Those People

by Louise Candlish

  There were no obvious wounds to his head, arms or legs and, when she lifted his T-shirt, nothing was visible on his chest either. His clothes were intact, other than his left trainer, which had come off and lay nearby. Though the van’s engine was now off, she could still feel its low heat as Booth emerged from the driver’s seat, leaving the door open as if he intended to get back in and continue his journey!

  Em and Sara had appeared at the front line: “Why the hell were you reversing like that?”

  “He came out of nowhere,” Booth said tonelessly.

  “You shouldn’t have been driving in the first place,” Em cried. “The road is closed today! For God’s sake, why won’t you follow the rules, like everyone else?”

  “Couldn’t you see the kids playing?” Sara demanded.

  Booth made no comment. Was he shrugging?

  “Did anyone actually see it happen?” Tess said, then, over a barrage of children’s accounts: “I mean an adult?”

  “I saw it.” It was Karen, a mum from farther down the street who had a daughter Charlie’s age. “I came up to get Lola for lunch and I had a clear view. The little boy was on his skateboard and he wasn’t in control of it. He went scooting off into the path of the van and collided with the side, just near the back.”

  “Where was the impact?” Tess asked.

  “His chest, I think. He must have been winded.”

  “How fast was the van going?”

  “Now, hang on a minute!” Booth protested, but Karen was already explaining:

  “Really slowly, just a couple of miles an hour. The boy was going much faster—I doubt he’d have been visible in the wing mirror.” She gave Tess and Em a look of apology. Though from the far end of the street and not exposed to the full force of Booth’s nuisance, she appeared to know who he was and was a reluctant defense witness.

  It was then that Jodie appeared from Portsmouth Avenue, shopping bags in either hand, and Naomi and Ralph came sprinting up from number 7, Libby a step behind. Seeing her brother prone in the road, Libby let out a cry and clutched her father, while a tearstained Isla hovered near Dex, who was sobbing.

  “Oh my God,” Naomi cried. “Oh my God, Charlie!”

  At the sound of her voice, Charlie’s moved his eyes and, sick with relief at the first signs of his emerging from his stupor, Tess relinquished her spot to Naomi and pulled her own children close. At the gate of number 7, Kit and Cleo barked frantically, sensing that emergency had gripped their pack.

  “You fucking ran him over?” Without waiting for an answer, Ralph lunged at Booth, but Libby was still clinging to him, which weighed him down and prevented his outstretched fingers from grabbing the other man’s throat. At the sight of this, Jodie dropped her shopping and tried to swat Ralph away, catching poor Libby in the process and making her wail in pain.

  “The kid ran out!” Booth protested. “I didn’t see him.” Neither he nor Jodie went near Charlie or asked how he was, Tess noticed. He was, in fact, rallying, moving his arms and legs and crying in Naomi’s lap.

  Enlisting Finn’s help, she tried to pull Ralph away. “You should back off, seriously. Karen saw the whole thing and it might not be what it seems.”

  “There,” Jodie exclaimed. “I knew it weren’t his fault!”

  “He shouldn’t have been in his car!” Ralph hissed.

  “I said that! No one listens to me,” Em said. She was making things worse and Tess wished Ant, who was standing some distance away with Sam in his arms, would do something to calm her.

  “Do we need to call an ambulance?” Tess asked Naomi. “He was hit in the chest, apparently. He might have broken a rib.”

  “There’s a forty-five-minute wait on Sundays,” Naomi said. “I was just reading about it yesterday. NHS cuts. Quicker to take him ourselves, if it’s safe to move him.” At this, Charlie began to struggle into a sitting position, before slumping back against her. “We’ll take a chance. Go and get the car, Ralph. Ralph! Finn, can you make sure the road’s clear for him to pull in?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  As the brothers mobilized, Ralph haring off to Portsmouth Avenue for his BMW and Finn moving bollards and clearing onlookers, Em and Jodie continued arguing, neither listening to the other and both flushed with heat and anger. Booth stood in the street as if uncertain of his next move. He reached for the van door handle.

  “Leave it exactly where it is,” Naomi snapped. “The police will want to check it out. Has someone called them? Tess?”

  “Not yet,” Tess said.

  “Well, can you do it, please?”

  Moments later, Ralph’s BMW began crawling into the street at five miles an hour and turning in the most painstaking way. When it came to a halt, Naomi and Finn lifted Charlie and positioned him, prone, in the backseat; then Naomi slid in next to him.

  “Want me to drive so you can sit with him?” Finn offered.

  Ralph passed him the keys. “Can you, mate? Then I can call ahead to A and E. Let’s go.”

  Before Tess could protest, Naomi called across to her: “Can you look after Libby and the dogs?”

  “Of course.”

  “And call the police,” Ralph reminded her. “He’s not getting away with this.”

  When they’d gone, a subdued shock reigned. Those families not directly involved in the drama departed, play resuming for the younger kids at the lower end of the street, and Booth and Jodie retreated inside.

  The van remained in the same spot, at the same angle, as on impact. It was obvious to Tess that Karen’s account was true and Booth had reversed in a standard shallow arc; the police would find no skid marks from speeding. But there’d been that incident with Sissy, hadn’t there? When he’d almost hit her—he’d been driving dangerously then, Naomi said.

  “Just come and get me when the police arrive. I’m at number 53,” Karen told Tess.

  One of the cottages at the other end of the street, far from the war zone.

  Having put Libby in charge of her cousins and told them to wait inside with the dogs, Tess rang 999. There was some confusion as to the extent of the emergency, given the victim’s removal from the scene, but eventually a squad car arrived and Tess directed officers to numbers 1 and 53.

  “Do you need any background?” she offered when they reappeared, and she explained the rules of the Play Out Sunday arrangement. “He almost ran over the lady at number 2 a few weeks ago—Sissy Watkins, she’s called, if you’d like to speak to her? And look at the scaffolding! If that’s not dangerous, I don’t know what is.”

  But she could tell by the way the officers thanked her that they considered this outpouring semihysterical, and she could only watch helplessly as they exited the scene for a more urgent call. She’d just reached her own gate when Jodie came stomping toward her, as livid as before.

  “What’s your problem, huh?”

  “Are you talking to me?” Tess said.

  “I don’t see anyone else crawling to the cops, do you? Why d’you have to get them in, anyway?” Aggression radiated from her; it almost had its own scent. Tess had a vision of herself being shoved to the ground or belted with one of those freak blows you read about in reports of violent altercations that ended in terrible handicaps or even deaths.

  “If you can’t see why your husband is in the wrong in this situation, then I’m not going to be the one to explain it to you.”

  “Don’t need you to explain nothing,” Jodie sneered. “It’s obvious what’s going on here.”

  Tess lost her patience. “What? Other than the fact that you two are putting the welfare of this community at risk?”

  “Don’t give me that,” Jodie said. “You’ve had it in for us from the second we arrived on this street. You were all over the scaffolding the other day.”

  “Because it wasn’t being put up right!”

  “D
on’t think I haven’t forgotten you broke in, neither. Maybe I should tell the police about that, yeah?”

  “I did not break in,” Tess said.

  “Had a good look around, did you? Decided we’re not good enough for you? You’re a bunch of snobs, the lot of you, and I reckon you’re the worst.”

  “I am not,” Tess protested, though her response implied a certain agreement with Jodie’s broader accusation. “None of us are snobs,” she clarified.

  Jodie glowered. “I’m watching you,” she said, no less disturbing for being a cliché, and as she walked away, she turned twice to look back at Tess in illustration of her warning.

  * * *

  —

  It wasn’t till seven in the evening that Ralph and Naomi returned from the hospital. Tess was with the kids in the den at number 7 when she heard them let themselves in, call hello, and take Charlie straight upstairs to his bedroom. Finn, she assumed, must be parking the car. Libby tore off upstairs, leaving Tess to hover until someone appeared.

  “How is he?” she asked when Ralph came down. She had to hand it to him; he looked fired up, forceful, the exact opposite of how she felt.

  “He’s sleeping. We had to wait an age for him to be seen. The NHS is in a shocking state.”

  “Did they do a chest X-ray?”

  “Yeah, nothing’s broken, thank God. He’s going to have bruising down his side, that’s all. But if he’d hit his head, it’d have been a different story. As it is, he’s going to be terrified to play out again.”

  “Children should be able to feel safe in their own street,” Tess said. There was no way she was going to say that a helmet was a good idea when learning to skateboard. At the sight of Naomi descending to join them, she said, brightly, “Great news about Charlie! What a horrible scare. I made the kids carbonara for tea. Libby helped me cook. She’s been very brave. And we took the dogs out together.”

  “Oh, good.” Naomi sank onto the stairs, as if she couldn’t trust herself to make it all the way down, her eyes shiny with tears. “So, what happened with the police? They haven’t phoned us yet. Did you give them my number?”

  “Nothing happened, really,” Tess admitted. “I mean, I explained he’d been knocked over—well, Karen from number 53 did. She was the only adult witness. Booth was questioned as well.”

  “Did they arrest him?”

  “No, he’s still at home, I think. It does sound as if it was a genuine accident. He’s moved the van back onto his drive.”

  “Not the RV, though,” Ralph said coldly, as if that were Tess’s fault as well.

  Naomi gazed down at her in disbelief. “Did he at least get some sort of verbal warning?”

  “I don’t know.” Under their joint scrutiny, Tess felt totally inadequate. “I couldn’t really tail the police into his house, but I hope so.”

  “You hope so?” Ralph echoed. “This is unbelievable. I’m going round there, Nay. If the police won’t sort him out, I will.”

  “No, Ralph.” Naomi spoke to him sharply, a vein pulsing by her left eye. This was the most stressed Tess had ever seen her, not helped by the fact that Libby had appeared on the stairs, complaining of a migraine. Naomi rose to go back up, at least remembering to say good-bye to Tess, which was more than Ralph managed as he began protesting his wife’s warning, in competition for her attention with Libby. Not a word of thanks from either of them, Tess noted. But this wasn’t about her, she reminded herself; it was about poor Charlie.

  Next door, Finn took Dex from her and put him to bed while Isla went to change into her pajamas. It seemed incredible to think there’d be work and family life the next morning, business as usual. Tess began hunting for something for Finn and her to eat for dinner. She couldn’t tell whether the ache in her stomach was from nerves or hunger, but the stinging red blotches on her skin were from anxiety, she knew. She opened the kitchen window, tried to cool herself. There was music coming from the garden of number 1, fainter than Booth’s usual levels, and Ralph’s voice was suddenly audible over it.

  “Don’t look at me like that, babe. I need it.”

  He must be having a cigarette, Tess thought. No sooner had she made this deduction than she smelled the smoke.

  Naomi sounded like her composed self again. “Charlie’s decided to sleep in our bed. Libby’s lying next to him. They’re both maxed out on paracetamol. I can’t believe Tess didn’t notice Libs had a headache.”

  “I can’t believe she didn’t handle the police better. One of us should have stayed here to deal with them,” Ralph said.

  Wait, this was completely unfair! And, as usual, they were the most important people in the world, theirs the only perspective to be considered. The rest of us are only here to enhance them, she thought. They’re egomaniacs, not so different from the Booths—

  She caught the thought, ashamed of herself.

  “I’ll phone them tomorrow and make the situation clear,” Naomi said. “I suppose when you think of all the stuff they’re called out to day in, day out, this was one with a happy ending.”

  “You’re right. Charlie’s OK—that’s the main thing. But it’s not an ending.” Ralph paused, presumably to smoke, and Tess imagined the toxins entering his lungs and streaming through a network of tiny tubes in search of his heart.

  “As far as I’m concerned, it’s the beginning,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  When Tess and Finn were finally alone, at the kitchen table with soup and bread and cheese, she hardly knew where to begin.

  “Don’t start about moving again,” he said, forestalling the onslaught. “I’m exhausted. Children’s A and E has got to be one of the worst places in the world. All that screaming, and they keep it so hot, even in summer.”

  “I wasn’t going to say that,” Tess said. “And you didn’t have to go to A and E. It didn’t need three of you.”

  Finn began tearing the bread as if he’d never been fed in his life before. “I’m sorry. I just offered on the spur of the moment. I did the coffee runs.”

  Tess raised her eyebrows. “Oh, well, in that case.”

  He grinned, dropping his bread to reach for her arm and give it a squeeze. “What were you going to say, then?”

  Tess exhaled. “I want to bring our holiday forward. Tomorrow or the next day, I want to get out of here. I don’t care what it costs to reschedule. I’ve got to have a break from this street.”

  It seemed to her that a week on the Atlantic coast of Portugal was all that stood between her and a breakdown. She wanted the roaring ocean in her ears, not the neighbors’ sniping, not children’s cries.

  “I might not be able to rearrange my leave at such short notice,” Finn pointed out. “I’ve had it booked in for months.”

  “But will you try? Or just call in sick?”

  He nodded, spooning the last of the soup into his mouth. Tess had not begun hers.

  “I meant to ask you,” she said, the sudden, mid-distant thunder of a Motörhead bass line reminding her. “Em said you made one of the official complaints to the council that Ant needed to get his diary sheets. I thought we agreed we wouldn’t go on record in case we decide to sell? You know you have to disclose any disputes to the buyer?”

  “It’s too late for that, Tess.” Finn gazed at her, jaw thrust uncannily like his brother’s. “Haven’t you just called the police yourself about the man? We’re all on record now.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  SISSY

  Have I had any previous reason to complain? Are you really asking me that now? After what’s just happened?

  All right, the main point. The main point is he’s run me out of business. Will that do? He’s run me out of business and there’s not a thing I can do about it!

  MS. SISSY WATKINS, 2 LOWLAND WAY, INQUIRIES BY THE METROPOLITAN POLICE, AUGUST 11, 2018
r />   One week earlier

  “Thank you. These are lovely,” Naomi said, raising the roses to her nose, and Sissy watched her inhale their scent with a kind of born-again appreciation. Her skin shimmered as if it had gold in it. The shock of Charlie’s accident, the intimation of tragedy, suited her beauty.

  Sissy remembered the last time she’d given flowers to a neighbor: crocuses for Darren Booth, that first Saturday—a far less poetic experience. He’d probably dropped them on his rubbish heap the moment her back was turned.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t catch you earlier in the week. I’ve tried a couple of times, but no one’s been in.”

  “You know what August’s like,” Naomi said. “The usual school-holiday complications. Tess and Finn went to Portugal early and I took the kids and dogs to my parents’, so I’ve been working late while I’ve got the chance.” As Naomi updated her on the victim’s bill of health and on her and Ralph’s follow-up phone calls to the police and the council, Sissy felt, to her horror, a yawn stretching her mouth.

  “I assume that’s thanks to the eighties metal last night?” Naomi said. “I didn’t realize the music was such a problem across the road. You know, you could always go the double-glazing route. I can give you the details of the company that did ours.”

  “I don’t really have the budget,” Sissy said, sighing. “I can barely afford to clean the windows I’ve got.”

  “Has business really been so affected?”

  “Yes, I’m still getting bookings, but all the recent feedback is the same: they wouldn’t come back because of the shambles over the road. Soon my rating will be too low to attract anyone but desperate last-minute bookers.”

  Noisy neighbors, said one recent review. Fine for a night or two but you wouldn’t want to live there.