Chapter 13
They sit in Suzie’s car, staring straight ahead. A few seconds pass in thoughtful silence, and although Mr. Jenner has finally given up his sentry position at the curb, he is still visible in the upstairs window of his house, occasionally peering out.
“Thank you,” Cathy mutters through gritted teeth. “If you hadn’t come along, I’d probably have been arrested for assault.”
Suzie smiles. “I’m trained to deal with conflict. We get it a lot in the pharmacy, even a small one like ours. Besides, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, as my grandmother used to say.”
A beat. Cathy is restless, turning her head to look at the house.
“Can I tell you something?”
“Sure.”
“Before Mr. Jenner came out, I looked through the letter box. There’s post lying on the mat. All the lights are off. I don’t think she’s been back home.”
Her voice wobbles but doesn’t break. Suzie feels her heart sink. There’s something wrong. They both feel it.
“Listen, maybe Hazel paid Laurence Mitchell to look after the cats so she could get back to her husband. That’s what I’d do. I’d miss Teddy like mad.”
“She isn’t with Joe anymore. That’s why she came back home. They’re divorcing.” Cathy catches Suzie’s expression and clucks her tongue. “Ah, right. She hadn’t told you. Great. Bigmouth strikes again, as The Smiths said.”
Suzie doesn’t respond. She doesn’t know who The Smiths are, but she does remember how Hazel had looked when Suzie mentioned Joe, how fast Hazel had turned away from her, and how quickly she’d changed the subject.
Cathy reaches for her bag. “Can I smoke in here?”
“No. The smell gets into the upholstery. Do your parents still have the French windows round the back?”
Cathy blinks, surprised. She turns to Suzie. “Yes. Why?”
“Open the glove box.”
Bemused, Cathy leans forward and peers inside.
It’s neat and tidy in there, of course—nothing like the spill of wrappers and lighters and old cans of antifreeze in Cathy’s own car, only a logbook and a crumpled chamois leather beside a long flat-head screwdriver.
She pulls the screwdriver out and holds it questioningly up to Suzie, who nods, just once.
“Used to carry a rape alarm but I’ve learned that under pressure I’m better with a weapon.”
Suzie climbs out of the car and Cathy stares after her, shaking her head in wonderment. Suzie Trebath, she thinks, you dark, dark horse.
They scale the locked back gate by pushing a wheelie bin against it and clambering over. The back garden is in full darkness, but the security light switches on as they approach the patio, making both women jump in fright.
Up close, the darkened windows and open curtains speak of vacancy, and there’s an unnatural stillness behind the glass. Suzie steps up to the French doors and nods toward the top of the frame where the two doors meet.
“Help me,” she whispers to Cathy, indicating the top of the door. “I need you to push the door inward, okay? Hard as you can.”
Cathy does as she’s asked, creating a narrow gap into which Suzie slides the flat end of the screwdriver, drawing it downward until they hear the click of the flush bolt.
Then she crouches, doing the same at the bottom, leaning her weight onto it until something clicks and the doors swing silently inward. Cathy whistles.
“My dad showed me how,” Suzie tells her. She looks almost embarrassed, Cathy thinks.
They both exchange a look of apprehension before they enter the darkened room beyond the doors.
It is so quiet that somewhere in the house they can hear a clock ticking.
Cathy calls out to her sister in a husky, frightened voice.
She hits the lights with the heel of her palm, turning to Suzie, who is bright-eyed with fear.
“You don’t have to do this, Suzie. You’ve already helped me out enough.”
Suzie swallows and they share a shocking, tacit understanding, nodding slightly. They are going in together.
Cathy moves out into the hallway and Suzie follows, drawing alongside her as they stare at the small pile of post on the tiles beneath the letter box.
“Kitchen first,” Cathy whispers, breaking the silence.
They walk through an arched doorway, turning on the counter lights to illuminate washing up piled in the sink, toast crumbs on the counter.
Suzie picks up a bottle of milk, turned soupy and thick.
There are two ceramic bowls in an alcove beside the fridge, both painted pink.
One has Conquest written on it in fancy, curlicue script.
The other, Celeste. They are both empty.
Cathy finds a pair of Hazel’s trainers lying at the bottom of the stairs as if they have been kicked off.
There are no signs of struggle, but Cathy takes no comfort in that.
She begins to climb the staircase with Suzie following reluctantly behind her.
Suzie is gripping the screwdriver tightly, nerves taut as trip wires, so jumpy she thinks if the doorbell rang right there and then, she would likely scream.
“This is Hazel’s room.” Cathy nods toward the closed door to their left as they reach the landing.
They exchange an uneasy glance. Downstairs, the clock ticks, the refrigerator hums. Everything feels normal, Suzie thinks, and yet it isn’t.
There’s some dreadful knowledge waiting for us beyond that door, I can feel it.
“Wait!” She reaches out and grabs Cathy’s arm as Cathy moves to open the door. “I don’t think I can go in there.”
“Then don’t,” Cathy tells her flatly. Cathy is frightened too, but her fear manifests differently. Suzie looks like a little rabbit staring down the barrel of a hunter’s gun. Cathy’s fear is an ugly, blunt weapon that makes her sweat and want to fight. She grits her teeth and pushes the door open.
Cathy can’t remember the last time she was in Hazel’s bedroom but it seems smaller than she remembers.
The bed is positioned differently, the old curtains with the cheerful print replaced with plain white linen.
The scent of fresh paint still lingers, and something else beneath it, pungent and bitter.
Cathy wrinkles her nose, and behind her Suzie exclaims, “Ugh, what is that horrible smell?”
Cathy doesn’t know, but it pinches at her, adding to her deep sense of unease.
The room is a mess, bedcovers peeled back, crumpled towels hanging over chairs, still damp.
Drawers have been pulled out and emptied, as if in a hurry.
There are toiletries scattered across the dressing table and lying beneath them, a large brown envelope printed with Hazel’s name and her parents’ address.
Cathy doesn’t pick it up. She knows an official letter when she sees one, God knows there’ve been enough court summonses and bailiffs’ letters through the door in her time.
She points it out to Suzie. “Divorce papers. She mentioned they’d arrived on the phone.”
Suzie brushes aside the litter of eyeliners and hair spray to lift it up. She turns it over to inspect the seal. “She hasn’t opened it.”
“No? She told me th—” Cathy holds her hand up for silence. “Wait. You hear that?”
Suzie listens. There is a scratching sound. It’s coming from the wardrobe. Their heads turn slowly to look at it.
Suzie lifts the screwdriver out in front of her as if it is a sword. “There’s something in there,” she whispers. “Open it.”
Cathy can’t move. It’s as though all her limbs are frozen, rooting her to the spot. It’s not just that smell—heavy and fecal, like an open sewer pipe—it’s all of it. It’s her sister not showing up to meet her yesterday and the unopened envelope and the empty cat bowls and—
The empty cat bowls.
“Oh fuck!” Cathy cries out as another sound—a mewl, she recognizes—seeps out through the closed wardrobe.
She crosses the room in two long strides and flings the doors open, finding nothing except empty clothes hangers rattling on the rail and a small black suitcase, pushed right up toward the back.
Cathy reaches in, her heart in her mouth, the smell getting stronger, bestial.
Matted fur and ammonia harsh enough to make her eyes water and her throat burn.
“Cathy?”
Cathy doesn’t answer. She hauls the suitcase out, trying to be careful but clumsy in her rush to get to the locks and open it.
The mewing is louder, more urgent. It’s a wheelie case, one with a handle that pops out of the top, and Cathy sits it up straight as she struggles to find the zips, swearing under her breath.
Suzie has a hand clamped over her mouth, face skinned pale, the color of cream cheese.
“Help me, for fuck’s sake,” Cathy snaps, and Suzie kneels beside her, expertly popping the little padlock holding the zips together with the handle of her screwdriver.
Cathy is too anxious to be impressed. She unzips the case to reveal a dark, huddled mass of damp and matted fur, the gleam of narrow, glassy eyes. Suzie screams.
“How long do you think they’ve been there?”
Suzie is still very pale, even in the kitchen with all the lights blazing. Cathy hands her a cup of tea, her own hands shaking only very slightly. She lights another cigarette, her third.
“Can’t be longer than twenty-four hours, Suzie. My mum would lose her mind if anything had happened to them. Thank God we found them when we did.”
Both women look at the two Persian cats on the floor beside them.
They have been bathed—an ordeal they endured with only minimal fuss and a very feline disdain—and have just finished eating, licking their paws with identical sandpaper tongues.
Suzie can’t tell them apart; they are both gimlet eyed and snubby nosed, but with their fur damp and sticking to their bodies they look goblinesque.
“Poor things.” She sips her tea.
Cathy gives a dry, humorless laugh. “Well, at least we know it wasn’t a burglary. These particular cats are pedigrees—they’re the most valuable things in the whole house. It’s not like Mum even tries to hide how much they’re worth, which must be at least ten thousand each. Probably more.”
Suzie’s phone flashes, a concerned message from Teddy. It’s the fourth one he’s sent.
Where R U, it’s late?
She turns it over. Can’t face him right now.
“Do you think Laurence Mitchell put the cats in there?”
“Maybe.” Cathy shrugs. “It crossed my mind.”
She isn’t convinced, though. Suzie can tell. There is a beat, silent bar the rasping of the cats’ tongues. Suzie’s phone vibrates again. She ignores it. Right now all she wants to do is sink her hands into steaming hot water and scour them until they burn.
“Do you think we should call the police?”
Cathy laughs until she almost starts coughing. “If you think the police are coming over here because someone tried to murder a couple of cats, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.”
“Well, we’ve got to do something! Have you tried calling Hazel?”
Now Cathy looks at her, incredulous. “Of course I have! It just goes straight to her answering service. Honestly, Suzie, what a stupid question.”
Suzie taps her nails on the counter. “You know, Hazel said something to me when she came into the pharmacy. I didn’t really think about it at the time, but now it’s sort of stuck in my head, you know?”
Cathy nods, but she doesn’t know what Suzie means, not really. She’s tired, and now the adrenaline is wearing off she feels upset and angry.
Suzie sips her tea and continues, “I asked Hazel what she was doing in town and she said, ‘We’re house-sitting for my parents.’”
Cathy frowns. “So?”
“‘We’re house-sitting,’ Cathy. We. At the time, I presumed she was here with Joe, until you told me about the divorce. So, who did she mean when she said we?”
Cathy feels a bud of dismay unfurl in her chest. Her heart sinks.
Suzie’s phone vibrates again, and Cathy slams a hand over it as if she wants to squash it flat. She fixes Suzie with a stare.
“What were you doing here tonight, Suzie? You don’t live on this side of town.”
“Ever since I bumped into you at the shopping center, I’ve been thinking about how Hazel looked when she came into the pharmacy.
I’ve seen that look on her face before, but not for a long time.
Not since … uh, I don’t know, maybe I’m just projecting.
I just thought I’d come by the house and see if I could help. ”
“Ah, I get it. You wanted to fix things.”
“Is that wrong?” Suzie feels angry but her voice doesn’t sound it. It sounds whiny and hurt. Sometimes she wishes she was more like Cathy. A wasp. A hornet, she thinks meanly.
“You were just being you,” Cathy sneers. “It must be so lovely in your head, Suzie Trebath. It must be like fucking Disneyland.”
Suzie stares at her. Her phone buzzes. She’s over an hour late home. Teddy is getting frantic. “I should go.”
“Good idea,” Cathy tells her, nodding toward her phone. “Sounds like Teddy needs his nappy changing.”
Suzie opens her mouth to reply, snaps it shut again.
It’s been over ten years since she was at school, but almost immediately she is transported back there again, mean girls with mouths like buckshot and Cathy Maddon the meanest of them all, a coiled viper.
Suzie stands and grabs her phone and handbag, trying desperately to ignore the burning feeling in her hands, the overwhelming compulsion to run them under water so hot her skin peels.
Her cheeks burn as she leaves the house wordlessly, almost running to reach her car.
Let Cathy sort her own mess out, she tells herself angrily, slamming the door so hard the whole car shakes. Forget Hazel. Let them both suffer.