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The garden is in darkness, the shrubs and trees gothic shadows under the starless sky, the white sliver of moon. She strains her eyes, scrutinises the scene for movement, but there is nothing. No one.
She closes the curtain, tells herself she is being stupid. Pathetic even. Her heart is racing over what? A poem. A stupid poem that could be, probably is, actually, a silly prank. Yes, a joke. A student with misjudged ideas about what’s funny, with what Marcia would call ‘a shit sense of humour’.
She was not looking forward to Peter’s return, but now she wills him to come home. She calls him but he doesn’t answer. A good sign; it means he’s on his way. Hopefully. She paces, looks out of the window, tells herself that pacing is a cliché, to stop, stop it, stop it. She sits, finally, tries and fails to read the new Kate Atkinson, checks Facebook, feels a pang at the picture of Marcia and Jacob outside the Barbican, about to go to a gig.
She scrolls through her own page, the photos of her and Peter, of her, Peter and Emily when Emily was first born, when she was a few weeks old; her announcement that she would be teaching at the local adult community college in the new year, the link to the course her feeble attempt at advertising. It’s all so recent, yet it feels like so long ago. She puts this down to the dramatic changes in the last year or so. It’s been intense, a life concentrated to a pulp.
She uploads a picture of Emily sleeping, tags Peter, and adds the caption:Zonked out after a super-busy day!She throws down her phone, paces some more, looks out of the window. Listens.
She is checking her non-existent notifications for the tenth time – only Marcia has liked the photo – when she hears the roar of the Porsche on the drive. She leaps up from the sofa, half runs to the front door. The freezing January night rushes in, making her shiver. In the porch light, Peter’s face is tired and stern, his neck a little forward, as if he has something heavy on his shoulders. He doesn’t know she is watching him, has not seen her. She wonders whether this is how he moves when he thinks she isn’t looking, how hereallymoves. It is nine o’clock. He is over an hour late, but that’s the least of her concerns.
He looks up, seems to straighten his shoulders, lighten his step as he walks towards her.
‘Hi,’ she says. ‘Sorry about earlier.’
‘That’s all right.’ He leans in to kiss her on the cheek. He smells of cigarettes.
‘Have you been to the pub?’
‘Supervision meeting with a PhD student,’ he says, hanging up his coat. ‘We were both starving, so we went to the Marlborough Arms. You haven’t made dinner, have you? I grabbed steak frites.’ He heads through to the kitchen. She stands in the doorway while he pours a glass of red, takes a large slug – about half the glass – and tops it up. He sighs, rests his hand on the counter, looks at her, finally. ‘Emily go to bed all right?’
Samantha nods. ‘She’s asleep.’
‘Good, I—’
‘Peter?’
‘What?’
‘I need to talk to you about something.’
She gestures towards the living room and goes in. Sits down.
‘Peter?’ she calls after a moment.
‘One second.’ A minute or two later, Peter appears at the door, chewing a breadstick and carrying two glasses of wine. ‘You look like you need one,’ he says, handing her a glass and sitting beside her on the sofa. He glances about him. ‘This is all a bit ominous.’
‘It’s not about us, don’t worry.’ She does, she realises, fancy a glass of wine. Tonight, with Peter not here to pour it, and her so preoccupied, she has forgotten to have one, but it is her habit now as much as his. She takes a long draught, another, enjoys the alcohol hit. Her head swims a little, pleasantly, and she feels a bit calmer.
‘At the end of the class today I took in their clerihews,’ she begins. ‘Anyway, there are eight students, right? But when I looked in the folder, there were nine poems. I thought nothing of it. And then I got home and had to tend to Emily and all that so I didn’t get round to checking them until after dinner. But anyway, one of the poems didn’t have a name on it, the handwriting doesn’t match any of the others and it’s … it’s a bit … I don’t know, have a look.’ She hands the sheet to him and studies his face while he reads. ‘I guess it’s just given me the creeps a little bit.’
His frown deepens. He runs his fingers through his hair, takes another slug of wine. ‘Did you see anyone hand this in?’
The dull pain in her sternum tells her that she was longing for him to dismiss it instantly as nonsense. But he has not.
‘No,’ she says. ‘They collected them in a pile and one of them, Lana, she gave the stack to me, I think … Yes, she did because she asked me about limericks.’
He presses his lips together in thought before shaking his head. ‘It’s probably meant to be funny. They might even have handed it in by mistake, you know. What about the paper? Does it match any of the others?’
She flicks through. ‘No. No, that one’s plain white. The rest of them are on lined sheets. It could have been stolen from the photocopier or something, so that suggests something a bit more purposeful.’ She meets his eye, their grumpy exchange from earlier forgotten. ‘What should I do?’
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Do nothing at all. Just hand out the named sheets and throw this one away. Whoever it is either gave it in without meaning to or is trying to provoke some sort of reaction. It’s classic attention-seeking – I get it sometimes. Is there anyone who appears odd or needy in any way?’
‘Not really. Well, a bit. There’s a guy called Sean who’s slightly geeky, nerdy, you know? Stained anorak, writes speculative fiction in which he features as a priapic love god.’ She feels a wry smile spread across her mouth. ‘There’s a recovering drug addict, Tommy, a Polish girl who’s more serious than anyone I have ever met and a punk septuagenarian writing soft porn, but apart from that …’
Peter laughs. ‘The joys of adult ed.’
She can’t quite laugh with him. ‘So I just do nothing?’
