In Control

The drive was the most overgrown she had ever seen it. The door, hidden by a forest of thorns, could only be accessed by a scramble through blotted sunlight and opportunistic webs. She knocked.

“Sweetheart! Come in!”

Her father, stooped in a stained apron, padding ahead as she followed him with a wary hesitancy.

“Where is she?”

“Out gallivanting.”

“Thank god.” She untucked her blouse.

The house was museum-still with embroidered headrests over sofas and assorted knick-knacks dyed a dull nicotine brown. She looked out of the kitchen into the back garden.

“Lots of digging,” she noted. “Separate your tomatoes and potatoes.”

He opened the fridge, an unlocked padlock swinging from the handle as the yellow light caught off his glasses.

“She’s stopped locking it?”

“Don’t worry about me.”

He started telling her about the rats they’d had next door, large as foxes with bald tails as thick as a cigar.

“Cigars!” she said. “That’s it! Where’s the smell? Don’t tell me she’s given up.”

He told her about his spring cleaning, pointed up to a long line of white Artex peaking through its brown smoke shroud. “Bleach!” he said. “I’ve been using buckets of the stuff.”

She positioned herself so that the small camera in the corner of the room could only catch her back while she brought out a roll of banknotes to place into his hand. “Careful,” she whispered, nodding behind her at the device.

“It’s unplugged,” he said. “She can’t see us.”

“Try to get out a bit. I know, the tracker, but claim you have therapy and take a class. You need friends, Dad, a life. You’re not getting younger and…”

The knock on the door was heavy and startled them into standing. They stared at each other until the knock came again.

The policeman didn’t ask to come inside, but remained at the entrance, his shoulder-piece carrying a small piece of foliage from the hostile path.

“Is Mrs Sherman in?”  

Her father seemed rendered mute. He shook his head and gazed, bewildered, more ancient than she had ever seen him.

“Where is Mrs Sherman?”

“Out,” he said, in a whisper.

“Just a courtesy welfare check. Apparently, Mrs Sherman has missed her knitting circle twice and her friends can’t get through on her mobile. Could you give her a call now?”

A silence woven in with the scurrying of the rats at the back of the house.

She gasped and steadied herself with a tremble. The policeman switched his attention to her while she recovered herself to speak.

“Mum’s buying a new phone.” She put her hand on her father’s back. “I saw her earlier, she said she’d been mugged. That’s what you should be investigating. Should she report it?”

The policeman relaxed. “Yes. But get her to contact her friends, they’re worried.”

“Of course, Officer,” she said. “We’ll make sure of it.”

Together they watched him bat his way back through the foliage, away from the house of bleach and newly dug earth.