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EDWARD CAME OUT OF his interview with Charles feeling depressed. Six weeks alone in Black Gables he could just about take. The same six weeks expecting the walls to be stormed by Valérie and Susan was another matter.
The crush in the hallway caught him off guard. Mourners in various stages of drunkenness and irritability queued between the only toilet and the exit to the lawn. The air was thick with the smell of sweat and perfume and damp. At the centre of the floor, the stairway had a ‘No Entry’ sign across it, guarded by two bouncers in sunglasses with radio receivers. Someone glanced his shoulder.
“Excuse me!” said a high voice.
He turned to find himself face to face with a thin, middle-aged woman with a bruise on her forehead.
“Watch where you’re bloody going, moron,” she said.
“My mistake,” he replied through clenched teeth.
“Oh, my God. Look who it isn’t.”
‘Look who - ’? Could this be Valérie or Susan? She was aggressive enough, if Charles had been right. She wore a black suit, heels and a wide-brimmed hat.
He decided to try for an introduction. “Do we - ”
“I hope for your sake you used a bloody condom.”
What? Suddenly everyone stopped talking. A clearing opened up with Edward at its centre.
“It wasn’t like that,” came another woman’s voice from his left.
To his astonishment – it felt like a dream, stuffed with arbitrary arrivals - a much younger woman with bare feet squeezed through to stand by his side. “I’ve just told you we’re not having a relationship. I’m not stupid.”
Valérie kept her eyes fixed on Edward. “You should be bloody ashamed of yourself. My daughter’s mentally ill.”
There was a collective groan of disapproval. “Bastard,” said someone from the back of the crowd.
“Who are you calling mentally ill?” Susan said.
“It’s not a term of abuse, you silly cow. I’m just stating a fact.”
Susan guffawed. “Oh, but it’s okay for you to shag the caterer’s assistant in the bushes. Look, there he is.”
A man at the front of the crowd in a chef’s smock went as pale as Edward. He ploughed his way to the exit followed by jeers.
Susan laughed. “Hope you used a condom!”
“You bloody little - ” She grabbed Susan’s arm.
“Let go!”
“You might have behaved this way when you were living with Vivienne, but you’re living with me now, and you’re going to live be my rules, or not at all.”
“Get off me!”
Valérie grabbed a handful of Susan’s hair and pulled. Susan kicked her mother’s feet away and they fell over in a clinch. She freed herself by crushing Valérie’s fingers into her palm. Valérie screamed. Susan threw her on to her back and sat on her stomach, audibly winding her. Every muscle in her face contracted. Her teeth bared, her eyes bulged.
Valérie suddenly looked terrified. She tried to unseat Susan by bouncing her hips but to no avail. She tried to hold Susan’s hands away from her neck, but her arms shook. Susan’s fingernails – Edward hadn’t noticed till now, but they were sharpened to points - closed in. The crowd laughed and whooped.
As far as Edward could tell, only he saw the seriousness of the situation. There was about to be a real murder in full view. He went to intervene but the bouncers arrived, four men tearing through the throng as if it was made of foam. Susan punched the first full in the face, snapping his sunglasses and felling him. He slumped to his knees. His nose bled. He staggered to his feet and rejoined his colleagues.
They strenuously wrenched Susan and Valérie apart, two men per woman. Then they tried to pin them to the floor, face down. Susan surged and managed to get on top of one of them. She snapped her teeth shut on his ear. He bellowed. Blood sprayed. Reinforcements arrived from the garden.
“Get her down!”
Her fingernails landed in the cheeks of the man closest to her. He screamed.
“Wind her!” one of them yelled. “Wind her, the cow! Whack her one!”
“Get her arms!”
“Get her on the ground! John, get her bloody legs! Watch out for her nails! Darren, Darren!”
“Get her over!”
Susan cried and twisted in every direction. The crowd went silent. While Valérie was being carried to the door, the other bouncers took control of Susan, turned on her stomach and wrenched her arms behind her back. She oozed sweat, her flesh was scarlet and her gums were exposed and bloody.
“Had enough?” said the man nearest her ear. There was more hope than conviction in his voice.
Every face was aghast. A few people looked on the verge of panic. On the other side of the hallway, Charles emerged from the living room. He tut-tutted and shook his head. He held a whisky in one hand and an intercom in the other.
Suddenly, Edward heard a roar seemingly from inside him, as if the adrenalin in his veins was burning fuel. This was the woman who’d just saved him from Valérie. The details didn’t matter. She’d come to stand by his side and this was where it had got her. He was floating now. He was omnipotent. He could take on six bouncers, yes. Or he could if she helped him. Which she would.
Then suddenly all his indignation melted and turned to pity. He went down on his knees and stroked the hair from her eyes. He wanted to say something comforting, but all he could think of was her name. Better than nothing. He put his lips as close to her ear as he could get them. “Susan,” he said.
To his surprise she stopped struggling. She looked at him.
“Get her out of here!” Charles shouted.
The bouncers hauled her in the air, knocking Edward down. The crowd closed on the spectacle as it moved forward and off the premises. Someone kicked Edward in the stomach and ran off.
He retched for a few moments then got up and staggered over two broken glasses and Valérie’s hat to the front of the house.
A four wheel drive pulled away. The windows were misted with condensation but he could just make out Valérie at the wheel and Susan slumped in the passenger seat. Everyone was laughing and applauding, all the terror they’d shown earlier gone.
Charles put his hand on Edward’s shoulder. “It’s all over now. Stroke of genius, my boy, patting her head like that. Without you we’d still be trying to get her outside. Now, thank God, that’s the complete end of them.”
The car disappeared from view and Edward amen-ed. He too hoped he’d never see them again, especially Susan, the supernaturally strong one. How the hell he was going to fend them off if they came to Black Gables demanding entry? How could he have been so stupid as to agree to stay here alone with that as the condition?
He felt a pair of eyes burning into him. He turned in what he felt to be their direction. Richard Appleton.
Appleton was standing apart from the crowd, leaning on a walking stick. He and Edward regarded each other for what seemed an unusually long time before he turned and strode away.
Edward took out his mobile. It wasn’t far to walk home, but on this occasion he wanted a taxi.
