“Yes. I suppose.”
“I only mentioned Dean once, as far as I remember.”
“He going to come after you, is he?”
“No,” she said. “He’s dead.”
“Christ! Really? You’re not winding me up?”
She shook her head.
“Accident, was it?”
“I believe so.”
“You’d lost touch? I’m glad he’s dead. Suppose I shouldn’t say it, but I am.”
She sniffed. “He was nothing to me.”
“I mean, I hope he didn’t suffer. Kind of thing.”
“Gavin, is this sock yours?”
“What?” he said. “That? No. Never seen it before. So what about this psychic stuff, have you given it up?”
“Oh, yes. That’s all finished now.” She held up the sock to examine it. “It’s not like you usually wear. Horrible grey thing. Looks like roadkill.” She frowned at it; she thought she’d seen the other half of the pair, but couldn’t think where.
“Colette … listen … I shouldn’t have told you lies.”
“That’s all right.” She thought, I told you some. Then, in case she seemed to be excusing him too readily, she said, “It’s what I expect.”
“Doesn’t seem like seven years. Since we split.”
“Must be. Must be about that. It was the summer that Diana died.” She walked around the kitchen, her finger dabbing at sticky surfaces. “Looks like six years and three hundred and sixty-four days since you gave these tiles a wipe-down.”
“I’m glad now we didn’t sell up.”
“Are you? Why?”
“It makes it like before.”
“Time doesn’t go backwards.”
“No, but I can’t remember why we split.” She frowned. Neither could she, really. Gavin looked down at his feet. “Colette, we’ve been a couple of plonkers, haven’t we?”
She picked up the woolly sock, and threw it in the kitchen bin. “I don’t think women can be,” she said. “Plonkers. Not really.”
Gavin said humbly, “I think you could do anything, Colette.”
She looked at him; his head hanging like some dog that’s been out in the rain. She looked at him and her heart was touched: where her heart would be.
Admiral Drive: Al hears the neighbours, muttering outside. They are carrying placards, she expects. Sergeant Delingbole is speaking to them through a megaphone. You can’t scare Al. When you’ve been strangled as often as she has, when you’ve been drowned, when you’ve died so many times and found yourself still earthside, what are the neighbours going to do to you that’s so bloody novel?
There are several ways forward, she thinks, several ways I can go from here. She accepts that Colette won’t be back. Repentance is not out of the question; she imagines Colette saying, I was hasty, can we start again, and herself saying, I don’t think so, Colette: that was then and now it’s now.
Time for a shake-up. I’ll never settle here after all the name-calling and disruption. Even if, when all this dies down, the neighbours start to cosy up to me and bake me cakes. They may forget but I won’t. Besides, by now they know what I do for a living. That it’s not weather forecasting; and anyway, the Met Office has moved to Exeter.
I could ring an estate agent, she thinks, and ask for a valuation. (Colette’s voice in her ear says, you ought to ring three.) “Miss Hart, what about your shed, which is of local historic interest? And what about the black cloud of evil that hovers over your premises. Will you be leaving that?” Memories are short, she thinks, in house sales. She will be forgotten, just like the worms and voles who used to live here, and the foetus dug in under the hedge.
She calls Mandy.
“Natasha, Psychic to the Stars?”
“Mandy, Colette’s walked out.”
“Oh, it’s you, Alison. Oh dear. I foresaw as much, frankly. When we were at Irene’s, looking for the will, I said to Silvana, trouble there, mark my words.”
“And I’m on my own.”
“Don’t cry, lovie. I’ll come and get you.”
“Please. For a night or two. Till it dies down. You see, the press are here. Cameras.”
Mandy was puzzled. “Is that good? For business, I mean?”
“No, I’ve got vigilantes. Demonstrators.”
Mandy clicked her tongue. “Witch-burning, isn’t it? Some people are so narrow-minded. Are the police there?”
“Yes.”
“But they’re not trying to arrest you or anything? Sorry, silly question; of course not. Look, I’ll bring Gemma for a bit of muscle.”
“No. Just come yourself.”
“Take a nice hot bath, Al. Unplug the phone. Spray some lavender around. I’ll be there before you know it. I’ll have you out of there. A bit of sea air will do you good. We’ll go shopping for you, give you a makeover. I always thought Colette gave you bad advice. Shall I book you a hair appointment? I’ll line up Cara to give you a massage.”
Three hours later, she is ready to leave the house. The police have not had much success in dispersing the crowd; they don’t, they explain, want to get heavy-handed. Sergeant Delingbole says, what you could do, probably it would be for the best, would be to come out with a blanket over your head. She says, do you have an official blanket you use for that, or can I choose my own? They say, feel free: the policewoman helpfully runs upstairs and looks out at her direction her mohair throw, the raspberry-coloured throw that Colette bought her once, in better times than these.
She places it over her head; the world looks pink and fuzzy. Like a fish, or something newborn, she opens her mouth to breathe; her breath, moist, sucks in the mohair. The policewoman takes her elbow, and Delingbole opens the door; she is hurried to a police vehicle with darkened windows, which whisks her smartly away from Admiral Drive. Later, on the regional TV news, she will glimpse herself from the knee down. I always wanted to be on TV, she will say, and now I have; Mandy will say, well, bits of you, anyway.
As they swing onto the A322, she pulls aside the woollen folds and looks around her. Her lips itch from their contact with the throw; she presses them together, hoping not to smudge her lipstick. Sergeant Delingbole is sitting with her: for reassurance, he says. “I’ve always been fascinated,” he says. “The paranormal. UFOs. All that. I mean there must be something in it, mustn’t there?”
“I think you tried to come through,” she says, “at one of my dems. Couple of years back. Just after the Queen Mother passed.”
“God bless her,” says Delingbole automatically, and Alison answers, “God bless her.”
The day has brightened. At Worplesden, trees drip onto the fairways of the golf club. The policewoman says, “The cloud’s lifting. Might see some action at Wimbledon this afternoon.”
Al smiles. “I’m sure I couldn’t say.”
Before they reach Guildford, they pull into an out-of-town shopping centre. The exchange takes place in front of PC World. Mandy clip-clips towards the white van: high-heeled pastel pumps in pistachio green, tight pale jeans, fake Chanel jacket in baby pink. She is smiling, her big jaw jutting. She looks quite lined, Al thinks; it is the first time in years she has seen Mandy in full daylight. It must be Hove that’s aged her: the sea breezes, the squinting into the sun. “Got the consignment?” says Mandy, breezy herself, and Delingbole opens the back door
