along the street, then pulled it to, leaving it unlocked for the old lady as she hurried round the square to find her car. It was hemmed in tightly as usual and the roof had been liberally splattered with bird droppings from the plane tree under which she had parked it. With careful manoeuvring she managed to extricate it and drive back to her flat leaving it double-parked outside. The street door was still open. Frowning, she glanced up and down the road. She couldn’t see Mrs Lal or any of the upstairs people. There was a gang of boys hanging around on the corner, some builders packing ladders and paint pots into a van; two African girls in bright dresses were giggling at them; beyond them she could see a couple of women in black headscarves. No one was near her door; no one who would have been into her house. Pushing the door open carefully, she looked into the hallway. All was quiet. She ran up, taking the stairs two at a time and stopped on the first floor landing which was in deep shadow, the lightbulb broken yet again.
‘Hello?’ she called out nervously. ‘Is there anyone there?’
There was no reply.
With a shaking hand she groped in her pocket for her keys. Before she tried to slot the first into the lock her door swung open. Holding her breath she looked in. Her bags and boxes were still standing in a line where she had left them. The flat was silent but something had changed. Someone had been there; she could sense it. Smell it. She sniffed. Aftershave. And sweat.
‘Will?’ It wasn’t the brand he used, but he was the only person she knew of with a key. Unless she had left the door open. But she hadn’t. She knew she hadn’t. Had she? ‘Will, are you there?’ she enquired shakily – she was poised, ready to run.
There was no reply.
Cautiously she peered into the living room. There was a large bouquet of flowers lying on the coffee table.
Her heart seemed to stop beating. Frozen, like a rabbit in the headlights, she stared round the room.
‘Will?’ Her voice was trembling.
There was no sound. Even in her panic she could feel the emptiness of the flat.
‘Will?’ Her mouth dry, she tiptoed to her bedroom door. There was no one there. The neatly made bed, the tidy surfaces, the half-drawn curtains were all as she had left them. She turned and went to glance into the kitchen and bathroom. Both were empty. No one appeared to have been in there. Her boxes by the door had not been touched as far as she could see. Whoever had been into the flat in the short time she had been away, had gone. Pushing the front door closed she took a deep breath and went back to the flowers. There was a card tucked in amongst the pink and blue petals of the shop-bought chrysanthemums in their swathes of pink Cellophane and ribbon. With shaking hands she pulled it out and opened it.
We two, that with so many thousand sighs Did buy each other, must poorly sell ourselves With the rude brevity and discharge of one. Injurious time now with a robber’s haste Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how. As many farewells as be stars in heaven, With distinct breath and consign’d kisses to them, He fumbles up into a loose adieu, And scants us with a single famish’d kiss, Distanced with the salt of broken tears.
Thanks for everything, cheers, Ash.
Underneath he had scrawled, Your door was open. Sorry to miss you. A x
Ash had been in her flat. Not Will. Ash, quoting from Troilus and Cressida. He must have been watching, waiting for her to go out so he could sneak in. She closed her eyes with a shudder.
It took ten minutes to load the car, racing up and down the flights of stairs with her boxes and cases, constantly scanning the pavements. At last everything was in. She went back to the flat one last time and glanced round to check she hadn’t forgotten anything. Just the flowers. With a grimace of disgust she picked them up and rammed them head first into the waste bin. She threw the card in after them, ran out of the flat, double-locked the door behind her and headed into the car.
Slamming down the door locks, she sank down behind the wheel taking deep breaths to try and calm her panic. ‘All over. He’s not here. He won’t know where I’m going. I’ll be safe.’ She was whispering the words out loud as she rammed the key into the ignition and turned it.
As the old Ford Ka bumped up the track towards the house Jess peered through the windscreen at her sister’s small sprawling farmstead nestling against the wooded hillside and felt a sudden wave of intense happiness and relief. The feeling wavered a little as she turned into the courtyard and switched off the engine. Where was Steph’s car? The house was empty. She was too late. Steph had already gone – why else would the front door be closed? She had never seen it closed before in all the time Steph had lived there, even in winter.
Climbing out, stiff after the long drive, she stared round. Fighting off a wave of sudden loneliness she went to look for the key. It was in its usual hiding place, cocooned in cobwebs, a sign of how seldom it had been used, under a terracotta pot in the porch. As she bent to pick it up an indignant swallow swooped out of the nest tucked into the shadows above her head, leaving a row of sullen babies, half-fledged and bursting out of the nest leaning out, glaring down at her.
She pushed the key into the lock and turning it with difficulty, opened the door and went in. The house was eerily silent.
Her sister was a sociable woman. In the past when Jess had visited, the place had always been full of people – artists and writers fleeing the town, ex boyfriends and husbands who all appeared to be on astonishingly good terms with her sister, fellow teachers from the west London art college where Steph had taught for ten years before retiring to her pottery, people she had picked up on her travels, animals who followed her home, together with waifs and strays their mother had met on her research trips and blithely redirected to her daughter in Wales. As Jess unloaded the car and cautiously began to explore the house which would be her kingdom for the summer, she was expecting at any moment to see a sleepy face peering at her from one of the bedrooms, a stray cat, a motherless lamb, a homeless artist. There was no one. The house was neat and tidy and empty. On the kitchen table there was a note with a box of nougat.
Sorry I’m not here to welcome you. Enjoy the peace. Stay as long as you like. I mean it. Wine in fridge. See you some time. S xxx
She chose the largest of the spare rooms to make her own. It had a double bed with a patchwork quilt, an antique pine chest and an old French armoire with a beautiful if threadbare Afghan rug on the polished oak boards, plenty of space for her books and its own quaint old bathroom set in what must have once been another bedroom behind the huge chimney breast. Carefully she put the smaller of her plants, an exuberant Flaming Katy in full scarlet flower, on the windowsill. The other plant, a mother-in-law’s tongue given her by Will, which had barely escaped with its life after their break up, when she had still been throwing things about, she put in the bathroom, a room large enough for an antique dressing table and an ancient creaking settle covered by an exotic crimson shawl, and yet another bookcase beside the free-standing bath.
She wandered round the rest of the house, the sitting room with its open hearth swept and filled with dried flowers, the dining room with its refectory table, so often crammed with talking, arguing, noisy people. Steph’s cooking was adventurous and not always terribly successful – she was frequently rescued from her culinary crises by more talented visitors who didn’t seem to mind
