Cuckoo (33 page)

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Authors: Julia Crouch

Tags: #Fiction

BOOK: Cuckoo
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‘So Tiger got sent home again,’ Anna said.
 
‘Please don’t speak with your mouth full, Anna.’ Rose touched her on the wrist.
 
‘He punched Sammy in the face,’ Yannis said.
 
‘Not hard enough,’ Nico muttered.
 
‘It made his nose bleed, though,’ Anna reassured Simon, who winced.
 
‘What do you mean, not hard enough, Nico?’ Rose asked.
 
‘He was saying stuff about our mum,’ Yannis said.
 
‘Shut up, Yan,’ Nico said.
 
‘What sort of stuff?’ Rose gently put herself between the boys.
 
‘He said—’
 
‘Shut UP!’ Nico yelled at his little brother. ‘It doesn’t matter
what
he said. He shouldn’t have
said
anything.’
 
‘Well, whatever he said, he didn’t deserve to be hit,’ Rose said.
 
‘He fucking did. And Tiger didn’t deserve to be sent home. He was being a mate,’ Nico grumbled.
 
‘And Sammy
is
a shit, Rose,’ Yannis said earnestly.
 
‘Quite possibly so, I suppose.’ Rose looked down at her hands. She just didn’t have the energy to draw a conclusion from all this. Unusually, the ability to make it into a lesson for the children escaped her.
 
The room fell into an awkward silence, with just the sound of Flossie breathing heavily as she tried to cram a squashed-up ball of chocolate cake into her mouth.
 
‘Well then – who wants to watch a DVD?’ Simon clapped his hands. ‘We’ve got a top quality pirate of
Pirates of the Caribbean Four
. You can even see the people getting up to leave the cinema to pee!’
 
‘Yess!’ Liam and Effie stood on their chairs and punched the air. Evidently this dodgy sort of DVD was a top treat in their household. The Tiger business was forgotten as the children bundled through to what Simon called the screening room – in reality just a second living room with a laptop projector trained on a large white wall.
 
‘Now then, me hearties,’ Simon said as the children made themselves comfortable on the velvet beanbags that were scattered around the carpet. ‘When you see signs of a getting up to pee-er, you’ve got to go
Harr Harrrrr
, OK? And there’ll be Seaworthy Simon’s special toffee popcorn for them as stay quiet except for that – all right, me hearties?’
 
‘Aye aye, Cap’n,’ the twins saluted. Even Nico couldn’t help a smile. The DVD started and soon the children settled down into a concentrated silence.
 
Rose and Simon went back to the kitchen.
 
‘That’s bought us a bit of undisturbed time, thank God,’ he said. ‘Those boys are something of a handful.’
 
‘Tell me about it,’ Rose said. ‘Do you mind if I feed Floss?’
 
‘There’s no better sight.’ Simon got up to make more tea. Rose unbuttoned her shirt and latched Flossie on, then looked around at the drifts of clutter, the half-finished projects by the twins. There was a miniature garden in a shallow dish, with moss pressed down into earth to make grass. There was a papier-mâché and posterpaint fort, with plastic soldiers guarding toilet-roll ramparts. Rose remembered how the Annexe had been full of similar efforts, and she sighed as she tried to remember the last time she and Anna had sat down to get on with something with no one else around, no bickering boys, no clamouring baby.
 
‘Is everything all right, Rose?’ Simon sat down next to her and put a mug of tea by her side.
 
‘What do you mean?’ She jumped out of her daydream.
 
‘You just seem a little – disconnected today. It’s not because of me and her, is it?’
 
‘What? Oh, no. Like I said, that’s all forgotten.’
 
‘What’s on your mind, then?’
 
‘Oh, nothing. I’m probably just a bit tired out. Still not quite got into the swing again after the hospital stay. And the worry. You know, about Flossie.’
 
‘Of course.’ Simon drank his tea and looked closely at Rose. ‘Everything’s OK at home besides that, then? Between you and Gareth, I mean?’
 
‘Of course,’ Rose blurted out. ‘We’re rock solid.’
 
‘Of course.’ Simon looked down.
 
‘Always have been. Nothing wrong there,’ she said.
 
‘Good. And how’s things with Polly?’
 
‘Fine.’
 
‘Any sign of her moving on?’
 
‘Possibly. After last night – but, it’s her shout, you know?’
 
‘Yes.’
 
‘I can’t make her do what she’s not ready for.’
 
‘Of course.’ Simon let his gaze wander out of the window. Then, as if making a decision, he turned back to Rose and, reaching across the table, he grabbed her hand.
 
‘Rose. You have got to get her out of your house. You are being set up for a disaster, Rose. She’s dangerous.’
 
‘You’re just saying that because you got hurt.’
 
‘Possibly, but I’ve got eyes in my head and I know what I see. I’ve had to listen to her talking about you two when you’re not around to hear. Get her out, Rose.’
 
‘I don’t want to listen to this, Simon.’
 
He got up and went round to her side of the table. He sat next to her and held her by the shoulders. ‘Look, Rose, I’ll spare you the details, but I can’t say it strongly enough. Get her out of your life. If there’s an applecart, she’ll upset it. She’s already got mine toppled all over the place. I’m not just being selfish – although it’d do me no end of good if she weren’t just down the road. This is because of you, my dear friend, and I don’t want you upset as well. Regroup, get her out.’
 
Liam bounced through to the kitchen. ‘Oy, Dad, where’s our popcorn?’
 
Simon moved away slightly. ‘Coming, Lee. Just doing it.’
 
‘Get on with it, then, Dad,’ Liam said, disappearing back into the screening room. ‘We’ve got Greek boys waiting!’
 
‘I don’t want to hear any more,’ Rose said, straightening her back and stroking Flossie’s cheek.
 
‘Just ask yourself, Rose. How does a baby take all those pills, eh?’
 
‘It was an accident, Si.’ But even saying it, Rose flushed.
 
‘And Rose,’ said Simon, getting up to haul out his heavy-based pan for popcorn. ‘Where is Polly now?’
 
‘Gareth took her to Bath,’ Rose said. ‘To get guitar strings.’
 
Simon looked at Rose for a moment, then turned to make his special toffee sauce for the popcorn for the children.
 
Thirty
 
Simon gave them all supper, a quick tuna pasta bake. Rose tried to call Gareth to tell him to come over and join them, and to bring Polly too, if she felt like it. But his mobile was off, and he wasn’t picking up the landline.
 
It was gone eight when Rose and the children got back to The Lodge – later than she had planned, but it was a Friday, so there was no school the next day. The house was dark and the car wasn’t in the driveway. Polly and Gareth were still out.
 
She went to the place around the side of the Annexe to switch the outside lights on so that they could see their way down to the house, cursing as she stepped in something that she thought might be a pile of animal mess.
 
When she flipped the switch, she saw the full horror of what she had felt underfoot.
 
‘Look away, Anna!’ she gasped.
 
But it was too late. Anna had seen Manky, or what remained of Manky, in the driveway just outside the Annexe, underneath where the Galaxy usually sat. Something had got hold of him and torn him to bits, so that at first Rose had thought Polly might have dropped a red-lined fur stole on her way to or from the car.
 
But no, the mangled mat of fur, blood and viscera was her faithful old cat. Whatever had killed him had left his head intact, so she could tell.
 
Anna screamed, turned away and vomited tuna, pasta, chocolate cake and popcorn into Rose’s vegetable patch. Nico and Yannis squatted by the pitiful corpse, wrinkling their noses in disgust, but unable to look away.
 
‘It must be the fox,’ Rose said, helping Anna away towards the house, trying to find an explanation. ‘Or a badger, perhaps. I’ve heard they can be quite vicious with cats.’
 
‘Foxy wouldn’t hurt Manky, though,’ Anna sobbed.
 
‘Come on, boys,’ Rose said. She felt very cold, and very tired.
 
 
‘I want to sleep with you tonight, Mum,’ Anna said, as Rose towelled her dry after a troubled bath.
 
‘Of course. You, me and Floss will all sleep together,’ she said. She would be glad of it. She didn’t want to let anything else precious out of her sight tonight.
 
She tucked Anna and Flossie into her bed, then went to switch off the boys’ light. Nico was reading and didn’t look up, but Yannis peered, pale and tiny, from the folds of his duvet.
 
‘Rose,’ Yannis said, his voice very small. ‘Is there a cat heaven for Manky to go to?’
 
‘I’m not sure, Yannis,’ she said. She wasn’t feeling very generous. ‘I’m not so sure about anything,’ she went on, and he put his fists to his eyes.
 
‘Goodnight,’ she said and turned the light out.
 
She went down to the kitchen, turned on all the lights and opened a bottle of wine. It was the second of the evening – she and Simon had shared one earlier.
 
Standing vigil in the middle of the room, she looked up at the Annexe, willing the car to return as she drained her glass and refilled it.
 
By the time she had reached the end of the bottle, there was still no sign of the Galaxy. She realised her legs were aching from standing still. She was also drunk, cold and weary. She took herself upstairs to her girls and, tucking herself under the duvet, lay down between them.
 
 
‘Rose, Rose.’ Gareth was shaking her awake. ‘Hey, Rose.’
 
She had been dreaming of falling down a sort of Alice in Wonderland hole, where scenes of her life were playing out in layers: here was her mother, being stern about something Rose had done wrong; there was Christos, smiling with the sun in his eyes as he lay beside her; there was Manky, running around after a toy Anna had made; there was the baby being taken away.
 
She landed with a bump in the bed. ‘Where were you?’ she whispered.
 
‘I’m so sorry. We bumped into Dave Morgan, and he took me and Polly round to his studio.’
 
‘Who?’ Rose was bleary.
 
‘You know, Dave the sound guy – with the studio in Lansdown? He’d heard about the gig. Looks like he and Polly are going to work something out. I tried calling. Did you get my answerphone message?’
 
Rose couldn’t work out why she hadn’t thought to check. But then she remembered. ‘Manky . . .’
 
‘Manky?’
 
‘You’ll have to clear him up, Gareth. I can’t do it.’
 
‘What do you mean?’
 
‘He’s dead.’
 
‘What?’
 
‘In the driveway. You probably didn’t see. You probably parked the car over him.’
 
‘God.’
 
‘He was attacked, he’s—’ And Rose started shaking, until she couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.
 
Moving Flossie to the other side of her, Gareth sat and held her close, stroking her hair, until she was done.
 
‘He was part of me.’
 
‘I know.’
 
‘I don’t know what to do, Gareth.’
 
‘I’ll deal with him, love. Don’t worry about a thing.’ He lifted Flossie and put her into Rose’s arms. ‘You take your girls and get some sleep now. Don’t worry about me. I’ll bed down in the studio. And don’t go out in the morning until I’ve sorted it all out, OK?’
 
‘OK,’ Rose said, allowing herself to be tucked in like a child. It took a while to stop shivering, to stop the pictures of her rippedapart cat playing themselves on her eyelids, but in the end, she fell again into a deep, black sleep. This time there were no dreams. Nothing at all.

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