watched as her car drove past, her mouth wide, but to her credit she didn’t yell or wave, but watched impassively as Mrs Dixit rounded the corner and disappeared from view.
Mrs Dixit drove them back to the house. She didn’t know what else to do, afraid the officer would see them and report them if she simply circled the block and headed back. It was the wrong decision, obviously – she should have found another place to park nearby, but she panicked. She tried calling and texting Mrs Rampersad but couldn’t get through and received nothing in response. After lunch, she considered taking the car out again and looking for her, when she finally heard the front door open.
Mrs Dixit rushed out.
‘I’m so sorry! There was—’
Mrs Rampersad held up her hand, her face icy – her expression could have stopped water from running. She started up the stairs.
‘Is Naveem okay? Is he still there? Please, I need to know!’
Pausing on the second-to-last step, Mrs Rampersad nodded her head.
A wave of relief passed over Mrs Dixit.
‘So they didn’t see us! What did you find out…?’
But Mrs Rampersad continued up the stairs without a word, shutting her door firmly.
Henry was beside her when she turned, startling her.
‘See, she doesn’t like us,’ he said and then went back to his TV programme.
In the afternoon, running out of ways to occupy themselves – and with Mrs Dixit worrying over the unknown condition of her husband, but too afraid of her neighbour’s wrath to prompt any further – they took a bus to the waxworks.
The same teenager as before sat in the ticket office, picking at his cuticles and looking thoroughly fed up.
‘Is it busy inside?’ Mrs Dixit asked, secretly hoping it would be, wanting to be washed in a bath of sound and chatter and noise until the voice in her head was drowned out completely.
‘Nah,’ said the boy, checking the time on his watch, a fat gold one with a brown leather strap. You didn’t often see youths wearing watches anymore, what with mobile phones so commonplace. Phones could do anything except microwave your lunch, it seemed now, although Mrs Dixit barely used the message function on hers. Mr Dixit had never been a fan of texting either, the lack of prediction in the predictive text frustrating him. ‘Machine’s broken,’ the boy added. ‘Cash only.’
It was indeed empty inside and slightly unnerving with no one else around, like a haunted house where one of the immobile figures might suddenly jump out at you. Henry seemed to prefer it today, taking his time with each room, inspecting the waxworks cautiously, investigating anything that could be interacted with: a button to start a short video about making the wax models (this was clearly a relic from the eighties, judging by the perms and mullets), flaps over celebrity quizzes that could be lifted to reveal the correct answer, an invitation to handle a tinny replica of Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight champion belt.
‘Would you like me to take a picture of you with…’ She paused, assessing the waxy set of features approximating a human face, ‘… David Beckham? Or is it Johnny Depp?’ The second was the safest bet as the place seemed lousy with Johnny Depps. He was obviously extremely popular at one time, and once you’d made the mould, you could clone as many as you’d like, Mrs Dixit supposed. Add some knives to the hands in one, facial hair and a pirate hat in the other…
Henry shook his head at the suggestion of a photo, so Mrs Dixit put her phone away again. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with the camera function anyway.
Mrs Dixit sat down on a stool in front of the running video, really to buy her some time so they didn’t rush through the place within half an hour of arriving. She considered ringing the hospital again, to see if she could be put in touch with the nurse who made weekly visits to Naveem, but so far that had proven fruitless – she was always told to refer to his GP, and his GP said to refer to the hospital. She’d deliberated intercepting the nurse as she left Naveem’s parents’ house, but that might become problematic, especially if the nurse reported it to the hospital, or worse, told his mother. Poor Naveem, perhaps she should go back to his parents’ house right now? If she was braver, she would…
Mrs Dixit had been staring at the silent screen in a very distracted way,