Chapter 26 – The Games we play

Chapter 26 – The Games we play

Much to Danni’s disgust, the rain started to come down as soon as she and William stepped out onto the pavement. Cursing under her breath, Danni reached for her hood, but William pulled what looked like a heavy-duty beach umbrella out, holding it between them so it covered them both. What started as a gentle hum soon turned into a persistent drumming, running down the metal first in drops then turning into streams.

“Isn’t this just our luck? The second we walk out of the warm is the moment we get rained on.” William commented, turning his eyes up to the sky.

“Don’t have to tell me. Watch out for the leaves or you’ll go flying.” Danni warned, skirting around a pile of slush that might have once been leaves or something. Now it was just a mushy brown mixture. A harsh gust of wind kicked up behind them as they turned onto the road and headed back towards Poppy Cottage. The walk was quiet, neither of them knowing what to say to the other. Danni was too busy trying to think of who else on her wall might serve as a suspect to make conversation and William had a pensive, pinched edge to his features. It gave him an odd expression, almost like he was trying to appear more mature than he was.

“I might just go flying if this wind gets any worse.” William grumbled, his knuckles turning white round the handle of his umbrella. “This is what I get for shopping at car boot sales! Sure, it stands up to the weather, but I’m going to end up like Mary Poppins!”

“That’ll be something to put on the C.V. First reporter to fly with an umbrella!” Danni giggled, grabbing the umbrella as well. Though the pair of them were slight of frame, their combined weight was still enough to keep them both planted firmly on the ground.

“It would make it easier for me to get around. Most of the time I have to walk or bike and in weather like this, I’ve got a better chance of becoming king of England than getting anything presentable to my editor.” As if to prove it, William removed his notebook from his pocket, checking to see if it had gotten soaked at all. Fortunately, it was safe, but the weather seemed to take it as a challenge. With a threatening rumble Danni could feel in her stomach, the pair had to bow against the billowing wind. Just as before, the straight road and curved trees all around them had transformed this once pleasant walk into a wind tunnel and it was blowing at them in full force and fine form.

Rain splattered into their faces, eliciting swears from both of them.

“Here! Put it in my bag, it’s leather so water will slide off.” Danni offered, holding out a hand to take it, blinking in discomfort. She could see, but not well with all the rain on her glasses.

“They’ll be safe like thi-shit!” As if just to spite him, a deluge of water hammered down upon them from the tree cover above and the pages were given a thorough soaking.

“We’re almost back to my place. Then we can get dry and we’ll see what we can salvage.” Danni consoled him, pausing only long enough to clean off her glasses on the hem of her shirt.

“Down here, Poppy’s just… here!” Danni called over the sound of the rain. Now it was coming down in sheets, and she had to pull her hood up, tucking her hair into it so that it would stop flying into her face, doing her jacket all the way up to her chin.

“Poppy?” William asked, leading the way towards the door. Pulling her key from the bottom of her bag, where it had almost been buried by the detritus of her other belongings, she opened the door for William to head inside. She shoved several logs into the pipe to kickstart the heating before following him inside and stripping off her soaked coat.

“It’s the name of the house, Poppy cottage.” She explained, feeling the air warm around them almost as soon as she said it. “We’ll be warm in no time.”

“Is this your place?” William asked from where he sat in the breakfast nook.

“I wish, I’m just here because of a favour for a friend. She’s paying me just to be her housesitter and cleaner, that kind of thing. It’s nothing massive, but it’s a little more money in my pocket.” She explained, pulling off her shoes.

“That’s got to be pretty relaxing…”

“It was… until everything went to hell.” Setting the kettle to a boil and pouring out the water into two prepared cups, she brought them over with the milk and sugar. “I wasn’t sure if you were a milk or sugar kind of person, so…”

“Thanks for this. You didn’t have to.”

“Don’t worry about it. There’s more if you want.”

“Thanks, I’m sorry to be dripping all over your floor.” Pulling off his boots, William tipped one of them upside down and a small stream of water flooded out onto the floor.

‘ Poppy was not going to like that ,’ was all Danni could think.

“I can clean it up later. Just take those wet clothes off.” Danni instructed distractedly, heading for the cupboard whilst she waited for her tea to cool enough for her to drink it.

“I beg your pardon?” William asked with a shocked laugh.

“Don’t let your mind go like that. I’m getting out the clothes horse so I can dry your clothes off!” Danni snapped, setting it up and holding out a hand. Pulling off his coat and the thick jumper underneath, both bearing large wet spots from the rain, he handed them over and she strung them up, placing the rack near the radiator. “You should take your socks off as well. Keeping them on is a good way to get the flu and you don’t want to be bedridden if and when I work out what is going on.”

“You? I’m pretty sure that it’s my job to investigate this story.” He teased, a smirk playing over hiss mouth.

“I’m the one who found the body. Therefore, I’m involved and I’m pretty sure I’ve made a hell of a lot more progress than you.” She replied, trying not to cringe at the feeling of his wet wool socks in her hands.

“Are you going to strip too?”

“I’m not soaked to the bone like you.” She remarked, arranging her own coat on the rack.

“Speaking of which, you need to tell me where you got that coat. It was a biblical storm,” Outside a rumble of thunder echoed, “And you’ve barely got a drop on you.”

“I… I got that coat from Joey. It’s… It was his.” She explained, taking special care with the coat. “As were those boots…”

“Oh…” Just like that, the room seemed to grow cold again. The pair could only sip their tea in the quiet, punctuated only by the occasional rumbles outside.

Finally, Danni chose to break the silence. “You know… you said that you were told to come up to the Widow’s house if you wanted to get more information about Joey… But I didn’t tell anyone that I was up there. I didn’t even know that I was going to be headed up there until we started to talk in the graveyard… and even then, I didn’t tell anyone that I would be there.” She asked, crossing her arms and fixing William with a hard glare.

He froze in his spot, suddenly turning his eyes towards his tea as if he could find the meaning of life in the cup.

“If I told you, you would think that I was insane…” He grumbled. The tone of his voice was so familiar, it took Danni aback. She knew that voice. It was the same one she had heard coming out of her own mouth whenever her parent’s shot her down. It was one borne of years of disappointment, of crushed dreams and betrayed anticipation.

“Try me.” She replied flatly. Anything that he told her, she knew she could beat it.

“You’re really never going to believe me. Trust me.”

“And I’m telling you to trust ME. There is nothing that you can tell me that would surprise me.”

“Yeah… I’m pretty sure that what I have to say tips the scales on finding a dead body.”

She fixed him with a glare. “Try. Me.”

William sucked in a deep breath between his teeth. “I can… see things. Things that… haven’t happened yet.”

“Like… visions? Or is it a sense of Déjà vu?” She asked, sitting back down at the table. Being here with tea and company was quickly becoming a familiar routine for her. She almost wished that she’d had the forethought to make cookies or something like that.

“It’s like a feeling… I don’t know how to explain it really. I’ll wake up and as soon as I’ve opened my eyes, I find myself in a place I’ll have never seen before. I’m just hit with the feeling that I need to go there that day.” He explained. When she didn’t answer immediately, his face fell. “I knew it, you think I’m insane.”

“I believe you.”

It was William’s turn to let out a flat “What?”

“I believe you. After what I’ve seen, that is damn near ordinary. I’ll be honest, I’m even a little disappointed. I thought you were going to say that you had bugged me.”

“I would never. Only the shadiest, most unscrupulous reporters in the world try those tactics. I don’t know what goes inside my head, but it has never steered me wrong. The problem is that… well, no one believes me whenever I try and explain it.”

“Until I came around. But… look, the next time that you get one of those visions, let me know. Maybe I’ll be able to help you work out where it is that you need to be.” Danni insisted.

“Sounds like a deal.” William lifted his cup in a toast and Danni returned the gesture, the porcelain clinking together.

“So, tell me, do you live in the village?” Danni asked, finishing her drink and deciding against going back for more. She’d had her fill of tea after spending all morning drinking it.

“I live in the city, but I have to share with three other guys to afford it.” He explained, pouring himself more tea as Danni moved over to the fridge. She needed something cooler, something fizzier. Setting the coke down on the table, she sank down into her seat again.

“Do you all work for the news?”

“No, it’s just me. The others are all over the place.” Counting them off on his fingers, William said, “One is a cook at a café, since he wants to be a pasty chef. One is a trainer at the gym and one works in an… office I think.”

“You think?” Danni asked, cracking open her drink and taking a deep pull from it. She had been drinking so much tea lately; she had forgotten about what coke tasted like.

“I couldn’t tell you what the hell he’s doing there. Just that he wears a name tag, complains about back aches a lot and has the eyes of a guy who drinks way too much coffee.” He explained. “It’s scary sometimes, like a squirrel on crack.”

“Really? And that leads you to believe that he works in an office?” She enquired.

“You can’t say that the clues don’t point that way.” He remarked.

“Regular Poirot, aren’t you?” Danni replied. “Did your ‘little grey cells’ help you see that?”

“Something like that. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What’s your story?”

“I don’t really have one… Unless you mean the one I’ve been trying to write whilst I’m here.” She confessed, running her finger around the rim of the can. “But honestly, I can barely stand to look at my screen without wanting to tuck my tail and run.”

William waved a hand as if brushing way a cloud of midges.” You’re being too hard on yourself. No-one’s writing is perfect and if you’re comparing yourself to those you’ve read before, then you’re only going to torment yourself for nothing.”

“You’re giving me too much credit. I haven’t even had time to write anything… I’m pretty sure that anything I put out now wouldn’t even be worth to line a hamster cage.”

“Look, this is something I learned the hard way. No one is going to like your first draft, especially you. I’ve been chewed out by my editors more times than most people have had hot meals. But writing anything is like…” He groped around for a metaphor. “Like making a diamond ring. First, you need to dig up the jewels, right? That’s finding inspiration. Then you select the band, right? The setting thing? After that, you take the stone to the jeweler who cuts it and polishes it, putting it all together to create something beautiful, right?”

Danni got the distinct impression that William was doing his best but his lack of knowledge about all thing's jewellery was was obvious.

“I get what you mean. It… Thank you.” She explained, smiling to herself into her drink.

“And if I can be honest for a moment, since you’ve been so open, if your writing is anything like you are as a person, then it’s going to be wonderful to read.”

It was something that she had never known she’d needed to hear until it was said.

“So… can I ask why you got into this in the first place? I mean, if I saw what you did, I’d be trying to find the quickest way to forget about it.”

“I don’t like to admit it, but I only got involved in this because Joey was so kind to me. I was even… This is going to sound so damn stupid, but I think I was starting to get a little crush on him.”

“One of my flatmates has a tattoo of a girl he thought was going to be his wife one day. Then she stole his car, his wallet and almost made off with his dog.”

“His dog?!”

“Yeah, good thing it bit her, and we were able to get everything back. Now she’s rotting in prison, I think and he got the tattoo changed to the name of the dog instead.” He explained and the pair dissolved into fresh laughter.

“Oh my God, that is karma, if I ever saw it!” She declared.

“I’ll drink to that.” William lifted his cup again and they toasted again.

“To karma!”

With a window rattling clap of thunder, Danni almost jumped out of her seat in fear. But before she could settle her racing heart, a sharp ringing came out of nowhere.

“What the hell is that?” She squeaked, rubbing her chest in the hope that it might give her time to breathe.

Looking crestfallen, he pulled his phone from his back pocket.

“Shiiiiiit… It’s my editor. He needs me to come back into the office and wants an… shit… he wants an update.”

“Oh shit…” Chugging the rest of her drink, she pulled off his clothes off the horse and relief filled her from head to toe to find that they were dry as a bone. She mouthed “thank you” towards the ceiling, hoping Poppy would see it. “Come on, get your things on and get going before the weather gets worse.”

Slipping on his things, he paused to root around in his pocket. “Hold on, there’s something I wanted to… here! I know it’s not much, but I thought you might like this.” He held something out to her and it turned out to be a piece of paper.

Taking it, Danni discovered a drawing of her own face was staring back at her. Not a sketch, not a stylised interpretation, a real drawing. One that someone had poured hours into… it was just of her head, but there were signs of a pencil going over and over each part with the utmost care. Someone had sketched out the basic outline of her face, then gone back over it with thicker marks, erasing what lay underneath so the bold lines stuck out neater.

“Oh… Where did you get this?” She asked breathlessly.

“From… Joey’s place. The police are done with searching the place, and they thought this might be evidence of something but… since you’ve been doing your own investigation, I know that you aren’t a suspect. You’re someone Joey thought very highly of.”

“Thank you… it’s beautiful.”

She bid William goodbye as he walked back out into the storm, umbrella held high and clutched tight.

Looking down at the picture, held in her hand delicately as if it were made of glass, she decided. She was going to frame it.

“Ooooo, who was that?” Cooed a voice behind her. Spinning around, she aimed a glare at Erik.

“None of your damn business!” She snapped, folding the picture as carefully as she could and slipping it into her own pocket.