Women’s Group Cancelled Tonight due to illness – Call Kath for details of next week
Below that was drawn a smiley face in a large, irregular circle. The smile had been formed out of the word ‘sisterhood’.
‘Bollocks,’ I said, turning up the collar of my denim jacket as the rain fell harder. The sky had darkened to a dull chrome. It felt like winter had arrived already and it was only August. I turned to leave and that’s when I saw him. Standing beneath the towering gingko in the middle of the churchyard. He was wearing a dark overcoat and wellington boots and was staring right at me, his face as pale and round as the moon. I felt a shiver of discomfort. The man was holding a bag in his hands, swinging it as he started to walk towards me, his expression as still as a stopped clock. I lifted my hand.
‘Hi, I’m here for th—’
‘It’s closed.’
‘I know. I just saw the sign.’
He looked me up and down. There was a smell coming off him, like old clothes in a trunk, mothballs. He had pink scar tissue stretched thin across his neck, fine lines cobwebbing his eyes.
‘I got the keys here. You come in, out the rain.’
I stared at him. His eyes were silvery blank pennies. ‘No thanks. I have to get back.’
‘I’d better draw the curtains. Getting dark. More storms rolling in.’
‘Yes.’
We stood there silently as he rifled through the ring of keys he’d produced from his pocket. The keyring had a little pink plastic bird attached to it, rubbed almost smooth with age. It was the kind of trinket you’d find in a Christmas cracker and it was so incongruous, given the man holding it – broad and stooped with only a clutch of brown teeth still left in his mouth – that I almost burst out laughing. The caretaker pulled at the handle and the door wheezed open. I took a step back, calculating the distance between me and the iron gates. I couldn’t tell you why I was so nervous, but the one thing I’d learned from my women’s group had been written on a T-shirt Kath had worn one evening: ‘Trust your gut – that bitch knows what’s up.’
I looked over at the gates again. They were a long way away but I could make it, if I sprinted. If I needed to. If he reached for me with his big, callused hand.
‘The graves’ll flood.’ He was looking up at the sky. ‘Sink right into the ground.’
I was looking at the white plastic bag he was holding, the handles stretching with the weight of what was inside. And what is inside? I thought, with a feeling of creeping horror. My stomach somersaulted as I caught a glimpse of dark wet fur and a glassy, staring eye. There was a smear of blood on the wall of the bag like a streak of brown paint on canvas. He looked down at it, then up at me.
‘We’ve got a rabbit problem,’ he said, ‘but they’re too clever for traps. Don’t like the poison, though, no sir. They come out the ground to die, because they want to see the stars.’
‘Do you have to poison them? Can’t you find a more humane way?’
It was as if he hadn’t heard me. He had a strange, faraway expression, looking past me, back towards the trees. ‘You’d want to see the stars too, wouldn’t you? In your last moments. Better than down there, in the earth. In the dark.’
My eye was drawn again to that bag, bulging with small leporine corpses. There was the faint smell of blood, a coppery tang, and something else too, carried on the wind. Sweet and awful at the same time, a rot like overripe fruit. Fear tasted glassy and metallic in my mouth. I pulsed with it, feeling his shadow creep over me like a cold wind. There was something wrong with this man. I knew this as simply as I did my own name.
‘Bagged a whole warren,’ he continued, as I started moving away, walking backward through the long grass. ‘You know rabbits scream when they know they’re close to death? It’s like they see it coming. Sends all the others into a fr-fr-frenzy.’ He was starting to stutter. There was spittle collecting on his lips. ‘First time I heard it I screamed right back.’
‘I have to go.’ I started to jog over the damp spongy grass. My heart was hammering in my chest, that smell of decay thick and gluey in my sinuses. My hand reached for my back pocket, instinctively. I was as jumpy as a hare in spring. He still wasn’t done, still talking to my retreating back.
‘Told ’em to stop coming here. All of ’em, but it don’t make a difference.’
By the time I got home, I’d been gone for about an hour and a half. Thunder rumbled in the distance, a warning. I entered the house quietly, put my keys on the side and walked into the living room, switching on the light on the wall with the heel of my hand.
And there was Edie, frozen to the couch, her jeans around her thighs, her eyes comically round with shock. On top of her a boy, athletic, good-looking, his hand shoved into her knickers, moving as though searching for something. He had thick curly hair and dark, blank eyes. When he saw me he lowered his head on to Edie’s chest. I could hear his muffled swearing, could see Edie’s hands in the crotch of his trousers. His T-shirt was pulled up to reveal the skin of his torso, the muscles there clearly defined. I’d remember this scene for a long time. Every moment of it.
‘Edie, get dressed now.’
‘Mum!’ She was angry, embarrassed, her face turning a vivid red.
I turned to the boy. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Mum, stop it.’
The boy looked up at me. He pulled his hands out of Edie’s knickers, wiped them discreetly on his trousers. I could feel the pulse in my throat stutter. He didn’t respond to me. He talked to Edie. ‘I thought you said she was going to be out for hours.’
‘Mum, what the hell?’
‘Right. You, upstairs. You, out.’ I pointed at him.
He smiled slantwise. It wasn’t a very nice smile and there was no humour in it. ‘Sure.’ He raised his hands. ‘I’m going, I’m going.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ Edie said, rising from her seat.
I laughed. ‘Are you joking? Get upstairs. Now.’
‘All you do is embarrass me. I hate it here. I can’t wait to live by myself.’
‘But you don’t, do you? You live with me, in my house, under my rules. So get dressed and go upstairs before I do something to really embarrass you.’
There was a brief silence. I tapped my nails on the sideboard. Click, click, click.
The boy looked shifty and caught-out. He ran his hand over his face. ‘Edie, maybe I should go.’
‘Then I’m coming too.’
‘Your mum says – uh—’
‘That bitch doesn’t tell me what to do.’
I grabbed her. I grabbed her by the arm and I knew I was squeezing too hard because she looked shocked, horrified, and I was glad because that is how I wanted her to look. Later I would think about the marks I left there, red stripes on her pale skin.
‘Upstairs, Edie. Now. Now!’
I heard her start to cry as she walked through the kitchen and then clattered up the stairs. I just wanted the best for her, and these boys, these eager, narcissistic boys, were not the best. I stared at him. He stared back, defiant. He sat like a man, his legs spread almost the length of the two-seater couch. His hands dangled in the gap between them.