‘For a Rat’ by Lynsey May

In the nine and a half years since Oscar died, his shed had turned into a strange and lonely looking shanty. Sometimes Lorraine stood at her window and thought its degradation malicious, other times she wondered what it was Oscar had been doing all those years, to keep it in such an upright condition. It seemed to her that the force of his personality had held the shed together and without him, it had no choice but to moulder.

It was not the first time the neighbours had complained. Betty on the right was rather polite about it all – Oscar helped her with falling-down shelves or jammed bathroom doors more than once – but the Rosenbergs on the left were passed the point of impatience. The wife’s smile was decidedly steely when they met on their respective front paths, but it was the husband who came round. Lorraine was in the middle of baking a cake. She liked the desserts she made for the grandkids to be special, a practice run was not unusual.

‘Sorry, if I’m interrupting you,’ he said, looking a little on the steely side too. ‘It’s just that shed.’

‘Oh yes.’ Lorraine dusted icing sugar from her hands. ‘The shed.’

‘You said your son-in-law was going to take care of it.’

‘He wants to. He will the next time they come to visit.’

‘That’s all well and good, but we’ve got a bit of a problem and it won’t wait.’

‘Oh dear,’ Lorraine said.

‘Last night my wife was in the garden and she thought she could hear noises, strange noises, coming from the shed. And when she got closer to have a look, what did she catch sight of but a rat, sneaking out from under it.’

‘A rat?’

‘And with the children … Something will have to be done. As soon as possible. We were thinking there’s surely someone local who could deal with it, a professional.’

‘A professional,’ Lorraine said. Her hands twisted together, eel-like, in the cracked plastic pocket of her apron.

‘Or we could do it, Greg and me.’

‘That’s kind.’ It was kind, but she had to get rid of him. He asked for an answer in the next few days and she promised. He was shaking his head as he walked away.

Lorraine closed the door firmly behind him and returned to her cake. The mixture had deflated during its abandonment and she suspected no amount of whipping would set it right. She did her best, and put it in the oven thinking she could still have a go at the icing at least. Easter chicks, she’d been planning, a green, grassy butter-cream with piped Easter chicks.

Her daughters picked on the shed too, as part of their larger ploy. They agreed it was about time Lorraine sold the big old house altogether. She needed somewhere smaller, certainly somewhere closer. But it was the daughters who’d moved away, not her, and Lorraine was not ready.

As the kitchen became infused with a warm sugary smell, she filled the sink and started to wipe her dishes clean. But Lorraine didn’t look down at the slippery bowls between her fingers, all she could see was the shed; glowering in the corner of a garden also on the verge of going bad. The shed’s wood had darkened over the years, and in the pre-streetlight gloom of the early evening, it looked duller and darker than ever. A rat, he’d said, a rat.

Lorraine thought of the neighbours who’d lived on the left before, a decent enough couple she and Oscar used to share the occasional bottle of wine with. The wife wore too much lipstick, smiled too often, but she’d been perfectly nice and shown plenty enough hand-patting sympathy when he died. The husband borrowed a lot of tools and had a lot of DIY questions to discuss, or at least that was the pretext when he and Oscar disappeared into the shed for a smoke, and more often than not a wee nip too. Lorraine would have liked to know what they were really talking about.

She hadn’t gone into the shed when he was with her, and she hadn’t gone into the shed since he died.

There had been better looking men than Oscar, but she liked him well enough, especially when he made it so clear he liked her. It was only after almost ten years of marriage she began to doubt whether he loved her the way he claimed to. And once she started doubting, it was impossible for her to stop.

She frowned and she sighed and for a while he tried to make her stop, bought her flowers and made promises, but she couldn’t believe him and eventually he gave up and went back to the way he’d always been. Lorraine continued to make his favourite lunches, and tried not to worry about all those hours he started to spend in the shed.

When Oscar died, he was not so young, but as Lorraine well knew, he wasn’t so old either. Worse, he was one of those men who become more attractive with age, and she knew that if he’d realised, she’d have lost him. She started to sneak glances when he was paying attention to something else, appraising the way he looked and wondering when he’d notice, if he hadn’t already.

It had become late by the time the cake was ready to be taken from the oven. Doggedly, she tried to create her grassy idyll, but she hadn’t left enough time for the sponge to cool and everything slipped and slid. No matter how hard she tried to save them, the Easter chicks became yellow sacs of pus on a bilious sea. She tipped the whole thing into the bin and went to bed with a glass of port.

But she could not sleep.

In the double bed with one side of the covers still flat and tucked in, Lorraine remembered all the times she’d stood at the doorway to the shed, picturing the love letters, the perfume, the incriminating pair of panties she might find. But she never looked. She’d long ago decided she didn’t need to know Oscar’s secrets. If he’d stopped loving her, at least he had stayed, and so she would be grateful and she wouldn’t force a choice. She’d be Lorraine, who had only suspicions and never needed to act.

The shed looked more welcoming at night, cosied up by the light of the orange streetlamps. She stood at the kitchen window, and thought of men she didn’t know dragging all of Oscar’s secrets out onto the lawn. She sat at the kitchen table to lace up her stoutest shoes.

It was four AM and the streets were silent. She took the hammer from under the sink just in case, but the wood around the padlock was so rotted all she had to do was pull it away. She felt the heft of the metal in the palm of her hand and it was cold and comforting. The door had to be pulled, and it squealed, the noise too much for the small garden.

The shed did not smell of Oscar. It was earthy and rotten and clogged her throat. Lorraine switched on the handheld light her daughter had given her. It was shaped like a mushroom cap, and when the top was pressed down, the whole thing lit up. She held the glowing circle in her hands and listened, wondering whether that rat was in there with her. The only noise she was aware of was the chattering of the light between her fingers.

Focusing only on its safe glow, she placed the light on the table and reached into her pocket. There was no choice but to look round quickly, and she was grateful that the BBQ set turned out to be dead ahead. She stepped towards it, remembering Oscar on the far side of the kitchen, pummelling and tenderizing steaks as she eased a fresh loaf from the tin.

‘It’s already dead.’ A favourite joke.

‘Can’t have it wandering off the plate now can we?’

‘Course not, love.’

The match hit the gasoline with a small squawk. Flames whumped into life, rustling the hair of her eyebrows, but it quickly shrunk and settled back into a more sedate affair. She retreated to the door, careful to look only at the flames, then, when she could feel the chill of the night air on the back of her legs she put the can down on the floor and kicked it over. The liquid splashed and trickled slowly, but Lorraine knew to turn and walk fast. She had to be back at the house before they reached the sedate flames and turned them into something else.

She stripped off her coat and pulled her dressing gown over her nightie, the shoes were a struggle but she wrested them off by the window, as she watched. The shed smoked, and for a second she imagined Oscar in there, a Christmas cigar between his teeth, but there was a crack and then she could see the flames though the joins in the wood and moments later the flickers of light broke free. Her chest was tight and she turned the cold tap on to run her wrists beneath it. She thought, just maybe, she saw a small black shape dart away across the lawn, but the flames striped and burned across her vision so strongly, she couldn’t be sure.

From issue #1: autumn/winter 2015

About the Author
Lynsey May lives, loves and writes in Edinburgh. She has been a recipient of a New Writers Award from Scottish Book Trust and a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. Her short fiction has found its way into various journals and anthologies, including The Stinging Fly, Gutter and New Writing Scotland.