Read by Miranda Harrison
The hood of Jessie’s parka was pulled forward so it was not until she was nearly home that she caught her first glimpse of him. A huge ginger Tom, stretched out in their window box. He was squashing the purple crocuses her mum, Dawn, had planted there. A bit of nature to counteract all the car fumes, Dawn had said.
When Jessie opened the gate, she realised with a start it was not a cat at all. The fox opened one eye. Jessie took off her rucksack and held it protectively across her chest. You could tell from the size of him that it was a male fox. The jangle of Jessie’s keys didn’t seem to faze him. She wanted to shoo him away but something about him made her hesitate. Brazen, that’s what Nan would have called him, if she was still around.
Dawn had a notebook she kept open on the kitchen table where she sat half the day watching the wildlife through the patio door. She listed each creature she saw:
13th March 2019
seven pigeons
first ever goldfinch
next door’s cat
three squirrels
a magpie (one for sorrow)
one rat.
‘A rat! For God’s sake Mum,’ said Jessie when she came in from school and saw the list.
‘They’re all God’s creatures,’ said Dawn, as if there were no difference between a goldfinch and a rat.
Jessie stopped going in the garden after that, even though it was a good place to smoke.
Next door’s cat and the rat (or was it rats?) appeared more frequently in the notebook entries after Dawn tried to entice a hedgehog into the garden with saucers of cat food.
And now this fox had appeared, lounging like a king on his crocus bed.
Later that evening, when Jessie came into the kitchen to say goodnight to Dawn, there was a fox-shaped shadow sitting outside the patio door.
‘That’s Reynard,’ said Dawn gazing through the glass, a Mona Lisa smile on her face.
*
The tulips, which had replaced the crocuses, were starting to go over, their red petals splayed open or dropped. When Jessie came home each day, the house felt different but she couldn’t figure out what had changed. Perhaps it was Dawn, who’d taken to humming tunes Jessie didn’t recognise. They were cheerful tunes and better than the usual silence.
Jessie sat on the sofa to watch telly. A dark orange hair, tipped black at one end and snowy white at the other, lay on the cushion. Jessie held the wiry hair between her fingers and went through to the kitchen to show Dawn. ‘Look what’s been in here!’ she said. ‘You need to keep the patio door shut.’
‘Mmm,’ said Dawn, distractedly.
A day later, Jessie found, not just a hair on the sofa, but the whole of Reynard, sitting upright in Jessie’s usual spot. And on the other half of the sofa was Dawn. A Spring Watch programme about moles was on telly. Dawn and Reynard were engrossed by the scenes on the screen and neither looked round until Jessie coughed. Reynard’s amber eyes rested on Jessie. Unblinking.
Dawn stroked Reynard’s head between his triangular ears. ‘It’s okay, it’s only Jessie. She won’t hurt you.’
There was a rank odour, like the smell when you walk past the Gents, only stronger.
When Jessie backed out of the room, Dawn and Reynard resumed their telly-watching.
‘Ray’s quite tame, you know,’ Dawn said when she eventually came upstairs to find Jessie. ‘You’ll come to like him.’
‘They’re really dangerous. Look.’ Jessie, held out her phone to show Dawn. ‘One bit off a baby’s finger!’
‘You can’t believe everything you read on the internet, there’s all sorts of rubbish on there.’ As Dawn left to return to Ray, she said ‘You know, in Russia lots of people have them as pets. Not that Ray’s a pet.’
Jessie listened, over and over, to the playlist she’d named Lonesome. Sam Smith sang ‘Stay with Me’, a tear ran down Jessie’s cheek and she wiped it away with her sleeve. She wandered downstairs to join Dawn. When Jessie sat in the armchair Ray gave a low growl from the sofa where he was lying with his snout on Dawn’s knee. Dawn trailed her fingers along his back where the bristles were blackest. Country File was on. A farmer was delivering a lamb with a whoosh of water and blood. Ray looked over at Jessie and licked his lips.
*
The sun blazed down and Jessie was in the garden, digging little holes in the lawn to pass the time now that it was the summer holidays. Mooching around, Dawn called it. The bird feeders were empty, as was the cat food saucer intended for hedgehogs, so there was no longer any risk of rats. Dawn was only interested in one type of wildlife now. Jessie could see Ray’s outline skulking towards the armchair where he cocked one leg.
The whole house smelled of Ray. Ray and fried chicken. The top two shelves of the fridge bulged with a roast chicken, chicken drumsticks, chicken breast pieces, turkey slices, and ready meals of chicken korma, chicken nuggets, and crispy duck pancakes. The bottom shelf contained four long boxes of free range eggs, leaving a small corner for Jessie’s tofu and Quorn.
Ray sat at the table with Dawn, his bushy tail hanging down, curled round one of the chair legs. He was much bigger than before, the largest fox Jessie had ever seen. Perhaps he was fluffing up his coat to give this impression. Maybe it was all the chicken.
Jessie took her dinner of tofu chunks and microwaved rice to her bedroom. When Jessie went to clean her teeth before bed, Dawn had just finished washing in the bathroom.
‘Night,’ Dawn said to Jessie. As Dawn walked into her own bedroom, slinking along by her side was Ray.
*
At breakfast Ray sat on his usual chair, his auburn paws on the table, dipping his snout into a plate brimming with scrambled eggs. Jessie poured oat milk onto her cornflakes. Dawn took a sip from the mug of coffee she was cradling and placed it down. That was moment Jessie saw the scratches on Dawn’s neck. Four dark red lines close together.
Jessie frowned, then raised her eyebrows to ask Dawn what the hell was going on.
‘He was only playing,’ said Dawn. She spooned more egg onto Ray’s plate.
Jessie grabbed her parka from the hall, and ignored Dawn and Ray as she walked out through the patio door into the garden, trailing her coat behind her. She pulled at the wire around the hole in the back fence, wriggled through the gap onto the common, and walked on and on, all the way to the beech trees at the far end.
Jessie laid out her parka and sat on it, her back against a tree trunk, and smoked a cigarette in long drags. She could just make out the house in the distance and the glow of the telly. The hazel fur inside her parka was soft and beckoning. Jessie curled up in a tight ball in the hollow at the base of the tree and pulled her hood over her head.
(c) Sadie Nott, 2019
Sadie Nott began writing in 2014 and is a research psychologist by background. She is working on her second novel. Her short fiction has appeared in LossLit, The Selkie and The Book of Godless Verse. She lives in South London where she watches garden foxes with admiration and trepidation.
Miranda Harrison: Credits include More Than This (Bread & Roses); Women Redressed (Arcola); The Mesmer (Dirty Dick Vaults). Classics: Nurse, Romeo & Juliet (Leicester Square Theatre); Mother, Blood Wedding (Barons Court). Voiceover work includes BBC Children in Need; charity & corporate narrations; educational audio. Miranda also runs new writing event Page to Stage.
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