Life Class (16 page)

They slowed and stopped. They were safe. But what was that? Dory’s heart gave a scary jolt. Someone was standing beside a tree. He blended in with the background; she’d only seen him because he’d moved, a flash of white as he looked over his shoulder. He turned back towards the tree, head bowed. After a moment he stooped and picked something up, before turning to face them.

The boy, looking neither curious nor angry to find a gang of girls in his wood, simply stared at them, as if waiting for an explanation. Even now Dory could recall his pale face and solemn dark eyes. A canvas bag was slung diagonally across his thin chest, a branch gripped in his hand like a staff. His other hand was cupped.

‘Are you the witch’s son?’ someone asked.

The boy looked puzzled. ‘No. What witch? My mother’s dead.’

‘Who are you then? Robin Hood?’

‘No, he doesn’t live here,’ he said. Dory saw her sister’s look of disdain. At their age – and he had to be as old as Fran – they were still comfortable inhabiting a world where reality and fantasy overlapped, but even
she
knew the difference.

‘Is this your house?’ Emily asked. He nodded.

Dory wanted to ask about the mad old woman, but as she was one of the youngest there she felt shy.

‘What are you doing?’ another of the girls asked.

‘Just looking … collecting things.’

‘What, leaves? Are you going to make leaf prints?’ Fran interrupted.

‘What are leaf prints?’

‘Didn’t you see
Take Hart
on telly last night?’

‘We haven’t got a television.’

This was a deprivation beyond the sisters’ experience. ‘Poor you!’ Fran looked at him pityingly. Dory might not be as old as her sister but she didn’t like her tone. The boy wouldn’t want everyone feeling sorry for him. Even though he didn’t have a TV he might be interested to know about it.

‘
Take Hart
is a programme about how to do art,’ she explained. ‘It’s got lots of ideas in it. Tony Hart … the man who does it … had loads of different leaves and he was painting them different colours. Then he pressed them onto paper and made patterns. It looked fun. I’m going to try it.’

‘
I’m
going to be an artist when I grow up,’ Fran butted in.

The boy turned his gaze to Dory’s sister again. Desperate to regain his attention, and yet somehow knowing it would sound lame to copy Fran, Dory surprised herself.

‘
I’m
going to be a vet,’ she announced, the idea born of the moment, influenced by her other favourite TV programme.

Emily agreed. ‘I want to be a vet, too.’

‘When I grow up I want to be a typewriter,’ Becky announced.

Fran gave her a withering look. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked the boy, but he ignored her and instead stared intently into his hand. ‘What’s that? What have you got?’ she demanded. His fingers closed.

‘It’s a skull. You might be interested if you want to be a vet,’ he said to Dory. ‘It could be a rat, or maybe a squirrel.’ She stepped forward, but her sister half barged her aside, so she could look first.

‘I want to look,’ other voices whined behind them. ‘Let me look!’

Raising his shoulder, he turned away from the other girls and approached Dory. He opened his hand. The small, muddy skull on his palm had some tissue still clinging to the jaw. Her skin prickled with goose bumps, but, under the scrutiny of her sister and friends, the maintenance of her dignity felt suddenly important.

‘What happened to it?’ she asked in a small voice, ‘It may have been hunted by a raptor, maybe an owl. Could’ve bitten through the neck and dropped the head,’ he said, calmly. ‘But it’s been here a long time. I don’t usually find skulls so clean.’

‘Why do vets need to know about skulls?’ Fran said contemptuously. She had walked away and picked up a stick and was now swiping at the undergrowth.

‘Vets need to know about animals’ anatomy, I expect.’

She had no answer to this. ‘I saw you peeing!’ she sneered. ‘Bet you
are
the witch’s son! Were you going to collect some of your widdle and mix it with the skull to make a magic potion?’

The boy’s cheeks flamed. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you there’s no such thing as magic and witches?’

‘Course I know that!’ Fran called over her shoulder. ‘I’m not
stu
pid. Come on, Emily, come on, Becky, come on, sis. Let’s go. Leave skull boy to play with his bones.’

‘It’s my garden. I never asked you to come in!’ he retorted.

Surprised how the half-forgotten incident had unfolded from her subconscious, Dory could even now recall her flush of embarrassment at her sister’s taunts. She looked at her watch. Better get back. Behind her, she could hear the snap and crunch of approaching footsteps, a fleeting trace of cigarette smoke. Malcolm? For a nanosecond she expected to turn and see her ex; despite being a doctor, he was the only smoker she knew. Her mind was playing tricks. It had to be Kevin …

Chapter Fifteen- Fran

It was dark when Fran opened her eyes. She could just see the faint glimmer of her clock face. It was 5.45 a.m. She turned over and pulled the duvet up to her shoulders. Only moments passed before she became aware of a soft, rumbling snore. More disturbing was the hot, sleep-stale huff of breath that hit her face at the culmination of each gentle snore. She turned on to her back, eyes open, staring towards the ceiling as the clock ticked. All remnants of her dream dispersed, leaving her wide awake. She knew she could probably coax herself back into sleep, but a bubble of excitement began to ferment. Why not get up? She’d gain two or more undisturbed hours on the computer.

On her way to make a cup of tea, she switched on the PC. A couple of surprised dogs wandered dazedly into the kitchen, ears swivelling like feathery radar dishes. When it seemed she was going to ignore them, they leapt up, pattering their tiny paws against her legs and yapping. She opened the back door for them and filled their bowls. By the time she got back to the study the computer had booted up. Already in her Live Mail inbox was a message from Melanie. She’d look at it later. She wanted to know if anything had arrived since last night at her other address. Yes! There were two messages from ‘db’.

Within a day of that first flurry of speculative email, she’d been thrilled to find a number of responses in her Hotmail inbox. Anti-climax swiftly followed. Most were mail delivery failures. It was disappointing but not surprising, considering she had been making up email addresses. The few real replies had been ‘
Sorry. You’ve got the wrong person’
messages. There’d even been a couple from women, one a Debbie and one a Davina. And then, a day or two later, there’d been the one from ‘db’.

‘Hi Fran. Gr8 2 hear from U. Wot U doing these days?’

She wasn’t stupid. She knew she had to be cautious. The inner voice that warned this person might not be
her
Dan Brown prompted her to pose some disguised questions in her next email. His reply was funny and quirky, and even though it failed to confirm his identity, neither was he unmasked as a fraudster. Reservations subdued, not entirely forgotten, their e-conversation continued.

Had
he
done anything with his art after leaving college? She admitted she hadn’t. He told her he still painted. Strange. He’d been in the graphics department; even all those years ago graphics was a discipline that was already moving away from the drawing board and T-square towards the computer. But perhaps he’d started painting in the intervening years as a relief from sitting in front of a screen?

Fran’s emails grew longer, more discursive. It was impossible not to reminisce about the old days – about mutual friends, the things they’d done, places they’d been, the bands they’d listened to. Originally his typical responses were snappy three liners in text speak. But they lengthened and became more flirtatious as the days went by.

‘R U a prisoner? If I cum 2 foot of yr tower will U let down yr hair 4 me?’

The more suggestive his messages, the more amused and excited she became, eager for the next one. Yet she adopted a stern, schoolmarm tone of reproof, adding the reminder that she had a husband
and
a daughter. But he was enjoying their sparring, it seemed, and instantly came back for more. Three or four a day from each of them were now winging back and forth.

‘Married? OK. But happy?’ he queried. ‘Does he luv yr fiery nature? Wld
he
cover U in choc & lick off?’

In response to her repeated questions, he eventually admitted that he too had been married. ‘Hitched x 2 … d’vorced x 2’, but no woman compared to her. ‘Guess wot? – still got pix of U.’ She dismissed, with a guilty shiver, the chocolate comment and concentrated on the idea that he saw her as fiery. She liked that. She liked even more the idea he had kept a picture of her. Perhaps the time had come to let him see what she looked like now. Maybe, she thought with a little flush of self-congratulation, he’d be impressed to see how she’d kept her looks. OK, she was a bit plumper, but not much since her diet, and was scarcely lined. In no time she had flicked through the digital pictures stored on the PC and found her favourite. Her husband usually chose to snap her when she was unaware – raw-faced and untidy with all her bulges hanging out. But this was a carefully posed head and shoulders shot. Behind her was a lilac sky and the copper lit Bay of Salerno. Her hair, caught by the evening breeze, was flatteringly lifted away from her face; her white lace camisole top showed off her tan and a bit of cleavage, and, best of all, because she and Peter were just about to go out for a meal, she had make-up on.

It had been their first holiday without Melanie – at fifteen she’d preferred to go with a friend’s family to a campsite in Provence. More significantly, Fran had just completed her big diet. She’d reached her target of losing three stone just before they went on that holiday to Ravello, on Italy’s Riviera coast. The picture was a few years old, but it wasn’t really a deception. She’d not aged markedly since, and though she had put on a little weight, it was still under control. Anyway, Dan wasn’t to know the difference. Fran hit the ‘send’ button before she could think better of it.

Only then did she click back to Live Mail. The email from Melanie, via Facebook, was about an Australian boy called Aden. He really, really liked her, she said. She went on to detail the things they’d done together – mainly lounging on the beach and drinking, as far as Fran could tell. An impression confirmed by the pictures on her daughter’s Facebook page. Mel gloated over his white blond hair, incredible mahogany suntan, and amazing ‘pecs’ – almost as if in shock, as if convincing her mother would help her believe that she, a plump, pale English girl, had scored the best-looking guy in town.

Getting her head back into mother/daughter gear, Fran’s instant reaction was that Aden – what kind of name was that, anyway? – looked and sounded like a beach bum, though, admittedly, a good-looking beach bum. Despite Melanie’s blatant need for approval and applause, Fran composed a cautionary response. Don’t let your heart rule your head was the gist of the message. Its subtext –
don’t have sex with him.
Their relationship did not allow her to be that straight with her daughter. Able to picture her frown, feel her disappointed impatience on receipt of the cautionary reply, she knew it would simply confirm Mel’s opinion of her ‘wet blanket’ mother. Other women seemed capable of making friends of their teenage daughters without losing respect or lowering their standards. Why couldn’t she? Her buoyant mood was diluted by regret. Yet she still hit the send button.

A warm, wet tongue curled between Fran’s toes. Nelson and Jimbo had finished their breakfast and come to find her. Whether this was a gesture of affection, or simply because they liked the faintly cheesy taste, she didn’t know. It made her giggle and lifted the momentary gloom. For a while longer she sat hoping for a reply from db, but none came. It wasn’t until she heard the flush of the loo upstairs that she shut down the PC. As she went into the kitchen to begin preparing breakfast, Fran remembered that Dory was coming round later to tell her about that ridiculous house.

Chapter Sixteen - Dory

‘Cut to the chase,’ her sister said, counting spoonfuls of coffee into the cafetière. ‘Is it the same house? What’s the verdict?’

There was a lot to tell, but Dory hesitated. Spotting the third mug on the tray, she said, ‘Is Peter here?’

‘He’s
always
here. Hangs around all day, messing the place up. Why do you think I like going out so much?’ The kettle switched off, and Fran poured the steaming water into the jug and gave it a stir. She led the way into the conservatory, the dogs intent on tripping her up. Dory’s brother-in-law was sitting on a rattan chair reading a newspaper. At the dogs’ barks he looked up and smiled, folding the paper haphazardly and putting it on the floor beside him.

‘All right, Dory?’

‘She’s going to tell us about the dark and dreary mansion she’s just looked at.’

‘Hi, Peter. My sister’s exaggerating, as usual.’

‘Put me out of my misconceptions then,’ Fran said.

‘It’s not a mansion but …’ Dory began, taking the mug of coffee. ‘In a way, you’re right. The house has panelling everywhere, heavy furniture, and floor to ceiling books, which gives it a gloomy atmosphere.’ An inexplicable reluctance kept her silent on the subject of the property’s ownership. Instead, and without explaining its provenance, she launched into a description of the antique pottery and painted furniture that Stefan’s parents had managed to bring with them when they escaped the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

‘Enough of folksy furniture,’ Fran eventually objected. ‘What about the house itself? Isn’t it just too huge?’

‘It was originally a cottage, I guess, and the frontage was added on at a later period … maybe Georgian … so the main rooms
are
spacious, with high ceilings and tall windows, but it is just a three-bedroom, one-box-room house. It would be pretty depressing to live in as it is now because of all the dark wood and dingy wallpaper. It needs a complete overhaul. But how likely am I to find an older house I can move into straight away, without doing anything to it?’