‘She’s not my girlfriend.’
‘’Course she isn’t, you little runt.’
‘So that’s all I know. I mean, I s’pose she doesn’t trust me now, so she’s not going to tell me anything, is she?’
This went home. Tommy got up and walked about, his boots thumping on the concrete floor.
‘So what’s happening to me?’
‘You’re staying here. Like I said.’
‘You going to feed me? I really need something to drink.’
Robbie started unwinding the rope around his ankles. Tommy didn’t try to stop him, but stood in front of him, looking at him long and hard. Robbie thought, they’re going to try and work me over again some time, and I so don’t want to be around for that.
But all Tommy said was, ‘She’s out there somewhere.’
And Robbie knew it wasn’t Mags he was talking about. Something in Tommy’s voice nearly made Robbie feel sorry for him.
‘I’ll give you the night to think about it,’ Tommy said. Then he was gone. Robbie heard the key turn in the lock.
The barn doors looked solid, and apart from them there was the one back door with a cat flap in it. Up in the ceiling there were skylights, but there were no ladders around to help him reach them. There was some water in a bowl for the farm cats, it looked disgusting, but he didn’t have a choice. He took a sip, spat it out, then forced himself to drink some more.
Okay, what else did he have on him? No phone, they’d taken that, it was locked so they couldn’t use it. He still had his lighter, but no cigarettes. And that was about it.
The barn was rank. Broken boxes, a dilapidated boat and three sets of oars, two rusting engines, some empty plastic containers that smelled like they’d had cider in them, a length of green hose hanging on the wall. Four tables, one that had been used for table tennis. White goods – clapped-out fridges and washing machines. There was something that looked as if it had once been an iron staircase lying on its side. Some bookcases. The old tractor and the Land Rover.
The tractor had lost its engine; maybe it was one of the two lying by the wall like big broken hearts. It was sitting at the top of a shallow ramp that sloped to the doors.
The thing about the Land Rover was, did it have a lock on its fuel tank? To Robbie’s surprise and relief, it didn’t. This might all just turn out to be possible.
So this was his plan. Get the hose, cut it on the edge of the iron staircase, put it in the tank, suck hard and siphon the petrol into the plastic container.
All he needed was some light to see what he was going to be running into out there. He wasn’t going to sleep, that was for sure. He needed to sit tight and wait, and he was going to have to be very, very speedy.
Finally, dawn came. There was light in the sky and through the gap between the barn door and the concrete floor Robbie could spy the outline of the farm buildings. There was the barn with one side open to the world over to the right that he remembered from before, and another beyond it, and behind that the ground rose to a ridge.
He was on the old tractor beginning to ease off the brake.
It happened so fast it was over in a second. He was lying nearly out cold by the tractor and the door had been broken open, only a bit, but enough, held there by the tractor’s nose. His head was spinning again. He hadn’t thought it would work at all really, so he hadn’t considered the effect of the impact.
He squirmed through the gap in the door with the container full of petrol, heading for the next barn, taking off the cap from the container and swinging it so the petrol sprayed all over the back of the barn wall.
A door slammed. He waited.
There was a shout from Billy, ‘Robbie?’ He must have made a bit of a racket. ‘You won’t get far. You know what Tommy can do with a gun.’
Robbie took out his lighter.
The flames blew up the side of the barn with that sweet soft sound and then they took hold. It was a bone-dry summer. Perfect.
He ran up the hill, and by the time he looked back the flames were piling into the sky. It was beautiful in the early dawn light, like big sails billowing on before a yacht.
He could see Tommy running towards the barn, carrying two buckets of water. He was going into the barn. What was he doing that for? It could collapse any second. The fire’s way too big for him. That barn’s going to go, and he’s going to be inside it.
There was a wild feeling rising in Robbie: it was panic and it was fear, and in a weird, weird way he wanted to protect Tommy, who was hurrying back again with more buckets. Where was Billy? They’d be calling the fire brigade, he’d better go. But he couldn’t move. Tommy was going inside the barn again.
There was something else in the yard. At first Robbie thought it was Billy, wearing a white hat, or a white hoodie or jacket or something. But it wasn’t. It was white, though.
It was her.
Just sitting there.
There was a yelling like a thousand devils. Billy was running out of the house, calling Tommy, pointing at Fleet, raising his gun.
She didn’t move, she stayed still. The light from the dawn seemed to flow into her, she was luminous, like the first time he’d seen her.
Time slowed.
Nothing happened. Nothing moved.
Then Tommy came running out of the barn.
With a roar the roof crashed down.
At the same time Fleet ran and there was a shot.
It was as if Robbie’s insides flooded with acid, with flames.
But Billy had missed. She was away so fast Robbie could hardly see where she went. The speed of light. Of moonlight, of dawn light.
She had saved her lover.
Just as Mary Allardyce had said she might.
23
THERE WAS no one around at home. Robbie let himself in and headed up to his room, needing sleep.
When he woke it was late morning, and still there was no one around, so he fixed himself some cereal. The house was deserted and a little bit messy, which was not Sheila’s style at all. As he ate, he heard a scraping sound from the garden, and went out. His dad was working the soil over with a hoe. He didn’t look in the mood for company.
‘Dad?’
His dad sighed and, without looking round, stopped what he was doing and leaned his chin on the hoe, gazing listlessly into the distance.
‘Where is everybody?’ Robbie asked.
‘They’ve gone,’ his dad replied.
‘What d’you mean, gone?’
‘They’ve gone to London.’ His dad turned back to his flowerbed. Scrape, scrape went the hoe. ‘I don’t think they’ll be returning.’
‘Why not?’
‘Sheila and I had a bit of an argument last night.’
‘That bad?’
‘That bad.’
‘What was it about?’
‘I don’t particularly want to rehearse it now. It might have helped if you had come back with some spaghetti.’
The spaghetti. It must be lying in the road somewhere.
‘You argued over spaghetti?’
‘More about the fact that you didn’t bring it back. Sheila made some rather pointed remarks.’
‘She slagged me off?’
His dad pursed his lips. ‘She was pretty scathing. And though a large part of me agrees with her … where did you go, anyway? And did you come back at all? I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘I had a bit of a run-in with the Stricklands. But, yeah, I came back all right. I kept quiet, though.’ And you can blame me however much you like, Dad, he thought, but I’m not taking it.
‘I’m not surprised if you heard us arguing.’
‘Well, I didn’t know what it was about, and I was tired, so I went to bed.’
‘Very sensible. What happened with the Strickland boys?’ He came out of his reverie and, looking at his son for the first time, recoiled in alarm. Instinctively, he put his hand on Robbie’s arm. Robbie flinched in irritation. ‘Jesus Christ, what happened to you?
Did they do this? You look as if you’ve been in a war zone. Listen, let’s get some ice on that eye and get you to a doctor.’ He stroked his son’s cheek, and Robbie flinched again, this time from pain. ‘Come on, we’re getting the police in too. I’m not having this. Bloody hell.’ He was becoming agitated.
‘Dad, it was nothing I couldn’t handle. Bad fall, that’s all. Leave the police out of it. I mean it. Really. I lost the spaghetti, though. So were you defending me?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t want you to think the whole thing was about you.’
‘That’s a relief.’
‘It hasn’t been an entirely successful enterprise for some time.’
‘You’re talking about Sheila, right?’
‘Yes, of course. What else would I be talking about?’
‘Well, call it a relationship, then. Unless you don’t want to get back together. You don’t want to, do you?’
‘What?’
‘Get back together.’
His dad pushed out his lower lip, squidged up his nose and pulled his mouth down at the corners. Looks like it’s going to be just me and him for a while, thought Robbie.
‘We’ll have to see how it all pans out. Come on, let’s see what we can do for that face of yours.’
‘I’ll miss her cooking.’
‘You were never really that sold on her, Robbie, I know.’
‘I did like Jess, though.’
A little later, he texted her: ‘???’
She texted back: ‘!!!’
He replied, ‘Any chance of a rematch?’
She came back with, ‘Negative c u when we grown up.’
Which did seem a bit final.
24
AUGUST. THE FIELDS were beginning to be full of harvesters pouring grain into trucks, and the roads were full of harvesters and trucks getting in everyone’s way.
Robbie suspected that his dad thought that deep down Robbie was disturbed by him and Sheila splitting up, and Robbie wanted to say to him, ‘Dad, I was disturbed by you and Sheila getting together.’
Surprisingly, given what he’d done, the Stricklands seemed to have lost interest in him. Alice thought they would be terrified now.
‘They’ll be looking, but not for you,’ she said. ‘Everyone will be. Everyone who knows, who’s in with that family.’
‘Most people try and keep out of their way.’
‘My guess is they’ve got lots of friends and their enemies are scared of them and there’s going to be a core who know all about this stuff. All of it. I said that to you.’
‘I could go snooping round the Allardyces’ house.’
‘You won’t get anything from them.’
‘So we just sit and wait.’
‘I was going to say it’s not our problem, but, Robbie, you’re in this somehow, and that’s for a reason. It’s you, it’s your dad, it’s your mum, it’s something.’
‘Mags.’
‘Yeah, Mags.’
‘I was in it from the start with her.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’
*
More and more he thought about Mags. Finish it, Fran had said. But he couldn’t without Mags. And he wasn’t even sure Fran was talking to him, maybe she was just talking to whoever was watching, whoever found the memory stick. Maybe she thought Mags would find it, she was the obvious one. But there was anxiousness everywhere now, in the air, in the heat and the dust, and in the endless noise from the roads and fields.
He remembered Mags saying, ‘I’m worried about you and your dad.’
‘Why?’ he had asked.
‘You need him. He needs you. And you just ignore him.’
‘He’s a loser.’
‘You always say that, and no, he’s not. He works hard. He does his best for you.’
‘This is my dad you’re talking about?’
‘Don’t be like that. He’s all you’ve got.’
‘I’ve got no one. I’m on my own. Apart from you, Mags. And Alice.’
She seemed not to be listening, just looking at him with those pale eyes, a little kink in her forehead.
‘You need him, Robbie. And he loves you.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I can tell.’
‘How?’
‘The way he looks at you. The way he talks about you.’
‘I’ve never heard him talk like he loves me.’
‘Not when you’re there, you wazzock. That’s the way he is.’
‘Am I like that?’
‘Sometimes. Often. Not when you’re thinking about your mum, though. And you’re still angry.’
‘Not these days.’
‘Maybe. But there’s so much going on in there that doesn’t come out.’ She pointed a forefinger at his heart.
Being Mags, of course she was right, but he was right too. He didn’t think he was as crazy as he had been, in fact, he knew he wasn’t, and she’d had a lot to do with that. He wasn’t so impulsive, so ambushed by life. He no longer felt he was running away from everything, and, if this didn’t sound a little bit cheesy, maybe he was finding a way of running towards something, though he wasn’t sure what it was yet. Maybe they would sell the house and go back to London. But then he wouldn’t see Mags. And for the first time, he thought, he didn’t need London as much as he thought he had after all. He was beginning to feel part of the slow rhythm of the seasons, the opening up of spring, the serenity of summer. He knew the names of the trees now, and all sorts of other things, such as the likely movement of the cattle and who the flocks belonged to. He and his dad had this in common, at least. The land was claiming him. There was a life to be had here.
Then there was Fran. Poor besotted Fran. She was the clue to everything, why everything was happening the way it was, why people were doing and saying what they were. She was at the centre of it all, she was like the blood pulsing through the world, a drum beating, on to the end. Robbie remembered Mrs Allardyce’s words. The brutality of love, the pain that’s left behind. For all Mags says, you’ve got to be careful with your heart.
He thought of that glade in the woods with the faded flowers tied to the tree.
Outside his house at the back were his dad’s favourite late summer dahlias, and he went to cut some, bright blood-red, their petals swirling geometrically.
On the other side of the fence Hugo Allardyce walked past the corner of his house. He was wearing shorts and trainers and carrying a walking stick. He looked in Robbie’s direction, then turned away as if he’d never seen him before.
Robbie found some rubber bands in his dad’s desk to put round the dahlia stems, and got some tape from the shed in the garden to bind them to the tree.
When he reached the wood it was very still and out of the sun the sweat on his back began to cool. He hadn’t visited the place since he’d first seen her, and it felt as if it had lost its innocence, or, worse, somehow become contaminated.
The cooling sweat turned to the chill of something else. There was no one around, and he was walking towards a place of death. A place where pain, too much pain, had been extinguished. And the trees had gone on growing, and the sun beat down on the leaves above.
A girl was sitting on the little bank where the dip began. Most of the dried leaves had gone, broken up and dissolved into the bare earth under the trees.
He stopped and stared. She was blonde, her knees were under her chin, and she was looking at the tree where the flowers had been tied. She was wearing a denim jacket. The flowers were new.
It was her. The friendless one.
Alone.
His heart began to pound. His senses were open wide. He could feel every sound from far away, cars and trucks on the roads and sheep up on the beacon, every soft scent of the brackeny wood, every stroke of the sun.
Once more the stillness was alive.
For a long time he waited, watching her. She didn’t move, and he couldn’t see her face.
What would happen this time?
She
turned.
He was wrong.
‘You going to say hello?’ she said, just like when they’d first met.
He was so relieved he could have cried.
‘Mags.’
She stood up and threw her arms around him.
‘I thought you hated me.’
‘I did.’
‘So what changed? Where’ve you been?’
‘Hiding. You know me. And I heard about what those guys did to you, and what you did to them, and everything else, and I was worried about you, and I was proud of you. And then I knew it was time.’
‘Time for what?’
‘Time for some things to happen. I can feel it. You can feel it.’ Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. ‘But that was a mean thing you did. A bad thing. It got me into a pile of trouble.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why did you do that? Why did you tell them?’
‘I didn’t mean to. I don’t think I knew what I was doing. And I didn’t know who she was.’
‘Eliza Strickland’s sister. Just the worst person you could have told about me and Fleet. Apart from Eliza, of course.’
There was a silence between them. He placed his flowers on the tree beside hers.
Mags looked at him and shook her head, but there was no real venom there, he could tell. He felt stupid, and sorry, and just not sure, as he hadn’t been all the time since, whether he’d done something wrong there because he meant to, because he was being too inquisitive, because he was happy to betray what Mags knew, or all those things. Sometimes it’s hard to know how guilty you are.
She smiled her graceful, pearly smile.
‘Here’s an idea. You want to go swimming?’
He knew there was a pool nearby, his dad had mentioned it a few times, but he’d never looked for it. He’d always supposed it would be crowded, but when they got there it was deserted, despite the heat. And it was beautiful; a river ran into it and out the other side and it was deep and clear between low mossy cliffs with big slabs of rock on its floor. Robbie sat on the edge and watched Mags strip and for a moment she seemed different to him. She dived in perfectly with hardly a ripple. He watched her slipping through the water, scaring the trout lying lazily at the bottom and he knew he had to try it. When he was in Mags started chasing him and for a while there was nothing but shrieking and splashing and the sun catching in the spray and the pool swirling around them.
The White Hare Page 12