Eva asked, ‘Why?’
‘You don’t know?’ the girl said. ‘I’m Poppy. I’m Brianne and Brian Junior’s best friend.’
Eva could hear Brian Junior and Brianne grunting as they staggered up the stairs with Poppy’s luggage, and was startled when Poppy shouted, ‘I hope that’s not my luggage you’re throwing about. There are precious objets d’art in those cases.’ She got up from Eva’s bed and went into the bathroom, where she left the door ajar.
A few seconds later, Eva heard Poppy’s one-sided conversation.
‘Hello, Peaches Ward, please.’
Silence.
‘Hello, is that Sister Cooke?’
Silence.
‘I’m very well. I’m staying with friends in the country.’
Silence.
‘How are Mum and Dad?’
Silence.
‘Oh no! Should I come up?’
Silence.
‘Are you sure? I could easily -’
Silence.
‘How long do you think they’ve got? Tell me, I need to know!’
Silence.
‘No! No! Not six weeks! I wanted them to be there when I graduated.’
Silence.
‘It breaks my heart when I think that this will be their last Christmas! [Pause] Thank you, Sister, but I only do what any loving daughter would do for her dying parents.’
Silence.
‘Yes, I wish I had the money to visit them over the Christmas holiday, but I am penniless, Sister. I’ve spent my money on rail fares and, er… grapes.’
Silence.
‘No, I am an only child and I have no living relations. My family were wiped out in the last Chicken Flu epidemic. But, hey ho.’
Silence.
‘No, I’m not brave. If I were [sob] brave [sob], I wouldn’t be crying now.’
Eva slid down the pillows and pretended to be asleep. She heard Poppy come back into the bedroom, give a tut of annoyance and stomp out in her workman’s boots, which she wore without laces. The boots clumped down the stairs, out of the front door and into the street.
Brian, Brianne and Brian Junior were on the landing, discussing whose room they should take Poppy’s luggage to.
Brian Junior sounded uncharacteristically vehement. ‘Not mine, please, not mine.’
Brianne said, ‘You invited her, Dad. She ought to sleep in your room.
Brian said, ‘Things are bad between me and Mum. I’m sleeping in the shed, at Mum’s request.’
Brianne said, ‘Oh God! Are you getting a divorce?’
Brian Junior asked, at exactly the same time, ‘So, will we be buying two Christmas trees this year. Dad? One for us in the house, and one for you in the shed?’
Brian said, ‘Why are you wittering on about divorce and bloody Christmas trees? My heart is breaking as we speak here. But never mind about silly old Dad! Why should he enjoy the warmth and light of the house he’s still bloody paying for?’
He would have liked his children to give him a comforting hug. He remembered watching The Waltons on television, when he was young. His mother would be making up her face, preparing to go out with whoever was the latest ‘uncle’. Brian remembered the smell of her powder and how deft she was with the little brushes. The last scene, when the whole family said goodnight to each other, had always brought a lump to his throat.
But instead, Brianne said angrily, ‘So, where do we put the mad cow’s luggage?’
Brian said, ‘She’s your best pal, Brianne. I naturally assumed that she would sleep in your room.
‘My best pal! I’d sooner have an incontinent tramp with mental health issues as my “best pal” than that…’
Brianne could not properly articulate her loathing. She had come home to find her mother permanently in bed, in a stark-white box, obviously mad, and now her father expected her to share a room with that bloodsucking vampire, Poppy, who had ruined her first term at university.
The luggage was still on the landing when Poppy rang Brian to say that ‘an old man with a horribly scarred face’ had followed her from the newsagent’s where she’d been buying her Rizlas. She had called the police and was hiding from him in a park nearby.
Brian said into his mobile, ‘That’s almost certainly.
Stanley Crossley, he’s a lovely man, he lives at the end of our road.’
Brianne snatched the phone from her father. ‘His face is scarred because he was almost burned alive in a Spitfire. Or have you never heard of the Second World War? Phone the police now and tell them you’ve made a mistake!’
But it was too late. They could hear the sirens wailing outside. Poppy disconnected the call.
Eva punched the pillows in her rage and frustration. Her peace had been shattered. She didn’t want to hear raised voices outside her bedroom door, or sirens in the street. And she didn’t want that mad girl to spend another five minutes in her house. The Stanley Crossley she knew was a reserved and polite man who never failed to lift his hat when he and Eva passed in the street.
Once, only last spring, he had joined her on the wooden bench he had bought as a memorial to his wife, Peggy. They had exchanged banal observations about the weather. Then, out of nowhere, he had talked about Sir Archie McIndoe, the surgeon who had reconstructed his face, giving him eyelids, a nose and ears.
‘I was a boy,’ he had said. ‘Eighteen. I had been handsome. There were no mirrors in the Nissen huts where the other boys and I lived.’
Eva had thought that he might continue, but he had got up from the bench, tipped his hat and made his ungainly way to the local shops.
Now Eva lay back on the pillows. She could hear Brian Junior and Brianne bickering in the next room.
She had meant to visit Stanley, who only lived a hundred or so yards away. She had intended to invite him for tea. She imagined a white tablecloth, a cake stand, and cucumber sandwiches arranged in triangles on a china platter. But to her shame, despite passing his front door at least twice a day, she had issued no such invitation.
Eva was furious with Brian. Bringing Poppy into an already tense household was like introducing nitro-glycerine into a bouncy castle. She said, ‘Brian, go and find that malicious little cow. She is your responsibility.’
A couple of minutes later, she watched Brian hurrying in his carpet slippers towards the end of the road, where police cars, motorcycles and a dog van were trying to park.
Brian approached a thickset policewoman. He wondered who or what had given her such a very badly broken nose.
He said, ‘I think I can clear up this stalking nonsense.’
Are you the gentleman we are looking for, sir?’ asked Sergeant Judith Cox.
‘Certainly not! I am Dr Brian Beaver. ‘Are you here in a medical capacity, Dr Beaver?’
‘No, I am an astronomer.’
‘So, you are you not a medical doctor, sir?’
‘I believe a medical doctor trains for only seven years, whereas we professional astronomers are still in training until the day we die. New stars and new theories are born every day, Sergeant -’
‘Beaver, sir? As in “agile little dam-builder”?’
Before Brian could speak again, she added, ‘There is one question I’d like you to answer, Dr Beaver.’
Brian put on his professional, listening face.
‘I’m Aries. I’ve just been asked out by a constable of my acquaintance. My question is, he’s Sagittarius, are we compatible?’
Brian retorted angrily, ‘I said astronomer. Are you trying to provoke me, Sergeant?’
She laughed. ‘Only joking, sir! I don’t like being called a pig by the public either.’
Brian failed to see the comparison, but he went on, ‘I can personally vouch for the character of Stanley Crossley. He is a scholar and a gentleman, and I only wish that England had more like him.’
Sergeant Cox said, ‘That may be true, sir, but I believe Peter Sutcliffe’s exquisite manners are legendary in Broadmoor.’ She listened to the crackling of her lapel radio, said, ‘No, mine’s the beef chow mein with the oyster sauce,’ into it, raised her hand to Brian and went into the park to interview Poppy, the stalkee.