Stephen Irwin - The Darkening

She picked herself up and wrote a tersely worded note, which she stuffed under his door.

It took around ten minutes to get to Myrtle Street and its heavy-lidded shops. Even in daylight, the sight of them sent her heart tripping and her feet tingling, ready to run. But she wasn’t a child any longer; she had knowledge of many things. She climbed the low steps to the tiled veranda outside the shopfronts and walked briskly to the door of Plough amp; Vine Health Foods.

A handwritten sign inside the glass of the door read ‘Closed for stock take’. The ‘o’ in ‘stock’ was a smiley face with petals around it. The shop within was dark.

Suzette let her eyes probe the gloom, expecting any moment to see something shift, to see a small, bent lady peer from between the gibbets of hanging things. . but the shop was still.

She flicked her eyes to the doorframe. The glossy white paint was a bright ice storm of reflections of the day outside the awnings and of her own face. She ran her fingers over the silky surface. . and felt the small, invisible grooves. It was there. Her fingertips tingled at the touch of it. Blood rune. War rune.

She pulled her hand away.

If she felt it, Nicholas must, too. What else did he know?

Kelmscott Heights had a small driveway entrance flanked by two dark brick piers crawling with ivy. The drive itself was gravel and crunched under the tyres of Katharine’s car. Old camphor laurel trees lined the drive; their crocodile-bark trunks cast cool shadows and their branches met overhead, creating a cosy leafed tunnel. At the end of it was the main building of the retirement home: a two-storey brick house with steep eaves and, like the front fence, frocked in dark green ivy. A newer wing ran off at an angle, and separate cottages were divided by neat hedges, politely pruned citrus trees and red-flowered bottlebrush. Kelmscott Heights, Katharine realised, was no ordinary retirement home. Pamela’s family must have money.

The young man at the counter seemed delighted that Pamela had a visitor. His name badge read ‘Nathan’, and he gave Katharine very clear, if slightly patronising, instructions to Pamela’s room in Roseleigh. ‘That’s the AR wing,’ he explained in a stage whisper.

Katharine just bet his boyfriend liked Nathan to whisper ‘Come on my face’ in that exact tone of voice.

‘And “AR” is. .?’

Nathan rolled his eyes, as if Katharine were joshing; surely a good friend who visited often would know that? ‘Assisted Residents. Pamela requires quite a bit of care now.’ He let the last word linger like an accusation.

Katharine smiled thinly and leaned closer. ‘Couldn’t give a fuck. I’m just here to see what I can steal,’ she stage-whispered back. She enjoyed the shocked expression on Nathan’s young face. ‘Kidding, of course.’ She waved and headed to the lifts.

The walls of the AR wing were adorned with bright pictures painted by residents’ grandchildren and dozens of photographs that invariably showed smiling faces anchored by the blank stare, scowl or confused off-centre look of an elderly wrinkled man or woman. They’re mostly senile , realised Katharine. She started reading door numbers, and found her way to room sixteen.

Pamela Ferguson was sitting under the window reading a Tami Hoag novel. The room was surprisingly large, and furnished with some pieces that must have come from Mrs Ferguson’s own home: a blackwood bookcase, a small china cabinet full of Lladro figurines, a small silky oak coffee table on which sat a Chinese abacus that looked — and may well have been — five hundred years old. On the bedside table was a fading framed photograph of a jolly-cheeked man with wrinkly eyes and a bad combover; the deceased Mr Ferguson, guessed Katharine. She realised suddenly that even though she’d shopped at Mrs Ferguson’s greengrocery for nearly two decades, she had never asked Mr Ferguson’s first name.

Katharine coughed into her fist.

Pamela Ferguson looked up and pulled her bifocals down on her nose to peer over them. Her eyes brightened in recognition. ‘Katharine!’

They hugged and exchanged pleasantries. Pamela Ferguson had shrunk with age — nature’s way of finally letting us buy smaller dress sizes, she explained — and Katharine watched with sadness as the once sprightly woman strained to reach into the bar fridge for milk as she made tea for herself and her guest.

They sat and chatted for a while. Katharine complimented Pamela on the lovely grounds and the gorgeous view; Pamela explained her brother had developed and sold a software company and had left her quite a bit when he died, which allowed her to stay here.

‘Pam, this is going to sound. . honestly, a bit stupid. You seem just fine. Why are you in here?’

‘In the Alzheimer’s Revenge wing?’ suggested Pamela. ‘It’s temporary, until a cottage becomes vacant. And the only way to speed that up is to sprinkle a bit of rat poison in someone’s cacciatore.’

The women laughed. The easy silence that followed encouraged Katharine to state her business.

‘Have you been watching the news, Pam?’

Mrs Ferguson shook her head. ‘I’ve given it up for Lent. Sudoku, that’s my thing now.’

Katharine nodded, then recounted how Nicholas had returned from London, how the Thomas boy went missing, and later was found with his throat cut. The man who confessed to his murder died in prison within days of the crime. Katharine looked carefully at Mrs Ferguson. The older woman drew a deep breath through her nostrils.

‘Anyway, all this got me thinking of when Nicky’s friend Tristram died,’ said Katharine.

‘Of course,’ said Mrs Ferguson. ‘All a bit similar, isn’t it?’

Katharine nodded. ‘Suzette asked me if I remembered Mrs Quill.’

She watched the older woman. Mrs Ferguson said nothing. She nodded to Katharine, go on.

‘Mrs Quill,’ repeated Katharine. ‘She used to scare Suzie, remember? Do you know. .’ She hunted for the right words. ‘Why do you think she worried her?’

Mrs Ferguson drew in another of those long breaths. It was a sad, finite sound. ‘I worked next to Mrs Quill from the day I took the lease on my fruit shop to the day I dropped the shutter for good. And not one second in between did I like that woman.’

‘Why not?’

Mrs Ferguson fixed Katharine with a firm stare. ‘ Baobhan sith .’ Then she laughed and shook her head. ‘Fiddlesticks. That’s my nanna talking, superstitious Scot she was. I just never took to Quill. She was always polite. Always said hello. She always paid her rent, never a day in arrears, though who knows how she turned a quid in that haberdashery. There were days went by when I never saw a soul enter her shop.’ Mrs Ferguson shrugged and looked again at Katharine. ‘But nights when I worked back, making fruit salad from the bruised stock or cleaning up the grapes where such-and-suches went picking at them, and I knew Quill was still in her store two doors up. .’ She shivered. ‘I didn’t want to go up there. I thought if I did, I wouldn’t come back. I have to say it was a happy day when I heard her sister won the lottery and bought her a house in Hobart.’

Katharine frowned. ‘I heard she moved to Ballina and died.’

Mrs Ferguson’s eyebrows rose. ‘Oh? Well. That’s funny, because I also heard. .’

She looked out the window at the gently swaying callistemon. Bees hummed on the red fluffy flowers. Clouds had crept over the sun and the day had gone dull and cool. She fell silent.

‘Pam?’ said Katharine. ‘Pamela?’

Mrs Ferguson jerked at Katharine’s voice and turned. Her eyes widened in surprise.

‘Katharine! What are you doing here? How lovely. Here. .’ The older woman stood and shuffled to the kettle, switched it on. ‘I should be at the shop, but I’m not a hundred per cent today. How’s your Donald? Where’s little Suzette?’