Mice Read online

  We hadn’t buried the burglar properly; we’d left his right arm protruding stiffly out of the soil. Or if it wasn’t his arm, it was his foot, the foot without a shoe in its threadbare green sock. I had to go out and cover him properly, I had to go out and bury him properly, or Mrs Harris would see him when she drove up to the house . . . Or we hadn’t actually killed the burglar, somehow he’d regained consciousness and hauled himself out of the ooze of his temporary grave. Like a B-movie monster of mud and hacked flesh, he was calling me on his mobile phone as he limped towards the cottage, calling to torment me, to taunt me, to terrify me . . .

  I sat up screaming when the phone rang. I stared at it in horror and let it ring, too scared to pick it up. But as my head cleared and the ridiculous thought that it was the burglar was slowly dispelled, my next thought was that it was the police. God knows how many times I let it ring before I finally snatched up the receiver.

  It was Mum.

  She was very guarded. She was working on the assumption that someone, somewhere, might be listening to our call, and so I did the same.

  ‘Are you having a lovely birthday?’ she asked cheerily.

  ‘Yes, wonderful, Mum,’ I replied without the slightest trace of irony in my voice. ‘Roger bought me a beautiful edition of Rebecca.’

  ‘Wonderful! How did your class go?’

  ‘Fine, thanks – we did the origins of the First World War. It’s Roger’s special subject – you should hear him, there’s nothing he doesn’t know. He really should write a book.’

  We talked without really saying anything for five minutes or so, but by the end of the conversation Mum had reassured herself that I was OK and that the police hadn’t come to the cottage . . . yet.

  She said she’d try to get home early.

  I was sick again a little later, but there was hardly anything left in my stomach to bring up. I went upstairs and washed my face in cold water and brushed my teeth and gargled with some mouthwash to get rid of the acidic aftertaste. As I stood at the basin, the desire to sleep was overwhelming; sleep called to me like a siren, like the pipes of the Pied Piper, and I would have gone to bed (damning all the consequences to hell) if I hadn’t heard Mrs Harris’s car pull into the drive at just that moment.

  Mrs Harris was far easier to cope with than Roger. She had no interest whatsoever in the fact that it was my birthday, and when she saw Roger’s card and present she merely commented coldly that if she bought a present for every one of her pupils on their birthdays she’d be bankrupt by now. Unlike Roger, Mrs Harris had little curiosity in what was around her, and probably wouldn’t have noticed if the entire sideboard had been removed from the dining room. Nor did she ever want a cup of tea, preferring to drink cups of black coffee from the small Thermos flask she always brought with her.

  The dull flat surface of that lesson was only disturbed once, briefly, but with a violence that shocked us both.

  Mrs Harris had poured herself a cup of coffee and was carefully unwrapping the cling film from her digestive biscuits.

  ‘I’ve just taken on a new pupil who lives very close to here,’ she remarked, ‘a girl about your age. Her father’s a farmer – his fields must come up to the rear of your property. Jade’s her name. Jade, if you can believe it!’

  I said nothing, merely glanced at my watch to see how much longer was left of the lesson.

  ‘She’s yet another so-called victim of bullying,’ Mrs Harris went on, dusting the biscuit crumbs from the tips of her fingers. ‘In other words, she prefers to stay at home rather than be inconvenienced by the tiresome business of going to school.’

  I’d let remarks like this pass several times before; I knew Mrs Harris’s views on mice all too well. But this time, before I even realized what I was doing, I was speaking out.

  ‘How dare you?’ I hissed at her, unconsciously screwing up the piece of paper I’d been writing on.

  Mrs Harris stared at me, completely stunned, as if her docile lapdog had suddenly bitten her finger right to the bone. I could feel my face twitching and contorting with uncontrollable anger.

  ‘How dare you?’ I shouted it right into her face. ‘I suffered eight months of hell at the hands of bullies! I was attacked day in and day out. I was set on fire! I could have been killed! What do you mean, another so-called victim?’

  My anger was so great that my words couldn’t keep pace with it. I had so much pent-up rage to vent that now the floodgates were open it was impossible to know how to shape it all into words. My outburst fizzled out in tongue-tied incoherence.

  Mrs Harris’s reaction took me completely by surprise. I expected her to bridle with haughty indignation, to unleash a venomous, withering rebuke that would reduce me to tears in a matter of seconds. But instead of flaring up in self-righteous fury, she put her fingers to her lips as if she couldn’t believe what had just escaped them.

  ‘I’m sorry, Shelley. I – I’m so sorry!’ Her freckled hand made an awkward, conciliatory move towards me across the table before retreating back to her lap. ‘I didn’t mean to belittle what you’ve been through. It was a stupid, tactless thing to say. I just forgot who I was talking to, honestly I did.’

  My rage gradually subsided and we carried on with the lesson, but we were both distracted by what had happened and hugely relieved when four-thirty finally came around. At the door Mrs Harris apologized again, and wished me a very happy birthday.

  I watched her driving away and even in the midst of all the trauma of that day there was room to feel pleased with myself for having stood up to her at long last, for having worsted such a tough old bird. I knew she’d probably only backed down because she was worried that her cynical view of the ‘shirkers’ and ‘wimps’ she taught might find its way back to the local authority and they’d stop her fat monthly pay cheques, but nevertheless I’d won the day. She’d left the field in disarray, in ignominious defeat; the imposing Mrs Harris had turned out to be just a paper tiger after all, I thought to myself, and smiled triumphantly – but as my gaze wandered towards the front garden the smile wilted on my lips.

  23

  It was only when I was on my own in the house again that I remembered the burglar’s wallet.

  The urge to know his name was irresistible. And it was more than just curiosity now. I felt that if I knew his name, the thought of him lying out there in our garden wouldn’t fill me with so much terror.

  A name, after all, would anchor the burglar in mundane reality. He’d be Joe Bloggs or David Smith, one person, one individual – and a pathetic one at that. Without a name it would be as if he had no boundaries; he’d be able to leak into all areas of my life like some poisonous fog, contaminating everything. He’d become a bogeyman, a repository for all the fears that would haunt me for the rest of my life. If I could just find out his name, I felt it would be like switching on all the lights in the middle of a scary movie.

  I knew Mum wouldn’t be home for hours, so I didn’t have to hurry.

  I went upstairs and into the spare room. I knew the bag with the dressing gowns, the one with the wellington boots and the one with the red sports bags. I was looking for the first one, the one with the broken dishes and the doormat. I soon found it, wedged behind the mop and bucket. Mum had tied one of her vicious little knots in it that took me ages to unpick. All the time my emptied stomach growled loudly. My appetite, which nine hours earlier I thought had been extinguished forever, was pacing hungrily back and forth inside its cage.

  I had to move the doormat to see inside the bin bag. The wallet was there, right at the bottom. There was something on the doormat, a gelatinous grey goo that must have leaked from the back of the burglar’s head as we’d dragged him out of the kitchen. I couldn’t bear to look at it and turned my head away to the wall, reaching in for the wallet without looking, like a blind person. My fingers closed around it first time and I pulled it out.

  It was a weird sensation to hold in my hands something that had belonged to the burglar – somethin
g that had been in his pocket when I’d stabbed him. It was like resurrecting him in a way. I could almost feel his presence in the air around me, and I was suddenly anxious to get out of the spare room as quickly as I could.

  I clicked open the press stud with trembling fingers and a racing heart. There was a pocket lumpy with loose coins and another packed tightly with cards. I recognized the pinkish edge of one as a driver’s licence, and tried to tease it out with my fingernails. As it worked loose, I found myself looking into the cold grey eyes of the burglar. Another queasy wave of nausea passed over me and I caught a faint taste of the spaghetti bolognese. The hair may have been a little shorter, the cheeks a little less gaunt, but there was no mistaking that face: it was the man Mum and I had killed in the kitchen the night before.

  I looked for his name, and there it was.

  Paul David Hannigan.

  I slipped the driver’s licence into my jeans’ back pocket, snapped the wallet shut and tossed it back into the bin bag. I retied it, trying to replicate Mum’s tight little knot as best I could. I couldn’t see any stains on my hands or sleeve, but I washed my hands anyway and put on another top just to be on the safe side.

  With my stomach gurgling and squeaking with hunger, I went to the kitchen and heated myself a small bowl of vegetable soup and sliced some baguette. I took it into the lounge on a tray and ate it in front of the TV, watching the cartoons. It was strange to watch Tom chasing Jerry round and round the kitchen (‘We’re playing musical chairs now! We’re playing musical chairs now!’), bringing the frying pan down on his head and flattening Jerry like a pancake while the music raced jovially along and the comic sound effect – boing! – rang out again and again. Violence in bright colours. Violence without blood. Violence without death. It wasn’t like that in real life. I remembered Mum lining up the blow with the chopping board, tightening her grip, taking a deep breath before she raised it high above her head like a diver about to submerge to the darkest depths. I remembered the sound the board had made when she’d brought it scything down . . . and it hadn’t been boing.

  I lay down on the sofa and examined the burglar’s driver’s licence in more detail. Paul Hannigan’s driver’s licence. I looked at the date of birth and worked out that he’d been twenty-four years old, older than I’d thought. Eight years older than me. There was his signature – a back-sloping child’s hand with a ridiculous flourish as if he were a person of importance. His address on the licence was a city in the north with a reputation for high unemployment and drug-related gang crime. Just the month before, a fourteen-year-old boy working as a drug courier had been shot and killed there in broad daylight. So, I meditated drowsily, Paul Hannigan was a rat out of that rat hole. Or at least he had been. The licence was four years old; the chances were he’d been living locally when he came to burgle Honeysuckle Cottage.

  I tried to think how the police would finally link his disappearance to Mum and me, I tried to think what invisible thread bound us together, but my eyes were heavy and I sleepily fumbled the driver’s licence back into my jeans pocket. Someone had already missed him. Someone . . . was already . . . looking . . . for him . . .

  24

  I was woken up by a hand gently rocking my shoulder.

  I opened my eyes to see Mum looking down at me. It was dark outside. The only light in the lounge was the orange glow from the standard lamp by the TV.

  ‘Are the police here?’ I asked, sitting up with a start.

  ‘No, no,’ Mum crooned soothingly. ‘The police aren’t here, Shelley. I’ve made you a nice cup of tea. It’s half-past ten.’

  ‘Half-past ten?’ I’d been asleep for over five hours!

  ‘You were sound asleep when I got in. I thought it was best to leave you. I went over the kitchen again with a fine-tooth comb, then I had a bath, came down here and sat in the armchair, and next thing I knew I was fast asleep too. I’ve only just woken up myself.’

  I took the mug she was holding out to me. My mouth was dry and foul-tasting and I sucked thirstily at the tea, which was lukewarm and easy to drink.

  ‘How’s your neck?’ Mum asked.

  I swallowed. That scratchy feeling was still there.

  ‘It still feels weird.’

  ‘I bought you some throat sweets and linctus. Take the linctus before you go to bed and we’ll see how you are in the morning. With any luck it will make it feel better. I hope we don’t have to take you to the doctor’s – Dr Lyle’s old, but he’s no fool. He’s bound to ask some awkward questions.’

  ‘How was work, Mum?’

  ‘Horrible. I had a flaming row with Blakely in front of Brenda and Sally.’

  ‘A row?’

  ‘He wanted me to work late and I said no and he didn’t like it.’

  I thought she was most likely exaggerating. I’d never known Mum to have a row with anybody.

  ‘Did anyone notice your eye?’

  ‘Sally asked me why I was wearing make-up.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said I’d decided it was time I found a new man.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said she’d heard there was a gorgeous criminal solicitor by the name of Blakely who was single.’

  We both giggled. But our giggles faded away as we remembered the burden we lived with now.

  We were silent for a long time, sipping our tea and staring into space the way you do when you’ve just woken up. The only sound was the occasional ghostly cry of an owl in one of the trees along the drive.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes, Shelley?’

  ‘What’s going to happen, Mum?’

  She sank her face in her hands and dragged them back and forth across her features as if washing without water. When she turned to me again, she looked unspeakably tired.

  ‘I don’t know, Shelley. I don’t know. I’ve been turning it over in my mind all day. I just don’t know.’

  The owl outside hooted again – a long, mournful vibrato – and I thought of the corpse lying out there in the oval rose bed.

  I took Mum’s hand and squeezed it tightly.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes, sweetheart?’

  ‘Is it OK if I sleep with you tonight?’

  ‘Of course it is, darling. Of course it is.’

  That night I dreamt I was working with Roger at the dining-room table when the police came to the house. It was dark outside and when I opened the front door I was blinded by the flashing of their blue lights. ‘Turn your lights off!’ I cried. ‘Can’t you see I’ve got bloodshot eyes?’ Mum and I were led out of Honeysuckle Cottage by policemen in gas masks carrying shotguns. Roger came to the doorway calling out weakly, ‘You can’t take her away – don’t you realize she’s got very important exams in two months’ time?’ Mum and I were wearing orange jumpsuits like American prisoners I’d seen on TV; our legs were chained at the ankles and our hands handcuffed behind our backs. ‘Why are you wearing gas masks?’ Mum asked one of the policemen. He bellowed back at her, ‘The stench! The stench of death! If you can’t smell it, that proves you’re guilty!’

  I heard someone laughing and looked over to see the burglar standing up in the rose bed. He was uninjured, just as I’d first seen him standing at the top of the stairs, except that his olive-green bomber jacket was decorated with bright red bows and these bows streamed long red ribbons, which spooled on the ground at his feet. When he saw me his expression became hard, murderous. ‘It was them eggs,’ he said, ‘you ugly, stuck-up bitch. Them eggs was off.’ His mobile rang and he reached into his back pocket. ‘Excuse me, I’ve got a call,’ he said, and putting one finger to his ear to hear better, he wandered away in the direction of the house.

  The policemen pushed us into an armoured van and it moved off down the drive. Out of the window I could just make out a car parked in the narrow lane and a shadowy figure seated behind the wheel, waiting. The car’s headlights suddenly flashed on, its engine revved angrily and it began to follow us.<
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  ‘Who’s that?’ Mum asked.

  ‘It’s the watcher,’ I replied.

  25

  I was momentarily confused the next morning when I woke up in Mum’s room. Mum had already got up, leaving just the ghost of her scent on the other side of the bed and a few corkscrew strands of hair on her pillow. I could hear the taps running in the kitchen, cupboard doors banging, the jocular burble of a radio presenter’s voice.

  When I tried to get up, I couldn’t believe how stiff I was. All my muscles screamed with pain as if I’d run a marathon during the night, and it made me realize how ferociously I must have fought the burglar. I limped down the landing to the bathroom like a geriatric, wincing with discomfort at every step. When I sat on the loo my coccyx stung nastily where I’d fallen on the knife. My throat was still sore, but that strange scratchy sensation every time I swallowed had gone, and when I looked in the bathroom mirror I was relieved to see that my eyes were much less bloodshot. I brought my face close up to the glass so that my nose was almost touching it.

  I asked my reflection, ‘Will the police come today?’

  I’d gone into my bedroom to get my slippers and an old dressing gown, when something outside – an un- familiar smudge of colour in the landscape – caught my eye. I went to the window and wiped away the condensation so that I could see better. And almost wished I hadn’t.

  Outside, in the narrow lane that ran along the side of Honeysuckle Cottage, was a car, a battered turquoise car. It had almost been driven into the thick hedge, its right front wheel halfway up the grassy bank and its back end jutting out, making it difficult for other cars to get past. On the other side of the hedge was our back garden – the cypresses marking the rear boundary, the vegetable patch, Mr Jenkins’s compost heap, the rows of fruit trees.

  I felt my blood run cold. It was Paul Hannigan’s car. There was no doubt about that. Paul Hannigan’s car parked right outside our house, pointing at Honeysuckle Cottage like a giant arrow, crying out to the police: Want to solve the mystery of the missing driver? Enquire within.