Fire Damage (A Jessie Flynn Investigation, Book 1) (7 page)

The light was on in Ahmose’s cottage, and she could see him inside, sitting in his stiff wing-backed chair – the one he favoured because he didn’t have to lower himself too far to get into it – by a roaring log fire, reading the paper.

Ahmose had obviously spent the day gardening because some of the plants in her tiny front garden, across the low flint wall dividing the properties, were wrapped in what looked like white woollen coats, protecting them from the winter freeze.

He pulled open the door, a wide smile spreading across his face.

‘Perfect timing. I put the kettle on when I heard your engine. It should be boiled.’

She gave him a kiss on the cheek and stepped into the hallway, immediately felt herself relax as the warmth of the little cottage enveloped her, the woody charcoal smell of the open fire filled her nostrils.

While Ahmose busied himself filling the china teapot, getting the cups and saucers from the cupboard, arranging them all on the floral tray that had been Alice’s favourite, Jessie found a plate and fanned out the biscuits his sister had sent him from Cairo in a neat semicircle. She spent a moment adjusting them, so that an exact portion of each biscuit showed from under the next.

Their weekly tea was a ritual that they had developed over the five years they’d been neighbours. Jessie’s heart had sunk the first time Ahmose had appeared on her doorstep the day after she moved in – clutching a miniature indoor rose, full of advice on how to keep it flowering – imagining a nosy old man who’d never give her any peace. The reality, she quickly found, was the opposite. She sought him out more often than he sought her, had learnt to value his calm, sensible views, his clear-headed take on her problems, his stories and his humour. Their weekly tea was now a sacred part of her calendar: civilized, to be savoured, a deeply companionable, uncompetitive couple of hours. Ahmose felt more like family now than her blood relatives, certainly far more than the father she had only seen five times in the past ten years.

Curling on the sofa, Jessie wrapped both hands around the piping cup. With the open fire the cottage was warm, but she felt chilled to the bone from standing too long in the car park playing verbal games with Starkey. She reached for a biscuit.

‘You must let me pay for the plant warmers, Ahmose.’

‘Most certainly not. A nice garden makes both our cottages look beautiful, adds value.’

She smiled. ‘You sound like a Home Counties estate agent.’

‘And it gives an old man something to do, some exercise,’ he replied. ‘Oh, and before I forget, your mother dropped by a couple of hours ago.’

‘My mother?’ Jessie was surprised. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother had popped around. Years ago, it was – three at least.

She rolled her eyes. ‘She seems to think that I don’t actually have a job. That I’ll be here in the middle of the afternoon.’

‘It’s a mother’s job to believe that their child is forever too young to be gainfully employed and to worry about them constantly. I offered for her to wait in your house – I thought that you wouldn’t mind – but she said that she needed to get home for six.’

Jessie nodded, took a sip of tea. ‘Did she want anything specific?’

‘I don’t think so. I think that she just wanted to see you. She said that it has been a long time.’

Jessie bit her lip. It had been a long time, eight months – her mother’s birthday. The weather had been unseasonally hot and she’d been wearing a T-shirt and jeans. She remembered her mother asking if she couldn’t have
dressed up a bit for lunch
– even though they were only going to a pub on Wimbledon Common. Chafing against each other even now, fifteen years later. None of the life-changing events they had lived through talked about in detail. Nothing resolved.

‘You should go and see her, Jessie, whatever has gone under the bridge.’ And when she didn’t reply, he continued: ‘The mother–daughter relationship is …’ A pause as he searched for the right world. ‘Irreplaceable. Difficult, challenging, of course, but irreplaceable.’

Jessie shrugged. ‘It was always more mother–son for my mother.’

Ahmose took a biscuit from the plate, chewed in silence. Jessie watched him warily over the lip of her cup.

‘Alice and I never had the chance to have children,’ he murmured, dropping the half-finished biscuit into his saucer. ‘It was before all that IVF was widely available.’ He waved his hand towards the window, as if encompassing all the modern inventions of the last thirty years. ‘It broke Alice’s heart. She never got over it. I saw it in her eyes most when she smiled, when she was happy …’ A pause. ‘There was always something missing, as if sadness was sitting right behind her eyes, taking some of the light from them, even when she was smiling.’ Reaching across, Ahmose laid a hand on Jessie’s arm. ‘Losing a child must be worse than never having had one at all, because you know what a fantastic human being they would have made, how incredibly unique and wonderful they would have been. That is what your mother lives with every day.’

Jessie felt tears prick her eyes. ‘It’s not so great losing a brother.’

She had spent fifteen years dodging memories. How much longer could she maintain it?

‘Go and see her,’ Ahmose said gently. ‘Please. If only because I have asked you to.’

The morning of Jamie’s funeral, she had risen at 4.30 a.m. – pitch-black outside, even though it was nearly mid-summer – and tiptoed downstairs. She had expected to be alone with her thoughts of Jamie, the burden of her guilt, but her mother was already awake, sitting at the kitchen table in her towelling robe, clutching a cup of coffee that had grown a milky film it had sat so long, untouched.

She was holding Jamie’s school jumper, pressing it to her face, drinking in his smell. Jessie was surprised how small it was. The images she retained of Jamie, despite his illness, were larger than life, a personality that occupied a vast, fizzing space. Looking at her mum clutching his jumper, fingers stroking the balled wall, she realized how young he was, how little. Seven years, gone in a heartbeat. A life snuffed out before it had properly begun.

‘I thought you were asleep,’ Jessie murmured. She couldn’t meet her mother’s gaze.

‘How could I?’ The words barely audible.

Distractedly, her mother took a sip of coffee, her face wrinkling in surprise at its coldness. How long had she sat here, cradling the cup?

‘I’ll make you another,’ Jessie said.

She padded over to the kettle. While she was waiting for it to boil, she pulled back the kitchen curtain expecting, for some reason, to see dawn breaking; startled when all she saw was her own pallid reflection. Though she had been in the kitchen for barely two minutes, each second had elongated until it was nanometre thin, filling an hour of memories, of self-recrimination. The ticking of the kitchen clock sounded like a hammer on steel, the dim overhead lights, half the bulbs missing, interrogation-chamber bright. She was hypersensitive to every movement, her mother’s every tic.

Filling two cups, Jessie moved back to the table.

‘I’ve been trying to remember Jamie before the illness.’ Her mother’s voice wavered. ‘But all I can remember is him without colour, pale and sickly. He used to have the most beautiful complexion, the most vibrant look about him.’ She plucked at her own sallow, papery skin. ‘You both did … do. Perfect Irish roses. Your father’s look.’

Leaning over, she cupped Jessie’s chin in her fingers, their first physical contact since Jamie’s death. ‘You’re so like your father. Beautiful, like him. He was … is beautiful … on the outside, at least.’

‘Will he … will he be there?’

‘What?’

‘Dad? Will Dad be at …’ Jessie’s tongue felt like a wad of cotton wool in her mouth. ‘At the funeral?’

A vague shrug. ‘How would I know?’ Her mother’s hand moved to stroke her cheek. Her touch like a chill breeze. ‘Yesterday, in the supermarket, I imagined holding Jamie when he was just an hour old. I was in bed, in hospital, my knees bent, and he was lying in the dent between my thighs. I closed my eyes, standing in the middle of the aisle, and I could feel him. Actually
feel
the warmth of him. The shape of his skull under my fingers, that duck’s fluff of baby hair. He clutched my hand with his tiny fingers. I remember studying his nails in wonderment. They were so perfect, every nail a perfect crescent. It always amazes me that something so small, a baby’s hand, can work at all.’ Her words ran out, her face closed down. A single tear squeezed from her eye and ran down her cheek.

‘Mum?’ Jessie bit her lip to stop herself from crying. ‘It’ll be all right.’

‘No. It won’t be all right.’ Her mum rose, turned towards the door. ‘I’m going to get dressed.’

‘Mum. Please.’

To stop talking meant that time would start ticking again, the unstoppable slide towards the inevitable: a black car at the front door, the slow journey down the A3 to the crematorium, the impatient flow of traffic cutting around them, brake lights flashing as drivers caught sight of the little coffin smothered in flowers and slowed to stare, the black-garbed crowd waiting outside the crematorium, children and parents from school, children who had teased and taunted Jamie when he couldn’t run any more, couldn’t play football –
Thought your sister was the Jessie, jessie.

Jamie’s body being interred in fire.

‘
Mum
.’

Her mother paused at the door; her dead eyes found Jessie’s. ‘When your dad left us, I thought that the unrequited love I had for him was the hardest I’d ever experience.’ Her voice cracked. ‘But I was wrong. When someone dies they can’t love us back. However hard we love them, they can never, ever love us back.’

Wendy Chubb rubbed a hand against the window. Steam from the washing-up bowl had clouded the glass, but even so she was sure that she had seen a flash of light in the garden. She stared hard through the smeared circle she had rubbed clear. Only darkness now.

The light from the house washed the patio next to it with a feeble glow, but beyond that the night was thick and black, the hills that rose up on either side of the house seeming to suck whatever moonlight there was from the garden.

What had made her look out the window anyway? A noise? Had it been a noise? Tilting her head, she listened. She heard the old house creaking, the walls murmuring to each other, the knock of air in the pipes, the gurgle of hot water filling the radiators. Wind bristled the trees in the garden. Her gaze swept left to right through the glass, straining to make out the line of leylandii shielding the house from the road, the knot of apple trees in the centre of the garden, the pots lined up at the edge of the patio, plants in them dead from cold and neglect.

Suddenly she leapt back, her hand flying to her mouth, smothering a gasp of surprise and fear. A bright flash. Right up close to the house, barely five metres from where she was standing. She breathed hard, trying to settle the hammering of her heart. What on earth was there to be afraid of? Now that she thought for a moment, fear felt ridiculous. She was inside a locked house, Major Scott in the sitting room across the hallway. And there was clearly a rational explanation for the light.

Sami? Was he outside with his torch? She hurried to the bottom of the stairs.

‘Sami.’ No answer. She leaned against the banister, shouted, ‘
Sami
.’

Silence.

‘
Sami
.’

Light hurried footsteps, the boards creaking above her head.

‘Yes.’ His voice sounding timid.

Poor kid.

‘Oh. I wondered if you’d …’ she broke off. ‘Don’t worry, darling. You carry on playing. I’ll be up in five minutes to put you to bed.’
Stupid woman.
Of course he hadn’t gone outside. He couldn’t reach the lock and the Yale was far too stiff for him, even if he could. She stuck her head into the sitting room. Major Scott was in the leather chair, asleep he looked to be, breathing heavily, mouth open, a globule of saliva gathered on his bottom lip. Wendy glanced at her watch. Nooria’s train wasn’t due into Aldershot for another half-hour.

Back in the kitchen, she hung by the door, not wanting to approach the window, feeling ridiculous at the tight knot of fear in her stomach. Stepping firmly across the kitchen, she pressed her face to the glass.

No lights. Nobody out there. Just the soupy darkness, wind moving the trees, black outlines shifting and twitching, but purely due to the wind. And transposed over it all, the pale, frightened moon of her own face.

Back in her own cottage, Jessie took off her shoes, lined them up in the shoe rack by the door, removed her coat and hung it on the hook, straightening the sleeves. Taking a step back, she checked their alignment, straightened again, millimetre by millimetre, until they were exactly level.

She was hungry, in need of something more than biscuits to eat. Padding into the kitchen in her socks, she tugged open the fridge. Rows of clear plastic Klip-It boxes faced her on the shelves, each one labelled with its contents, the labels hand-printed in neat, black capitals. Cheese, salad, eggs, beans, apples, red peppers … The product of her weekly shop debagged and decanted, nothing entering the fridge in its original packaging. No foreign dirt, no mess, no uneven shapes to knock her sense of order off kilter. Everything organized and in its place.

Her gaze ranged along the uniform black capitals, nothing taking her fancy, her heart sagging under the weight of the disorder spelled out by the codified containers. Reaching out, she picked one up and reversed it, grabbed the bottle of Sauvignon and poured herself a glass. Returning the bottle without bothering to line up the label, she slammed the fridge door.

She was halfway across the kitchen when she stopped. She could feel the electric suit hiss. Ignoring the rising tension, she forced herself to keep walking, into the lounge. Jamie’s photo caught her eye – that chocolate-ringed smile. Her limbs felt on fire, her throat so constricted that breathing was a struggle. She felt as if she would explode with the tension building inside her.

Fighting back tears, she retraced her steps to the fridge. Hauling the door open, shivering at the blast of cold air that enveloped her, she realigned the box, turned the wine bottle until the label faced exactly outwards, exactly – to the millimetre – and pushed the door closed. Sliding down the fridge, she folded herself into a ball on the kitchen floor and burst into tears.

OCD. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. She knew all about it. Had studied it at university, read case after case in her spare time. She knew everything there was to know and still she was helpless to fight the disorder in herself. A disorder that was now as much a part of who she was as her black hair or blue eyes, it had inhabited her for so long. She was a character in a sick and twisted play. Knew exactly how the performance would play out and wanted no part of it, but had no ability to resist. She was consumed by the need for order, for control, even as she had no control over her own mind.

When she was all cried out, she pushed herself up from the floor and went over to the sink. Letting the cold tap gush until the water was freezing, she doused her face, let the water run down her neck and chest. As the water numbed her skin, her brain spun with thoughts, memories, memories on memories. Love. Guilt. Helplessness. Self-hatred.

She had never realized that so much love could exist for another person until she had seen her mother grieving for Jamie.