Cuckoo (53 page)

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Authors: Julia Crouch

Tags: #Fiction

BOOK: Cuckoo
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Nothing happened.
 
‘Gareth!’ she cried. ‘Gareth!’
 
‘Oh, Rose. See what you’ve gone and done now?’
 
Rose looked up to see Polly standing over her, her hands on her hips, that faint smile still on her face. For a second or two, Rose couldn’t move. Her mind was blank except for the fact that she needed to act quickly. Then like an animal running for shelter, she scrabbled to her feet and fled across to the pantry, slamming the door behind her and drawing the bolt so that Polly couldn’t get in. She stood there, panting, until she could breathe again.
 
What
had
she done?
 
It dawned on her that she had run into a trap. If she was going to get out of there, not only was she going to have to face the horror of what had happened to Gareth, she was going to have to deal with Polly, the creator of it all. She was running on instinct now, on the need to preserve the self. Casting around the room, her eyes fell on the gun. Gareth’s gun. He had put it up on the top shelf, no doubt in some feeble attempt to hide it. The fool. It was completely visible up there behind the few jars of apple chutney that had escaped Polly’s pantry purge.
 
Clambering onto the work surface, she pulled herself up by her fingertips, levering herself like a mountaineer against the shelves. She could just about reach the gun, although when she pulled it down, it brought one of the chutney jars crashing along with it. The sticky gloop splattered all over the slate tiles. Rose was nearly beyond caring about the mess, although she still added clearing up the chutney to her mental list of tasks. Using some skill she didn’t know she possessed, possibly something that had lodged in her from some film or other, she cracked open the gun. It appeared to be loaded. This was a good thing, she thought.
 
She put her ear against the bolted door. All was quiet in the kitchen. Who knew what she would find when she went back in there? All she hoped was that the children were still outside.
 
Holding the gun up to her chest, she eased the door open and edged back into the room. Gareth was still on the floor, where she had left him, and he was as still as ever. She would get back to him after she had finished with Polly.
 
‘I was wondering when you were going to come out of there,’ Polly said.
 
Rose wheeled round to see her, back in the armchair. For the first time, she saw that sick little smile waver as Polly clocked the gun.
 
‘What are you doing, Rose?’ Polly said, standing up.
 
‘Stay there!’ Rose barked, and Polly put her hands up and stood still, rooted to her spot.
 
Rose edged over to the back door and locked it. Pointing the gun at Polly, she moved around the room, drawing the curtains. Finally, she locked the front door. Now there was no danger of the children coming in. She could do what she wanted now.
 
‘What are you going to do, Rose?’ Polly asked again.
 
Rose circled round to face Polly, pointing the gun straight at her. She lined the sight up so that it was level with Polly’s forehead. She had always been a good shot at funfairs with rubber ducks and the like. She was confident her aim was going to be true.
 
‘Rose, I don’t know what you think was going on, but really, everything I have ever done has been in your best interest,’ Polly said.
 
‘Hah,’ Rose snorted.
 
‘It’s true. How on earth could it be otherwise?’ Polly said quickly. ‘We go back so far, Rose . . .’
 
‘I’ve heard all this before,’ Rose said. ‘I’m bored of it.’
 
‘Rose. You think this is irretrievable, don’t you? You think you’re in so deep that you might as well finish me off and have done with it, don’t you?’
 
Rose said nothing. She just reaffirmed her position with the gun and unhooked the safety, curling her finger tight around the trigger.
 
‘I was the only witness to this, Rose. The only witness.’ Rose could see Polly’s mind working with the desperation of the doomed. She wasn’t going to be taken in by it.
 
‘Exactly,’ Rose murmured.
 
‘But don’t you see? You didn’t kill Gareth. He fell. It was an accident. An
accident
, Rose.’
 
Rose felt the waves of breathlessness coming over her again. She adjusted her stance and did her best to remain steady with the gun.
 
‘It was an accident! A horrible accident. You can walk away from this if you want.’ Polly looked relieved at the thoughts that were occurring to her. ‘The girls will still have you. But – but if you shoot me now, there’s
no way
you’ll get away with it. Think what a waste that will be! All those four children with no parent to speak of. If not for me, then for them, Rose. Put the gun down. Look! We can do it!’
 
And, her hands still up, Polly edged round the room. Rose kept the gun trained on her, as she reached the bloodied onyx eggs. Facing Rose and squatting down, her back straight, Polly picked them up.
 
‘Don’t panic,’ she said as Rose hitched the gun again. ‘I’m just going to take them over to the sink and clean them. Look.’
 
Holding the eggs up in her scrawny little arms, Polly backed round to the sink and, using a J-Cloth and Ecover, she removed every trace of blood from them. Then she dried them on a tea-towel.
 
‘Put them back in the basket,’ Rose said, and Polly did so, climbing on a chair to put the basket back in its place on the dresser.
 
‘There.’ She turned and beamed at her friend. ‘All back how it was.’
 
Shaking, Rose let the gun down. She broke it open and emptied it of its cartridges.
 
Polly came over to her and handed her the tea-towel.
 
‘Best to wipe that of any fingerprints and put it back where you found it,’ she said. As Rose took the cloth, Polly’s hand took hers. She looked her in the eyes.
 
‘I’m so sorry, Rose. About everything that has happened. About all this. Poor us. Poor him.’
 
They looked down at Gareth on the floor.
 
After a moment, Rose broke away and went to put the gun back in the pantry. When she returned to the kitchen, Polly was kneeling at his feet, undoing a shoelace.
 
‘This is why he tripped,’ she said. ‘He lost it, didn’t he?’ she said to Rose. ‘I mean, look what he did to his studio. And he phoned me and said it was you. And all the mess everywhere, the whisky. And it’s not like he hasn’t got a history of, well, difficulty. When he lunged forward to attack you, I didn’t know what I was going to do . . .’
 
Rose backed into the armchair and buried her face in her palms. She felt hands on her knees and looked up to see Polly crouching in front of her.
 
‘Rose. This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to take the children round to Simon’s,’ she said. ‘I’m going to tell him there’s been an accident. You’re going to call Kate and tell her you don’t know what to do. Then let her take control. She’s good at that. You’re upset now. Just go with that. I’ll be back in a second and we’ll tell our story about how Gareth tripped as he went to attack you.’
 
Rose nodded dumbly.
 
‘I’m glad, really,’ Polly went on. ‘It’s happened quicker than I had hoped, but everything’s back as it should be. We’re both in the right place again. Everything else is just water under the bridge, isn’t it ?’
 
Polly got up and undid the bolts on the back door, then turned to face Rose again, her eyes burning.
 
‘You know, Christos was never the same after you visited Karpathos, Rose.’ Then, with a sudden, violent force, she spat on the floor.
‘Never.’
 
She opened the door, and went out into the garden.
 
Trying not to look at Gareth, Rose got up and peered through a chink in the curtains. She watched as Polly went over and gathered up the children. She was smiling and talking to them as if nothing had happened at all. Something she said to them even made them cheer.
 
She seemed very practised at subterfuge.
 
Two years later
 
‘MAMAN!’
 
Flossie toddled across the scrubby grass, her little hands held out to her mother. Anna caught her and tumbled her to the ground. Both girls laughed as they rolled together down the flower-dotted slope that brought them to their mother, who was sunning herself on a rug underneath a cherry tree.
 
Rose smiled and swept them up, hugging them to herself, breathing deep their scent of salt and sea and sky. They lay back and looked up at the dancing blossom above them. Rose closed her eyes and listened to the distant crash and roar of the waves as they coursed into the sand a few yards from where they lay, discharging energy picked up over the vast swathes of water that lay to the west.
 
‘Maman.’
Flossie, who had got to her feet again, was leaning over Rose, brushing her nose with a long stalk of grass. Rose reached up and tickled her tummy and the little girl squirmed in pleasure, her sharp eyes dancing.
 
Anna looked on, smiling. ‘No, we say
Mummy
, Flossie,
Mummy
.’
 
‘No, it’s
Maman
!’ Flossie insisted.
 
For the fourth time in so many days, Rose thanked the sky for this brightness that had flown back into her daughters, and into everything around them. It hadn’t happened overnight, but here they were at last.
 
‘There you are.’ Andy appeared round the orchard fence, wiping his hands on an oily rag. He had been working on the boat for the last couple of weeks, since the weather had turned. He was planning to spend the summer mornings out there again, on the waves, catching fish for the local restaurant. Rose supplied the same place year-round with eggs, preserves and vegetables from the little garden that she had somehow managed to coax out of the wild soil of this small island off the west coast of Brittany.
 
Despite the money Rose got from the sale of The Lodge, she, Andy and the girls lived a consciously pared-down existence here on the Ile d’Ouessant, and it suited them fine. They were almost self-sufficient and had no TV, no phone, no internet, and very few visitors, except for Frank and Molly, who came over every couple of months with Johnny, Rose’s little grandson. Rose was so pleased that she had been able to help them in their very young parenthood by buying them a house in Brighton. It was reparation, of sorts.
 
She had, at last, found peace.
 
‘Look at you lot, lying around,’ Andy smiled.
 
‘Can’t a bird take a rest once in a while?’ Rose looked up at him. He was so handsome in this light. Happiness suited him.
 
He scooped up Flossie and, swinging her round onto his knee, he joined Rose on the rug, putting his arm round her and the girls.
 
‘Beautiful day,’ he said. ‘Fancy a swim later?’
 
‘You’re on.’ Rose leaned over and kissed him on the nose.
 
He held her gaze for a moment, then broke away and reached into his pocket.
 
‘Oh yeah. You completely made me forget why I came to find you. This arrived.’
 
Rose took the letter from him and opened it. She recognised the writing instantly.
 
Album done. Wiped out. Need a break away from temptations. Boys v. excited about seeing you all. When can we come? Send ferry details etc. Polly xx
.
 
So, then. It had been bound to happen some day. Rose felt a little sick. She folded the letter over and smoothed it in her lap. Shielding her eyes with her hand, she looked out over the orchard fence, at the blurred line of the horizon, where the sea met the sky.
 
How could she refuse?
 
A sudden, brisk breeze pushed itself in from the shore. The cherry tree shuddered. A flurry of blossom tumbled down around Rose, Anna, Flossie and Andy, and Rose shivered.
 

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