Christopher Fowler - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 10

“And what sort of terms would you suggest I come to?” Claire heard herself being unpleasant, perhaps unreasonable, but these were merely hints of the feelings that constantly lay in wait for her. “Please. Do tell me whatever you think I should know.”

The old woman’s gaze wavered and focused beyond her, and Claire had an excuse to move out of the way of whoever was there. Then she heard him say “Here’s the soap you like, mother, that’s gentle on your skin. Who’s your friend you’ve been talking to?”

“You know Mrs Maynard. We were just talking about. ” Apparently emboldened by the presence of her son, Mrs Gummer brought her gaze to bear on the other woman. “How long has it been now, you poor thing?”

“Three months and a week and two days.”

“Have they found the swine yet?”

“They say not.”

“I know what I’d do to him if I got hold of him, chair or no chair.” Mrs Gummer dealt its arms a blow each with her fists, perhaps reflecting on the difficulties involved in her proposal, before refraining from some of another wink as she said “They’ll be testing the men round here soon though, won’t they? It isn’t just fingerprints and blood these days, is it?”

The possibility that the old woman was taking a secret delight in this sickened Claire, who was gripping her trolley to steer it away when Duncan Gummer said “I shouldn’t imagine they think he’s from our neighbourhood, mother.”

He’d taken his position behind the wheelchair and was regarding Claire, his eyes even moister than his display of lower lip. “They’ve told you that, have they?” she demanded. “That’s the latest bulletin for the patrol.”

“Not officially, no, Mrs Maynard. I’m sure Mr Maynard would have told you if they had. I was just thinking myself that this evil maniac would surely have had enough sense, not that I’m suggesting he has sense like ordinary folk unless he does and that’s part of how he’s evil, he’d have kept his, his activities well away from home, would you not think?” He looked away from her silence as a load of bottles jangled onto a shelf, and let his lip sag further. “What I’ve been meaning to say to you,” he muttered, “I can’t blame myself enough for not being out that night when I was meant to be on patrol.”

“Don’t listen to him. It’s not true.”

“Mother, you mustn’t — ”

“It was my fault for being such a worn-out old crock.”

“That’s what I meant. You weren’t to know. You mustn’t take it on yourself.”

“He thought I was turning my toes up when all I was was passed out from finishing the bottle.”

“Can’t be helped,” Claire said for the Gummers to take how they liked, and turned away, to be confronted by the liquor shelves and her inability to recall how much gin was left at home. She was letting her hand stray along the relevant shelf when Mrs Gummer said “You grab it if that’s what you need. I know I did when his father left us.”

Claire snatched her hand back and drove her trolley to the checkout as fast as the shoppers she encountered would allow. She couldn’t risk growing like Mrs Gummer while Laura went unavenged. Time enough when the law had taken its course for her to collapse into herself. She arranged her face to signify that she was too preoccupied to talk to the checkout girl, and imitated smiling at her before wheeling out the trolley onto the sunlit concrete field of the car park.

Tasks helped advance the process of continuing to be alive, but tasks came to an end. At least riding on the free bus from the supermarket to the stop by the golf course was followed by having to drag her wheeled basket home. She might have waited for Wilf to drive her if waiting in the empty house hadn’t proved too much for her. His need to go back to work had forced her to do so herself, and on the whole she was glad of it, as long as she could do the computations and the paperwork while leaving her colleagues to deal face to face with clients. She didn’t want people sympathising with her, softening the feelings she was determined to hoard.

As she let herself into the house the alarm cried to be silenced before it could raise its voice. Once that would have meant Laura wasn’t home from school, and Claire would have been anxious unless she knew why. She wouldn’t have believed the removal of that anxiety would have left such a wound in her, too deep to touch. She quelled the alarm and hugged the lumpy basket to her while she laboured to transport it over the expensive carpet of the suddenly muggy hall to the kitchen, where she set about loading the refrigerator. She left the freezer until last, because as soon as she opened it, all she could see was Laura’s birthday cake.

She’d thought of serving it after the funeral, but she would have felt bound to scrape off the inscription. That still ended at the unfinished letter — the cross she had never made. She’d considered burying the cake in the back garden, but that would have been too final too soon; keeping it seemed to promise that in time she would be able to celebrate the fate of Laura’s destroyer. She reached into its icy nest and moved it gently to the back of the freezer so as to wall it in with packages. While Wilf rarely opened the freezer, she could do without having to explain to him.

He ought to be home soon. She might have made a start on the work she’d brought home from the office, except that she knew she would become aware of trying to distract herself from the emptiness of the house. She wandered through the front room, past the black chunks of silence that were the hi-fi and video-recorder and television, and the shelves of bound classics she’d hoped might encourage Laura to read more, and stood at the window. The street was deserted, but she felt compelled to watch — to remember. Remember what, for pity’s sake? She’d lost patience with herself, and was stepping back to prove she had some control, when she saw what she should have realised in the supermarket, and grew still as a cat which had seen a mouse.

“Wilf?”

“Love?”

“What would you do. ”

“Carry on. We’ve never had secrets from each other, have we? Whatever it is, you can say.”

“What would you do if you knew who’d, who it was who did that to Laura?”

“Tell the police.”

“Suppose you hadn’t any proof they’d think was proof?”

“Still tell them. They’ll sort out if there’s proof or not. If you tell them they’ll have to follow it up, won’t they? That’s what we pay them for, those that do, that you haven’t fixed up not to pay tax.”

“I’d be best phoning and not saying who I am, wouldn’t I? That way they can’t find out how much I really know.”

“Whatever you say, love.”

He had to agree with her, since he wasn’t there: he’d left home an hour ago to be early at a building site. She couldn’t really have had such a conversation with him when he would have insisted on learning why she was suspicious, and then at the very least would have thought she was taking umbrage which in fact she was too old and used up to take. She knew better, however. If Duncan Gummer had been as obsessed with her as she’d assumed him to be, how could be have needed his mother to identify her at the supermarket? Now Claire knew he’d used his patrolling as an excuse to loiter near the house because he’d been obsessed with Laura, a thought which turned her hands into claws. She had to force them to relax before she was able to programme the alarm.

The suburb was well awake. All the surviving children were on their way to school; a few were even walking. The neighbourhood’s postman for the last four months had stopped for a chat with a group of mothers being tugged at by small children. Less than a week ago Claire would have been instantly suspicious of him — of any man in the suburb and probably beyond it too — but now there was only room in her mind for one. She even managed a smile at the postman as she headed for the golf course.