Finders, Keepers - Sabine Durrant Page 0,54

tried to feel calm. I remarked out loud on the space available for my feet. But the emptiness unnerved me; I was aware of the filth along the top of the window, of the smell: disinfectant and dog food and something baser that got into your nostrils and clung and bloated. People think loneliness is like boredom, but for me it’s more like agitation. After a while, I began to think there wasn’t much point to a table if it was somewhere one would sit alone.

At 11 a.m., I took Maudie for a walk, comforted to see out the front the reassuring heap of black bin bags that would stay, she had said, until I was ‘ready’. I scooted round the common. Though smartly dressed, I was wearing my usual trainers, so for some of the distance, I took it at a half-run. Maudie, poor old girl, struggled to keep up. This is relevant because it shows a) how anxious I was, if Ailsa did come, not to keep her waiting, and b) what a short time I was absent from the house.

When I saw the open gate and the bare front path, the stepping stones, the grass between them, my first instinct was to throw myself to the ground and scream. Don’t worry, I didn’t. I know how that sounds. I put both hands on the fence and bent forwards, lowering my head over it, so the top bar was pressed into my abdomen. I let out a long low groan, a bellow, like a cow that’s lost her calf. She had promised me, promised. It was the betrayal that got me, the knowledge they’d watched and waited, that I’d been played. A bus hummed. The church bells rang. I didn’t hear Ailsa until she was right on top of me. ‘So Tom took the stuff,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I couldn’t stop him. I know we said we’d wait. I’m really sorry. Verity. Please. It’ll be OK. Look at me.’

My eyes, I’m afraid to say, were full of tears – anger at being misunderstood and panic, as well as an overwhelming sense of loss.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, her voice urgent, her hand an insistent pressure on my shoulder. ‘Listen. Please. Dear old V. Let’s go in before he gets back.’ She was so close to my face I could smell the tea on her breath. ‘I’m on your side.’

Perhaps I should never have let her in, that could have been the end of it, but I did let her in, and we sat together at the little table. Now she had cleaned the windows, the light in the kitchen was harsh; she looked tired, shadows under her eyes. A tiny cut on her lower lip. I should have asked how she was – found a way to ask those questions that piled up in my head. Instead, I was weakened. I let her take control. It stopped being about me and Ailsa or Ailsa and Tom and became about Tom and me. This room: the war office. My house: the campaign. Armed conflict underpinned her language. She referred to him ‘bringing in the heavy artillery’; how we should ‘put up a defence’. It weakened me, won me over. It’s only now, looking back, I realise I should have thought more about who was the vanquisher and who was being vanquished; who was abusing whom.

She stood up and placed her hands firmly down on the melamine. She was ‘mine’ again for the day. Tom was taking the kids for lunch at his parents in Berkshire. Where did I want her? Don’t worry, she wouldn’t go upstairs. She knew Faith’s room was out of bounds. (I’d locked it now and hidden the key.) Father’s study was beyond her, which left the hall, the stairs and the sitting room. The party wall was a matter of concern. Also: finding the source of the smell. But yes, for now, all good. ‘Right. Let’s get at it,’ she said.

Her mood was very different that day. No more confidences. She worked with a sort of happy frenzy; almost manic. She sang, scraps of old pop songs, and told me I was brilliant. It was even warmer than the day before, the air mushy like rotting pears, and yet she wore a long-sleeved shirt, I remember that, and now and again I saw her wince and rub her shoulder. I went in search of Nurofen, and in a box of sewing kits, found half a