Mice

20

When I came out of the bathroom I saw Mum disappearing into the spare room, carrying two of the black bin bags. When she came out, I held up the one I’d put my nightie and towel in. ‘Do you want this one?’

‘Yes,’ she said, in barely more than a whisper. ‘I’ll put mine in there too.’ Her face was drained of colour, blanched, and she winced suddenly with pain, but before I could ask her if she was OK she’d slipped past me into the bathroom and locked the door.

While I was in my bedroom drying my hair I thought I heard her retching, but the noise had stopped when I clicked off the hair dryer to listen.

I got dressed in a pair of faded blue jeans and a white blouse, and tied a red scarf around my neck to hide the bruises. Even though it was going to be a warm day, I put on a thick pair of socks and my chunky-soled walking boots. When I stepped into the kitchen again, I wanted to have a good half-inch of vulcanized rubber between me and those tainted tiles.

Mum was still in the bathroom when I walked past, although I couldn’t hear the shower running. I was turning at the top of the stairs to go down when I caught sight of the black bin bags in the far corner of the spare room. Mum had piled them up around the mop and bucket like sandbags protecting an anti-aircraft gun.

I stopped. The sight of them excited me strangely. I didn’t have to reflect for long before I realized why. In one of those bin bags was the burglar’s wallet. And inside the wallet, I was sure, there’d be something which would have all his personal details on it. His name. His address. His date of birth. .

I was seized by the sudden, overpowering urge to know what the burglar’s name had been. To know the name of the man I’d killed.

I listened at the bathroom door trying to hear what Mum was doing. I knew she’d go mad if she discovered me trawling through those blood-soaked objects just after I’d showered and put on clean clothes. I heard her tugging up the zip of her skirt. She was still getting dressed. She’d be some time yet, I thought, and I slipped silently into the spare room.

I was looking for the bag with the doormat and the broken crockery in it, the one she’d swept his mobile phone and wallet into. I knelt on the floor and started to run my hands over the bin bags one by one. It felt like a macabre parody of childhood Christmases, when I’d sit beneath the Christmas tree, squeezing and shaking my presents, trying to guess what they were. The bag stuffed with our dressing gowns was easy enough to identify, as was the bag with only our wellington boots inside. I thought I’d found the right one, but when I untied the neck it only contained the red sports bag (now emptied of its contraband), the marble chopping board, the wrapping paper from my laptop and the forlorn red bow.

Just then I heard Mum cough and fumble with the bathroom doorhandle and I jumped up and darted out of the spare room. On the landing, I called to her just in case she’d heard me.

‘Mum? Do you want anything to eat before you go?’

Even the thought of food made me feel nauseous. I felt as if my appetite had been destroyed for all time; it seemed impossible to imagine wanting to eat food ever again. I was sure Mum would be feeling exactly the same.

‘No, sweetheart,’ she answered weakly. ‘Just coffee, please — very strong coffee.’

Mum had worked hard while I’d been in the shower. All the smears and smudges of blood — on the cupboards, the pine table, the bread bin, the washing machine, the tiles around the sink — had disappeared. She’d taken down the blood-spattered kitchen curtains (no doubt upstairs in one of the black bin bags) and the kitchen was flooded with golden spring sunshine. The benchtops, the sink, the draining board gleamed in the bright light, and the kitchen floor — which she’d scrubbed and dried again — positively sparkled.

Mum had left the back door open to help the floor dry. Outside, I could see that she’d hosed down the patio — washing away our bloody boot prints and the glistening red slug trail the body had left as we’d dragged it over the paving stones. The open back door made me feel suddenly uncomfortable. What if we hadn’t actually killed the burglar but only wounded him? What if he was dragging himself across the lawn towards the house right at that very moment? I ran to the back door, and slammed it shut and pulled the bolt across, ashamed at myself for being at the mercy of such childish imaginings, but at the same time powerless to resist them.

Mum had worked a similar miracle in the dining room and lounge. The ragged pieces of rope had gone from the floor. The two chairs were back in their proper places. My flute was returned to its case, Russian Folk Songs slipped inside the stool and the piano lid closed. The contents of the sideboard and the antique writing desk had been carefully picked up and put tidily away in their drawers. The potpourri had been swept up and was back in its wooden bowl on the sideboard. Every fragment of the broken vase had disappeared and its identical twin — which had stood on the cabinet on the landing — now held the violet spray of dried flowers instead. All the ornaments had been put back in the exact spot they’d occupied when I’d gone up to bed at ten o’clock the night before. Miraculously, they’d survived their mistreatment at the hands of the intruder unscathed — save for the miniature thatched cottage, whose chimney, I saw on closer inspection, had been snapped off.

Mum had put all my birthday cards back on the sideboard and I noticed she’d added her card to them. It read, ‘On This Special Day’ and showed a close-up of a pink rose, its petals sprinkled with dewdrops. I looked inside and read the inscription: To my beautiful, darling daughter Shelley. Sweet sixteen! May this year be one that you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

I smiled crookedly at the irony. My birthday wasn’t more than a few hours old, and I already knew that I would never (What did you do that for?) ever forget it.

I made a large pot of coffee, adding six spoonfuls instead of the usual four, thinking that we’d need all the help we could get if we were going to stay awake all day. I took the coffee and cups through into the dining room. I didn’t want to be in the kitchen. It wasn’t only that without the curtains the light was too bright for my sore eyes. It was as if in some strange way last night’s struggle was still going on in there, the stabbing, the struggling, the screaming, like a movie playing non-stop in an empty cinema. .

It was just after eight when Mum came down, dressed in her navy blue suit and carrying her briefcase ready for work. I was amazed at how expertly she’d managed to disguise the injury to her face. She’d bathed her eye and radically reduced the swelling around it, then put on grey and purple eye shadow, cleverly camouflaging the real greys and purples of the bruising. She’d covered up the gouge on her cheek with heavy foundation, and brought her hair forward (she usually hooked it back behind her ears) to further disguise the swelling. Someone would have had to look at her pretty closely to guess that she’d been punched hard in the face.

‘Your eye looks amazing, Mum — how did you do that?’

‘I didn’t always hate make-up, Shelley. I was sixteen myself once, you know.’ She tried to wink at me, but her eyes watered with pain.

She sat down and took several noisy gulps of her coffee.

‘How’s your neck feeling now, sweetheart?’ she asked.

‘It’s still sore. It hurts when I swallow. I think something’s damaged — pushed out of place.’

Mum looked at me anxiously. ‘I’ll get you something in town today.’

‘I don’t think cough sweets will help,’ I said, trying to control the sudden irritation I felt. ‘I need to see a doctor.’

‘If it doesn’t get any better we’ll go the doctor’s, but it’s a risk, Shelley.’

‘I don’t know how I’m going to get through today, Mum,’ I whined. ‘I’m so tired! Can’t I just call Roger and Mrs Harris and tell them I’m ill?’

‘Absolutely not!’ she snapped with a fierceness that brought the heat to my cheeks. ‘We mustn’t change our routine in any way today — we’ve got to act normally. If the police come asking questions, the fact that you cancelled your classes or that I didn’t go in to work today is just the sort of thing that will arouse their suspicions.’

Then she smiled warmly at me and squeezed my hand, and I knew she was saying sorry for snapping. ‘I know it’s not going to be easy, Shelley, but you’ll do it, I know you will.’

I sat glumly in resigned silence. I didn’t want her to go to work. I didn’t want to be left on my own in the house. Not with that thing lying buried out there in the front garden.

‘Mum?’ I said, broaching something that had been worrying me all morning. ‘Do you think that farmer saw us?’

‘He saw us — he definitely saw us,’ she replied, ‘but I don’t think he saw us, if you know what I mean. He was too far away and he was going too fast. He just saw two women tending their garden in their dressing gowns, that’s all — nothing too out of the ordinary in that. Not in the country, anyway.’

I smiled, relieved that she was so unconcerned. My smile morphed of its own accord into an enormous yawn. ‘God, I can hardly keep my eyes open!’

Mum held my chin between her thumb and forefinger and looked at me closely. ‘Your eyes are very bloodshot. If Roger or Mrs Harris say anything, just tell them we drank too much wine last night celebrating your birthday and that you’re suffering from a bad hangover this morning.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ I said. ‘That’s just what it feels like.’

Mum drained the dregs of her coffee, all the time glancing anxiously at her watch, then collected herself in that peculiar mother-hennish way she had that always warned me she was about to say something important (Shelley, darling, your daddy wants a divorce. .). She squeezed my hand and looked deep into my eyes. ‘Look, Shelley, I’ve no idea what’s going to happen today. The cottage is as clean as I can get it in the time I’ve had, it should be OK, but keep people out of the kitchen whatever you do, and don’t let anyone go upstairs under any circumstances. If — ’, and she squeezed my hand more tightly before continuing — ‘if the police do come, call me straight away. Tell them your mum’s on her way and she’ll be here within an hour. Don’t let them into the house — even if they have a warrant. They’ll wait, I’m sure they’ll wait. But should the worst happen and you are arrested, don’t say anything to anyone — do you hear me? Refuse to answer any of their questions. You can tell them you’re following my strict instructions if you like.’

With that she stood up. ‘I’ve got to go. I mustn’t be late.’

I stayed where I was, still shocked by her words: should the worst happen and you are arrested. . you are arrested. . you are arrested. .

‘Be brave,’ Mum said. ‘Everything will be all right, you’ll see. We’ll talk tonight.’

I waved half-heartedly as she drove away, but she didn’t glance back at me and make the little glove puppet bow. She was crouched over the wheel, the full force of her mind concentrated like a blowtorch on the problem the night had set her. Our quaint little routine had been shattered — we hadn’t had breakfast together in the kitchen, we hadn’t kissed each other in the hall, I hadn’t told her to drive carefully like I always did. Everything had changed. Everything was changing: should the worst happen and you are arrested. .

I was about to close the front door when I felt it. An eerie, cold sensation that crept over the left side of my face, a sudden self-consciousness, an acute awareness of myself in my own skin, my expression, the position of my hands, the way I was standing. The feeling that someone was watching me.

I scanned the trees and bushes in the island in the middle of the gravel drive, the yawning mouth of the garage with its stepladder and can of oil, the hedge to the right that bordered the farmer’s field, but I couldn’t see anyone. Away to the left were the plants and shrubs that separated the gravel drive from the front garden, and through their tangled foliage I could make out the close-cropped lawn.

And the sinister mound of the oval rose bed.

He’s dead, for God’s sake! He’s dead!

I slammed the door shut and fumbled the chain across.