Ninepins

by Rosy Thorton

  ‘It’s great, Mum,’ is all she’d said, and she hadn’t tried it on, not straight away.

  Laura had given her cash for Simon’s birthday cheque, and she’d emptied her piggy bank, too – the old Eeyore one she still used to keep her pocket money in.

  ‘I’m loaded! P’raps we’ll get the train to London, and go clubbing. Back on Monday, all right?’

  She was excited: sky-high and gliding. It was lovely to see her like that, even if it meant ignoring a pang. Swinging it over her shoulder as she headed for the door, Beth remembered to stop and say, ‘I’ve borrowed your suede bag. Hope that’s OK?’

  Rianna and Caitlin were catching the same bus further along the route, at the corner of the road to Longfenton. The plan was for lunch out – a burger, or a jacket potato from the barrow on the corner of the market square – followed by shopping; then they were all coming back here when they were done. Four or four thirty, Beth had said, most likely. This meant there was plenty of time to whip cream and mascarpone together to pile on top of the cake, and stud it with the fresh raspberries she had bought – against all her usual principles, although it was mid-November. She had fetched the old party banner down from the loft, too: the one they’d made together for Beth’s ninth and was now on its fourth outing, the cut-out cardboard letters of HAPPY BIRTHDAY beginning to curl a little, and the felt-pen colouring to fade. For once, they could use the dining room. She didn’t know if the girls would stay and eat or if they’d want to be run home when they’d had a slice of cake. There were pizzas in the freezer she could rustle up quickly enough, plenty for all of them, or for just herself and Beth and Willow. She wouldn’t get the knives and forks out yet. Keep things casual, she told herself; play it by ear.

  By four-fifteen she had the room arranged to her satisfaction: festive but not overdone. She switched on the small side lamps to add a final touch of cheer. Outside the window, dusk was beginning to gather. With nothing remaining to prepare, she unhooked her coat from the kitchen peg and went outside to watch the darkness fall. It was a favourite time for her, the winter twilight.

  When she and Simon first came here – before the arguments, before Beth – they used to stand here side by side sometimes, neither speaking nor moving, and watch the sky slowly bleed from grey through mauve to black. There was so much sky at Ninepins. From here on top of the dyke, looking out across the lode, across the empty fields beyond, it seemed to dwarf the earth, vast and tall and toppling. On days like today, when cloud was sparse, it held a quiet luminosity which lingered even after the sun was gone; the lode and banks were lit by a soft, persistent glow which seemed to come from around and within as much as from above, outshadowing the orange smudge of Cambridge on the southern horizon.

  On top of the willow tree, above the tree house roof, hunched a dark shape. A cormorant. They strayed this far sometimes, perhaps disorientated, winging in from the Wash across these tracts of land that should be water. No doubt it would roost here for the night.

  Along the main road, between the sporadic flow of car headlamps, she saw by its brighter lights the approaching bus: high above the fields swayed the small oblong of illuminated windows, growing larger at each jolt and turn. It was too early, though. It didn’t halt at the end of the drove but rolled on past towards Stretham and Ely. Feeling a sudden chill, Laura went back inside.

  For an hour, an hour and a half, she turned her mind to forestry, and managed to make some useful notes for her article, though turning them into polished prose tonight was a demand too far. The kitchen clock crept round to six. The window, now, was a shiny blank, merely throwing back the light of the room; she rose to pull down the blind, casting her eyes as she did so in the direction of the road. The shops would have closed by five or five thirty; the girls must be here soon.

  To stop herself from going outside again to wait in the cold and dark, she went to check the dining room, adjusting the clusters of balloons she had tied to either end of the curtain rail, counting again the twelve red candles which lined the perimeter of the chocolate torte. Maybe she should lay the matches out ready. It could only be in imagination that she heard the release of air, the hiss of a bus braking. Still, she found herself waiting and listening as she resumed her place at the kitchen table – five minutes, eight, ten – until it was too late for the sound of voices or the thud of the front door.

  They’d been there again on Friday when she picked up Beth from school: she seemed always to be with them, now. Outside again, they were perched on the iron railings this time, in front of the main front doors, instead of inside in the warm. It was strange how different girls could look in the same school uniform. Rianna and Caitlin were slim-legged, the stretch black trousers hugging fashionable, longbow thighs; the collars of their polo shirts were turned up at exactly the desirable angle beneath their school fleeces. Even their regulation trainers (‘plain black, no logo’) were subtly chunkier than Beth’s, the top tab undone and studiedly flicked back. Beside them Beth looked both too tidy and at the same time gawky, lumpen, aching Laura’s heart; she looked like a kid.

  At seven, she picked up the phone and called her daughter’s mobile. Too bad, if her friends thought she was checking up on her; she was a mother and entitled to her concern. If the bus hadn’t come, if it had broken down or been delayed, she could run into town in the car and pick them up. No reply; after one ring it switched to automatic voicemail. Where are you, love? It’s getting late. She hesitated just a second, then replaced the receiver without speaking.

  For something to do, she put the kettle on; then, once she had her cup of tea she realised she was hungry, too, and cut herself a slice of bread and cheese. It was ridiculous to be anxious. Beth was with her friends; what could happen to four of them together? Her mouth, though, was dry of saliva; the bread felt lumpy in her throat. Why was her daughter’s phone switched off? She never switched it off. But if there were a problem, she would have phoned, for sure. There were three other girls there, with three other mobiles. She took a swig of tea and swallowed.

  If only Beth were with Alice, or her other old friends from the primary school – Joanne or Ellie or Gemma. People whose mums she knew; children she had known since they were four. It was doubtless perverse: they were just as un-streetwise as Beth. Rianna and Caitlin were probably far more resourceful: more use in a crisis, more aware of danger. But she couldn’t help wishing for the old friends, anyway. They were such nice girls.

  At twenty past seven and again at half past, she tried Beth’s mobile, with the same result as before. At a quarter to eight she cleared a shelf and put the cake in the fridge. The Mascarpone was drying out and beginning to look crusty and tired. She should cover it, really, but it was difficult to see quite how, without taking the candles out again and having the cling film stick to the topping. They were with Willow, she reminded herself, and Willow was seventeen. An adult, or practically. The idea, which should have been a comfort, she found was nothing of the sort. How long ought she to wait before she rang someone? At eight, at nine, at ten? And actually, she realised with a cold clamping of the stomach, she had no idea whom to call. Not the police. Not yet. She had no number for Rianna’s parents, nor Caitlin’s – unless she could find them scribbled down somewhere among Beth’s bits of paper. The plan had been to drop them home, and let them give her directions. Longfenton was all she knew – not even their addresses. Vince, was all she could think. Vince, who had left his number on the pad by the phone that first Saturday. He would know what to do.

  It was just after nine thirty when the door opened. The kitchen door, that is; it was odd how, after straining her ears so long, she had not, in the end, heard the front door open and close. It was just Beth.

  Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick.

  ‘On your own?’ she asked, rising and stepping forward, then stopping again. ‘No Willow?’

  ‘Oh, she didn’t come with us, in the end. She went off. Shopping by herself, or something, she said.’ Beth was
casual, unconcerned.

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘They got off earlier, at the turning. Caitlin rang her mum to come and pick them up.’ She peeled off her duffle jacket and hoisted it over a peg. Underneath, she wore just a T shirt; one sleeve of the Fair Isle jumper trailed from Laura’s suede bag.

  ‘I thought you were coming home for supper.’ Her voice came out a little too high. ‘I’ve been calling you.’

  Beth turned round from the coat pegs, her face showing the first mild trace of consciousness.

  ‘Yeah, sorry. The battery was dead. I forgot to charge it last night.’

  ‘So, where did you go?’ Again, the tight, raised note, like somebody else’s voice.

  ‘Gonzalo’s. Dad’s money was enough for us all to get enchiladas, and then an ice-cream. I had a hot fudge sundae.’

  Stay calm; don’t get upset. It would do no good to give in to the anger that was welling up now to replace her fear. Beth’s stolen evening could hardly have been more innocent, after all – having an ice-cream sundae to celebrate her birthday. It was only a quarter to ten: not too late to salvage something of a celebration. The safety lecture could wait for the morning.

  ‘Think I’ll go and have a bath, Mum, if that’s OK. I’m totally wrecked. Can I have some of your coconut bubbles?’

  When she was gone, Laura took the cake back out of the fridge, and found two plates. Maybe the dining room was a bit much for just the pair of them, but Beth could still blow out her candles and make a birthday wish. Perhaps she’d like a mug of hot chocolate before bed, too, if she wasn’t too full up of hot fudge sauce. And there might be time for Laura to see the things she’d bought: a late-night fashion parade.

  After twenty minutes, she heard the gurgle in the downpipe as the bath water drained away. Ten minutes more, and she headed upstairs, calling softly on the landing, ‘Beth?’

  All was silent; a haze of slowly-dispersing steam hung damply around the open bathroom door. The door to her daughter’s bedroom was closed and no light showed in the crack underneath. A gentle knock and she turned the handle and pushed the door wide, flooding a segment of the room with half-light from the landing. The bed lay in the portion still in darkness. Beside it in a careless arc were flung the clothes which Beth had been wearing, the jeans with legs akimbo, T shirt bunched and inside out. And, under a hillock of duvet, clutched tight at the chin and folded close round jack-knifed legs, her daughter lay fast asleep.

  Laura closed the door softly and padded back downstairs. She pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table. The hands of the clock showed twenty past ten. She should have a bath herself, too, and get to bed, if only she could summon the energy. Instead, she folded her arms and slid forward, elbows on the table, until her forehead rested on her wrists. The first shudder surprised her, catching her like a kick beneath the ribs; it was followed by another, and then another, until she was sobbing like a child.

  Down in the pumphouse, Willow sat on the bed and closed her eyes. Except that she wasn’t in the pumphouse. She wasn’t at Ninepins and she wasn’t seventeen.

  She was eight years old, and letting herself into a silent house. It wasn’t even her own house. It was somebody else’s – as it always seemed to be, around that time. This one belonged to Ayodele. Willow liked Ayodele; she wore a many-stringed necklace of tiny speckled shells and smelt sweet and musty like honeycomb, and sometimes she came and met Willow from school. But not today.

  Willow’s mother loved Ayodele, too – just as she loved all the people whose houses they passed through, immoderately, with a promiscuous passion. She spun her round in the kitchen with extravagant vows of devotion; she threaded sticks of dry spaghetti in her springy, black hair like flowers, laughing and laughing, while on the hob the pan of water boiled over.

  The house was dark and narrow, a terrace in a dark, narrow street of terraces the same. It was a side-street off a main road. She remembered that it blew with litter: not just sweet wrappers and the odd tin can but big sheets of paper which clung around your ankles in the wind, and whole broken cartons from the backs of the shops on the main road, and the stripped outer leaves of cabbages, as big as faces. If it were in Cambridge, she couldn’t place, now, the main road or the shops, which smelt sour with spices; there were often fruits and vegetables she didn’t recognise among the detritus. More likely, it was Peterborough or Norwich, or even London.

  It must have been winter, because there were lights already on in front windows along the street, though it couldn’t have been long after three o’clock. If it was cold, she didn’t recall. Wet, though: it had been raining recently, filling the air with the smell of stirred drainwater. When she reached the house, there were no lights showing. Number 19, with its green front door, the paint peeling off in streaks. She had to use her key: the one Ayodele had given her, attached by a metal ring to a little wooden giraffe. The ring went through the giraffe’s feet, so that it always seemed to her to be suspended upside down.

  In the gloomy hallway, she stumbled over piles of shoes before she found the light switch. With the light on, the silence seemed to intensify, its edges hard and sharp, intimidating her out of calling her hello. Ignoring the deserted kitchen and living room, she mounted the stairs, slowly, one step at a time: first the left foot, then the right. Only twelve steps; far too soon she reached the bedroom door.

  There she drew a deep breath and pinched her nose. Thirteen, fourteen … Let her be out. Let her have gone to the shops with Ayodele to buy food for tea. Twenty-six, twenty-seven. Let them come back in, laughing and banging the door, and swing heavy carrier bags on to the kitchen table. Let Mum click on the radio and sing along like she’s Madonna. Forty-nine, fifty. Let Ayodele make one of her special curries, with fat aubergines and sweet potatoes and those skinny green chillis, the kind she gave one of to Willow once to bite on, as a joke, so that she had to stand for ten minutes with her tongue under the cold tap, hopping from foot to foot. Seventy-one, seventy-two. Let her mother look up, and let her eyes be shining with fun, and let her hold out her arms. Ninety-four, ninety-five. Don’t let her be here by herself in the dark. Don’t let her be in bed.

  She held her breath as she turned the door handle, held it as she pushed it open. A hundred and eight, a hundred and nine.

  The curtains were drawn shut and the room was in darkness. Stepping forward, Willow’s feet met a soft obstruction: discarded clothing, perhaps, or bedding thrown to the floor. She stood still and waited for her eyes to adjust. A hundred and twenty. In the bed, half under the blankets, the figure was turned towards her and not to the wall. Hope rising, she took another step. A hundred and twenty-one. Please let her eyes be open.

  They were open. But they didn’t flicker, just stared at her dully, without recognition. Willow turned on her heel and fled from the room, slamming the door behind her. On the landing she stopped, closed her eyes tight and drew her arms across her chest. Let Ayodele come home; let her mother come down. Let her be back to how she was a week ago, two weeks; let her come back.

  She drew back her shoulders and filled her lungs again. One, two, three …

  Chapter 8

  The Saturday of the birthday outing was the last fine day for a fortnight. On the Sunday morning, clouds rolled in from the north and west, stacking fold upon fold above the house, each new layer more ominous than the last, in shades of pewter grey. By noon, the individual shapes and colours had disappeared and the cloud banks had lowered and merged until the sky was one dark, uniform mass. As the air outside grew heavy with unshed moisture, so, indoors, Laura watched her daughter’s breath shorten.

  The Cambridgeshire fens were the worst place in the world for an asthmatic child. Beth should have lived in Italy, in air that was dry and filled with sunlight – or even just fifty miles east, on the sandy coastal heaths of Suffolk, where rainfall was low and the wind held the snap of ozone. But the research grants were not in Suffolk or Italy. Here the damp was a constant factor. It hung on the breez
e like smoke; it seeped under doors and soaked through clothing; it trickled invisibly underground and gathered to run in the lodes and drains and ditches, and rose as mist from the wet, black, chocolate-fudge soil. And with the rising water in the earth, as it seemed to Laura, rose also the fluid in Beth’s lungs, narrowing her airways to a needle’s width and leaving her fighting to breathe.

  There was no attack that Sunday night, though Beth slept only fitfully, propped close to vertical on a stack of pillows, while Laura lay sleepless in her own bed, hearing – or imagining she heard – each wheezing inhalation through two open doors and across the short stretch of landing. She was well enough to go to school, though with a note about sitting out PE. It pained Laura to see how the short walk from the car to the double swing doors left her daughter gasping, head reared back to open her throat and snatch at the air.

  It rained again every day that week, if not solidly then at least for prolonged spells. By Friday, the level in Elswell Lode was as high as it had been since the early spring; by Monday, it was higher than at any point last winter, or indeed the winter before. Beth’s chest remained tight and her breathing laboured. She moved everywhere at a snail’s pace, grasping at furniture and door frames like an old woman. At break times, at school, she stayed in the classroom.

  ‘It’s all right. Rianna and Caitlin stay in with me. They’re allowed. Mr Burdett said.’

  Laura watched each breath with a practised eye, and waited. At the moment, it was manageable. Beth’s first sharp suck on her inhaler drew in through the clogged bronchea just enough salbutamol to make a difference. If she could avoid a coughing fit from the effort of pulling in the first dose, then a minute’s careful breathing brought marked relief; her tube walls released their stranglehold sufficiently to increase the flow of oxygen, and hence to allow absorption of the second puff of drug.