Cher sits up, unfurls her leg and rubs her upper arm. ‘Ow.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know. I – there was something on the top step. I trod on it and it went right out from under me.’
Vesta reaches her and sits down beside her. ‘What on earth…? I didn’t leave anything on the stairs.’
Cher groans and gingerly tries her legs. Emits an inward hiss of breath as her right foot hits the carpet. I don’t want to wish anyone ill, thinks Vesta, but thank God it was her, not me. That would have been a broken hip and an ambulance, if it were me.
‘Are you okay? Anything broken?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I’ve fucked my ankle, but I don’t think it’s anything worse than that.’
‘Language, Cher,’ Vesta corrects automatically. She pulls herself up by the banister and follows the girl as she hops down to the hall.
Cher leans against the wall and switches on the light with her shoulder blade. Rubs at the carpet burn on her thigh. ‘So what the hell was it?’
Vesta looks up the oatmeal stair carpet. On the top step, there’s a nasty, wet-looking stain; black and brackish. ‘I don’t…’ Her eyes trace back down the stairs, look down at the floor beneath their feet. ‘Oh, God!’
There’s a rat resting up against her shoe. A rat the size of a Pomeranian, yellow incisors hanging from its open mouth, dark fur matted and oily, bald pink tail winding round and knotting itself in the pink viscera that hang from a bulging, flattened torso.
Cher follows her gaze, stiffens against the wall, pushing back against it as though she hopes it will open up and let her through. ‘Oh. Oh, God, oh no, oh…’
‘Well, I’ll be blowed. Where on earth did that come from?’ Vesta is simultaneously fascinated and repelled. The rat smells like her drains; old and foetid and long, long dead. Its eyes are milky-white. As she watches, a bluebottle crawls from the half-open mouth and bumbles away up the corridor towards the kitchen. ‘It looks like it’s been dead a while. It can’t have been lying there all this time. I would have noticed.’
‘I don’t care,’ moans Cher. ‘It stinks. It’s that bloody cat. He’s fetched it in. I knew I shouldn’t have adopted him.’
‘Psycho? No, it can’t be Psycho. That’s carrion, that is. He’s not a hyena. I don’t understand. How did it come to be here?’
Absently, Cher lifts up her sprained foot and looks at its underside. Claps a hand over her mouth and stares at Vesta, wide-eyed. Her sole is coated with blood and slime. The contents of the creature’s guts have smeared themselves up her leg as she fell, green and black and…
When she moves her hand, her words come out in a rush, strangled and small. ‘Oh, God, I’m gonna be sick.’
Vesta feels the skin on her neck crawl. ‘No! Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare! Come on. Let’s get you to the bathroom.’
She grabs the girl by the arm and manhandles her up the passageway. Cher is gagging as she hops and her cheeks are filling. ‘Don’t you dare, Cher. Don’t you dare! If you throw up on my carpet, so help me, I’ll… I’ll…’
As they pass through the kitchen, she notices, to her surprise, that the outside door is open. She’s sure she remembers putting the bolt on before she went to the shops, but right now all she can think of is the hurricane that’s about to hit. She drags Cher into the bathroom, her own hand clamped over the one the girl has over her mouth, throws her down like a sack of potatoes over the toilet and feels a cold sweat of nausea break out on her own forehead as Cher’s lunch – a hamburger and fries by the look and smell – explodes into the pan. Oh, God, she thinks, there’s a rotten sewer rat squashed flat into my carpet. It looked like it had been run over by a truck and it’s in my carpet. I’m going to have to scrape it up.
Cher makes a noise like a wildebeest trapped in a crocodile swamp as Vesta rushes to the sink and adds the fug of cheesy croissant and milky coffee to the odours in the air. Heaves again at the sight of the solids caught in the drain cover. Runs the taps and splashes her face, then collapses on the floor, leaning against the bath.
‘Oh, God,’ Cher mutters. She wipes her face with a forearm, flushes the chain and crawls back to join Vesta. ‘Fuck,’ she says.
‘Yes,’ says her friend, and lets the word that would have had her beaten within an inch of her life when she was Cher’s age slide pleasurably from her tongue. ‘Fuck.’
‘It’s all over my leg,’ says Cher.
‘I know. We’ll wash it off with the shower hose.’
‘That rat was rank.’
‘That’s what I love about you,’ says Vesta, ‘you’re so observant.’ And they begin to laugh.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Carry your bag, miss?’
She swims out of her fugue and sees Hossein standing in front of her. She’s not seen him coming, not noticed anything, really, about the street around her. For all she knows, she’s passed Tony, pulling faces, and is none the wiser. Visiting Janine wears her out. When she comes home after her daily hour, she’s so drained that even the walk home from the station is enough to make her long for a nap.
She blinks and forces a smile on to her face. ‘No, don’t worry, it’s not heavy. I’m fine, thanks.’
Hossein tuts. ‘You Englishwomen are so independent it hurts. Come on. Letting me carry a bag for you doesn’t mean I’ll take away your right to vote.’
He holds out a hand and smiles, and suddenly she’s relieved to hand the weight over. She finally stopped into Asda on the way to Sunnyvale and bought some bedclothes, and she’s surprised how heavy they seem. The bag is a big woman’s shopper in pink leatherette, but he swings it unselfconsciously over his shoulder and grins as he sets off towards Beulah Grove. She falls into step beside him.
‘So how are you getting along?’ he asks. ‘You’ve been to visit your mother?’
She nods.
‘And how is she?’
Collette sighs. ‘Fairly much the same.’
‘Does she remember you yet?’
‘No. Most of the time, she doesn’t even remember I came yesterday. She doesn’t mind the chocolates, though. She eats a box a day, but she never seems to put on any weight.’
‘It’s hard,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ she says, and they carry on in silence to the High Street. I need to find a change of subject, she thinks. We can’t just walk all the way home without saying anything. It’s embarrassing.
As they turn the corner, she says: ‘So you’re Iranian, then?’
‘Yep,’ says Hossein.
‘That’s Persia, right?’
‘Sort of.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘Lovely,’ he says. ‘It’s a lovely country. It’s not Syria, you know.’
‘So why did you leave?’
‘Because it’s ruled by arseholes,’ he says, ‘and I kept saying it out loud.’
‘You’re a politician?’ She’s surprised by the distaste she hears in her own voice. She’s never met a politician before. Hadn’t ever thought she would want to.
‘I taught economics. And I did some journalism, wrote a blog. These things don’t go so well with the powers that be when your students start joining in.’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. Did you… were you…?’
‘It’s what happens,’ says Hossein. ‘I wasn’t exactly the only one. Anyway, I’m here now. And soon -’ he hams up his accent and curls his spare arm so that a lean, hard muscle pops ‘- I weel be beeg, beeg Englishman, inshallah. So it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?’
Collette looks around her as if she’s seeing it for the first time. The heat has been heavy for the past few days, but a breeze, she notices, has got up and the air is surprisingly pleasant. ‘Yeah, it is, isn’t it?’
They reach the corner of Bracken Gardens and turn down it. ‘It’s swimming pool weather,’ says Hossein. ‘Have you ever been to the Serpentine?’