Immortal Peril

 

Chapter one

 

It’s too hot.  I roll over irritably, my sheet tangling around my feet.  My pillow feels slightly damp from my sweat – that’s plain nasty – so I sit up and flick the lamp on.  Reaching for my glasses, I peer blearily at my radio alarm clock; it’s three twenty-five a.m.  In three hours, I have to get up for work, my first day back after the summer break.  I do not need a restless night.

 

Sighing, I wrap the sheet around myself, wander across the landing to the kitchen and put the kettle on.  There’s no point trying to force sleep in this heat, so, once I have my cup of tea, I head through my living room and out onto the balcony.  At least the air will be cooler.

 

Tea in hand, I settle myself onto the plastic recliner and gaze out across the harbour.  There is no moon and the water is inky black; I can’t see it, but I can hear it gently lapping at the shingly shoreline.  Across the black void, the lights of the Sandbanks peninsula twinkle invitingly, a double line of streetlights and their reflection on the obsidian water.  Even in the dark, the view from my apartment is spectacular.

 

Although it is already September, the nights are still balmy, and I’m grateful for the breeze coming off the water.  Once I have drunk my tea, I snuggle into my sheet and close my eyes, hoping at least to doze now I’ve cooled off a bit.

 

I start suddenly, abruptly woken.  Something disturbed me – a noise?  For a moment, all I can hear is my own heart hammering and I think I must have imagined it.  Before I settle back down though, there it is again – a bump and a scrape, coming from the apartment next door.  No one has lived there since old Mrs Parker passed away six months ago.  Her sons both live in New Zealand now, and nobody has been in there apart from her solicitor, sent to do whatever it is they do while her estate is under probate.

 

Someone is in there now, I’m sure of it.  It’s still dark, I can’t have been asleep long – are there burglars next door?  I really should phone the police.  Reaching down beside me, my fingers find my mug, my glasses, but no mobile – it’s still in my bedroom.  I fumble my glasses onto my face and get up as quietly as I can, tiptoeing towards the edge of my balcony.  There is barely a two foot gap between my railing and next door’s – our apartments are small and packed tightly together.

 

Leaning across the gap, I try to peer round and through the French window next door.   A face appears in the apartment before me, and our eyes meet; a boy, deathly pale, dark eyes, blond hair, teeth bared!  I nearly topple over in shock, but manage to grab the opposite railing and right myself.  When I look up again, the apparition is gone.  The neighbouring apartment is dark and quiet.

 

Did I just imagine that?  With shaking hands, I lean forward for another look.  And sure enough, there is a face – my own, reflected in the glass.  Disgusted at myself and my overactive imagination, I scoop up my mug and pad back indoors to bed.

 

~*~*~

 

Work doesn’t give me time to ponder last night’s events.  It’s the start of the new term, and there’s a lot for a teaching assistant to do at the best of times, but today, and for the rest of the week, I’ve been asked to fill in for a colleague in another class.  She was bereaved over the holiday and has had her leave extended until next Monday.  She supports a boy with complex behavioural needs, and he is going into a class with a newly qualified teacher, so she has to be covered.  As my teacher is very experienced, it’s been decided that she can manage without me in the meantime, so I’ve drawn the short straw.

 

The new teacher is young, hardly older than my own boy, surely, and he seems very nervous.  However, he’s six foot two, and his class of six year olds stare up at him open-mouthed and hang on to his every word, like he’s Kindergarten Cop or something.  Our school is situated away from the harbour and the tourist areas in the middle of a large estate with a lot of social housing.  More than half of our kids have no dad living at home, so a male teacher is a real novelty for them.

 

Actually, he’s a real novelty for the mums, too.  There was a lot of staring and whispering from them as they handed their kids over first thing, and a couple of the bolder ones have already asked me to find out whether he’s single.  The old teacher, Ms Stanley (that’s Mzz, not Miss or Missus), whose departure was much lamented at the end of July, seems completely forgotten now this new Adonis has appeared.

 

Of course, the little lad I’m supporting doesn’t “do” change, like new teachers, and by mid-morning he’s disappeared under the units at the back of the classroom, between two cupboards.  Knowing there’s not much else I can do until he’s calmed himself down, I simply stand in front of his hidey-hole, deliberately offering a human shield between him and the other children.  They’re all used to him and carry on regardless, but the poor teacher, being new to the profession and having read all the books on behaviour management, feels the need to assert his authority. 

 

Most unfortunately, he’s read the one that tells you to get down on the child’s level. 

 

As he kneels, I try to tell him, “Don’t do that, this one’s a -” but I’m too slow.  There is a sound like drains unblocking then a phlegmmy splat, and Sir shuffles back hurriedly, swiping at his face in disgust.

 

“- Spitter,” I finish, lamely.

 

Mr Butler hurries to the sink in the corner to clean himself up, while his pupils giggle.

 

“Sir got spitted on,” titters one.  Being based upstairs in Key Stage Two, I don’t know all the littluns’ names yet – she’s one of the boozy names- Chardonnay or Champagne or something.  Sherry.  That’s the one.

 

“George owned him,” agrees Miley, and Tyson nods.  Meanwhile, having made his point, George squeezes out past my legs and joins his friends on the carpet, sitting there like butter wouldn’t melt.

 

Our children’s names fall into distinct categories here. We have all the “regular” names – the Megans and Katies and Taylors and Kierans, and then we have our specialists; the boozy names, like Chardonnay, Sherry, Tia, Bailey; the pop star names like Kylie, Britney and more recently, Miley and Rhianna; “other celebrities” like soap stars, boxers, footballers, etc, and finally the “way out there” names like Beau, Storm and Princess.

 

You’d think our George was one of the regular names until you meet his older twin brothers, John and Paul, and their little Staffy terrier, Ringo.  Baby number four is due soon, a girl, and I’m terrified they’re going to lumber her with Yoko.

 

Actually, I shouldn’t sneer.  My own boy, nineteen now, is named after a character in a book I liked as a kid; Jem, from To Kill a Mockingbird.  It says Jeremy on his birth certificate, but that’s just a compromise, in case he grew up to be a barrister or a brain surgeon and needed a sensible name for more gravitas.  Not much chance of that, though.  He’s recently told me he won’t be going to uni, and has cheerfully taken up a job in MacDonald’s.  He was supposed to tell his father at the weekend, what I wouldn’t give to have been a fly on the wall…

 

Playtime arrives not a moment too soon for poor Mr Butler, and while he frantically tries to reassemble his classroom, I seek the relative safety of the upper school playground, in my customary spot just out of range of the basketball hoops.

 

While I watch the games, with a weather eye out for trouble, George’s twin brothers come over to me.  Paul is in my new class (not that I’ve been there yet) and John is next door.  At the moment I can’t tell them apart, but as the weeks progress I’ll learn their subtle differences.

 

“’Allo, Miss,” says Paul, or is it John?

 

“Is George being good?” asks John, or is it Paul?

 

“He’ll be a bit uppity at the moment,” twin one tells me.

 

“How come?” I manage to interject, although a contribution from me doesn’t seem necessary.

 

“He’s round Nan’s house.”

 

“Mum’s in hospital.”

 

“Dad can’t cope with George on his own.”

 

“Hold up – why’s Mum in hospital?” I frown.  “I thought she wasn’t due for a few weeks yet?”

 

“She’s got pre- pre- ” twin one attempts.

 

“Free clams!” the other helps him.

 

“Pre-eclampsia?” I offer.

 

“That’s the one!”

 

“She’s going to have the baby early.”

 

“Guess what we’re calling her?”

 

Not Yoko, not Yoko, not Yoko, I pray silently to the God of Babies’ Names.

 

“Stella!” they cry together, not waiting for my guess.

 

“Ooh, that’s a nice name!  Like Stella McCartney?”

 

“No, Miss.”

 

“’Oo’s she?”

 

“Like Stella Artois, Miss.”

 

“Don’t you know nuffin?”

 

At that moment, a stray basketball bounces past, and the twins chase after it to join in the game, sparing me the need to come up with an intelligent response.

 

After play, I head into the staffroom for my much needed coffee break.  The other teaching assistants are there, too, and there’s a lively hubbub of colleagues catching up on news and gossip.  I’m politely asked about my holiday, and I manage to utter a couple of words about a weekend in Cornwall before Pin-money Pam cuts across with her three weeks in the Maldives, which naturally trumps any holiday the rest of us had.

 

None of us use her nick-name to her face, only a few of us even remember it.  A few years back, after a ‘reorganisation’ of the local authority, we went through a cut-back of auxiliary staff.  They had to make two of us redundant.  It was a horrible time, unions were called in, and we all had to justify our positions here.  Some of the younger ones grumbled that the older ones should offer to retire, and we all started counting up how many years we had worked, hoping longevity in the job (and the resulting size of any redundancy payout) might save us.  It was then that Pam piped up that she rather liked her job and would be sad to go, as it was so important to a house-wife that she be allowed to earn her pin-money.  Well, she lit the blue touch paper with that one!  So many of us in this job  are single mums or have partners on low incomes, and are entirely dependent upon the money, meagre though it is.  Yet there was Pam, speaking as though she thought what we did was a mere hobby!

 

The boot came down on two lovely ladies, both of whom were badly affected by the loss.  Jane’s husband had lost his job in the recession.  They were hanging on by the skin of their teeth, already behind on the mortgage, and when Jane was made redundant too, they lost everything.  Last I heard, they had moved up north to stay with her in-laws.  The other lady, a single mum, works in the big Asda in town now.  New posts have come up here since, but she won’t apply – once bitten, twice shy.

 

So Pam, having kept her little hobby job, earned the moniker Pin-money Pam and lost a few friends along the way.

 

I’m disturbed from my reverie by the Head, Mrs Argyle (Gargoyle, according to the older kids) plonking herself beside me.  I have to move quickly to avoid having my arm nudged and losing my tea into my lap.

 

“There you are, Linda,” she breathes, like I’d be anywhere else right now.

 

Tracy opposite rolls her eyes at me.  My name’s not Linda, it’s Lynette, and I’m only ever called Lyn.  My granny was the last person to use Lynette.

 

“Remember you said before we broke up that you’d get all the exercise books out to the classes today?  They’re all waiting for them – can you make it a priority?”

 

“Yes, but-”

 

“Good, good, well done.”  And she’s gone again in another elbow-nudging flurry.

 

“Chop, chop, Linda,” says Tracy, as soon as the old bat is out of hearing range, and we all laugh.

 

“I’m supposed to be looking after George,” I groan.

 

“Take him with you – no-one’ll mind.”

 

When I return to class, the children are on the carpet (have they made it to their seats even once yet?) except for George, who is back under the units, and Sherry, who is patiently explaining to Sir that we normally have our fruit snack now, and it should be her good self in charge of distributing it.

 

I cough theatrically to gain everyone’s attention.

 

“Mrs Taylor’s been given a Very Important Job to do,” I announce, referring to myself in the third person and emphasising random words as one does in Key Stage One, “and I need some Help.  Of course, it has to be Someone who is sitting on the carpet Sensibly,” I add, as George peeks out.  I wait a moment until he is back in his correct place, arms folded, chest puffed out.  “I think I’ll choose… George!”

 

Mr Butler nods his approval, then tilts his head toward Sherry, his expression hopeful.  I’m a nice person, so I take the hint.

 

“And… Sherry!”

 

Delivering a whole school’s worth of exercise books is no small undertaking, there being fourteen classes and each class needing different books for different subjects.  Thankfully, someone has sorted them all into piles over the holiday, and all we have to do is load a couple of piles at a time onto a small trolley and drag it to the right class.  Naturally, Sherry and George squabble over the trolley, and I suspect we’ve had the paint off the walls in a couple of places, but somehow, we get it all done by lunch time.  There’s one difficult moment, when we use the wheelchair lift to get the books upstairs, and George plays with all the buttons, making it stop halfway.  After a few deep breaths, I manage to get the thing going again.  It wouldn’t do to have a claustrophobic panic attack in front of the children!

 

The rest of the day passes quickly.  After school, I join the cleaners with a couple of other teaching assistants.  It’s like a second job – teaching assistants by day, cleaning staff by night.  As I’m hoovering the corridor by the Head’s office, the lady herself sticks her head out.

 

“Ah, Linda,” she says.

 

“Just Lyn,” I correct her.  She ignores this.

 

“Have a look over here,” she says, leading me to the corner where she points out a nasty looking little gouge on the outer edge.  It’s at the right height to have been our trolley earlier, but I didn’t see them do it.

 

“Any idea how this happened?” she’s asking me.  If in doubt, brazen it out, I think to myself.

 

“No, this is an old one, been there forever.  I don’t remember when it first appeared,” I tell her, frowning hard with the effort of remembering.

 

“Really?  I haven’t noticed it before.  And Brian went round over the holiday to touch up the paintwork.”

 

Ah.

 

“Well, he must’ve missed a bit,” I suggest.  Our caretaker is hardly the most thorough of people – he could have missed some.

 

“Mm.  Oh, well.  When you see him, Linda, ask him to do that if he gets a minute?  Oh, and I heard George spent rather a lot of time not involved in lessons today,” she adds.  “You really need to be stricter with him tomorrow.”

 

Blow that for a game of soldiers, I think to myself.

 

“You know, Key Stage One really isn’t my thing.  Maybe you should get someone else to cover him tomorrow,” I reply, pointedly.

 

“Oh, no, you’re doing a great job, much appreciated, much appreciated,” she responds hastily, and retreats back into her office.

 

And the name’s Lyn, you cretinous old hag! I shout, but only in my imagination.  I have a mortgage to pay, after all.

 

~*~*~

 

It’s gone six by the time I get in, and I can hear the TV in the living room – Jem is home.  He spent most of the weekend at his girlfriend’s house, apart from yesterday afternoon, when he went for his monthly visit with his father and the Wicked Stepmother.

 

“Good weekend?” I call as I pull my shoes off in the hallway.

 

“Mm-hm.”

 

“Dad ok? Sandra? The girls?”

 

“Yeah.  Till I told him ‘bout McDonald’s.”

 

“Ooh, I bet he was thrilled,” I lie, joining Jem on the couch.  He’s got a big bag of crisps open, so I stick my hand in and grab a few.  Jem doesn’t object – he’s good like that.

 

“I thought he was going to have a heart attack,” Jem tells me, solemnly.  “Then he got all snipey and said he should of sent me to the bloody military academy, or something.”

 

“Language, Jem,” I scold.

 

“Sorry.  Should have.” We grin at each other.

 

“Well, if your education was that important to him, he should have paid for you to go to private school.  He managed it for Sandra’s two.”  The fact he’s taken better care of his step-daughters than he ever did his own flesh-and-blood has never ceased to rankle with me.

 

“Anyway, Mum, I’ve been thinking.”

 

“About what?”

 

“Well, I’m earning.  I should give you some rent.  Is fifty a week okay for now?”

 

“Can you manage that much?” I ask, doubtfully.

 

“Yeah.  I still got twice as much left as I was getting on Jobseekers.”

 

“Well, thank you.  That would be a big help.”  I feel a cow for taking his money so readily, but the honest truth is it’s a struggle to pay the mortgage and feed a hungry teenager on what I’m earning.

 

Jem’s father and I married young and bought the apartment in the mid-nineties, while prices were at rock bottom.  I quickly got used to striving to pay the mortgage, doing every crap job that came my way and caring for baby Jem while Alan studied accountancy.  Then he got his qualification, landed a swanky position in the finance department of a big law firm, and upgraded the missus for the gorgeous PA.

 

I doggedly refused to sell up, scraping the cash together by working at the school by day and in a bar at night.  This would not have been possible without the redoubtable Mrs Parker, of course.  She took Jem in free of charge, wanting only companionship in return, which we gave in bucket loads.  Jem and I were very noticeably the only mourners crying at her funeral.  She wasn’t close to her sons.

 

Of course, over the years, pay and benefits have improved while my mortgage has stayed the same.  House prices rocketed shortly after we bought our place, and nowadays, I’m in a better position than wealthier friends, paying half what anyone I know does in rent or mortgage.  When the latest recession closed the bar, I simply increased my hours at the school, taking on the cleaning post.  In the holidays, I temp for an old school friend at her partner’s firm, doing an odd day here and there for whatever they need, if they’re short-handed for any reason.  I scrape by, in other words.

 

“You staying in tonight?” I ask Jem.

 

“Nah – I’m meeting Amelia later.  Got a late shift at McDonald’s tomorrow.”

 

I realise this means he doesn’t have to get up early and will probably stay over at either Amelia’s or one of his friends.  This has become a regular pattern, and I am used to pulling on a robe before I leave my room now – I never know when he’ll bring his friends back here to crash and there’ll be a random teenager in my bathroom or on my couch or raiding my fridge.  On these occasions, I grit my teeth and remind myself of all the instances Jem’s in someone else’s home, eating their parents’ food – and he has quite an appetite!

 

My first day back at work has been quite exhausting, and by ten I’m done in, so I crack open the sliding door to the balcony an inch, throw my bedroom window wide open, and keep all the internal doors ajar in the hope of creating enough through-draft to be able to sleep comfortably tonight.  Then after a last cup of tea and a trip to the bathroom, I’m ready, and crawl gratefully between the sheets.

 

~*~*~

 

A creak, a click, then silence.  I lie in the dark, eyes wide open, ears straining for further sounds.  Sure enough, I hear a shuffle and a bump.  I am definitely not imagining things; somebody is moving about next door!

 

I grope for my glasses and check the time – it’s a little after half one.  After pulling on my robe, I tiptoe to my front door, release the catch and open up cautiously, just enough to poke my head into the corridor.  A man is in Mrs Parker’s doorway, his back to me.  He whispers something, too quietly for me to hear, to somebody else, presumably inside the apartment.  My breath hitches, and he turns abruptly, catching me in his gaze.  He is tall and well built, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties.  At first he looks angry, a scowl darkening his otherwise handsome face, but as he looks me up and down his features alter into a slightly amused smile.  I glance down at myself.  My tea-stained, threadbare bathrobe hangs open to reveal a long white tee-shirt style nightie with a picture of a sleeping cat.  My legs are bare from mid-thigh down, exposing unshaved, pale flesh and chipped toenail varnish.

Aw, crap, this is embarrassing, I think, but somehow I keep a straight face. 

 

 

“Who are you?” I ask, polite but straight to the point.

 

“I, er, we’ve rented this place,” he replies.

 

“Really?  Didn’t think it was on the market yet, it’s still under probate, as I understand.”

 

“Um, private arrangement, on the QT, friend of a friend,” he responds hurriedly.  I frown, not at all sure whether to believe him.  But his whole appearance is smart and ‘middle-class’ – he’s wearing tan chinos with a navy shirt and brown brogues, and his sandy-blond hair is neatly cut but artfully tousled on top.  He doesn’t look like a burglar or a squatter, in short.  He looks more like a middle management civil servant.

 

Cashing in on my doubt, he darts forward to take my unresisting hand and pumps it up and down a couple of times.  His handshake is firm, his flesh warm.  My hand is swallowed up in his grasp – I like a man with big hands.  Blushing, I push the thought away.  I’m older than him by a good decade, and while he looks fit and honed, my figure is only a stone or two shy of orang utan, and about as saggy.

 

“I’m Mason,” he’s saying, “Mason St Andrew.  And you are…?”

 

I blink.  “Taylor.  Lyn.  Um.  Lyn Taylor.” Inwardly I curse my inarticulate mumbling.  Smooth, Lyn, way to go.

 

“Well, I’m pleased to meet you, Lyn,” he says, his azure eyes dancing with amusement.  He drops my hand, but his smile remains in place.

 

“You said ‘we,’” I prompt, regaining the power of speech.

 

“Oh, yes, my son is with me.  Thomas,” he raises his voice slightly as he says the name, and a small boy appears in the doorway.  “Come and say hello to our new neighbour, Thomas.  This is Lyn.”

 

“Hello,” I respond gently, holding my hand out, but the boy does not approach.  He lifts his face to meet my eyes and I gasp – under his silver hair, his face is white apart from the dark rings under his eyes.  His pupils are large and dark, but his irises are the palest grey I have ever seen.  He really is a pitiful looking specimen.  And his is almost certainly the face I thought I had imagined last night.  I quickly regain my composure, and put a smile back on my face.

 

“I’ve got a boy, too,” I say.  “He’s a bit older than you, though.  He’s out with his friends at the moment.”

 

“Hello,” the boy whispers.  He glances doubtfully at his father, then retreats indoors once more.

 

Mason watches after him for a moment, then turns back to me.

 

“He’s not a well child,” he says, obviously feeling some sort of explanation is required.  “Lots of health issues.”

 

“Oh, I’m sorry.”  I have no idea what the right thing to say is at this point.  “Well, the sea air might do him some good.”

 

“Indeed.”  Mason shifts his weight to his other foot, and glances towards next door again.  “Well, it’s late.  I’m sorry we woke you.  Don’t let us keep you.”  And he disappears after his son, closing the door gently behind him and giving me the impression I’ve been dismissed.

 

For several beats, I stand there non-plussed.  It’s a ridiculous hour to be moving in – where’s their removal van, or any of their belongings?  I pad barefoot to the end of the corridor and peer out of the small window to the road below.  There is no truck, or any unfamiliar vehicle parked outside.  My car is there, plus the cars of my neighbours, all in our allocated bays.  Mrs Parker’s bay is empty – one of her sons removed her car after the funeral.

 

Wondering whether I should phone Mrs Parker’s solicitor in the morning, I return to my own apartment and crawl back into bed.  Despite hearing a couple more muffled thuds from next door, exhaustion finally wins out and I drift gratefully back to sleep.