Хилари Боннер - The Cruellest Game

‘There must be somewhere,’ he persisted.

I shook my head. ‘No, but it makes no difference. This is where I live and I’m staying here. Nobody is driving me out.’

‘Well, you really shouldn’t be here alone, you know. What if something else happened?’

‘I thought you and PC Jacobs believed I’d done all this myself?’

Bickerton didn’t respond to that.

‘I could probably get a PCSO over.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A Police Community Support Officer.’

I could think of little I would like less than the company of some sort of assistant policeman.

‘No, thank you,’ I said.

Bickerton shook his head sorrowfully.

‘Well, Jim and I are on duty till the early hours, so we’ll keep an eye.’

I was actually rather grateful for that, but I certainly wasn’t going to show it.

As a child and a young woman I’d had a reputation for being stubborn. My dad used to say that I might have been small in stature but I had a big heart and a strong will. During all those years of my apparently idyllic existence with Robert and our son I’d had no reason to take a stand about anything much, and I suppose I’d become a fairly benign sort of person.

But that evening, amid the wreckage of my home and of my life, I could feel that indigenous stubbornness returning.

And I remembered my road to Damascus moment on the moors the previous weekend. There was no longer any question of me attempting to escape, by any means at all, including suicide, from the desperate crazy world I now appeared to inhabit. I was not going to be beaten. Somehow or other I was going to find out what was going on. I needed to know who could hate me and Robert so much that they would embark on a vicious campaign to further destroy lives that were already broken, probably beyond repair.

First I had to protect myself. And I didn’t need PC Bickerton to remind me not to repeat the mistake I had made after the first break-in at Highrise. I needed to get my locks changed. Fast. I called an emergency twenty-four-hour locksmith company in Exeter. Rather to my surprise, they agreed to have someone at Highrise within a couple of hours. Apparently coming to the rescue of panicking householders really was their speciality.

While I waited for one of their employees to arrive I went out to the car to fetch Florrie. And as I led her along the hallway I remembered I hadn’t yet fed her. I left her outside the kitchen door, aware of how much she could damage herself walking amidst all the debris inside, piled some tinned food into her bowl, thankfully made of stainless steel or I imagine that would have been smashed too, and carried it out into the hall for her.

Then, unwilling to face the horrors of even beginning to clear up the desecrated house that night, I sat on the bottom of the stairs cuddled up with Florrie until the locksmith arrived, actually only just over an hour later. He was a cheerful-looking chap, who told me his name was Billy, but his face registered a kind of bewildered embarrassment when confronted with the state of Highrise. Billy said little as he crunched about over broken furniture, shattered glass and smashed crockery, but he worked fast, taking little more than an hour and a half to change all three of my locks.

After Billy left I realized I was still quite numb with the shock of what had been done to Highrise. And all this on top of Robbie’s horrible death. I didn’t dare dwell on any of it. Not that night. What I needed was oblivion.

Automatically I began to lead Florrie to the kitchen, then I realized that I could not leave her there overnight amidst layers of broken glass and crockery. Indeed, it was a miracle she hadn’t cut her paws already.

‘You’re going to have to sleep upstairs with me tonight, girl,’ I told her. She wagged her tail gleefully. I swear that dog understood every word I said.

I also realized that while I had fed Florrie I had eaten nothing myself. But I still had no interest in food. Drink was a different matter. I stepped across the hall, wriggled my way through the little door leading to Robert’s wine store in the cellar, which had mercifully and miraculously escaped the attention of whoever had destroyed so much of the house — presumably they just hadn’t found it — and selected two of his finest and most expensive French reds.

I found a bottle opener among the wreckage of the kitchen and uncorked them both. Then, after checking the back door was locked and all the windows downstairs firmly closed, I carried the wine upstairs to the guest bedroom I had been using. The bedclothes, along with my beloved pink Turnbull & Asser pyjamas, had been pulled off the bed and tossed carelessly around the room, but otherwise the bed was undamaged and, most thankfully of all, unsoiled.

I undressed, picked up my pyjamas from the floor and put them on. The door to the en-suite shower room stood open and I could see that the tooth mug which lived there remained intact in its wall bracket. I collected it and filled it to the brim with red wine. I pulled the bedding back on the bed and climbed in.

Florrie, hardly believing her luck, jumped up straight away, snuggled close and lay her head on the empty pillow beside me. Robert would have been horrified. It had been so much more his decision, rather than mine, that she be confined to her bed in the kitchen at night. I’d never thought about it before but her warm furry presence was extremely comforting, and from now on one of many changes I intended was that Florrie should have bedroom privileges. Regardless of the hairy residue she would leave behind.

I stroked her head, picked up the tooth mug, downed its contents in almost one swallow, filled it again and emptied it just as swiftly. Even at that moment it gave me a kind of perverted pleasure to dispose of Robert’s best wine in such a manner because I knew how it would have offended him.

The third mug finished off the first bottle and I drank it more slowly, washing down two zolpidem as I did so. Then, after a moment’s thought, I swallowed another pill just to make sure.

For the first time since Robbie’s death the only emotion I felt was anger, perhaps because I had no other emotion left. But I did need to block out the world. I was, of course, extremely anxious about being alone in Highrise in spite of the new locks and in spite of my show of bravado to PC Bickerton. The next day I planned to make it even more difficult for whoever it was to enter my property again. Meanwhile I just wanted to sink into enough of a stupor to get me through the night. And I did. After drinking slightly more than half of the second bottle, I slept soundly until about six o’clock the following morning.

Florrie, her head resting on my chest, seemed to have been waiting for me to open my eyes. She wagged her tail and licked my face.

My mouth felt uncomfortably dry and I had a dull headache. A hangover presumably. It was so long since I’d had one of those I’d almost forgotten what it felt like. This one, it had to be admitted, was well deserved. But at least I’d found the oblivion I had both sought and so badly needed, and I did now feel, in a strange way, able to begin to face the chaos that surrounded me.

I dressed in the jeans and sweater I now kept in the guest room and, remembering the debris all over the kitchen, dug out a pair of old trainers from the cupboard on the landing. Then I led Florrie downstairs, letting her out of the front door as I did not want to risk taking her into the kitchen again until I’d cleared up a bit.

I found a mug which was chipped and had lost most of its handle, and made myself tea. While Florrie was still outside pottering about I retrieved a spade from the garden shed, and a brush from the cupboard in the hall. I began sweeping up the debris that covered the kitchen floor and shovelling it into heavy-duty bin bags. I piled these outside the back door.