Jonathan Coe - Number 11

Grace nodded and Sophia stuck up her thumb in approval. Rachel withdrew and went downstairs to the main kitchen, thinking to herself that even these little gestures represented a small victory.

*

Although the twins were cooperative and uncomplaining and didn’t argue much either with Rachel or each other, the process of feeding them and making sure they bathed themselves and then reading to them in bed was still surprisingly tiring. Rachel had decided to carry on sleeping in her own bedroom but she made a point of wedging open the doors that connected the two parts of the house, and told the girls that they should come and find her, or call her on the internal phone system, if they got scared or if anything was wrong. It was almost ten o’clock by the time they were both tucked up in bed and sleeping. After that, Rachel found herself unable to settle. She kept climbing up and down the narrow staircase at the back of the house and checking that the doors and windows were locked. Faustina’s sudden departure had really shaken her. That, and the terrible fate of Mortimer. That was two days ago, now. She wondered what Jules had done with the body. She went to her bedroom window, opened it and peered out into the garden. Surely he would not just have left it there? That would be too grisly to contemplate.

No, the canine bundle had definitely gone. A light breeze was beginning to stir and an untethered section of tarpaulin was flapping quite loudly. She hoped that it wouldn’t keep her awake all night. It was a corner of the tarpaulin that covered the pit, or was meant to. It seemed to have come loose.

Then there came another sound from the garden. A loud, metallic clang, as if a bucket had just been knocked over. Was there something out there? In the absence of any other explanation, Rachel had still not discounted her own theory that it was some fearless, oversized urban fox that had entered the garden and attacked Mortimer. She craned her neck further out of the window and squinted towards the rear, ivy-covered wall. It was too dark to see anything for certain but, the more intently she looked, the more she suspected that there was something there, some wild creature, lurking in the deepest shadows.

And then she did see it. It rushed out from the back of the garden, scuttled towards the edge of the pit and disappeared through the hole in the tarpaulin. Its body was black and grossly distended, its movement was unmistakably insectile, and she was convinced that she could even make out the hairs on the last of its eight legs as it dived down into the pit, scrambling down the walls, plunging deeper and deeper into the darkness from which it had come.

‘The thing is,’ Rachel said, ‘when I’m sitting here with you, talking like this, everything seems so normal.’

‘Of course it does. Everything is normal.’

‘I know. I imagined it. I’d had a really stressful day, I was incredibly tired … Maybe I even nodded off and dreamed it.’

‘Quite possibly that is the explanation. After all, you’d just seen the picture in the museum, and you’d been looking again at the card from the old pack of cards that your friend gave you all those years ago. So this creature, or something like it, was very much on your mind.’

Rachel and Livia were having coffee together once again at the Lido café in Hyde Park. They had not wanted to give up on the burgeoning friendship just because Mortimer no longer furnished them with a pretext. In fact, more than ever, Rachel valued Livia’s sanity, her smiling good nature, the sense of calm she always radiated with her measured advice and tuneful, cello-like voice.

‘So you don’t think I’m going mad?’ Rachel asked, with a smile that didn’t do much to conceal the sincerity of the question.

‘Of course not. This is such a difficult time for you. You just need to take things easy.’

‘Everything seems to be going wrong at once,’ said Rachel. ‘It’s just one thing after another. My gran phoned this morning. She’d had a letter from Grandad’s oncologist.’

‘Yes? What was the news?’

‘Nothing good. He’d applied to the Cancer Drugs Fund for that drug you mentioned but they turned him down. Too expensive, apparently. Oddly enough, that doesn’t seem to have been a problem for your client — the Duchess or the Baroness or whatever she is.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Livia, ‘I never thought about the expense. Of course, she’s a very wealthy woman and might have paid for it herself. The thing is, I don’t always understand how things work in your country. I’m trying to find out more about it. I thought this book might help me.’

She handed Rachel the book she was currently reading, a thick, faded green hardback with no dustjacket. It was called The Winshaw Legacy , by Michael Owen.

‘I found this in the charity shop,’ she said. ‘The Winshaws are a famous family in Britain, I think. This tells their story. Did you read it?’

Rachel shook her head. ‘Maybe I should. Their name seems to come up everywhere these days. My friend Alison was stitched up by one of them. She was telling me about it just the other day.’

‘Really? By a member of this family? Which one?’

‘Josephine.’

Livia’s eyes narrowed. She had very striking, amber eyes.

‘Oh yes. I know Josephine.’

‘You do?’

‘She lives near here. Not far from the house where you live, in fact. I walk her dog sometimes. But nobody has seen her for a few days.’

‘Taking a well-earned break in Mauritius or somewhere, no doubt.’

‘I don’t think so. The police are looking for her.’ She pressed her copy of the book into Rachel’s hands. ‘Here — borrow it. Please.’

‘Thanks, but I’m not really in the mood for reading at the moment.’

‘No. Take it. You should learn about these people.’

Purely because Livia was being so insistent, Rachel flicked through the pages quickly, automatically, and then put it in her knapsack. ‘OK, I’ll give it a try,’ she said. ‘Thank you. And thanks for trying to help with my grandad. I hate to think of him suffering the way he is.’ She clasped Livia’s hand. ‘You’re a good friend. There aren’t many people like you in my life at the moment.’

‘And how are things with your boyfriend?’

‘Oh, OK. He’s trying to get a chapter of his thesis finished. He doesn’t seem to have much time to think about anything else right now.’

‘Well, I’m here for you,’ said Livia. ‘And the children, if you want me to take them off your hands for a while.’

Rachel looked directly into her eyes, now, and felt ashamed with herself that instead of seeing — as she should have done — uncomplicated kindness there, she imagined something else instead, something ambiguous, something blank and unreadable. It was symptomatic of the way she was growing needlessly wary of other people. This job was making her cynical and mistrustful. She looked away and sipped her coffee, embarrassed.

*

That afternoon, she picked up Grace and Sophia from school at three thirty as always, and then, as they entered the building site at the front of the house, they found that all the Romanian workers were gathered around the site office, and some sort of crisis meeting was in progress. At the centre of it was Dumitru, the site manager, who seemed to be presenting Tony Blake with an ultimatum. The faces of the other workers were attentive and morose.

‘Come on, you two,’ said Rachel, hurrying the twins up the front steps. ‘This doesn’t have anything to do with us.’

Nonetheless, as soon as she had ushered them through the front door and told them to go upstairs and change out of their uniforms, she went back on to the steps to listen to the argument. But the meeting was already breaking up. Dumitru was still shouting and gesturing angrily as he stripped off his high-visibility jacket, removed his hard hat, and stormed out through the door in the hoarding. The calls from his workmates suggested, to Rachel, that they were asking him to come back, but his decision seemed clear: he was quitting. Tony Blake was staring after him, tight-lipped, and brandishing an empty, clear glass bottle in his hand.