Some Kind of Fairy Tale (25 page)

Peter dropped Tara off at the dentist’s office. After that he called in at the police station to deliver his motor insurance and ownership documents. As far as the police were concerned, Richie had been the one driving drunk, but as owner of the vehicle, Peter had to provide his documents for inspection. He was still in the doghouse with Genevieve about that episode with Richie. At least Richie had insisted on persisting with the charade that he had been driving rather than Peter. The police officer had wanted to know why it was that Peter was wearing a head bandage when only that morning he had interviewed Richie in the hospital with a similar wrapping. Peter had said it was all fun, that they were always doing juvenile things like that. They suspected that the copper knew the truth: and they thought he knew that they knew. Regardless, Richie had been the one taken to the station, where he duly and unsurprisingly tested positive for alcohol. The officer had initially wanted to take Peter along, too, but Richie had talked him out of it.

Since the keys to his truck had been confiscated, Peter had walked home, sobering a little as he went. He’d walked at least half a mile before he remembered that he still had Richie’s bandage trailing loosely around his head, and for no reason.

J
ACK HAD HEARD HIS
dad come home, and he heard his mum asking,
Where is the truck?
His dad had an unfocused gaze and he was holding a long length of white bandage. When he heard his mum ask his dad if he was drunk, he wanted to stay and see how the interesting conversation might develop, but he was also quick to spot an opportunity.

He hurried to the outbuildings, took out the stainless-steel spade, and sprinted to the top of the garden. There he dragged away the dead bush covering the disturbed soil and immediately began to dig. He worked quickly, and after a few spades of soil he was already sweating. Pretty soon he struck the corpse of the cat.

It was a distasteful job, but he was relieved to find that the corpse was still in pretty good order. He loosened all the soil around the neck of the creature and found a silver buckle on the red collar. He gagged. There was no odor rising from the dead creature, but
he gagged anyway. The buckle was tight and it resisted his fingers. It required both hands to work it loose. Finally, he got the buckle open and was able to drag the collar free.

He piled all the loosened soil back over the dead cat and carefully covered the disturbed ground with twigs and sticks before dragging the withered bush back into place. He cleaned the steel spade by wiping it on the grass, returned it to the outhouse, and went back inside.

“Where’s Dad?” he asked his mother.

“He’s gone upstairs to lie down for a while.”

“Is he okay? ”

“Ha!”

“Is he drunk?”

“Ask him.”

Jack kicked off his shoes and went up to his bedroom. He decided to hide the red collar between his mattress and the base of his bed. Then some thought made him wince. Instead he took the collar to the bathroom and rinsed it under the cold-water tap for a good few minutes. He patted the collar dry with a bath towel before going back to his bedroom and hiding it behind some soccer annuals on his bookcase.

After that he went downstairs, slipped his shoes on again, and marched brightly across the road to Mrs. Larwood’s house. He rang the bell and within a few moments there came the usual drawing of bolts and the unlatching of chains.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Larwood. “Has he been found?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve come to do your computer.”

“Come in.”

Jack dipped his shoulder to squeeze past Mrs. Larwood without making eye contact. Before Mrs. Larwood had closed the door and joined him in her living room he already had the monitor out of its packaging.

“Goodness! I’ll put the kettle on, shall I? Or you’d probably prefer lemon soda, wouldn’t you?”

“No! No need. I mean, I’ll have tea. Although I don’t want anything.”

Jack unpacked the PC and began assembling it at super-speed
on her dining table. He attached the monitor to the PC and jacked in the keyboard and the mouse.

“So many parts,” Mrs. Larwood said, watching him.

“Where’s your power outlet?”

Jack had it assembled, plugged in, and switched on in under five minutes. He steered the computer through its setup. “Do you want a password?”

“What?”

“I’ll leave it open. Do you want a screen saver?”

“What?”

“You can pick any picture you want on the screen.”

“Can I?”

“Yes. Anything.”

“What sort of picture? ”

“Well, you can have a picture of the sea or the mountains or the Outwoods or anything you like.”

“The Outwoods? I wouldn’t go there if you paid me a million pounds!”

“Why?” Jack asked reasonably.

Mrs. Larwood seemed to ignore him. “Can I have a picture of my cat? The one I gave you?”

Jack blinked. Something itched at the back of his knee and he scratched the place hard. “Yes.”

“Put that on, then.”

“I’ll have to, you know, scan it and download it.”

“Will you?”

“Yes.”

“How will you do that?”

Jack had come with the purpose of planting in the old woman’s mind the idea that there had been a sighting of her cat, in order to prepare the ground for the moment when he could turn up with a new ginger tom in the red collar. But now that he was in the same room as the woman he couldn’t bring himself to raise the subject.

The PC drive whirred and bleeped. “What’s it doing now?”

“It’s still setting up.”

“Am I on the Internet now? ”

“No. Have you got a server?”

“What?”

“You have to, you know, pay.”

Jack explained to Mrs. Larwood that she could get an Internet connection through her telephone company. Then it occurred to him that the wireless signal from The Old Forge might be strong enough to hook up Mrs. Larwood’s computer. After all, he knew the security passwords and key codes. Peter set up the passwords and key codes to maintain parental control for Internet access, but kept forgetting his own codes and regularly had to ask Jack for them. Jack made a great show of explaining it all to Mrs. Larwood in minute detail, but he could tell that by now she was only pretending to understand what he was talking about. In the end he said he would try to piggyback off his home system across the road while she waited for a connection to be installed by her phone company.

“You’re going to give me a piggyback?”

“Yes.”

She seemed satisfied with that and went off to make tea. Jack found that a connection to The Old Forge was readily available, and that the signal strength was adequate. By the time the cup of tea that he didn’t want had arrived, he had already set up Mrs. Larwood with an e-mail account and an Internet identity.

“I’ve given you a piggyback on our system,” he said gravely.

“Have you? Here’s your tea and I’ve brought you some cake.”

“I’ve given you an e-mail address. You can send people e-mails. You are Larchwood21.”

“Larchwood? Couldn’t I be Larwood?”

“No. There were too many other Larwoods. Is Larchwood21 okay?”

“I’m sure it is.”

“You’re ready to send e-mails.”

“How exciting? Who shall I send one to?”

“Well.” Jack scratched the back of his knee again. “Who do you know who has an e-mail address?”

“No one, really.”

She looked a little crestfallen, so Jack volunteered his own address. He said Mrs. Larwood could send him an e-mail if she wanted. Mrs. Larwood wanted to know if that was really necessary,
since he was right there, in the room, right now, and she could tell him anything she wanted to. They could, if they wanted, she said, just sit here and have a good chat instead. Jack didn’t know he was being teased. He wrote down his address. Mrs. Larwood saw that it was
jackgiantkiller
, so she asked what her name was, and Jack repeated that Larchwood21 was her account name; he added that she could have other accounts in different names.

“Why would I do that?”

“You can pretend to be other people, like you’re younger or older or whatever.”

“Is that honest?”

“Okay, you could have one for friends, and one for ordering things so you don’t get spam.”

He explained to her about spam. And about e-mails from Nigeria.

Mrs. Larwood eventually said she didn’t want anything dull, and she wanted a name like his. She suggested
madoldbitch
.

Jack blinked. “A bit strong.”

“You think so? I thought it sounded fun.”

“Okay. I’ll set it up.”

“Yes, change it to
madoldbitch
.”

Jack sipped his tea. “Why did you say that?”

“Say what? ”

“About the Outwoods.”

“Been up there, have you? ”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Not saying. Otherwise you would think I was a
madoldbitch
.” Mrs. Larwood made a kind of snorting noise, as if she had choked back a laugh.

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“All I’m saying is that you wouldn’t get me to walk up there. No. Wouldn’t go near the place. There are powers.”

“Powers?”

“You’ve seen how nature made that place. The rocks? This way and that. That place lies on a fault. Geology. Do they teach you that at school? You don’t think nature has accidents, do you? You’d
be a fool if you did. You might know a thing or two about that computer and e-mails from Nigeria. But if you don’t know about powers you don’t know nothing. How old are you?”

“Thirteen. My aunt Tara was walking up there when she was fifteen. She disappeared. Now she’s back.”

“Who?”

“My aunt Tara. They thought she was dead. Everyone did. But she came back on Christmas Day.”

Mrs. Larwood put down her tea cup. “What, this Christmas?”

“Yes.”

“When was this? I mean, when did she disappear?”

“Twenty years ago. She was walking up there. Now she’s back.”

Mrs. Larwood took Jack’s cup from him, even though he hadn’t finished his tea. Her brow was knitted. She also confiscated his untouched cake. “That’s enough chatter now. Quite enough. You be on your way.”

Jack was baffled. He knew he had been given his marching orders but he didn’t know why. He hauled himself to his feet. “Do you want me to shut this down?”

“You leave it. Come on, let’s be moving.”

Jack remembered that his mission was to suggest progress in the hunt for the ginger tom. But he knew that now was not a good time to mention it. He was on the step when the door was closed behind him. He heard chains rattled into place and bolts shooting home.

Madoldbitch
, he thought.

P
ETER HAD SPENT THE
day at work, sweating out his hangover. In the afternoon, still sticky with perspiration and lugging his portable gas furnace to the back of his truck, he heard the ringing tone of his cell phone. He heaved the furnace onto the truck.

It was the dentist, Iqbal Suida. “Peter, how are you?”

“I’m fine. Did you get a chance to look at Tara?”

“I did. She is a charming lady. We had a good chat. I took some X-rays and a few other samples.”

“I appreciate it.”

“No problem. I’m happy to return a favor. But I have to say things are a bit complicated.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, I’d prefer to see you in person.”

“It’s okay, you can tell me now. Is it about Tara? ”

“How old is your sister?”

“She’s thirty-six.”

“That’s what I thought you said. Well, look, I’ll come straight out with it. The lady who came to see me today, she’s not your sister.”

“What?”

“Peter, I’ve done the X-rays and I’ll send them off for analysis just as I promised. But I’m telling you this as a friend: I don’t need any scientific analysis. I’m an experienced dentist and I’ve looked in a lot of mouths. Even at a glance I can tell you that the person who came to see me today isn’t any older than eighteen or so.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I’m sorry to be telling you this. I know what I’m looking at. Charming as she is, Peter, there is no way that person can be your sister.”

I
said to him, “Is that all you do here? Fuck each other and play in the water? Is that all you people do?”

It didn’t matter how insulting I made it sound, he would just smile at me and wait until I’d finished speaking. He never once interrupted me, nor did his words ever cross over mine.

We do lots of things.

Like what?

He thought for a moment. Well. We take time off its hook, for one thing.

Lovely. How do you do that on a Sunday?

Well, it’s easy enough. You just have to spin time backward and forward in the same moment.

Oh! Simple.

His features twisted between a smile tugging him one way and a frown pulling the other. Oh, I see: you’re mocking me. Very good. Good straight face. I like it. I like when you mock me. I need mocking.

Well, you were mocking me.

No, I wasn’t. That’s what we do. Stop time and start it up again. Kind of. I mean, you don’t want to stop time altogether, now, do you? That would be living in the past, wouldn’t it? And the excitement of life is what the future will bring, good and bad, isn’t it? And anyway, the past is only there inasmuch as it delivers the right now, isn’t it? And the present is only here inasmuch as it delivers the future, you see that? And the future, of course, isn’t here at all.

Shut up! Shut up!

I’m serious. I mean, you wouldn’t want to be frozen in time, like a fly in amber, now, would you? I mean, however sticky-sweet it was. Back then. Back whenever. So you have to run time backward and forward in the same moment, don’t you?