How long she slept Ginny had no idea. When she woke, she could not remember having heard the car drive off. It was almost dark in the room, though she could just about see the outlines of the furniture. The air was stuffy too, smelling stale; all the windows were shut, firmly secured. Through the open door she could see a strip of light coming from the kitchen. Someone was in there, moving about. She padded over in her bare feet.
‘Hello, love! Sleep well?’ It was Bernie, crouched in front of the open fridge. With a satisfied grunt he extracted a flat packet of streaky bacon. ‘Thought I’d let you sleep. You looked as though you needed it. How are you now?’
‘Famished and filthy.’
‘I’m doing bacon and eggs for supper. If you’re really hungry I could throw in a couple of sausages.’
‘Urgh, I couldn’t face it! I’ll take some muesli if we’ve enough milk, and then a bath.’
Bernie sat at the table with her as she ate, deferring his cooking — as he said — till she was in the tub. His face was drawn, with deep shadows of tiredness under his eyes. It had been the worst day he had ever experienced, he told her. He’d been called to accidents before, but never anything as horrifying as this. There had been more deaths — two of them in ambulances on the way to Lingford — and more were expected before the night was over.
‘I don’t know if you’ve heard already, but ours was not the only incident, though none of the others were as had.’ He rubbed his hand across his forehead, then squeezed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. ‘Isolated encounters, yet several people killed.’
‘D’you have a headache, love?’ she interrupted him.
‘So much pesticide was sprayed around the place, I think we all caught some of it. Make sure you rinse your eyes again. I’ll give you something mild and an eyebath.’
Bernie went to the bathroom with her, inspecting it thoroughly before permitting her to turn on the water. The windows were tightly shut with rubber insulation in the gaps, but he was particularly careful about the vents in the floorboards through which the waste pipes led, and also about the bath itself. Before he left she gave him the plastic bag containing her T-shirt.
He was taking no chances, she reflected as she lay back in the soothing water after having soaped herself all over. From now on, that was the way they would have to live. Tapping out shoes before putting them on. Looking out for tell-tale signs in every corner. Wire gauze over the windows. She had even left the bathroom door ajar in case — just in case — she needed to scream for help.
The bath water was dirty and she let it run out, using the hand-shower to rinse off the suds. The only shampoo Lesley had left was an unpleasant, highly-perfumed concoction which she’d won in a raffle. Ginny sloshed a generous amount over her matted hair, sticky from the fluid the moths had spat at her. To her relief it washed out easily without taking the hair with it, though the shampoo smell lingered.
Drying herself, she wondered what to do next. Spending the night alone in this house with Bernie had not been what she’d had in mind. There had to be a certain trust between sisters, hadn’t there?
She dressed in the fresh clothes she had brought with her — new salmon-coloured jeans, plus a long-sleeved, high-necked cream blouse and different boots — then went downstairs. That was something else they would have to adjust to: keeping well-covered as a protection against these caterpillars.
Bernie was in the lounge, stretched out in one of the armchairs. He stood up as she went in.
‘Drink?’
‘Whisky. Sorry I took so long. How was the egg and bacon?’
‘Fine.’ He poured her a generous couple of fingers. ‘We haven’t seen that outfit before. You look absolutely gorgeous.’
‘Bernie, we have to get one thing straight. I’m not spending the night here. I’m going back to the cottage.’
‘You’re crazy!’ He stood stock still, her glass in his hand. ‘Have you thought what that means?’
‘It means, my love, that you sleep here and I sleep down there.’ She took the glass away from him. ‘Cheers!’
‘If that’s all you’re worried about you can stay in me spare room and lock the door.’
‘If I stayed in the spare room I wouldn’t want to lock the door.’
‘Ginny, for God’s sake, these things are all around us. For all I know we’d not even get as far as the car. What if they’re waiting in the car? Let alone the problems of getting into your cottage and checking it’s okay.’ Looking pale with worry, he poured himself another drink, but remained standing by the sideboard without tasting it. ‘D’you really imagine anyone is going to venture out in this village tonight?’
‘You would,’ she said calmly, sitting down. ‘The moment that phone rang and a patient called for you. You’d go through nuclear fall-out to see to some old dear’s rheumatism.’
‘Half my old dears died today. Those well enough to go to the Spring Fête usually went early.’
They both fell silent, regarding each other sullenly. He was right of course, she knew that much; if only she hadn’t fallen in love with him she’d have accepted staying in the spare room with no argument. He suggested phoning around to a few people to find out what was happening in the village — but who? The local constable would have been the obvious man, but he was dead. So was the vicar, and the scout master; and Johnson who ran the garage had lost his wife.
‘What about the woman from the Garden Centre?’
‘Mrs Agnew? She’s one of those in hospital. I don’t want to upset people more than necessary, so we have to choose someone fairly level-headed.’
In the end he risked a call to the landlord of the Plough. His two nephews who had been staying with him had both been killed, but at least he was known as a hard, sensible sort of man, not easily upset. As it turned out, no one answered.
‘I’m going to the cottage,’ Ginny stated firmly, downing the rest of her drink in one gulp. ‘A phone call first to Jeff Pringle about tomorrow, then I’m off.’
She found his number in her diary, dialled it and got a recording machine which instructed her to leave her message after the tone. The tone never came. Eventually there was a click, then the line went dead.
‘So much for that,’ she said, turning back to Bernie. She began to unbutton her blouse. ‘Don’t get too excited. I’m consulting you now as a doctor. That stuff the moths spat at me seems to have left a bit of a rash. It’s patchy, where it soaked through the T-shirt.’
‘Does it hurt at all?’
‘No.’
‘Itchy?’
‘It was smarting a little in the bath. Like sunburn.’
‘What about your back?’
She slipped out of the blouse. ‘Much the same, isn’t it?’
‘Mm.’ He swivelled her around again and she felt her nipples hardening under his gaze, yearning for him to touch them. ‘You can get dressed now. I’m going to give you some calamine cream to use when you get home. But I’d like to see you again tomorrow.’
‘Any time, doctor,’ she murmured ironically.
He was gone for almost five minutes. When he returned he had with him a selection of protective gear to wear during the drive to the cottage: a hat each, with a loose gauze face mask of the type beekeepers use, gauntlet gloves and rubber surgical gloves for underneath them. He helped her put them on.
‘Thanks.’ With that gauze in front of her face she could not even kiss him goodnight, she thought. It made her feel unusually virtuous. ‘Should we go?’
He opened the front door. Before he could object, she had already stepped outside ahead of him. The night was uncannily quiet, as though holding its breath. Gripping an aerosol pesticide spray in one hand, she stepped cautiously on to the driveway. Somewhere in those deep shadows she was convinced the caterpillars must be lurking.