'What do you mean me? I'm not putting it back.'
'I can't pretend it was mistakenly taken away for cleaning. He showed it to me and told me it contained his mother's ashes,' says Dom. I narrow my eyes at him. What a weak and feeble excuse.
I look and feel absolutely aghast. 'Me? Why me? Why can't Harry do it? It must be worth at least ten bob-a-jobs,' I bleat. I'm not a terribly brave person but I am perfectly willing to send an innocent boy scout in there.
'Too young,' says Simon.
'What about Monty?' I continue, determined not to be sidetracked.
'Too old.'
'Mrs Delaney?'
'Too busy. She's cooking dinner for twenty.'
'How about me being too scared? Or too jumpy? What about that?'
'Aww, come on Izzy! It's not going to be difficult!' Dom says encouragingly.
'Flo?' I counter. 'She obviously managed to take it, she could put it back!'
'She'd probably nick something else while she was in there,' Simon says.
'What about you then?' I demand.
'I couldn't get caught in a guest's room.'
'That's mighty convenient,' I snap.
'Shall I slap you, Izzy?' says Dom hopefully. 'You seem a little hysterical.'
I give Dom a look which suggests that if he even thinks about slapping me …
'Come on, Izzy.' Both men are hauling me to my feet.
'What if he catches me? What shall I say?' I whimper.
'Just say you found it downstairs, knew it didn't belong to the household and discovered it had been mistakenly removed from his room.' They are pushing me out into the hallway now.
'Where shall I put it? Where did he leave it?'
'Back in the wooden box which I put in his bedside cupboard for him when I carried it up,' says Dom, 'I'll stand watch outside the door and whistle if anyone comes. We need to wait until he's gone down for dinner.'
'Thanks, Izzy. You'll save our necks,' pants Simon, almost dragging me across the hallway. 'I'll go and see to Aunt Flo while you two are doing that.'
'NO!' Dom and I yell simultaneously and our little party comes to a standstill.
'Em …' Dom and I look at each other. Simon doesn't know about the spider.
'It's just that it would be better if she was with us and not wandering the house nicking other stuff,' I stutter.
'Why?'
'Well …' I think briefly about covering for Flo but then decide that a tarantula and a dead mother are too much to handle in one evening. If Poppet continues her tour of the house then perhaps it's best if Simon knows about it. 'Flo has a pet.'
'A pet?'
'Yes. A sort of spider.'
'A pet spider?'
'Well, more of a tarantula actually.'
'Poppet? God! I told her to get rid of that bloody thing!'
'She's probably lonely! Old people need pets!' I say defensively.
'Isabel, how could anyone be lonely in this house? Apart from when you're asleep, have you ever had a moment of privacy? And in case you haven't noticed, we have about a thousand dogs littering the place. The spider was supposed to go because Mrs Delaney was refusing to clean in there and kept having the vapours every time Poppet had a walkabout.'
This brings me very neatly to my next point. 'It's very funny you should mention that. You'll laugh at this—'
'It's escaped again, hasn't it?' He looks quite weary.
'Er, yes.'
'It's always escaping.'
'Well, it's probably a bit pissy at being called Poppet, isn't it? Hardly the name for a fierce street-fighting tarantula,' proffers Dom. 'God, it all happens in the country, doesn't it? City life is looking terribly tame!'
'Getting plenty of material for your novel?' I ask acidly.
'Plenty thank you.'
'Right,' Simon says decisively. 'You two go and put the urn back, I'll see to Aunt Flo.'
After several years working for one of the finest caterers in London, here I am hanging about suspiciously outside a guest's room clutching an urn full of ashes. Life is a funny old thing.
Dom and I pretend to be studying something enormously important out of the window.
'Why is Mr Berryman carrying around his mother's ashes, Dom?' I ask suddenly.
'A good question, Izzy and indeed, at another time, something that I would love to discuss with you in more depth. But I think we should concentrate on the key issue here and not get sidetracked. Whatever Mr Berryman does with the bloody thing, the point is that you need to get it back to him so he can carry on doing it.'
'Good point.'
'Are you clear about what you're doing?'
'Crystal. Well …'
'What's the problem?'
'The plan seems a little simple for my liking.'
'Izzy, love, I know you always want to over-complicate things, and again that's something else we can talk about later, but the plan is simple because it is simple. So, to recap, I will be out here keeping a look-out and if I see someone coming I will whistle. What happens then?'
'I leg it.'
'Any questions?'
'Yes.'
Dominic mutters something and rolls his eyes dangerously.
I don't get to ask him any of the numerous questions on my list because at that moment Mr Berryman comes out of his room and starts to walk down the corridor towards us. In a loud voice I start to explain to Dom various tasks in the gardens that need to be attended to. Thankfully, the fact that it's starting to get dark and I'm in full evening dress doesn't seem odd to Mr Berryman. The urn is hidden behind one of the curtains. We greet each other with a great deal of jollity on his part – lots of shaking of hands and water-skiing references which hopefully mean he hasn't noticed his precious urn is missing.
As soon as he has disappeared down the stairs, I move towards his door, urn in hand. Dominic starts to dust a table of ornaments with his hanky.
I gently open the door to Mr Berryman's room, walk inside and close it behind me. I sprint over to the bedside cabinet, shove the urn inside the wooden box and am about to run for the hills when a thought occurs to me. I hate it when that happens.
Could I find something here which would be of use in the takeover? Help Simon out? An image of myself saving Pantiles single-handedly and thus being free from crushing guilt flashes into my mind.
My eyes narrow as I spot a black leather attaché case on top of the wardrobe. Just a quick peep, what harm could come of it? On impulse, I seize a chair and drag it to the front of the wardrobe. I am just balancing on tip-toe and reaching for the briefcase when a disembodied voice says out of nowhere, 'How are you getting on?'
With a loud parrot-like screech I stumble and then crash to the ground.
'Jesus, Dominic!' I snarl from my sitting position, rubbing my shoulder. God, what is wrong with everyone? Do I look like I need winding up any more? 'What are you doing?'
'Just came to see if you were all right. I thought you might have taken up Buddhism you've been so long.'
'I was going to look in this attaché case,' I hiss, 'to see if there's anything in it that could help Simon.'
'God, Izzy you're becoming positively immoral! How marvellous! Go on then!'
'Go back outside and keep watch!'
He scurries out of the room and I climb back on the chair. In the background, a couple of grasshoppers begin their warm-up, as is their wont at this time of the evening. I silently curse them and get on with the job in hand. Looking up at the door every now and then, I remove the attaché case and try to open it. It's locked. Damn.
After replacing the case, I get down off the chair as softly as I can, return it to its usual position and then have a quick prowl around. I'm just about to give it all up as a bad job when I notice something quite peculiar. By the foot of the bed is what looks like a small furball. I kneel down next to it and instinctively put out my hand to touch it. It flinches. Bloody hell! It's Poppet!
C h a p t e r 20
W
hen he hears my scream, Dominic hurries in. 'God! Izzy! What the hell has happened now?'
I clutch my arms to myself and hop around well away from the vicinity of the bed. I point manically at the bed. My mouth has become paralysed with fear. I'm not that fond of common or garden spiders, let alone ones that are the size of your fist and answer to the name of Poppet.
'What? Is this some sort of happy-clappy hostess dance? I can't see anything. What?'
I stab with my finger in the direction of Poppet until Dominic finally gets the message and peers cautiously at the floor.
'JE-SUS!' he shouts and sprints to join me on the other side of the room. 'What shall we do?'
'Simon!' I manage to mumble and together we scramble for the door in a mess of limbs as though we're joined together in a three-legged race.
Believe me, I can run when I feel like it. And I really, really feel like it. When we reach the study Simon is talking to someone on his mobile phone. He must already have dealt with Aunt Flo. I tug urgently on his shirt and he frowns at me. I twitch madly for a few seconds while he rants on about PE ratios and suchlike. God! To think I almost touched it! Maybe it bit me and in the heat of the moment I didn't notice. I look anxiously at my hand for fang marks. Simon looks at me worriedly but continues his conversation. I pick irritatingly at his shirt again. 'Simonsimonsimonnnnn,' I hiss, looking like I'm about to wet myself. I think he picks up on the note of urgency in my voice because he tells the person on the other end of the line that he'll call them back and rings off.
'What is it?'
'It's Poppet. She's in Mr Berryman's room.'
'Are you sure?'
'Positive. She practically devoured my arm!'
'Well, why didn't you catch her?'
I look at him as though he's speaking Russian. Is he on the same planet as me? 'Catch her?'
'With a glass or something?'
'A glass? Simon, it is the size of my hand. What sort of glass did you have in mind?'
'Well, couldn't you have just scooped her up?'
'I'm just plain Isabel. You must be thinking of Incredible Isabel the Spider Tamer. I'm going nowhere near her.'
'God! If you want a job done …' He swoops out of the room, muttering to himself. Ungrateful or what?
Dominic and I beetle after him as he takes the stairs at an ambitious three at a time. We catch up with him in the corridor. He taps lightly on Mr Berryman's door and then peers into the room. He looks back at us.
'I'll stay here,' says Dominic. 'I'll whistle if someone comes.'
'But I can whistle,' I protest.
'Not as well as me,' says Dom, giving me a hefty shove Poppet-wards.
'Perhaps we could both whistle?' I suggest.
'Don't be dizzy, Izzy. I'll need some help,' says Simon, grabbing my hand and pulling me into the room. Some help? Can I be useful from about five metres away? I hope so because that's the only sort of assistance I feel qualified to give.
We walk softly into the room. 'Where is she?' whispers Simon.
'By the bed,' I whisper back. We creep towards the bed – I use the plural term loosely here because I'm not actually making very much headway across the room at all.
'Where?' he whispers, turning his head back towards me. 'Izzy! Get over here! She's not going to bite you!' It isn't the biting bit
per se
that bothers me; it is the general verb bit, the
walking
, the sitting, the
moving
, the just plain
being
-
those are the bits that are worrying me. I walk another inch towards him and point. 'She's there. By the foot of the bed,' I hiss, but suddenly there is the unmistakable sound of someone whistling. Rather hysterically too. Our eyes meet for a second.
'Quick, someone's coming! Under the bed!'
'Under the bed?' Is he mad? Where the spider is, I certainly am not.
The whistling gets louder and then lapses into humming.
'Okay, in the wardrobe then!'
We run over to the wardrobe. I throw myself inside with dangerous abandon and Simon follows. He lands in a heap on top of me and swings the door shut.
It takes me a few seconds to orientate my limbs and another second to realise we have done this rather badly. I am lying with my head at a difficult angle, my cheek pressed up against the wood and the smell of mothballs up my nose. We're not talking about an exceptionally large wardrobe here; it's certainly not designed for two fully-grown adults. My legs are curled under me and my dress is rucked up around my ears. I try to breathe quietly and keep perfectly still but I seem to be taking in great chugs of air and my limbs are already suffering from cramp.
I pray to God, Buddha, Allah and anyone else who could be listening that Mr Berryman doesn't take it upon himself to open his own wardrobe. I mean, what on earth are we meant to say if he finds the two of us inside? Hello, turned out nice again? I bite my lip as I feel a wave of hysteria rise up my throat. But the more I try to stop it, the harder it becomes. Come on, Izzy! Don't let the side down. This is not the time to be overwhelmed with giggles. I manage to find my leg with my hand and dig my nails into it hard. Must think of unhappy thoughts. Must think of dead things and naked politicians and …
The Sound of Music
. God, that's not right, is it? The problem is it's not easy to keep your perspective with your face pressed up against the back of a wardrobe. I mean, it's hardly a meditating position, is it? You don't find yoga gurus advocating the inside of a wardrobe as the ideal place to contemplate your inner peace.