Ninepins

by Rosy Thorton

‘Not ‘‘hatched’’,’ said Alice, the literalist. ‘It’s just come out of its mother’s pouch. Like a kangaroo. And they grow by shedding their skins.’

  ‘Yeah. Like snakes.’ Beth was examining the screen again, with prurient pleasure. ‘They’re disgusting. Look, you can actually see their insides.’

  Laura ruffled her daughter’s hair. ‘Shrimps for supper, then. Hope that’s all right with you girls?’ She left the room to the sound of two very gratifying squeals.

  In fact, they had spaghetti Bolognese. They called Willow, who emerged from upstairs with her nose in a paperback and spoke scarcely two words during supper. Afterwards she disappeared again with her book, while the kids headed back to the computer, and Facebook. It was a mystery to Laura, who had grown up with strict limits on midweek telephoning and no other communication medium to hand, how girls who spent all day at school talking to their friends, could yet feel the need to chat to them again all evening online.

  Laura made a coffee for herself using the small Italian percolator that she rarely had out. At the back of the cupboard she found a bar of chocolate-coated marzipan left over from Christmas, which she unwrapped and cut into slices. With the marzipan in one hand and her coffee cup in the other, she returned to the sitting room.

  The PC was still switched on, but the screen had reverted to an energy-saving blank. Social networking abandoned, Beth and Alice had also reverted: in their case to the age of six, by all appearances. They lay side by side on their stomachs on the carpet, emitting strange, snuffling, snorting noises, interspersed with volleys of laughter.

  ‘What on earth …?’

  ‘We’re baby woodlice.’ Beth wriggled her feet gleefully in the air behind her.

  Alice was humping and writhing like a dyspeptic sea lion. ‘I’m shedding my skin. Only it’s got stuck.’

  ‘I’ll help!’ cried Beth, and flung herself upon her friend and began to tickle her, and soon they were rolling in a helpless, giggling heap.

  Laura stood over them, smiling. ‘Do woodlice like marzipan?’

  They drove Alice home soon afterwards, through Elswell village and out the other side to the cluster of whitewashed buildings on the Longfenton road where Mr Seabourn farmed.

  ‘Thank you for having me,’ said Alice, then, over her shoulder, ‘Bye, Beth,’ and she ran towards the door, where her mother raised a hand from the step.

  All the way back in the car, Laura listened with satisfied half-attention to her daughter’s jabber, about Mrs Farrell and school and marsupial bugs and tomorrow’s packed lunch. It gave her quiet pleasure to hear her talk that way, without self-consciousness – and laugh again, as she’d been laughing with Alice on the sitting room floor – for the first time in more than a fortnight.

  It was nearly nine when they reached the house. Laura mentioned the bath, but didn’t press the point in the face of Beth’s protestations.

  ‘I just want to go back on Facebook a minute. Please, Mum – I won’t be long, I promise. I only want to say g’night to Alice. And I thought of something I forgot to say to her.’

  So Laura subsided into the settee and flicked on the TV news. A car bomb attack in Karachi flooded the surface of her mind. The unimpassioned voice of a translator only half masked the hand-wringing wail of a headscarfed woman: her sister and two nephews, missing in the mêlée. But presently, in another layer of consciousness, Laura registered a silence behind her. The tapping at the keyboard had ceased. She glanced round, saw Beth’s rigid back, and knew instantly that something was amiss.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, rising to move across the room. There was no reply. But as she neared the computer, Laura caught a glimpse of the screen before her daughter hit ‘delete’. Next to the box containing the short, illegible message was the photograph of the sender. With the hard shell of make-up and the glamour model pout, she would pass for twenty-five, but the steely blonde hair was unmistakable. Rianna.

  ‘Beth, what was that? What was she saying to you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But then why did you delete it, love? Why not let me see?’

  ‘Honestly, it’s nothing. Just a stupid wall post. No big deal.’

  Laura strove to master her fury against Rianna, and her own impatient curiosity. She spoke gently, one hand on her daughter’s shoulder. ‘Was she saying something nasty to you – or about you? You know you can tell me, sweetheart.’

  Beth shot her an agonised, sidelong glance. ‘Mum, please don’t. I told you, it’s stupid, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Of course it matters. It matters to me. If anyone is picking on you, or being mean, then – ’

  ‘Shut up!’ Shrugging the hand from her shoulder, Beth stood up, the movement so violent that her chair toppled and fell backwards on to the carpet, bashing Laura’s shin on the way down. ‘Stop it, Mum, for God’s sake. Just leave it alone, OK? You always have to bloody interfere. Why can’t you ever just leave things alone?’

  She kept her face averted, so that Laura couldn’t see if there were tears, but there was something blind about her progress as she stumbled from the room.

  Righting the chair, Laura sat down at the monitor and stared at it for a long moment, her mind as empty as the blank, grey screen. Then she pressed the space bar to kick it back to life. Up came the screensaver: an oceanscape, the glistening wall of water topped with leaping dolphins, chosen by Beth last summer during a craze for marine mammals. Laura clicked the Safari icon, and selected ‘history’.

  Home-made pizza was the solution that Laura hit upon. Beth had never been able to resist the allure of the floury work surface, pounding two-fisted at the squidgy dough, then stretching it out into rounds in the air, as she used to love to watch them do behind the counter in Pizza Express. She was persuaded to brave the overdue visit to her father’s house at the weekend by the promise of pizza-making for Sunday supper on her return. They would make a party of it; they could all do with some cheering up. Alice was invited but had to turn them down, having a great-aunt’s seventieth to attend over near Bury St Edmunds. Then Ellie was going to come, until her mother rang on Sunday morning to say she was down with a nasty cold, and shouldn’t be spreading it about. Laura swore as she replaced the phone; Beth would be disappointed when she got home, if it was just the three of them after all. There was nothing for it but to call Vince; Beth was always pleased to see Vince.

  Laura made the dough in the afternoon. She made a big batch of tomato sauce, and assembled all the toppings. Simon ran Beth home, for once, although his motives may not have been entirely altruistic, since it was just at the boys’ bath- and bed-time. They were slightly later than he’d said – not unusual for Simon – and Vince had arrived before them. He had left his car behind for once and come by bus, bearing wine and declaring the intention of taking a taxi home. He and Willow were already aproned and scrubbed to the elbows when Simon and Beth came in. Laura was laughing and clattering pastry boards and heard neither the car nor Beth’s key in the front door; she caught sight of Beth in the kitchen doorway, with Simon at her shoulder, just as Vince, in retaliatory action, was lunging at Willow with floured hands and dabbing her on the nose.

  ‘Hello, there. Are we interrupting something?’ said Simon, with brows raised infuriatingly at Laura, who, vexed at herself for being flustered, effected the introduction.

  ‘Simon – Vince.’ She wished she hadn’t felt the need to add, ‘Vince is Willow’s social worker.’

  She felt uncomfortable, too, when he looked round her kitchen that way – the kitchen that used to be his, too. So she said, ‘How’s Alfie?’

  ‘Absolutely back to normal now. You know how it is with kids. They’re ill, but it leaves you more knackered than it does them.’

  Beth circled the table, casting off coat and scarf and staring at the row of whitened boards on the worktop. ‘You started without me. Why did you start without me?’

  ‘Oh dear, I’m sorry, love. But we hadn’t really got going, we were just getting t
hings ready.’

  ‘Hmph.’ She didn’t sound ready to be mollified so easily, until Vince dabbed her nose, too, and said, ‘Here, we were just going to divide up the dough. Why don’t you take a lump and show me what to do?’

  His ability to get round her was galling, sometimes, even while it was handy. ‘Wash your hands first, then,’ she said.

  Simon could not be persuaded to stay for a cup of tea, pleading the requirement of his presence at home for goodnight tuckings-in; but she was irked by his grin as he told her at the door, ‘I’d only be in the way here.’

  They each armed themselves with a quarter of the dough and began to knock it into shape. The mixture seemed to Laura too sticky; hers came up in strings when she tried to knead it and adhered to the board in spite of the liberal application of flour. Then, when she began to pull it out flat, it stretched unevenly and tore to holes. The others all seemed to be managing all right, so it must just be her. What was wrong with her tonight?

  Once it was on the oiled baking tray, she pressed closed the rents with her fingers, disguising her botched handiwork with tomato and mushrooms. Vince opened his wine: an Italian name she didn’t recognise, red, full-bodied and good. She emptied her glass more quickly than was sensible, and found it refilled.

  By the time the kitchen warmed to the aroma of oregano and melting cheese, she was starting to relax. Beth was having fun, which was, after all, the object of the exercise. If the shadow of Dougie had haunted her weekend at Simon’s, she showed no sign of it now as she shouted suggestions for novel pizza toppings.

  ‘Pepperoni, pea and prune,’ she squealed, wrinkling her nose. Beth abhorred prunes.

  ‘The Lancastriana,’ countered Vince. ‘Black pudding and fried egg.’

  ‘Anchovy and custard. That would be so gross.’

  ‘Or how about eel? The Feneziana. For every pizza sold, 25p will be donated to the Elswell in Peril fund, for improvements in land drainage.’

  Willow, Laura noticed, wasn’t joining in, though she watched the two of them closely. And when the pizzas were decreed to be done and the trays lifted steaming from the oven and on to the table, three were dismembered and three-quarters dispatched before hers missed more than a slice. And as soon as Beth sat back in her chair and declared herself ‘totally stuffed’, Willow took hold of her arm.

  ‘C’mon, let’s go upstairs.’

  To her credit, Beth looked doubtfully at her mother, though any sense of obligation was apparently limited to practicalities. ‘What about the washing up?’ she asked.

  Beth had spent increasing hours in the spare bedroom over the past two weeks. But Laura resolved to say nothing; what was there she could say?

  ‘Don’t worry about the dishes. You two go.’ It was only twenty to nine.

  Vince replenished her glass with a roll of the eyes. ‘Kids.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll make a start …’

  But as she began to shuffle the remains of pizza on to a single baking tray, he trapped her hand and held it still. ‘Later. Just sit. Drink.’

  She did as she was told, and presently the warmth of the food and the glow of the wine seeped up to flood her with lassitude and she lost all thought of clearing up. For some time, she allowed Vince to talk, and for once he seemed very willing to do so, though not about his work – never about that. He related some story about a social worker friend of his up at King’s Lynn who kept a fishing boat there. It had been his father’s, and he still went out in it at weekends. He’d had to let go of the family fish shed when his father died and no longer had an outlet for his catch, so had developed the habit of pressing his clients to gifts of mackerel, bass and pollack.

  ‘We had a lad in the office this week who’d turned up at Social Services in Lynn. A runaway. One of ours, so they sent him back down to us. I knew it must have been Sam who’d seen him there. The lad was giving off a stink of fish. When someone finally asked about it, he produced a pair of dabs from his pocket, wrapped in greaseproof paper.’

  Laura laughed, and more than merely dutifully, though her mind was running on other tracks.

  ‘Next time I come I’ll bring supper, shall I? I can get Sam to look out four nice fat sea bream.’

  ‘That would be nice. Beth likes fish. Anything, as long it doesn’t have tentacles.’ Then she took a slug of wine and said, ‘Vince, I’m worried about her again.’

  What is it this time? If he was thinking it, he gave no outward indication. But, poor man, he must be fed up of her bending his ear about Beth.

  ‘I think there are some girls at school giving her a hard time.’ Bullying, she almost said, but the word seemed too portentous.

  He surveyed her across the table and said nothing.

  ‘It’s these girls that she was friends with, and now they’ve fallen out and I think they’re being nasty to her about it.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘The shoplifters?’

  She nodded. ‘The girls who put her up to it, yes.’

  ‘And what kind of thing are they doing?’

  ‘I’m not exactly sure. About what’s going on at school, I mean. Beth never says anything. Not to me. I’ve tried, but asking makes it worse. She just clams up.’

  There she lapsed into silence, so that he had to prompt her. ‘So, then …?’

  ‘Well, I saw something on the computer. Or rather, I didn’t actually see it, not to read, but I knew it was there, and I’m sure it won’t have been the first or only time, not by Beth’s reaction.’

  ‘On the computer?’

  ‘Yes. She was on Facebook, and there was a message there. A ‘‘wall post’’ is what she called it, which I gather means it’s public, and all her friends could see it as well.’

  He didn’t need to nod; his frown was confirmation. ‘But you don’t know what was said – what’s being said?’

  Miserably, she shook her head. ‘I only know she was really upset.’

  ‘Poor old Beth,’ he said, and she felt a moment of anger, or at least of disappointment. Was that all he had to offer?

  ‘The thing is, I wonder if I should say something – do something.’

  ‘Complain to the moderators, you mean?’ She must have looked blank, because he added, ‘Networking sites, chat rooms, they all have rules against posting abuse.’

  Impatient, she shrugged. ‘Beth deleted it.’

  ‘But if these girls are going to post more messages – ’

  ‘It’s not that. It’s not Facebook, not really – or not only that. I mean, it won’t be just the computer, will it? I’m worried they’re being spiteful to her in other ways, in other places. At school, for instance.’ In school or outside school, spreading their poison; talking or texting, to her or about her; jeering, telling hurtful lies. ‘I suppose I was wondering if I should tell her form teacher.’

  After a pause, he said quietly, ‘What does Beth think?’

  She looked at him, with a feeling of slipping, of the ground falling away. ‘She wants me to leave it alone, to keep out of it. At least that’s what she says. But I can’t just do nothing, can I?’

  That’s what she’d done last time, over the stolen chocolate bars. She hadn’t gone marching into school with her denunciations; she’d kept Beth’s confidence and not named names. And precious good it had done. Weren’t you supposed to stand up to bullies?

  But Vince was unmoved. He reached for the wine bottle and measured out the final inch between their two glasses.

  ‘In the end,’ he said, ‘it’s down to Beth. You can’t fight her battles for her.’

  There was some truth in it, Laura supposed as she gazed at him helplessly, yet there was surely an irony in his saying it. Wasn’t that what he did all the time at work, fight kids’ battles for them? It was practically his job description.

  Letting her thoughts drift into absence, she broke off an edge of pizza, encrusted with cheese and a final olive. She took a bite but it was dry as polystyrene.

  ‘Shall I open another bottle?’ She rose, co
llecting up, now, the baking trays and plates. ‘There’s some red in the corner cupboard, though I’m sure it’s not as nice as yours. Just cheap supermarket plonk.’

  He made polite, demurring noises and tossed back the remnant in his glass. When she’d recovered the corkscrew from the washing up bowl, given it a wipe and uncorked the Côtes du Rhône, she poured them both a generous helping. She was about to sit down again when he stood up.

  ‘Let’s go outside.’

  ‘Outdoors?’ It had been close to freezing all day.

  ‘Do you mind? Just for a breath of air.’ He laughed. ‘Stupid habit of mine. I used to smoke, and I miss it. At work I go and stand out the back by the bins every day for five minutes in the rain.’

  This, she assumed, could not be true, but he seemed to be serious. He was already half way down the hall, taking his wine glass with him. She took hers and followed.

  It wasn’t as cold as she’d supposed, not as cold as when she’d made him walk by the Hundred Foot Drain. After nightfall, cloud had crept across, blotting out the stars and drawing the temperature up by a few degrees. There was certainly no frost: the chill had a damper, blunt-edged feel. It was hard to make out anything beyond the semicircle of electric light cast by the open front door. She wrapped her arms around her body and wished her wine were cocoa.

  Vince had taken a few steps along the top of the dyke. The darkness, which had seemed as dense as bitumen, thinned to show her his silhouette. She moved forward and stood beside him, squinting the way he was looking, across the lode and into nothing.

  He didn’t move or speak, and presently she found herself asking, ‘How’s Marianne?’

  He turned a fraction. ‘All right, I think. Back on her pills.’

  There was nothing more she could think to say – not about the mother, not directly. But there were things she wanted to know.

  ‘Vince, do you mind if I ask you about bipolar disorder? I talked to Willow, and she mentioned that might be the issue, with Marianne.’ It was manic depression – she knew that much, of course, and she’d looked it up to find out more. But she hadn’t found an answer to the doubt that dogged her. ‘Is it hereditary? Might Willow …?’ She let her question drift, thinking of the silences, which might be troubled, unhappy or merely self-absorbed; the long days in the spare bedroom, alone.