One Plus One: A Novel (10 page)

He raised one eyebrow, swiveled his head toward the dog. “Not even to vacuum my backseats afterward?”

The breath that left her chest probably sounded slightly more relieved than was diplomatic. “Well . . . okay, that I can do.”

“Right,” he said. “Then I suggest we all get a few hours’ sleep and I’ll pick you up first thing tomorrow.”

I
t took Edward Nicholls about fifteen minutes after he had left Danehall estate to question what the bloody hell he had just done. He had just agreed to transport his stroppy cleaner, her two weird kids, and an enormous reeking dog all the way to Scotland. What the hell had he been thinking? He could hear Gemma’s voice, the skepticism with which she had repeated her statement: “You’re taking a little girl you don’t know and her family to the other end of the country, and it’s an ‘emergency.’ Right.” He could hear the quotation marks. A pause. “Pretty, is she?”

“What?”

“The mother. Big tits? Long eyelashes? Damsel in distress?”

“That’s not it. Er . . .” He hadn’t been able to say anything with them in the car.

“I’ll take both those as a yes, then.” She sighed deeply. “For Christ’s sake, Ed.”

Tomorrow morning he would pop by, apologize, and explain that something had come up. She’d understand. She probably felt weird about sharing a car with a near stranger, too. She hadn’t exactly jumped at the offer.

He would donate something toward the kid’s train fare. It wasn’t his fault the woman—Jess?—had decided to drive an untaxed, uninsured car, after all. If you looked at it on paper—the cops, the weird kids, the nighttime joyriding—she was trouble. And Ed Nicholls did not need any more trouble in his life.

With these thoughts in his head, he washed, brushed his teeth, and fell into the first decent sleep he’d had in weeks.

—

He pulled up outside the gate shortly after nine. He had meant to be there earlier but couldn’t remember where the house was, and given that the council estate was a sprawling mass of Identi-Kit streets, he had driven up and down blindly for almost thirty minutes until he recognized Seacole Avenue.

It was a damp, still morning, the air heavy with moisture. The street was empty, apart from a ginger cat, which stalked its way along the pavement, its tail a question mark. Danehall seemed a little less unfriendly in daylight, but he still found himself double-checking that he’d locked the car once he’d stepped out of it.

He gazed up at the windows. Pink and white bunting hung in one of the upstairs rooms, and two hanging baskets swung listlessly from the front porch. A car sat under a tarpaulin in the next driveway. And then he saw that dog. Jesus. The size of it. Ed pictured it lolling over his backseat the previous evening. A faint echo of its scent had remained when he climbed back in this morning.

He opened the latch of the gate warily in case the dog went for him, but it simply turned its enormous head with mild indifference, walked to the shade of a weedy tree, and flopped down on its side, lifting a desultory front leg as if in the vague hope it might get its stomach scratched.

“I’ll pass, thanks,” Ed said.

He walked up the path and paused at the door. He had his little speech all prepared.

Hi, I’m really sorry, but something very important has come up with work and I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to take the next couple of days off. I’d be happy, however, to contribute something to your daughter’s Olympiad fund. I think it’s great that she’s working so hard at her studies. So here’s her train fare.

If it sounded a little less convincing this morning than it had done last night, well, it couldn’t be helped. He was about to knock when he
saw the ripped note, half attached to the door with a pin, flapping in the breeze:

FISHER YOU LITTLE WASTE OF SKIN I HAVE TOLD THE POLICE

As he straightened up the door opened. The little girl stood there. “We’re all packed,” she said, squinting, her head tilted to one side. “Mum said you wouldn’t come, but I knew you would so I said I wouldn’t let her unpack the suitcases until ten. And you made it with fifty-three minutes to spare. Which is actually about thirty-three minutes better than I estimated.”

He blinked.

“Mum!” She pushed the door open. Jess was standing in the hallway, as if she had stopped dead halfway down it. She was wearing a pair of cutoff jeans and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her hair was clipped up. She did not look like someone preparing to travel the length of the country.

“Hi.” Ed smiled awkwardly.

“Oh. Okay.” Jess shook her head. And he knew the child had been telling the truth: she really hadn’t expected him to turn up. “I’d offer you a coffee, but I got rid of the last of the milk before we set off last night.”

The boy sloped past, rubbing his eyes. His face was still swollen, and now colored an impressionist palette of purples and yellows. He gazed at the pile of holdalls and bin bags in the hall and said, “Which of these are we taking?”

“All of them,” said the little girl. “And I packed Norman’s blanket.”

Jess looked at Ed warily. He made to open his mouth, but nothing came out. The entire length of the hallway was lined with battered paperbacks.

“Can you pick up this bag, Mr. Nicholls?” The little girl tugged it
toward him. “I did try and lift it earlier because Nicky can’t pick stuff up right now, but it’s too heavy for me.”

“Sure.” He found himself stooping, but stopped for a moment before he lifted it. How was he going to do this?

“Listen. Mr. Nicholls . . .” Jess was in front of him. She looked as uncomfortable as he did. “About this trip—”

And then the front door flew open. A woman stood in jogging bottoms and a T-shirt, a baseball bat raised in her hand.

“
Drop them!
” she roared.

He froze.

“Put your hands up!”

“Nat!” Jess shouted. “Don’t hit him!”

He lifted them slowly, turning to face her.

“What the—” The woman looked past Ed at her. “Jess? Oh, my God. I thought someone was in your house.”

“Someone is in my house. Me.”

The woman dropped the bat, then looked in horror at him. “Oh, my God. It’s . . . oh, God, oh, God, I’m so sorry. I saw the front door and I honestly thought you were a burglar. I thought you were . . .” She laughed nervously, then pulled an agonized face at Jess, as if he couldn’t see her. “You know who.”

Ed let out a breath. The woman put the bat behind her and tried to smile. “You know how it is around here . . .”

He took a step backward and gave a small nod. “Okay, well . . . I just need to get my phone. Left it in the car.”

He edged past her with his palms up and headed down the path. He opened and shut the car door, then locked it again, just to give himself something to do, trying to think clearly over the ringing in his ears. Just drive off, a little voice said. Just go. You never have to see her again. You do not need this right now.

Ed liked order. He liked to know what was coming. Everything about this woman suggested the kind of . . .
boundarylessness
that made him nervous.

He was halfway up the path when he heard them talking behind the half-closed door, their voices carrying across the little garden.

“I’m going to tell him no.”

“You can’t, Jess.” The boy’s voice. “Why?”

“Because it’s too complicated. I work for him.”

“You clean his house. That’s not the same thing.”

“We don’t know him, then. How can I tell Tanzie not to get in cars with men she doesn’t know, and then do exactly that?”

“He wears glasses. He’s hardly going to be a serial killer.”

“Tell that to Dennis Nilsen’s victims. And Harold Shipman’s.”

“You know way too many serial killers. We’ll set Norman on him if he does anything bad.” The boy’s voice again.

“Yes. Because Norman has been so useful, protecting this family in the past.”

“Mr. Nicholls doesn’t know that, does he?”

“Look. He’s just some bloke. He probably got caught up in the drama last night. It’s obvious he doesn’t want to do it. We’ll . . . we’ll just let Tanzie down gently.”

Tanzie. Ed watched her running around the back garden, her hair flying out behind her. He watched the dog shambling back toward the door, half dog, half yak, leaving an intermittent snail trail of drool behind him.

“I’m wearing him out so that he’ll sleep most of the journey.” She appeared in front of him, panting.

“Right.”

“I’m really good at maths. We’re going to an Olympiad so I can win money to go to a school where I can do A-level maths. Do you know what my name is, converted to binary code?”

He looked at her. “Is Tanzie your full name?”

“No. But it’s the one I use.”

He blew out his cheeks. “Um. Okay. 01010100 01100001 01101110 01111010 01101001 01100101.”

“Did you say 1010 at the end? Or 0101?”

“1010. Duh.” He used to play this game with Ronan.

“Wow. You actually spelled it right.” She walked past him and pushed the door. “I’ve never been to Scotland. Nicky keeps trying to tell me there are herds of wild haggis. But that’s a lie, right?”

“To the best of my knowledge they’re all farmed these days,” he said.

Tanzie stared at him. Then she beamed, and sort of growled at the same time.

And Ed realized he was headed for Scotland.

The two women fell silent as he pushed the door open. Their eyes dropped to the bags that he picked up in each hand.

“I need to get some stuff before we go,” he said, as he let the door swing behind him. “And you left out Gary Ridgway. The Green River Killer. But you’re fine. They were all nearsighted, and I’m farsighted.”

—

It took half an hour to leave town. The lights were out on the top of the hill and that, combined with Easter holiday traffic, slowed the queue of cars to a bad-tempered crawl. Jess sat in the car beside him, silent and awkward, her hands pressed together between her knees.

He had the air conditioner on, but it couldn’t disguise the smell of the dog, so he turned it off and they sat with all four windows open instead. Tanzie kept up a constant stream of chatter.

“Have you been to Scotland before?”

“Where do you come from?”

“Do you have a house there?”

“Why are you staying here then?”

He had some work to sort out, he said. It was easier than “I’m awaiting possible prosecution and a jail term of up to seven years.”

“Do you have a wife?”

“Not anymore.”

“Were you unfaithful?”

“Tanzie,” said Jess.

He blinked. Glanced into the rearview mirror. “Nope.”

“On
Jeremy Kyle
one person is usually unfaithful. Sometimes they have another baby and they have to do a DNA test and usually when it’s right, the woman looks like she wants to hit someone. But mostly they just start crying.”

Tanzie squinted out of the window.

“They’re a bit mad, these women, mostly. Because the men have all got another baby with someone else. Or lots of girlfriends. So statistically they’re really likely to do it again. But none of the women ever seem to think about statistics.”

“I don’t really watch
Jeremy Kyle,
” he said, glancing at the GPS.

“Nor do I. Only when I go to Nathalie’s house when Mum’s working. She records it while she’s cleaning so she can watch it in the evenings. She has forty-seven episodes on her hard drive.”

“Tanzie,” Jess said. “I think Mr. Nicholls probably wants to concentrate.”

“It’s fine.”

Jess was twisting a strand of her hair. She had her feet up on the seat. Ed really hated people putting their feet on seats. Even if they did take their shoes off.

“So why did your wife leave you?”

“Tanzie.”

“I’m being polite. You said it was good to make polite conversation.”

“I’m sorry,” Jess said.

“Really. It’s fine.” He addressed Tanzie through the rearview mirror: “She thought I worked too much.”

“They never say that on
Jeremy Kyle.
”

The traffic cleared, and they headed out onto the dual carriageway. It was a beautiful day, and he was tempted to take the coast road, but he didn’t want to risk getting caught in traffic again. The dog whined, the boy played Nintendo, his head down in intense concentration, and Tanzie grew quieter. He turned the radio on—a hits channel—and for a moment or two he started to think this
could be okay. It was just a day out of his life, if they didn’t hit too much traffic. And it was better than being stuck in the house.

“The GPS reckons about eight hours if we don’t hit any jams,” he said.

“By motorway?”

“Well, yeah.” He glanced left. “Even a top-of-the-range Audi doesn’t have wings.” He tried to smile, to show her he was joking, but Jess was still straight-faced.

“Uh . . . there’s a bit of a problem.”

“A problem.”

“Tanzie gets sick if we go fast.”

“What do you mean ‘fast’? Eighty? Ninety?”

“Um . . . actually, fifty. Okay, maybe forty.”

Ed glanced into the rearview mirror. Was it his imagination or had the child grown a little paler? She was gazing out of the window, her hand resting on the dog’s head. “Forty?” He slowed. “You’re joking, right? You’re saying we have to drive to Scotland via B roads?”

“No. Well, maybe. Look, it’s possible she’s grown out of it. But she doesn’t travel by car very much and we used to have big problems with it and . . . I just don’t want to mess up your nice car.”

Ed glanced into the rearview mirror again. “We can’t take the minor roads—that’s ridiculous. It would take days to get there. Anyway, she’ll be fine. This car is brand new. It has award-winning suspension. Nobody gets sick in it.”

She looked straight ahead. “You don’t have kids, do you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“No reason.”

—

It took twenty-five minutes to disinfect and shampoo the backseat, and even then every time he put his head inside the interior Ed got a faint whiff of vomit. Jess borrowed a bucket from a petrol station and used shampoo that she had packed in one of the kids’ bags. Nicky sat on the verge beside the garage, hiding behind a pair of
oversized shades, and Tanzie sat with the dog, holding a balled tissue to her mouth, like a consumptive.

“I’m so sorry,” Jess kept saying, her sleeves rolled up, her face set in a grim line of concentration.

“It’s fine. You’re the one cleaning it.”

“I’ll pay for you to get your car valeted afterward.”