From Dark Places (12 page)

“It’s hot out there,” she said, flopping into one of the chairs and fanning herself with her straw hat.

Nana nodded, ignoring the way the chair groaned, and pointed at the plums in the bowl. “Help yourself.”

“I bet he was bitching about me having more kids.” The plum juice ran down her chin. “I could see it all over his face.” A screech from the garden, followed by a terrible wailing, made her eyes roll. “Oh for the love of Chr- Mike. I can’t have one minute to myself, can I? I’d better get back out there.” She hauled herself back onto her feet and left.

The youngest of her grand-daughters arrived shortly after, pushing the screen door open and slipping inside quietly, as if hoping the others in the garden wouldn’t notice her.

“Hello, Nana,” she said and pecked her on the cheek. She sniffed and wrinkled her nose just enough for her grandmother to notice.

Nana eyed her thin frame critically “You’ve lost weight.”

She shrugged. “I watch people stuffing their faces day in, day out. I just don’t have an appetite any more. Oh, that’s apple and blackberry pie, isn’t it?” She sighed when Nana nodded. “I think I’ll pass. I’d better go and say hi, they’ll only think I’m ignoring them.”

Nana watched her leave and twisted the edge of her apron with worry. She checked on the pie again. The crimped edge was browning nicely.

“Nana?”

She jumped, startled by the soft voice behind her. She turned to see her favourite grandchild smiling shyly by the table, positioned so he wouldn’t be seen from the garden. She laughed and hurried over to embrace him. “You startled me! Why are you sneaking around like that?”

He shrugged, shuffled back out of her arms. “They’re all here, aren’t they?”

She nodded. “Why don’t you go and tell them the pie is nearly ready?”

“Can’t you do it, Nana?”

“You’ll have to face them sooner or later. Is it really that bad?”

The way he looked down at his shoes, how it made his blond curls hang down and bounce gently, tugged at her breast.

“They all hate me, Nana. They don’t understand how hard it is to be the one in charge. There’s work to be done, simple as that. Just because they’re my family doesn’t mean they get special treatment.”

She caught hold of his hands, still as soft as she remembered. “Poor darling, there’s a lot on your shoulders, I know. How’s your back?”

“Still sore. I don’t think it’ll ever heal.”

“I can’t do anything about work, or your back, darling, but I can cook your favourite pie. Come on now, let’s go out there together. I’m sure they’ll be pleased to see you.”

She led him outside, onto the lawn where the rest of the family were lounging or squabbling.

“Look everyone,” she said, squeezing his trembling hand tight. “Lucifer’s here!”

THE HANDSOME DRAGON

Kay held the gun in front of her, shaking.

Will I be able to use it?

The lift slowed. The loud ping made her jump and grip the handle tighter as she tucked the gun behind her bag. The lift slid apart revealing a large hallway.

Another woman, also dressed in a smart suit, ran towards the lift, a briefcase crushed to her chest, mascara streaking her cheeks. She stumbled in before realising Kay was preparing to step out.

“Don’t go in there,” she sobbed. “It’s just awful. They’re evil—evil men.”

Kay bit her lip, tasting the first lipstick she’d worn in years.

Perhaps she’s right?

The lift doors began to shut. She lurched forwards, darting through the narrowing gap before the doors could close on her leg.

I’m here now. No-one else can do this for me. Be brave.

The entrance to the room ahead was imposing, designed to make the person entering the room look even smaller than they might feel. One was ajar, a soiled tissue lying just outside of it. Kay drew a deep cleansing breath, trying to exhale the anxiety crushing her chest. She could hear the shuffling of papers from within.

A cough. A sigh.

“Next!”

No-one else seemed to be waiting, so Kay tugged her skirt down to be certain it was below the knee and stepped through the door, gun held in front of her. The four men sat in a row of chairs in the spartan conference room. An empty chair faced them, next to a small table with a jug of water and glass. They all looked up at her and the gun.

“Miss Danvers?” asked the one on the left, a man in his fifties immaculate in an Armani suit.

“Yes.” She ventured further into the room. “Well, no, actually, it’s Doctor Danvers.”

“I take it you know who we are?” the man next to him asked, younger by ten years and more handsome in real life than on the television. He seemed amused by her correction.

She nodded and tried to smile, but her lips stuck on her dry teeth making her look more like she was trying not to break wind than break the ice.

Oh, God, I’m going to giggle. No pee. Oh, God. Oh, God.

“Well, we don’t have all day, Doctor Danvers,” said the elderly man on the far right who looked like he’d been wearing the same suit since 1962. “What on earth is that you’re pointing at us? Is that a gun for heaven’s sake?”

“Yes,” she said, hurrying to the spot in front of her chair. “Well, no, actually, it’s not a normal gun. Obviously. I mean, not a weapon. So to speak.”

Oh God! I’m messing it up! Calm down.

Mr Handsome smiled at her discomfort, but not unkindly. He raised a hand in the direction of the chair. “Take a seat, Doctor Danvers, and explain your invention to us in your own time.”

She sat and rested the gun on her lap, taking care not to nudge any of the buttons on the side. She could see why they called these things Dragon’s Dens now. If they suddenly breathed fire it wouldn’t have surprised her.

“This is a gun in the same way that portable speed measurement devices used by the police are guns—in that they’re pointed at things to take a reading,” she explained. “Not shoot people.”

Not shoot people? Oh ground open up and swallow me, now!

She’d practised her opening for days in the lab, in front of her rats, Dyson and Bayliss, succinct, informative and professional. Now she just sounded like a blathering idiot. Spending the majority of the last four years in the company of rodents had seriously degraded her social skills. And to think that at university she’d been a regular speaker at the student union, addressing hundreds of people at a time. That seemed like a lifetime ago.

Maybe it was the beer back then?

“And what exactly does your gun take a reading of?” Mr Handsome asked, leaning forwards whilst the others yawned and flipped through sheets of paper.

This is it. Crunch time.

She took a deep breath, trying desperately to remember the ‘elevator pitch’ she’d agonised over for days.

“It reads how long you have left to live. The person it’s pointed at I mean. How long they have to live, not the reader.”

Damn, that wasn’t how I practiced it. Dyson and Bayliss would have made a better job of it than me.

The yawning, shuffling of papers and bored fidgeting stopped. All four pairs of eyes fixed on her. Then Mr 1960’s started to laugh.

“This is a spoof, right? Where’s the camera?”

“It’s not a spoof!” she retorted. “I’ve spent the last four years developing this. And it works!”

Most of the time.

The sensors had worked fine on the way up in the lift anyway.

“Are you seriously telling us you point that thing at a person and it tells you when they’ll die?” asked Armani, removing his glasses to scowl at her.

“Yes,” she nodded. “Well, no. It doesn’t give a date per se, it’s a calculation of how much longer they have to live. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s actually based on sound scientific principles involving feedback from –”

“Prove it,” said Mr Handsome, who was still smiling at her.

“I—I beg your pardon?”

“Point it at me and take a reading.” He spread his hands and turned to the rest of the dragons. “Let the invention speak for itself.”

The others shook their heads, folding arms and leaning back with all of the non-verbal signals of the disinterested and disbelieving. Kay focused on Mr Handsome and saw something in his eyes she couldn’t resist. She lifted the gun off her lap, pressing the stand-by button on the back of the handle. It hummed into life.

“Do I just sit still?”

She nodded.

“Oliver, I think this is a –”

Mr Handsome held up his hand to the last of the four, seated next to him and silent up until now.

“I want to give this a chance.”

He looked back at her and the gun pointed at him. It took only a few seconds and the result flashed up onto the little LCD screen attached to the top. She read the numbers and flushed a deep red.

That can’t be right?

“Well?” he asked.

She cleared her throat. “I…”

“I’ve had enough, let’s get dinner,” said Mr Armani, standing. “It’s been a hell of a day and I can’t sit through another crack pot’s madness.”

Mr 1960’s and the quiet man also stood and fell in behind Mr Armani, giving her nothing more than a dismissive shaking of their heads. She lowered the gun, exhaustion swamping her. All this time, all this work and nothing to show for it.

I’m going to lose the house.

And her future unfolded. Turning up on her Mum’s doorstep with a suitcase and car full of half-finished inventions. Her old room back in return for stern lectures. Smug confirmations of how she’d wasted her time. A promise to get a proper job.

It’s not supposed to be like this, dammit!

She turned the gun off.

“You didn’t tell me what it said.”

His voice startled her. Mr Handsome remained, leaning back in his chair as if he were waiting for a film to start. She almost dropped the gun.

“Oh, I think it was a duff reading.”

“Take a second one then. I’ll wait.”

She shrugged, switched it back on and pointed it back at him. The result flashed up a second time. It read two minutes less than the last reading.

Oh hell. What do I say?

“You know what,” he said, jumping to his feet. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I do know it works though, else you wouldn’t look the way you do.”

“Do you like sushi?” The question leapt from her gullet before her mind had a chance to quash it.

“What?”

“Sushi. You know, raw fish. Makimono—Japanese food.” A strange kind of elation coursed through her, a kind of recklessness replacing the former anxiety. “Do you like it?”

He nodded.

“There’s a great place round the corner. I know the chef, he’s mad, but he makes great sushi.”

“Are you asking me to dinner?”

“I am,” she replied, unable to list anything more she stood to lose that evening. “Are you going to say yes?”

“You know what,” he laughed, standing and offering her the crook of his arm. “I think I am.”

I’ll just slip it into conversation over dinner.

She wasn’t quite sure how it happened. Somewhere between sushi, champagne and the discovery they studied under the same professor, at the same university but three years apart, the evening slipped by. Kay found herself in a chauffeur driven Bentley on the way to Mr Handsome’s ‘Pied-a-Terre’ in Covent Garden.

She suddenly felt like she was in a film, watching herself play a part, without knowing the script. She looked at the leading man, sitting next to her on the leather seat, stereotypically good looking and so at ease.

What on Earth am I doing here?

“Oliver,” she said, “I think I should go home.”

Momentarily distracted by a group of men on a stag night cheering their way down the street, he turned back to her. “I thought you wanted a nightcap?”

“I… I’m not the kind of woman who just goes home with a man she met four hours ago.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What kind of a woman would do that?” he asked, all mock prudishness.

 The champagne fuzz at the edge of her mind tipped her into laughter.

“Seriously Kay, if you want to go home, we can turn the car around. But I’m not assuming anything. Only that you want to come back for a quiet drink in my roof garden—and that you’ll love the roof garden.” He smiled, leant closer. “Purely innocent assumptions, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

She smiled back uncertainly. The car rounded a corner, tipping her bag against her leg and reminding her of the gun inside.

Oh Christ, what the hell was I thinking? Talking for hours and not actually telling him about the reading. I will, as soon as we’re inside.

 “Okay,” she nodded. “But just for the record, we’re not going to sleep together. We’re straight on that?”

He responded to her sternness with such seriousness she burst out laughing again. They laughed the length of Long Acre, pulling up outside his building with aching sides.

In minutes she was looking down on that same street from a beautiful roof garden, gazing at the sculpture of an angel tucked away in the eaves of the building across the street. Hundreds of people walked on below, not one looking up at her or the angel. A glass slipped into her hand and he leant on the rail with her.

“No-one ever looks up,” he said, following her eyes tracking the Friday night drinkers. “They miss the best bits of London.”

“Your assumption was spot on, I do love the garden,” she said. “This isn’t how I envisaged my evening, I have to say.”

“What were your plans?”

“Pizza with Dyson and Bayliss.” She blushed. “Just a couple of—friends.”

He didn’t pursue it. She looked at his features outlined by the light pollution. This was the moment, if there ever was one.

“Oliver, I need to tell you what the reading was.”

“You do?”

“I think you should know. I should have told you straight away, but—you distracted me.”

“Did I?”

She frowned at his flirtation. “This is serious. I’ve been irresponsible.”

He reached across and rested his hand on hers. She marvelled at how it changed her heart rate. “So have I,” he said quietly. “I have a pretty good idea what it said, and I should have been honest with you.”