Chapter 9 Elise #2
She took the camera downstairs and held it out to him. “Here.”
Sam took the camera from her to look, smiling at the image. “What a lovely picture. Apart from the colour of his hair, he’s like a mini you.”
“Yes.” She took the camera back from him, feeling slightly cleansed from letting all those words out. From sharing her son.
Then Sam said, “How you and your husband have suffered.” And suddenly it wasn’t just the two of them in the room any longer. Robbie was there too.
Elise got up. “I’d better take Lulu for a walk. She might settle then, and I really need to get on with some work.”
“Will she like the marshes, d’you think?”
“I might save those for another time, stick to some of the footpaths around the village for now. See you later.”
“Yes, have a nice walk.”
Clipping on Lulu’s leash and deciding to keep it on for now until the dog became familiar with the area, Elise left the house and crossed the road to reach the footpath beside the stream.
She walked quickly, the little dog scampering to keep up with her, her mind churned up.
Apart from the wrench of giving Lulu up, the little dog herself brought nothing but happy memories.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t painful to remember them.
Charlie’s adoration of her had been mutual.
Lulu had been his constant shadow, sitting on top of the armchair by the sitting-room window to wait for him when he went to school, willingly putting up with being dressed as a plethora of characters, including, on one memorable occasion, Darth Vader.
So much laughter. So many doggy kisses.
When Lulu stopped to sniff the base of a tree, Elise remembered how the little dog had been, lying on Charlie’s pillow that hideous afternoon she’d been forced to share the worst possible news in the world with him.
She saw herself downstairs preparing a bowl of strawberries for a treat, thinking of the best way to say what she had to say, wishing with all her heart Robbie wasn’t working away again so they could do it together.
Then, suddenly, she’d heard Charlie call out, and the bowl of strawberries toppled to the floor as she hurried from the kitchen, taking the stairs two at a time to get to him.
Charlie had been sitting up in bed, Lulu on the pillow beside him, his face silhouetted against the light from the window.
It hadn’t been too dark for Elise to see his expression of utter delight, though, and she’d stopped, smiling with relief.
He’d looked more like an entranced toddler than a ten-year-old boy.
“What is it?” she’d asked, but even as she spoke, she saw. And gasped. “Oh!”
She’d given Charlie some strings of crystal suncatchers recently; he’d hung them in the window, and now the sun was shining through them, filling the room with a score of bobbing mini rainbows.
“How wonderful.” Because if anything in life could ever be called wonderful again, then this flickering, shifting rainbow world was it.
Elise remembered the way Charlie had suddenly looked at her. Her realisation that something in her tone of voice hadn’t been quite right; that her enthusiasm for the rainbows hadn’t quite disguised the utter despair of her soul.
She could see him working it out, as he looked at her. The way she and Robbie had asked Gran to take him to get ice cream at the hospital so she and Robbie could speak to the consultant alone.
And then he said, “I wish I could go where the rainbows come from, Mum. It would be nice there, I think.” And Elise knew her boy already knew what she had to tell him. But, which, as his parent, she would have to say anyway, even if it broke her heart.
Lulu began to growl suddenly, the sound wrenching Elise from her memories. Looking up, she saw a large German shepherd lumbering towards them, teeth bared.
“Lulu!” she shrieked, bending to pick the little dog up, turning away from the dog, not in the least bit reassured when a male voice called, “It’s all right, Raven won’t hurt you.”
“Call him off!” she cried, stumbling along the path with Lulu barking her head off.
“Raven, sit!”
A glance over her shoulder told Elise the man was close by now. Also that, against all apparent odds, the German shepherd had done as he’d been told to do and was sitting. Albeit with a distinctively aggressive expression on its face.
“No need to look so terrified,” the man said casually. “Like I told you, he won’t hurt you.”
It didn’t seem worth responding to that, and Elise retraced her steps back to the footbridge.
“Hey,” the man called after her. “Are you working on that arty farty project at Marsh House?”
She turned very briefly. “I’m carrying out some of the restorations, yes.”
“Well, if they need a gardener, I’m your man. Ted Cook’s the name. I live just on the high street, opposite the shop. Leave a note, and I’ll get back to you ASAP. Unless you want to give me your number now?”
Elise couldn’t think of anything she wanted less. “I’m not actually responsible for hiring anyone for the project, sorry.”
“But you’ll pass on my details to the person who is?”
There was something so insistent about the man. She sincerely hoped he never came anywhere near Marsh House while she was there.
“If it seems appropriate,” she said, and, as she walked on, she could hear him laughing at her stuffy choice of words.
When her phone started to ring, she was grateful for the interruption.
But when she answered it, once again nobody spoke.
“Hello? Who is it?” Nothing, only silence.
Who was it who kept phoning her? And why didn’t they speak?
The number didn’t show up for some reason, so she couldn’t call them back, which was annoying.
It was getting so she felt like keeping her phone switched off.
Her walk took her almost subconsciously to Esther’s cottage.
“Elise!” Esther said when she opened the door. “How good to see you. And who’s this? She’s gorgeous!”
After Elise had explained about Lulu and had accepted a cup of tea, she described her recent hair-raising encounter.
“I can quite understand your being scared,” Esther sympathised. “But actually, I think Ted has very good control of Raven.”
“Do you know him, then?”
“In a village this size, everyone knows everyone. But my first real experience of Ted was when he came to cut our laurel hedge. It gets really out of hand if we don’t keep it in check, and neither Ivo nor I are the slightest bit green fingered.
Ted made an excellent job of it, I have to say, but it wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience.
He’s like someone from a different decade; all wandering eyes and nudge-nudge, wink-wink comments.
He’d do a good job of clearing the brambles from Marsh House, though, if you could put up with that.
He might be able to shed some light on your mystery photograph, too—his family have lived in the village for generations.
I think his granny is still alive, actually; she’d have been a young girl during the war, I should think. ”
Elise thought again of the sight of Raven lumbering towards them, teeth bared, and shuddered. But then again, presumably, he didn’t bring the dog to work?
“I’ll give it some thought,” she told Esther, and the rest of her short visit was taken up with admiring the work Esther had done on the seat backs.