Chapter 2.05
‘And here we is.’
The pool car drifted to a halt.
Home.
Actual, proper, genuine home.
In all its lovely granite splendour. A big grey two-and-a-bit-storey lump with bay windows and pointy bits, a nice front garden, and scarlet rose bushes in full bloom – like blood spray.
Cast-iron railings. Surrounded by like-minded properties: big and granity, on a big-and-granity street.
In a swanky and exclusive part of a big-and-granity city.
Home.
The only thing bringing the neighbourhood down was Roberta’s MX-5.
Someone must’ve retrieved it from the Inverurie police station car park, abandoning the poor thing beneath a big sycamore tree outside her house.
Leaving it all covered in leaves and lumps and sticky tree drips. Not to mention a bird poop or twelve.
Talk about a metaphor for her career: this thing that she loved, just rotting away . . .
Tufty parked in front of it, then hopped out – wearing his on-patrol kit, utility belt clanking as he jogged around to the passenger side and opened the door for her.
He stepped back, performing a deep butler bow. ‘M’lady.’
Took a bit of effort, but she wriggled around, making sure the walking stick was all set and her not-so-reliable legs firmly placed, before hauling herself upright to take a couple of limping steps towards the gate.
Weird to not be in pyjamas anymore. As if normal clothes were a foreign skin. And boots were nowhere near as comfy as slippers.
Tufty was still stuck in his bow, all bent over with his bum in the air.
Well, be a shame not to . . .
She hauled back a hand and let it fly with an almighty SPANK.
He yowled, leaping into the air, both hands clutching his tormented buttocks. ‘OW!’ Dancing away from her, face all scrunched up, holding onto his arse as if it were about to fall off. ‘OW, OW, OW, OW, OW, OW!’
Roberta shook her stingy hand. ‘Fifteen points.’
‘Owwwwwwwwwwwwwww!’
She hurpled around to the back of the car and popped the boot.
Reaching in to drag out the holdall – packed with brightly coloured jammies and all her hospital odds-and-sods – and the knotted black bin-bag they’d handed over with her discharge letter.
Everything she’d been wearing before the explosion.
Roberta had barely made it through the gate before both the holdall and the bin-bag slipped from her grasp. Because it wasn’t easy when you needed your other hand for your walking stick, and staying upright was a bit of a challenge. ‘Sod . . .’
The wee loon was still doing that high-stepping dance of his, like a hillbilly at a barn raisin’. Clutching his down-below. ‘Ooooooh, that was sore!’
‘Serves you right for leaving them on display.’
‘Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow . . .’
‘Grab the bags, eh?’ She tottered along the path, unencumbered.
‘Don’t see why Susan couldn’t take the day off and come get me.
Your Sex-Goddess wife gets home from the hospital?
That should be a celebration!’ Digging out the house keys.
‘Six weeks of lukewarm sponge baths and beige cauliflower cheese – I deserve a flipping parade. And a massive Chinese carry-out.’
Tufty rubbed at his bumcheeks. ‘You better not’ve broken my poor pert buttocks!’
Blah, blah, blah.
She squinted at her keys, blinking to get the stupid things in focus. As if they were written in too small a font. Flipping lock was all blurry too.
‘Kate says my bottoms are like unto an Greek Adonis’s. She’ll be really upset if you’ve made them all wonky.’
Finally, the key slid home. The lock clicked. And Roberta pushed open the old familiar door. Closed her eyes and took a deep breath – inhaling home. Which didn’t smell of disinfectant, cabbage, and despair.
Then turned. ‘You getting those bags or not?’
One hand clutching his ruined derrière, Tufty retrieved the fallen holdall and bin-bag, then limp-limp-grimace-limped his way up the garden path after her. Scowling. ‘That’s sexual harassment in the workplace: I should sue!’ Doing a lopsided bum wince. ‘Owwwwwwww . . .’
It was nice to spread a little joy in this heartless world.
She hobbled inside.
Home.
Framed photos festooned the walls: her and Susan on holiday in sunny places, and rainy places, and snowy places; her and Susan and Jasmine in slightly less exotic places; her and Susan and Jasmine and Naomi in a caravan park on Skye.
Photos of Mr Rumpole in his grey fuzzy coat; and old Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, tottering happily along the Beach Promenade; and Genghis Khat fetching sticks in Hazlehead Park . . .
The rack by the door was thick with jackets and overcoats, a jumble of boots and jimmies and shoes on the tiled floor.
A sideboard with a special drawer for your keys – because bowls were a bit wife-swapping-parties-esque, according to Susan.
A wooden staircase reached up, its handrail dark and shiny from three generations of Steels and one of Wallace-Steels too.
Home.
Roberta threw her arms wide, keys in one hand, cane dangling from the other. ‘Hello?’
Nothing.
A bit louder: ‘Girls? Hello?’
More nothing.
Louder still. ‘Mr Rummmmmm-pole? Gennnn-ghis?’ She lumbered over to the foot of the stairs. ‘ANYONE?’
No padding of little paws, or oversized trainers thumping down the wooden steps.
So much for a triumphant welcome home.
‘Pish.’ Roberta drooped. Then dumped her house keys in the drawer, with all the other assorted keys and key fobs.
Tufty limp-waddled into the hallway, clunking the door shut behind him.
‘Bet that’s going to leave a big vicious bruise.
’ Dropping her bags to rub at it. ‘Don’t understand how anyone could be into BDSM.
Too ouchy . . .’ Then he picked the holdall and bin-bag up again, heading for the living room. ‘You want I should dump these in here?’
Little sod didn’t wait for an answer, just opened the door and stepped inside. ‘Any chance of a cuppa?’
Cheeky bugger.
She pulled her shoulders back. Time to hobble in there and teach the demanding wee shite a lesson he wasn’t going to forget in a . . .
Hold on a minute.
Aha.
Of course.
It was all a set-up.
The reason Susan hadn’t come to pick her up – the reason the kids were nowhere to be seen, the reason there was no sign of Mr Rumpole or Genghis Khat – was obvious when you thought about it: they were throwing a sneaky wee party to celebrate Roberta getting out of hospital.
They were all hiding in the living room, waiting for her to walk in, so they could jump out and shout ‘SURPRISE!’
Pfff . . .
Took her long enough to work it out. Clearly, being in hospital all that time had dulled her normally razor-honed investigative instincts.
But she got there in the end.
Roberta tried out a quick oh-my-gosh-this-is-so-unexpected! face in the hall mirror. Perfect. Meryl Streep couldn’t do a better job. Then swapped the look for something more beneficent and motherly as she followed Tufty through the living-room door.
And stopped.
It should’ve been draped with bunting and balloons and a banner: ‘WELCOME HOME LOVELY ROBERTA!’ Maybe some streamers too . . .
Instead of which, it was the same nicely decorated, slightly old-fashioned room: two leather-buttoned sofas and matching armchairs, standard lamps, an upright piano, more framed photos, and a mantelpiece liberally sprinkled with trophies: golf, swimming, music, football, etcetera, and a taxidermied mouse, wearing little trousers and a scabby grey bra. Holding a chamber pot.
It also had an idiot in a police uniform, standing in the middle of the rug, gently massaging his own buttocks.
‘What’s the point of a stabproof vest if it doesn’t protect your bottoms?
We should be issued with . . . spankproof vests too!
Well, spankproof pants.’ A frown. ‘I should patent that, before someone steals my idea.’
An ornate carved screen hid one corner of the room, over by Susan’s collection of antique golf clubs. That was new.
Aha . . .
Time to get into character. ‘Why of course I’ll make you a cup of tea, young Tufty. After all, you were kind enough to drive me home.’ Laying it on nice and thick.
Ready to be surprised in five, four, three, two, one . . .
But no one jumped out from behind the screen.
She shuffled over there and peered around it.
Nope.
Just the telly and its collection of audiovisual gubbins.
Maybe they were hiding behind the sofas?
Roberta tried both. No one there, either.
Tufty pulled his chin in. ‘You OK, Guv?’
Hobbling back out into the hall, she made for the dining room.
Which wasn’t as nice as the lounge, because the large oak table was covered in one of those padded wipe-clean-vinyl things – its chairs stacked sixty-nine-style in one corner, freeing up space for piles and piles of big plastic boxes packed with craft stuff and Lego and boardgames and Airfix kits and all the kind of tat that kids and un-grown-up grown-ups liked.
But no sign of a surprise party.
Back in the hallway, Tufty was still nursing his skelped arse – forehead all wrinkled as he watched her hurple towards the kitchen. ‘Should I call the hospital?’ Hurrying after her. ‘Are you having an “event”?’
OK: the kitchen was certainly large enough for a surprise party – could put sausage rolls and fancy finger sandwiches on the breakfast bar; cake, jelly and ice cream on the granite worksurfaces; streamers on the oak units; messages of love and adoration on the huge fridge-freezer . . .
But nobody had.
The patio doors and all the windows looked out over the long garden with its high walls; climbing frame; verdant honeysuckle, ivy, trees, and bushes; the narrow outbuildings along one side, that doubled as sheds and coal cellars and their brand-new sauna . . .
Where was the sizzling barbecue? The bouncy castle? The crowds of happy party guests?
No one.
Not one single bugger had turned up to celebrate her homecoming.
Surprise . . .
Roberta wilted into a seat at the breakfast bar.