Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories Read Free Page B

last time she attended group.
    That night her father had a phone call. He took the phone and sat at the dining table, listening; after a moment stood and walked into his study, giving a quick backward glance at his daughter before closing the door behind him. Jane felt as though her chest had suddenly frozen: but after some minutes she heard her father’s laugh: he was not, after all, talking to the police detective. When after half an hour he returned, he gave Jane another quick look, more thoughtful this time.
    “That was Andrew.” Andrew was a doctor friend of his, an Englishman. “He and Fred are going to Provence for three months. They were wondering if you might want to housesit for them.”
    “In London ?” Jane’s mother shook her head. “I don’t think—”
    “I said we’d think about it.”
    “ I’ll think about it,” Jane corrected him. She stared at both her parents, absently ran a finger along one eyebrow. “Just let me think about it.”
    And she went to bed.
    —
    S he went to London. She already had a passport, from visiting Andrew with her parents when she was in high school. Before she left, there were countless arguments with her mother and father, and phone calls back and forth to Andrew. He assured them that the flat was secure, there was a very nice reliable older woman who lived upstairs, that it would be a good idea for Jane to get out on her own again.
    “So you don’t get gun-shy,” he said to her one night on the phone. He was a doctor, after all: a homeopath not an allopath, which Jane found reassuring. “It’s important for you to get on with your life. You won’t be able to get a real job here as a visitor, but I’ll see what I can do.”
    It was on the plane to Heathrow that she made a discovery. She had splashed water onto her face, and was beginning to comb her hair when she blinked and stared into the mirror.
    Above her eyebrows, the long hairs had grown back. They followed the contours of her brow, sweeping back towards her temples; still entwined, still difficult to make out unless she drew her face close to her reflection and tilted her head just so. Tentatively she touched one braided strand. It was stiff yet oddly pliant; but as she ran her finger along its length a sudden surge flowed through her. Not an electrical shock: more like the thrill of pain when a dentist’s drill touches a nerve, or an elbow rams against a stone. She gasped; but immediately the pain was gone. Instead there was a thrumming behind her forehead, a spreading warmth that trickled into her throat like sweet syrup. She opened her mouth, her gasp turning into an uncontrollable yawn, the yawn into a spike of such profound physical ecstasy that she grabbed the edge of the sink and thrust forward, striking her head against the mirror. She was dimly aware of some one knocking at the lavatory door as she clutched the sink and, shuddering, climaxed.
    “Hello?” someone called softly. “Hello, is this occupied?”
    “Right out,” Jane gasped. She caught her breath, still trembling; ran a hand across her face, her fingers halting before they could touch the hairs above her eyebrows. There was the faintest tingling, a temblor of sensation that faded as she grabbed her cosmetic bag, pulled the door open and stumbled back into the cabin.
    —
    Andrew and Fred lived in an old Georgian row house just north of Camden Town, overlooking the Regent’s Canal. Their flat occupied the first floor and basement; there was a hexagonal solarium out back, with glass walls and heated stone floor, and beyond that a stepped terrace leading down to the canal. The bedroom had an old wooden four- poster piled high with duvets and down pillows, and French doors that also opened onto the terrace. Andrew showed her how to operate the elaborate sliding security doors that unfolded from the walls, and gave her the keys to the barred window guards.
    “You’re completely safe here,” he said, smiling. “Tomorrow we’ll