Chapter 24
A warm breeze stirred the muggy air, fluttering the fly-away hairs around my ears and hushing through the leaves in the trees on the other side of the river. I wiped my face. It was barely afternoon and despite my hangover I found myself desperately needing a drink.
Perhaps I could ask after my neighbour at the pub. She’d been there last night, after all. And if that didn’t work, I could have a drink to calm my nerves.
And dull all these uncomfortable feelings.
I turned away from the river, up into the back streets and toward The Curtyard.
The smell hit me first as I turned the corner into the cobblestone courtyard.
I halted where I stood and took in the view, open-mouthed.
The wall of the pub was now veiled in fragrant greenery.
A coarse coat of flat, thin leaves climbed and covered the old stones of the pub.
Along the barrels-turned-tables, tubs of long-stemmed herbs ending in fringed sprays of delicate greenery gathered in pungent crowds.
The smell of the plants, a rich perfume, hung heavy in the humid air.
I approached carefully, tiptoeing up to the herbs in case some green-faced figure leapt out from among them.
I imagined brushing my fingers through the leaves and luxuriating in their scent.
Reaching out, I stopped as I identified the smells.
Fennel. And rosemary? I withdrew my hand.
Sprigs of rosemary unbelievably climbed and knotted through the broken Curtyard sign.
I didn’t think they were there last night. I didn’t think rosemary was a climber.
I pulled my arms up to my chest. A bubble of voices greeted me as I stopped at The Curtyard’s door. I tried to work out if heading back to the pub would incriminate me or set me above suspicion. Do guilty people go to the pub?
They certainly skulk around outside taking forever to decide.
I was here to ask after my neighbour and then maybe have a drink. That was a perfectly normal thing to do.
I opened the door with unearned confidence.
Pubs always have a different feel to them during the day.
They reminded me of the old country pub my parents used to go to when I was small, all sticky maroon carpets, dark tacky wood tables, and fruit machines with their brightly dancing lights in the corner.
I’d be plied with bottles of cold, sweet cola and packets of salt and vinegar crisps and sent out to play on the rough-hewn climbing frames and hot metal slides in the pub garden, while my parents avoided the sun and the wasps at a table inside.
I’d remembered feeling lonely, pushed outside with the rest of the kids and away from all the people my parents wanted to talk to.
Of course, that all changed a few years later when the Graysons divorced.
They were friends of my parents. While they went to mediation, my mum and dad looked after their daughters, Lucy and Laura-Ann.
Golden-haired girls with perfect dimpled smiles.
After that, when I was sent out to play at the pub, my parents came with.
My mum stayed smoking at a table with all the drinks in the shade while my dad pushed the two blonde-haired girls in tandem on the swings.
Their giggles rang against the red bricks while I stood and waited my turn.
“Their parents aren’t together anymore,” my mum explained, “so you should let them share your dad for a bit.”
My parents got called saints a lot back then.
When it was my turn for the swings my dad played with the girls on the slide instead.
Later that summer he bought them a yellow kite. The same one I’d been asking for since my birthday in the spring—
I smacked the back of my own hand to snap myself out of it.
Look at you, I scolded, drowning in self-pity. Get a grip!
The Curtyard was surprisingly busy. There was a crowd gathered on the right-hand side of the bar.
Funny. Last night most people seemed to gather on the fireside edge.
Every so often the crowd would cheer and tap the air with their half-filled pint glasses.
I shuffled into the mass of heaving bodies, carefully stepping into the spaces people left empty as they shifted about.
Through a parting in the crowd I spied the centre of the commotion.
A woman stood on one bare foot with a tartan scarf wrapped around her eyes like a blindfold.
She sipped a pint with one hand and aimed The Curtyard’s plastic ‘o’ with the other.
The beer was the same rich, rusty red colour as mine the night before.
She failed the first sip with a snorted laugh. The crowd laughed in turn.
“Stop it, you bastards!” she cried out. A wide open-mouthed smile puckered two perfect dimples upon her cheeks.
I caught more glimpses of her between the spectators.
She wore a perfectly tailored, white silk blouse and a pair of tight black trousers that were at once edgy and fashionable.
Her hair was that healthy kind of bouncy, cut into one of those styles that looked effortlessly chic.
She had a pleasant-looking face, what I could see of it around the blindfold, but something about it gave me an odd feeling.
I craned my neck to try and get a better look at her.
She wobbled a little then waved her pint as if entreating her audience to silence. All the while, despite the wobble, her raised foot stayed perfectly pointed. Her toenails were painted a tasteful shade of burgundy.
“Now shut up. I’m doing very busy and important things here.”
She grinned at her own self-deprecation, then put the pint back to her lips.
The crowd waited in anticipation. I scanned their watching faces.
Every eye was locked on her. Even the line of zebras above the bar seemed to be watching.
She raised the ‘o’ in her hand, tilted back her pint glass to gulp, then flicked her wrist. The hoop flew, silent and true, right onto the neck of the finest, most expensive looking whisky behind the bar.
The crowd erupted in delight. She brought down her raised foot.
“Did I do it?”
She whipped off the scarf with her throwing hand.
“Oh my God, I did it!”
She screamed in delight and bounced on her feet, straight into the nearest arms. Other hands reached to her, patting her shoulders, her bouncing hair, her straight back.
I stood frozen to the spot, staring at her face, not quite believing what I was seeing, my whole body turning cold.
The barmaid shook her head—this time she was wearing a long-sleeve top covered in waves of smaller surfing zebras—and reached for the expensive looking bottle.
“Alright, hen, will that be a double?”
The woman extricated herself from her adoring audience, her bright eyes sweeping the ceiling for a moment.
A white scar shone along the left-hand curve of her forehead.
I backed away toward the door.
“Ah…” She pursed her lips, her eyes alighting on her existing drink, then back to the bar. “Just another one of these please!”
She raised her red pint and grinned.
She was different, yes, very different. Polished up till she looked like a whole other person.
But it was definitely her.
She smiled at passing well-wishers who’d gathered up her shoes for her. Wellingtons, the posh ones, with a tweed trim, practical but still stylish. Then her eyes tracked straight onto me.
My stomach dropped.
Her face went eerily static for a moment. Then her mouth pulled wide.
Wider.
Wider still.
Until I could see every one of her teeth.
It was definitely her. Alive. Transformed. Looking right at me.
“Good to see you,” she said, “neighbour.”