Текст книги "When Will There Be Good News?"

Автор книги: Kate Atkinson

Соавторы: Kate Atkinson,Kate Atkinson
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

*

Reggie bought a local newspaper and a Mars bar. Mr Hussain tapped the front cover of the newspaper as he rang up the price on the till. 'Terrible,' he said.

The Evenin,,? News was making the most of the train crash, 'CARNAGE!' the headline screamed above a full-colour picture of a train carriage that was almost broken in two. Carnage from the Latin caro, carnis meaning flesh. Same root as carnival. 'The taking away of the flesh.' You couldn't really get two more different words as carnival and carnage. Everywhere -well, perhaps not everywhere, not in Bangladesh, for example, but certainly in an awful lot ofplaces -they had some kind of carnival before Lent, but in Britain all you got was pancakes. Last Shrove Tuesday had been during the dark days between Mum's death and starting to work for Dr Hunter. Reggie had still made pancakes though, sat in front ofRebus on her own and ate them all. Then was sick.

The photograph on the front page of the newspaper didn't convey anything about what it had been like last night, in the dark, in the rain. Or what it was like to have your hands sticky with someone else's blood or to feel that one man's life could seem like the whole world on a person's small shoulders.

'Terrible,' Reggie agreed with Mr Hussain.

When the paramedics finally came to relieve Reggie of her burden one of them put a mask on the man and bagged him while the other one ripped open his shirt and slapped paddles on to his chest. The man jerked and twitched back into life. It was so like an episode of ER that it didn't feel real.

'Well done,' one of the paramedics said to her.

'Will he be OK?'

'You gave him a chance,' he said and then they took him away and put him in a helicopter. And that was that. Reggie had lost him. Reggie sighed and picked up her paper and Mars bar. 'Well, must get on, things to do, Mr H.'

'Haven't you forgotten something?' he asked. Mr Hussain always gave Reggie Tic Tacs for free. She wasn't particularly fond of Tic Tacs, but gift horses, etcetera. He rattled a box of Tic Tacs in the air before gently underarm-bowling them to her.

'Thanks,' Reggie said, catching them in one hand.

'We make a good team,' Mr Hussain said.

'Totally.'

Last week Mr Hussain had shown her a copy of the Edinburgh property press that said the area was up and coming. 'Hot spot,' he said gloomily. Reggie's block of flats showed no sign of either up or coming. The close always smelt unpleasant and Reggie was the only one who ever cleaned the stair. The tenement was in a cul-de-sac at the bottom of which brooded an abandoned bonded warehouse, its black-barred windows as grim as anything in Dickens.

Mr Hussain said there was a rumour that Tesco's were going to knock down the bonded warehouse and build a new Tesco Metro but Reggie and Mr Hussain agreed that they would believe it when they saw it and Mr Hussain wasn't going to start worrying about the competition yet.

The door to Reggie's flat was not beautiful. Dr Hunter said that the most beautiful doors in the world were in Florence, on 'the Battistero' which was Italian for baptistry. Dr Hunter had spent six months in Rome on a school exchange when she was sixteen ('Ah, bella Roma,') and had visited 'everywhere', Verona, Firenze, Bologna, Milano. Dr Hunter pronounced Italian words properly whether it was 'Leonardo da Vinci' or 'pizza napolitana' (Dr Hunter had taken Reggie out for tea on her birthday, Reggie had chosen to go to the Pizza Express in Stockbridge). Reggie couldn't think of anything better than living in Florence for six months. Or Paris, Venice, Vienna, Granada. St Petersburg. Anywhere.

There was some random spray-painting on Reggie's front door, nothing artistic, just a boy going up and down the stair one night leaving behind him a wobbly snail-trail of red paint. The front door also had scratch marks on it as if a giant cat had tried to claw its way in (Reggie had no idea how that had happened) and also marks that looked as if someone had tried to chop their way in one night with an axe (they had, looking for Billy, naturally). None of these things was new. What was new was a note, stuck on the door with chewing gum, that read, 'Reggie Chase -you cant hide from us.' No apostrophe. She took some time reading this message and then took some time wondering why her front door wasn't locked. Perhaps the giant cat had come back. The door swung open as soon as she touched it. Had careless, infuriating Billy been here? He lived in a flat in the Inch but he often used her Gorgie address to confuse people and came by occasionally to see ifhe had any interesting mail. Sometimes he gave Reggie cash but she didn't like to ask where he had got it from. One thing was sure, he wouldn't have earned it, by any definition of the word. She always put the money in her building society account and hoped that by sitting there quietly it would clean itself up and somehow rid itself of the taint of Billy. Reggie stood on the threshold of the living room and stared. It took her brain a while to process what her eyes were looking at. The room was completely trashed. The drawers from the sideboard were pulled out and emptied on the floor, the leather sofa had been slashed, all Mum's favourite ornaments thrown around and broken, thimbles and miniature teapots scattered all over the carpet. All of Reggie's essays and notes had been emptied out of their folders and box files and her books were piled in a huge heap in the middle of the living-room carpet like a bonfire waiting to be lit. There was a funny smell, like cat pee, coming from the pile. In Mum's bedroom, drawers were upended and Mum's clothes, strewn around on the floor, had had a knife or a pair ofscissors taken to them. Something that looked like chocolate was smeared on the pink broderie-anglaise sheets. Reggie was pretty sure it wasn't chocolate. It certainly didn't smell like chocolate.

Reggie still kept her clothes in her old bedroom and it was the same story there, all her stuff tossed on the floor. There was a smell of something nasty in here too and Reggie couldn't bring herself to look too closely at her clothes. In the kitchen everything had been pulled out of the cupboards, the fridge gaped open, food scattered everywhere. Cutlery was flung around, plates and cups smashed. Milk had been poured on the floor, a bottle of tomato sauce had been thrown against the wall and had left a great arterial spray of red.

In the shower room, which was just a hall cupboard that had been tiled and plumbed, the walls had been spray-painted rather ineptly with the words, 'Your dead.' Reggie felt bile rising up, making her feel nauseous. You cant hide from us. Who was 'us'? Who were these people who didn't know how to use an apostrophe? They must be looking for Billy. Billy knew a lot of ungrammatical people.

She gave a little cry, a small wounded animal. This was her home, this was Mum's home, and it was wrecked. Desecrated. It wasn't as if it was much to begin with but it was all Reggie had.

Then a hand gave her a hefty shove and she went sprawling into the shower, pulling down the curtain as she flailed. An unfortunate few frames of Psycho played in her mind. She banged her forehead when she fell and she wanted to cry.

Two men. Youngish, thuggish. One ginger-haired, one a bleached blond, his face pitted with old acne scars like orange peel. She hadn't seen either of them before. The blond one was holding a sawtoothed knife that looked as if it could slice open a shark. Reggie could see a scrap of Mum's pink broderie-anglaise downie cover attached to one of the teeth. Her insides melted. She was worried she would wet herself, or worse. I'm not a child, she'd said to the policemen last night but it wasn't true.

She thought of her mother laid out on the side of the pool in her unflattering orange lycra costume. Reggie didn't want to be found dead, sprawled in an undignified heap in the shower in Ms MacDonald's horrible clothes. She didn't even have any underwear on. She could feel the pulse beating uncomfortably hard in her neck. Were they going to kill her? Rape her? Both? Worse? She could think ofworse, it involved the knife and time. She had to do something, say something. She had read that it was important that you talk to an attacker, get him to see you as a person, not just an object. Reggie's mouth was dry as if she'd been eating sandpaper and forming words was a real effort. She wanted to say, 'Don't kill me, I haven't lived yet: but instead she whispered, 'Billy's not here. I haven't seen him for ages. Honestly.'

The men exchanged a puzzled look. Ginger said, 'Who's Billy? We're looking for a guy called Reggie.'

'Never heard of him. Sweartogod.'

*

Unbelievably, the men made to leave. 'We'll be back,' the blond one said. Then the other, carroty one said, 'Got a present for you: and pulled a book from his pocket -unmistakably a Loeb classic -and tossed it to her like a grenade. She didn't even attempt to catch it, imagined it exploding in her hands, didn't believe it could only contain something as harmless as words. She heard Ms MacDonald's voice in her head saying, 'Words are the most powerful weapons we have.' Hardly. Words couldn't save you from a huge express train bearing down on you at full speed. (Help!) Couldn't save you from neds bearing gifts. (No thanks.)

'Hasta la vista, baby,' Ginger said and they both left. They were idiots. Idiots with Loeb classics.

She picked up the Loeb, a green one, that had flopped open, face down in the shower tray, like a grounded bird. The first volume of the Iliad. How was that a message? She picked the book up and read the faded pencil inscription on the flyleaf, Moira MacDonald, Girton College, 1971. Funny to think ofMs MacDonald being young. Funny to think of her being dead. Even funnier to think of one of her missing Loebs being in the hands of Billy's enemies.

Trojan horses had surprising insides and so did Ms MacDonald's Iliad. When Reggie opened the pages she found it had been the subject of razor-sharp surgery, its heart cut out in a neat square. A casket for something. A casket and a grave. A perfect hiding place. For what?

Reggie thought they had gone but then the blond one suddenly stuck his head back round the door. Reggie screamed.

'Forgot to say: he said, laughing at the horror on her face. 'Don't go to the police about this wee visit or, guess what?' He made the shape of a gun with his finger and thumb and pointed it at her. Then he left again.

Reggie surprised herself by suddenly vomiting up all her toast into the toilet. It took her a while to stop shivering, she felt as if she was going down with flu but she supposed it was just horror.

She stumbled down the tenement stairs, drenched in cold sweat and her heart hammering. She barged back into Mr Hussain's shop.

'All right?' Mr Hussain asked and she mumbled, 'No, halfleft,' which was a poor joke of Billy's when he was small. He wasn't funny, even then. Should she tell Mr Hussain? What would happen? He would make her a cup of sugary tea in the back of the shop and then he would phone the police and then the men would come back and shoot her with an imaginary gun? Kill her with words? They looked exactly like the types who had real guns. They looked exactly like Billy.

'Got to dash, Mr H. I'm gonna miss my bus.'

If only she had Sadie with her, Reggie thought as she walked as fast as she could to the bus stop. People thought twice about messing with you if you had a big dog by your side. 'It's like the parting of the Red Sea when you're out with Sadie,' Dr Hunter said once, fondling the big dog's ears. 'I always feel safe with her.' Did Dr Hunter need to feel safe? Why? Something to do with her history?

Had they really been looking for her? Made a mistake about her gender (a guy called Reggie)? Why? She had done nothing apart from being Billy's sister. Maybe that was enough. She tried phoning her brother and got a 'the person you are trying to reach is not available' message. She dialled Dr Hunter's number but it rang and rang without answer. Your dead. Without the apostrophe it implied something else, the dead that belonged to Reggie. There were enough of them.

The thing was, when Mr Hunter was speaking to her on the phone Reggie had heard Sadie bark in the background. When she wasn't at work Dr Hunter took Sadie with her everywhere, why would she leave her behind?

'Her aunt's allergic.'

'Aunt Agnes?'

'Yes.'

'Can't Dr Hunter give her something for it? Antihistamine or something? Why isn't she answering her phone, Mr Hunter?' 'Leave Jo alone, Reggie. This is a bad time for her. It's enough the past coming back to haunt her without you hounding her. OK?' 'But-'

'You know what, Reggie?' Mr Hunter said.

'What?'

'Just leave it. I've got a lot on my mind right now.'

'Me too, Mr H. Me too.'

Missing in Action A LONG TIME AGO, A LONG, LONG TIME AGO, WHEN THE WORLD WAS much younger and so was Jackson, he had his blood group tattooed on his chest, just above his heart. A soldier's trick so that when you are shot or blown up the medics can treat you as quickly as possible. Other guys he was in the army with had extended their skin-ink collections, adding on women and bulldogs and Union Jacks and, yes, indeed, the word 'Mother', but Jackson had never been a fan of the tattooist's art, had even promised his daughter a thousand pounds in cash if she made it to twenty-one without feeling the need to decorate her skin with a butterfly or a dolphin or the Chinese character for 'happiness'. Jackson himself had stuck with the one practical, lower-case message -'Blood Type A Positive', until now no more than a faded blue souvenir of another life. 'A Positive' -a nice common kind of blood shared by roughly 35 per cent of the population. Plenty of donors. And he'd needed them apparently, every precious ounce of red blood having been replaced courtesy of a band of blood brothers and sisters who had stopped him being erased from his own life.

'We thought we'd got the artery but you just kept pumping it out. It took a couple of goes,' a cheerful doctor told him. 'Dr Bruce, call me Mike,' he said, sitting on the end ofJackson's bed and grinning at him as if they'd just met in a bar. Call-Me-Mike was too young to be a doctor. Jackson wondered ifthe nurses knew that a boy from the local primary school was loose on the wards.

'Just humour him,' the fuzzy -now less fuzzy -nurse murmured in Jackson's ear. 'He thinks he's a grown-up.'

'Thank you,' Jackson said to him.

'No worries, mate.'

An Australian schoolboy.

The junior registrar, 'Dr Samms -call-me-Charlie,' looked like Harry Potter. Jackson didn't really want to be treated by a doctor who looked like Harry Potter but he wasn't in a position to argue. 'You seem to have taken a bit of a dunt to the head,' wizard-boy said. 'Ever had one before?'

'Maybe,' Jackson said. 'Not a good idea,' wizard-boy said, as if being banged on the head was something you volunteered for.

'Fuzzy,' Jackson said. It was definitely his favourite word. When his daughter was first learning to talk her first word was 'cat'. She used it for everything -ducks, milk, buggy -anything of interest in her life, everything was 'cat'. A one-word world. It made life much simpler, he must phone her and tell her. As soon as he could remember her name. Or, come to that, his own name.

He slept and when he woke again there was another nurse by the side of the bed. 'Who am I?' he asked. He sounded like an amateur philosopher but it wasn't a metaphysical question. Really, who was he?

'Your name's Andrew Decker,' she said.

'Really?' Jackson said. The name rang a tiny, tiny bell somewhere in the dark pit of his abandoned memories, yet he didn't have any relationship with it at all. He didn't feel like an Andrew Decker, but then he didn't really feel like anyone. 'How do you know?'

'Your wallet was in your jacket pocket,' the nurse said. It had a driving licence with your name and address on it. The police are trying to contact someone at the address.'

His ulnar artery had been partially severed, leading to 'profuse and rapid bleeding', the Potter lookalike said. His blood pressure had dropped and he had gone into shock. His brain had been starved of blood, 'Fatigue, shortness of breath, chills?' Australian Mike, the flying doctor, said. He looked as ifhe took more drugs than his patients. 'Nausea, confusion, disorientation, hallucinations? Yeah?'

'I was in a white corridor.'

'Bit of a cliche,' wizard-boy said.

'Don't knock it till you've tried it,' Jackson said.

'You might never remember the accident,' the flying doctor said. 'It was probably never transferred into your long-term memory. But you'll remember just about everything else. After all, you already know you have a daughter.'

Someone had given him first aid, had saved his life at the scene. One more person he would never be able to thank.

A policewoman came and sat by the side of his bed and waited patiently for him to focus on her. Someone had visited the address on his driving licence and the people who lived there had never heard of an 'Andrew Decker'. It was an old driving licence, not a photocard, perhaps he had failed to renew it when he changed address?

Jackson looked at her blankly. 'No idea.' 'Well, early days,' she said cheerfully. 'Someone's bound to come forward and claim you.'

It was strange to be surrounded by the aftermath of a disaster that you had no memory of. He could remember nothing about the train crash, could remember nothing about anything. He was a blank sheet ofpaper, a clock without hands. Now he wished that he hadn't been so sparse with the information that he'd been branded with. Alongside his blood group he should have added his name, rank and number.

'I had my cat chipped,' a nurse said to him, 'it gives me peace of mind.'

'I died,' he said to a new doctor.

'Briefly,' she said dismissively as ifyou had to be dead a lot longer to impress her. Dr Foster, a woman, who didn't seem to want to be on first-name terms.

'But technically .. .' he said, too weak to pursue the argument.

She sighed as ifpatients were always bickering about their dead or alive status. 'Yes. Technically dead,' she conceded. 'Very briefly.'

He'd already been here in another lifetime. How many weeks? 'Eighteen hours actually,' the new doctor said. He'd been to hell and back (or possibly heaven and back) and it had taken less than a day. Quite impressive. When would they let him go home?

'How about when you know where you live?' Dr Foster offered.

'Fair enough,' Jackson said.

He slept. That's what he did. He was the sleeper. He slept for years. When he woke up they told him about the train crash again. A nurse showed him the front page of a newspaper. 'CARNAGE', it said. He couldn't remember what the word meant. Nothing to do with cars, he supposed. He liked cars. He was a man called Andrew Decker who liked cars but who had been travelling on a train, destination unknown. No ticket, no phone, no signs of a life. No one who had noticed that he'd gone and not come back.

Now how long had he been here?

'Twenty hours,' Dr Foster said.

Reggie Chase, Girl Detective '[ THOUGHT [ COULD TAKE THE DOG FOR A WALK.'

'The dog?'

'Sadie.'

Mr Hunter sounded hoarse. He hadn't shaved and looked tired. (He's like a bear in the morning.) He smelt of the cigarettes that he was supposed to have given up 'ages ago'. The kitchen was already a mess. It seemed he was going to keep her hovering on the doorstep rather than invite her in. Reggie caught sight of a half-empty bottle of whisky on the counter. 'Bachelor's rules apply,' he said. He gave a little laugh, 'When the eat's away the dog will play.' Two empty mugs sat on the big kitchen table, one of them had a smear of lipstick on the rim, pale coral, not Dr Hunter's colour. Did that come under Mr Hunter's bachelor rules too?

'Seeing as Dr Hunter usually takes Sadie for her walk,' Reggie said, 'I thought I could do it for you while she's visiting her aunt. Aunt Agnes.'

Mr Hunter rubbed the stubble on his face as if he was having trouble remembering who Reggie was. Sadie had no such problem, appearing at Mr Hunter's side, wagging her tail at the sight of Reggie, although in a more subdued way than usual.

'Have you spoken to Dr Hunter since she left on Wednesday night?'

'Yes, of course I have.'

'How did you speak to her?'

'How?' Mr Hunter frowned. 'On the phone of course.'

'Her phone?'

'Yes. Her phone.'

'Only I've been phoning Dr Hunter, on her phone, and get no answer.' 'I expect she's very busy.' 'With the aunt?' 'Yes, the aunt.' 'Aunt Agnes? In Hawes?' 'Yes and yes. I have spoken to her, Reggie. She's fine. She doesn't want to be bothered.'

'Bothered?'

'What did you do to your head?' Mr Hunter asked, changing the subject. 'You look worse than I feel.' Reggie gingerly felt the bruise on her forehead where she had hit it in the shower.

'Wasn't looking where I was going,' she said.

Sadie whined impatiently, she had heard the word 'walk' several sentences ago and still nothing had happened.

'You probably don't have time to take Sadie out,' Reggie said. 'You having a lot ofthings to do and everything.' Mr Hunter looked down at the dog as ifit was going to answer for him and then shrugged and said, 'Aye, right, fine, OK then.'Which seemed like a lot of words for 'yes', even for a Weegie.

'Can I have a phone number for Dr Hunter's aunt?'

'No.'

'Why not?' Reggie asked.

'Because her aunt needs peace and quiet.'

'Can I leave my bag?'

'Bag?' Mr Hunter echoed as if he couldn't see the enormous Topshop bag that Reggie had lugged all the way over here. She had taken the bus to the town centre and bled her Topshop account. She had fled the flat in Gorgie with what she stood up in (Ms MacDonald's clothes, unfortunately) and she wasn't going back for any of her stuff that was lying in a dodgy-smelling heap in her room.

In fact she wasn't going back to that flat for anything. She just wished that her books and A Level coursework had been left undefiled.

In Topshop, Reggie had bought two pairs ofjeans, two T-shirts, two sweaters, six pairs of pants and socks, two bras, a pair of trainers, two pairs ofpyjamas, a coat, a scarf, a hat and a pair ofgloves. ('Never knowingly underdressed,' Dr Hunter used to laugh when she saw Reggie piling on her layers of winter clothes to go home.) Reggie had never bought so many clothes at one time apart from when she and Mum had tried to comply with the gargantuan school uniform list at the horrible posh school. Being in Topshop had been like buying a layette or a trousseau, both pleasingly old-fashioned words for starting a new life. Not much chance of that.

She put on a whole set of new clothes in the Topshop changing room and threw Ms MacDonald's clothes into a builder's skip on the street. It felt like a cruel act. Ms MacDonald herself was lying quietly in cold storage, as unwanted as her clothes.

Reggie had caught a bus from town to the hospital and presented herself at reception (she asked again about 'Jackson Brodie' but there was still no record of him), where a very nice Polish girl ('from Gdansk') collected her and led her to a room where she could look at Ms MacDonald through glass. A room with a view. It was like looking at a tableau or being presented with a small, intimate piece of theatre. Ms MacDonald's face was uncovered and Reggie said, 'Yes, that's her.' Her face was bruised and swollen but she didn't look as bad as Reggie had expected. She didn't like to think what condition the rest of her was in. It seemed unlikely that she was all in one pIece.

Reggie supposed that both her old teacher and her blue Saxo would be the subject ofa lot offorensic tests. Last night, Sergeant Wiseman had taken a note ofReggie's mobile phone number and said that someone would contact her when 'the body' was released. Reggie wanted to say that it was nothing to do with her, but it would have sounded churlish given the circumstances -carnage, etcetera. And anyway she was only sixteen. She might be technically an adult but really she was just a child. You couldn't make people who were almost children be responsible for dead bodies. Could you?

This was the third dead body Reggie had seen in her life. Ms MacDonald, Mum and the soldier last night. Four if you counted Banjo. It seemed a lot for a person of so few years.

She'd identified a dead body, had her flat vandalized, been threatened by violent idiots and it wasn't even lunchtime. Reggie hoped the rest of the day would be more uneventful.

'No,' Mr Hunter said.

'No what?'

'No, you can't leave your bag, I have to go out.'

'I have a key.'

'Of course you do.' Mr Hunter gave a long-suffering sigh as if he was conceding a drawn-out argument. 'OK. Give me the bag, I'll get the dog-lead.' He took the Topshop bag from Reggie and dropped it unceremoniously on the floor by the sink and then unhooked the dog's lead from behind the door and handed it over. An eager Sadie bounded past him as if set free from prison.

'Oh, and Mr H.,' Reggie said boldly (poking the bear), 'it's Thursday. Dr Hunter pays me on a Thursday.'

'Does she now?' Mr Hunter said. He smiled at her, one of his nice smiles that recognized you as a special person, and took his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and pinched out a small sheaf of notes without counting them. 'Don't spend it all at once,' he laughed, as if he was handing over pocket money rather than payment for a job well done. 'Leave some clothes in the shops, OK?'

'Very funny, Mr H. Thanks.' No point in telling him that she'd been on her shopping spree because two jokers had wrecked her house and her clothes. The Hunters didn't live in that kind ofworld. Reggie didn't want to live in that kind of world either.

When Mr Hunter had gone back in the house and shut the door, Reggie counted the money. It was half ofwhat Dr Hunter gave her.

Sadie had a basket of toys in the garage, balls, rubber bones and rings and an old teddy bear, and Reggie said, 'Let's get a ball for you, Sadie,' and Sadie gave a little wo~fof excitement at the word 'ball'.

The garage used to be kept locked but then the key had got lost and no one had got round to cutting a new one. Dr Hunter said that the worst thing that could happen was that her car might get stolen and it was insured so what did it matter? Mr Hunter said that was a cavalier attitude and Dr Hunter said, 'Well you get one cut then,' which was probably the nearest thing to an argument between them that Reggie had ever witnessed. Mr Hunter didn't know about the spare car keys that she kept on a shelf in the garage, behind a tin of paint (Clouded Pearl, the colour that the hall had been decorated in), because then he would 'go ballistic' according to Dr Hunter.

The garage was small because the house was built in the days when most people didn't own one car, let alone two, and the garage had been squashed into a small space next to the house as an afterthought, separated from the house by a narrow passage. Mr Hunter's big Range Rover couldn't even get into the garage and so it remained the snug home of Dr Hunter's Toyota Prius. Reggie squeezed past the car to reach the basket and pick out Sadie's favourite, an old red rubber ball so chewed that it had lost almost all of its bounce.

'Come on then, old girl,' Reggie said to Sadie as she shut the garage door. It was what Dr Hunter always said to the dog when they set offfor a walk. It felt odd to be in charge ofSadie. No Dr Hunter, no Mr Hunter, no baby. Reggie realized she'd never been entirely alone with the dog before. They squeezed through the gap in the hedge that let them directly into the field that today was home to three horses, all standing around rather listlessly as if they were waiting for something to happen. Reggie threw the ball and then raced round the field with the dog because that was what she liked best.

Here was the thing. Dr Hunter had travelled to Hawes last night. She drove down last night, Mr Hunter said on the phone this morning. So why was her car in the garage?

When they got back from their walk the house was locked and there was no sign ofMr Hunter. A note placed prominently on the kitchen table said, 'Dear Reggie -actually I forgot -Jo suggested that maybe you would like to take our mutual friend to your place and look after her until she gets back. You'll probably have more time at the moment than I will anyway. Thanks, Neil.' It took Reggie a moment to realize that the note referred to the dog. Mr Hunter seemed a different person on paper, he certainly used a lot more words. There was no mention of money for dog food, Reggie noticed.

The thing was. When she brought the dog back from her run in the field, Reggie had gone upstairs to Dr Hunter's bedroom -Mr Hunter's too, ofcourse -not for any reason,just to be there, to look, to feel closer to Dr Hunter. She shouldn't have, she knew, but she wasn't doing any harm.

Dr Hunter wouldn't have minded, although you could be pretty sure that Mr Hunter would.

The bed hadn't been made -Mr Hunter's 'bachelor's rules'. Otherwise it was pretty tidy, although not as tidy as when Dr Hunter was home. Sadie circled the room, sniffing everything like a tracker dog -the sheets, the carpet, the dry-cleaning bag that Dr Hunter brought home with her yesterday lying over the back of a chair. Reggie took the newly cleaned suit out of its plastic shroud and hung it up in the closet next to one of Dr Hunter's other suits. The closet was a big, walk-in affair, Dr Hunter had one side, Mr Hunter the other. All the clothes on Dr Hunter's side smelt faintly of the perfume that she always wore. The plain blue bottle stood on the chest ofdrawers next to Dr Hunter's old-fashioned silver-backed hairbrush, her spare inhaler and a photograph of the baby taken when he was just a few days old and looking as if he was still waiting to be inflated. Reggie dabbed some of the perfume on the insides of her wrists. Je Reviens. A promise. Or a threat. Hasta la vista, baby. Back soon.