ILLUMINATION BOOK CHAPTERS (UPDATED LIST OF CHAPTERS HERE).. ROMANTIC COMEDY — QUIRKY ROMP — CO-STARS MOOCHER THE DOG

‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ — Chapter Eight

Her newest lodger has a secret. Should the police know? Oh, how wonderful it would be if Hugh turned up now …

“What are you doing?” Tony demanded as Liz headed for the phone.

“Calling the police.”

“No!” He jumped out of his chair and stood over her. He was so tall he blocked out the sun. “You don’t want to do that. It’s not a good idea…”

Her scalp heated up so quickly while she tried to make her tongue work, Liz was afraid it was going to blister off. Finally, she managed speech: “My God! Are you threatening me?”

“No, no! Of course not! I was just thinking that for someone to have done this must mean they’re very close. Or, at least they must be keeping an eye on this place…”

Julie let out a heart-rending moan and looked over her shoulder, but he ignored her. He was concentrating on Liz. “And they know you didn’t call the police last night, so they’ll think…”

“Are you saying the two incidents are linked? What makes you think that? This is an entirely different thing to a broken window, for Pete’s sake. What is it with you and the police anyway?” Her head was getting hotter by the second.

The phone rang. Liz snatched it up, convinced the police were into telepathy these days.

It was Lydia. “Your fridge door is still open, dear. Think of all that electricity going to waste and how bad it is for the things in your fridge…”

Liz gritted her teeth so hard she thought they’d splinter. “Thank you, Lydia,” she said, her jaw aching from the effort of speaking fairly naturally. “I will shut it forthwith. Good bye.”

She strode to the window, if a shortass like her could be said to stride, and waved. Lydia fluttered a lace handkerchief with one hand whilst the other girlishly covered her mouth, no doubt to stifle giggles.

“Yes. Ha. Ha,” Liz said and Lydia suddenly disappeared from view. God knows what Liz’d looked like. A snarling shortass yeti probably.

“You can’t go to the police,” Tony said. His voice sounded much too satisfied for her liking. He continued in the same smug vein: “I thought I’d have a look for myself, but the evidence, if, indeed, it ever existed, has gone.”

What was the man wittering on about? Liz went to the fridge, carefully walking around him, as though round a snake pit, and saw that he was right. The plate with its grisly burden had disappeared. Liz looked around the room, mystified. She had seen it. Julie had seen it — else why all the histrionics? Liz felt very unstable and even put her hand out to the wall to steady myself.

Tony continued, not bothering to disguise the amusement in his voice. “I could just see you trying to tell your local constabulary that you had a finger, you didn’t know whose, in your fridge when you got up this morning. You had no idea where it came from or should I say, who it came from, and then suddenly it was gone. ‘No, officer, no sign of forced entry.’ I don’t think even you could carry that one off, Liz.”

No, Liz didn’t think she could either. Nor could she think what she’d thought was fanciable about Tony. Well — actually — yes, she could — his back view in well-tailored trousers. But the rest of him was turning out to be a severe disappointment.

Then Liz heard Melanie’s enthusiastic voice floating out from the kitchen, “Oh, Moocher, you bad dog, what have you stolen now? Here give it to me — you’ll choke on the cling film.”

Liz’s heart threw itself out of her chest and threatened to erupt from her mouth. She rushed out to the kitchen to see Moocher looking up at Melanie with one of his what-me-I’m-an-innocent-doggie looks on his furry face and a bit of cling film hanging from his front teeth, which Melanie plucked off as Liz watched.

Another very, very bad day had begun. How could five adults, in one room, have allowed a big black hairy dog to waltz in, help himself to a delicacy from the fridge and then retire to the kitchen to scoff the evidence without anyone seeing him at it?

Tony started to laugh, not delicately either. ‘Uproariously’ was probably the word. Liz gave him her best you’re-dead stare but it didn’t stop him. He even had the nerve to say: “I’m sorry, but it is funny.”

“It’s not funny at all. I’m very picky about what he eats.”

On reflection, maybe not the best thing Liz could have said. She hurried on: “Not only that, but you wouldn’t think it funny if it was your finger, would you? Also, why are you so determined that I don’t go to the police with anything that happens?” Liz stood there with her fists on her hips. This must be an automatic throw-back stance coming from her mother’s side in situations of stress. Normally, she’d avoid such a fish-wife pose like she avoided men who dribbled.

“There’s something very dodgy about you and I want to know what it is.” Liz tapped her foot like people with their fists on their hips should be able to do. It’s quite difficult to do it for any length of time with no practice. The muscles in your leg seize up. She stopped tapping her foot.

“I’m waiting.” Her mother used to say that when Liz’d been particularly adventurous and she wanted an answer from her as to what she’d done. As if she didn’t already know. What a horrible thought. Why was Liz thinking so much of her mother just now? It must be because Liz was in trouble and knew it. Same reason for thoughts of Hugh, no doubt. She removed her fists and sat down.

The phone rang. Liz leapt up, scooped it off its rest and yelled, “The fridge door is still open. I know the fridge door is still open. I like it open. Okay?”

The voice at the other end was not Lydia’s. It belonged to one of her clients. “Personally,” he said. “I shut my fridge door whenever I can. You never know what might get in it, or out of it, come to that. How often do you clean your fridge?”

Why do I get the demented people, Liz thought. Why can’t I have the sort of clients who would simply say, “Oh, is this a bad time? Call me back when you’re done.” But, oh no, I get the smart alecks.

“I, er, I clean my fridge every month, thoroughly,” Liz said firmly. Simon, who had just reappeared from the garden, stared at her, startled out of his customary coma. Liz made a face at him. “But as for your accounts…”

“No, seriously, do you find it best to use washing up liquid? My mother always told me that would taint the salad, so I use bicarb, you know. Of course you can’t use anything scratchy, it would spoil the surfaces.”

“Er, well, actually. I never clean my fridge. I was lying.”

“Oh! Hahaha. Very funny.”

“No, I’m serious. However, I might be tempted to clean it now because there’s been a finger in it. A finger hacked off someone. Now then, your accounts are ready, but we do need to get together to discuss tax implications. When’s a good time?”

“You are sooo funny. A finger. Hahaha. Seriously though, take my tip and use bicarb,” he said. “Oh, hohoho, you keep finger food in your fridge — I get it. You nearly had me going there.”

Liz wished he was going. “Tomorrow be all right, two-thirty?”

“Oh. Yup. Two-thirty. I’ll see you then. Don’t forget the bicarb.”

“Thank you. I won’t ever forget it again. Bye then.” Liz replaced the phone and sighed. Unbelievable. This guy ran a construction company and he cleaned his fridge with bicarb. It would be in the forefront of her brain every time he made a pass at her now: Jeez, this hunky guy cleans his fridge with bicarb. His mum told him to. Liz turned around and fixed her oldest lodger with a piercing stare. “Simon, what do you clean the fridge with?”

“Bicarb of course.” He almost saluted as he said it.

Everyone in the world except her knew that you should clean your fridge with bicarb.

“I think it’s time for a clean, don’t you?”

He leapt from his chair. “I’ll do it. I’ll do it,” he said and rushed into the kitchen.

She turned to her newest lodger. “So, what have you got against the police, Tony?”

Liz was worried about telling the police there’d been a finger in her fridge. No sane person would believe her. And if they did believe her what would they do about it? They might decide to excavate Moocher’s stomach to find the remains and Liz wasn’t having that. She was an averagely law-abiding citizen but nobody was cutting up her dog in order to find the chewed up remains of a finger no one was claiming as their own.

She supposed they could wait until it went through his system, but would they? Perhaps she’d secretly bag up his poo over the next couple of days and keep it somewhere until this was all sorted out, in case it was any use. Question is, should finger-infested poo be kept in the fridge? Would it go off if it wasn’t?

“They’re after me,” Tony said.

“What?”

“The police are after me for something which I’m trying to sort out at the moment. I didn’t do it, but I have to prove I didn’t do it and if they catch up with me I won’t be able to prove it.”

Liz had this strange and enchanted feeling that she was on the set of ‘The Fugitive’ and Harrison Ford would come racing around the corner any moment, hotly pursued by Tommy Lee Jones and Liz would be whisked up in it all and come out the other end of a great pipe with a thousand metre drop into a paradise of richness and unparalleled splendour and she would live happily ever after with no lodgers, no bills and no bloody fridge at all.

Everyone looked at each other and then at her. The expression on their faces was clear to read. Liz had, in an instant, become the criminal of the piece. It would have helped if someone other than her had seen the damn finger! Julie had, but Liz knew without asking that she wasn’t in a hurry to back her up.

Liz also knew that if she got the police in she would become Malvern Road’s equivalent of a mad cow, and no lodgers would ever come here to pay her bills for her again. What had happened to her philosophy of live and let live? What had happened to that?

“Right. Right, then. Well…”

“Liz, you can’t get the police in now. Tony has to get it sorted and then it’ll be okay. After all, he got the window fixed and there’s no finger to report or anything…”

This was a pretty impassioned speech from Melanie. Tony must make a mighty handsome casserole. There they all were, rooting for this man who had only entered the household yesterday. He probably bribed Moocher to pinch the finger, come to think of it.

“Thanks Melanie, for your support.”

Liz was sure Tony’s voice didn’t accidentally become a thrillingly husky bone-melting tone.

Melanie fidgeted and blushed slightly. Liz’s bones melted slightly.

“Yeah, Liz. There’s no need for the police, is there?” Even Simon was on his side. Liz would never shout “Pocket!” at him again. He could burn a hole right through his leg for all she cared.

“What about whoever the finger came off? What about them?” Liz asked, hardening her bones.

But no one answered. No one looked at her now. Simon, bless him, had gone a bright pink. No one believed her. Liz wasn’t sure she believed herself anymore. She’d avoided looking at it after that one, brief, glimpse. She’d had a very bad night. She’d got up very early, perhaps too early. Could it have been a sheesh kebab on that plate? Had Moocher developed a taste for Asian cuisine?

“I’ve got work to do,” she snapped, and stomped off before she collapsed in a gibbering heap. She wanted to repeatedly bang her head on the floor in the hope that the feeling of snow blizzards inside it would clear. She was still going to call the police, but needed some time to collect her thoughts. To do that she would have to get away from their accusing looks.

She headed for the attic. Moocher stayed downstairs, probably hoping for another snack. Actually, it was time for his walk and it was Sandra’s turn today. He liked going out with her. She didn’t tire easily. Must be all the exercise she got. Too bad he’d have to make do with Melanie instead.

Accounts were boring. Dead boring if the wrong person was doing them. And she was the wrong person. Liz only did accounts because she could, and because it was a way of earning money from home. She stared at yet another trial balance for quite a while before she realised she wasn’t seeing it at all. She was actually running over in her mind the attitude Tony seemed to have towards Julie. It was a strangely familiar attitude he showed her and Liz wasn’t really into coincidences. They’d arrived on the same day, both anxious for a room in her house. Julie hadn’t objected to him virtually undressing her. Julie might have been in shock or was just incredibly wimpish and Tony didn’t get as far as her bare flesh, but even so…

Liz wasn’t happy with Tony’s explanation of why no police either. What on earth could he have done that made the police think he’d done something else, but that he could prove he hadn’t and they’d all live happily ever after? She’d have to rent that Harrison Ford video again and see if it gave her any clues.

Also, she had to admit, she was driving around with no insurance and no MOT last year for about three days without realising it. If someone had got the police in for something else and they’d asked her for her driving documents Liz would have been in trouble. Who, really, isn’t a black pot sometimes? Or was it kettle?

She really needed Hugh. Her hand crept along her desk phone-wards as though it belonged to someone else. Liz watched it with a strange fascination as it moved quite independently of her brain. She certainly did not want to telephone her ex and ask him to come and sort things out. She would never show such weakness, and anyway it would encourage him in thinking they might stand a chance together. And they didn’t. So it wouldn’t be fair. (Not to mention the, “Now, Liz…” thing).

Her hand had picked up the receiver before her other hand came to its senses and slapped the first one so hard it dropped the receiver back into the cradle. Comes to something when one’s own hand was prepared to let you down and go behind your back. Maybe Liz should cut it off to stop it doing it again.

And then put it in the fridge.

Aargh.

It was no good. She wasn’t getting very far in her deliberations. She wandered over to the dormer window and stood right in it peering down on Malvern Road. She loved this window. There was a little step up into it. It was like one small step up sends you giant-leaps into the sky and, once there, you could survey the rooftops, the little people in the street, the cats and the birds and other people’s business to your heart’s content. Sometimes it was like you were on a level with the hot-air balloons that came over, breathing heavily in that monstrous way they have. Sometimes you could wave to the little people in their suspended baskets and they’d wave back.

It didn’t generally occur to people down in the street to stare upwards if they should be doing something they didn’t want someone to see. They might look all around and over their shoulder, but they never seemed to look up. Oh, the power of it all! The things she’d seen!

For example, the chap with muscles across the road had some strange urge to pee in his front garden hedge. Liz had seen him doing it a few times. He would grin whilst doing it, waving to people and whistling. In general it made him very happy so there couldn’t be anything wrong with it, although the hedge wouldn’t agree. One day she’d check to see if there was a brown patch in that spot on his side.

The woman in the house on the other side of him took photos of him doing it sometimes, from the back. Why? Maybe Liz should take a photo of her taking a photo of him peeing in his hedge. But she couldn’t think what for.

Anyway, there was the usual activity. In other words, there was no sign of brick carrying yobs, no one running down the street with carefully presented fingers. No, there were a couple of cats warning each other off, a keen gardener getting his patch ready for the planting of optimistic seedlings and, ooh, look, there was Git-Next-Door fiddling around with his gate. What was he doing? Liz leaned further forward until her nose squashed up against the glass and stared at him. Or rather, she stared at the top of his head.

There was something about Git-Next-Door that bothered her. More than usual. Liz stared until her eyes watered. She rubbed them and stared some more. And then it hit her. He was fumbling about with the catch on the gate and “fumbling” was the right word. He was having difficulty because there was a great beehive of bandage around his hand.

She didn’t remember seeing him with a bandage on yesterday when she spotted him in his garden tweaking the odd blade of grass that had the nerve to grow out of line — in fact, it would have been impossible for him to get his very expensive, fawn-coloured leather gardening gloves on with a bandage like that on his hand. No, he did not have it yesterday.

But this morning there definitely had been a finger in her fridge. Could that finger possibly have belonged, or, strictly speaking, still belong to Git-Next-Door? Liz felt positively light-headed with intuition. But did she need to know? Not really, no. There was no longer a finger to know anything about. She would just make even more of a fool of herself.

But… What if it was his finger? What was she supposed to do, exactly? Attempt to return it? Duhhh… Before Liz could get too befuddled by sending her thoughts down that path, she saw something that put it right out of her mind. It was Hugh. She had never seen so much of him since they last lived together, a couple of years ago. Actually, she’d never seen so much of him when they had lived together than she had in the last day or so. And here he was again. So early again, too.

Her heart lifted, jumped a little, and then remembered he wasn’t Hugh anymore. No, he was Mr Judgmental now. Drat. She’d have given anything to see the old Hugh. She even felt her throat start to swell up in remembrance of her old friend who was no more. Maybe that was why he’d come back so soon. Maybe it was the old Hugh come to apologise. Maybe Liz could unburden herself onto him of all the mysteries that had collected around her in the last twenty-four hours. Oh, how wonderful that would be!

But then, maybe he wasn’t coming here. Liz watched him park and lock up and cross the road, surprised to see him not even check for traffic. In fact, he walked as though carrying a heavy load, feet loath to carry him, and fear caught her breath instead. There had to be something wrong with him. Maybe, this time, he would tell her what it was.

She raced as quietly as possible down the stairs and opened the door before he reached it, before he could ring the bell and bring others on the scene. She didn’t want anyone else getting in on the act, and he’d be too polite to say so, even if he did want to confide something in her. Liz hurriedly dragged the door open, pecked him on the cheek, ignored his recoil and pulled him by the arm over the doorstep and into the front room, shutting the door firmly behind them. In fact, she locked it as well. She knew it was a communal room and therefore shouldn’t be locked against other lodgers, but it was either that or take him up to the attic and she felt that was too intimate and might make him feel they did stand a chance of getting back together when Liz knew they did not.

He remained silent for some time, walking around the room, fiddling with things. Liz waited.

Finally, he coughed. “Liz. I wanted to tell you why I came round yesterday.”

“Oh, I thought you came round because you always do when we need you,” Liz said, immediately forgiving him his previous pomposity.

“No, I came around to tell you I’m getting engaged to be married,” he said.

As though it was a perfectly ordinary thing to be doing.

She felt her face flinch and her brain started to make strange, shrill noises that skidded around the inside of her skull.

Hugh wouldn’t look at her. And Liz was glad. She had no idea what she must have looked like. She felt as though a rugby team had jumped on her stomach and stayed there. Doing some more jumping. Grinding their studded heels in.

“Hugh,” Liz said. “That’s wonderful news. I’m very happy for you. When’s the wedding?” She was extremely proud of herself for getting this out, despite the Springboks’ best efforts.

He still didn’t look at her. “We haven’t set a date as yet. I’ll… I’ll let you know when we do. In the meantime I probably won’t be around so much. You know how it is.”

“No, I don’t know how it is. Why should you not be around so much?”

“Because I’ll be spending a lot of time with Charity.”

“Charity?”

“Yes,” he said and finally he looked at her. Glared might be a better word. Daring her to say anything. As if she would. As if she could think of anything at all to say.

“Charity?”

“Yes. Charity.”

Hysteria welled up and Liz knew she couldn’t attempt much more by way of speech. Not without risking a wobbly voice and hot, leaking eyes.

“Right,” she managed to creak out through a throat suddenly tight and pained. “I wish you well.” She stood up and led the way to the door.

With him on the outside, curiously reluctant to go it seemed, and her in the house looking at him and Moocher pressed against the side of her leg as though he felt the unleashed, and unreasonable, hurt, Hugh held out his hand and Liz put her hand in it. They shook hands and he left.

That was the first, and probably would be last, time in their entire history that they’d ever shaken hands. They’d hugged and kissed and cried and shouted and hurled stuff. They’d never shaken hands. It must really be the end, then.

Chapter Seven of ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ is here!

Chapter Nine of ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ is here!

All ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ chapters to read are here.

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