Waiting for Wednesday

ONE
    There was no sign that anything was wrong. It
was just an ordinary terraced house on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon in April. It had
a long, narrow garden, like all the other houses in the road. The one to its left had
been neglected for many years. It was overgrown with nettles and brambles; at the far
end there was a plastic sandpit full of sludgy water and a child-sized goal that had
been tipped over. The garden on the other side was paved and gravelled, with plants in
terracotta pots, chairs that the owners folded up in winter to store in their shed, and
a barbecue under a black tarpaulin that would be wheeled into the centre of the patio
for the summer months.
    But this particular garden had a lawn, just
cut for the first time this year. White blossom shone on an old, twisted apple. The
roses and shrubs in the borders had been pruned back so hard that they were like sticks.
There were ranks of orange tulips near the kitchen door. There was a single trainer with
its laces still done up under the window, empty flower pots, a bird table, with a few
seeds scattered on its flat surface, a couple of empty beer bottles by the
boot-scraper.
    The cat walked up the garden, taking its
time and pausing by the door, head lifted as if waiting for something. Then it deftly
inserted itself through the cat flap and entered the kitchen, with its tiled floor, its
table – big enough for six or more people – and its Welsh dresser, which was really too
large for the room and was cluttered with china and odds-and-ends: tubes of dried-out
glue, bills in their envelopes, acookery book opened at a recipe for
monkfish with preserved lemon, a balled pair of socks, a five-pound note, a small
hairbrush. Pans hung from a steel rail above the cooker. There was a basket of
vegetables near the sink, a dozen more cookery books on a small shelf, a vase of flowers
that were beginning to droop on the windowsill, a school textbook open spine-down on the
table. On the wall was a whiteboard with a ‘to-do’ list in red felt pen.
There was a half-eaten piece of toast, cold, on a plate on one of the surfaces, and a
cup of tea beside it.
    The cat dipped its head delicately into its
bowl on the floor and ate one or two granules of dried cat food, wiped its paw over the
side of its face, then continued through the house, out of the kitchen, whose door was
always open, past the little lavatory to the left, up the two steps. It sidestepped a
broken glass bowl and walked around the leather shoulder-bag lying in the hallway. The
bag was upended, its contents scattered over the oak floorboards. Lipstick and
face-powder, an opened pack of tissues, car keys, a hairbrush, a small blue diary with a
pen attached to it, a packet of paracetamol, a spiral-bound notebook. A bit further on,
a black wallet splayed open, a few membership cards dotted around it (AA, British
Museum). A framed print from an old Van Gogh exhibition was tipped to one side on the
cream wall, and on the floor, its frame cracked, lay a large family portrait: a man, a
woman, three children, with broad smiles.
    The cat picked its way through the debris
and walked into the living room at the front of the house. An arm lay outstretched in
the doorway; the hand was plump and firm with nails cut short and a gold band on the
fourth finger. The cat sniffed at it, then gave the wrist a cursory lick. It half
climbed on to the body, in its sky-blue blouse and its black work trousers, digging its
claws purringly into the soft stomach.Wanting attention, it nuzzled
against the head of warm brown hair that was greying now and tied back in a loose knot.
There were small gold studs in the ear lobes. There was a thin chain and locket round
the neck. The skin smelt of roses and something else. The cat rubbed its body against
the face and arched its back.
    After a while, it gave up and went to sit on
the armchair to wash itself, for its coat was matted now and sticky.
    Dora Lennox walked slowly back from school.
She was tired. It was Wednesday and she had double science last lesson, then swing band
in the after-school club. She played the saxophone – badly, splitting notes, but the
music teacher didn’t seem fussy. She had only agreed to go because her friend Cam
had persuaded her, but now Cam didn’t seem to be her friend any more, and
whispered and giggled with other girls who didn’t have braces, weren’t
skinny and shy but bold and curvy, with black lacy bras and shiny lips and