Bloody Horowitz (18 page)

Her heart leapt. An image had appeared on the screen of a beautiful country house on its own grounds. There were two people standing in front of it. They could have been anybody's grandparents, white-haired and smiling. Underneath them a caption had been written on a yellow ribbon in flowing letters:
An orphanage in the English countryside.

There was just one paragraph of text, but it told Jennifer everything she wanted to know.

Jennifer felt a flood of relief. She wasn't an orphan—at least, not in the strictest sense of the word—but she was certainly being exploited and killed. Quickly, she pulled up some pictures of Eastcott. Although it wasn't the prettiest of villages, it was situated in glorious countryside, right on the edge of Salisbury Plain. It had a village green and a handful of shops. Jennifer could already imagine herself growing up here. There would be other orphans. She would make new friends. And in time she would forget all about Watford and her parents.

But would the Pettigrews bid enough to save her? The auction was due to end on Sunday night at ten o'clock. It was now almost seven o'clock on Saturday and they were only one hundred dollars ahead of the competition. The bidding didn't change again, and at nine o'clock Jennifer was sent to bed. Her mother, still clutching a tissue, read her a bedtime story, but her eyes never left the book and when she kissed her daughter, she avoided her eyes. Jane Bailey was ashamed of herself. And, Jennifer thought, she had every right to be.

Jennifer hardly slept at all that night. Once, at one in the morning, she got up and rebooted the computer, but it only confirmed her worst fears. Dr. MacNeil, the man who wanted to cut her up for medical experiments, was back in the lead with $5,000. The Pettigrews hadn't returned to the auction and Jennifer was certain they had forgotten her.

The next morning, at first light, she returned to the screen, but nothing had changed. It was a Sunday and as usual her parents went to church, but Jennifer stayed behind, pretending she had the flu. All day, she sat at her computer and watched as Dr. MacNeil, Ethan Kyte and Sawney Bean fought over her. By the evening, it looked as if her future lay in haute cuisine . . . the London restaurant had raised the bidding to $7,500. At least the coven of witches had dropped out. After their $4,500 bid had been beaten, they hadn't bothered to come back. Presumably they would just have to find someone cheaper for their blood sacrifice.

At eight o'clock she was on the operating table.

At nine o'clock, with a price tag of $9,000, she was the main course.

Still nothing from the orphanage.

The restaurant had one last try at half past nine. With thirty minutes until the end of bidding, it went to $9,500.

Dr. MacNeil didn't respond.

Five minutes to ten. Jennifer had cried so much she thought she was empty, but even so, the tears came from somewhere. She could imagine herself tied up in an oven. Maybe they would put an apple in her mouth. She just hoped she would give whoever ate her food poisoning.

And then, with one minute to spare, the miracle happened. The Pettigrews returned with an offer of $10,000. Jennifer could imagine her father gloating at that sum of money. She had reached five figures! But she didn't care. Surely this had to be the last word. The orphanage was taking her. Somehow they had found the necessary funds and she was going to be saved.

The minute hand on her Barbie alarm clock ticked to ten o'clock. The sheBay screen flashed red. The sale had closed. Gerald and Samantha Pettigrew of the Tall Trees orphanage in Wiltshire had won.

Things happened very quickly after that. Jeremy Bailey received a check in the mail and went straight to the bank to cash it while Jane Bailey packed her daughter's bags and bought her a single rail ticket to Pewsey. Apparently Eastcott was too small to have a station of its own. A few days later—once the check had cleared—a taxi came to the house to take her to Paddington, where she would catch the train.

Her parents stood awkwardly by the front door.

“Well, good-bye, my dear,” her father said. “Don't think too badly of us. We did try to be good parents.”

“We did everything we could,” Jane sobbed.

“Maybe things will go a bit better for us and one day we'll be able to buy you back.”

“I don't want to come back!” Jennifer cut in—and her voice was cold. “I don't ever want to see you again and I'll never forgive you for what you've done.”

Her father went pale. Her mother began to cry all the harder.

“I'll have a much happier life without you, if you want the honest truth,” Jennifer went on. “I always thought your garden business was stupid. And I hated living here. I'm really glad this has happened. I'd much rather be with the orphans than with you. I'm an orphan now myself. Good-bye!”

She got into the taxi and was swept away.

The journey to Pewsey took a little over an hour. Jennifer had brought a book with her, but she spent most of the time looking out of the window, watching as the grayness and graffiti of London was replaced by the lush green of the English countryside. She wondered if there might be any other orphans on the train, but although she went up and down the corridor a couple of times, she seemed to be the only child traveling alone.

Pewsey station was delightful with its two long platforms, a single footbridge and neatly arranged tubs of flowers. Gerald and Samantha Pettigrew were waiting for her outside the ticket office, and she liked them immediately. He was a short, round-shouldered man with a thick crop of untidy white hair, dressed in an old pinstripe suit missing some of its buttons. Samantha was taller than her husband, wearing a loose dress and Wellington boots. She had a rather long nose with a thin pair of spectacles balanced halfway down. They were both smiling, with a twinkle in their eyes, and they looked even sweeter and kinder than they had in their photograph. Jennifer was bursting with questions as they put her suitcases in the back of their car—a rather muddy Land Rover—and drove her through Pewsey and on toward Devizes.

“Is it far?”

“Not far now.”

“Is there a swing in the garden?”

“Under the chestnut tree!”

“Do the orphans know I'm coming?”

“Oh yes. They're very excited.”

They reached Salisbury Plain, which sloped up, huge and empty, on their left. Ahead of them lay the village of Urchfont with its pretty duck pond and thatched cottages. The road twisted through open fields and centuries-old woodland with Eastcott ahead of them until at last they turned into the driveway of Tall Trees. And there it was, an old black-and-white manor house with oak beams and roses climbing up between the windows. The car pulled up. The Pettigrews got out.

“Shall I bring my luggage?” Jennifer asked.

“No. Come inside, dear,” Mrs. Pettigrew trilled. “We can see to all that later.”

Jennifer hurried through the front door. Several things struck her at the same time. The house had very little furniture inside. The walls and the floor were bare. There was a strange smell in the air. And she could hear something, a sort of deep grumbling, coming from somewhere farther inside.

“This way!” Mr. Pettigrew exclaimed. He threw open a set of double doors. The grumbling became louder. In fact, it was more like growling.

“What is . . . ?” Jennifer began.

But she had already seen what lay on the other side of the doors. There was a deep pit and, far below, a dozen animals were pacing back and forth, their vicious claws scratching against the straw-covered concrete, their eyes glowing hungrily, their bones rippling beneath their orange-and-black fur.

“Here they are!” Mrs. Pettigrew waved a hand over the pit. “Our family of orphans.”

“Orphans?” Jennifer quavered.

“Orphaned Bengal tigers,” Mr. Pettigrew explained. “Babies and young adults. It's terrible how they've been neglected. They would die if they were left on their own. But we look after them, Samantha and me. We let them roam on the grounds. We watch over them. And sometimes, as a special treat, we even get them fresh meat.”

“But . . . but . . . but . . . ,” Jennifer began.

The Pettigrews grabbed hold of her. They were surprisingly strong. She felt herself being lifted off the ground.

“Feeding time!” Mrs. Pettigrew exclaimed.

A moment later, Jennifer was hurtling through the air, diving headfirst toward the waiting pack below.

I never liked Dennis Taylor, not from the start. I didn't like the way he dressed with his blue blazer and silk cravat. I didn't like his mustache. I didn't like the way he laughed at his own jokes. But the very worst thing about him, the thing that made me squirm and wonder how I was going to survive the next ten years, was the fact that he was about to become my stepdad. How could Mum do this to me? Had she gone completely mad?

I had never known my father. He'd left home when I was very young and I didn't find out why. I'm sure my mum would have told me if I'd asked, but I never did. You may think that strange, but the truth is that the two of us were happy together. The life I had was the only one I knew. So why go digging up the past when all it will give you is dust in the eye?

We lived in a small house in Orford, which is right on the coast in Suffolk. There were only two bedrooms, but we didn't need any more as I didn't have any brothers or sisters—just a load of cats that came and went as they pleased. Mum worked part-time in a local hotel. She'd been left quite a bit of money by an eccentric aunt years ago and she'd put it all in the bank for when she needed it. So although we weren't exactly rich, we weren't hard up either.

Mum was actually working at the hotel when she met Dennis. He was looking for a house in Orford . . . he planned to move up from London. Well, one drink led to a chat, a chat led to lunch and soon they were seeing each other on a regular basis.

They got married at St. Bartholemew's Church, which was much too big and drafty for the little congregation that turned up. I was there with my best friend, Matt, and a handful of villagers. Mum's parents were still alive, but they lived in Scotland and she didn't invite them because she was afraid that the journey would be too much for them. Dennis hadn't been married before. He produced a sister who was plain and sulky and a best man who apparently sold shares in the city. That was what Dennis did, by the way. Stocks and shares. He described himself as an entrepreneur. He liked sprinkling his language with French words.

After the service, they flew to Barbados for their honeymoon. Mum would have been happy just going to Cornwall or the Lake District. But Dennis convinced her that they should do something more special. He also persuaded her—he was short of cash—to pay. I watched them leave, their car almost crashing into a white van that turned the corner, coming the other way. At the time, I wondered if there was an omen in that. And in a way, as you will see, I was right.

I stayed with Matt and his parents while they were away, and when they got back I was a little ashamed of myself for being so mean about it all. I was against Dennis. I didn't want Mum to get married. I hadn't wanted them to go to Barbados. But here was Mum, suntanned and as happy as I'd ever remembered her. She'd bought me lots of presents, including earrings, a straw hat, a wrap, a carved wooden tortoise and all sorts of other stuff. She'd also taken hundreds of photos on a camera that Dennis had bought her at duty-free. Seeing her like that, I made a resolution. I wasn't going to complain. I was going to adapt. I had a stepfather now. I was going to make him feel welcome.

It wasn't easy. Dennis didn't buy a house as he had planned. He simply moved into ours, which made sense because selling and buying would have been so expensive, and anyway the market was pretty dead. I didn't say anything. It wasn't as if I was going to have to move out of my room or anything like that. But from that moment, everything changed.

You see, a house has a rhythm. The way people move around in it . . . it's a bit like the workings of a clock. Suddenly, when I wanted to take a shower, Dennis would be there ahead of me. I couldn't wander around the kitchen in my underwear and T-shirt anymore—I had to get dressed for breakfast. I felt uncomfortable watching TV in the evening. If Dennis and Mum were together in the living room, I felt almost like an intruder. And then there were the unfamiliar smells and sounds. Dennis's aftershave. Classic FM blaring out of the radio every morning and Jeremy Paxman, religiously, every night. The dirty clothes that he never put in the laundry bin. Curled-up cigarette ends (yes—he smoked) in the ashtrays.

I'll get used to it, I told myself. I tried to get used to it. Over the next few months I never complained. Christmas came and we had a pleasant enough time together. I had my finals to think about. Mum still seemed happy, although I noticed she was working longer hours at the hotel. Apart from that, Dennis seemed to be looking after her okay.

I forget exactly when I began to realize that things were going wrong. I suppose money was the start of the slide downhill. Isn't it always? Dennis had sold his house in London, but after he'd paid off the mortgage he hardly got anything out of it. Also, his business wasn't going very well. I know that Mum had lent him money from her savings—she'd mentioned it to me—but of course the stock market had taken a dive and all of it was gone. I noticed that bills weren't being paid. There was a pile of them stuck in a corner of the kitchen. Some of them were printed in red ink. Final demands.