Ruth Rendell - Portobello

'How are you feeling?' Ella said.

She expected his mother to answer for him, perhaps briskly or with impatience, but Wendy Stemmer only shook her head. She had once, Ella could see, been a very pretty woman – pretty rather than beautiful – the kind of trophy wife rich men like Stemmer marry, with toothpaste advertisement teeth and long fingernails on unused hands. Time and perhaps the tragedy of her daughter's death had faded her so that she was like a rose that has been worn all day in a buttonhole, limp, starting to wither.

Joel turned his head towards her.

'My mother let the light in,' he said. 'She always does. She doesn't believe it hurts my eyes.'

Nor do I, Ella thought, but still I wouldn't deny you the darkness you want. She had begun to wonder what she was doing there. It would have helped if Wendy Stemmer had offered her coffee or even a cold drink but she had sat down beside her son, half smiling at Ella as if she expected her to take charge, say something to fetch Joel out of his apathy, perhaps take his temperature or listen to his heart.

'I understand you're not too happy with Linda,' Ella said at last.

'Who's Linda?'

Was he indifferent or had he forgotten? 'One of your carers.'

'I don't mind her,' he said. 'It's her . She doesn't like it here. She wants it to be light all the time. You know I can't stand the light.' He got up, moving more quickly than she had ever seen before, pulled down the blind in one swift gesture and pulled the curtains across. Mrs Stemmer shook her head and pulled down her short skirt over bony knees. 'When it's light I can see Mithras.'

'Now, Joel,' said his mother, in an almost jocular tone.

Joel took no notice of her. 'When I can only hear him I think he's a figment of my imagination but in the light I see him and he's real.' He spoke in a very low voice. 'I can't stand it when he's real.'

'He isn't real, Joel,' said Mrs Stemmer.

'I've spoken to Miss Crane,' Ella said. 'She says it would help you a lot if you would take your medication. If you got into a routine of taking a pill every morning.'

Joel made no reply. He got up and went out into the hall, trailing the scarf behind him like an infant with his comfort blanket. His purpose was evidently to pull down all the blinds his mother had raised and draw all the curtains his mother had opened, for darkness began to close in. Wendy Stemmer peered at Ella through the dimness and cast up her eyes. 'He's not having any heart problems, you know,' she said. She switched on one of the low-wattage lamps. 'The results of his scan were absolutely fine. There's actually nothing wrong with him any more.'

But Ella thought how much worse Joel was now than when she had first seen him in the hospital. Then he had been just another more or less normal man recovering from heart surgery, while now… Joel came back, ignored his mother, gave Ella such a sweet and tender smile as to cause a tremor in the region of her heart. She remembered how he had asked her to come and live with him.

'I've said it before, Joel,' she said. 'I don't think you should be alone here. Here or anywhere else. Linda won't come again. Noreen will and we can get you another carer.' She glanced at Wendy Stemmer who sat with her hands moving slightly in her lap, the gesture of someone growing impatient. 'But I don't think that's good enough. It should be someone close to you. It should be family.'

'You,' said Joel. 'You come and live here.'

That was too much for his mother. She almost screamed the words. 'You're mad, you really are, expecting your doctor to move in with you! What next? You've got a beautiful home with everything provided for you and no expense spared, I'm sure. You're perfectly well. You need work, you need something to occupy you and take your mind off your so-called troubles.'

He nodded sadly, unperturbed. 'Yes, they are troubles. I call them troubles and that's what they are.' He sat down beside his mother, 'You see, Ma, I've got someone living with me. He's here now only I can't see him in the dark. If he would go away I should be all right, wouldn't I, Ella?'

It was the first time he had called her by her given name in his mother's presence. Ella saw Wendy Stemmer's slight frown, the sharp glance she gave her son. 'I must go. Goodbye, Mrs Stemmer.' Not for anything would she say it had been nice to see this woman again. 'Joel, I'll see you very soon.'

Lance had spent a lot of time in the past weeks speculating about what treasures he might find in Elizabeth Cherry's house. Credit cards or one credit card, a chequebook maybe, though what use a chequebook was these days to someone like him he didn't know. Maybe you could order something on mail order and send a cheque. He would have to find out. There would be jewellery and very probably more money. Perhaps a strongbox under the bed. He had heard tales of old folk who didn't trust banks and who never had bank accounts but kept all their money in cash, thousands and thousands, stuffed into socks or even pillowcases.

If there was jewellery he'd flog it to the man called Mr Crown in Poltimore Road his Uncle Roy had recommended. Would it be best to get along to the man before he did the job and see how the land lay? Ask him, for instance, if it would be all right to go over there with his haul the next day? He'd ask his aunt's exhusband only he'd gone on his holidays to Lanzarote. There was a lot to learn when you got yourself into this kind of thing. If told of the proposed job in advance, what was to stop the man in Poltimore Road alerting the police? It would be a way of getting in good with them. Lance decided against it. If only he had a vehicle he could remove a few bits of furniture but if Dwayne wouldn't drive a getaway car he certainly wasn't going to come in with him on a job like this. Gemma's brother was already doing God knows how many days' community service for breaking into a car and stealing from it a computer and a leather coat.

A long day lay ahead of Lance and nothing to do with it but think about the job ahead. He would have slept half the morning away but Uncle Gib's departure on the coach for Clacton woke him at seven, an hour Lance barely acknowledged as existing, one of the small hours, more or less the middle of the night. And Uncle Gib didn't leave quietly as any normal person would but yelled, 'I'm off. Don't you get up to no tricks, mind,' and slammed the front door behind him so that the house shook.

The diesel throb of the coach's engine made a noise like half a dozen taxis. Lance tried to get back to sleep but couldn't. He understood, perhaps for the first time in his life, how an event planned for the evening ahead can send tentacles of anxiety creeping up through the day to clutch the mind at dawn. It was a revelation to him and when it became clear, at about eight, that the octopus grip wasn't going away, he got up. These August mornings should have been warm, the sun up but not yet strong, not the way they were this year, chilly and dark. Shivering, he mooched outside to what Uncle Gib called the privy and he the 'bog'. One thing to be thankful for, the rats had taken themselves off or, full of Warfarin, died underground. He washed himself at the scullery sink, something he wouldn't have bothered about a couple of months back. Fastidious Gemma insisted on cleanliness, even providing him with a bar of Dove soap. He thought of her fondly as he dried himself on a thin grey towel.

The house in Blagrove Road was the only dwelling place Lance had ever been in where there was no fridge. His nan had told him that when she was a child they didn't have one in their house but, apart from that, he had no experience until he came here of the fridgeless state and had never before seen a larder. That, apparently, was what this dark and damp-smelling cupboard was called. It was empty but for a shrivelled knob of black pudding and a cracked egg on a plate. Lance would have liked to break the place up, smash everything, the useless telly that had only got four channels, the laptop, which was so old it took ten minutes before a picture came on to the screen, the glass in the painting of Jesus holding a lantern and standing among a lot of weeds, the clock in its dark wooden case that didn't go, which had never gone as far as he knew, the dead plant, growing out of dust in a cracked china pot. He would have liked to smash it all but he didn't. He feared finding the place locked against him when he came back from the job at two in the morning.