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Weak and exhausted, Finn drifted into a troubled sleep but was abruptly jerked awake by a sensation of pressure on his cracked ribs, and a hot foetid smell that somehow eclipsed the other foul odours in the car. It took a moment for him to realise this wasn’t just another horrible hallucination, there reallywassomething on his chest. Something with a hot, throbbing body, and sharp, scratching claws. Finn screamed in revulsion as his vision sharpened and he saw the largest rat he’d ever encountered just inches from his face.
His useless right arm was incapable of knocking it off, but his startled cry had dislodged the creature’s hold. For one dreadful moment the rat skittered even closer to his face before he managed to bring up his left arm and knock it roughly back out through the window it had presumably just crawled in through.
The rat was bold, and hungry perhaps, for it didn’t instantly disappear into the jungle-like foliage. It was huge, almost the size of a domestic cat, and there was a knowing look in its eyes, as though it realised who had the upper hand here. And it wasn’t Finn.
‘Get out of here!’ Finn cried, frantically groping in the car’s footwell for something to throw at the rodent. His search yielded nothing at first except for an empty takeout cup, which he immediately discarded. He was reaching back into the footwell when his fingers brushed against the key ring swinging from the Torino’s mangled ignition. The fob was heavy, too large really to hold just two keys, but it was a souvenir from a romantic weekend break he and Gemma had taken, and every time he saw the engraved name of their hotel on the shiny brass plate, it made him smile. He wasn’t smiling now, though, as he snatched the key ring from the ignition and threw it with more venom than accuracy at the lingering rodent. The keys disappeared far into the dense foliage and so too, mercifully, did the rat.
Finn hauled himself closer to the shattered side window to check it had definitely gone and immediately jolted back as another streak of grey with an impossibly long pink tail scurried past the car. And then another. He was deep in the shadowy undergrowth of the gully, and this was the rats’ territory, although to be fair, none of the creatures running past the car appeared to be interested in him. They seemed far more intent on moving as quickly as possible away from this place.
Finn was slow to connect the frightened rodents and the rumbling thunder with a new sound, which at first he couldn’t identify. It rustled the leaves surrounding the car and pinged eerily on the Gran Torino’s bodywork. He turned his face and felt something on the leather of the driver’s seat that definitely hadn’t been there a moment earlier. He lifted an exploratory hand to his cheek. It was damp. And suddenly it all made sense: the thunder, the fleeing rats, and the weird plinking noise on the car’s metalwork. It was raining. No, more than that: it was pouring, and some of the deluge was managing to penetrate the foliage and reach the bottom of the gully.
He scarcely even noticed the new cuts and grazes he acquired as he thrust his arm through the broken window and into the dense undergrowth. Carefully, because a mistake now would be disastrous, Finn found a gap in the thorny foliage and wedged the takeout cup into it. Almost immediately he was rewarded with the satisfying plink of a raindrop hitting the bottom of the empty container. And then another. And another. He’d been desperate for a sign that he shouldn’t give up hope, and now he’d got one.
The rain was going to save him.
31
The retro clock hanging in my kitchen had a tick like a metronome, but today it was playing a duet with the distantly rumbling thunder. The rain of the previous night had been almost biblical in its ferocity, but it looked as though we’d still not seen the last of Storm Edna. Despite the cloying humidity, I reached up and pulled the sash window to a close. Whoever had thought that giving storms cute names would somehow humanise them had got it completely wrong. Edna had capriciously flooded roads and burst riverbanks, and she wasn’t done yet.
I filled my time clearing up broken crockery and making two cups of coffee, neither of which I drank. I also paced a lot, covering the chequerboard kitchen tiles like a zoo animal before my restless feet led me into the hallway and from there to my desk.
With a feeling of déjà vu I once again drew the Mushroom Cottage paperwork from the drawer. I slid my hand into the crevices of the folder, swearing under my breath as my fingers fastened on a rectangular business card which sliced a paper cut into my thumb. I drew out the card. A tiny drop of blood had fallen across the name emblazoned in flamboyant script across the middle. I wiped it clear. Amelia Holmwood. I thought I’d forgotten her name and practically everything else about her, but the memories were coming back now as though summoned at a seance.
*
We’d been laughing as we climbed back into Finn’s car after our first visit to the estate agent offices, giddy with excitement at the prospect of becoming joint homeowners.
‘I think you might have made another conquest in there,’ I told him, nodding in the direction of the building we’d just left.
He turned to me with a mystified expression.
‘Really? Who?’
I gave a wry smile. There had been only two employees in the estate agent offices that afternoon; one was the pretty blonde with the husky voice and Disney-princess eyes, and the other was a bespectacled, grey-haired secretary in her late sixties. Although, to be fair, Finn had the kind of charm that sliced effortlessly through age barriers, so it could have been either of them.
‘The young, pretty one,’ I replied.
Finn gave an easy shrug. ‘I didn’t notice.’ And I could tell from his eyes that he truly hadn’t. He leant across from the driver’s seat to press a warm kiss on my lips. ‘It doesn’t really matter – wherever we go, I never see anyone but you. Miss Whatever-her-name-is could rip off her clothes and run round the office stark naked and I still wouldn’t be interested.’
I could feel his love for me, as if it were a coat he’d slipped around my shoulders to ward off the chill. ‘I’m fairly sure they only do thatafteryou’ve exchanged,’ I said, my lips twitching.
Finn’s rumbling laughter had filled the car as we’d driven away.
That was a good memory.
*
The garage phoned just when I was on the verge of caving and calling them back myself.
‘I have good news,’ the manager began without preamble.
I made an inarticulate sound, which he correctly interpreted as ‘Go on’.
‘We still have the CCTV tape from that Friday night.’
‘And did my fiancé’s car come in for petrol?’
The manager sighed. ‘I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I’m really not comfortable about revealing that kind of information,’ he said.
