The Woman Next Door(77)
It has taken until now for her to understand there is something seriously wrong with Hester. This fussy, buttoned-up woman is able to mould the most grotesque realities into shapes that seem acceptable and even logical to her. But whatever her justification for taking Amber away, Melissa needs to stop her. She owes this to Kerry. And to Jamie.
Half an hour later she is in a cab travelling to King’s Cross. She hides her puffy, wild eyes behind sunglasses. The driver, a small, bespectacled Indian man, has shot more than one curious glance at her. She is aware that she crackles with tension, stress sparking off her like an electrical discharge. He doesn’t attempt to make conversation.
Pushing through the crowds of slow-moving tourists and forests of wheeled cases at the station, she manages to catch the Gatwick Express and it is only when she settles into her seat that she begins to shake. She sends Kerry a text message.
I am going to bring Amber back to you by this evening. Please don’t worry. She is safe and well and happy. Melissa
She doesn’t really know if any of this is true.
Then she turns off her phone and buries it deep in her handbag. Kerry will ring as soon as she gets the message. It feels now as though the phone glows radioactively inside the leather bag. Kerry’s fury and terror will be funnelling towards her like a mini tornado and she bites her lips in distress before quickly looking around the carriage. But no one is looking at her.
The train is busy. A good-looking Italian group in their twenties chatter and take endless pictures with their mobiles. The women wave their hands expressively; colourful bangles tinkle up and down slim, tanned arms.
Elsewhere businessmen and women hunch over laptops or peck confidently at their phones with busy fingers. Everyone else’s life is easy and uncomplicated, it seems.
Melissa suddenly pictures getting to Gatwick and taking the first flight out of the UK.
No. She has to see this through, wherever, however, it ends.
HESTER
Why should I expect things to go right for me? It’s not as if they ever do. As if I ever get what I want.
I had it all planned out. We would check in and then head for the beach. I thought we could buy what we needed here and then while away the afternoon building sandcastles.
First of all, we couldn’t find the guest house. Carbis Bay is much bigger than I remembered and in trying to follow the directions I had written down, we ended up in a complicated warren of houses on a very steep hill. Amber began to complain within a few minutes of walking. I tried to cajole and coax her with soft words but there was a resolute set to her little jaw and before long she began to wail. The pitch and volume of it was quite extraordinary.
I knelt down before her and tried to get her to pick up Bertie, even though he was frightened by the noise and straining away from me. Her face was turning a deep red and she kept running on the spot, her small feet pounding against the pavement so hard it must hurt.
It seemed to go on and on and several people passing by stared at us, muttering in disapproval.
And then, just to make it even worse, a light rain began to fall. The weather changes so quickly here; I remember this. I looked up at the glowering darkness of the clouds rolling in from the sea and actually prayed for a bit of luck.
Amber stopped crying so abruptly I thought maybe my prayers had been answered. Then I saw that her attention had been snagged by a couple walking by with a toddler in tow and a gigantic white dog that was staring at us with a haughty manner. Some sort of husky, I think. I had a flash of inspiration then and said, gently, ‘Can you see the wolf, Amber? They have friendly wolves here. Did you know?’
She gazed up at me with those blue eyes, clouded by tears now, and shook her head. Her tongue was slightly protruding but she had stopped crying at least.
‘Let’s go and quickly find where we are staying and we can go and see if we can find anymore, okay?’
I held out my hand and she took it with hers, which was warm and sticky. A clear trail of snot ran from her nose to her lip and I got out a tissue to clean her up.
But our troubles weren’t over. When we got to the guest house I was told that they only took pets during the winter season, between October and April.
‘But it didn’t say that on your website!’ I protested, quelling the sudden urge to cry.
The man on reception, who was young and sort of scruffy with a small beard, sighed and tapped away at his screen before turning it to show me. I could see then that the words ‘Off Season Only’ appeared in red next to the words ‘Pet friendly’.
Blinking back tears, I asked him whether he could suggest another place we could stay. He wrote down a few names on a piece of paper and then, at my insistence, rang them to see if they had rooms. The first two were full and despair was really beginning to nip at my ankles, but thankfully, the third, a place called Hope House, had a large room available. He called us a taxi and good job too. It is about as far away from the sea as you can get and I would never have found it.
We are sitting here now. The room is not what I had hoped for. It smells very doggy and there are visible extension cables for the bedside lamps. The glass shades of these are thickly embedded with sticky dust. I think someone has been smoking in this room too.
Still, we are here.
Amber is sleeping on the bed, worn out by the travelling.
I have managed not to think too far ahead yet. It’s amazing what you can put out of your mind if you really make the effort. But for some reason I keep hearing blasted Terry in my head today. I can just imagine what he would make of all this. ‘Oh Hester, what on earth have you gone and done?’ he’d say. Or, ‘Well this is a bit of a mess, old girl. You’re going to have your work cut out sorting this.’