A Suitable Vengeance

“Please.” With a small cry, she brushed past him, hurrying out of the school yard and into the street. She heard Dr. Trenarrow call her name once, but she kept going.

Rubbing arms that were sore from heaving pint glasses and working the taps all night, she scurried down Paul Lane towards the mouth of Ivy Street which led into the twisting collection of alleys and passageways that comprised the heart of the village. These were narrow inclines, cobbled and tortuous little streets too cramped for cars. During the day, summer holiday makers came here to photograph the picturesque old buildings with their colourful front gardens and crooked slate roofs. At night, however, the entire area was illuminated only by oblongs of light from cottage windows. Darkly shadowed and inhabited by generations of cats who bred in the hillside above the village and fed by night in rubbish bins, it was not a place for lingering.

Gull Cottage was some distance into the maze of streets. It sat on the corner of Virgin Place, looking like a whitewashed matchbox, with bright blue trim on its windows and a lavishly blooming fuchsia growing next to its front door. Blood-red flowers blown from this plant covered the ground nearby.

As Nancy approached the cottage, her steps faltered. She could hear the noise from three houses away. Molly was crying, screaming, in fact.

She looked at her watch. It was nearly midnight. Molly should have been fed, should have been fast asleep by now. Why on earth was Mick not seeing to the child?

Exasperated that her husband could be so selfishly deaf to his own daughter’s cries, Nancy ran the remaining distance to the cottage, threw open the garden gate, and hurried to the door.

“Mick!” she called. Above her, in the only bedroom, she could hear Molly’s screaming. She felt an edge of panic, picturing the baby’s face, red with rage, feeling her small body tense with fright. She shoved open the door.

“Molly!”

Inside, she ran for the stairs, took them two at a time. It was insufferably hot.

“Molly-girl! Pet!” She flew to the baby’s cot and picked her daughter up to find that she was wet to the skin, reeking of urine. Her body was feverish. Tendrils of auburn hair curled limply on her skull. “Love, lovely girl. What’s happened to you?” she murmured as she sponged her off and changed her and then cried out, “Michael! Mick!”

With Molly against her shoulder, Nancy went back down the stairs, her feet striking the bare wood noisily as she headed for the kitchen at the rear of the cottage. Feeding the baby was foremost on her mind. Still, she allowed herself to give vent to a small eruption of anger.

“I want to speak with you,” she snapped at the closed sitting room door. “Michael! D’you hear? I want a word. Now!”

As she spoke, she saw that the door was neither latched nor locked. She pushed it open with her foot.

“Michael, you can damn well answer me when—”

She felt the hairs bristling along the length of her arms. He was lying on the floor. Or someone was lying there, for she could just see a leg. Only one. Not two. Which was curious unless he was sleeping with one leg drawn up and the other splayed out in complete abandon. Except, how could he be asleep? It was hot. So hot. And the noise which Molly had been making…

“Mick, are you playing some pawky joke on me?”

There was no reply. Molly’s crying had faded to an exhausted whimper, so Nancy took a step into the room.

“That’s you, isn’t it, Mick?”

Nothing. But, she could see it was Mick. She recognised his shoe, a frivolous high-topped red plimsole with a strip of metallic silver round the ankle. It was a new purchase of his, something that he didn’t need. It costs too much money, she’d say to him. It bleeds off the chequebook. It takes away from the baby…Yes, it was Mick on the floor. And she knew what he was up to at the moment, pretending to be asleep so that she couldn’t rant at him for ignoring the baby.

Still, it didn’t seem like him not to hop to his feet, laughing at his ability to frighten her with another one of his practical jokes. And she was frightened. Because something wasn’t right. Papers blanketed the floor, far more than represented Mick’s usual mess. The desk drawers were open. The curtains were drawn. A cat yowled outside, but in the cottage, there was no sound, and the heavy, hot air was foul with the smell of faeces and sweat.

“Mickey?”

Her hands, her armpits, the back of her knees, the inside of her elbows. She was sticky and wet. Molly stirred in her arms. Nancy forced herself forward. An inch. Then another. Then an entire foot. Six inches after that. And then she saw why her husband had not heard Molly’s cries.

Although he lay motionless on the floor, he was not pretending to be asleep at all. His eyes were open. But they were glazed and fixed and as Nancy watched, a fly walked across the surface of one blue iris.