by Jane Bidder
“What do we do next?” asked Kayleigh when they’d washed out their own plates afterwards.
“You’ll need to see Sandy,” said Posy knowledgeably. “She’s on morning duty. She’ll help you find a job. Got your national insurance number, have you?”
Kayleigh was about to say that she didn’t and that actually, she couldn’t work because she was really fifteen and not sixteen. But then she saw a tall, thin angular woman approaching, wearing jangly bracelets and earrings. “Kayleigh? Kayleigh Long?”
That wasn’t the surname she’d put on her form. How did she know her real one?
The thin woman’s lips tightened. “I’m afraid you haven’t been telling us the truth, have you?”
She felt a nasty twinge of unease.
“We checked out your details with the police – something we do as a matter of course – and found that you are actually fifteen, not sixteen.”
The woman’s face looked like a sorrowful horse that Kayleigh had stroked once during a school trip to an inner city farm.
“You’ve been in trouble too, haven’t you?” continued the woman, looking quickly behind her.
Then she saw him. The same policeman who had nicked her in the park. Standing by the door, helmet under his arm. “Hello, Kayleigh,” he said with those clear blue eyes that really freaked her out. “Can you come this way for a minute?”
He led her into a room where – fucking hell – Mum was waiting. And Ron too. “What the bleeding hell d’you think you’ve been doing, my girl?” he yelled, leaping up and trying to grab her.
“That’s quite enough.” For a minute, she was glad the policeman was there to intervene. He turned to her. “Thought you’d like to know that your friend Frankie has pleaded guilty which means he will go to prison for a bit. I have to say it makes our life much easier. What we have to do now is decide what will happen to you.”
He gesticulated towards a thin woman in a blue suit, sitting in the corner of the room. “This is Susan. She’s going to be your social worker.”
But his earlier words were still ringing round her head. Frankie was going to prison. Because of her. She’d let him down. She should never have told them what happened in the park.
“I’m afraid we have another problem too,” continued the policeman. “The girl who brought you here says you stole some money.”
“I did NOT!”
“Fifty pounds,” continued the policeman, looking at her with that gaze that made her feel he could see inside her head. “She said you took it from a woman outside the centre and that you spent it all.”
“She’s lying!” Kayleigh could hardly believe it. “It was a present.”
Ron snorted. “Sure it was.”
Slowly, the truth began to dawn. So Posy had stolen the money. Not the boys. How could she have been so stupid?
“We’ve got a witness who says she saw you take the money,” said the policeman heavily.
“Who?”
“Another of the girls sleeping rough.”
Kayleigh snorted. “You don’t believe her, do you?”
Those blue eyes looked sad. “I warned you after the park, Kayleigh. You only had one more chance. You’re going to have to come down now to the station to be cautioned and maybe charged.”
What? Most of the kids on the estate had records. It was why they couldn’t get any decent jobs. That couldn’t happen to her. It just couldn’t.
The woman with the jangly bracelets, chipped in. “We also need to talk about care proceedings.”
Care? Kayleigh knew about that all right. Hadn’t her own Mum been in care for years? She was always talking about it.
“Mum,” she called out. “Don’t let them do this.”
But her mother was just looking at her, stony-faced. “I don’t want her,” she muttered, turning away.
A long time ago, before Ron, Mum had had a boyfriend who was quite nice really. He had encouraged her to join a running club that was free for kids on the estate.
She hadn’t forgotten how to do it.
“Stop her,” called out the woman with jangly bracelets.
But she was off. Out of the window and down the street. Running as hard as her legs could carry her.
Chapter Seven
When Daniel got home that night, Alice told him about coming across the girl at the shopping centre. Her initial anger over his use of the word ‘slut’ had cooled. All these years, she’d known deep-down that ‘the incident’ as Mum sometimes called it, must have been her fault. So was it any wonder that Daniel thought badly of her?
Now her anger was replaced with fear. Daniel was right. She should have told him immediately what had happened in the park. So it wasn’t surprising that he was now being so cool. Maybe he might even leave her …
Occasionally, in the last few years, Alice had fantasised about living alone. No one to shoot her reproachful looks because she didn’t care for sex. No need to feel embarrassed if a passionate scene came on television or one of their friends told a raucous story at a dinner party that everyone else thought funny apart from her. No one to run around after in the home, in an attempt to make up for what was missing in bed.
But now, with Daniel’s face set like stone – not to mention the fact that he’d started coming home much later than usual without attempting to give an excuse – Alice began to feel horribly insecure and scared.
What if he’d found someone else? No. That was impossible. Unlike her, Daniel was incapable of deception.
Supposing he’d had enough of her? Now that might be understandable.
How would she manage on her own? Not just financially, her own money from the china ‘business’ would barely have paid the phone bill. But emotionally too.
It had been a wake-up call and one, which Alice told herself, had come not a moment too soon. So it seemed right to tell him about the girl on the centre steps.
“You just bumped into her?” Daniel’s face clearly showed he didn’t believe her. “You didn’t go looking?” He shook his head. “I know you, Alice, better than you realise. You were worried about her, weren’t you?”
The softer tone in his voice flooded her with gratitude. So she was forgiven! “Yes. Now I’ve seen her, I can’t stop thinking about where she’s spending tonight and how she’s coping. She’s not some cheap tart, Daniel. She’s a nice kid. I could tell.”
The words came out in a rush even before she’d taken Daniel’s light summer jacket and hung it on the row of hooks above the Victorian wooden settle in the hall, that had once belonged to her mother-in-law. “Her name’s Kayleigh. She didn’t tell me her surname. Or why she was sleeping rough.”
Daniel shrugged. “Some people like it. There are places for these people to go, if they want a proper roof over their heads.”
Were there? Once, Alice had had a furious row with her friend Janice’s husband at a dinner party, when he had declared that ‘the homeless had a choice’. You couldn’t generalise in that way, she’d retorted. It had led to a distance between her and Janice for a while.
Now she was disappointed that Daniel had the same attitude. After all, wasn’t his university keen on promoting pastoral care? That had certainly been the message in its recent prospectus which had carried a flattering photograph of her husband above the blurb for the English department.
Not that she was going to say anything. This was a time for rapprochement, not further arguments. “If you say so,” she shrugged. “But she looked cold. And hungry.”
Her back was to Daniel now, as she poured his pre-dinner scotch while keeping an eye on the cheese sauce at the same time. Alice always took care to make a fuss over dinner. It was the least she could do, given that she was so severely lacking in the other wifely department.
“How much did you give her?” said Daniel’s voice.
She wasn’t going to lie. Not again. “Fifty pounds.”
“FIFTY POUNDS?”
“It was my money.” Alice gave the sauce a sudden defia
nt stir.
“That’s not the point.” He stood beside her; the heat of his presence forcing her to look up. To her relief, his face registered concern rather than annoyance. “You do realise that she’ll only go and spend it on drugs or drink, don’t you? You’ve given her fuel for her habit. Made it much worse.”
When he put it that way, Alice could see that she had in fact, been really silly. “I just kept thinking of Garth,” she whispered. “If he was cold and hungry somewhere, I’d want someone to help him.”
Something changed in her husband’s face. Their son, who had promised faithfully to email ‘regularly’, hadn’t made contact for nearly four weeks now. Daniel was as worried as she was. Alice could tell. The friend whom he was travelling with had his phone switched off too. Gap years, she’d begun to think, should be banned on the grounds of parental mental health.
“I can see that,” he now said softly. Then he drew her to him, ignoring the spatula in her hand. “But we can’t look after every waif and stray, can we?”
Sensing that something was going on, Mungo leaped up just as Daniel tried to hug her. It provided Alice with an excuse to break away. Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. “Goodness, I’ve got cheese sauce on your shirt! Here, let me wipe it down.”
Fussing, to hide her terror over the near-hug, she began sponging down the stain. “It’s all right. Leave it.”
Daniel’s cool tone showed he wasn’t fooled. Why, oh why, can’t you show me any affection, he might as well have said. Can’t you put the past behind you after all these years? But how was that possible when she was no better than the girl in the park?
“Perhaps you’d better contact your policeman,” he said sharply, taking a place at the kitchen table and watching her strain the green beans (fresh from the garden) that were to go with the chicken in its cheese sauce. “I’m not sure it’s legal for a witness to give money to a defendant.” He gave her a hard look. “You might be in trouble.”
Paul Black had given her a phone number after she’d made her statement. “It’s just in case you think of anything else you’d like to add,” he’d said as she’d looked at the card with a mobile number on it. “Or if there’s something that’s troubling you.” His blue eyes had locked with hers. “Our force prides itself on looking after witnesses.”
“Should I be worried?” she’d asked nervously, recalling her concern over bricks through the window? But now she thought about it, it could be worse. What if this youth in the park, who had such a nasty reputation, had a go at her?
Hadn’t she read with horror, over the years, about awful attacks on women (rarely men) who’d had acid thrown at them? True, it was often in relation to ‘honour’ killings, rather than middle-class, middle-aged women like her about to give witness. But even so …
And now, she had this other thing to worry about. A simple donation to a homeless girl. A rather large one, admittedly. Yet wouldn’t anyone in her position have done the same?
“Paul Black speaking.”
Alice hadn’t expected him to pick up the phone on a Saturday morning. But Daniel’s suggestion that she might have broken the law had worried her so much all night that she’d simply had to do something.
She’d leave a message, she told herself, so he could then ring her back on Monday morning. The sound of his deep voice – rather more educated than one might expect for a PC, although she felt awful just thinking that – both threw her and was reassuring at the same time.
“It’s Mrs Honeybun speaking,” she said. “Alice,” she then added, remembering that she’d rather rashly and inexplicably suggested he called her that during the statement taking; even though she’d once reprimanded someone from a call centre for doing exactly the same.
“Hello.” The last part of the word rose slightly in the air; more like a greeting between good neighbours than policeman and witness. Did he speak to everyone like that, wondered Alice? Perhaps it was a tone he adopted to wheedle the maximum amount of co-operation out of people.
“You said I could ring if I had anything to ask,” she said, feeling like a criminal herself. How awkward it was, talking to a policeman! Irrelevantly, she found herself wondering if her MOT was up to date. Janice always claimed that if she found herself driving behind a police car, she would pull in and let it go on ahead. They always find something to get you for, she’d announced with the authority of one who had six points on her licence. They need to do it to get their bonuses or stripes or whatever they get nowadays.
“The thing is,” continued Alice, wishing now that she hadn’t rung at all. “I think I might have done something rather stupid.”
“To do with the case?”
There was a definite hint of alarm in his voice.
“Yes,” she admitted, feeling really scared now.
“Tell you what.” He sounded solidly brisk. “Why don’t we talk about it over a cup of coffee. I’m in your area at the moment. How about that new place on the corner by the ice-cream kiosk.”
Coffee? With a policeman? In full view of her friends who would be in town shopping?
“I won’t be in uniform,” he added as though he knew what she was thinking. “In fact, I’m just about to come off duty.”
Totally thrown, she floundered silently for an excuse. “I don’t want to bother you. Not if it’s in your free time.”
“It’s no trouble at all. Besides, there’s been a development with the case. I was going to contact you on Monday anyway.”
Luckily Daniel was at the golf club, playing his usual Saturday morning round. It meant she could explain later. Say something casual like “ Guess who I bumped into?” Or maybe “I happened to see that policeman by the ice-cream kiosk so we had a coffee together.”
No, Alice rebuked herself. Hadn’t she promised not to hide anything else from Daniel? It was a promise she had made many years ago but she’d gone and broken it over the park business. It wasn’t going to happen again.
She’d just tell him the truth at lunchtime when he got home, Alice decided as she cycled down to the front. She loved her bike; enjoying the wind through her hair. Stubbornly she refused to wear a helmet for this reason despite the statistics which Daniel was always spouting. Besides, it calmed her nerves, which were something that always seemed to need calming; especially now Garth was roaming the world.
As she entered the coffee shop, Alice was relieved to see that she didn’t know anyone else there. In fact, she almost didn’t recognise Paul Black. His black hair, that had been unremarkable the other evening – perhaps because it had been flattened by the helmet – was rather jauntily brushed to one side. He was wearing a green-and-brown checked shirt that looked very similar to a Burberry which she had bought Daniel the other month. And he had a pair of smart casual cords. He was also reading the T2 section of The Times which was one of her favourite bits. Instantly she felt better. “Almost like one of us,” she could just hear Janice saying. Much as she liked her friend, she could be an awful snob.
“Hello,” he said, for the second time that day. Face to face, it sounded different. Warmer. It struck Alice, rather bizarrely, that an outsider might think they were embarking on a blind date. The absurdity of the situation made her want to giggle.
“Something funny?” he asked, seemingly amused. There were laughter lines round his eyes, she noticed. So despite the serious conversations they’d had to date, Paul Black had a sense of humour. Interesting.
“Funny?” she repeated, thinking briefly of her husband’s laugh, which was more of a reluctant smile. “Not really.” Then, in case he thought her totally mad, she added. “Nerves actually. I sometimes laugh when I’m nervous.”
“Me too,” he said swiftly.
Really? Yet he appeared so confident. Perhaps he was just saying that to make her comfortable – cosy up to her to ensure she didn’t back out as a potential witness. It was the way they worked, wasn’t it? At least she’d recalled something similar on The Bill which she used to watch when Daniel wa
s out late.
“What would you like?” he continued as the waitress materialised beside them.
Paul – it felt weird that policeman had first names –ordered peppermint tea too, she noted with surprise. “My husband says it’s not tea,” she found herself saying.
“Exactly.” His eyes twinkled. “Much better for you. Nice cups, aren’t they? I like the colour. Fuchsia pink as my mother would have said.”
A man who noticed colours. She liked that. Yet it was unusual in her experience. She glanced at his left hand. It was bare. No sign of the tell-tale, recently divorced white mark, either.
Maybe he was gay, she told herself, appalled by her own thoughts. Just because a policeman scrubs up well, drinks peppermint tea, and notices colours, that doesn’t mean he was (as her own mother coyly called it) ‘otherwise inclined’.
“You said you were worried about something,” he said, when they had their drinks in front of them and had chatted for a bit about Thailand which was, according to the paper in front of them, one of the top five hot-spots for this time of year. They had both been there, it transpired, although if Paul Black had gone with someone, he had taken care not to use the word ‘we’.
“Yes. Yes, I am worried.” She nodded tightly as if agreeing with herself; wishing stupidly there was another reason for their meeting. Her companion was really rather easy to talk to. He listened carefully and then commented in a manner that complemented what she had just said instead of putting her down, as Daniel did all too often.
“I saw the girl from the park yesterday. At the shopping centre. She was on the steps. It was very early and I think she’d been sleeping rough. So I gave her fifty pounds.”
His blue eyes were locking on hers again. Part of her wished he wouldn’t do this. It was really unnerving. The other part felt glued to his in return. “You gave her fifty pounds,” he repeated.
She nodded, her mouth dry. “I know it was rather a lot but I felt … well worried about her.”