Molly Fox's Birthday (26 page)

We wrapped up our conversation, and I thanked her again for loaning me her place. I told her about the broken jug, but she was dismissive about it. Afterwards, I walked through the house to the kitchen, where the wooden box, the fruit and plants, were still sitting on the draining board. There was a smell of earth and herbs. I crushed a spine of rosemary between my fingers and inhaled the fragrance, sharp, deep, with something of the heat of the south in it; and I smiled to myself to remember Andrew doing the same thing, so cautiously, earlier that evening. Absentmindedly I picked up one of the strawberries and bit into it, into the red flesh with its scented white core, and then I wandered out into the garden. There was still light in the sky, a pure blue radiance. I sat down and ate the second half of the strawberry. The cow looked even more peculiar than it did in broad daylight. The two empty glasses were still there on the table, and the neck of the champagne bottle stuck at an angle from the chrome bucket. All the ice had melted back into water.

And then I heard something rustle nearby at the bottom of a trellis. Lumbering, slightly awkward but moving with surprising speed nonetheless, it was a hedgehog. It had noticed me now, and it came to a complete standstill. Even when I stood up and moved towards it, it didn't budge, and so I was able to inspect it at my leisure. How strange it was, with its crown of brown spines and its bright eyes, its squat feet and pointed snout. It looked completely
other
, like a creature that had arrived not from a burrow beneath the ground, but from another planet. I moved closer again and still it stood there, immobile. It was only when I drew back that it scampered off once more. At the foot of a climbing rose it came across the champagne cork that had shot off into the undergrowth when Andrew opened the bottle. The hedgehog stopped for a moment, sniffed it, tapped it with its foot, sniffed it again. Inscrutable, mysterious, it moved on once more and then disappeared into the shadows and was gone.