KERRY WILKINSON
FOR RICHER,
FOR POORER
PAN BOOKS
For my little sister.
Good job we grew up.
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1
Harriet Blackledge closed the door of the children’s bedroom and leant against the hallway wall, letting out a large breath. It had been another one of those days. Ian had been called into the office for yet another Sunday and she’d been left lugging the kids around Chester Zoo by herself. By the time she’d stopped them running off, persuaded them they weren’t allowed to ride the giant tortoises, and told them that climbing into the primate enclosure wasn’t a good idea, she was exhausted.
When it came to monkeys, her pair were quite enough, thank you.
Ian’s voice echoed through the house from downstairs: ‘Harry, where’s the TV remote?’
Harriet winced. Having spent the past twenty-five minutes reading Jemma and Thomas separate bedtime stories, the last thing she wanted was her husband’s booming voice to wake them up again. She made delicate shushing noises and started down the stairs.
Quite how she’d got to this, she wasn’t really sure. She had a degree and wanted a career at some point . . . yet somehow she’d ended up as one of those kept stay-at-home mums she’d always ridiculed.
Tripping over the bottom step, Harriet righted herself and headed into the living room.
‘. . . always in the same spot. It’s not as if it’s grown legs, things don’t just walk . . .’ Ian Blackledge was picking up cushions from the sofa, before turning and spotting his wife in the doorway. ‘There you are, do you know—’
‘I’ve just put the kids to bed. You’re going to wake them.’
Ian scowled at his wife for a moment. He hated being interrupted, which was why Harriet did it as often as she could. She held his gaze until he went back to searching.
He continued as if nothing had happened, his boring voice boring into the walls, boring her. Boring, boring, boring.
‘. . . I was just saying that these things don’t lose themselves. Whenever I’ve finished watching television, I leave it on the table underneath – that way I know where to find it again . . .’
Harriet rolled her eyes behind his back. How many times had he said ‘I’ in that sentence? I, I, I. What a wanker. And she was married to him. Four thousand, five hundred and thirty-five days and counting: that’s how long ago it was that she’d said ‘I do’. Back then, there was no money, no big house, no expensive dresses and no bloody business.
‘. . . I mean, it’s not that hard, is it? If you use something, you put it back where you picked it up from . . .’
At least she had the kids. She had them. Ian had been in Johannesburg when Jemma was born and his phone had been buzzing constantly when Thomas said hello to the world. Well, gurgled a sob at the world.
‘. . . I’ve said it before, Harry, and I’m serious this time – someone’s going to have to have a word with those kids. Always picking things up and not returning them. I mean . . .’
Someone’s going to have to have a word: meaning her. He wasn’t even subtle nowadays.
The words slipped out before Harriet even knew they were in her head. ‘They’ve got names.’
Ian spun around again, cushion in hand. ‘What?’
‘Our kids. They have names: Jemma and Thomas.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘They’re not those kids – they’re our kids and they have names.’
Ian frowned again. He didn’t like people talking back to him, which Harriet well knew because of the amount of time he spent banging on about it. Most of his complaints about work ended with: ‘. . . and I’m not sure who it is they think they’re talking to – but I’m the boss of that company and I’ll happily fire them if that’s what they want . . .’
That was the clean version anyway. After a few drinks, he’d be threatening any number of anatomically awkward acts upon his workforce. Harriet suspected he was worse to work for than he was to live with – and that was saying something.
She continued holding his stare. This time Ian didn’t look away. ‘What are you trying to say?’
He couldn’t even think of a different question but there was no going back now. Harriet felt something flare in her stomach. It had been there many times before but she always backed down, unwilling to have the argument. Always thinking of the children.
She took a deep breath. ‘They’re kids. Children play – they were watching “The Lion King” in here earlier while I cooked tea. Sometimes things get moved, sometimes things get knocked off. Don’t you remember being young?’
‘I always knew to respect my elders.’
He really was a bore. How had that skinny, smiling student who had so charmed her become this suit-wearing dullard of a man? His hair had started to go grey not long after he turned thirty, then he stopped doing anything that involved the slightest amount of exercise. Then he never wanted to do things at the weekend and the kids had come along to ‘fix’ their marriage. Meanwhile, everything became about ‘the business’, while she continued being the perfect, thin, homemaking wife.
‘Didn’t your dad used to hit you?’ she said.
It was a low blow but Harriet wanted it to be. Ian took half a step backwards, eyes bulging. ‘I . . .’
‘I’m saying that “respecting” your elders didn’t count for much. Kids are kids – they need discipline but they have to have space so they can be children too.’
Harriet could see Ian’s shock beginning to boil into rage. The way he’d been treated by his father was something they’d spoken about years ago, when they were in love and they shared their deepest secrets with each other. They’d lain in bed, bodies entwined, and she’d listened as he cried. Different times, different people.
His eyebrow was twitching, bottom lip bobbing. His voice was low, almost a growl. ‘What are you trying to say?’
Harriet felt a lump in her throat and knew she’d gone too far. She replied with a sigh: ‘That being angry at them isn’t going to help. It’s only a remote control – if it’s down the back of the sofa then I’m sure they didn’t mean it.’
That wasn’t what she wanted to say at all. What she should have told him was the truth – that she wasn’t happy and that no amount of money was going to change that. In so many ways, she’d enjoyed herself more living in their poky old flat with noisy neighbours, a dodgy TV that needed a whack, a fridge that made a dangerous-sounding hum a couple of times a day, and a constant Friday- and Saturday-night showcase of idiots walking past their window throwing beer cans and drunkenly hurling up on the pavement. At the time she’d thought she hated it; now it seemed like living.
Ian wasn’t backing down: ‘Perhaps if you kept a closer eye on them?’
‘I can’t watch t
hem every minute of the day – I was cooking. It’s only a remote control! It’s a Sunday, perhaps if you were home with them more often . . .’
Ian tossed the cushion to the floor. ‘What do you think I do all day? Sit around playing games? You know how important this deal is to the business. What do you think pays for this house? Your clothes? Your car?’ He threw his hands up in the air theatrically. ‘Money doesn’t grow on bushes, you know.’
Harriet sighed. She didn’t want to have this argument because they’d only ever go around in circles. She could never tell him the truth: keep your house, your car, the clothes; keep it all. She didn’t want any of it. He kept bringing it up, thinking it was something he would always have over her, when the only reason she allowed him to have it was because she didn’t want her kids to suffer the moneyless upbringing she’d had.
‘Gone quiet now, haven’t you,’ he taunted.
One day she’d tell him the truth.
Harriet stepped forward, ready to help the search, when there was a crash from the kitchen. Her first thought was that the kids were going to be awoken again, then she caught her husband’s eye and there was a ripple of fear. Despite what he’d become, the one thing Ian offered was security and she always felt safe around him. Seeing the confusion and anxiety in his eyes sent a shiver through her.
Ian bounded across the room, but froze next to her as the sound of heavy boots boom-boom-boomed around the walls.
There were people in the house.
Ian thrust a protective arm across her but Harriet was already heading for the stairs when a man appeared in the doorway. He was wearing black and grey camouflage-style cargo trousers, with a padded black long-sleeved top. Harriet froze, half-turning towards her husband, but there were three more identically clad men entering their living room through the other door. All four wore balaclavas and thick, dark gloves. Over their shoes were supermarket carrier bags. Harriet opened her mouth to scream to who knew who but the man was quicker, grabbing and spinning her in one movement, simultaneously putting a hand across her mouth. Harriet could taste the polyester pushing into her gums.
Ian turned from the men to her and back again. She could see the terror in the whites of his eyes. The tallest of the four men marched forward, effortlessly shoving Ian to one side and sending him sprawling towards the sofa. He kept moving until he was in front of Harriet, reaching into his pocket and taking out a pistol. Harriet felt the other man holding her tighter as she began to flail involuntarily.
An actual gun was pointing at her.
Harriet had seen them on TV, at the cinema. She’d heard the loud bangs, seen the brawny action figures with huge arms and the weedy gang members. She’d read the books and the news reports. Everyone became desensitised to the idea of guns because so many forms of entertainment put them front and centre.
But that was different to seeing an actual weapon being pointed at her. Harriet watched the man’s gloved finger rest on the trigger, using the merest amount of pressure. The slightest slip and that would be it.
‘Shhh,’ he whispered, perfectly calmly, as if comforting a crying child. Harriet forced herself to take a breath through the man’s glove, standing straighter, letting her arms flop by her side. Behind, the other figure slightly loosened his grip.
The first intruder turned towards Ian but didn’t lower the angle of the gun, which was still pointing at Harriet’s head. ‘Where’s the panic button?’ he asked.
Ian was on the floor, head resting on the lip of the sofa, not knowing where to look. The thought popped into Harriet’s mind that his suit was creased and she knew how much he hated that. He’d have her ironing trousers over and over, or simply drop half-a-dozen off at the dry cleaners in one go. Then she wondered why she was thinking about suits when there was a gun pointing at her.
‘What panic button?’ Ian replied.
Harriet coughed slightly, telling herself it was because of the fingers stuffed in her mouth and not because her husband had just lied to a man who was pointing a gun at her. He hadn’t even had the good grace to do it convincingly.
The man with the weapon stepped nearer, holding the gun so close to Harriet that she went cross-eyed as she stared down the barrel. She had always thought those stylised shots in movies were completely over the top but here she was in that same position. What should she be looking for? Should she be able to see the bullet? Should his finger be twitching?
His voice sounded sort of local, not with the complete Mancunian twang that some had but there was certainly a hint. ‘I don’t give three chances, sonny. Where’s the panic button?’
Harriet knew her husband too well. She could see his eyes darting and read his body language. He wasn’t sure whether to be aggressive or deflated. He didn’t accept defeats very well but this was surely different – their children were upstairs and someone was pointing a gun at her. In her mind, she screamed at him to tell them, hoping that somehow her thoughts would be projected across the room into that stupid mind of his.
‘There are a few,’ Ian stammered. ‘In my study and—’
The gunman nodded at one of the other men, who strode across the living room, carrier bags crackling on the carpet. He roughly yanked Ian up by the arm.
‘Show my colleague where the central communications unit is,’ the gunman said.
Ian was given a shove and he stumbled towards the kitchen. Harriet knew where the four buttons were around the house – one in their bedroom, one in the study, one in the kitchen and the one underneath the television cabinet she was trying not to stare at. She didn’t know how they worked: all Ian had said was that pressing any of them would silently alert a security company, who would send the police around. They’d been fitted so long ago that she’d nearly forgotten about them. The gunman either knew, or he’d guessed. Based upon the area they lived in, it wasn’t a big stretch – Harriet supposed most houses in this area had some sort of connection to a private security firm.
The gunman lowered the weapon until it was by his side. ‘Where’s your mobile phone?’
The man holding her released his fingers from her mouth but Harriet could feel the material of the gloves clutching the lower part of her neck: a warning that he could harm her at any moment.
‘I . . . er . . . I think it’s in my bag in the kitchen.’
He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of a third man, who scuttled away. ‘Can never be too careful,’ the gunman said. ‘Not after . . . well, y’know.’
Harriet did know – she’d seen the other two robberies on the news. No one she knew had been targeted but they’d both occurred in south Manchester houses like theirs: big places owned by people with money. The thought had crossed her mind that perhaps it could be a pattern, as it had with the other parents she’d spoken to on the school run.
The third man re-entered with Harriet’s phone in his hand, which he tossed to the gunman, who caught it one-handed. ‘Nice,’ he said, before dropping it on the floor and stamping on it.
‘Do Jem and Tom have phones?’
Harriet started to reply before she even knew what he’d said. She ended up coughing, trying to compose herself. Somehow these men knew the names of their children. Then she remembered the website – Robert’s stupid business, where there was an ‘About Me’ page with him fawning over the family he never saw. She’d told him at the time that she didn’t want to be involved and now there was a man with a gun in their house speaking the names of their kids.
‘It’s a simple question,’ he said, his arm holding the gun twitching slightly.
‘Jemma does – Thomas is too young.’ The gunman’s head flickered towards the third man again but Harriet squealed. ‘Please let me get it. They’re asleep. I won’t try anything, honestly I won’t.’
Through the small slits of the balaclava, Harriet saw the gunman biting his bottom lip. As he lunged forward, she thought, just for a moment, that he was going to shoot her. A small shriek slipped from her lips before he clamped a hand ac
ross them, forcing her backwards through the door, towards the stairs.
Without a word, he pushed her upstairs, pausing at the top and waiting for her to show the way. The muzzle was pressing into her back but Harriet forced herself to stop shaking, padding as softly as she could towards Jemma’s bedroom.
‘Leave the door open,’ the gunman whispered.
Tears were close but Harriet managed to hold on, gently easing her daughter’s door open and creeping into the room. A dim orange night-light hanging above the bed shone a murky glow across the space as Harriet moved on her tip-toes.
‘Mummy?’
Harriet froze, wincing at the feeling of being punched in the stomach, even though there was nobody near her. She glanced behind quickly, taking in the gunman’s frame, wide and muscly underneath the padded top. He was staring towards her in silence, his chest rising almost imperceptibly.
Harriet stepped across to the bed, sweeping the phone from the bedside table into her left hand, resting her right on her daughter’s forehead. ‘Go to sleep, sweetie.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing, honey. I was just checking on you.’
Even in the gloomy swathes of darkness, Harriet could see the smile spread across her daughter’s face. The duvet was tucked underneath her chin, and her eyes were closed, one leg sticking out of the other side of the covers as it always did.
Harriet stood, walking carefully across the room and edging the door closed, before turning to see the gunman’s outstretched hand. She placed the phone into it and then led the way back downstairs.
Ian was sitting on the sofa in the living room, elbows on knees, leaning forwards. The whites of his eyes were almost glowing, the area around them rubbed red. He gulped as Harriet was marched back in and shoved onto the sofa next to him. The gunman took Ian’s phone from one of the other men and dropped that and Jemma’s on the floor, before stamping on them.
Crumpled pieces of plastic, silicone and aluminium littered the carpet. Harriet found her eyes flickering towards the cordless landline phone in the corner. The gunman noticed and she could see him smiling through the balaclava. ‘Try it if you like – we’re not that stupid.’
For Richer, For Poorer Page 1