Power on Her Own

by Judith Cutler

  ‘OK, OK, keep your wool on. I just thought you should know, that’s all. So you’re not an item, after all, you and Graham?’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint the rumour-mongers, but no. We’ve been trying to sort out a problem I’ve had with my computer. And his mother-in-law needs a residential home, like Cassie.’

  Sally peered in the mirror. ‘Poor bugger: I wonder if she’s as dreadful as his wife. Real tartar she is. Has these migraines all the time. She says. I reckon it’s just to get him dancing to her tune. Won’t do this, can’t do that. Won’t come to any of our dos with him. Poor bugger. Deserves better. You’re sure you don’t …?’ she asked almost wistfully. ‘Ah, well.’

  ‘Right.’ Kate put a full-stop on the topic. ‘Now, tell me about the baby. When’s it due? And when will you be going?’

  ‘Now, lads, I want you all to give it your best shot tonight,’ Paul was saying. ‘Remember Kate’s not done this sort of thing before, and whatever happens we should be very grateful for her trying.’

  Kate said nothing. This might not have been the sort of introduction she wanted, but to cavil publicly would only draw attention to what he’d said. She smiled. And then, hoping he but not the boys would pick up on her sarcasm, said. ‘OK. Tonight I’m Glenda Hoddle. Right? And next match we play, we’re going to score!’

  The laughter wasn’t much more than polite. But it was laughter, and they started on their stretches. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Paul disappearing into the church hall. Excellent. Without an audience, even an audience of one, the boys would be less self-conscious. And then he re-emerged.

  ‘Hell, Paul, we’re not ready for this sort of treatment, not yet. Nor for a long time,’ she added so only he could hear. ‘We’re simply not ready to be videoed. They’re self-conscious enough having a new trainer around without wanting a camera in on the action. Put the bloody thing away. Right, lads. This time we’re going to jog and every ten steps we’re going to stop and kick, stop and kick. OK?’ She blew the whistle she’d found in a photographic shop, of all places, just off the High Street.

  They jogged half-heartedly round the car park at the back of the chapel.

  ‘Call that kicking? Wouldn’t kick the skin off a rice pudding. Come on. Hell, now what?’ She sprinted over to a red-haired lad at the back of the joggers. ‘Marcus, you OK?’

  ‘Asthma.’ The kid’s chest heaved.

  ‘Got a spray?’

  Paul was at his side. ‘We keep one in the hall, don’t we, Marcus? Come on, old son.’

  Marcus pulled away.

  ‘I’m sure you’d be better in the warm with me. Maybe football’s not a good idea for asthmatics.’

  ‘Lots of great sportsmen get asthma. People like Ian Botham. They just need their sprays. So just go and get it, would you, Paul? Now, Marcus, we’ll soon have you OK. Paul? What are you waiting for?’

  ‘I’ll take him in. Come on, son.’

  ‘He’s not a baby. He just needs his spray. Now.’ She tried for the boy’s sake to keep the urgency out of her voice, but could hear herself failing.

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Paul saluted her aggressively and jogged off.

  Marcus watched him out of sight.

  ‘Had asthma long?’ Kate asked conversationally. ‘Come on, the rest of you: who told you to stop?’

  ‘Ever since. I was a kid. Getting better. Bad when there’s a cold wind.’

  ‘D’you want to go in with Paul?’ She’d forgotten what it was like to be small and miserable.

  He shook his head violently. ‘Stay here. Getting better.’

  She was sure he wasn’t. But Paul was strolling back, making a leisurely point, she thought. If only she could work out what the point was. Something to do with proving who was boss?

  She took and shook the spray: not much left in there. Enough, maybe. ‘Here you are, Marcus.’

  ‘There isn’t very –’ Paul began.

  ‘Shut up. If you want to be any use go and act as whipper in. Sheepdog, whatever.’ She was surprised how angry she felt. ‘Go on.’ She turned back to the boy. ‘How’s that? Good, I can see it’s working already. Right? Now, d’you feel like joining in the next bit? Because it’s not running, it’s kicking, very gently.’

  He looked over her shoulder, eyes wide again. ‘I won’t have to go home, Miss?’

  She turned. Paul was bustling back officiously.

  ‘Not till you want to. And then I thought I might go with you: remind your mum to let us have another spray. Ready? Right lads, I want you back over here. Now!’ For Paul’s ears only, she added, her voice oozing as much sarcasm as she could squeeze out of it, ‘Provided that’s all right with you?’

  ‘Of course – I –’

  ‘If you want me to run this session, I run it. My way.’ She added more reasonably, ‘If the boys think you’re in charge they’ll obey you. I have to have them doing what I say. All the time.’

  ‘But I shall always be around.’

  ‘That’s as may be. But on the football pitch and in training what I say goes. Or it won’t work. Now, are you going to join in?’

  With ill-grace he joined in. Just short sideways passes. And she was glad to see Marcus was better at it than he was.

  At the end of the session, she gathered them round her. ‘Well done. You’ve worked very hard. I’ll see you all again after the service on Sunday. Just half an hour. Don’t want to make you miss your Sunday lunches. A little and often, that’s what we want. Sweat shirts and tracksuits on now, please. And have a bath or a shower when you get home – stop you getting stiff. OK? And Marcus! Well done! It was very brave to keep going like that. And you’ve got good ball skills.’

  She waited at the car park exit, and intercepted Marcus there. ‘Shall I give you a lift?’

  ‘I can take him, Kate, I know where he lives.’

  ‘I’ve offered my prize striker a lift and I’ll give him one if he wants one. Won’t I, Marcus?’

  ‘Yes, please, Miss.’

  ‘Right. Mine’s the Fiesta. Over there.’ She zapped the alarm. ‘Go and let yourself in.’

  He trotted off.

  She waved all the others off the premises, and locked the room, handing the keys with ostentatious deference to Paul. ‘Yours. Your job the room, mine the team. OK?’

  ‘Bloody hell, woman! What’s got into you? Oh, don’t tell me. PMT.’ He turned and was locking the door. ‘Or is it HRT?’

  Could she be bothered to respond? She rather thought not, and strode off to her car.

  Marcus directed her to a double-fronted house in a quiet part of Kings Heath protected by speed bumps. Apart from telling her where to turn and where to park, he’d said nothing. Accepting he might be shy, she’d not probed. Pulling in behind his and hers Volvos, she went to reach across to open the door for him, but he flinched. ‘That lever there,’ she said.

  Both parents came to the front door. His father was old enough to be his grandfather, his mother scarcely thirty. They both looked at her oddly.

  ‘Remember what I said about a bath or a shower, Marcus. I’ve been working them hard, Mrs – er –’

  ‘Fulton. Melanie Fulton. This is Doug.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘I’m Kate Power. I’m the football team’s new coach. Go on, Marcus – don’t risk catching cold.’ She waited until he was out of earshot. ‘He had a bit of an attack, you see. Paul said the Boys’ Brigade kept a spray on the premises, but it’s nearly empty, and I wanted to make sure he brought a new one next time – you know what kids are like.’

  Mrs Fulton turned an anxious face to her husband: ‘I thought I sent one last week.’

  He looked fondly back. ‘You must have forgotten. In your condition.’ His announcement was superfluous: ‘We’re expecting our second, Miss Power.’

  Premature sibling rivalry? Was that what was eating Marcus? And had Paul known and was just trying to be kind to a confused kid?

  ‘You’ll make sure he brings one on Sunday? And gives it to m
e? Once his chest cleared he was very promising. I’d hate him not to join in.’

  ‘I’ll bring it myself and lay it in your own fair hands, my dear.’

  ‘I know them,’ Cassie said. ‘He was her English teacher. Ever such a scandal there was. He lost his job, of course. But his mother dropped dead in the nick of time: left him everything. Such a boring man: never knew what she could see in him. So where are you sleeping these days? All this gadding off to the Manse.’

  ‘The Manse. Just another couple of nights. Until they’ve sorted the problem with the kitchen. It’s all stripped out and I’ve got a lovely new floor and the units will be delivered tomorrow. But no working surface. It’s stuck somewhere in Sweden. And until that’s fitted, no sink.’

  ‘You’ve got the garden tap: you’ll just have to make do with that.’ Cassie spoke sharply: she was too tired for what seemed like complaints.

  ‘That’s right.’ Best not to tell her she didn’t have a cooker or a hob, either. ‘Have you finished the crossword yet?’

  ‘I should have thought,’ Cassie said, ‘that messing about with clues was your business.’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘I was hoping Kate and I could pair up for this job, Sir,’ Colin was saying.

  ‘Well, you can’t. You’re on with Selby. Miss Power, as everyone knows, is queen of the fucking keyboard. So she can stay put and work her way through this lot. If that suits you, Miss Power?’ Cope leaned his beer belly towards her.

  Snapping to rigid attention, she said, ‘Anything you say, Sir. But I understood DCI Harvey might have other plans for me.’ The liaison work with Family Protection.

  ‘Well he might, Miss Power. But DCI Harvey isn’t here to favour us with his thoughts, is he? He’s on one of these nice high-powered – oh, dearie me, forgive the pun! – high-powered courses that our masters see fit to send us on from time to time. I bet you’ve been on a few yourself, a young high-flier like you? I’m sure we’re all gasping to hear about every single one of them, aren’t we, gents? No? So just cast your beadies over this lot and start tapping away. Selby, Roper – in my office, please.’

  Kate switched on the computer. While it played its opening jingle, she stared unseeing at the pile of material Cope had dropped on her desk. Poor Colin. Though he’d never said anything, she had a suspicion she’d not voiced even to Harvey that Cope had his knife into him almost as deeply as into Kate herself. And she’d have liked to work with Colin: to renew her acquaintance with the streets of Brum. As it was – well, it looked horribly like more of the cross-referencing of databases she’d hoped she’d finished with. And it was: car theft from Newtown. Really vital stuff when there was a child molester out there. At least there might be something to report to Cope at the end of the day – that was the best she could hope for.

  Meanwhile, she wondered what had happened to Graham. Deep down, somewhere she didn’t like to think about, she was hurt he hadn’t mentioned this course. Not told her all about it. Just mentioned it, in that comradely way of his. But he hadn’t, any more than he’d told her about his sick wife. She pulled a face, and started on the first database.

  It was terribly hard to have a row with a man who was cutting your front hedge without even being asked. There he was, Paul Taylor, clipping away with a pair of shears so rusty they must have come out of Cassie’s shed.

  He beamed when he saw her: ‘I was a bit edgy yesterday – bad day at work. So this is a sort of sorry present. You did want it cut back, didn’t you?’

  ‘Want it cut back! Absolutely!’

  He stepped back to consider his handiwork: the privet was so old and so overgrown that now he had trimmed back the top, all she had left was a collection of skeletal twigs.

  ‘Perhaps it’ll bush out in the spring,’ she said, as if to cheer up a child. Her voice lacked conviction, largely because she’d hoped to root the whole lot out.

  ‘And perhaps it won’t. Oh dear, I did so want it to look nice for you.’

  ‘Come on: the light’s almost gone now. Let’s have a coffee. I can guarantee milk this time.’ She shook her Sainsbury’s carrier. ‘And chocolate biscuits.’

  ‘I’ll just get this lot swept up and into the skip. No! Not in those clothes you don’t! Too smart for gardening. You go and get that coffee started.’

  She unlocked the door, but turned to gather her bags of shopping. Paul was tidying up the cuttings, sure, but he was taking his time about it. Exasperated, she shoved the shopping into the vestibule, ready to help despite her suit, but he was working with a will by the time she’d straightened. A white cat oozed between the railings the far side of the playground. Paul speeded up again.

  ‘You’ll be staying here tonight?’ Paul asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Tomorrow, maybe. I don’t want to outstay my welcome at the Manse but I can’t insult your sister by saying I’d rather stay in this pigsty. Still, it can’t be long now. The kitchen seems to have arrived.’

  He looked puzzled.

  ‘All those flat-packs and boxes in the front room. There’s certainly a sink there. But alas, no working surface that I can see. And until the working surface comes, they can’t fix the sink.’

  ‘Cheer up. It’s getting better.’ He put an arm round her shoulder, squeezing minutely, then distancing himself as quickly as he could. ‘How’s the upstairs?’

  After a hug as perfunctory as that, she couldn’t suspect him of wanting to get her into bed! ‘Let’s look.’ Cupping her mug of coffee, she led the way. And was so pleased she could have hugged him. The two main bedrooms were carpeted, and the fitter had actually replaced the furniture. He’d come back to do other rooms as and when they were ready.

  ‘Looks good.’ Paul followed her into the middle room. ‘Do you want to make up the bed?’

  ‘I’ll leave it to air one more night. And I’d want to dust and vac everywhere. All these rolls of fluff. I wonder –’ I wonder what Robin will say. She made it to the bathroom, retching till there was nothing except bile. Hell. When would her body understand that there was no more Robin, and none of its protests could bring him back again? She slapped cold water on her face. But the towel was too filthy from workmen’s inadequately washed hands to put anywhere near her face. At least they’d left some loo roll. Not much. Good job she’d bought a megapack tonight. As for the towel, it had better join the others in the bulging black sack she’d take to the laundrette. One evening.

  Paul was calling.

  ‘It’s OK. I must have eaten something.’ She rejoined him.

  ‘Which bedroom will you have?’

  ‘This, no traffic noise. And this suite just fits.’

  ‘Georgian, isn’t it? Must be worth a bomb.’ He stroked the mahogany and the lighter wood of the inlay.

  ‘Edwardian copy, Cassie says. Still worth a bit. Whereas the one that fits the front room is so naff I’d be surprised if even a charity shop will take it. Hey, do the Boys’ Brigade have a bonfire? They could pop the guy on top of that dressing table!’

  Paul looked shocked. ‘Strip that down and put on a lighter varnish – it’d be fine.’

  ‘The colour, yes. But not the shape. I never did like thirties shapes. Would you like it? To be honest I’d rather have the tackiest MFI than that.’

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Never more.’

  ‘Thanks! I’ll get some of the lads to help me collect it.’

  ‘Can I operate this one, then?’ Kate was in Tim’s bedroom, which was almost entirely filled by a train set. Paul, claiming such matters were over his head, had gone home to attack a mountain of marking.

  Tim nodded, not taking his eyes from the model he was fitting on to the track. ‘This is my favourite,’ he said. ‘Flying Scotsman. Though I like King George, too. Can you see the bell on the front? That was from when he went to the States for a visit.’ He looked up. ‘Hey, those coaches are the wrong livery for King George. You need those over there. Great Western livery. See.’

  So far
as Kate was concerned they were just coaches. But she was spared an embarrassing confession by the arrival of Maz.

  ‘And what sort of time d’you call this, Tim? Half an hour after lights out, I’d call it.’

  ‘My fault,’ Kate suggested, not quite truthfully. ‘I love his layout.’

  ‘Would you like to come and play properly tomorrow?’ Tim asked. ‘I’ll show you which coaches to use and everything.’

  Kate looked at Maz. ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘Mind! I should be delighted! Indeed, grateful. In fact, I was going to ask you the most enormous favour. Night-night, love. Dad’ll be up to say your prayers with you as soon as you’ve cleaned your teeth.’ She kissed him and patted his bottom affectionately.

  Kate kissed him too. On the forehead. Like she’d kissed Robin’s children. She hadn’t realised how much she missed them. She could hardly contact Kathleen and ask to see them.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Maz came back up the stairs and laid a hand on her arm.

  This time she wouldn’t even try to pretend. ‘Missing my sort-of-step-children. Dan’s about Tim’s age, Emma about Jenny’s. We used to have them some weekends.’ She straightened. ‘Now, what was the favour?’

  ‘The kids. Someone’s offered Giles and me tickets for Symphony Hall for tomorrow night. Scenes from the opera.’

  ‘And you’d like me to stay in with the kids? Fine.’

  ‘All three? They can be a real pain if they think they can get away with it. I could always get Paul to pop round, too.’

  ‘No. Honestly. Paul says he’s got a load of assignments to correct, so I’d hate to bother him. No, just give me a set of your ground rules and we’ll be fine. Now, I know you said not to bring any food in but they’d got this offer on smoked salmon, and I thought we could all have a treat. To celebrate Cassie’s diamonds, maybe. I’ve brought a bottle, too.’