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

‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ — Chapter Ten

Who locked Moocher’s door?

What now? Simon! She must warn Simon. Liz wasn’t surprised he hadn’t answered their door. He never did. He never answered the phone either. He was too humble to think it would be for him. Or, that’s what she’d always thought. Perhaps she’d always been wrong and he was hiding from a colourful past, too. Even if he was, he was her friend and Liz wanted to warn him.

She dashed into Clive’s front room, but it was empty. Oh, well, so much for him. She raced the length of his house, and bursting out of his already open back door, narrowly missed landing in a load of planted up patio tubs he had there — very pretty they would be later too. She turned the corner of Clive’s house and ran across his neatly edged and shorn lawn, noticing while she did so, Clive himself leaping the garden wall four houses down. Boy, he could certainly move in a hurry and that was with one finger short. Liz vaulted, she liked to think in athletic fashion, his garden wall, scooted around the corner of her house and hurled herself at the dog flap.

She now had concussion she realised, as she found herself on her hands and knees slowly shaking her head side-to-side outside her own back door. Someone had locked the dog flap. Luckily the lock was only a plastic sheet inserted into the dog flap frame, otherwise she would have had a permanently flat head.

That was when real panic set in. Moocher needed to be able to get out at will because of his age and because he was used to being able to get out at will and now he couldn’t. Who the hell would lock his door? And what if whoever-it-was hurt him? Liz could imagine her lovely loving dog being tortured, held down while a claw was detached with a power tool.

She lost her head, what was left of it. She hauled herself from the ground and running full tilt crashed into the French windows. She’d always known they were old and ill fitting and now she was glad of it. They were the type made of many smaller panes of glass so she felt more confident than if they’d been made of single large panes. Sure enough the doors crashed inwards, without any glass breaking at all, and she was in. That took her into the old sitting room, now Tony’s bedroom. She raced straight through. Tony could have been in bed with a netball team and a rugby team together for all she cared at that moment. She didn’t think he was, though. She’d have noticed. She wrenched open his door, dashed into the hall and down to the back door expecting to see Moocher dancing about with crossed legs. No Moocher. He must be having a lie-in.

She pounded up the stairs shrieking her lungs out all the way for her dog. As she stepped onto the last flight of stairs leading to the attic, she was conscious that Simon had come out of his room and stood there looking startled. For someone with no range of expression at all, this completely changed his face. She had no time to ponder on it though. He was wearing a pair of jocks. Just jocks. Nothing else. “Get dressed,” she snarled at him in passing and continued on up the stairs.

When she’d searched under the bed and the desk and the pile of washing waiting to be done and found no Moocher, she raced down the stairs and, without knocking, crashed into Simon’s room. He was crawling round the floor, no doubt looking for socks that weren’t too stiff to wear.

“Where’s Moocher?” she yelled. “Who locked the dog flap?” She took a quick look around Simon’s room and stopped abruptly at the window.

She could see Moocher nosing about in the back garden. He must have been out there all that time. She knew exactly what had happened. Moocher was the real reason her back garden so closely resembled the plains of the Serengeti. He loved to stalk through the long grass pretending he was a great black lion. He would lope through his natural habitat blending in with the trees and the vines and the leaves and, single-pawed, he would cuff all opposition into submission. And then, exhausted from all the lion-like tension he would turn around in three magic circles and be asleep before he hit the ground. The grasses would lazily waltz and dip and wave above his nest.

He had been curled up in well-earned rest all the time. Her passing through the garden must have wakened him.

“Oh, thank God. He’s okay.” She collapsed suddenly on Simon’s bed, the relief so great her bones felt like mush. She thought she was going to cry until she realised that although Moocher was locked out, and not in, it didn’t solve the mystery of who had done the locking. Also, there were still three finger-obsessed perverts on the loose after Simon.

She did wonder for a second whether denial of the whole Hugh and some-person-called-Charity thing was having a very strange effect on her mental processes, but she didn’t think she had imagined the visit next door, nor the locked dog flap.

She didn’t think Simon would have locked the dog flap and, checking her watch, she realised no one else would be in at this time in the morning. Or would they?

“Simon, is anyone else in at the moment?”

“You know, I’ve been looking for you…”

“Simon, is anyone else in the house?”

“I wanted to tell you about…”

“Simon! Is anyone in?”

“No, Melanie’s always out first thing and it’s not first thing anymore. Julie went to Lydia’s. Tony left at the same time. I’ve not heard the screechy bit on the door apart from when you came in a few minutes ago. I wanted to have a word with you…”

“Listen Simon! It wasn’t me that came in the door. It must have been whoever locked the dog flap and it must have been someone who doesn’t know about the screechy bit or they wouldn’t have let it screech.”

“Hang on, are you saying there’s someone in the house with us, someone who locked Moocher outside and who is now keeping quiet somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Trophy collectors.”

“Pardon?”

“I think there’s three men in the house with us at the moment. And I think they’re collecting fingers.”

Simon had succeeded in finding a couple of socks pliable enough to get on his feet and was in the process of lacing up his shoes. He stopped his knotting and stared at her thoughtfully. “You know, I think that accounting doesn’t really suit you.”

“What the hell’s that got to do with fingers on plates?” He came out with the dumbest things at the most inappropriate moments, he really did.

“Oh, nothing. Um, has this got anything to do with the finger that was in the fridge? The one Moocher ate?”

Liz went cold. “You talk about it as though there really was a finger in the fridge, Simon. I thought you didn’t believe me. I thought no one believed me.”

“I believed you. I put it there. That’s what I wanted to have a word with you about, but you shut yourself away in the attic and I know you don’t like people going up there and I haven’t seen you until now.”

“Tell me it wasn’t a real finger, Simon. Tell me it was a fake finger for some crazy joke,” she pleaded.

“No, it was real all right,” he said, his concentration unwaveringly on the complicated knot he was creating in his tie. Simon always wore a tie. Always. Today’s was maroon, the colour of old blood. Maybe the colour of blood from an old finger. Aargh. Chuckler, Shorty and Yummy were in the house and Liz and Simon were talking about old and long-eaten fingers when they needed to be more concerned about ones that were still attached. She’d investigate Simon’s admission about the fridge finger later.

Just now she really didn’t want him to lose a finger. He played the violin. Although she wasn’t sure you needed all your fingers to play the violin. Whatever.

“Simon, there are three men in the house and I think they want your fingers.”

“How did they get in, then?” He had found his glasses and was looking at her closely.

“Through the front door — you heard it.”

“Yes, but, how did they get it open?”

Ooh, that was a good question. And she knew the answer. She went hot all over. If anyone else had done what she’d done she would have thrown them naked into the street. In her hurry to catch Clive she must have pulled the door to, but not hard enough for it to catch. It probably would have looked shut until someone had pushed on it, or hammered on the knocker. She’d left her household wide open to the pernicious, opportunistic advantage of finger-thieves. Jeez, Simon was right — she really had to get out of accounting. Fast. Before all her brain cells went on permanent holiday.

Although, she knew in the deepest recesses of her being that it had nothing to do with accounting, and everything to do with Hugh’s shock announcement. He’d unbalanced her. He’d got himself engaged to someone called Charity who didn’t deserve him. It was obviously her that had made him all critical and horrible. She was changing him already. Her Hugh, her dearest friend — apart from Moocher — was not happy. She wasn’t being bitch in the mangerish about it, but she was certain he was anything but happy and that made her feel really bad. Tears were near.

She gulped and twisted her hands into a pile of socks until she realised they were lacerating her palms. She dropped them like live snakes. “It was me. I left the door open.”

Simon said nothing. That’s the good thing about Simon. He often said nothing. Liz resolved to be like that in future.

“So where are they now? Where were they all the time you were thundering around the house shrieking for Moocher?”

Another good question. It did seem odd that they’d hide through all that if it really was the gruesome threesome. What were they doing? Perhaps it wasn’t them after all. That would be nice.

She was getting a headache. She was yearning for the sight of a purchase ledger. It was all getting to be too much.

“Simon, are you in trouble with the police?”

“No, not unless they’re after me for parking on the pavement again.”

“Are you in trouble with any criminals from a past life that might be looking for you?”

“As far as I’m aware I don’t know any criminals, except Tony, of course.”

He really didn’t seem to have taken to her newest lodger, but that was irrelevant just now. “So, no one’s after you?”

“I don’t think so.” He stopped to adjust his collars as he’d now thrown on his 60s safari-type jacket-thing festooned with epaulettes and pockets. Then he looked up and she saw the blood leave his face. “Unless…”

Liz was fascinated. She’d never known Simon’s expressions show so much emotion all in one day. He’d obviously had a truly horrifying thought. She sat up straight and awaited yet more startling revelations. Life was getting so interesting these days.

She wished it wouldn’t.

He said, “Unless, it’s Stella.”

“Oh. Stella. Do you think your ex-wife would send three gorillas after you to collect a finger — does that make a pound of flesh?” Liz found that excruciatingly funny and nearly wet herself laughing. Simon looked hurt. She fought hard to bring herself under control, recognising that her sanity since Hugh’s pronouncement, hung on a knife edge. “Nah, I don’t think so, Simon. Can’t be Stella, surely.”

“Who do you think threw that brick through the window with the finger attached to it? It was a warning, Liz. I’m sure of it. She’s after me. She’ll never let me rest.” The despair in his voice was painful to hear.

Just as Liz grappled with the surprise link between bricks and fingers, with no warning at all, Simon’s door was flung open so hard it hit the chest of drawers behind it, toppling a rather ghastly bust of someone Liz always thought belonged in a Hammer movie, but was actually Beethoven. The door bounced back and slammed shut leaving three satisfied looking heavies on the inside of it. In with them.

At least they knew where they were now.

Simon and Liz both believed in mind over matter and working things out logically and in doing so the heavies who didn’t appear to hold the same philosophy, had plenty of time to track them down and corner them in Simon’s room. They advanced into the room, picked Simon up and stood there holding him, his feet dangling just above the floor.

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

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

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

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