The Pull of the Moon (15 page)

‘Oh, look,’ said Danny. ‘There’s a horse with a foal – see it over on the left . . .’

‘Oh, how sweet,’ I said. ‘Slow down a bit, Si – look at his dear little legs – a perfect Bambi.’

‘Bambi was a deer.’

‘I know, but he’s got the same gangly legs.’

‘I think we could still get quite a bit of work done today,’ Danny addressed Simon. ‘It’s not four o’clock yet.’

By the time we got back to the house my head felt fuzzy with the heat. I decided to try running a bowl of cold water and putting my feet in it – it was the nearest thing I could think of
to a cool dip. We’d had a kiddies’ paddling pool when I was little. Just a simple blow-up one, two pale blue plastic rings and a white plastic bottom covered in pictures of shells and
fishes, although any illusion of the seaside was always spoiled by the tiny bits of grass which found their way in on our bare feet. I entertained a wistful longing for it, while I ran the kitchen
tap.

My bowl of cold water provoked nothing but mirth from the others. ‘You look like an old woman,’ Trudie said, passing me on her way out to sunbathe.

The cold water failed to do the trick, so I went to lie down on our bed. The open window caught a hint of breeze and funnelled it in my direction. I thought about Trudie’s question in the
car. She did have an awful habit of blurting things out, without stopping to think what effect it might have on people. Of course she wasn’t to know that there might be any particular
sensitivities about Rachel Hewitt. Then I remembered what she claimed Josser had said – ‘Rachel Hewitt was crazy about Danny’ – and I wondered if she had been
mischief-making after all. If there had been any truth in this assertion, then it was surely not the most tactful thing to bring up in front of us both. It was rubbish of course. Just Josser trying
to stir things because Danny had punched him in the mouth. I drifted into a hazy half-sleep, during which Josser’s words echoed every now and then, reminding me of my anxiety while Danny was
out of my sight at university. ‘Well, you needn’t have worried,’ said a small, sensible voice in my head. ‘Danny is crazy about you – not about Rachel Hewitt or anyone
else – just about you.’

The next thing I knew, Danny was rousing me. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding a glass of lemonade. ‘Are you all right? I didn’t realize you’d come up
here.’

‘I was too hot,’ I said. ‘I must have fallen asleep.’

‘You look a bit pale.’ He handed me the glass, a thoughtful frown drawing his eyebrows together. ‘You should have told me you weren’t feeling well. I don’t like to
think of you being up here by yourself – you might have needed something.’

‘I’m feeling much better now.’ I sat up properly and swung my feet on to the floor. ‘What time is it?’

‘It’s half six. We’ve packed up for the day and Trudie’s got dinner ready. Do you feel up to eating anything?’

‘I’m fine now,’ I insisted.

We went downstairs together. Trudie had made a cheese and onion flan, with roast potatoes and peas, which she was spooning on to four plates. She looked up as I entered the kitchen. ‘Where
did you get to? You promised to help with the potatoes, or had you forgotten?’

I had forgotten, but before I could open my mouth Danny cut in to say I hadn’t been feeling well. Trudie was instantly all concern, but I saw the way Simon’s lip curled.

We took our plates and cutlery into the garden. The outside temperature had become bearable, but I declined the offer of cider in favour of another cold lemonade. It was the first time we had
all been together since we got back to the house and Trudie wasted no time in embarking on the topic which had obviously been uppermost in her mind for several hours.

‘It must be exciting, being involved in a real life murder. Tell me again what happened to this girl you were at university with.’

‘There’s nothing to tell really,’ said Danny. ‘She was on my course and we lived in the same hall of residence – although I didn’t know her all that well.
Someone – some pervert, I suppose – climbed into her window and strangled her.’

Trudie looked deflated. Danny’s slightly bored delivery had completely undermined whatever sensational tittle-tattle she had been anticipating. She forked up a lump of potato and
masticated thoughtfully, before saying, ‘Josser said this girl was mad about you.’

‘So what?’ said Simon. ‘Danny’s a good-looking bloke. Loads of girls are mad about him.’

‘Was she ever your girlfriend?’ Trudie persisted.

‘No. Katy’s my girlfriend.’ Danny leant across to squeeze my shoulder.

‘Danny could have had anyone he wanted,’ Simon said, ‘but he chose Katy.’ The note of sarcastic incredulity was not lost on any of us.

I rose to the bait. ‘Meaning?’

‘Just a joke, darling.’ Simon was smirking. He knew he had riled me.

‘At least someone wants
me.
’ As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t have said them. I saw Simon redden and Danny frown.

‘I wonder how difficult it would be to strangle someone,’ Trudie mused.

‘Depends how annoying they are, I should imagine,’ said Simon. He didn’t need to look at me – I understood perfectly what he was getting at. ‘I fancy a walk –
is anyone else up for it? Trudie was saying the girls went down to the wood yesterday. I wouldn’t mind seeing what it’s like down there myself.’

Danny hesitated. ‘Maybe Katy shouldn’t go: she wasn’t very well this afternoon.’ He turned to me, ‘I’ll stay here with you, shall I?’

I acquiesced readily. The further away from Simon the better, so far as I was concerned. Danny volunteered to clear away and I helped him wash up: which seemed only fair since Trudie had done
all the cooking again. We were about halfway into the job when Danny said, ‘I wish you would try to be a bit nicer to Simon.’

‘Maybe you should ask him to be a bit nicer to me.’

Danny chose to ignore the point. ‘It’s so great when the three of us get along together – like we did at the beginning. It was perfect – and that’s the way I like
things. I want everything to be perfect between you and me.’

‘But Simon—’

Danny didn’t allow me to get any further. He kissed his forefinger and placed it against my lips. ‘I always get what I want, remember? And I want everything to be perfect, so it will
be.’

With the evening sun slanting in at the kitchen window and Danny silhouetted against it, it was easy to imagine him sweeping aside all obstacles to our happiness. He was by turns my forceful
handsome warrior and my parfit gentil knyght. He kissed me properly, taking me up bodily and perching me on the table, the better to do so. ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he whispered
into my hair. ‘Sometimes I can hardly believe you’re mine.’ Distracted by Danny’s kisses, I did not even think to question the veracity of this alleged honeymoon period, in
which Simon and I had been the best of pals.

Next morning Simon was as good as his word: he rose early and was back at the house with the pane of glass before ten o’clock. Replacing the window proved to be a major task, involving all
four of us attempting to hold the pane in place, while simultaneously getting in each other’s way and issuing contradictory instructions to one another. The end result looked awful. Even
after Simon had trimmed the surplus putty with a dinner knife, it bulged around the glass with the appearance of badly managed pastry. The surface was a blur of fingerprints, as if a thousand
phantom hands had come pawing at the window: an effect I found so creepy that I voluntarily set to work to clean them all off. The others left me to it. It was a desperately tedious job. Each time
I cleaned the outside I managed to miss some marks, which were instantly visible once I got back into the drawing room, and every time I went outside again I spotted a few more marks on the inside
of the pane. Eventually I gave up the unequal struggle and went to find Trudie in the garden.

She was lying stretched out on the dry grass in her bikini. Her eyes were closed and there was a bottle of suntan lotion lying beside her, with a single white drip suspended halfway down its
label. Cleaning the glass had made my arms ache, so the sight of such indolence irritated me.

‘Who were you phoning, the other day?’

The question made her jump. Either that or she hadn’t heard me approaching.

‘No one. What are you talking about? There isn’t a phone here.’

‘In Leominster.’ I flopped down beside her. ‘I saw you come out of a phone box, the day before yesterday.’

‘Oh – then. I wasn’t phoning anyone.’ She relaxed into her former position.

‘Yes you were.’ She’s such a liar, I thought, unexpectedly angry. ‘Why else would you be in a phone box?’

‘I wanted to see if there was a Yellow Pages, but of course there wasn’t. They’ve always been pinched, haven’t they? The phone books and Yellow Pages.’

‘Why did you want a Yellow Pages?’

‘I wanted to look at the antique dealers. If you must know, I wanted to see if any of them advertised any special interests.’

‘Come off it,’ I said. I was convinced that she was giving me the runaround. ‘You were in a street full of antique dealers. You didn’t need to look them up in the Yellow
Pages. You were calling someone.’

‘Well, what if I was?’ she suddenly snapped. ‘I don’t see that it’s any of your business, anyway.’

This silenced me. It was absolutely true of course. If Trudie wanted to make half a dozen phone calls, it was really nothing to do with me at all. Nor was it anything to do with me if she wanted
to visit the local antique shops – unless of course she was stealing from Simon’s uncle. I thought about the way she had sneaked off on her own, two days running. Had she anticipated
that I would ask her what she had been up to? It occurred to me that the alleged encounter with Josser had provided a distraction at a very convenient moment.

‘Did you really bump into Josser in Leominster?’ I asked, trying to sound natural and friendly.

‘Of course I did.’ Trudie sounded natural and friendly again too. ‘It frightened the life out of me. He’s such a creepy sod.’

‘You didn’t think that when you went for a ride on his motorbike.’

‘That was then – before he came round and left his calling card through our window.’

‘Do you think he’ll come back again?’

A cloud edged in front of the sun, blocking some of the heat. Trudie sat up and half turned towards me. ‘I shouldn’t think so. He’ll be one of those people who just comes into
your life story, then goes out of it again. You know, like Colonel Careless.’

‘What?’

‘Colonel Careless – the bloke who hid with King Charles II in an oak tree. He just appears on the stage of English history for that one day; then he’s never heard of
again.’

‘You’re making that up,’ I said, laughing. ‘Nobody could possibly have been called Colonel Careless.’

‘It’s true – honestly. We did it in History.’

‘Come on, Trudie.’ We were both laughing now. Keeping my tone light, I said, ‘So are you going to tell me why you gave me the slip in Dorothy Perkins?’

Trudie considered this for a moment, looking arch, with her head on one side. ‘Well, all right then,’ she said, affecting a reluctant conspiratorial tone. ‘Since you’re
dying to know, and I think you can keep a secret . . .’ She paused theatrically. ‘My grandmother gave me the most valuable gift I possess . . .’

I wasn’t in the mood for any of her fairy stories or wind-ups so I faked a yawn, holding my mouth wide open and patting my fingers repeatedly against my lips. I was getting very tired of
hearing about Trudie and her ‘gift’.

‘You obviously don’t really want to know,’ she said, getting to her feet and walking back towards the house. I let her go. She got into a huff periodically but it never lasted
very long.

SIXTEEN

In spite of being young and fit, Simon and Danny found the pond excavation hard going. They suffered from blistered hands and sunburn in the early days, coupled with the
frustration of seemingly getting nowhere. Sometimes they spent an hour or more just extracting tree roots, or a whole morning hacking away a rotten stump. They dug out wheelbarrowloads of stones,
which they hauled away to provide foundations for the rockery – often the only man-made sound in the garden was the distinctive chink of a stone tossed into the bucket. Once or twice we
thought we heard a motorbike roaring along the lane, but, as Trudie said, plenty of people had motorbikes.

While the boys were engaged with their building project, Trudie and I amused ourselves as best we could. The two of us had fallen into the habit of walking down to the woods together. It was a
way of escaping from the house for a while and, with no one to overhear, we could indulge in the sort of conversations which held no interest for the boys, to say nothing of seizing the opportunity
to grumble about the way they left their dirty socks lying around and forgot to flush the loo. Lately everyone had a grievance of some sort and none of us were slow to air them. Even our woodland
excursions became the subject of a spat between Simon and Trudie, when he complained one afternoon that she had not been on hand to provide him with a cup of tea.

‘I’m not your bloody slave, you know,’ she said. ‘I’m a free agent. I can come and go as I please.’

‘This isn’t a frigging holiday camp,’ Simon snarled. ‘You can’t expect a free ride.’

‘I do more than my fair share, so screw you,’ she shouted. ‘If you don’t want me here, I can soon find somewhere else.’

‘Pack it in, Simon,’ I said. ‘Trudie works really hard. It didn’t hurt you to make your own tea just for once.’

‘If I’m not wanted—’ Trudie began, but I managed to soothe her down with platitudes while Simon stumped off – probably to sulk.

After what seemed like an eternity they finally finished digging out the pond. The eventual result was an irregular oval about ten feet by six at its widest points and deep enough to allow for
two or three feet of water. Simon ordered sand for the lining and we all stood round when the lorry arrived to deliver it, toasting the first significant landmark in the project.

The arrival of the sand signalled another fall-off in the work rate. It was a milestone and as such felt like a good excuse for a couple of days off. Danny was all for a return trip to the
seaside, but Simon said it was too expensive in petrol, so we settled for a walk on Hergest Ridge instead. The heat was less intense that day and from the top of the ridge it was possible to see
banks of cloud, creeping in from Wales.