10
When Lyssa awoke the next morning, it was trying to rain, and the pearly grey light infusing her room instantly depressed her.
She knew this feeling of old, and it meant potential trouble.
She rolled over on to her side and stared at the empty space beside her for a while, and as if sensing her need, Bibbie jumped up and came to lie down beside her.
For a while she stroked him gently, but once he’d had enough of that (and every cat owner knows that moment!) she sighed, and forced herself to get up.
With the dim grey day already nibbling away at her psyche, she knew that if she wasn’t careful, she was going to have one of her ‘bad’ days.
She’d had plenty of them after Kyle had died, days when she couldn’t even get out of bed, days when she could barely read a book, let alone write one.
The passing year had winnowed them down to occasional occurrences now, but they hadn’t passed completely.
Anything could be a harbinger for one – a restless night, filled with bad dreams. An anniversary – his birthday, hers, their wedding. Or sometimes, just a rainy day and an overwhelming sense of loneliness.
To make her blues even worse, Justin Tillman had failed to phone her by eight o’clock last night, so she’d called him instead but received no reply.
Now she reached for the phone and tried again. And this time it was picked up – but the voice which answered was young and female.
‘Hello?’
Lyssa sat forward a little on the sofa. ‘Oh, hello. Is this Justin Tillman’s number?’
‘Yes – that’s my dad. He’s not here right now.
’ Lyssa thought it was probably Chloe Tillman she was talking to but didn’t want to freak her out by calling her by name.
She was bound to ask how Lyssa knew it, and then she’d be drawn into a long explanation.
Instead she said brightly, ‘Oh, I see. I wonder when might be a good time to call back?’
There was a short silence on the line, and a sense of foreboding suddenly had the hairs on Lyssa’s arms standing on end.
‘That’s hard to say. Dad’s in the hospital right now.’
Lyssa felt her mouth go dry, and said quietly, ‘It’s nothing serious, I hope?’
Again, there was a short tense silence, and then, ‘He’s had a serious fall, I’m afraid. From the roof.’
‘From the roof?’ Lyssa echoed in surprise. She couldn’t help it, and a moment later, she felt rather sick as a horrific thought hit. ‘Oh, please don’t tell me he was in the loft and fell from there?’
‘What? No. He had been up in the loft earlier in the day, but then our next-door neighbour dropped in to ask Dad if he’d noticed that one of the tiles on the roof had come loose and Dad, being Dad, got the ladder out of the garage and went up to take a look.’
Lyssa felt a wave of relief wash over her at this blessed confirmation that she hadn’t been inadvertently to blame for the Tillman family’s trouble.
‘Sorry, just who is this?’ the voice, now sounding rather brittle, abruptly demanded.
‘Oh yes, sorry – I’m a writer. I’m doing a biography of Amelia Montrose. I rang your father before because . . .’
‘Oh yes, I can place you now,’ Chloe Tillman interrupted, sounding a little less stressed. ‘It’s about the film Grandad took back in the 60s, right? Mum told me about it. She said he was chuffed that someone was still interested in something his father had done.’
Diplomatically, Lyssa decided not to mention that selling his story and film to the press for a nice fat profit might not have been her grandfather’s finest hour.
‘For a moment,’ she said instead, ‘when you said he’d fallen from the roof, my heart nearly stopped, because I thought he might have been in the loft when he fell. ’
‘I wish,’ Chloe said bitterly, a catch in her voice now. ‘He wouldn’t be in the hospital if he had – or at least, it wouldn’t be so bad.’
Hearing her distress even over the telephone line, Lyssa felt her heart start to pound sickeningly again. ‘Oh no! Was he seriously hurt, then?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Broken leg and pelvis, concussion, all sorts. He’s unconscious right now, and the doctors are waiting to see how bad the swelling in his skull is going to get. They’ll know more if . . . I mean, when he wakes up.’
For a moment there was a dreadful silence as both women pretended not to notice her little slip.
Then Chloe rushed on. ‘I just wish the silly sod had called a roofer instead. But he does stuff like that – he says that people nowadays charge the earth to do even the simplest things, and he can mix up a bit of cement and climb a ladder as well as the next man. And, to be fair, he really is quite good at doing repairs like that, and he’s always extra careful about safety precautions.
He has all the right gear when he’s doing some welding – goggles and gloves and such.
And when he’s using his electric saw he has the guards in place and everything.
And he’s always careful when he goes up ladders, making sure they’re secure.
Which is why we can’t understand how he came to fall. ’
And once again the hairs on Lyssa’s arms stood on end. Because what if it hadn’t been an accident?
The moment she thought it, Lyssa told herself not to be silly. Of course it was an accident. The alternative was simply unthinkable. And absurd. And yet, suddenly, her hands had gone cold.
‘I’m so sorry. I hope you get good news from the doctors soon,’ she said, realising how feeble the words sounded. But really, what could you say to a stranger over the telephone that might make them feel better?
‘Yes, Mum’s still at the hospital, and I’ve taken some time off work.
I’ve just popped back here to fetch Dad some extra things – slippers and shaving gear and all that.
He’ll be needing it soon,’ she said firmly.
As if, by saying it, she could make it so.
But Lyssa knew she must be wondering if her father would ever need his shaving things again, and her heart went out to her.
‘I’m sorry – I totally forgot about why you called! About Grandad’s film . . .’ Chloe began.
‘Oh no, don’t even think about that right now,’ Lyssa interrupted her, aghast. ‘You have much more important things to think about than . . .’
‘That’s the problem, to be honest,’ Chloe said quickly, her voice a little thick with the tears she was holding back.
‘Right now, I’m thinking about them too much, so I’ll be glad of the distraction.
Let’s see . . . Mum said he’d been up in the loft and had brought a cardboard box down.
I think it’s probably in his man cave. Or as me and Mum call it, the cubby hole in the garage!
I’ll check it out when I come back from the hospital and see if I can find what you’re looking for. ’
‘Oh, you needn’t . . .’
‘No, no, like I said, it’ll give me something practical I can do. And going through old film canisters is as good a distraction as any. What can you tell me about the date and the subject?’
Lyssa quickly passed over Monty’s name and the date of the party, and feeling guilty and still protesting that Chloe didn’t need to do it if she didn’t feel up to it, she finally ended the call.
For a moment she sat very still on the sofa, feeling totally wrong-footed and uneasy.
Then, realising that if she stayed indoors now, she’d just go around and around in circles, fretting about the Tillmans and probably going down a rabbit hole of pointless speculation, she stood up and told herself to get a grip.
She was in danger of seriously losing it if she was seeing conspiracy theories about a poor man falling off his roof whilst attempting to fix a tile!
Determined to nip this bout of blues in the bud before it could get properly started, she went to the closet containing her outdoor coats, boots, hats and bulky clothing like that, to don her running gear.
As she further opened the already ajar door, Bibbie raised his head and glared at her for the disturbance. The floor of the closet, where the odd scarf, exercise towel or bulky dressing gown occasionally fell, provided him with a comfy bed, and was one of his favourite spots for a snooze.
‘Sorry, Bibs,’ she said, and the cat got up and yawned vigorously, then stuck out his front paws in a sumptuous stretch.
As he did so, one of his claws over-reached the towel he was lying on and hooked on to the tip of something that had slipped between the slot of the back wall of the closet and one of the sides.
She saw the small flash of a white square before her pet shook it free and, curious, she reached down and picked it up.
The printing on it was slightly faded, but as she turned it over and read it, she realised it was the receipt from a storage facility nearby, and she frowned. She knew she hadn’t ever rented out extra space . . .
And then her breath caught, as she realised Kyle must have done so.
She rubbed the paper in her hand, knowing that he’d once held it too, and felt a familiar ache of loss start up inside her.
To distract herself, she checked the dates, and realised he’d paid for it just a few months before his death, which meant that the three-year lease was still current.
Funny, but she couldn’t remember him ever telling her about it.
Maybe he’d forgotten to? The closet was where he’d kept his bulky clothes too, so it had probably fallen out of one of his coat pockets and had wafted down to almost disappear into the crack between the wooden slots, until her cat had accidentally rescued it.
She sighed and slipped the piece of paper on to the high shelf above her head.
Now that she knew about it, she would have to find the place and see what was inside – but she could only imagine it would be stuff from his work.
It would be the ideal place for him to store his bulky and heavy fitness gadgets and equipment or keep the latest new workout machines that his clients were always demanding.