Little Woodford

by Catherine Jones

  ‘I came to see the diggers.’

  ‘Does your mum know you’re here?’ The boy shook his head and the tears flowed faster.

  Zac stood up and then picked up the lad to set him on his feet.

  The child howled. ‘Owwww. My feet hurt,’ he sobbed.

  Zac knelt on one knee and sat the child on his other one. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Alfie.’

  ‘Then, Alfie, is it OK if I take your wellies off?’

  Alfie nodded.

  Zac tugged the boots off causing Alfie to squeal again. He had a look at the kid’s feet. The back of one of his heels was rubbed raw and the other had a fat, puffy blister. He looked at the station and considered his options. He could abandon the lad here and catch his train as planned. Or – and he knew this was the only real choice he had – he could take the kid back to his home and dump him on the doorstep. Zac sighed. His escape to the city would have to wait a few minutes. He had to hope that he wasn’t going to get spotted by anyone who might recognise him, and that his parents hadn’t yet found his note and come out looking for him. He made the only decision he could; there was no way he could leave the kid here, alone on the street. He’d take the boy home, ring the doorbell and run away. Job done.

  ‘OK. How about a piggyback?’

  Alfie, his face wet with tears and sobbing quietly, nodded.

  Zac stood Alfie on his bare feet while he slipped off his rucksack, stuffed the boots in it and then swung the child up and onto his back. He grabbed his bag and set off towards the town. ‘Where do you live then?’

  ‘Past the play park.’

  Like that narrowed it down. ‘OK,’ said Zac. ‘And I’m Zac, by the way.’

  ‘Thac,’ lisped Alfie.

  He headed towards the park along a still quiet main road. A car swished past on the wet tarmac and Zac kept his head down, hoping his face wasn’t visible if anyone in the car bothered to look at him. He reached the park gates. ‘Now where?’

  Alfie pointed dead ahead. Zac trudged on.

  Ahead he could see the fluorescent yellow and blue of a police car driving towards him. He pulled his hood further forward. The car pulled up beside him. Fuck.

  *

  Zac pushed his hood back as Leanne rang the doorbell at The Grange.

  ‘You did the right thing,’ she said to him.

  Zac shook his head as the door opened.

  ‘Zac!’ said his mother. ‘Thank God. Where was he?’ She threw the door wide and gazed at her son, swallowing down tears of relief as he crossed the threshold.

  ‘He was walking along the high street. He’d found Alfie Millar who had also gone walkabout and was taking him home.’

  ‘I’d have been on a train if it hadn’t been for that,’ said Zac.

  ‘Then, thank God for Alfie,’ said Olivia.

  ‘Welcome back, Zac,’ said Nigel. He came over to his son and sighed.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Olivia, shooting him a look.

  ‘You frightened the crap out of us,’ said Nigel. ‘I’m so relieved you’re back.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Zac.

  ‘The main thing is you’re safe and well. That’s all that matters in the long run,’ said his father.

  ‘But the other stuff...’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Nigel.

  Zac looked bemused. ‘But Mum’s ring...?’

  ‘That you sold to Dan,’ said Leanne. ‘Your dealer? Danny Nightingale?’

  ‘How did you...?’

  ‘I told you, Zac, I’m a copper. I know this stuff. I think he needs a visit.’

  ‘You won’t tell him I said anything?’ said Zac.

  ‘Said what?’ Leanne tugged at her stab vest, pulling it down and adjusting her belt. ‘I’m off then. And don’t run away again, Zac. It’s always better for everyone to face the music rather than run away from your problems. Truly.’

  Zac nodded.

  52

  When the doorbell rang, Bex wasn’t entirely sure she was ready to see anyone. If she’d been frightened for Alfie’s safety the first time he’d run off it was nothing compared to the second time. And as for the relief that had engulfed her when he’d been returned safely... All the emotion had wrung her out and, despite the fact it wasn’t even time for elevenses, she felt almost ready for bed again. Lewis was still glued to the cartoon channel, semi-oblivious of the near-awfulness of what had happened, Megan was up in her room blaming herself for not having followed up her premonition that Zac about to do something drastic, and Alfie was in his, having a nap because he obviously hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep and he was exhausted.

  The doorbell rang a second time and Bex gave a sigh before she headed out of the kitchen to answer it.

  ‘Miles.’

  ‘I had to come round. Belinda said there was a police car parked in your drive. You haven’t been burgled, have you?’

  Bex shook her head. ‘No, Alfie went walkabout again.’

  ‘No! How? Didn’t my bolt work?’

  ‘Fine, as far as I know. He managed to squeeze between the bars.’

  Miles shook his head. ‘I know I called him Houdini but it was meant as a joke. I didn’t expect Alfie to follow quite so closely in his footsteps.’

  Bex shook her head. ‘It was so awful. I woke up and he’d gone. I had no idea...’ Her voice caught in her throat as she relived the shock of finding the back door open and Alfie’s bedroom empty.

  ‘Come here,’ said Miles, opening his arms and enveloping Bex in a massive hug. Her emotions and tiredness got the better of her and she leaned her forehead on his shoulder as sobs began to wrack her. His arms tightened around her and the feeling of being safe and wanted increased. She relaxed, sagging against him, allowing him to support her. She felt his lips against her hair.

  No!

  She pushed away from him. ‘Stop.’

  ‘Why?’ he murmured into her curls.

  ‘Because... a million reasons because. Because of Belinda, because it’s wrong, because what sort of example am I setting for my kids?’ Bex pushed harder and out of his grasp. Panting, she took two steps back.

  ‘But...?’ said Miles.

  ‘There’s no “but” about it. How could you? What about Belinda?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She’s your partner.’

  Miles began to laugh.

  Bex looked at him in exasperation. ‘It’s not funny,’ she snapped.

  ‘Oh, yes it is. Yes, she’s my partner; she and I have half-shares in the pub, but that’s it. That’s all it is – business.’

  ‘Business? You mean you’re not...’

  ‘Romantically involved?’ Miles raised an eyebrow. ‘Shagging?’

  Bex felt her face flare. ‘Well...’

  ‘No, we’re not. We did, we have, but we decided that we’re completely wrong for each other and if we were to make a success of the pub it was strictly business only.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. We get on fine as working partners – but live together? We’d kill each other before a week was out. Check with Belinda if you don’t trust me.’

  Bex looked up and stared at him. Did she believe him? Did she call his bluff and ask Belinda? She hadn’t been married to Richard for so long as to have forgotten the way men could lie if they wanted to.

  Miles was smiling at her. ‘At least that explains why you worried about me coming round here and jumped like a scalded cat if I got close to you. And there was me thinking it was because you didn’t like me much.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you how unhappy it made me to think I didn’t have a chance.’

  Bex was lost for words. ‘Oh,’ was all she managed to get out.

  ‘So, do I? Have a chance?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know...’ She smiled at him. It wasn’t an abhorrent idea, far from it, but the thought of it made her feel unfaithful to Richard. And what about the kids? How would they feel? Megan especially. ‘I’ll think about it, promise.�
��

  ‘As long as there is a ray of hope.’

  Bex nodded.

  *

  Leanne leaned against her locker at the police station and began to unzip her stab vest. What a day! Normally, a Sunday shift was a total doddle; a patrol or two, maybe a domestic to deal with, sometimes a drunk-and-disorderly in the summer... but two missing kids and then a couple of raids. It was probably more excitement than Little Woodford had seen in a decade – the local paper would have a meltdown. They’d had to get back-up from Cattebury to get enough manpower to deal with the simultaneous searches of Danny Nightingale’s gaff, Billy Rogers’ place, plus his locker at the car dealership, which Mr Silver, the owner, had been less than pleased about, search warrant or no search warrant.

  ‘Looks bad,’ he’d protested.

  It had looked a lot worse when they’d started removing bags of nicked stuff that Billy had stored there. A couple of customers had been agog with curiosity, as had Mr Silver, as they’d carried out laptop after laptop, cameras, jewellery and some nice antiques.

  ‘What was Billy up to with all this?’ he’d asked.

  ‘No good,’ was the response.

  Leanne had to admit it had been a great day as far as results were concerned; both kids found, Billy and Danny nicked for theft and possession of stolen goods, a number of items recovered that could now be returned to their rightful owners, and a stop put to the recent crime-wave that had been the scourge of Little Woodford. But now she couldn’t wait to get home and put her feet up. She hadn’t become a PCSO in a place like this to deal with criminals like Dan and Billy – proper nasty they were, and when they were behind bars the law-abiding residents would be able to breathe that much easier.

  Although it made her wonder what Amy had seen in Billy in the first place. As far as Leanne was concerned, Amy was well out of her relationship with him, assuming she wanted out of it, that was. And if she didn’t... well, she deserved everything she got. Mind you, thought Leanne, since she and Amy had been at a school together she’d known that Amy had had a dodgy taste in men. That boy that had knocked her up just before she took her GCSEs had been a waste of space and hadn’t even hung around to do the decent thing. As soon as Amy had told him she was in the family way he hadn’t been seen for dust.

  Leanne hung her uniform in her locker, shoved her shirt in her bag to wash at home and locked the door. She felt bone tired as she made her way out of the station and took herself home. A she walked down the high street she wondered how the Laithwaites and the Millars were dealing with their errant children. She suspected Alfie would be smothered in kisses while Zac would have to do a lot of explaining.

  *

  Zac’s explaining was on hold while he recovered from his night of rough sleeping. He knew he was going to have to talk to his parents at some length and he was worried and concerned about their reaction but, after tea and toast, exhaustion had completely overwhelmed him and he’d been asleep moments after getting into bed, leaving his parents to worry about his motives and where they might have gone wrong.

  ‘Was it our fault?’ said Nigel as he and his wife ate roast lamb, neither of them enjoying their food but going through the motions of Sunday lunch regardless while Zac slumbered upstairs.

  ‘But the other kids were fine.’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’ Nigel laid his knife and fork on his plate. ‘Maybe we got complacent.’

  ‘But we had no reason not to think we were anything but good parents.’

  Olivia was going to add that maybe, if Nigel had been home earlier these past few years instead of never getting through the front door before eight at the earliest, he might have bonded better with his son, got to know him, spotted that he was going off the rails. But as she was about to challenge him she realised that she was as much at fault, what with the council and committees and the WI and the book club and all the other things she did to occupy her endless free time. She could hardly cast the first stone.

  She took another mouthful of lamb and redcurrant jelly and chewed. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘I ought to spend more time with the family.’

  Nigel glanced at her. ‘You sound like a politician who’s about to resign.’

  Olivia nodded. ‘That’s about the size of it. I think I need to give up all my committees and clubs. I’ll get the church fête out of the way and then I’ll resign from everything.’

  ‘But you love that stuff.’

  ‘I love Zac more.’

  ‘But what will you do all day? You’ll go stir crazy.’

  ‘I could get a job – part-time, like Bex. Then I’d be around when Zac is home from school. Let’s face it, any extra money would help. We haven’t had an offer on the house yet which tends to make me think the estate agent was right and we might have to be prepared to accept less than we’d like.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘We haven’t the luxury of holding out for the full price – you know as well as I do that the debt collectors are starting to get impatient, to say nothing of the way the interest is accruing.’

  ‘What would you do?’

  ‘Bex found employment.’

  ‘But you told me she works at the pub.’

  ‘So? Work is work. After lunch I shall look at what’s in the Sits Vac in the local paper.’

  *

  After lunch Bex asked Megan to keep an eye on her half-brothers, who were playing in Lewis’s bedroom with the contents of the dressing up box and a den made from the clothes horse. She was amazed by the resilience of her youngest who had woken up at midday and bounced down the stairs almost as if nothing had happened. He’d complained about having sore feet but a dab of Savlon on each heel and a sticking plaster had solved that. However, he had listened solemnly to Bex’s lecture about never, ever wandering off again and had nodded in understanding when she’d explained that he’d been lucky that one of Megan’s friends had brought him home and not someone bad – very bad, who might have taken him away so he’d not have been able to see Megan or Lewis or his mummy again.

  ‘Or Dougie,’ added Alfie.

  Bex had had to suck her cheeks to kill a smile. Obviously being separated from Dougie was the critical issue. But at least she felt that she’d been able to get across to Alfie the seriousness of what he’d done without frightening the little mite to kingdom come and giving him nightmares.

  Telling Megan she’d only be half an hour, she’d slipped out of the house and up the road. She had with her a large bunch of flowers she’d cut from the garden. It wasn’t much, she thought, but there was nothing she could buy or produce that would say thank you adequately for what Zac had done for Alfie.

  As she walked up the hill she wondered how to phrase her gratitude. It was tricky because Zac had sacrificed his plan of running away to take Alfie to safety so, despite the fact that Olivia’s son had done a good deed, it had all been brought about by the fact that he’d planned to bring some serious heartache to his family. Bex reckoned that whatever she said would be better than saying nothing.

  She rang the bell and a man answered the door.

  She smiled and said, ‘Hello, you must be Nigel. I’m Bex – Alfie’s mother.’

  ‘Ah, Bex. Come in.’

  Nigel opened the door fully and Bex stepped in to the house. Olivia was seated on the sofa – she looked exhausted; Bex could sympathise with that.

  ‘Hi, Olivia,’ she said, holding the flowers out. ‘I brought you these.’

  Olivia got up and took them. ‘You shouldn’t have,’ she said as she inhaled the scent of the roses and admired the jolly ox-eyed daisies, the aquilegias and the spikes of white delphiniums.

  ‘Totally inadequate given what happened and I am sure Zac won’t be the least bit impressed but I didn’t know what else to say or do. If it hadn’t been for him...’ Bex stopped as a sob threatened to well up.

  Olivia nodded, then she stepped forward and hugged Bex. ‘And if it hadn’t been for Alfie, Zac would probably be in London by now and I dread t
o think how that might have turned out.’

  ‘Kids, eh?’ said Nigel.

  Olivia went to the kitchen and got a vase which she filled with water and put the flowers in. ‘These are so lovely,’ she murmured as she arranged them.

  ‘I think the previous owner of my house had green fingers.’

  Olivia moved the flowers to the middle of the coffee table in the sitting room. ‘I shall miss this garden when we move,’ she said. ‘I try and tell myself that it’ll be fun planning a new garden but...’ She stopped. ‘So how is the wanderer?’ She sounded falsely bright.

  ‘He’s had a nap, he’s had a lecture about not doing it again and I’m going to make our gate completely childproof. I shall ask Miles to put netting on the inside so Alfie can’t climb through it or up it. But he’s fine. I don’t think he’s got any idea of what might have happened and I think it’s for the best I keep it that way. How’s Zac?’

  Olivia shook her head. ‘He came home tired and hungry and a bit shamefaced.’

  ‘Which he bloody should be,’ said Nigel, ‘given what he owned up to in his farewell note. Drugs, stealing—’

  ‘Stealing? Not Zac doing all those burglaries?’

  ‘God, no,’ said Olivia. ‘Thank God. No, it was just from us. Although I say “just from us” – I mean, that’s pretty bad.’ She looked bleak.

  ‘It was the drugs that made him do it,’ said Bex. ‘Megan says he’s clean.’

  Nigel nodded. ‘Apparently.’

  Olivia gave him a look. ‘I think he is and I think he’s learned his lesson. And his punishment is our lack of trust in him because that is going to take years to win back.’

  Nigel didn’t look convinced.

  ‘And I don’t think what you said to Leanne,’ continued Olivia, staring at him, ‘was terribly helpful.’

  Bex was agog to know what it was but couldn’t ask.

  ‘I don’t see anything wrong with a public flogging, personally,’ muttered Nigel.

  ‘And I don’t think you’re in a position to suggest it. People in glass houses...’ snapped Olivia.

  ‘It was a joke,’ said Nigel.

  ‘I must be going,’ said Bex. She stood up. She knew it was worry and the subsequent relief and exhaustion that was making this couple bicker but she didn’t want to be a witness or a referee.