Page 6

‘ H iya Posie!’ Simon was washing up his breakfast things. ‘We really need to get a dishwasher.’

‘We need a whole new kitchen,’ she answered.

Simon dried his hands and looked at her closely. He frowned.

‘Haircut,’ Rose explained. ‘New top.’

‘Oh yeah, nice. You look less like a depressed bag lady.’ Gee thanks Simon . ‘Tea?’

‘Awash with it,’ Rose answered.

Simon leant against the worktop and sipped his coffee, looking at the floor and then the ceiling and out of the window. He made her think of Sky - that sense of feeling trapped by domesticity.

‘Er, yesterday,’ he started, ‘it was a bit weird.’

‘Really? You spent twenty-four hours as a sedated werewolf locked in a cage. Seems normal to me.’

He made snide noises but then looked serious again. ‘Actually about that, I was wondering about starting to tell key people, get more TV work commissioned.’

‘I can just see it: “Fifteen Celebrities who you didn’t know are UNDEAD.”’

‘Two things wrong - I’m not undead and I bet you a million quid there are more than fifteen.’

Rose sighed, they’d been through this before, ‘Andrew says…’

‘Yeah, yeah, Andrew. I just feel….’

Rose drew in her breath. Where did she start?

‘Actually, about yesterday,’ she said. ‘It really was weirder than normal. This woman turned up out of the blue: Emmeline McPherson. She runs some sort of Ladies’ Guild. She wants me to join and wants you to give a talk.’

‘All old biddies I assume,’ asked Simon, rolling his eyes.

‘No, actually no. All ages. I’ve seen some - quite a variety.’

‘Oh well, it’s a bit of cash I suppose,’ he sensed her reserve. ‘What’s the catch?’

‘I’m not sure. It’s something I can’t put my finger on.’

‘OK, so it started with Emmeline McPherson.’ He looked at Rose and then back out of the window. ‘There’s something else isn’t there? I had a really strange dream. It’s made me feel a bit …’

She wasn’t used to Simon’s feelings. After the first couple of months after the incident, he had reverted to brother mode and buried any distress under a stream of jokes and mild irritation.

Rose took a deep breath. ‘Someone came to visit you. A woman called Sky.’

Simon paled and stared at her. ‘She can’t have. Sky’s dead.’

‘Well this woman wasn’t. She was very much alive, very strange and ran off wearing my clothes.’

‘What? What was she like? How was she?’

‘Naked.’

‘Well she would have been,’ said Simon incomprehensibly. ‘Was she injured?’

‘I didn’t notice any wounds but then to be fair, I was trying to get her to get dressed before (a) she froze to death and (b) Emmeline McPherson saw her. She certainly wasn’t dead.’

Bit by bit, she took him through the day, ending at the point where she was staring out into the night.

‘You just let her go?’ Simon was furious, flinging open the patio door and staring up the slope towards the woods. ‘You just let her go out into the night in this godforsaken place?’

‘Simon, listen to me!’ Rose tried to haul him round to face her but he resisted her, his jaw clenched. Two days of beard bristled on his face. He wrenched himself out of her grasp and went to get his boots.

‘I didn’t “let her go”. She went while I was trying to get rid of Emmeline. I’d actually offered her a bed for the night. With en suite spiders.’

He paused lacing his boots and frowned at her.

‘What?’

‘She seemed to like spiders. I told her the spare room had some. It was supposed to be a joke. She also seemed to like worms. It was all a bit odd. She said she couldn’t stay.

She said…’ Rose closed her eyes and tried to remember the conversation.

‘It was something like “I can only be here today. Today and the next today. The next time it happens I’ll be back. I can’t come any other time”.

It made no sense at all. She’s Blanket Girl isn’t she? ’

‘Blanket Girl?’ Simon stood up and pulled a jacket on. ‘What the hell are you on about?’

‘David said a young woman kept turning up dressed in a blanket. That you were fond of her.’

‘Did he? Like it was any of his business. He …. never mind.’

‘He what?’

‘I said, it doesn’t matter. Right, show me where she went.’

‘I’m telling you, I have no idea. I shut the front door, turned round and she was gone.

I looked out and called for her, but she didn’t answer.

The moon had started to set by then. I’m sorry, Simon, I could see she was really upset.

Her song was beautiful, I understood what it meant even though I couldn’t understand the words. ’

‘How could you understand it?’ Simon was striding out into the garden and climbing over the fence behind the bungalow. The field up to the forest was steep and rutted. The ground was hard and it was impossible to make out any footprints.

‘What do you mean? Do you think I don’t understand a broken heart?’

‘You’re not like Sky,’ argued Simon. ‘You’re not emotional. You can cope with all that sort of thing.’

‘So you think I don’t have any feelings?’

Rose stood still in the lumpy grass. She could feel the tears in her throat and knew if she spoke, she would say something irrevocable. What if she just returned to the bungalow, packed her things and left? Simon stopped and looked back at her.

‘Stop being hysterical Rose. Sky’s a different sort of creature altogether from you.’

‘I wish you’d explain,’ said Rose. ‘Just tell me.’

Simon ignored her, ‘How did she get here? Where could she go to?’

‘She said her family were waiting.’

‘Her family?’

‘I wondered if they’d come over with the resettlement project, perhaps they have a house in the woods or something. I forgot to ask about it in town this morning.’

Simon’s frown disappeared. He laughed and flung his arm round her.

‘A house!’ he chuckled. ‘That’s hilarious.’

‘And that’s funnier than spiders?’

They had got to the edge of the forest. A high fence towered above them.

Notices warned them to keep out. Rose felt sick.

What if something had happened to Sky and it was all her fault?

Perhaps she should have let that loathsome woman in and at least she could have kept an eye on the woman and made sure she was safe.

She braced herself for Simon’s fury but he was smiling.

He’d looked back at the bungalow and was lining it up with where they stood.

‘No, we’re not in quite the right place,’ he said. ‘She’d have come direct. This way.’

They walked along the fence for a few metres until they found a place where it appeared someone had climbed over. At the foot of the nearest tree were Rose’s clothes, heaped up and damp.

‘She’ll be freezing.’

‘No, she’ll be fine. Look here.’ Simon bent down and reached through the wire, pulling out strands of coarse hair.

‘A dog? She had a dog waiting for her?’

Simon pocketed the hair and looked into the forest. There was nothing to be seen or heard. It was peaceful under the trees.

‘They’re not here at the moment,’ he said.

‘Who’s not here?’

‘Let’s go home and have a cup of tea.’

‘If I have any more tea, I’ll explode,’ argued Rose. ‘Will you just tell me…’

‘Actually it’s got to be lunchtime by now, I’ll open a bottle of wine, you get us something to eat, tell me what she said again and I’ll explain about the spiders.’

Simon started back down the slope with Rose stumbling after him, her feet catching in the cattle trodden ground and rabbit holes.