Shivering she knocked into several headstones as she headed for the mass of Jake’s tree. He would want her to go there, she told herself, to get warm and dry, perhaps a change of clothes…Rion quickened her step – a change of clothes! The notion at first sounded so remote it appeared inaccessible.

Lost in the dream of warm dry clothes Rion didn’t notice the headlights coming down the avenue.

Until it was too late.

From the interior of the guards’ jeep Rion appeared lit up as an eery ghoul. Toy figures, masked and dancing, dangled from the jeep’s rearview mirror.

“What the hell is that Gorby?” Beck, the young guard, turned to the driver.

“Beats me,” Gorby replied winding down his window. “Hey!” he shouted into the night.

Rion turned round to be blinded by the powerful lights.
Panicking she ran onto the woodchips of a smaller path, the lights of the jeep showing her the way between the tombs on either side.

Hearing a door slam behind her she ran on, ignoring the voices calling into the night. Her wet clothes hung cold and heavy against her, restricting her progress, her waterlogged trainers chafed her feet, but Rion ran as fast as she could.

When she was out of the jeep’s glare she turned round to see two powerful torches searching the night in her wake. Rion squelched on, soon ducking behind an ornate mausoleum to catch her breath and get her bearings.

She figured she was on a small path off South Avenue, not far from the main entrance gateway, that would, at this hour, be securely locked.

What had Jake told her again? She wracked her memory. Something about another escape route through the fence near the Reformer’s Memorial? Or was it the Dissenter’s Chapel? They were both in the direction she was going – she would find out when she got there.

Rion could hear the guards coming closer and closer. She held her breath, certain they could hear her beating heart.

Or her chattering teeth.

She saw the torches light up grieving angels and marble steles, the powerful beam flashing over burial plots and into corners in their search for the trespasser.

Feeling another huge sneeze come on Rion watched, eyes watering, as the two guards gave up the search. Halfway to the jeep Gorby turned round and flashed his torch at the ornate tomb. The momentary adrenaline rush scared the sneeze away although Rion wasn’t sure if she had jumped back fast enough.

“She’s vanished,” said the younger guard.

“Spooks always do,” Gorby replied, although he wasn’t so sure. He was intrigued though – this ‘spook’ could be just what they were looking for.

O
llie had only been back for five minutes before Hum barked ahead of an urgent knock on the door. He opened it to find Nicky on the doorstep.

“Come on! Come on!” Clutching a bottle of wine she pushed past him, “Don’t you know it’s raining out there?”

Ollie looked at his watch. It was quarter past nine. “You’re fifteen minutes early,” Ollie grumbled as he followed Nicky up the stairs and into the sitting room.

“Yeah, well, I thought I might get a headstart on the news if I arrived early.” Nicky rummaged through the cutlery drawer, found the corkscrew and quickly opened the Cabernet Sauvignon.

“Not until Gem ‘n Em get here.”

Nicky poured a glass for Ollie and then one for herself, “How was Johnson?”

Ollie began telling her about the lifestyle enhancer and his blow-jogs when again Hum’s bark preceded another series of knocks.

“So when you say you’re going jogging we’re not going to find you, trousers around your ankles, in the bushes along the canal?” Nicky called to Ollie as he went down to open the door.

With a smile Ollie swung open the door to let in Auntie Gem and Auntie Em.

“We’re not too early are we dear?” Auntie Gem asked.

“Nicky’s already here. She thought I might spill the beans before you arrived.”

“And did you?” Auntie Em kissed him on the cheek and went up the stairs.

“He wouldn’t, would you child?” Auntie Gem tickled his ribs as she followed Em up to the sitting room.

“Of course not.”

The two very different ladies – Auntie Em, white, tall, in her early fifties and Auntie Gem, five foot one, black, closing on seventy – settled themselves on the sofa.

Nicky handed them a glass of wine each, “Don’t worry he hasn’t told me anything.”

“Now precious,” Auntie Em began, “what is this ‘monumental news’?”

“Firstly, it’s just – ” Ollie began pacing up and down in front of the fireplace. “What would you think about if – and that’s all it is at the moment an ‘if’ – someone moved into lA?”

His question met with silence. Even Nicky was quiet. 1A, the house next to Ollie’s, was known as the ‘unlucky house’ due to the mishaps that befell its residents. It hadn’t been lived in since the McGuires left four years ago.

Auntie Em was the first to speak. “You know how we feel about that angel.”

Ollie did know. Auntie Em, in some way, felt responsible for the unhappiness that had affected the inhabitants of lA. In her eyes everyone who had moved in there had met with misfortune.

Two had ended up in addiction clinics, one had been sectioned, the Robinsons had divorced, prior to that Lily McGuire’s son had met with that
terrible
accident – Auntie Em linked a whole catalogue of wretchedness to the ‘unlucky’ house.

“But if you think about it Auntie Em some of those disasters were actually blessings. Harriet and Sasha have been clean now for several years, Martin got the help he needed, the Robinsons – well, they weren’t really suited anyway and Lily’s boy – when they removed the spike they found he had a much more serious condition which, if left untreated, would have been potentially fatal.”

Nicky came to his aid, “Sasha and Harriet say getting clean was the best thing that happened to them.”

“Who is it that wants to move in?”

“Well, that’s just it Auntie Gem. I haven’t told her – this person – about lA but I have a feeling she needs our help, or will do soon.”

“Ollie, this isn’t one of your lost causes is it?” Nicky asked, her tone had changed from one of support to one of suspicion.

“You’re very sweet, angel, but you can be too trusting sometimes,” Auntie Em chimed in.

“And too nice. Remember Stan?”

Ollie really didn’t want to. “But he – ”

“Remember Stan?” Nicky persisted.

“Yes,” Ollie said crossly, remembering the builder who came to replaster the sitting room ceiling, moved in with Ollie before promptly moving out with his stereo, record/cd and dvd collection, alongwith one of Nicky’s cameras. It was only after some diligent sleuthing that they found everything at the Record & Tape Exchange in Notting Hill Gate.

“We got it all back though.”

“That’s not the point Ol.”

“Why don’t you tell us a bit more about this person?” Auntie Gem asked. She refilled Auntie Em’s glass, before standing to top up Nicky’s.

“Well,” Ollie said, “you sort of know her Auntie Gem.”

It was at that moment Rion chose to make her entrance.
Having made it to Meanwhile Gardens Mews she found the door to number three was open ajar. From his bed at the top of the stairs Hum opened one eye and half-heartedly wagged his tail.

As Auntie Gem moved round to pour some wine into Ollie’s glass she felt a blast of cold air come up the stairwell. She looked over the banister.

What she saw froze her blood.

Seeming to hover halfway up the stairs was the ghostly figure of the young girl from the cemetery, but this time, Auntie Gem noted, she looked like she had crawled through the gates of Hell. Large, haunted eyes looked up at her, her mouth opened beseeching, beseeching, croaking some satanic message from the otherside.

Rion’s long bedraggled hair was matted to her mud spattered face, her white-pac-a-mac floated around her in the current of air. With her sore throat killing her she tried to call Ollie’s name but nothing came out apart from a dreadful hoarse growling. Looking up Rion saw a horrified black woman holding a bottle of wine.

With a scream Auntie Gem collapsed back into the sitting room and fainted dead away.

The rain had finally slowed to drizzle when Jake made it home to Kensal Green Cemetery. The house painting in the wilds of Stoke Newington would take another three days at least. If they finished before the weekend the actor whose house it was had promised a handsome bonus. It would be another early start in the morning.

Jake looked at his watch to see it was nearly twelve thirty. He had to be away by six which meant, he realised, five hours sleep maximum.

He had tried to convince himself all day that Rion would be all right. After all Old George had seen off much worse weather with never a drop on the chamber floor.

He had tried to convince himself but failed.

Underneath he had this nagging feeling that Rion wasn’t ok, that something unfortunate had happened to the young girl.

Squeezing through the railings and the dripping saplings Jake whistled his arrival. He wasn’t too put out when there was no welcoming whistle in return – Rion would surely be wrapped up in the sleeping bag, fast asleep.

When he found the clearing under water he realised things might be worse than expected.

“Rion,” Jake whispered, then louder, “Rion!”

There was no reply.

He pulled back the heavy blanket from the doorway. When he flashed his torch inside Jake saw something he had never seen in all of the years he had known Old George.

The floor of the chamber was completely under water, not a dry patch of ground to be seen.

The beam from his torch bounced around the space but there was no sign of Rion. His hopes rose for a moment upon seeing the sleeping bag on the bed but it was clear, even from the doorway, that no one was inside.

Jake splashed into the chamber. He could see Rion’s now sodden clothes were still there – she couldn’t be too far away. He looked in vain for a note but there was none.

If nothing sinister had happened to her there was only one place he surmised she could go. To Ollie’s. He hoped with all his heart that was where she had gone.

Rion was curled up in the spare room of Gem ‘n Em’s house at the end of the mews.

“How is she?” Ollie asked as Auntie Em emerged leaving the door open ajar.

Auntie Em sunk into the sofa beside Nicky. “She’s sound asleep but has quite a temperature.”

Ollie poured Auntie Em a cup of tea from the freshly made pot.

“Mmmmmm,” she took a sip of the soothing hot drink, “thanks sweetness.” Auntie Em leaned back and closed her eyes. “What a night it’s been,” she murmured. Ollie and Nicky could only agree. What a night indeed.

The young girl had run from the house upon hearing Auntie Gem scream. She had hardly got out of the front door before Ollie realised who it was and what was going on. He managed to bring her back upstairs to the sitting room where Auntie Em and Nicky tried to bring Gem round by splashing water on her face.

After much fluttering of eyelids Auntie Gem opened her eyes to see Rion directly in her line of vision. The thought that she had woken up in Hell occasioned another bout of screaming.

This in turn brought on an uncontrollable bout of sneezing from Rion. What with Auntie Gem screaming and Rion caught in a spluttering sneezing frenzy, the only thing left was for Hum to join in.

Which he did with delight.

Excited by all that was going on around him the dog threw himself into the centre of things and barked like mad.

Auntie Em thought the world was coming to an end.

After much persuading Auntie Gem understood that the bedraggled girl in front of her was not a spirit sent from Hell. Rion’s wheezes subsided as did Auntie Gem’s screams until the old lady’s whimpers were matched by the young girl’s sobs.

Still shaken but much calmed down, Auntie Gem was taken to her room, given a sleeping pill, some hot tea and tucked up in bed where Ollie read her stories about Princess Diana until the old lady fell asleep.

While this was going on Nicky and Auntie Em gave Rion a hot, very bubbly, bath and one of Ollie’s long t-shirts to sleep in. Ginger tea with a dash of rum, a double dose of Uniflu, clean sheets and a large duvet soon had Rion in the land of Nod.