Rambling. Definitely rambling. He needed to be in hospital, and quickly, but she moved well out of reach before she extracted her cellphone from her bag, dialled the emergency services and asked for an ambulance. They wanted details. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know who he is. He broke into my house and he’s fallen in the kitchen…’
‘It’s not your house!’ he yelled. ‘It’s mine!’
‘Head injury?’ she repeated distractedly as the ambulance dispatcher probed for details. Had he been watching the house? Had he seen Carenza leave and thought it was empty? He was regarding her angrily, but he hadn’t moved an inch. Unconvinced by this evidence of co-operation, she stepped further back into the hall, leaving a milky footprint on the carpet. More mess. More bother. ‘Oh, yes, he gashed his forehead on the corner of the kitchen unit… Yes, he’s conscious, but he seems to be a bit odd…not quite making sense… I thought maybe he was, you know, on something…’ He groaned. She ignored him. ‘Would you? And you’ll inform the police. Thank you so much.’ She hung up and returned to the kitchen, standing in the doorway, unwilling to get any nearer. One close encounter had been quite enough. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
‘Tell me,’ he asked, finally managing to heave himself into a sitting position and propping himself up against a cupboard, ‘are you mad, or is it me?’ He sounded quite serious, as if he really wanted to know.
Unwilling to say anything that might agitate him further, Jessie kept her distance, although her knees were shaking so much that if she didn’t sit down soon, she’d probably collapse in a heap right where she was. ‘Just keep still. I’m sure they’ll be here soon,’ she said, with a lot more calm conviction than she felt.
‘Are you? I hope you’re right. Tell me, where did that cat come from?’
Mao, having enjoyed the free spillage of milk and toyed with the yolk of one of the eggs, was now carefully washing his face. Jessie watched him for a moment. There was something almost hypnotic about the delicate, repetitive movements… ‘I don’t know. He belongs to the owner of the house.’ She turned to him. ‘It’s one of the reasons she was desperate for someone to move in. She needed someone to look after him. It must have been a bit of shock to discover the house wasn’t empty after all.’
‘You could say that. Especially since this is my house.’
He was worse than she thought. Much worse. Jessie glanced at her watch, wondering how long it would take the ambulance to arrive. ‘This is your house, is it?’ she asked in what sounded, even to her own ears, a patronising attempt to humour him.
‘Yes, madam, it is,’ he said, sharply. ‘And you can believe me when I tell you that I hate cats. And so does my dog. So maybe you’d like to explain what you’re doing here?’ Dog? He had a dog? She glanced around nervously. That was all she needed, a burglar who modelled himself on that Dickensian prototype Bill Sykes. But there was no slavering bull-terrier waiting to tear her limb from limb and Jessie, praying fervently for the early arrival of someone to remove this madman from her home, decided that humouring him would be the safest course.
‘I’d love to—’
‘Why don’t you start by telling me—?’
Upstairs, Bertie began to cry. She could have kissed him. Would kiss him. Right now. ‘I’d love to stop and chat but I have to see to the baby.’
‘Baby?’ He looked, she thought, as if he’d been struck a second blow. ‘You’ve got a baby? Here?’
‘He’s teething, poor soul,’ she said, beating a hasty retreat, stumbling over the bag her unwelcome caller had left in the hall. It was black and expensive and clearly very heavy. He’d probably stolen it and stuffed it full of the loot at a house he’d broken into earlier. ‘Just stay put and the ambulancemen will be with you any minute.’ She turned, put the front door on the latch so that whichever of the emergency services got there first could let themselves in, and bolted upstairs.
Bertie was intermittently bawling and stuffing his fist into his mouth. Jessie threw on the first things that came to hand and then she picked him up. He needed changing. The nappies were downstairs. In the kitchen. It figured.
Baby? Patrick grabbed hold of the edge of the sink and hauled himself to his feet, doing his best to ignore the thumping pain in his head, the rush of nausea. That was the smell. Warm milk, baby cream, talc, that stuff Bella had used to sterilise bottles. That was the scent that had eluded him. How could he have forgotten it?
He’d come back after the funeral and it had seemed to fill the house. It had taken him months to get rid of it. He’d got to the point where he’d thought he’d have to move. But in the end he’d realised that the smell existed more in his head than in reality. A faint ghost of his lost family that would forever haunt him. Moving would have been pointless.
Where the hell was Carenza? He clutched onto the sink for a moment while the kitchen spun around him, determined that whatever happened he wouldn’t be sick. When he felt strong enough to risk opening his eyes, he discovered that he was being regarded suspiciously by a uniformed policeman.
‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘Officer, there’s a mad-woman in my house. She hit me with a cricket bat.’
‘Why don’t you sit down, sir? The ambulance will be here in just a moment.’ He didn’t need a second invitation to sink into the nearest chair. His trousers squelched damply beneath him. ‘Maybe, while I’m waiting we could just deal with the details? If you feel up to it. Shall we start with your name?’
‘Shouldn’t you caution me?’ he demanded.
‘Just for the record, sir.’
He let it go. ‘Dalton. Patrick Dalton.’
The man made a note. ‘And your address?’
‘Twenty-seven Cotswold Street.’
‘That’s this address, sir.’
‘That’s right. My name is Patrick Dalton and I live here,’ he said, slowly and carefully. ‘This is my home,’ he added, just to make the point.
The man made a note, then turned as the front door opened. ‘The medics have arrived. We’ll sort all this out later, sir, down at the hospital.’
Patrick recognised the calming tone of a policeman confronted with a man he thinks is crazy. A policeman covering himself with excessive politeness in case he was wrong. He considered telling the man that he was a barrister, a Queen’s Counsel, and that he’d find him listed… But his head was throbbing too much to bother. Hospital first, explanations later.
Then he’d take great pleasure in telling that woman to take her baby and her cat and get out of his house—right after she’d told him where he could find Carenza.
‘Would you like to tell me what happened, miss?’ The policeman stood by impassively while Jessie tried to change Bertie with fingers that didn’t seem capable of removing the peel-back strips from the tapes of the disposal nappy.
She’d been calm, very calm under the circumstances, but reaction was about to set in and she was nothing but jelly. The policeman, seeing her difficulty, helped her out while she explained, haltingly, what had happened.
‘Mr Dalton said you hit him with
