Second Chances Part 26

I saw Mrs Tiggywinkle today. Jeremy Fisher, too. He was out fis.h.i.+ng in the rain again. You'd think he would learn.

I wondered vaguely why Kit had moved the kettle. Perhaps he'd had a last-minute tidy-up before he left. Come to think of it, the room might be slightly neater than usual. I stopped reading and looked around.

No, not neater. Emptier. Finally, I focused.

No radio.

No microwave.

No bottles in the wine rack, and the tin where we kept spare cash was upside down on the floor.

With a feeling of sick certainty I ran across the hall and into the sitting room. Television and DVD player, both gone. They'd left the dinosaur desktop, though-presumably there was no market for them. It was an efficient violation, and chillingly tidy. These intruders hadn't pulled out drawers or smashed windows. They'd taken their time, as though they knew they had all day.

A nasty thought struck me: perhaps I had disturbed them. Perhaps they were still here. I stepped out through the kitchen door and into the low autumn sunlight, looking around. There was no sign of a vehicle, but my skin was crawling as I shaded my eyes and peered into the gloom of the bush.

A small violence in the branches of the walnut made me jump half out of my skin, but it was only a tui launching itself with a whirr of wings. I considered driving off somewhere, maybe to ask for help from Tama, but I wanted to be here when the rest of the family came home. Anyway, I could no more leave my house alone and undefended than I could have abandoned one of my children.

In the end I used my mobile to call the Napier police station. The woman on duty took my details and said they'd see who was in my area. I had the impression they might make it by Christmas if they really hurried, and made a mental note to call a twenty-four-hour plumber if there was ever a real emergency-a crazed axe murderer, for example. The nice man in his van would probably be the first to arrive by several hours.

I tried Kit's phone, which went straight to his messages. He'd have turned it off in the theatre. I sent him a text. Then I forced myself to walk back inside and creep up the stairs. I felt sure someone-or something- was inches behind, leering at the back of my head. Once I felt a touch on the shoulder and swung around in abject terror, eyes popping, heart going like the clapper of a church bell. But it was only my hair.

Something was moving on the landing. I froze, then realised it was a curtain, flapping lazily in the breeze.

In our bedroom the drawers had been left open. I had a pervading image of dirty, thieving hands digging through our clothes, and sure enough the snazzy little video camera was gone from my socks drawer. My jewellery box had moved slightly, though its lid was closed. There wasn't much of great financial value in it: a string of pearls Dad bought for my eighteenth, a brooch that had been Mum's, and the sapphire pendant Kit gave me when the twins were born. I reached out with shaking hands-I could actually see the tremor-and lifted the lid.

Empty. I sat on the bed with it in my hands, feeling sick. Then, struck by a new thought, I hurried down the landing to the boys' bedroom. A shaft of afternoon sunlight spilled an oval pool onto their worn carpet. The cupboard doors were wide open: lake-coloured doors, with Sacha's careful flamingos spread across them. The shelves were bare, the boys' clothes and books strewn across the floor. In a daze I began to pick everything up, wanting to have it all tidy and normal before the twins came home. They were too young to be confronted by such callousness.

It wasn't until I had everything back in place that I realised what was missing. It was painfully obvious, because there was a blank s.p.a.ce on the shelf: the blue piggybanks with their Christmas money. I searched the room, frothing with rage, but there was no sign of the two tipsy pigs. By the time I closed the cupboard doors I was ready to kill. Jewellery, DVD players-bad enough. But what kind of a perverted monster steals a child's piggybank?

I began to roam through the house, teeth gritted, looking for clues. I wasn't afraid any more. If I had found a man lurking in the pantry with a stripy jersey, a mask and a bag marked swag, I swear I would have kneed him where it hurt. String 'em up, I muttered to myself, every last one of 'em. That was pretty hypocritical, as I have been a member of Amnesty International all my adult life and abhor the death penalty. But dammit, piggybanks!

A racing engine. Some vehicle was heading up the drive, and fast. My bravado faltered. I caught myself squinting out from behind a curtain while calculating how long the bathroom door would hold if I locked myself in there. The car swirled into the yard and Kit leaped out, hair standing straight up.

'How bad?' he yelled, as Finn and Charlie spilled out of their doors in a thrilled little flood.

'Did we really have a b.u.g.g.e.rer?' asked Charlie.

'Burgerer,' corrected Finn. 'We've been burgered.'

'Did they take Blue Blanket?'

'No, no!' I hoped I sounded cheerful. 'Blanket and Buccaneer Bob are still here. Nice, tidy little b.u.g.g.e.rers.'

Then I broke the news about their piggybanks.

'Gone?' repeated Charlie pathetically, his eyes pooling as he looked up at me.

'My money!' Finn's fists became b.a.l.l.s.

Kit and I began a systematic search of the house, trying to work out exactly what had gone.

'Oh no. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have taken my laptop,' he moaned when we got to the sitting room. 'That's going to be a real pain.'

Charlie had crouched down on all fours and was staring into the denuded DVD cupboard. 'Did they really need Mary Poppins?'

When Sacha arrived home from orchestra, the twins rushed to tell her the news.

'A feef came to the house and took our things,' screeched Charlie.

Sacha's hand flew to her mouth. She turned slightly green, as though she was about to be sick.

'Your room looks okay,' I said quickly. 'h.e.l.luva mess, but I don't think that's the burglar's fault.'

She swung around the kitchen, staring at the blank s.p.a.ces. Then she spun on her heels, crashed through the door and pelted towards the smoko hut. There was a short silence before an anguished yell tore the air. Kit and I met at the kitchen door, both running, and sprinted down the track. The boys trotted after us.

Sacha was kneeling on the floor of her hut, smas.h.i.+ng her fist against the wooden wall. 'The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!' she screamed. 'The f.u.c.king idiots!'

'Hey, calm down,' I said, taking hold of her shoulder. 'You're scaring the little ones.'

'Those sodding b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, I'll kill them! They took my stuff.'

We looked at her, baffled. She wasn't Sacha at all. This was a different being altogether: a furious, maddened creature.

'What stuff?' I asked.

'My stuff! My new iPod. My speakers. My money. Even my little telly.' She drove her fist right through a rotten piece of wall. 'This is bulls.h.i.+t!'

'Mine too,' said Finn. 'I told you. They took our piggybanks. Our special piggybanks, that Grandpa gave us.'

'All gone,' added Charlie sadly.

For some reason, those words seemed to pop Sacha's rage like a pin in a balloon. 'This is awful,' she whispered. 'This is h.e.l.l. I want to go home.'

'It's only a burglary,' I said firmly. 'It's not a disaster. In England I know people who've been burgled lots of times-the Caldwell family, remember? Three times in three years. We've got good insurance. At least you've still got your laptop-you took that to school today, didn't you? And look, there's your old iPod in your pocket.'

'We're all fine, that's the important thing,' said Kit, pulling a boy onto each knee. 'n.o.body's hurt.'

'Hurt?' wailed Sacha. 'We are! Of course we are. We're all hurt.'

A police car pulled up an hour later, and the local bobby heaved himself out. I recognised him as one of the school parents: Robert Andrews. He had two rugby-playing children, a boy and a girl. I'd seen them on the field, menacingly shoving their mouthguards in and out of their mouths like hunting chimpanzees then pa.s.sing and tackling with a deadly blend of skill and psychopathy. Robert was one of those slow-moving middle-aged men who have developed a permanent shelf sticking out in front, upon which to rest their beer bottles. He made me feel positively lithe and fit. There was something rea.s.suring about his sheer solidity; he was like one of those toys that wobble but don't fall down.

He gave me a laconic nod. It's a special Kiwi rural male nod. It means 'h.e.l.lo,' and 'please don't display any emotion,' and sometimes, 'I can't remember your name.'

'h.e.l.lo,' I said, advancing on him. 'Martha McNamara.'

He shook my hand with his hairy paw, glancing over my shoulder with a twitch of the facial muscles that I thought was probably his version of a smile. 'G'day, mate,' he said. 'Been having a bit of drama, I hear.'

Kit had stepped out of the kitchen doorway. 'Thanks for dropping by, Robbie.'

I was surprised by all this first-name matiness. Then I remembered that Kit did school trips and sausage sizzles and umpired cricket matches. He did McDonald's. He was one of the in crowd, down at Torutaniwha Primary School.

'You've been unlucky,' said Robbie the bobby. 'We don't have many house burglaries around here. Once in a blue moon.'

He and Kit strolled off for a session of knowledgeable squinting at windows and checking of flowerbeds for footprints. Eventually they arrived in the kitchen. Robert was gloomily certain of the method. 'Tidy job. In through the unlocked kitchen door, clean the place out, off in a vehicle.' I had the impression his crime report would read pretty much like that. Economical.

'More than one?' I asked.

'Hard to tell.'

'They can get away by continuing along the track,' said Kit. 'It runs on through the bush, meets up with a forestry road and comes out three miles north of here.'

The policeman nodded. 'I know that,' he said. 'And so do all the other locals.'

'How come?' I asked.

'The trail ride comes through this bit of land most years.'

'Trail ride?' I pictured romantic hors.e.m.e.n, men of Rohan, re-enacting some venture of yesteryear-perhaps with teams of packhorses and wagons, sleeping under the stars, eating around campfires and communing with the spirits of the land.

Robert stirred half a pound of sugar into his coffee. 'The school holds a ninety-kilometre trail ride as a fundraiser.'

'Lovely. Horses?'

He chortled into his mug. 'Motorbikes. Trail bikes, off road. We ride along the beach, up the riverbed, through the bush here and then into the forestry. You want to come next year, Kit? You've got a four wheeler, haven't you? Bring your lads.'

'I might,' said Kit. 'Thanks.'

'Well, me too,' I huffed, as the feminist in me buzzed militantly to the surface. How dare the man a.s.sume that it would be Kit who would want to take part in this festival of daredevil, petrol-headed machismo? On the other hand, it sounded very long, boring and environmentally deeply dodgy. And after all, what was the point?

'My kids go every year,' said Robert, with fatherly pride. 'They've had their own bikes since they were five.'

I was impressed. The Andrews children weren't much bigger than mine-seven and nine, maybe-yet they happily rode their trail bikes for ninety kilometres on riverbeds and steep hills. Try doing that in Bedfords.h.i.+re. You'd be deafened by the storm of tut-tutting. Child protection agencies would go into hyperdrive.

'Anyway,' I persisted. 'This burglar. Or burglars. D'you think they knew the other way out, then?'

'Quite possibly,' said Robert. 'They like an escape route in case someone comes home and they have to leg it. They don't want to be trapped-that's their nightmare. I'll go out and look for vehicle tracks in a minute.'

'But doesn't that imply they were locals?'

'Or forestry workers. As I say, we don't get many burglaries.'

'I don't understand why they picked on us,' said Kit. 'This house isn't visible from the road. And how did they know we were all out? It was only by chance that I was on a school trip.'

'Maybe they've been watching us,' I said uneasily, glancing out of the window. 'From the trees. Sacha sometimes feels we're being watched.'

'I have the impression they knew what they were looking for,' added Kit.

Robert raised his eyebrows. 'Who was your removal firm?' I told him, and he looked interested. 'D'you remember which lads?'

'Frank, er . . . a man called John, wasn't it, Kit? And Ira Taulafo-well, you know Ira from school. He was just casual, in between jobs.'

The policeman downed the last of his coffee and stood up. 'Better go. Wife's expecting me half an hour ago. There'll be trouble in the camp.'

'Do you know something about those men?' I asked, opening the door for him.

'Can't comment at this stage, but working for a removal company is a pretty neat way to check out who's got what.'

We walked him outside. Robert took a swift look along the track that ran on past the smoko hut, but found no sign of recent vehicles. When he ambled across to his car the twins were loitering, awed and whispering.

'I'll turn the lights on, shall I?' asked the policeman. When his weight hit the seat, the whole vehicle sagged. Blue lights began to flash as he stuck his head out of the window. 'D'you two lads want a ride? Hop in, then.'

They tumbled into the back seat. Robert circled the yard three times, throwing up dust, and dropped them a hundred yards along the drive. I heard a burst of farewell sirens before the twins came pelting back across the cattle stop, their upset at the burglary momentarily forgotten.

'That was cool!' yelled Finn, high-fiving with Kit.

I watched as the police car disappeared behind the willows. 'You don't think it was anything to do with those removal men, do you?'

Kit didn't answer. He was peering into the bush. 'You could hide an army of burglars in there.'

'Or worse things,' said Sacha, from behind us.

Robert hadn't seemed interested in fingerprints, and it didn't look as though he was going to send a forensic team in white bunny suits, so we cleaned the house with obsessive care and a lot of disinfectant, trying to remove the grubby feeling left by the burglary. The place needed a spring clean, to be honest.

'They're still there,' said Sacha. It was Sunday morning and we were tired of scrubbing. 'I can feel their eyes.'

'No you can't,' I retorted, mopping a squashed mosquito off the wall. 'Look. We are not the first people in the world to be burgled, and we sure as h.e.l.l won't be the last. No way is it going to spoil our lives.'

'It is,' said Sacha, scrabbling at her wrist. 'It's not just the burglary. It's something evil that creeps out of the bush.' Her phone made a noise like a bleating goat. She glanced at the screen. 'Bianka. Wants to go to a film this afternoon. Her dad got some free vouchers. Can I stay with her? I'm completely spooked here.'

As she spoke I was absently looking at her phone. She held it to her chest. 'Hey! Don't read my texts.'

'Keep your hair on.' I dug in a plastic shopping bag. 'I've got this spray for your hut, look . . . in case it's infested with something that's biting you. What film?'

She named some romantic comedy, unmemorable but harmless enough.

'What about school tomorrow?'

'I'll take my uniform.'

'Have a lovely time, doll.' I sighed. 'A night away, and you'll be right as rain. Thanks for all your help.'

That evening, Kit and I sat in low deckchairs beneath Hinemoana's hill, sipping Jean's wine. Kit was sketching. Despite the chilly evening air we'd all taken a dip, was.h.i.+ng off defilement in the freezing salt water. Now the twins were building an ambitious ball run.

Liquid gold rolled down the hills and flowed in long fingers across the beach to meet the water. The boys circled their mound with a natural, artless grace. Kit's sketchpad was soon covered in images so vivid that they seemed to dance on the page. As the sun sank lower, he got up to collect driftwood.

Finn came to stand beside me. He was stroking his left ear with one hand but the other arm he laid gently around my neck. His woolly pullover felt warm and sandy.

'What's up, bud? I asked, kissing his cheek.