Chapter 11 Monday 17 June 2024 Sally
Sally
Before either woman says anything, Sally starts to worry that Avril is not the right person after all.
As a general rule, one’s perfect helper is not already crying about something else—something you don’t have time to wonder about, relating to their own life—when you most need them to focus on you and your problem.
Avril is in her late thirties with light-brown, center-parted hair that lies flat against her head as if pasted to it.
The tops of her ears sometimes poke through.
Sally has gotten into the habit of looking out for this and feeling ever so slightly disappointed when no pink ear-tip is visible, as is the case today.
For the first time, Sally is getting to see the inside of Avril’s house, which has dark stripy wallpaper on both sides of its tunnel-like hall—white and either navy or black, Sally can’t tell.
Bad choice for such a narrow space, she thinks, and way too many framed photographs on both sides.
Beyond the hall, in whatever room is at the far end of it, a child starts to wail. Sally can’t remember how old Avril’s youngest is.
“This isn’t a great time, as you can probably tell,” Avril says. “Can it wait?”
“Not really,” says Sally. “I need help and I don’t have time to…
I need help fast.” As she says it, she knows that not a single person would agree that this is an every-second-counts crisis.
They’re all wrong. Given what the Gaveys have already done, there’s no telling what they might do next.
Sally has to get herself and Champ out of the Hayloft and far away from Swaffham Tilney, and it can’t wait.
“You need help?” Avril looks and sounds affronted. “I mean…no offense, but have you seen the state of me? I swear to God…” She looks over her shoulder as the wailing turns into a gargling scream.
Sally hears a man’s voice repeating a mantra: “Nothing happened. Nothing happened.” She guesses that the shrieking child is correct in thinking that something did, in fact, happen. “Avril, can you come and give me a hand,” her husband shouts. Nick: That’s his name.
“Do you sometimes wish you’d never had kids?” Avril says. “And by ‘sometimes,’ I mean all the time?”
Sally doesn’t, ever. Her children, furry and non-furry, are the best part of her life.
She often used to wish Mary Poppins were real and would drift down from the sky to help with childcare, but only because she knew that would have been as much fun for Ree and Tobes as it would have been a relief for her.
“Avril, please… I know it’s a lot to ask, but can you let Nick deal with whatever it is and help me?” she says. “It’ll cost you nothing: just a few minutes of your time. I wouldn’t ask if I were any less desperate, but it’s a life-or-death emergency.”
This has a visible perking-up effect. Now Avril’s interested.
“The Gaveys are trying to kill Champ,” Sally tells her.
“Champ? Oh, right. Your dog.” There’s no mistaking the downgrading that just took place in Avril’s mind. The change in her expression said it all: instant de-prioritization.
Then it gets worse.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Avril says. Does it make sense to say that a voice sounds as if it’s rolling its eyes in frustrated impatience? If so, that’s how her voice sounds.
“Look, Sally, hard as this might be to hear, not everyone’s like you.”
“Meaning?”
“You’re really going to make me say it?” Avril sighs.
“What choice do I have, when I’ve no clue what you’re on about? Conversations don’t work unless the people having them understand each other.”
Way too harsh. Shit. That was snapping, not chatting. It wasn’t neighborly, let alone friendly.
Strangely, it seems to have a softening effect on Avril. “Look,” she says in a kinder tone. “Not everyone loves dogs. Not everyone wants a smelly, slightly muddy animal with bad breath slobbering all over them—”
“But that doesn’t mean they want them dead?” Sally interrupts her. “Is that what you’re about to tell me? Great, I agree. The problem is, the Gaveys do want Champ to be killed. Or… or did you mean it’s okay if the Gaveys think Champ’s a smelly, muddy dog and are trying to kill him for that reason?”
Now Avril’s face rolls its eyes, as well as her voice. “You’re being ridiculous,” she says.
“I really hope so,” says Sally. “I’d be so thrilled to be wrong and have nothing to fear. Anyway, look, I’m sorry to bother you. This was a mistake.”
She turns and walks away, heads for the swings at the farthest end of the green.
And the seesaw! And the roundabout! In her head, Sally greets these pieces of playground equipment she normally ignores as if they were her friends, tiny in the distance, waving to her as if to say, “Come over here and hang out with us. You’ll have a much better time. ”
It’s good that Avril Mattingley has revealed her true nature; now Sally won’t waste any more time thinking about her.
Yes, it’s a setback, but Sally, unlike most people she knows, is good at changing her mind, good at responding to danger signals—which, frankly, Avril might as well have blasted into the vast, low-hanging East Anglian sky from a massive cannon: regrets the existence of her children, doesn’t understand that dogs are people too, happy to declare herself sure about something that demonstrably isn’t the case without asking any questions first, horrendous taste in wallpaper…
Halfway to the swings, Sally hears footsteps behind her.
She slows her pace but doesn’t turn. The padding gets louder.
Sally doesn’t fear it might be a Gavey; there’s no doubt in her mind that it’s Avril.
Which is fine. She will say more unpleasant, inaccurate things, but Sally won’t argue with her.
In her mind, Avril Mattingley barely exists anymore.
Sally doesn’t need her, or anyone. She’ll go home, get Champ, and set off.
She’s got a new plan and thinks it will work.
“Your dog is very cute, right…” The breeze propels Avril’s voice toward her.
Sally turns. If by any chance this is the beginning of an apology…
“ …but he’s just a dog! He’s just a sodding pooch, Sally.
He’s not the second coming. A few weeks ago when I bumped into you both outside the church, he jumped up and licked my hand and nearly pulled a button off my shirt, and you were all like, ‘Aww, look, he likes you!’ And my hand stank afterward.
Like, all the way home it reeked of dog breath. ”
Sally tries not to laugh as she remembers what Ree once said: that Swaffham Tilney people are entirely oblivious to their “distance privilege”—that was what she called it.
“All the way home,” in this instance, meant less than a minute’s walk.
Sally could have hopped on one leg from the church to Avril’s house without any problem at all.
“So, look, I’m sorry if I’m not at my most tactful,” Avril goes on.
“I’ve just had the shittiest day. Everything that could have gone wrong has.
I was stressed even before I started cooking shepherd’s pie for tea, and then Nick made this massive production of offering to help, as if he ought to win the Nobel Peace Prize or something.
I told him to leave a tiny bit of water in the pot with the potatoes, to help make them a bit softer for when I mashed them, but instead he left about a third of the water in, mashed them himself—no milk, no butter, no seasoning—and then just slopped them out all over the meat mixture.
Ruined the whole thing. Now I’m going to have to start from scratch, and there’s nothing in the house.
So, yes, I apologize for getting a bit impatient with your imaginary problem.
I’m sure something’s happened, and I’m not asking for the details, but come on.
” Avril shakes her head. “Turning up and saying the Gaveys are trying to kill Champ?”
“ …would be unacceptable if it weren’t the truth,” says Sally, as if they’re playing a fun game in which her challenge is to complete Avril’s sentences. “Bye, Avril. Order a takeaway.”
Nick, destroyer of shepherd’s pies, was made redundant two months earlier, so perhaps the Mattingleys can’t afford takeaways at the moment.
Nor do most of the restaurants that claim to deliver to Swaffham Tilney actually agree to do so when asked.
“Sorry, love, we’re up to our ears in orders, and we’ve got three people off sick.
It’d take us too long to come out your way.
” Sally knows all this; that’s why her comment was the perfect missile to fire at Avril.
And her own address is even more unappealing to delivery drivers, being farther from the B1102, and the Lamberts also can’t afford takeaways apart from for birthdays and special occasions, so she doesn’t feel bad.
And she remembers someone from the village telling her Nick Mattingley got a full year’s salary as a redundancy payoff, and his job had been highly paid and the best kind of London-ish job too, the sort that never seemed to require him actually to go to London.
“Go fuck yourself, Sally,” says Avril. “Really, just get lost.”
“I am,” Sally tells her and heads off again with a wave.
Where was she going? That’s right: the swings.
No. Home. She remembers her new plan. She must get Champ before she does anything else, get him safely out of the village.
But, wait, there’s Corinne Sullivan standing between the swings and the roundabout.
Sally didn’t see her at first; the sun was in her eyes, and she only saw what was ahead of her once she stepped into the shade cast by the church’s tower onto the village green, then suddenly everything was fully visible again.
Why does Corinne look like she’s waiting for Sally?
No. Don’t risk it. Stick to the new plan.
Corinne doesn’t appear to be busy or afflicted by shepherd’s pie trauma. She looks…available. To help, maybe.