The policeman eventually tried to invite himself into the house, saying it might be easier to speak inside. Mum said no, it wouldn’t be, not for her. I couldn’t see her—I was on the upstairs landing by now, hovering at the window above the front door—but I could see the policeman standing on the pavement, shifting from foot to foot, looking as if he wasn’t enjoying himself, or perhaps he needed to go to the toilet. He was young, with a long, oblong head that reminded me of the brush from the dustpan-and-brush set in our utility room cupboard—rectangular and bristly. He had a way of speaking that made it sound as if he was leaning heavily on each word.
Then I heard him say horrible things that I knew were lies, one after another. Quickly, I ran through a truncated version of the meditation I learned with Mum in Abbots Langley, hoping it would have an instant calming effect:
Praise Ricky, Thank Ricky, Ricky loves me.
Praise Ricky, Thank Ricky, Ricky loves me.
I knew that wasn’t how inner-peace meditation ought to be done, but what about when an unforeseeable emergency happens and you need instant tranquility or else your heart will explode? That was how I felt. If you have to be calm first in order for a calming mantra to work, that’s a problem.
It didn’t work. And then Champ started to bark and I thought I might be sick, except there was nothing in me to throw up. He’s normally quiet when people come to the house—usually the only thing that sets him off is when he hears dogs barking on television—but he could sense Mum was terrified, so he got scared too. I didn’t blame him. What made it extra chilling was that Mum’s never frightened or sad. She’s always cheerful. Only a week or so beforethe Day of the Policeman, I heard her tell Champ that, after listening to the latest episode of one of her two favorite podcasts, she’d finally realized her purpose in life at the age of fifty-three. “Shall I tell you what it is, Champy?” she said. “It’s Enjollification, with a capital E. Do you know what that means? You don’t, do you? No, you don’t. You’re a gorgeous boy, aren’t you? Yes, you are!”
While she hugged him and stroked the fuzzy hair under his chin, I worked out whatEnjollificationhad to mean and felt pleased with myself when Mum confirmed it: “It means making people feel as jolly as possible, including me. I invented the word today, but it’s always been my purpose, and do you know what, Champy? It’s so useful and…enlightening to know that about myself.” By the time she’d finished explaining, I’d downgraded my achievement in guessing correctly—the meaning would have been obvious to anyone, probably—though not to our policeman visitor, who didn’t sound clever or perceptive. He sounded like a “This is just the way it has to be” person. (Anyone intelligent knows that nothing is ever just the way anything has to be.)
Mum had decided, understandably, that the policeman didn’t deserve to be Enjollified. I glared down at the top of his head, beaming all my viciousness at the points I decided were his most vulnerable: those tiny pink patches between the light-brown bristles that sprouted from his skull. I remember hoping I’d carry on feeling as savagely vengeful as I felt at that moment. Believe me, it’s a less horrible emotion to grapple with than pure terror. The current of vindictiveness running through me was proof that I had power, even though I could have done so much more in the moment. I could have sent the policeman running from our home, screaming,never to return, but I was neither quick-thinking nor brave enough on 17 June.
Anyway, then he said it, as I’d known he would from the second I’d started to concentrate on what was going on. He said the dreaded name—Gavey—and the inevitability of it felt like a double layer of something stifling wrapping around me, inescapable, as indoors as it was outdoors, as stitched into the earth of every flower bed and plant pot in Swaffham Tilney as it was blown into every cloud in the sky and dissolving into every drop of the water in the lode, the waterway by the path where Mum and Dad walk Champ—and spreading from there to all the other lodes in the surrounding fenland. As I eavesdropped from the landing, trying to take in every word the policeman was saying, trying not to panic, I felt that sticky inevitability coating the walls and carpet and ceiling around me as well as every inch of what Dad likes to call “our special little corner of ancient England.”
The Gaveys.
Of course this disruption to an until-now-happy day in the life of the Lambert family turned out to have the Gaveys behind it.
2
Monday 17 June 2024
Sally
Once the policeman has said what he came to say and is ready to leave her alone, at least for the time being, Sally Lambert begins to close her front door. She does it as gradually and quietly as she can, wanting to be able to watch through the gap as he walks away. She has to check he’s really going, can’t wait for her outside not to have him in it anymore. She stares after him—Connor something; she’s already forgotten his surname—as he walks to his car, gets in it, and drives to the corner, past the Barn and the Farmhouse.
Now he’s slowing to a stop; now he’s indicating a turn. Sally waits, still looking, until his silver Audi turns onto the main road, which isn’t anyone sensible’s idea of a main road but is called that by all the residents of Bussow Court, apart from Sally. She used to say it too but stopped after Vinie Skinner told her Deryn and Jimmy Dickinson, owners of the Granary and the first to move into Bussow Court, had created and launched the nickname deliberately in order to produce a feeling of inferiority in those Swaffham Tilneyresidents who lived on that road rather than off it. Sally believes this story is highly likely to be true. Vinie has it in for Deryn Dickinson for sure, but it wouldn’t have occurred to her to make that up.
Finally, the policeman is gone. Sally pulls her front door wide open, then slams it shut as hard as she can. She falls to the floor with a loud wail, forgetting, in her distress, that Champ, her Welsh terrier, might be alarmed, and so might her daughter, Rhiannon, who is upstairs and must have heard. Actually, Ree is more likely to be embarrassed than worried; she’s seventeen and finding much of what Sally does embarrassing these days—which means Sally ought to stop making strange, howling noises, but she can’t. For the first time in her adult life, she can’t control what her body is doing (slouching in a heap by the front door, her back hunched against it) or the sounds she’s making.
It’s only when Champ starts to lick her face that she realizes she’s crying. Shuddering, too, as if she’s just climbed out of icy water and has nothing warm to wrap herself in. Champ clambers into her lap in order to be able to lick more effectively.
Sally puts her arms round him and buries her face in his wiry coat, which feels soft sometimes and hard sometimes. Today it feels soft. “It’ll be okay, Champy,” she tries to say but only gets half of it out.Shall we sing your day song?she thinks of saying next but doesn’t even manage one word of that. His day song would be impossible anyway, she realizes, because of the last line. She has sung it hundreds of times without understanding that it’s a sad, desperate song, not a celebratory one. Now, whatever happens next, she’ll never be able to sing it again.
Wait—she knows what she’ll do; she’ll turn Champ’s othersong, his night song, into a day and night song. One song is more than enough for a three-year-old Welshie, so why does Sally feel so sorry for him? That’s easy—because of the policeman, the lies, the danger—and it’s also not the right question. Why is Sally feeling sorry for herself, when she should be thinking only of Champ? Why is she thinking about a milky-pink-colored bottle of gardenia body lotion that she had when she was thirteen? She’s fine now, she’s a grown-up, she’s so over that stupid incident. It wasn’t even anything in the first place, and she hasn’t thought about it for forty years.
At least it makes sense that Furbert, her first beloved Welsh terrier, should come into her mind now, but she doesn’t need to feel sorry for him, not anymore. He is safe, content, and well looked after in Dog Heaven, from which exalted vantage point he can clearly see that Sally’s love for him is just as much a part of her daily life as it was while he was alive. You don’t stop loving someone once they’re gone.
And you don’t start either, thinks Sally, and suddenly she can smell that gardenia lotion and is wailing louder than when she started, though Champ’s fuzzy hair is muffling it, thank God. Ree must have her headphones on, or else there’s no way she wouldn’t have heard.
Or else she can hear everything and doesn’t care.Likely.
No, that’s not fair, Sally corrects herself. She wouldn’t have thought something so disloyal if her sister and the Facebook business hadn’t come up in conversation yesterday and Ree hadn’t taken the opportunity to mention that she’d always been able to see it from Auntie Vicky’s point of view as well as Sally’s.
Champ shakes his head vigorously, so Sally has to move hers. He looks at her searchingly, as if to say, “What’s going on? Why are you thinking about all these bad things from the past and imagining everyone’s against you? Remember, I’m here! I’m on your side, all the way and all the time.”
Yes. Right. Good point. Champ adores Sally. He sleeps draped across her legs or curled up next to her head every night, much to the disgruntlement of her husband, Mark. And Champ needs Sally’s help; he’s the only person she ought to be thinking about right now. Champ’s personhood—and before it, Furbert’s—is, has been, endlessly debated in the Lambert household. Sally acknowledges that, from a strictly factual point of view, Champ is a dog and not a human, but she allows herself to include him in the category of “people” when she says things like “Champ’s the only person who hasn’t eaten yet,” because it would make no sense to say “Champ’s the only dog…” when the rest of the Lamberts (those present in bodily form in Swaffham Tilney, at least; those who need to eat because they’re not permanently nourished souls in a canine paradise) aren’t dogs.
It’s good that Ree hasn’t come downstairs, thinks Sally. It means she hasn’t been caught in her unraveling. She might still get away with it. She has time to get herself together, though not much. Mark’s gone to pick Tobes up from school after his exam and they could be back any second, but if she locks the front door and doesn’t open it until her face looks normal again, and if Ree keeps those headphones on, then maybe no one needs to find out that Sally collapsed in a heap and began to disintegrate. Champ won’t tell anyone. (Obviously she doesn’t mind him knowing; he’d never mock her for it or use it against her.)
She’ll have to tell Mark, Ree, and Tobes about the policeman, but that’s okay. The only part she needs them not to know, because she wants to forget it quickly herself, is that Sally Lambert is capable of falling apart.
3
Champ’s day song. Champ’s night song. Auntie Vicky and the Facebook business.
