Hidden Power Read online

  Aesthetic distress—Rod would enjoy that. Without waiting for an answer, she swept into the kitchen. Yes, he’d had the better of her in that encounter. But she still had to find Out what he was up to, so she slung the empty bottle into an empty carrier—sooner or later she could take it to a bottle bank—and returned to the fray.

  Or would have done if Craig hadn’t been halfway through the front door.

  ‘Where the hell—?’

  ‘Going out with me mate, aren’t I?’

  ‘Mate? We’re not supposed to, be seeing our mates. Not from this house.’

  ‘Nosey, aren’t you?’ He pressed her nose in what an outsider might have seen as an affectionate rebuke. The pain drew reflex tears, despite herself. He went halfway down the path, then came back to pat her cheek, again with force, not tenderness. ‘Just so’s you don’t go whining off to Earnshaw, it’s a new mate. Met him at a builders’ merchant’s a few days back. OK, your ladyship?’ Another slap, and he was gone.

  Trying to stay in role—what would Kate Potter do? Ask him when he wanted his meal? She couldn’t stoop to that. Wave dismally? Slam the door? Or simply droop miserably, holding her face, before trailing slowly indoors? She drooped. The stupid thing was, she didn’t know what to do about his dinner. He wasn’t the man to come back and cook his half for himself, not with the skinful she expected him to have on board when he returned. And she wasn’t going to get up in the small hours and cook it for him, no matter how touchingly wifely that might seem. She could cook the lot, and put his share between two plates, so he could microwave it. That seemed the best option. By the time she’d started to worry what would happen if he didn’t eat it then, about the waste if it were thrown away or the danger of attracting scavengers if she slung it on their infant compost heap, she knew she was cracking. Cheap wine or PMS? On the grounds he’d drunk more than half the bottle, she did what would at least have made Aunt Cassie cackle: she got her bike out and headed for the twenty-four-hour Tesco.

  Fortunately—for she meant to buy decent, Rod-worthy wine—she’d only got as far as the confectionery aisle when a familiar voice hailed her. Which—given the breadth of her acquaintance in Devon—rather limited the field.

  ‘Hello there, Kate: didn’t recognise you at first,’ Gary Vernon told her. As he pushed his trolley towards her, he was orbited by two school-uniformed children who might have been his clones, with their fine blond hair and ruddy cheeks. And their receding chins. The girl was about eight, her brother a couple of years younger.

  Kate rather expected them to descend like locusts on the chocolate, but they held back, looking at their father, till he grinned. ‘OK. A pound’s worth each. You’ve been very good.’ The look he gave Kate was sheepish. ‘Parents’ evening—and they both got excellent reports. So I’ve promised them a real treat the next weekend I get free. In the meantime,’ he added, watching as they argued the merits of chocolate versus sweets, his eyes naked with love for them, ‘I don’t think this’ll hurt them. Ah, here’s your mum!’ he added, more loudly.

  Dressed like her husband in a suit meant to impress, Mrs Vernon was a.neatly built woman a year or so older than Kate. She walked with a slight limp, and seemed glad to rest her hand on the trolley handle—certainly there was nothing possessive about her gesture.

  ‘This is Kate, one of the cleaning team at Sophisticasun,’ Vernon said. ‘Kate, my wife, Julie.’

  Julie smiled, exposing tired lines already meshing under her eyes, and put out a hand to shake Kate’s. A decent woman, to shake hands with a cleaner; and a firm handshake, too. Kate smiled, allowing her dimples an airing for once.

  ‘I’ve heard about you.’ Julie’s voice was surprisingly strong.

  ‘All good, I hope,’ Kate said, adding a slightly flustered giggle to compensate for the swiftness of the response.

  ‘All very good. And you’ve worked wonders in Gary’s office. I’ve often wanted to take the Hoover to it myself. Well done.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Kate Potter looked at her feet before managing another smile. Kate Power told her to turn the compliment to the kids ‘Mr Ver—your husband—was saying about your children doing well at school. Wish I’d worked harder,’ she added, as the children came within earshot. ‘You only get these chances once, don’t you?’

  ‘What did you want to be?’ asked the girl. ‘That you couldn’t be, I mean?’

  ‘Oh, something a bit better than a cleaner. A nurse, something like that.’ The girl looked at her with something like scorn. ‘Why not a doctor? My teacher says girls can do anything!’

  ‘I’m sure your teacher’s right,’ Kate sighed, ‘so long as you get your exams and that.’ At times like this she hated the sloppy vocabulary, the lapse into Brummie. She wanted to take this eight-year-old and talk woman to woman to her. ‘Best be getting on, if you don’t mind, Mr Vernon. Mrs Vernon. Early start, you know.’ She reached for a smaller bar of chocolate than her original target, and trundled off. Before she bought any more wine, she must watch them safely through the checkout. As she peered at cheap offers on tinned beans and breakfast cereals, her path kept coinciding with theirs. From time to time they’d exchange half-embarrassed smiles. There were still no squabbles. The kids might be pushing the trolley but they made sure it went in straight lines and the girl kept flashing glances at her mother. They seemed anxious looks, too—as if there were something wrong. The limp? The tiredness? As they reached the checkout queue, Vernon hefted the boy on to his shoulders, as if he were three, not six or seven. The last thing Kate heard, as she made for the drinks, was all four voices raised in laughter.

  Her nightly phone conversation with Rod over—this one had been distressingly short—Kate went to bed. She’d left Craig a note telling him his meal was in the fridge, and had taken the wine and the chocolate up with her, concealing the former in the bottom of her tiny built-in wardrobe. She would feed it into the common supply at intervals, provided, of course, that Craig showed some sign of reciprocating.

  Empathy didn’t seem to be his strong suit, however. Or even, what she’d have been happy with, common courtesy. She’d been deeply asleep when he at last came in, apparently trying to make as much noise as possible. OK: that was unfair. But he certainly made no obvious effort to be quiet. Apart from moving round a great deal, and using the bathroom a couple of times, shutting the door firmly, and audibly bolting it on each occasion, he must have devised a method of removing his shoes which involved dropping them: Kate heard the separate thuds.

  By now she was so enraged she doubted whether she’d ever sleep. At home she’d have reached for one of her favourite books. The only reading matter here was a pile of magazines: Hello! and OK. Well, she supposed that Kate Potter would be interested in the lives of soap-stars, so she set to to memorise as much as she could of someone or other’s tacky wedding. The trouble was, the following morning she couldn’t remember whose.

  She was always up and off before Craig surfaced—according to their preparatory notes, that had been a cause of dissension. Kate Potter had always accused him of lying in bed when he should have been off drumming up work. But this morning she was relieved not to see him. She’d had so little sleep she couldn’t trust herself not to fan the flames of their previous evening’s dispute by yelling at him She might—to use Rod’s word—remonstrate with Craig, when neither was quite so touchy. And he’d be touchy all right, if his regular flushings of the loo were any indication of the amount of booze he’d sunk.

  But not as touchy as Kate would be if ever he parked his Escort again so awkwardly that she couldn’t get her motorbike out—at least not without risking both sets of paint. After three or four attempts she knew she’d have to move the car. Was he careless enough to leave the keys in the ignition? No. They’d be in his pocket, presumably. She ran upstairs, intending a quiet burglary. But his bedroom door was locked.

  Five minutes later, she was about to wield the pickaxe he used in his gardening work. But just as she lifted it, she heard him m
utter. This time she’d simply bang on the door using the shaft. And yell, as she’d not stopped yelling. The door opened.

  He was naked. ‘What the fuck do you want?’

  She glanced at his early-morning hard-on. ‘Not that, anyway. Your car keys. You’ve parked so I can’t move my bike.’

  ‘Course you fucking can.’

  ‘I’m already late for work. Move your car. Now.’

  ‘What, like this?’

  ‘Don’t see why not. Shift your arse, man. I’m late for work. Can’t afford to be late for work, can I?’ she added, as he started to hunt for his keys. ‘For Christ’s sake, hurry up!’ She joined in the search, shaking the jeans and trousers he’d left in a heap on the floor. Nothing.

  ‘My things!’

  ‘Your keys!’

  ‘Don’t worry—I’ll move your fucking bike for you.’ Grabbing a towel, he groped his way slowly down the stairs. She followed: she could check the living room and kitchen as she went. It was best to ignore the swearing coming from the garage, not to mention the ominous scrape of metal on metal.

  She found the keys down the side of the sofa. And he’d manhandled the bike on to the path.

  She’d talk to him about the damaged fairing later. At the moment the priority was work.

  Gary Vernon looked at his watch as she came in.

  ‘I know. I’m really, really sorry,’ she said, before he could speak. ‘Bloody Craig, wasn’t it—he parked so I couldn’t get at my bike. I’ll make sure I do all my hours, don’t worry. Oh, Mr Vernon: it won’t happen again.’

  ‘I hope you won’t. But it sounds as if it isn’t up to you. You’re a good worker, Kate, but we need dependable people here.’

  What had happened to the kindly family man of yesterday evening?

  ‘I’ll leave my bike on the drive or somewhere. Honest, Mr Vernon—I really need this work and I’m giving it my best shot.’

  ‘What if the bike gets stolen?’ he asked pettishly. ‘The sort of chain I use?’ No, that sounded too Kate Power. ‘And I’ll get another. Or I’ll nick Craig’s car.’

  Vernon dropped his voice. ‘Are you?—I mean, that sounds… Kate, sit down a moment. Does he—does he hit you?’

  She remained standing, but shook her head, eyes filling at the sympathy, no, real kindness, on his face ‘Not yet I’ll go back to Brum if he does. My friend in Kings Norton. She says she’ll get me job at her place. But—well, I’m here now, Mr Vernon, and I’d better get on,’ she concluded awkwardly. ‘Tell you what, if you’d rather, I could leave your office for now, and come back later. Whatever’s most convenient.’ Did she dare ask about the stuff to be shredded? On the whole, not. She’d re-establish herself by working more than the half-hour she was late—goodness knew she had no reason to dash back to Newton Abbot. Then perhaps tomorrow she’d press a bit harder. At least while she was pushing the cleaner backwards and forwards over the carpet in the bar she could ponder her next move with regard to Craig: to grass him up or not to grass him up?

  ‘See you back here later,’ he said, nodding dismissal. Then he picked up what looked like the morning’s mail. Damn, if only she could have hung back: she might have seen something, anything.

  There was nothing to see when she came back to his office, either. He was still at his desk, attacking the computer keyboard as if it were a personal enemy. Then he transferred his attentions to the mouse, some pallid ginger Tom avenging a psychological defeat.

  She made herself finish the vacuuming before she asked, ‘You got a problem there, Mr Vernon?’

  ‘The screen’s got all these funny marks on it—it must be a virus or something! God, now what? You don’t know anything about computers, do you?’

  She inched across. ‘I did start this course… Then I got a bad wrist: that thing that some doctors say exists and other say doesn’t exist. Teeno something. It existed in my wrist, all right.’

  ‘Computer course? I didn’t realise you’d got qualifications.’

  ‘Oh, yes Not as many as I’d like, like I was saying to your little girl. But I got enough GCSEs to get on this college course. Only I had to drop out, and the wrist means I can’t do inputting, and jobs like that.’

  ‘So what are you doing cleaning?’

  ‘It’s a job, isn’t it? And sometimes I get other casual work. But I can’t pick fruit or flowers because of my wrist, see.’ By now she could see the screen. ‘Oh, Mr Vernon—you know what you’ve been and done. No, it’s nothing to worry about. You just clicked on this little box down here, see? Where it says, “Outline View”. All you have to do is click on one of the other little boxes down there: “Normal View”—that’s how it looks then. Or “Print Layout View”—which isn’t all that much different. Which do you want?’ As she pushed the mouse she contrived to bring the top of the document into view. Hmph. A memo about health and safety: surely the wretched man had something more exciting to write about than that? And couldn’t he write it in better English, for goodness’ sake? ‘The thing I always like was up here,’ she said, clicking on the ABC icon. ‘All those red and green lines under the words—it explains why they’re there. See: it’s telling you your sentence is too long or something. And it wants you to write it this way.’

  Vernon gaped at her as if she were puffing rabbits from the screen.

  ‘Oh, it’s not rocket science, just what they told me at college,’ she said.

  ‘Can you—can you type?’

  Yes! ‘Only for a bit. In case this thing comes back to my wrist. Honestly, it’s like red hot needles stabbing into you.’ She rubbed her right wrist as if in painful recollection. ‘Now, I’ll put that poor fern in a bowl of water in the loo—it’ll turn its poor toes up if I don’t—and then come and do your bins. OK?’

  ‘Fine. Thanks, Kate. You’ve done a great morning’s work.’

  ‘You won’t have to tell them at the agency—about me being late?’

  ‘Not this time.’

  • • •

  ‘Poor little thing,’ she cooed to the fern. ‘You really need repotting, don’t you? See if this nice drink’ll help, just for now.’ Under her breath she added, ‘Funny that he didn’t say not to bother—the plant suppliers should be dealing with you and your mates, like they said in that memo.’

  This morning she had no time to make more than a random grab of paper destined for the shredder, folding it as flat as she could and stuffing it in her overall. She returned both bins with a cheery smile. ‘Just got to bring that fern back, Mr Vernon, then I’ll be off.’

  ‘You haven’t brought your swim things then?’

  ‘You mean you’ve fixed it for me? Oh, aren’t you nice! If you weren’t a family man I’d kiss you!’

  ‘If I weren’t a family man you could,’ he said, laughing. ‘Yes, you can swim any time after work, so long as you promise to sort out this bloody thing next time it throws a wobbly.’

  Kate bowled home the long way round—right up the estuary, aiming to find the A380 just outside Exeter. But she got diverted. She’d never been to Topsham, had she? Why not go now, while the sun was shining and she felt good about herself and her morning’s work She found a parking slot in the main street, and wandered along enjoying the mixture of small shops and tempting restaurants: now, this would be a place to bring Rod, if it weren’t so close to base. Look at that delicatessen, now! At the far end of the road she came to the river. How about lunch at that pub No, not a very Kate Pottery thing to do. Nor, perhaps, was homing into the warehouse the other side of the car park: but being with Rod had given her a taste for antiques and she knew she couldn’t resist three floors of them. In the event, she bought nothing, and felt curiously flat. Yes, it must be PMS. She always wanted to treat herself, as if buying things re-established a fading identity.

  So to discover she’d parked right outside a charity shop was a wonderful surprise. At first she’d thought it was just a dress agency, but it seemed it was supporting the local hospice. Flexing her Kate Potter credit card
, with its pitifully low limit, she sailed in.

  Chapter 11

  When Kate got back from Topsham, Craig was back in bed, and, judging by his regular snores, sound asleep. What the hell did he think he was playing at, getting back in the small hours and needing to lie in till after midday? No need to ask what the smell was. Kate knew it all too well: cannabis. They’d agreed a no-cigarettes rule for the house, and here he was, not just smoking but smoking a particularly pungent type of pot.

  Shaking out the clothes she’d bought, she felt a pang of guilt herself. Yes, she’d obeyed Earnshaw’s injunction to buy clothes from charity shops, but Earnshaw hadn’t meant her to buy a Yarell skirt, even if it was now cheaper that its new Matalan equivalent. But those colours —not to mention the cut! No, she couldn’t have left it there. What she could do was shove it back in its bag and get Rod to take it back to Birmingham for her when he went back after their promised weekend together. Better still she could wear it this weekend while he was here. And putting it with her other clothes was better than trying to hide it, which would only draw attention to it. Out of the bag it came again, to be smoothed lovingly as she hung it in the tiny wardrobe And then she reached for the scissors It didn’t need its label, did it? That would be much better cut into slivers and flushed down the loo. Except Craig wouldn’t recognise Yarell anyway. What was happening to her brain? It must be the amount of Craig’s ganja still left in the atmosphere.

  Lunch? Well, that was easily dealt with. Last night’s stir-fry would fill the bill nicely. She trotted downstairs to find it half-eaten on the kitchen table, a spliff stubbed out in the middle of the remains. The stupid bastard! Talk about leaving the evidence in full view!