“Oh,” Dexter replies breezily. “Not until Christmas. But you have to plan these things early.”
“Yes,” says the Other Jane. “Yes. You do. And if you happen to find her, do send her my love. She was a strange little girl, but I did always have a soft spot for her. I really do hope nothing bad’s happened to her.”
It’s gone five o’clock when Dexter and Jane leave the Other Jane’s cottage and head into the warm edges of the late afternoon. “I’ve got some cans,” says Dexter, pointing at his gigantic canvas shoulder bag. “They might not be very cold by now though.”
“What flavor?”
Dexter peers into the bag and reads the cans. “Er, Gin and Tonic. Grapefruit Margarita. Dark Rum and Passionfruit.”
“Sounds great,” says Jane. “Let’s go and find a nice bench.”
They follow a dry path at the bottom of the Vale that leads them eventually toward the busier parts of the Heath. Schools are out, and the Heath is full of mothers and kids, schoolchildren and dogs. They open the cans and Jane toasts Dexter.
“You were amazing, little one,” she says. “Fearless and fleet-footed. I was in awe of you.”
Dexter smiles and clicks at the ring pull of his can with a bitten thumbnail. “If the dancing career doesn’t work out, I could always come in with you.”
“?‘Trevally and Stepson,’?” says Jane, forming quotation marks around the phrase with her hands. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“You know”—he turns to face her—“it actually really would be amazing. Genuinely. I think you could rock being a private eye. I could totally see you doing it.”
“Thank you, darling.” Jane sighs and rests her can on the grass at her feet. “But arealprivate eye would have some sort of a plan and currently I have nothing. So, what next?”
“Well, we need to find out what happened with the police back during lockdown. And we need to find this uncle who joined the circus: Jasper.”
Jane nods. “Yes, absolutely. Should be a breeze with a name like that.” She pulls out her phone and taps her thumbs against the screen. “Hm,” she says, “a tech DJ, looks about twenty-five,maybe not. And… aha, a character fromThe Walking Dead. And… nope, wrong color… Wrong age… No… not him.”
Dexter sighs. “Might need a bit more of a heavyweight approach,” he says. “Might be time for Dad’s people.”
chapter twenty-eight
STUART, NINE YEARS EARLIER
Annie hates me. She hates everything about me. She behaves as though I smell, simply because of the way I dress, the way I present myself, but if there’s one thing you learn when you’re sleeping in a different place every few months, every few days, when you’re sofa-surfing, squatting, short-term renting, a night on the streets, whatever it is, you learn how to stay clean. You learn where to get your clothes washed, or you learn how to hand-wash. You learn how to shampoo over the side of a bath with a jug of cold water and a bar of soap if necessary. You learn to keep your shoes fresh, your breath fresh, all the shortcuts to hygiene. So I may look rough from a distance, but close up I smell like a summer meadow, I can assure you.
However, Annie will never know that because she will never get that close. She is like a magnetic particle, repelled across whichever space we find ourselves sharing.Boing. I don’t care. I can’t say I’m that fond of Annie either.
“I’m only here for another week,” I tell her reassuringly that weekend. “Don’t you worry. And in the meantime, I will do all that I can to help around the place. I’m pretty handy. I can build things, fix things, move things. Whatever you need doing, Annie, just ask.”
“There’s a dead cat in the shed. It’s been there for over a year. Maybe you could get rid of it for us.”
“A dead…” I sigh. Jesus. I bloody love cats. I don’t want to see a dead one. But I need to earn my keep, to earn my place here. “Sure,” I say. I ask for rubber gloves, a garbage bag, and a point in the right direction. I set off through the back door and head up the scruffy, overgrown path that leads through the scruffy, overgrown garden. I can imagine it was beautiful once, a proper English cottage garden: flower beds, apple trees, cherry trees, nooks and crannies, a greenhouse at one end, and there, just ahead of me, the shed. I pull the neck of my sweater up over my mouth and nose and yank the door open. All the accoutrements of a keen gardener are here to see: bags of compost, neatly arranged gardening implements, an apron hanging from a peg, little plastic seedling boxes on a tall wooden table. And there, just as Annie promised, a desiccated cat, curled into a corner, its gray hair matted into knots, its eyes wide open, mouth hanging ajar, the tip of a dead gray tongue protruding.
“Jesus.” I snap on the gloves and crouch down. “Oh, buddy,” I say to the cat. “Buddy, buddy, buddy.” Poor bastard, I think, what a way to go.
I collect him carefully and realize that he is a she and I say, “Ah, sweetheart,” and slide her into the bag. Then I take her out into the garden with a spade in my other hand and I head toward a quiet corner to bury her with dignity.
“What are you doing?” Annie calls out to me from the back door.
“I’m going to bury her,” I say. “Somewhere up the back there.”
“No!” she snaps. “Do not do that! Throw it into the bushes. Let the foxes deal with it.”
I frown. “It’s a she,” I say, “not an it. And I want to bury her.”
“Well then, take it on to the Heath. Bury it there. But do not dig up my garden, absolutely not.”
I shake my head and tut gently under my breath. “Whatever you want, Your Majesty,” I say, and then I take the cat and the spade into a quiet corner of the Heath, far from prying eyes and CCTV. I call her Tina, I don’tknow why. I mark the spot with a cross made out of dry sticks and then I head back to the house.
