‘Hello? Mrs Le Maistre? Is anyone home?’
I see the garden door is open too – she must be here. I head back to the front, put the case down next to the porch, between a stone pillar and a small triangular shrub, then take a tentative step across the threshold of the house. There is a loud noise coming from somewhere, a whirring, clattering sound.
‘Mrs Le Maistre?’ I call into the hall, while knocking again on the open front door.
Behind me, I hear a car trundle into the driveway. It suddenly feels intrusive that I’ve stepped into this woman’s hallway, and without thinking, I duck further inside the house, scooting behind Maude’s front door. I realise too late: this is the worst thing I could have done. Now I am stuck here. Peeking out through the window, I hope it might be a delivery driver who leaves quickly. But it is not a delivery driver; the man getting out of the car is Keith – Bee Man Keith from the community fete.
‘Shit!’ I mutter under my breath. Keith already thinks I’m a weirdo stalker. What if he’s here to warn Maude that some lunatic woman is trying to get hold of her, and then they both find me crouched behind the front door? That would not look good. In a panic, my eyes dart around for somewhere better to hide, and I duck down from the window.
Keith walks up to the front door and calls out just as I did. He pauses, then I hear a voice call out from above my head and I try to flatten myself against the wall like a salamander.
‘Oh, it’s you hollering, is it?’ comes a female voice from upstairs. ‘I had the dryer on, it makes a right old racket. Go on through, I’ll meet you in the garden.’
Cold sweat prickles my skin, my mouth is dry. How have I got myself into this situation? I feel like a cat burglar, a really rubbish cat burglar who doesn’t want to steal anything. I worry Keith is going to see the case sitting next to the porch, but he’s walked past it and now he’s standing in the hallway too. I slowly lower myself to the floor.
‘Do you need a hand up there, Maude?’ Keith calls up the stairs. I hold my breath, worried he is going to hear me breathing. If he closes the door, he will see me, lying on the floor like a human draught excluder. There are footsteps above us.
‘No, I’ll come down. Give me one minute,’ comes the voice, which must be Maude. I can only see one more secure place to hide, an alcove full of coats in the hall, just a few yards away from me. Keith is facing the stairs, and the dryer noise is still rumbling through the floorboards; this might be my one chance to move. Holding my breath, I get to my feet and tiptoe across to the alcove, then quietly push myself backwards into the forest of coats, pulling a brown Barbour jacket around me, as I hear footsteps on the stairs and a ‘There you are,’ from Keith. Then the clunk of the front door closing – SHIT!
Peering out from behind the coat, I see a woman in her sixties, with a grey bun and plaid skirt standing by the door next to Keith.
‘Well, this is a nice surprise,’ says Maude. ‘The sun’s out, we should sit in the garden.’ Yes, sit in the garden, then I can sneak back out of the front door undetected. ‘I just need to get my specs.’
‘Someone was looking for you at the fete this morning,’ Keith says, following Maude into one of the rooms off the hall. I should dart out now, sprint out of the back door while they’re out of sight, but I want to hear what he’s going to say about me, so I stay put. ‘This girl who said she mistakenly picked up Jasper’s suitcase from the airport. She’s under the impression he must have hers.’
Jasper! Jasper!At last, I know his name. I love the name Jasper! It’s perfect. Laura and Jasper, Jasper and Laura; that certainly has a nice ring to it.
‘I didn’t want to be responsible for giving her your details, you know. She was a bit – odd.’
Odd? Bloody Keith, dissing me, especially when my broadcast brought his fete some much-needed customers.
‘Oh yes,’ says Maude, ‘I got a rather garbled message from someone, but I couldn’t make out the number to call her back, the line was so crackly.’ They both come out of the other room and walk back across the hall – I’ve missed my chance to escape through the garden now. ‘Jasper rang me to say he’d left his personal mobile at the London flat, so she’ll be having no luck getting hold of him. He went straight out on a lifeboat training exercise to Seymour Tower last night, so I suspect he’s completely incommunicado.’
‘He’ll be back for your birthday tomorrow, won’t he?’
‘Oh yes, I think he’s back tonight. So, he picked up the wrong luggage, did he? Oh dear. Do you have the girl’s number to hand? I should call her and explain. What made you think she was so odd?’
‘She was rather foul-mouthed, and she had wild, hysterical sort of eyes,’ says Keith.
FOUL-MOUTHED! WILD EYES?Literally, Keith heard the one time I’ve ever sworn in public.
They are out of sight now, at the other end of the hall, but I hear paper rustling, and then the clunk of a handset being lifted from its cradle. A cold bead of sweat trickles down my neck as I realise what’s about to happen – she’s dialling my number and the phone in my handbag is not on silent. It’s going to start ringing, and they will freak out when they hear it coming from inside the house. It will be like a horror film; Keith might murder me with a fire poker, and he wouldn’t even go to jail because I’m the intruder hiding behind a brown Barbour jacket in Maude’s coat alcove.
Scrambling about in my handbag, pinching my lips closed to suppress a scream, I manage to flick the phone onto silent just as the screen lights up with the call. From further down the hallway, I hear Maude leaving me a message explaining that Jasper left his phone in London and he’s off on a training exercise all day, but that she’ll get him to call me about the bag as soon as he returns.
With the phone-ringing/death-by-poker emergency averted, I have a few moments to digest the fact that Jasper is a volunteer; the guy just gets better and better the more I hear about him. He has a flat in London – great for a potential relationship with me, since, well, I live there. He’s called Jasper – such a hot name – and he rescues people from the sea. He must have quite muscular upper arms if he hauls people out of the water all day. An image of Ted’s arms springs unbidden to my mind, as he stripped off his sea-soaked T-shirt, that understated, muscular definition, strong but lean—
Through my musing about the sexiness of upper arms, I hear Keith and Maude’s footsteps across the hall again and tuck myself further back behind the coats. This really is a very deep coat alcove; you could fit a short bowling alley in here.
‘So, when am I giving you your birthday present?’ Keith asks Maude.
I feel briefly indignant on Jasper’s behalf – he’d better not be about to give Maude the beehive. It’s supposed to be a surprise, Keith.
‘Oh, you are a mischief,’ says Maude, with a chuckle. ‘I thought there was a reason you came over today when you knew I’d be here on my own.’
‘Mrs Le Maistre, I’m shocked you would suspect me of such base motivations. I am purely here as a messenger – though if you would like a little something – you know I’m always happy to oblige.’ Keith’s voice breaks into a little purr.
Then they stop talking, and I hear what sounds like kissing. No! Maude and Keith? I did not see that plot twist coming. They must be in their late sixties – no one kisses like that in their sixties, do they?