Practically Perfect (41 page)

‘He’s a bit upset,’ Cassie interrupted him without even noticing she was doing it. ‘They won’t let him out until tomorrow. But he was very lucky I was in town and able to get here straight away. Fortunately he remembered my mobile number and could get the hospital to phone me. His phone stopped working when he dropped it in the flames.’

‘Well, it would,’ muttered Anna.

‘Luckily I was able to phone the fire brigade and Geoff before the fire got too bad,’ said Rob.

Then Cassie turned to her brother and raised her voice
slightly
, as if he were very elderly or of limited intelligence. ‘Tell Anna how you rescued the dogs. She’d like to hear that.’

The fact that he hadn’t yet brained Cassie spoke volumes for his patience; he was obviously longing to. She was worse than Laura. ‘You tell her. I’m fed up with telling people.’ He looked exhausted, thought Anna, and wasn’t surprised that he closed his eyes. She perched on one of the plastic chairs at the side of the bed.

Cassie seemed quite pleased to take on the role of reporter. ‘Well, he’d just got back from being away, hadn’t you, Rob?’

‘Yes,’ he breathed.

‘And you saw smoke coming out of the place where the dogs are kept. Well, of course he had to get into the main part of the house to get through to their bit, and the smoke was really thick. I told him he should have put a wet cloth over his mouth to protect him from the smoke.’

‘And if you’d also told me where I was likely to find a cloth and some water from outside the house in a hurry, that would have been a handy tip.’ This was said with his eyes still closed and Anna couldn’t decide if it was because he was exhausted, or just irritated to the point of madness. She longed to touch him as Cassie revealed every grisly detail, with some relish, Anna noticed.

Cassie gave him an older sister look. ‘Anyway, the flames had taken hold but fortunately the bolt on the door to the garden was really flimsy—’

‘I seem to remember you telling me to get that bolt changed,’ said Rob. ‘But as I hadn’t, I could just kick it open and we all got out.’

He said this last bit to Anna, whose mouth was dry and hung slightly open. ‘Thank God,’ she whispered.

He managed a weak smile. ‘The dogs are with a farmer
friend
. They won’t get the five-star treatment that they’re used to, but they’ll be warm and comfortable and get a run every day.’ He explained where the farm was.

Anna moistened her lips. It was the thought of what might so easily have happened that was freezing her into immobility. She made an effort to appear normal. ‘Um, is there anything I can get you?’ She remembered the Marmite sandwiches left on Chloe’s worktop and really hoped he didn’t want them.

‘You can get me out of here. Sorry!’ He sent Anna an apologetic smile. ‘I’m just so angry with myself. It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t let people in while I was away, I would have realised they’d rigged up the temporary electrics in an unsafe way.’

‘Don’t be silly, Robbie.’ His sister, who had obviously looked after him a lot when he was little, patted his leg. ‘You’ve got to stay here until the doctor’s had another look at you and then you’re coming home with me to recover.’

‘I’m not ill! I’ve only got a sprained ankle!’ he said impatiently.

‘Don’t forget the smoke inhalation,’ Cassie felt the need to remind him.

‘Oh, for God’s sake! I’m fine! I don’t need to come—’

Cassie snapped out of big-sister mode and into the kind of older sister that tells her brother he has BO and really needs to do something about his spots. ‘Sweetie, I don’t want to rub this in, but you’ve nowhere else to go,’ she said practically. ‘You’re homeless, you’ve sprained your ankle and you can’t drive.’

Rob closed his eyes again and sighed very deeply, then he looked at Anna, a ghost of his usual humour in the mixture of anger and frustration. ‘If it wasn’t so bloody annoying, it would be almost funny.’

Anna didn’t think it was at all funny. It was tragic. She tried to think of something positive and encouraging to say but couldn’t think of anything. Much as she would have liked to, she didn’t feel she could invite him to stay with her in her rented house. ‘It’s awful,’ was all she could manage.

‘It’s not the end of the world,’ said Cassie. ‘Everyone’s OK. Think how awful it would have been if one of the dogs had been hurt – all of them, possibly.’

‘Well, there is that,’ murmured Anna. She looked at Rob, who was scowling at Cassie. ‘Could I bring you anything to read? Solitaire? Pack of cards?’ She searched her empty brain for ways to lighten his life. ‘Scrabble, possibly?’

‘Sweet of you to offer,’ said Cassie before Rob could speak, ‘but I can bring him anything he needs: a portable DVD player for one, then I may be able to get one of his nephews to give up his Game Boy for twenty-four hours.’ She made Anna’s idea of entertainment sound very old-fashioned. She smiled again. ‘I’m hoping to take him back with me tomorrow.’ She patted Anna’s leg now. ‘You must visit. Play chess with him or something. I know he’s going to be a nightmare to entertain.’

Rob closed his eyes once more.

‘I’d love to visit,’ said Anna, ‘but you’ll have to give me directions. I’m not sure where you live, exactly.’

But Cassie had lost interest in Anna and had turned her attention back to Rob. ‘I will. Now it looks as if my little brother needs a bit of shut-eye.’

Anna got up. ‘If there’s anything I can do, Rob?’

‘Really, everything’s under control,’ said Cassie, chivvying her away from the bed. ‘But I really look forward to seeing you.’ She gave Anna a conspiratorial smile that made Anna want to hit her. ‘I remember from when he was a little boy, he’s a terrible patient.’

Anna didn’t even have time to say goodbye to Rob as she was propelled out of the ward by Cassie.

Chloe was still drinking her coffee when Anna rejoined her. ‘You didn’t stay long. Was he all right?’

Anna sat down opposite Chloe. ‘I think so,’ she said, although she was still feeling rather shell-shocked. ‘His sister stayed the whole time. Please do remind me how bossy she is if ever I moan about Laura. Poor Rob! Anyway, I hope she’s going to invite me over – she can’t really expect me to just pop in, can she? She lives miles away. It’s so awful to think he’s lost everything. And he’s sprained his ankle so he can’t drive. He must feel so helpless.’

‘It is bloody awful, but at least he rescued the dogs. He’d never be able to live with himself if anything had happened to them.’

‘True,’ said Anna, then fell into a contemplative silence. Some minutes later she said, ‘I must buy a car. I’ll need it if I’m going to visit Rob.’

‘How long is he going to be at his sister’s then?’

‘I’m not sure, but she says I must come and visit, and then there’s the dogs. I can drive over and take them out. Anyway, I need a car.’

‘Shall we go?’ Chloe gathered up her bag and put her plastic cup in a nearby bin.

Anna trailed after her friend. She felt so frustrated. Her visit to Rob had been completely taken over by Cassie, who treated Rob like a child, and she wasn’t sure when she would see him again.

‘I mean it about buying a car,’ she said as soon as they were back in Chloe’s. ‘It would definitely be useful.’

‘Well, why don’t you hire one first, until you’ve got used to driving again.

‘Why? Why not buy one?’

‘Because you don’t know the first thing about cars! You could get sold a lemon.’

Anna gave her friend a withering glance. ‘I may not know much about cars but I’m quite good on fruit.’

‘Idiot! No, much better to hire a car.’

‘Surely it would be more economical to buy one?’ Anna watched a car whistle by and wondered if she would ever feel competent enough to drive so fast.

‘No! If you hire one it’ll be new and reliable and if anything goes wrong you just ring them.’

Anna considered this. ‘But I could buy a new one, although I hadn’t planned to. Really, I just want a big old estate that I can put building materials and several greyhounds – or at least Caroline – in the back of. Something really practical for a girl like me.’

‘I can see that would be useful, but until someone – Rob, Mike, Will perhaps – is around to help you buy one, just hire something that can take you to and from Rob’s sister’s house.’

‘But I couldn’t put the dogs in a hire car, unless I hired something huge.’

‘Why not?’

‘Dog hairs! And although I do see your point, I’d really rather have my own old jalopy so it won’t matter if I scrape a few walls.’ Chloe raised an eyebrow. Anna smiled. ‘Not that I will do. Anyway I quite fancy being a car owner, although I never thought I’d get back from Rob’s alive.’ She shuddered. ‘I’ve never seen a house fire before. I wasn’t there more than a few minutes, but it was so frightening. And to think of all Rob’s hard work, gone.’

‘The dogs could have been gone, too, if it hadn’t been for Rob.’

‘He is a bit of a hero.’

‘He’s a lot of a hero.’

Anna nodded. ‘It’s just a pity he sprained his ankle kicking down the door. That never happens to Bruce Willis.’

‘Bruce Willis doesn’t have much hair and is way too old for you.’

‘True,’ said Anna ruefully.

Once back in her rented house after having a restorative drink with Chloe, Anna spent some time looking at the local paper she’d filched from Chloe, and the
Yellow Pages
. She turned on her computer and checked her bank balance online. Then she dug out her driving licence. The local paper told her that she could buy the sort of car she wanted for very little money. She wouldn’t buy one from an individual seller, even if there were a couple that seemed very cheap; she would be sensible and go to a dealer, who’d give her some sort of guarantee – but buy a car she would.

Since seeing Rob lying in the hospital, furious and unable to do anything, helping Rob had become Anna’s raison d’être. And as she couldn’t help him personally, she had to help him make his house habitable. All the energy and enthusiasm she had put into her little cottage she now wanted to put into restoring his house to a liveable condition.

It wasn’t as if she had another project of her own she could get into immediately, she argued to herself as she cycled along the lanes to town the following day. The house she had decided to buy wouldn’t be hers for a few weeks. She had time on her hands. This is what she would tell Chloe and her sister when inevitably they discovered what she was up to. But in her heart she knew she would have felt like that even if she had got possession of her
own
house, and could start measuring and drawing and, later, swinging a sledgehammer about. Rob had lost what meant most in the world to him; she had to try and give what she could of it back. Getting her own transport was the first step towards making that possible.

When she chained her bike up on the railings of the car-showroom forecourt, she was obviously a woman not to be messed with.

‘Hi,’ she said to the rather startled young man at the desk. ‘I want to buy a car.’ She put her cycle helmet on the counter and fluffed at her hair. It had got stuck to her head and felt uncomfortable. ‘And I want to drive it away today. Can you arrange that for me?’

The young man took a breath. Anna couldn’t decide which of them was the more unnerved by her request, her or him. She decided it must be her. He had probably sold a car before.

‘What sort of car were you looking for?’ he asked.

‘An estate,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t have to be fast, but it needs to carry a lot of stuff. It must be totally reliable, never break down, and it must be environmentally friendly – if that’s possible for a car.’

The young man made some marks on the paper in front of him. ‘Right. And have you got your insurance papers for your current car?’

‘I haven’t got a current car, that’s why I’m buying one. I came here on my bike. Didn’t you see?’

‘So you don’t own a car currently?’ He obviously thought she’d been beamed down from another planet.

‘No. I’ve never owned one. This will be my first time. I suppose you could call me a car virgin.’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘But I really would prefer you not to.’

The young man’s own brow developed a film of sweat. ‘Have you got a driving licence?’

Anna pulled it out of her back pocket. ‘Oh yes. And it’s clean. Unused, and totally unblemished.’

The man cleared his throat. ‘Right. Well, if you’d like to come this way. How much were you hoping to pay?’

‘That’s not as important as getting the right car. But otherwise, as little as possible.’ She smiled at him. ‘I do have the money to pay for it, I promise.’

Anna drove her car very slowly out of the forecourt. She was fully legal and couldn’t quite believe what she’d done. The young man had loaded her bicycle in the boot and persuaded Anna it was not necessary for her to wear her cycle helmet. ‘It’s a car you’re driving now, and you’d look silly.’

As they’d been through a lot together she trusted him and smiled. She realised she knew him better than she’d ever known Max.

Now she looked both ways, several times, and drove her very first car out on to the road. She was glad that the traffic was light. She drove the car round the block and then round the town, following the cars in front, indicating when they indicated, and generally got to feel familiar with it. Then she drove towards her rented house. There she would collect her sketchbook, tape and pens and go and see for herself exactly what the damage to Rob’s house was. Then, when she went to see him at his sister’s, she could perhaps give him some good news. His sister had promised to ring her and invite her over, surely quite soon. She had to have as much ready to show him as possible.

Tears came to her eyes as she parked the car and saw the blackened beams, the empty windows and one wall completely collapsed. The smell of the fire was still appallingly strong. She had been so full of determination
on
the journey over, and in her head she had made the job seem quite do-able by a woman more than competent at DIY. Now she saw it she knew she couldn’t possibly do it herself, not until a lot of the initial building work was finished, anyway.

It took an effort to push her emotions aside and be the practical woman she claimed to be but as she walked about the ruins she realised that the main part of the house was still mostly intact. What had burnt to nothing was an extension, probably from the twenties or thirties, going by the tiles left on the floor. It was where the dogs lived and Anna could imagine the panic Rob must have felt when he discovered the fire, and where it had come from. The thought of him kicking down the door in a room full of smoke and flames made her heart turn over. It was what might have been that was so terrifying.