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for a minute, wanting to make the wretched man think her reasons for entering the kitchen were justifiable.

  “Looking for this?” asked Charlie, standing in the doorway, jiggling the telephone, a humorous expression on his face. His black mackintosh fell open where his right elbow rested high on the doorframe. Something metallic beneath it near his waist glinted in the fluorescent kitchen light.

  “Yes, give it to me, please,” demanded Mrs Evans, although her domineering tone wavered slightly at the situation she found herself in. “Or I’ll...”

  “Or what, Mrs Evans? I must say, you don’t sound very happy with me. And I am doing you a favour, after all. Perhaps you would rather I hadn’t come?”

  “Of course not. I’m sorry,” Joyce said, hoping she sounded sufficiently diffident, but years of... decades of haughtiness were difficult to disguise. “Please return what’s mine. I can offer you... I can give you a reward?”

  “If I was after money, Mrs Evans, I need only have claimed the four hundred and sixty dollars in your purse, sold your credit cards to some unscrupulous sorts I know and thrown the rest in the canal. It’s not money, I’m after, Mrs Evans. Oh no, it’s not money I’m after at all!” He laughed, too energetically for the jest.

  Joyce didn’t laugh. She was scared now.

  She looked around her large kitchen, seeking help. “Then...” she began, but stuttered. “Then what is it you do want, Mr Cromwell? It’s just that I’m expecting company... yes, company, anytime now, actually.” It was a dreadful excuse and terribly conveyed but Joyce was desperate, willing to try anything to discourage the wretch.

  “Company? Who?” Charlie dropped the telephone on the countertop, slipped his hands inside his pockets and leant his shoulder against the doorframe. He crossed his right foot over his left, creating an air of casualness unbefitting the occasion.

  “My friend... Mrs Deems.” The silly old bitch was the first person to spring to mind.

  Charlie smiled. “That old lady? She really is a dear, and makes a great cup of tea. Unfortunately, she won’t be coming tonight.”

  Oh my God! thought Joyce, what has he done to her? How does he know her? From the shop? Then he must have been following me! In her mind then, her already dire situation turned significantly worse. “Why not?” she was almost too afraid asked, her efforts to sound bashful coming naturally now.

  “She always cooks ‘a nice little rump steak for my husband’ on Friday nights. Didn’t you know that, Mrs Evans? Of course you didn’t, yet you work with her most afternoons.”

  “She leaves when I arrive,” Joyce replied automatically. How long has this man been following me?

  “So, that means you lied to me, Mrs Evans, about ‘your friend’ coming tonight.” Charlie made the quotation marks in the air with his fingers. “I don’t like liars, Mrs Evans.” He stood upright then, ominously blocking the doorway, casting a dark and foreboding shadow on the parquet floor. “Do you like liars, Mrs Evans?”

  Joyce shook her head.

  “People do nasty things to liars, did you know that, Mrs Evans?”

  She began to cry.

  “What’s the matter, Mrs Evans? Why are you crying?”

  Joyce remained still, quiet.

  “Perhaps I should leave now?”

  Joyce nodded, managed a pitiful, “Yes, please.”

  Charlie advanced upon the frail old lady.

  Joyce cowered away.

  “Haven’t you forgotten something, Mrs Evans?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Have I?”

  “Your purse,” said Charlie, placing it by the kettle where she could see it.

  “Thank you.”

  “No. Thank you, Mrs Evans. Dinner was exquisite. Perhaps we could do it again sometime? I so miss home cooking. It’s been such a long time since I had a meal like that. How did you make the orange sauce, dare I ask?”

  Joyce could not believe she heard such a question. “I don’t know... really, honestly... I don’t! Gloria makes it for me. She’s really good, isn’t she? She’s my maid.” Joyce decided straightaway that if she awoke alive in the morning she would thank Gloria from the bottom of her heart. For her orange sauce. For her care. For everything. It was probably time she did.

  Charlie stood back, stared momentarily at Joyce, then headed towards the kitchen door. He stopped there, turned, took a few paces back towards her. “I hate to impose further, Mrs Evans, but you mentioned a reward?”

  Joyce nodded. “Anything!”

  “Could I possibly trouble you for a ride home? The bus doesn’t arrive for another forty minutes, and the rain sounds...” he splayed his arms as if catching it from outside, “...persistent, shall we say? Would you mind, terribly?”

  Anything to get this man out of my house! “Of course I’ll give you a ride home, Mr Cromwell,” she said, pulling herself together a little as she left the kitchen, and the telephone, behind. She grabbed her coat and keys in the hallway and opened the heavy front door.

  Charlie followed her outside, watched her lock the house, slipped into the passenger seat as Joyce slipped behind the wheel and reminded her with a friendly tap on the shoulder, which startled Joyce terribly, to buckle up for safety.

  As they emerged from the stately driveway, Joyce wished a neighbour would pass by, anybody who’s attention she might catch. Somebody to help her. But the rain had washed the streets clean of people.

  Charlie indicated that Joyce should turn left.

  She obliged reluctantly, knowing a police station sat not half a mile in the opposite direction.

  The drive through the rain drenched streets took them east, into the docklands.

  Depravity was something missing from Joyce’s life. The derelict buildings meant nothing to her, brought no pangs of sorrow, no desire to cleanup the world or to help those less fortunate than herself. Conversely, she had often considered buying the land and building an art gallery to show off her wares, but the surreptitiousness of her existence proved too difficult to relinquish. Besides, the thought of the underlying filth seeping up through the walls made her shudder.

  Yet here she was, amongst the filth and the forgotten.

  And terrified.

  “Stop!” shouted Charlie.

  The tyres skidded on the tarmac, both rocked back in their seats.

  “Sorry,” Joyce apologised, staring directly ahead, desperately avoiding eye contact. She kept her hands on the steering wheel, gripped it tight to hide her shaking. She felt hot, and cold, and frightened of what might happen next, alone with this man in a dark, quiet, empty, alleyway in the roughest, filthiest, deadliest part of town.

  Charlie leant across, placed a calloused, tattooed hand on hers, squeezed it gently and whispered in her ear, “I’ll be in touch,” he said, then slipped easily from the car, slammed the door and disappeared into the night.

  Joyce, tears streaming down her face, drove frantically, chaotically home.

  The hum of toiling insects carried far on the midsummer breeze. Infrequent puffs of gentle cloud rolled quietly through the sapphire sky. Bedecked amid the scent of flowers reclined Joyce Evans, her gardening hat covering her sun wrinkled face, one arm hanging down, tantalising a line of eternally busy ants crawling across the paving stones an inch beneath her manicured fingers. A snapping sound roused her. A click followed, a knock, then a gentle change of air dragged her fully awake. She leapt to her feet as quickly as she could, looked around, heart racing. Is he back? was her first thought. Why is the shed door open? her second. She got to her feet, walked cautiously over and stepped inside.

  A man reclined in her favourite chair, flicking through a magazine, and without averting his gaze, said, “Mrs Evans, do come in. I’m sorry it’s been such a long time, but I’ve really been very busy. No excuse, I know, to be too busy for friends...”

  Joyce stood, motionless. “Mr Cromwell,” she said. “I... Mr Cromwell.”

  “Indeed it is,” he replied, favouring her address to his own name, enjoying the anonymity
it offered. “I see you still have the magazines I sold you?” He shuffled the first edition copy of the Dandy he held, folded it, returned it neatly to the pile. “You really ought to protect them, you know, Mrs Evans. Do you have any cellophane wrap?”

  To suffocate me with? No! “I... There might be some... yes, I do. In the kitchen. Let me go and get it for you.” Joyce turned, grabbed the door, but managed only a step before a strong hand caught her arm, drew her back inside.

  “Later,” said Charlie. “We’ll do that later. My, what a treasure trove you have here, Mrs Evans. A positive Aladdin’s Cave!” Charlie waved his strong arms at the organised shelves.

  “Yes, I suppose it is. You know, oddments, bits and pieces, things I pick up here and there. Things I collect, buy and sell, pass on, give away, you know...” Joyce was aware of her ramblings but fear gripped her, suppressed all rational thought and lucidity.

  “Give away, Mrs Evans? Did you say, give away?”

  Joyce nodded fearfully.

  “How very generous you are, Mrs Evans. I like generous people. So much nicer than liars, don’t you think? Liars, in my humble opinion, are pure evil. Don’t you agree, Mrs Evans? Liars are bested only by those who have, but fail diligently to alleviate those who have not.” An ominous silence descended upon the shed. The air seemed unnaturally cold. After a few, interminable minutes, Charlie spoke again. “How much would you say all these... oddments, are worth, Mrs Evans? Five thousand? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand dollars?”

  “I... I’m not sure.