5

Time Is Running Out

(Muse)

THERE SEEMED TO be an awful lot that could go wrong with a cabbage. Nell found it hard to believe that a food crop could survive, reach the exacting standards that supermarkets demanded and be perfectly edible, with so much against it. From now on, she would regard the contents of the brassica section in Waitrose as a triumph of nurture over nature, organic or otherwise. If it wasn’t an onslaught of cabbage-white caterpillars that were going to do for your crop, according to the pages of guidelines and photographs that Sheila, editor of Home Grown, had sent, it would be whitefly, rootfly, wire stem or clubroot. There was also an entire minor league of more obscure ailments that were waiting to scupper your lunch, if it survived any invasion by rabbits, squirrels and pigeons, wasn’t dug up by dogs and foxes and if you weren’t also stupid enough to keep a pet tortoise roaming free in the vegetable patch. Being individually fitted with cardboard collars and swaddled beneath fine mesh seemed the only way these vegetables could be (almost) guaranteed to achieve harvest point.

In her clapboard studio (which she loved – it reminded her of a village cricket pavilion) beneath the birch trees across the garden, Nell laid out her choice of watercolours in the shades she planned to use, opened the first of her selection of reference books and propped up a fat, healthy cabbage on the shelf in front of her. Home Grown’s brief was to paint twenty different vegetables. Each one had to be the entire plant, from tiniest roots to topmost leaf tip, incorporating all the diseases most likely to affect the crops of the keen amateur grower, all on one plant. A cabbage seemed like a good enough place to start. The cool, firm leaves and rich, deep greens suited her current rather uncertain mood, being somehow more soothing to work with than, say, the searing scarlets of tomatoes with their tight, tense skins. She would have to paint a bloody big one, she decided, committing a few pencil lines to a layout pad as a trial guide to the kind of shape she was going for. If it fell victim to even one of the troubles she had to inflict on it, it wouldn’t get even halfway to the size she was going to have to make it. Nor would it have any of the plump, veiny, full-size leaves she was going to have to give it, to show these optimistic amateurs what a perfect specimen should look like.

Nell was comfortably settled at her desk and had just sketched out the basic shape she intended to use for her fantasy cabbage when she caught sight of movement up by the house. The side gate was opening, very slowly. Whoever was behind it wasn’t yet showing their face. She tensed, nervous suddenly, wary of how vulnerable she really was. The studio door was open to let in the weak March sunshine (the cat was sprawled across the doormat, basking in a sunbeam), the house’s back door was unlocked and the keys for the car were lying on the kitchen table, along with her bag which contained credit cards, cheque book, a ninety pounds credit note from Joseph and two silver Tiffany bangles. She’d also left her computer on the worktop, after emailing Seb down in Falmouth to tell him that yes, it was all right, Alex was going to pay for another year of his car insurance.

It was, as Steve would have put it, a grazing-antelope moment. So, not as ready as she’d have liked to be to tackle a vicious burglar (the hands-on techniques came later in the Stay Safe course), she went outside and bravely, briskly, strode across the grass to confront the intruder, just as Steve himself suddenly emerged through the gate.

‘God, you scared me – again! What are you doing here?’ she demanded furiously, too outraged to care how rude she sounded. How rude was it, after all, to come creeping through people’s side gates when there was a perfectly good front doorbell he could have rung? It also rang in the studio – there was no way she could have missed hearing it.

‘Sorry, Nell – I didn’t mean to frighten you. I did press the bell but I couldn’t hear it ring in the house so I guessed it wasn’t working. Is it a battery one? It might need a replacement.’

‘It isn’t, actually. I’ll check it out and get it fixed. And I hope you’re not going to lecture me: I know I should keep that side gate locked. Anyway, come on in, I’ll make us some coffee.’

Steve followed Nell in through the back door. ‘Thanks, that would be great. You looked so fierce, I didn’t dare mention the lock! I’m going to cover home security in lesson two.’

‘So – what brings you here? And how did you find me? I didn’t give you my address.’ Had he followed her home after the class? she wondered. It seemed unlikely – after all, why would he? If he’d wanted to spend more time with her he could have accepted her offer of a lift.

Nell then wondered, as she made the coffee, if Steve supplemented his teaching with a spot of burgling. He’d know all the tricks: best method of house entry, whether a metal drainpipe had enough fixing points that hadn’t rusted through so that he could get safely up to a window that was open a mere careless centimetre. Perhaps that was why he was here now; he was casing the joint. Well, he wouldn’t find a lot; no more than the usual domestic haul of electrical gadgets and non-heirloom jewellery. She was not – unlike her mother – a collector of trophy gems. All the same, Nell, after putting two mugs of coffee on the table, moved her bag out of his way and shoved it to the back of the worktop, beside the bread bin.

‘Smash your side window and the bag would still be in reach,’ Steve commented, watching her.

‘Only by an orang-utan,’ Nell snapped. ‘It’s miles from the window.’

‘But that jar full of spoons and stuff by the sink isn’t. Any burgling scumbag could use those spaghetti-scoop things and grab the handle, no problem.’

‘Ah yes, but they’d have had to break the window first, and that would have Ed from next door round here in seconds,’ Nell argued.

‘Brave sort, is he, this Ed next door? You should bring him along to the classes. It might save his life. If you go in all confrontational and back someone into a corner it can too easily turn dangerous, and the next thing you know there’s blood everywhere. Probably not the scumbag’s, either.’

Nell looked hard at him. What was he up to? Why was everything down to the worst-case scenario? And wasn’t it a good thing that Kate hadn’t chosen this moment to call round – she’d be bouncing with unconcealed delight, grinning and winking and making unsubtle enquiries about whether he lived alone and so on. Steve was quite an attractive sort, if you fancied the wiry, athletic type. And he had all his (presumably own) hair, eyes as blue as Steve McQueen’s and, in spite of the subject matter, a smile that could charm dragons.

‘So, you haven’t told me yet … what made you come calling on me?’ she asked again.

‘Ah … yes. It’s not a big deal, just that Tuesday’s class will start half an hour later, that’s all. I just wanted to make sure you knew, to save you rushing there and having to hang about. Advanced Yoga are doing a special meditation session with a guest mystic that’s going on a bit so they can achieve maximum cosmic depth or whatever they do.’

‘But I gave you my mobile number. Not my address. Don’t tell me you’re doing house calls round the whole class?’

Steve looked, for once, mildly uncomfortable. ‘No – I emailed or phoned the others. But … I think you missed out a digit when you wrote your number down. Don’t know whether you were doing it on purpose – on grounds of security, maybe?’ he teased. ‘But either way, I couldn’t get through. So … er … I looked you up and found where you lived.’

‘You what? Looked me up where?’ The astounding nerve of it!

‘Sorry – and your number was ex-directory, so …’

‘Yes! Exactly! Ex-directory for a reason!’

‘I’m sorry.’ He put his cup down and pushed the chair backwards. ‘I’ll go, shall I? I am sorry, truly, I honestly didn’t intend to …’

‘No … no, it doesn’t matter.’ It did, a bit, but not that much, she supposed, not really. What had she got to be so privacy-crazy about? Too far down that road and she’d end up living in the kind of gated community where even your own children were screened for entry, and the residents were convinced the world just beyond the railings held an eternal threat of terrorism, drive-by shootings and a loitering army of hooded teen thugs.

She softened a bit, saying, ‘Actually, to be honest I can’t recall why we ever were ex-directory. It was probably something to do with Alex being in the communications business and not particularly wanting anyone to communicate with him!’ Her laugh sounded more than slightly bitter.

‘He’s your ex, is he? Alex?’

‘Yep. That’s him. The ex.’ It sounded odd, applied to Alex. The term ‘ex’ had only figured in her head with regard to Patrick before now. Not a massive total in her life (so far) was it? Only two major exes and a mostly forgotten selection of very short-term minor ones. Some people with far more adventurous lives must have a whole extra address book full of them. She wondered if having so many meant that it became less painful after a certain number, if each addition diluted the angst.

‘How did you know he was an “ex”?’ Nell suddenly asked. ‘I hadn’t said anything about that, either.’

Steve leaned closer and smiled in the manner of a doctor assuring a patient that it really was, for once, more than just a cold. ‘You didn’t need to. Though you did put down “divorce” as a reason for coming to the classes – that was a bit of a giveaway. My classes tend to attract three sorts of women: the ones who’ve been on the wrong end of crime, the ones who come with their mates from work for a social giggle and those who are suddenly living on their own and realize they feel newly vulnerable.’

‘But I also told you I was a crime victim. Surely that puts me in category one?’

‘You’d just come back from a holiday with your daughter, in term-time, and you didn’t mention a partner who might have been some use seeing off a mugger.’ He shrugged. ‘I just figured. And I could have been wrong.’

‘Are you sure you’re not a detective on the side?’ Nell laughed.

‘Well actually, I was once. I got on the wrong side of a sawn-off and when I was lying there in the hospital, all full of holes, I decided never again.’

At least he wasn’t offering to show her the scars, Nell thought. A few embryonic cells of an idea were occurring to her, though.

‘Um … so how did you find me? I don’t have a website. I probably should, for work, but I have an agent for that. What did you do? Googling Eleanor Hollis isn’t likely to find me.’

‘Oh, it was easy. If you know more or less the area someone lives in, you just go to this fantastic search site on the Internet. I’ll show you, if you like. Obviously with anyone you want to find, if you don’t quite know where they are, the first stop is Google or Friends Reunited.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know that, but if you can’t find them that way …’ Nell murmured vaguely. She took her computer from the worktop and put it on the table between the two of them, moving aside a small pile of Patrick’s old letters. She’d been reading through a few of them after Mimi left for school to remind herself of the personal spark that was contained in them, and to see if she’d find a reason not to look for him. Mostly, she’d only found a young, confused man who despaired that the world was out of sync with his thinking and who was forever impatient and halfway to furious. Had he mellowed or was he now the ultimate Grumpy Old Bastard? She wanted to know.

‘Thank goodness for broadband,’ Steve said as he tapped the address into the bar. A menu came up instantly, offering the choice of searching for a business or an individual or a map. Steve pressed ‘individual’ and looked at Nell.

‘OK – who do you want?’ he asked.

Nell held her breath. This was definitely going to be one she’d prefer to try when she was safely on her own. But for now … ‘Let’s try my friend Kate. Type in Catherine Perry.’

‘And the area she lives in?’

‘Ah – you definitely need that?’ That was a disappointment. For some ridiculous reason Nell had assumed the computer would immediately know exactly which ‘Catherine Perry’ she would mean. Of course it wouldn’t – and in turn it wasn’t going to know which ‘Patrick Sanders’ she meant, either. There must be thousands of them. And without having a clue where he was living it was going to be next to impossible to find him. And she definitely wanted to. She had a sudden painful thought that she might already be too late. Suppose he was dead? Or (and ridiculously it seemed worse) in the process of dying? Time could be running out, fast. For the more than twenty years since they’d split, she’d assumed he was still there, living a parallel life somewhere. Possibly he wasn’t, or wouldn’t be for much longer. When he vanished into the eternal dark they would never, ever speak to each other again. Why had this never crossed her mind before? It should have.

‘Oh – Kate’s only a couple of miles away. Try London SW13,’ Nell told Steve. She wanted him gone, then she could think about how to play with search sites.

All the same, when, in a few moments, he had found not only Kate, her address and phone number but also the names of all her neighbours along the avenue, Nell was both horrified and impressed.

‘Is nothing sacred any more?’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t we be more able to press a key to opt in rather than have to register to opt out?’

‘Depends on how you look at it,’ Steve pointed out. ‘It depends on whether you’re the one doing the searching or the one doing the hiding. And it’s all based on the electoral register, which is public anyway.’

‘Hiding’s nothing to do with it. It’s all an unacceptable gatecrashing of privacy, surely.’

‘Only if you’re looking where you shouldn’t be,’ Steve said. ‘Or if you’ve got something you’d prefer not to be known.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Nell said, closing down the computer. ‘It’s all a bit identity-card discussion for me. I think I find it all too Big Brother – and not in the television sense, I mean.’

‘You’re probably right,’ Steve agreed. ‘But anyway, thanks for the coffee and apologies again for invading your territory like this. I hope I’m forgiven?’

‘I suppose so!’ Well of course he was forgiven. Hadn’t he just taught her a possible way of tracking down Patrick?

Nell went with him to the front door. In her mind was the possibility that if she didn’t actually see him go, she might later find him upstairs in a cupboard, from where he’d unapologetically point out her mistake in not watching him leave the premises.

‘And don’t forget …’ Steve turned back at the gate.

‘I know – half an hour later on Tuesday,’ she called.

‘No … I meant get that doorbell fixed!’ He waved, unlocked a mud-splattered blue Audi and drove away.

Ed backed the Fiesta into the minuscule slot that the local Waitrose car-park designers had grudgingly allocated for the undeserving subspecies of ordinary folk who didn’t qualify for either disabled parking or a generous parent-and-child space. There was, he noted as he switched off T. Rex’s ‘Metal Guru’ and opened the car door, barely room to squeeze his normal-size body out between the concrete pillar and the car alongside his. To escape from the tiny gap, he bent the wing mirror inwards and noticed that the driver of the car beside him had done the same. Now he also wished he hadn’t gone in backwards, leaving himself no access to the boot so he could load the shopping. Stupid, he thought. So much for being a bright and brainy academic. He could come up with topics affording hours of debate, such as whether Juliet was the one calling the shots with Romeo, or the significance of motherhood as a theme in Macbeth, yet couldn’t figure out the right way to park at a supermarket. He hoped this wasn’t a senior moment. He wasn’t ready for those yet; he surely wasn’t anywhere near old enough. If Charles was with him he’d be standing over by the trolleys, hand on hip, tutting and smiling in the quiet triumph that only an older sibling can get away with.

Inside Waitrose was the usual bustle of after-work customers hurriedly flinging goods into trolleys and fuming at the slowness of the schoolkids’ shift on the checkouts. Ed, his trolley quickly stocked with smoked salmon, steaks, half a dozen special-offer bottles of Wolf Blass Cab. Sauv. and enough fruit and veg to keep the health police happy, chose his checkout with care. At the end of a working day he didn’t particularly want to have to make conversation over the bag-loading with one of his own A-level students, pleasant enough bunch though they were. He could find plenty to talk to them about if the subject was Hardy’s take on the Industrial Revolution, but he didn’t really want to answer polite questions about what he was doing tonight. Especially as the answer, as too often, was Nothing Special.

Across by the cakes counter, he could see Mimi from next door with one of her schoolfriends, and he wondered what Nell would be doing. There he’d be in his (well, his and Charles’s) house and there she’d be in hers, only the thickness of a wall away. He wondered if she fancied going out sometime, just as mates. She might. Most nights there was a band on at the Bull’s Head in Barnes. He’d been there several times with colleagues from the college. He’d even been on his own. Maybe she’d like that, not that he had a clue as to what sort of music she liked. She might be a folkie, or have fond memories of punk. He’d ask her. It would have to be in a way that didn’t give her the wrong impression, though. He understood from staffroom chat that a newly single woman would be wary of being circled by predators. What was it someone had called it, that approach to a woman who’d been left? Going for the mercy fuck, that was the crude version. That was absolutely not the idea at all.

‘God, Mum, what are you doing? It’s all dark in here!’ Mimi came clattering in through the front door, flung her schoolbag down on a chair and flipped all the light switches on at once. Nell blinked up at her, her startled eyes seeing nothing but silvered stripes and flashes.

‘Mimi – hi! What time is it?’

‘Mum! It’s gone seven! What’s for dinner? Where is it? I’m starving!’ Mimi opened the fridge and scanned the contents, picking up a half-bar of Fruit and Nut chocolate and biting off a square. ‘Jeez, you haven’t even started cooking. It’s going to be ages.’ She crashed around the room, picking up the newspaper, the box of cat food, an empty biscuit pack, slamming them down again, moaning, ‘What are you doing?’ She peered over Nell’s shoulder at the screen.

Nell quickly closed down the computer. ‘I got involved looking something up and lost track of the time. I’ll fix us some pasta and salad and stuff. And where’ve you been till now? Why didn’t you call and tell me you’d be late?’

‘Like you’d have even noticed?’ Mimi smirked. ‘Me and Tess went to the school play auditions. They’re doing Midsummer Night’s Dream, again. They only did it about two years ago, I’m sure. Anyway I’m Mustard-seed. Tess is Moth. She wanted to be Titania and is well fucked about it.’

Nell ignored the choice language in the interests of peacekeeping. ‘Will I have to make a costume? If you need wings, you’ll have to buy some from the fancy-dress place where all the hen-party women get them. I can’t do wings.’

‘Yeah, that I do remember,’ Mimi laughed. ‘You made rubbish ones from a wire coathanger when I was five. I got laughed at, big-time, at that party. It’s probably one of those things I’ll have to tell the psycho when I’m being analysed in rehab about my broken home.’

‘Is that how you think of it? Is this a broken home?’ How dreadful that sounded: as if domestic comfort, security, could be smashed like a precious vase. Nell didn’t have the sort that was financially valuable in mind; more the type of appealing, clumsy pottery that had deep sentimental attachment, something lovingly squidged together in a school art class perhaps (and which you kept forgetting leaked, until you put a bunch of daffodils in it), or a holiday souvenir invested with the kind of memories that made you smile. You grieved when things like that got broken. With valuable items, you just phoned the insurance company and welcomed the cash as an excuse for glitzy shoes.

‘Well … no, not really. Not specially.’ Mimi fidgeted with the strap of her schoolbag. ‘But years down the line, I don’t know, I’ll have to blame something and someone if life goes all wrong, won’t I?’

Nell hugged her, risking being pushed away with the usual resounding, ‘God, Mum, gerroff’. ‘Mimi, there’s no reason why it should all go wrong. Don’t even think about that!’

Mimi allowed herself to be held close for another moment before breaking away, ‘Yeah, well, I bet you didn’t think it would all go wrong either, when you and Dad got together. You must have been a hundred per cent sure it would all be all right for ever and ever or you wouldn’t have married him, would you?’

Nell laughed, to put off having to come up with a good reply. ‘Hey, life’s not a fairy tale,’ she said. ‘Happy ever after happens, but there’s a lot in the middle between the meeting and the long-term living. Give it a chance, don’t get bitter because of us.’

‘Can we have a takeout?’ Mimi’s attention was back on hunger.

‘Yes, good idea. What do you fancy? Indian?’

‘Ooh yeah. Sick.’

‘Huh? Do I take that as a no or a yes?’ Youth-speak – it could mean anything.

‘No – it’s a yes. A top yes. Keep up, Ma. Can it be soon? I only had a tuna melt for lunch, nothing since. I’m dying here.’ Mimi collapsed dramatically into a chair, holding her stomach and making agonized expressions. Nell suspected this was more to do with her being the one of the two of them who didn’t intend to go out in the dark, up to the high street to the Delhi Durbar to pick up the food. She needn’t have bothered – Nell didn’t particularly want her to be wandering up the road on her own in the dark, not with legs that long, hair that blonde, with a skirt that short, with her youth, her beauty and a world full of lions prowling out there.

‘OK. Korma? Naan? The cucumber thing?’

‘And the big crisps?’

‘Yes, I’ll get them. I’ll phone the order and go now. Warm some plates, find chutney, all the usual.’

‘Mmm, sure,’ Mimi murmured vaguely, flipping the kitchen television down from its under-shelf position and aiming the remote control at it. She settled back in her chair, tucking her feet under her, looking certain to be still in the same position when Nell came home again. Nell called the restaurant and ordered the food, then grabbed her keys, her phone and her credit card and headed out of the door. The order wouldn’t be ready by the time she got there, but she quite fancied a bottle of Cobra and a quick read through showbiz gossip in a trashy newspaper.

She was halfway through a fascinating piece on best choices for a fantasy royal edition of Celebrity Big Brother when Ed walked into the restaurant.

‘Hey, we’ve had the same idea. I did a full-scale Waitrose stock-up tonight and then couldn’t face cooking anything,’ he said, after putting in his order and coming to join her at the table kept for takeaway customers. ‘Fancy another beer?’

‘No thanks, I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t be bothered to cook either. There’s a lot to be said for the eighteenth-century days when you didn’t even possess a kitchen but just wandered up to the local bakehouse for pigeon and oyster pie and a gossip with Mrs Miggins. I suppose this is the twenty-first century equivalent.’

‘Could be. One day fish and chips, then pizza, Chinese on Fridays and so on. It could be done, just.’

‘But only if you live somewhere conveniently urban. I bet you couldn’t live like that down at your place in Dorset, could you?’

Ed laughed. ‘No – not unless you were keen on cold food and a long, winding drive. They only deliver up to five miles so that’s not an option either.’

‘Other things make up for it though, I suppose?’

‘Oh yes – the nudist beach over on the Isle of Purbeck has an ice-cream stall that can’t be beaten. You should come down one weekend, see for yourself.’

‘What, the nudists? Not sure it’s my thing! Is it compulsory?’

‘No, definitely not!’ he laughed. ‘And the cottage is further west, only just into Dorset. It’s on the edge of a village; what an estate agent would call secluded but not totally isolated. The perfect bolthole. I’m going down on Friday night for the weekend, to catch up with Tamsin for a bit of father-daughter bonding.’

‘How’s she doing? Is she still writing crime fiction?’

‘Oh yes. Still profiting from crime, still living with the same dipstick who can’t be arsed to get up before noon on the grounds that he is “creative” – if you can call it that, welding iron railings together in random form and calling the result something pretentiously poncy like “a rare peaceful outcome from one tender deed in time of war”.’

‘Do you think of the cottage or the house here as your main home?’

‘Oh the cottage – definitely. I’m a voter there, I take better care of the garden there. It’s all done the way I want it, unlike here. This house was our mother’s – it feels like an old person’s domain and frankly, since she’s been dead, Charles has definitely started turning into the resident old person in her place. Now it’s six months since she went, I’m thinking of looking for another job so I can live down there full-time. I’ll still come up to see him, check he’s OK, obviously, but … well, this has always been just somewhere I work.’

‘But you’ve got friends here. A social life.’ Ed knew everyone in the road, Nell thought. He went to everyone’s parties, and would surely be – if you had to have a ballot on it – the neighbour who’d most be missed.

‘I’ve got all that there too. This is only the half of me. Like I said, you should come and visit. Bring Mimi. Tell her we do have electricity and running water and some rudimentary television reception.’

‘Maybe …’ Nell wondered about this. Ed had never invited her and Alex to his cottage when they’d been a couple. What was this? Just a neighbourly gesture? Yes. That would be it. And besides, he probably simply hadn’t liked Alex. Which must mean he did like her. Well, that was always good to know. Very cheering.

Her order was ready. Nell picked up the bag of food and said goodbye to Ed. She walked home on the better-lit side of the road, her key between her fingers ready to cause serious (but justifiable, according to Steve) injury to anyone who had thoughts of attacking her. No way would she give up a chicken Madras without a fight.