Дэвид Муди - Strangers

Michelle phoned Jackie and arranged to skip the toddler group session and do coffee together instead. She didn’t feel like spending time with the sour, stony-faced women in the community hall. She felt like going back home even less.

Jackie’s terraced house was right on the main road through town, protected from the traffic by a waist-high wire-mesh fence and a narrow sunken pavement. Over the years the constant fumes had blackened the front of the building. Half-hearted attempts had been made to clean patches, but that had just spread the muck about. The whole building was dirty-looking.

Michelle drove past then took the next left and pulled up behind a car she thought she recognised. It was an old Ford Focus. Dirty and full of crap, it was splattered with mud and its exhaust was hanging off. It took her a while to remember where she’d seen it before. It had been less than a week, but it felt much longer. When she saw the man who’d stopped to speak to her and Tammy at the bus-stop last Sunday evening, it clicked. He emerged from Jackie’s front door and gave way to Michelle. Shifty-looking bugger, she thought. He was wearing the same faded football shirt as before, the same denim jacket too.

‘Sorry,’ she said as they side-stepped each other and both did a double-take. The man made less of an effort than she did, brushing up against her.

‘No apology necessary,’ he said, staring for a little too long. ‘You must be Michelle.’

The seedy man made her flesh crawl, but she did what she could not to let it show. ‘That’s right. How did you…?’

‘Psychic,’ he said quickly. He broke into a huge smile and an over-exaggerated laugh which seemed to fill the entire street. ‘Not really. I’m many things, lover, but psychic ain’t one of them. Jack’ll tell you.’

Michelle looked up and saw Jackie standing on the doorstep, wearing a short dressing gown and not a lot else. ‘Piss off, Dez,’ she said. ‘That useless bugger is my other half,’ she explained as she beckoned Michelle inside. ‘Really landed on my feet with that one, eh?’

‘Nice to meet you again,’ Michelle said, turning back around, but Dez had already gone. A couple of seconds later his car raced past the front of the house at a ridiculous speed, the noise of its tired exhaust taking an age to disappear.

‘Again?’ Jackie asked, puzzled. Michelle explained as she followed her into her small, cluttered house. They went through into the kitchen, every available bit of work surface covered with crockery, saucepans and food.

‘I was having a bit of trouble with my eldest last Sunday evening. She had a strop and walked off. I was sitting in the bus shelter with her, trying to get her to come home, and he stopped to check we were okay. I think he was just concerned.’

‘You reckon? Perving, more like. Funny, though, he never said anythin’.’

‘Probably forgot about it ’til now. I had.’ Michelle thought she should try and steer the conversation into safer waters. ‘So what does Dez do?’

‘As little as he has to,’ Jackie answered quickly as she filled the kettle.

‘And you’re okay with that?’

‘Don’t have a lot of choice, really. As long as he brings enough money in, I’ve learned not to ask too many questions.’

‘Like that, is it?’

She laughed. ‘I’m making it sound worse than it is. Dez isn’t scared of hard work, but he can’t hold down a regular job to save his life. He does odd jobs for people, helps folks out, all cash in hand. Everybody knows Dez.’

Michelle couldn’t help asking. ‘What kind of odd jobs?’

‘Whatever needs doin’. Look, I know it sounds dodgy, but it’s all kosher. He just does things different to everyone else, that’s all. People jump to the wrong conclusion too easy about Dezzie.’

‘Sorry, I…’

‘I didn’t mean you, love. He gets it all the time. Just this Saturday gone Sergeant Ross stopped him for no good reason. Mind you, he was off to see his mate with a load of beer and knocked-off DVDs in the back of the car. Dez don’t exactly help himself.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Ah, he asks for trouble half the time. Carryin’ on like he’d a load of hard-core porn stashed away or worse.’

‘And he hadn’t?’

‘It was a stack of Star Trek videos. Him and his mate Murray, that’s the guy who works up on the fracking site by Falrigg, are proper geeks. Sergeant Ross thought Dez was into sumthin’ mucky, fact is him and Murray were just plannin’ a Star Trek all-nighter.’

Michelle laughed at the ridiculousness of the story, then took her coffee from Jackie and followed her into the living room where the children were playing. The room was scattered with toys. Scattered . She thought that was a good word to use to describe the whole house; everything where it had been last used, nothing where it should be. She picked her way through the chaos to get to a seat, having to shift newspapers, TV listings magazines, remote controls and toys so she could sit down. Jackie took them from her. ‘Sorry about the state of the place,’ she said, noticing Michelle’s wandering eyes. ‘Fast as I clean it up, Dez and the kids trash it again.’

‘You should see my house,’ Michelle said quickly, worried that she’d caused offence. ‘We’ve still got a load of boxes to unpack. It takes forever. It took me weeks to get everything ready for the move and it’s going to take twice as long to sort it all out at this end.’

‘You sure you want to?’

‘What?’

‘Unpack? I mean with everything that’s happened here since you arrived? Ken Potter killing that girl then doin’ himself in… your other half finding the body… you sure you’re safe here?’

‘You taking the piss? Tell me you’re taking the piss?’

‘Course I am,’ Jackie laughed. ‘Jeez, you’re easy to wind up. I was just messin’ with you. Like I said the other day, I know what you’re goin’ through. Thussock takes some getting used to.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘Actually, it’s not the place, it’s the people. Most of them are all right, it’s just that when they’ve lived here all their lives, they’ve never known nothin’ else, you get me? What’s wrong to us is normal to them. Dez has got these cousins on his dad’s side what live right up in the Highlands, miles away from anyone else. He took me up to meet them once – just the once – and I swear they were the weirdest buggers I’ve ever met. Had their own words for things, like they was talkin’ their own language. Kept a bloody pig in the bathroom.’

‘A pig in the bathroom? You serious?’

‘Absolutely. Thing is, they didn’t have nowhere else to keep it and it was a downstairs bathroom so it kinda made sense. Point is, sittin’ having a piss with a pig lookin’ up at you was normal in their house. If they came to your place they’d be freaked out if you didn’t have no livestock in your bathroom. You get me?’

‘What’re you saying? The further north you go, the more screwed up people are?’

Jackie just shook her head and smiled. ‘I’m sure you had your fair share of fuck-ups down south too.’

‘You can say that again. I could tell you a few tales.’

‘Then we’ll do that one night. We’ll get some drink in, get rid of the kids and the men, then sit here talking bollocks ’til we’ve drunk so much we’ve forgotten our own names. Probably do us both good, that would.’

‘I’ll hold you to that,’ Michelle said, feeling herself slowly beginning to relax. Being here felt reassuringly, unexpectedly, normal. She drank her coffee and watched the children. They were tolerating each other, warming to one another’s company. In her book, that was good enough.