Chapter 9
It’s mid-afternoon when my mobile rings, Jess’s number appearing on the screen. I’ve decamped to another café, a little place tucked away behind the ice-skating arena; the ringtone is very loud in the enclosed space.
“Hey,” Jess says. “Can you talk? Are you on your way home soon, or can you be?”
“Should be able to.” I don’t bother checking my watch. “Why, is everything OK?”
“We’ve got a bit of a… situation,” she says, an edge of tension in her voice. “In the garden.”
“What kind of situation?” I say, standing up from the table.
“You’ll see when you get here. Are you in the office?”
I ignore her question.
“You sure everything’s all right? Are the kids OK?”
“They’re fine.”
“I’m on my way, leaving now.”
Everyone is in the front garden when I pull into the drive.
Leah has Daisy on her back, both of them in their school uniforms and both looking up at the wide-spreading oak tree that overhangs the front wall.
Their brother is straddling a branch about twelve feet from the ground, legs swinging happily, grinning down at the four of us below him.
Jess stands beneath him, hands on her hips.
Our son has always been a daredevil and likes climbing, running, jumping off things.
He learned to walk early, at nine months, and it wasn’t long before he was swinging from the curtains or jumping down the stairs into cushions piled at the bottom.
Today, he seems to have discovered that the oak tree in our new front garden has great potential as a climbing frame.
“Callum?” I say, walking across the gravel. “Are you stuck?”
He raises his fists to the sky. “I’m the king! Woo-hoo!”
“It’s a bit high, matey. How about I get the ladder and help you get down?”
“It’s fine, Daddy! Don’t need the ladder.”
“Not him,” Jess says, pointing higher up the tree. “Him.”
I follow her finger: ten feet above Callum’s head is our cat, spreadeagled on an almost-vertical branch, his considerable bulk clinging to the bark, ears flat to his head, tail fluffed out in alarm.
“I was trying to reach Steve,” Callum shouts. “He’s the one who’s stuck.”
Steve lets out a low, plaintive riaoooow, his tail flicking nervously from side to side.
“Daft creature,” I say under my breath. “How long has he been up there?”
Jess whistles to the cat but he doesn’t respond.
“About an hour,” she says. “God knows how he escaped. Callum thought he was trying to reach the bird box. I tried to get him down myself but you know I don’t do heights.”
“It’s OK,” I say. “I’ll go.”
I look higher into the spreading branches, shielding my eyes against the afternoon sun, and can just about see an old wooden bird box attached to the trunk above him.
Next to me, Leah bounces her little sister on her back. “We should have called him Tigger, shouldn’t we, Daze? Good at climbing up trees but rubbish at getting down again.”
“He is orange like Tigger,” Daisy agrees.
“We could just wait until he gets hungry?” I say. “Or until it gets dark.”
“Don’t be mean, Dad,” Leah says.
I hand my jacket to Jess, fetch the ladder from the garage, and lean it up against the branch next to Callum.
“Fire brigade game,” I say, putting a hand under his arm and helping him onto the rungs. “I’m the fireman and you’re being rescued.”
When he’s safely back on the front lawn, I move the ladder across and extend it, leaning it up against the branch where Steve lies flattened against the bark.
He lets out another long, sad meow as if he can’t believe someone has stranded him in the tree.
Leah offers to get his cat carrier but I learned long ago that when rescuing him from high places, trying to put him in the box was like trying to put an octopus into a string bag.
He disliked being confined at the best of times, let alone when he was suffering the indignity of being rescued.
Instead, I climb up to him and give him a minute to edge nervously down toward me.
The earthy, rich smell of the oak is stronger up here.
The bird box is just above us but it looks old and unused, the wood darkened and split with age.
Nothing for you there, Steve. When the cat is close enough, I pick him up with both hands and bring him to my chest. His claws, having been embedded in the tree bark, now go straight through my polo shirt like needles as he climbs up and around my neck, draping himself across my shoulders like an angry ginger shawl.
By the time we’re back on solid ground, the skin on my back is stinging and raw where it’s been punctured by his claws. He leaps off and runs around the side of the house without a backward glance.
“Ouch,” Jess says, looking at the back of my neck. “Shall I get the Savlon?”
“It’s fine,” I say. “Think I might take that bird box down, though. It’s falling apart anyway, and he’s only going to go up after it again.”
“Be careful.”
I go inside to change into clothes more appropriate for tree climbing. I’m lacing up my trainers in the bedroom when the sound of a vacuum cleaner starting up reaches me from across the landing. Which is curious, to say the least—because Jess and the kids are all still outside.
A woman in blue jeans and a pale pink housecoat is hoovering in Callum’s bedroom.
She has her back to me as she slides the machine across the carpet in short, vigorous strokes.
She’s small and slight, mousey-brown hair gathered into a short ponytail.
As I stand in the doorway, she reaches behind her, without looking, to hit the light switch with a practiced familiarity as if she’s done it dozens, hundreds, of times before.
As if she knows this house better than I do.
I have to say hello twice before she hears me over the noise, finally switching off the Dyson and turning to face me.
“So sorry,” she says. “In a world of my own there.”
“Hi, I’m Adam. Sorry… who are you?”
She’s somewhere in her mid- to late forties, with fine features in her prematurely lined face. She holds up a hand encased in a yellow Marigold glove.
“Helena,” she says. “The cleaner.”
I frown. “Right, OK.”
“I talked to your wife? I used to come in for Mr. Hopkins.” There is a very slight cadence to her accent, a heaviness to the vowel sounds. “Such a gentleman. More than ten years I worked for him. Although no one’s been in while the house was empty so there’s lots of work to do.”
“Of course. I’ll let you get on.”
She nods and hits the power button on the Dyson again, filling the small room with noise.
Back outside in the garden, I jerk a thumb toward the house.
“What’s with the cleaner?” I say to Jess. “Where did you find her?”
“They both worked for the last owner and they were recommended on the neighborhood WhatsApp group. Thought we could use them for a couple of hours on Mondays and Fridays at least while we were settling in. Everything needs a deep clean.”
“What do you mean them? There’s two of them?”
“Her and her cousin, Tobias. He’s in the back garden now, making a start on the hedges.”
I cringe inwardly at the extra expense of having help around the house when I had no job, no money coming in. The weekly expense would add up soon enough.
“We’re not a family that has a cleaner,” I say quietly. “Are we? We’ve never had one before. Let alone a gardener too.”
“We’ve never had a house this size before either,” she says. “It’s twice the size of our old place and has twice as many rooms.”
“Could we have talked about it first?”
“We did, remember? When we first offered on the house.”
“Did we? That was months ago.”
“We definitely did,” she says, with certainty in her tone. “Now, are you sure you need to go up that tree?”
“Got the ladder out now,” I say with a shrug. “May as well.”
I bring a selection of screwdrivers from the garage and extend the aluminum ladder as high as it will go, climbing back up so I’m almost level with the bird box.
Close up, the angle is awkward but I can see that the small circular opening—just big enough for a nesting sparrow or wren—is partly blocked by a piece of eggshell.
If it’s in use, I should probably leave it until later in the year rather than risk disturbing a nest.
I lean closer, shifting my weight on the ladder to lift the top of the box so I can check inside, the cotton of my shirt sticking to my back with sweat.
The lid won’t budge. I lean further across, one palm braced against the rough bark of the tree, and try to lever the lid up.
With my fingertips, I can feel the smooth metal heads of a couple of screws securing the lid tightly in place.
But the angle is too awkward to get any purchase with a screwdriver.
Callum’s high voice reaches me from below. “Are there any eggs or birds, Daddy?”
“Not sure yet, Cal.”
Jess’s voice is louder. “It’s not safe, Adam, leaning across like that.”
“Just can’t quite reach it.”
I lift one foot off the rung of the ladder, bracing it against the rising branch to my left to get a closer look at the box, blinking away a bead of sweat that runs into my eye.
With the muscles of my arm starting to burn where I’m holding onto the tree, I shift my weight further across so I’m almost directly in front of the small circular aperture in the wood.
Close enough to see what’s blocking the hole.
A cold, liquid sensation forms in my stomach as I see what it is.
Because it’s not an egg, or a piece of shell.
It’s the lens of a camera.