Norris gave him a not-very-hopeful look.
Oh, what the hell, it wasn’t as if he had anything else to do.
‘Go on then,’ said Oliver, clicking his fingers and pointing out to the hall. ‘Fetch your lead.’
Norris couldn’t believe his luck. Was he hearing what he thought he’d just heard? This was the one who never took him for a walk. Mesmerised, Norris hesitated, awaiting the magic word that would put him out of his misery.
‘Walk,’ Oliver said at last.
Yay! That was the magic word. Joyfully Norris scrambled out to the hall, locating his lead on the cushioned window seat. It was weird, when he’d first come here he hadn’t enjoyed going for walks at all. Who’d have believed that these days they’d be his absolute favourite thing?
The phone began to ring as Oliver and Norris were leaving the house. Since it couldn’t be anything to do with Tiff – Juliet would have rung his mobile, not the landline – Oliver locked the front door and set off without answering it.
Twenty minutes later, a taxi pulled up the drive. Gulping a bit at the sight of Oliver’s car, Estelle dialled the number again and breathed a sigh of relief when it went unanswered. Oliver was probably still at the hospital, at Tiff’s bedside. With Juliet.
‘I’ll be half an hour,’ she told the taxi driver. ‘There’s a nice pub in Main Street if you want to wait there, then come hack and pick me up at two.’
The look on the taxi driver’s face suggested that if Estelle had an ounce of decency about her, she would invite him into her vast house and make him a nice cup of tea and a sandwich. But for once in her life Estelle didn’t care. She didn’t have the energy to make polite conversation with a complete stranger. This was her home, where she’d lived for the last twenty-seven years, and she needed to be alone in order to say goodbye to it.
Having watched the disgruntled driver execute a three-point turn and head off down the drive, Estelle fitted her key into the front door.
It felt strange to be back, stranger still to be tiptoeing through her own house. Except there was no need to tiptoe, was there? Everyone else was out. She was here to collect the rest of her clothes, hopefully without interruption.
In the kitchen, which smelled heartbreakingly familiar, Estelle located the roll of black bin liners in the cupboard under the sink and took them upstairs. The suitcases, dauntingly, were piled on top of the wardrobe in the unused spare bedroom. Wasting no time, she rifled through her own wardrobe, pulling out anything she was likely to wear again. When she’d finished doing the same with the chest of drawers and dressing table, she stuffed everything willy-nilly into the bin liners. Oh God, that looked terrible, she couldn’t do it. Was there anything more naff than leaving home with your belongings in a bunch of bin bags?
Checking her watch - heavens, five to two already - Estelle told herself not to be such a wimp and braced herself for an assault on the wardrobe in the spare room. This entailed pulling a chair over to the front of the wardrobe, carefully balancing a foot on each of the rolled arms, then reaching up until she was juuuust able to grasp the dusty handle of the large blue suitcase stored on top of it.
It was the most ridiculous place to keep them. Estelle couldn’t imagine whose bright idea it had been in the first place. Now, maintaining her balance on the padded arms of the chair, she had to ease the cobalt-blue case slowly forward then tip it at just the right angle, so that it slid gracefully into her arms rather than crashed unceremoniously down onto her head.
Panting a bit with the effort, Estelle managed this. She was doing fine, absolutely fine, all she had to concentrate on now was— ohhh .. .
Falling backwards, falling backwards .. .
‘ Fuck,’ gasped Estelle, finding herself flat on her back on the floor with the suitcase over her face.
Pushing it off, she clutched the side of her head and felt the sticky warmth of blood where the metal-edged corner of the case had gouged a hole in her scalp. Oh well, at least the damage wouldn’t be visible, it was only in her hair.
At least, it wouldn’t be visible once the bleeding stopped.
Gingerly levering herself into a sitting position, Estelle brushed dust from her shirt and felt her head begin to throb. Actually, it hurt quite a lot. Having righted the chair and returned it to its original position, she was about to lug the case through to the master bedroom when the sound of the front door opening downstairs reached her ears.
Damn, damn. It was too soon for Kate to be back from the Angel, which meant it had to be Oliver.
Far too humiliated to face him, Estelle prayed it was only a flying visit home and that in a matter of minutes he’d be off again. Gazing wildly around, she realised that hiding under the bed wasn’t an option -
the gap between the base and floor was less than six inches, which was completely hopeless with a bottom like hers. Plus she’d drip blood all over the carpet.
Hearing movement downstairs and panicking, Estelle pulled open the door of the wardrobe and plunged in. The door wouldn’t close completely, thanks to the absence of a handle on the inside. But that was OK, she didn’t want to be trapped in total darkness. Breathing heavily, squashed like a sardine between a musty overcoat and one of her own ancient taffeta ballgowns, Estelle listened to the sound of footsteps on the stairs and prayed she wouldn’t sneeze.
Bloody dog, bloody animal, Oliver raged as he squelched up the staircase. How was he supposed to have known that Norris could swim? They’d been walking alongside the River Ash when Norris had suddenly spotted a mallard and taken a flying leap into the water. Oliver had experienced no more than a mild jolt of alarm but the next moment, struggling to free himself from a tangle of underwater reeds, Norris had started yelping and scrabbling in a genuinely help-I’m-drowning kind of way. In a complete panic, Oliver had promptly slithered down the steep river bank into the water. Revolting – and disgustingly cold, compared with his own heated pool – but at least he was only in up to his thighs.
That was until he had waded across to heroically rescue Norris, whereupon the bloody animal, wriggling and splashing, had freed his legs from the weeds and launched himself at Oliver, knocking him off his feet.
Spluttering, gasping and spitting out fronds of weed, Oliver had come up for air just in time to see Norris, sleek as a seal, swimming effortlessly past him with something that looked suspiciously like a smirk on his face.
Trudging back up Gypsy Lane, trailing the contents of the River Ash in his wake, hadn’t been Oliver’s finest hour. Norris, trotting along ahead of him, had begun wagging his stumpy tail as they reached the house and Oliver had lost patience with him. Shooing Norris through the side gate into the back garden, he had let himself in through the front door and made his way upstairs.
With the shower running, Oliver had already stripped off his wet muddy clothes when the doorbell began to ring. Heaving a sigh of annoyance but incapable of not answering the door – what if the bell carried on ringing? – he wrapped himself in a towelling robe and padded downstairs.
‘Yes?’ Oliver brusquely demanded of the man on the doorstep. On the driveway behind him stood a taxi with the engine still running.
Uh ... I’m back.’
‘ What?’
‘OK,’ said the man, clearly discomfited. ‘Could you just tell your wife I’m back?’
Oliver frowned. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I’m here to pick up your wife.’