Ralph’s Children

by Hilary Norman

  She bounced the football, caught it, scanned the garden, saw that no one was remotely interested in her or them, and handed the ball to Jack.

  Simon looked at the others. ‘I’m not quite sure about it.’

  ‘I am,’ Roger said. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

  ‘You just want to do the acting,’ Simon said.

  ‘It’s not,’ Jack said, ‘as if we’re going to really hurt her.’

  Ralph looked from one to the other, all in their uniform grey, and felt a pang of something like loss.

  ‘You do remember,’ she said, ‘that I can’t join in this one at all, don’t you?’

  ‘We know,’ Roger said. ‘You’ve said.’

  ‘Just as long as you don’t shop us,’ Jack said.

  Ralph felt the threat underlying his words, and was suddenly afraid, not for herself, but for him, the boy-thug.

  ‘She never would,’ said Simon, tenderly.

  No active participation, but she had been there nonetheless, could not keep away.

  Had to watch from a distance, just in case.

  Their Chief, after all. Guardian, more like.

  It had started well enough, according to plan.

  They took the cleaner’s dog, which was called Billy, while his mistress was at one of her jobs and the children were at school – and there was no husband or live-in boyfriend, which had made things less complicated – and after dusk, Roger had made an anonymous call from a public phone to say that the dog had been spotted tied to a fence on Bartlet Down.

  ‘Who is this?’ Rose Miller asked, but Roger had already hung up.

  She came, as they’d expected, though they were all relieved she came alone, had been afraid she might have brought the children, but it was cold and dark and she had done just what Simon had guessed she would; left the kids on their own and walked up towards Bartlet Down, bundled up in an anorak and woolly hat, shining a torch in front of her.

  The dog was there all right, its muzzle tied with a scarf – a long green woollen thing pinched by Jack out of a woman’s shopping basket on the bus – to stop it barking, though his whines were more than piercing enough, and there was no time to lose.

  ‘Billy boy,’ Miller said, shock in her voice. ‘My poor—’

  She began to stoop, and they were all on her.

  Ralph, hidden behind a tree but close enough to see the action, felt suddenly and violently sick, because Miller’s torch and the half-moon lit up the children’s monstrous war paint and the cleaner’s face, and her terror in those first moments were a part of what made Ralph nauseous.

  She had done this.

  She clapped a hand over her mouth, afraid she might vomit.

  And right away, saw it begin to go wrong.

  ‘You bastards!’

  Miller’s fear seemed to fill her, transformed swiftly into a fury, endowing her with a strength none of them had bargained on.

  ‘You shits!’ she screamed when Jack seized hold of her thick arms, fought back, kicking and striking out with her gloved hands, while Billy whined piteously into the night air.

  Do something.

  If she didn’t intervene now, Ralph realized, something worse would happen.

  Her mind shot through one scenario even as she moved. If she was quick, then Miller might believe she’d come to help her, and the group could get away while . . .

  But Rose Miller saw her coming out of the dark, and felt, in the heat of her battle, that Ralph was another threat.

  ‘No!’ she cried out.

  ‘Let me—’

  The cleaner tucked down her head and butted Ralph hard in the chest, and Ralph stumbled on the grassy slope, began to slip and then to slide. And what began as a fall from which she might easily have got up, became something else entirely, something dreadful, as she crashed into the trunk of a beech tree.

  And knew no more.

  Kate

  For as long as they were still checking to see that Kate had not been injured, the people who had emerged, a few at a time, out of the darkness – police, farm workers, paramedics and other drivers – were quite kind to her, but as soon as they saw that she could walk unaided, it seemed to her that everyone began to shout at her.

  ‘Stupid, bloody women drivers.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be allowed on the road.’

  ‘Can’t control their cars.’

  Kate ignored them, appalled enough already by the chaos that her burst tyre had created, seeing the long line of headlights snaking back along miles of curving road as the police began ordering the onlookers away and organizing traffic controls around the cars still blocking the two-way road. More than anything, she was profoundly grateful that no one seemed to have been badly hurt, though she had seen in the lights of an ambulance that the driver of one car was bleeding from a gash in his head.

  ‘Can I go wherever he’s taken to make sure he’s OK?’ she asked a paramedic at the roadside. ‘I mean, I know it wasn’t really my fault, but it was my tyre that caused all this, so—’

  ‘Not going anywhere –’ another policeman came from behind her – ‘until we’re finished here.’

  Which turned into a string of questions, a checking of her licence and insurance, and a long blow into the gizmo that declared Kate sober – and she thanked her lucky stars that she hadn’t drunk so much as a sip of wine while packing her bag earlier, then promptly had to thank them again as her spare tyre was declared sound – more luck than judgement, since she didn’t think she’d ever checked it since buying the Mini.

  It was almost an hour before she was ready to drive on – except that the injured man had been taken to the Royal Berkshire, which meant driving all the way back to Reading. But since she hadn’t learned his name, unless she did go there and make certain he was all right, Kate knew she might not be able to properly relax when she did finally make it to Caisleán.

  No fractures, no concussion, just a few stitches, as it turned out – none of which good fortune stopped the man from haranguing Kate.

  ‘They should make you take your test again,’ he told her. ‘You obviously feel guilty, or you wouldn’t be here.’ And after a breath: ‘There are courses for people like you.’

  Kate sat politely, aware he was probably shocked, waiting for him to finish.

  ‘There really was nothing I could do about it,’ she said finally, mildly, wondering why she seldom managed to react so calmly with people she loved.

  She experienced another great longing to speak to Rob, but she didn’t want to sound needy, nor did she want him to think she was trying to muscle in on his time with Emmie, so having downed a machine-bought can of Coke and a packet of crisps and used the loo, she went back to the hospital car park and settled for calling up her messages at home, in case Rob might have had a similar urge.

  Only one message, from Bel.

  Kate sighed, got into the Mini and returned the call.

  ‘Hello?’ a voice answered.

  Not Bel.

  Sandi West.

  She was usually somewhere around her mother’s life these days, which Kate had just about come to accept was, for Bel’s sake, perhaps not entirely a bad thing.

  ‘Hello, Sandi,’ she said now, willing her hackles not to rise. ‘It’s Kate.’

  ‘How nice,’ the other woman said.

  The sarcasm made Kate grit her teeth. ‘Is Mum there?’

  ‘You really upset your mother the other day,’ Sandi told her. ‘Putting the phone down on her instead of listening to her good advice.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Kate said, ‘I’d like to speak to her, please.’

  ‘You can’t,’ Sandi West told her. ‘She’s gone to the chemist’s.’

  ‘Is she ill?’ Kate waited for Sandi to lay some extra guilt.

  ‘She’s gone to fill a prescription for me,’ Sandi said. ‘I have to go away for the weekend, but my pain’s worse than usual and she was kind enough to offer.’

  Kate managed to end the call without resortin
g to rudeness.

  The phone rang again, startling her. She peered at the display, saw it was her father calling.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  Kate was startled, wondering how he could possibly know what had happened.

  ‘Only you weren’t yourself earlier,’ Michael said.

  Just coincidence then.

  ‘Too much myself.’ Kate remembered her awful behaviour. ‘I’m so sorry, Dad, I was a real bitch. And will you tell Delia?’

  ‘No problem, sweetheart.’

  She blessed him, as she had many times before, for his forgiving nature.

  ‘Are you guys at Heathrow?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m home,’ Michael told her. ‘Alone. Delia had a crisis.’

  ‘What kind of crisis?’

  ‘Family.’

  ‘In Oz?’

  A vision of Delia boarding a Qantas jet gave her a swift rush of pleasure, which she promptly squashed because her father would miss her.

  ‘No,’ Michael said. ‘Cumbria.’

  If Kate had previously known about Delia’s UK relatives, she’d forgotten.

  ‘I just wanted to tell you I love you, Kate,’ Michael told her. ‘And that if you need to talk, I’m always here for you.’

  The warmth she felt was a reviving force.

  ‘Thank you, Dad,’ Kate said. ‘Though I’m on the way to Caisleán for the weekend.’

  ‘Just what you need,’ Michael told her.

  ‘Hope so,’ Kate said.

  ‘Drive carefully, my darling,’ her father said.

  Kate promised she would.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said.

  ‘I’m your dad,’ Michael said. ‘Goes with the territory.’

  Laurie

  Not one, but two spanners in the works as Laurie’s countdown continued.

  First, a pipe had burst beneath the first floor, resulting in half the kitchen ceiling crashing down on the Moons’ beautiful granite worktops and maple floor, electrics shorting out and Shelly Moon pleading with her daughter to stay home and help out.

  ‘I am helping,’ Laurie said, sweeping up broken glass. ‘And I’ll go on helping as soon as I come back tomorrow evening.’

  ‘You’ll have to put off your visit till next week.’ Shelly was feeling desperate, though Pete was busy marshalling troops, and Dave and Frank from the stables were already on their way.

  ‘I can’t put it off, Mum,’ Laurie told her.

  ‘It’s not as if it makes any real difference to him,’ her mother said.

  ‘Perhaps –’ Laurie straightened up – ‘if you hadn’t said that, I might have postponed.’

  ‘But now you won’t,’ Shelly said.

  ‘No,’ Laurie confirmed.

  ‘You wouldn’t have anyway,’ her mother added, dislike in her eyes.

  ‘Probably not,’ Laurie agreed.

  The second spanner struck as she was about to leave the house to pick up some takeaway pizzas and extra bottled water for the troops, and her car broke down.

  The VW Polo had never let her down before, and it had started first time this evening, too – so she knew it was not as simple as her battery – but then, still in the driveway, the engine died and refused to be resuscitated.

  ‘Please,’ Laurie said to the car. ‘Don’t do this to me.’

  Even before she got out, Laurie could predict her parents’ reaction. She had no AA membership of her own, and her father would refuse to call them or the local garage for her (and she could forget any hope of borrowing Shelly’s BMW), and since it would be double time for an evening call-out, Laurie couldn’t afford to pay herself, because she’d maxed her credit card two days ago when she’d seen a gorgeous red scarf in a shop in the Oracle and had known that Sam would love it, and it was too expensive, but she’d had a great urge to get him something gorgeous and overpriced.

  No choice then but to crawl to her father.

  He was in the kitchen with the men, one of them – Frank – up a ladder, calling to the plumber who was somewhere above.

  ‘I’m sorry, Laurie,’ Pete said, ‘but I’ve got more important problems.’

  ‘I just thought maybe Dave or—’

  Her father cut her off. ‘I hope you’re joking.’

  Laurie saw Dave – who was holding a torch for Frank – glance first at Pete Moon, then at her, and she thought, but wasn’t sure, that he’d just winked at her, and if he had, she wasn’t sure what that might mean.

  What it meant, as it turned out, was that after Dave and Frank had finished clearing up for the night as well as they could, Dave came to Laurie for her car keys, and in less than half an hour the Polo was going again.

  ‘You’ve totally saved me, Dave,’ Laurie told him.

  ‘My pleasure,’ he said, and gave her a really lovely, kind and conspiratorial smile as he left, making her wonder for a moment if he might know where she was going in the morning.

  But of course he couldn’t know that, because Sam was a secret.

  An instant, foolish fantasy flew through her mind: Dave – who was tall and dark and good-looking, with a not-too-big tattoo on one arm – knowing about her son, asking if he could come with her one Saturday and visit him; Sam adoring him instantly, and Dave telling Laurie he was in love with her and if she wanted to get Sam out of Rudolf Mann House, he’d like nothing more than to be his father, and . . .

  Silly cow, Laurie told herself.

  Eight and a half hours till she saw Sam.

  The Game

  The games, as they had previously been, had ceased after the accident, the group’s infrastructure forever altered because of what had happened to Ralph.

  She’d stayed in hospital for a long time, had not returned to Challow Hall.

  They had come to her whenever and however they could.

  She had remained their creature, yet after that the group had belonged to her in a new way, because the four children owed her their freedom and futures, and each member had understood that.

  The night on Bartlet Down had changed everything.

  Regaining consciousness and finding Simon leaning over her shining a torch into her face, Ralph had remembered everything instantly.

  ‘Where’s Miller?’ she had asked.

  ‘Gone.’ Simon saw that the torchlight was dazzling Ralph, turned it away. Ralph blinked, looked around, saw the others a few feet away, their obvious terror not masked by their war paint, saw, too, Billy, the cleaner’s dog, still tethered and muzzled, whining and growling.

  ‘She ran off,’ Pig informed Ralph.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Not long,’ Simon said.

  ‘You’ve only been out of it for a few moments,’ said Roger.

  ‘You all right?’ Jack was still feet away, focusing on the dog, not quite able to look at Ralph who was lying on the ground so awkwardly that it was obvious she was far from all right.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she told him.

  Later, Ralph felt amazed by her clarity at the scene, but she had, remarkably, been able to issue directions, to instruct them to remove the lead and scarf from the dog and take them away.

  ‘Make sure you burn them, along with whatever you use to clean your faces.’ She paused. ‘And scrub your nails.’

  ‘Right,’ said Roger.

  ‘Then get back to Challow Hall and into bed.’

  ‘We can’t leave you,’ Simon said.

  ‘You have to,’ Ralph had told her. ‘Miller’s bound to be phoning the police, but she can’t have recognized you, and if she does make trouble, it’ll be my word against hers, so you won’t have to worry as long as you do what I tell you.’

  Jack untied the scarf, and the dog snarled, tried to bite him, began to bark, then ran off into the night and disappeared.

  ‘Now go,’ Ralph had told them. ‘Quickly.’

  They had hesitated a moment longer, then melted into the darkness, and she had tried counting minutes to work ou
t if they’d had long enough to get away before someone came, but then clarity had disintegrated, and consciousness with it.

  When kindly voices and helping hands had roused her again, she’d been ready with her story, ready to accuse Rose Miller and save her children. And she had not realized until later that she’d been so occupied thinking about them, that she had scarcely given a thought to the extent of her injuries.

  Jack had visited her in Princess Margaret Hospital in Swindon.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come,’ Ralph had told him quietly.

  ‘The others wanted to come,’ Jack said. ‘But I knew you wouldn’t want us all.’

  ‘I want you all right,’ Ralph said. ‘But it’s a bad idea.’ She paused. ‘They’ve charged Miller. With grievous bodily harm.’

  ‘GBH.’ His green eyes glittered with power. ‘Blimey.’

  ‘So you need to stay away, right?’ she said. ‘Until after it’s all over.’

  ‘Right,’ he had said. ‘Won’t you have to thingy, in court?’

  ‘Testify.’ Ralph had nodded. ‘I should think so.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he said.

  And then, moments later, after eating a handful of her grapes, he told her that he had killed Billy, Miller’s mongrel, had hit it with a brick.

  ‘Why?’ Ralph asked in a horrified whisper. ‘None of it was the poor dog’s fault.’

  ‘I had to,’ Jack said. ‘To punish her.’

  ‘But she’s going to be put on trial.’ Still, Ralph kept her voice down. ‘Isn’t that more than enough?’

  ‘No one’s going to know what I did,’ he said. ‘I dumped it, and it didn’t feel anything, if that’s what you’re worrying about, but they’re not going to find it, they’ll just think it’s missing.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Ralph said.

  Jack had looked at her for a moment. ‘D’you hate me now?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Ralph said, feeling ill. ‘But I still wish you hadn’t done it.’

  ‘I did it for you,’ he said.

  When the case came to court, Ralph had testified, confirming what she had already told the police. That she had been out walking on Bartlet Down, had heard a dog whining and gone to see if it needed help, and that Rose Miller – who she’d recognized from the home – had shoved her without any grounds to do so.