‘Aye, left some shoot in Montserrat or somewhere, just walked out and flew home on no notice, left them short-handed or shorttitted or whatever the phrase is. We’ve had the agency on the phone at the house — much to parental consternation — and something called a Creative Director, and even a lawyer, issuing threats. Very unprofessional of the girl.’
‘You mean, like, just to be here this weekend?’
‘Yup. Never thought she and old Joe were even that close.’ Ellie clicks her mouth again. ‘Grier Shows Familial Emotion shock. Who knew?’ She flicks a glance at me. ‘Assuming that really is her reason. Like I say, with Grier, given it’s the stated one, almost certainly not. Made off with one of their cameras, too, and some incredibly expensive lens, apparently.’
‘Yeah, I bumped into her on the beach at Vatton forest yesterday. She had a camera with a big lens there. Went to see Joe, lying in Geddon’s, then had a coffee.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Ellie sounds like even this chance meeting might have been deeply suspicious, though I can’t see how.
‘So, what?’ I ask her. ‘Grier just upped and left as soon as she heard Joe was dead?’
‘Nope. Day or so after.’
‘Aha.’
‘Yeah. Ah-fucking-ha, as you might say, Stewart.’
When Grier was fourteen she really wanted a horse but her dad wouldn’t buy her one. Ponies had been good enough for Ellie but then she’d kind of outgrown that phase and, besides, Grier wasn’t good with pets. She’d had various animals over the years and each time she’d doted on them for the first few weeks or months and then slowly lost interest.
Dogs especially; she’d play with them and take them for walks when they were still puppies and the weather was good, but then as they aged and the year turned wetter she’d find excuses, and other people in the family, usually Ellie, would have to take them for walks, or they’d just be left free to run around the garden. One Dalmatian, given the freedom of the Hill House grounds after Grier had found the animal too clingy and a bit stupid, had jumped over the wall into the path of a refuse truck and died messily. Grier had been less than distraught and suggested that the way was now clear to get a Samoyed, or maybe a Newfoundland. That kind of solidified Don’s attitude towards the subject of Grier and pets.
Still, she really wanted a horse; perhaps — Ellie reckoned when she told me this story — just because Ellie had only ever had ponies. Don usually indulged Grier in pretty much everything, but there was a feeling that, gradually, over the years, she’d made him look a bit more foolish each time she cajoled and convinced him that this time would be different and she could be trusted with a new pet, and now Don had finally decided enough was enough. There would be no horse.
Grier sulked mightily. There was some heroic door slamming. Don retaliated by having all the house doors fitted with those overhead hydraulic closing gizmos that close doors automatically and softly.
Grier took up golf, which, if it was a reaction to not being allowed a horse, probably wasn’t one that anybody would have anticipated. As was the case with most sports and hobbies that Grier could be bothered to pursue beyond any initially frustrating phase, she proved to be a natural, and got really good at it, about as good as it’s possible to get in the course of a year. She was quickly invited to join the regional youth team but turned them down. She abandoned the game completely and gave away the expensive set of clubs Don had bought her. She’d learned all she needed to know and she’d take the game up again when she was old and couldn’t do proper exercise. Don had taken the game up himself some years earlier and was struggling to get his handicap below twenty-five. How he felt about this casual, cavalier mastering — jeez, she learned so fast it was more like downloading — and abrupt dismissal was not recorded.
Anyway, the following spring, the main lawn of Hill House — the one visible from the lounge and the conservatory, the one that visitors to the house could see as soon as they came down the drive — suddenly erupted into flower, from bulbs somebody had dug into the grass the year before. The flowers made up a picture of a severed horse’s head, maybe five or six metres from the tip of its nose to the ragged bloody neck; red tulips stood in for the blood.
It wasn’t a particularly good portrait of a severed horse’s head, and it never really got a chance to bloom fully, but it was shocking enough. Mrs M nearly had a fit. The whole lawn was razed, ploughed and re-sown within a couple of days.
