Hubble Bubble

by Jane Lovering

  ‘But Holly …’

  ‘I wished for excitement, remember?’ I wheeled away from her and headed down over the lip of the hilltop into the wood, splashing through runny mud, keeping one ear on the rattle of the motorbike engine which sounded as though it was heading along the dry ground on the ridge.

  Heading out through the woods to the gully where I’d hidden after my escape from the shed. To where, it had just dawned on me, there had been an awful lot of plastic sheeting and loose earth, just the kind of thing you might expect to find if someone had, for example, wrapped and buried a load of drugs, in the middle of nowhere, where no one ever went.

  I tripped over my own feet as I ran. The bike engine was just ahead of me, so I kept going, following the sound, although my memory for places – honed by years of having to keep a mental image of locations in case of sudden need – told me that the gully was in the bottom of the valley and the bike was still running along the ridge. Suddenly the note of the engine changed, I saw the mossy outline of the innocent-looking shed where I’d been trapped just in front of me and realised that the bike was being ridden directly down the slope. I took a deep breath and sprinted amateurishly through the leaf-mulch, slipping and sliding on the debris with the sound of the dirt bike whining in my ears.

  Kept going, on through the trees. There was still a covering of snow on the floor of the forest, but all footprints were long gone. I had to run navigating by instinct, fear, and the vague memories that had formed as I’d hurtled through the trees afraid for my life. I found the gully the same way I had last time, by sliding down into it, rolling and jolting with my legs out in front of me and my shoulders catching on roots and branches, and I just had time to duck behind one of the low-growing ivy-covered bushes that littered the slope before I heard a bike drop with a dying drone. The engine cut out and there was a sudden green silence, broken eventually by a crashing slide as one of the men – I didn’t know which of them I’d been chasing – came plunging down the slope, broke his fall by grasping at a stump of elder and swung around to start digging with both hands in the side of the hollow, tearing plastic and swearing loudly and emphatically.

  I didn’t think. I leaped out from behind my cover and confronted my nemesis, Big Ginge himself, who was pulling small white blocks from the earth, dusting them off and slipping them inside his leather jacket. ‘The police are on their way,’ I said, making him jump and drop one of the packets. ‘They’re just arresting your mates.’

  ‘Then I had better hurry, hadn’t I?’ He was still helmeted, so the words were slightly muffled by his restricted cheeks, but his visor was open to show that he didn’t look even slightly worried. ‘And you had better stay out of my way.’

  ‘No.’ I went to push him away from the drugs but he was solid and wrapped in leather and my full-body charge just ricocheted off him and left me sliding through the mud. ‘I’m not letting you go.’

  A sigh and the final pack slid into the pocket. ‘You have no choice.’ And he turned around and hit me hard on the side of the head with his fist, almost unthinkingly. As I sprawled down, vision clouding, I saw him start to zip up his jacket and head back towards the fallen bike and I had the sudden, horrific vision of these blokes getting away with it, of Kai’s face if he realised he’d failed to stop them. I grabbed and got hold of an ankle clad in neopropylene and, as my vision started to clear, I pulled.

  Big Ginge slithered in the mud and went down, knees first, onto the ground. Packages fell from his jacket and he swore again, began groping around trying to replace them, while I held on to his leg and kept pulling in an attempt to stop him from moving. He started to kick, loosening my hold and catching me in the ribs with his foot. Breathless, I let go and he kicked me again, rolling himself until he could get purchase to stand. ‘Stupid fucking women,’ he stood over me now. I tried to get another hold on him but the mud sucked me down and my buzzing head and blurry vision meant I couldn’t see well enough to get a proper grip. I shook my head but it made things worse, the bushes and trees that lined the sides of the depression began to swing and nausea grabbed at my stomach. My heart had begun to pound, panic-fuelled, now that the adrenaline of the chase had worn off, and I was beginning to realise that I might have made a really stupid mistake. ‘Should have just shot you when we had the chance.’

  And then he kicked me in the head. The world went black and all I could smell and taste was blood but I could still hear, and what I heard was a sudden scratchy dashing sound, a snap and my ginger captor screaming ‘No, get it off, get it away!’ and then a low, growling, grunting sound. After a pause so long that I wondered if I’d passed out, there was the sound of running feet and lots of voices in a cacophony of yelling, and snarling, but the kick wasn’t followed up with any more bodily violence, so I curled myself into a little ball of pain around my aching head and let myself drop into unconsciousness.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ‘Wow.’ Isobel gently touched the side of my face. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Only when I breathe. Or eat.’ Two days had seen the bruising turn from red to black, one of my eyes was still swollen shut and my jaw looked as though a three year old had been let loose with a painting set on it, but I was getting better. ‘Or sit, stand, lie down and talk.’

  ‘Oh, Holly.’

  ‘And here’s the hero of the hour!’ Even Vivienne looked pleased as Megan entered, dragged by Rufus. ‘If Rufus hadn’t got loose and gone chasing after you, who knows what might have happened?’

  I could have sworn that Rufus winked at me, but since I could only see out of one eye myself I might have been mistaken.

  ‘None of us knew where you’d gone, you just vanished off the face of the earth.’ Eve said. ‘Dav— Kai was quite beside himself. He wanted the police to leave those thugs and go looking for you. Although, quite probably, he might also have wanted them to arrest me for flouting the unspoken rule of motherhood, “You shall not cover your adult son in kisses, however much you may have feared he’d been killed.” I thought he’d die of embarrassment. Where is he, by the way? I thought he was coming with you?’

  ‘He’s down at the police station giving a statement.’ I took an almost-warm cup of tea with my slightly trembling hands. ‘I wish I was there with him.’

  Eve gave a smile that was three parts relief to two parts romance. ‘You two are so in love, it’s wonderful.’

  ‘Actually I want to hear how he’s talking his way out of all this. He’s going to be generating more bullshit than a field of cows seeing the vet arrive.’ I let a slow, warm smile spread onto my face. ‘He’s really great in action, Eve.’

  Megan gave a filthy snigger. ‘And you’ve seen him in action a lot, haven’t you, Holl?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  The telephone rang and Vivienne answered it, while the rest of us emptied the cooling teapot and ate the supplied biscuits. Isobel touched my arm.

  ‘Holly, there’s something I need to tell you.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  She looked quickly over her shoulder. Eve was grinning to herself, a grin that was entirely unwarranted by the choice of soggy options left in the unwelcoming biscuit tin. Megan was still snorting the kind of laugh which comes with over-furnished comfort and crap snacks, and Vivienne was busy exclaiming into the phone. ‘Not here. Somewhere private.’

  I raised eyebrows. Isobel’s cheeks had a pink dab in the centre, like embarrassment, but her eyes were shining. Her hair gleamed more than usual and the spots had almost gone. ‘Why? What is it?’

  A coy, sideways look and her mouth opened, but our conversation was severed by Vivienne shooting towards the television set in the corner of the room.

  ‘Shh!’

  We all looked at one another. Being hushed like a room full of five-year-olds wasn’t really in our brief.

  ‘Why?’ Megan asked.

  ‘That was my daughter on the phone.’ Vivienne fumbled with a remote control, fiddling with buttons, trying to find a channel.
‘My husband … my ex-husband, is on TV.’ The screen flipped between yet another Top Gear repeat and a cookery programme.

  ‘He’s the Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car?’ Megan looked confused.

  ‘No … damn thing … Channel Four. It’s always hard to find on this set.’ Vivienne pressed a few more buttons and the graphics of a new quiz show flicked up. ‘“Cash for Questions”. I’ve never seen it.’

  We watched as the camera panned the audience. ‘Which one is him?’ Isobel leaned close to the screen.

  ‘He’s there somewhere. Emily said she saw him … oh!’ Vivienne collapsed onto the stool that Eve had vacated in order to rummage through the biscuits. ‘He’s there.’ Her eyes widened. ‘There. Not the audience. He’s a contestant.’

  The camera came to rest on a nondescript middle-aged man, chunky round the jowls, wearing a hand-knitted sweater and looking a bit shame-faced. ‘Bastard?’ Eve said, experimentally.

  ‘No, he … oh, turn it up, Megan, please.’ Vivienne straightened on her perch and we all watched in silence as Richard Bentley was introduced to an audience which seemed to be made up of pensioners on acid, judging by the gales of laughter raised by the presenter’s feeble attempts at humour.

  ‘Oh, Holly,’ Vivienne turned to me, her eyes shining. ‘The charm worked. It really worked! He’s all right!’

  ‘Must have been some sex,’ Meg muttered, but everyone shushed her.

  And then the quiz began. Fairly straightforward in format, it consisted of Richard being given money for each correctly answered question, and losing it for wrong answers. The cash, and forfeits, rose as the level of difficulty went up and I found that I was hugging a cushion as I watched, biting the careful piping around its edges to stop myself crying out in frustration.

  But eventually Richard came to the final question. He could choose to answer – trebling his current winnings and scoring himself a massive financial prize, losing it all if he was wrong – or to take what he’d got so far and run.

  ‘Take the money!’ Vivienne pounded the screen with a slipper. ‘You lunatic!’

  ‘Gamble!’ shouted Megan, and I had to stand quite firmly on her foot to shut her up. Vivienne’s eyes were nearly popping out and I hoped she didn’t have a history of high blood pressure, because the studio clock was ticking down to Richard’s decision in a way guaranteed to cause a coronary in susceptible viewers.

  ‘I’ll gamble,’ he said, into our collective intake of breath. The camera closed in on his face. ‘But first I want to apologise.’ The slick presenter knew good TV when he participated in it, and stood back, allowing Richard full access to the camera banks. ‘Vivienne, if you’re watching, I did it all for you. I had to leave, to stop you getting dragged into the God-awful mess that my life became. I thought you might have known … worked it out from the fact that I’d put everything into your name just before the bank foreclosed on the business loan. But if I win here tonight then so many of my troubles will be over. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me the pain I caused you, and that we could at least try to be together again.’

  ‘Questioned good and hard and then put out of his misery.’ I’d half-whispered it, but Vivienne heard and whipped her head around towards me. Her eyes were fixed, over-bright, as though she was holding tears under her lids.

  ‘Oh … He loved me. All the time, he loved me.’ Red-clawed fingers raked at her hair. ‘He wasn’t finding himself, he was protecting me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to find myself wearing a jumper like that,’ Megan said, matter-of-factly.

  ‘I knitted it. Three years ago. He’s wearing it as a sign that everything he says is true, he really does want me to take him back.’

  ‘If he wins.’ I felt a bit of an old sourpuss. ‘Then he can pay off a lot of his debts. Buy himself out of bankruptcy.’

  ‘It’s like that film, Slumdog Millionaire,’ Isobel added. ‘Winning the quiz gets him the girl!’

  ‘He hasn’t won yet,’ Eve reminded us.

  ‘But I’d take him back anyway, the old fool.’ The tears were there now, spreading onto Vivienne’s make-up like flooding pools. ‘Win or lose, it doesn’t matter. He never needed to protect me, he should have just told me the truth! I would have been there for him, no matter what.’

  The final question came, dropped into a hushed audience. ‘For the final gamble, Richard Bentley, can you tell me – who, or what, is Messier 81?’

  A sudden sound beside me. Vivienne was sobbing quietly into cupped hands. I patted her shoulder awkwardly. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Bankruptcy gets paid off eventually. And you might not have any money, but you’ll have each other.’

  She raised her head and I was surprised to see no trace of tears now. In fact, she was laughing gently. ‘He knows the answer, Holly,’ she whispered. ‘He knows.’

  Megan and I raised eyebrows at each other. Faith was one thing, but …

  ‘It’s a galaxy. A very distant galaxy.’ Richard answered firmly, decisively, and the audience cheered wildly as the big red tick that signified a correct answer flashed up onto the screen.

  ‘When we first married, Richard was studying astronomy. He wrote a dissertation on spiral galaxies, I remember having the notes lying around the place for weeks! I used to tidy them up, and he’d just go and get them straight out again, said he knew exactly where everything was, even when it was piled up on the floor … Messier 81 was one of his favourites. He gave up astronomy because he had a family to support.’ Vivienne couldn’t stifle the laughter any longer. ‘He thought there was no money in it.’

  As we watched the huge numbers racking up on the Winnings readout, we all started to laugh.

  I cleared away the teacups, pouring stagnant tea down the kitchen sink, listening to the atmosphere in the living room becoming more relaxed by the second. Vivienne had broken out the plum wine and I suspected I was the only person who was going to be fit to drive soon, and I only had one operable eye.

  Oh, and Isobel, who came into the kitchen with me, elbowing the door closed, but helping me with the dishes without speaking. When we’d washed and dried the final crockery, I turned to face her. ‘Okay, now you can spit it out. What is it that you feel you have to tell me?’

  Isobel let her hair hang over her face. ‘I don’t know if I can, now.’

  ‘Is it anything to do with the spell?’

  A pause and then a slight nod. ‘I think so. At least … I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re the centre of someone’s world?’ I looked behind me. Given the way the spell had worked for the rest of us, this probably meant that Isobel had become a supermassive black hole into which we would all be sucked.

  Now pale, Isobel nodded. ‘I know he was your friend, and it shouldn’t have happened but … he was there.’

  ‘Whoa, hold on, back up a minute.’ I held up a hand to stop the cascade of meaningless words. ‘Start again, but slower. Who are we talking about here?’

  Isobel blinked. ‘Oh, sorry. Did I not say? Sorry, my brain’s a bit scrambled these days, what with … oh, I see. From the beginning. Well, it was Aiden, obviously.’

  I leaned against the draining board in a sudden state of flop. ‘Aiden?’

  ‘When you asked me to go round and let him out of the handcuffs.’

  ‘Ah.’ A quick memory of a naked, and overly-eroticised Aiden thrashing about chained to my bed. ‘Oh. Oh my God! Aiden – I should have thought. I am so sorry Isobel, I would never have sent you if I’d known, if I’d thought … God. Did you go to the police?’

  She stared blankly. ‘Why would I do that?’

  Suddenly shocked into awkwardness, I shrugged. ‘You know, sexual assault? But, how, if he was handcuffed – did he go for you after you let him out? Oh, this is all my fault, I should have made him wait, I was only trying to be humane about it and not leave him for too long and I should have thought, I know Aiden, what he’s like and he must have seen you as—’

  ‘He didn’t. He barely notice
d me at all, just like everyone else. But then – something happened, something changed, I don’t know what. Maybe it was the spell. He was talking about how he didn’t really know why he’d come down from Scotland, didn’t know what he’d been thinking about to turn up at your door, and I just, sort of, listened, and he was … But when I told him, you know, about being a virgin and everything … He was very gentle, very sweet and kind. And, oh, Holly,’ a rapturous smile crossed her face, ‘it was fabulous. Better than I’d ever imagined.’

  ‘You wanted it?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’ve read the books and stuff but, they never really make it clear, you know? So when he— Well, he was naked and everything and— Holly, do you have any imagination at all?’

  ‘As far as Aiden’s concerned, I try not to have. So, let me get this straight, you’re dating him now?’

  ‘Dating?’ Isobel frowned. ‘No. Why would I do that? Besides, he’s gone back to Scotland, hasn’t he?’

  ‘But you said—’ realisation tapped on my shoulder and let incredulity come in as well. ‘Oh God. Isobel. You mean you’re literally the centre of someone’s world …’

  She gave a shy smile. ‘Due in the middle of August, actually.’ Protective hands crossed over her lower stomach. ‘And everything going well.’

  I flopped further, until both my elbows rested in a pool of water. ‘Oh, Isobel.’

  ‘And the oddest thing is, my parents are delighted! Can’t wait to be granny and grandad, and I’m still going to get the house next year, although obviously the makeover is going to have to wait until this little one is at least walking.’ Another half-hug around her middle. ‘And it’s going to be fantastic. Only I wanted to make sure you were all right with it, what with Aiden being your friend first, and then, if you could possibly tell him because I don’t know how to find him. Oh, it’s all right, I don’t want anything from him, but I think he should know he’s going to be a daddy, don’t you?’

  I tried to put the image of Aiden, leather trousers and reckless sex addiction, into the same context as the word daddy, and failed oh-so-miserably. ‘I can try,’ I said feebly.