Jess
Wednesday, seven in the evening, and Gavin Thew has a model of a lodge in each hand.
His site cabin's on the field behind Low Drove, up a track that's mostly puddle, a long white box on blocks with a kettle in it and a heater going. There's a table down the middle with forty little wooden lodges on it, in rows, each the size of a loaf, each with a tiny blue hot tub on a tiny deck. There's a map on the wall with a yellow road on it.
"Sit," he says. "Sit, sit. Tea? Coffee? It's only a pod."
"I've come about the book."
"The book." He puts one lodge down. He looks at me with every tooth. "I haven't the faintest, Jess. I was at the chemist's, you saw me. I was buying plasters. Ask the whole high street."
"And after that?"
"Lamb. Sandwich. The landlord'll tell you, he'll tell anyone. He made me a cheese and pickle and told me about his hip." He spreads his hands, one lodge still in it. "What would I do with a book, Jess? And listen. To be fair. If I'd wanted something off you I'd have asked. I'm a man who asks. I asked for your cottage in the middle of a flood at half eleven at night, didn't I? Does that sound like a man who sneaks?"
It does, a bit. I don't say.
"Who told you I'm skint?"
"Nobody told me." He's still smiling. "It's a small town. Everybody talks. Mo Tebbutt talks to the walls. I've heard the, I've heard you've got a bit of a, at the end of the day it's not hard." He picks up his coffee. "Now. Forget the number. I want to try something different, because I like you."
"Nope."
"Option." He holds up the model. He's got it by the roof, to show me the deck, the way you'd show someone a baby. "Ten thousand pounds, in your hand the day you sign. It's not a sale. It's an option. I pay you to hold it. Nobody else can buy, you keep your cottage, you keep your cat, you can live in it. And when you're ready, it's three fifty. All you've got to do is not say no to anyone else. Ten thousand pounds, Jess, for nothing. It's a gift. It's what I'd do if I was you."
"I'm not you."
"No. You've got the better coat." He swings the lodge to point at the window, where the dark is, and the lodge goes out of his fingers.
It's slow. It goes end over end across the table, over the edge, and down into the mug in his other hand. The coffee goes up in a brown spray and comes down on the map. The lodge sits upside down in the mug with its little blue hot tub sticking up out of it. The roof's come off. It floats.
Gavin looks at it.
"Show home," he says.
I get up. I go out. The door bangs behind me and the heater's roar goes on after, and I stand on the track in the dark with fourteen thousand two hundred pounds in my head and his ten thousand next to it, side by side, like two fares going the same way.
I leave the cat at the cottage. He's not said much since the car park. He's on the wall with his face to the dyke.
At nine the Lamb's car park's got four cars in it and Ned's van.
It's parked under the one lamp at the back with its orange light off. Ned's on the tailgate with a clipboard on his knee, writing. He looks up. He gets down off the tailgate so fast he hits his head on the door.
"Jess! Hi. Are you all right? Is it the book? I heard. Everyone's heard."
"Your van was on the corner at one," I say. "Outside the chemist's."
"Yeah. I'd the levels for the memorial. I was talking to Albert and the other old boy. I was on the steps."
"Did you see anyone near my car?"
"No. I didn't. No." He goes red. It starts at the hi-vis and goes up. "Honestly. I'd say."
I look at him. I'm not a person who looks. I'm a person who does the road and the meter, but the road's got something wrong with it. He's got the clipboard against his chest like a shield, and it's shaking. On the dash behind him, under the lamp, there's a long white envelope with a green logo on it. Thew's Fen Edge Lodges.
"What's that?" I say.
Inside the Lamb somebody starts to sing. It's a man with a lot of feelings about a door. It's Delilah, I think, and it's not going well.
"Oh God," says Ned. "Oh God, Jess. I'm so sorry. It's not the book. I didn't touch the book. I'd never. But I should have told you. I was going to tell you, and every time I was going to, it's, Gavin's paid me. He's paid me two thousand pounds. To tell him things. About you." It comes out of him in one go, with a gap in the middle where he breathes. "It's not as bad as it sounds. It is, it is as bad as it sounds. But I didn't tell him anything you wouldn't have, he asked how you were, how long you'd stay, if you'd sell, where you slept. I said you were sleeping in your car. I said you weren't sure. It was in an envelope in this car park the Tuesday after the flood, and I said no, and he said two thousand, and I thought, the board's cut my hours, I've the van, there's the rent and the exhaust and the diesel and I said all right. And I've felt sick every day."
I stand there. A man in the Lamb gets to the part about the door.
"Two thousand," I say.
"Yes."
"For what I owe. For what I'm doing. For whether I'm selling."
"Yes. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
I do it in my head. A seventh. He sold me for a seventh of what I owe.
"I gave you my number," I say. "In case the dyke came up."
"I know."
"You gave me a tour."
"I know. I know, Jess."
"Did you take the book?"
"No." He says it straight at me, with his chin up, and it's the first thing he's said all night without a sorry in it. "No. I swear on Maud. I've never touched it. I wouldn't know what to do with it."
I believe him, and I'm so angry I can't see a thing.
"Don't talk to me."
"Okay."
"Don't ring me."
"Okay," says Ned. "Okay. Sorry."
I go. I get in the car and I don't look in the mirror. I drive out of the car park with one wheel in a pothole and the singing following me up the whole street, and at the war memorial I stop and say a word, out loud, to the empty seat, that I haven't said since I was fifteen.
At eleven I'm at the gate.
The cat's on the wall. He doesn't say anything. I put the phone on the kitchen table to charge, because the car charger's been dead since Monday and the water got in the wires, and I stand in the cottage kitchen for one minute with the light off, with the black hair on everything, and the cat in the doorway with his back to me. It smells of liniment.
"Nope," I say, to the house, and go out and shut it.
The car's on the hard standing by the gate. I get in. I lock the doors, all four, which is a clunk like a till, and I put the engine on for the heater, because it's March, and the little light on the dash comes up green. I push the seat back as far as it goes. I put my coat over me. The camera on the windscreen blinks its red eye at me. The pumps are humming a long way off. There's one now. Maud, I think, on her own. It doesn't sound like a lot.
I count it. Fourteen thousand two hundred. Ten thousand for nothing, Jess, it's a gift. I count it until I'm somewhere else.
Water comes in under the door.
I don't know what time. I know I'm cold before I'm awake, and then I'm awake, and my feet are wet.
It's coming in under the door, not fast, as if somebody's left a bath running upstairs. It's cold through my socks before I've thought it. I get my feet up on the seat. I try the door. It opens an inch and the drove pushes it shut. I press the window button and the window goes down a quarter and stops, and the little green light on the dash goes out. The engine's still running. Then it isn't.
Clunk. All four locks, at once, like a till. And I can't make them go back.
Water at the seat. Water at my hip. It comes up very quickly after that. It isn't cold any more, it's a thing with a weight, and it's on my chest, and I've got both hands on the door handle and I pull, and it doesn't. I've never been so quiet. I'm counting. I can hear it. One. Two. Fourteen thousand two hundred, I think, for no reason. Three.
Through the windscreen the cat is on the wall, in the light from the one window upstairs at Mo's. He's up on his back legs with his front paws on the bricks and his mouth open, and I can hear him through the glass. He's screaming my name.
Not madam. Jess. He says it over and over, in a voice I've never heard him use, like a very small cat on a very big wall, and he doesn't come in.
I look at the red eye of the camera. It looks at me. It blinks.
Then there's a noise in the dark, a long way up the drove, getting nearer, and it's feet. Someone running in water, with a great splashing, in waders, and a light bobbing on his head. I can see him through the windscreen, coming down the middle of the drove through it, with the water to his knees, to his thighs, and then to his chest. He doesn't slow down. He goes past the cat on the wall, who's still screaming, and he gets to the driver's door.
I can't hear what he says. His mouth's making a shape. He shows me his arm. He points. He's saying turn, I think, or face, or away. I turn my face into my coat and put my arm over my head.
There's a crack like a gun.
It's the side window. It goes in, and the water comes through the hole behind it, and there's a hand in my coat, a whole fist of my collar, and I'm going up and out through the window like a cork out of a bottle, and I'm over a shoulder, and cold air hits my wet face like a slap.
He puts me on the wall. He sits me on the bricks, where the cat sits, and he gets down into the water and puts his hands on his knees and breathes, and over his shoulder the taxi's going. It goes down at the back first, with a long gulping noise. The headlights are still on under the water, yellow, two cones of it going out through the brown, and then they go off. The roof light's on. It comes up through the water, green, and lights the drove from underneath.
"I rang you," says Ned.
He's got his hand inside his other sleeve. He's holding on to it. There's blood running from under the sleeve, black in the light, and he doesn't look at it. "I rang you. Twice. Before I opened her. Maud was going. I had to. I rang you."
"You said Friday."
"I know I did. She wasn't going to last to Friday." He wipes his face with his arm. "I rang you twice, Jess. Check your phone."
A light's come on in the next house. The back door of Mo's has banged, and she's coming down her path in her dressing gown and slippers with a blanket in both arms and a bottle of brandy under one of them, crying as she comes, saying, "Oh, God, oh my love, oh my good God, oh Ned, oh your wrist," and she puts the blanket round me. She gets a tea towel out of her pocket and wraps his wrist in it, and she puts the brandy into my lap, with the top off, and I look at it, and I drink it. Ned stands in the drove with the water running off him.
I get down off the wall. My knees do something. I go into the cottage, to the kitchen table, in the dark, and I pick up my phone from its charger. The screen lights up.
Two missed calls. Ned Pumps. One twenty.
I look at the number. I look at the time. I put the phone in the blanket.
When I come out the cat's on the far end of the wall. He's sitting very upright with his back to me. He's not looking at me and I'm not looking at him. Up the drove, a long way off, I can hear the sluice running. In front of us the roof light's still on under the brown, a green square, with the red dot of the camera blinking inside it, and I stand there with the brandy in my hand until it goes out.