by Jane Renshaw
‘That’s barry then, son. Barry.’
Ryan’s eyeballing me.
‘Barry,’ I goes.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You’re thinking we’re no gonnae need heehaw for Bekki, and we’re no gonnae need to fuck off to Spain. You’re thinking we’re no gonnae get Bekki back?’
Ryan’s got my brains right enough. ‘I’m no gonnae lie, son, I’m getting a bad feeling about this bint Ruth. A bad fucking feeling.’
‘Aye?’
‘Why’s she never telt Pammie nothing about her childhood?’
Jed, Ryan and Travis gowp at me. The Three Fucking Stooges. ‘They’re best pals, aye? See each other every fucking day for five fucking years?’
Not a dickie bird.
‘She’s a fucking woman.’
Nada.
‘Every fucking woman on the planet tells her best pal about when she was wee. Every fucking woman. This Ruth bint’s a clever bitch, I’m thinking. Maybe she’s had it at the back of her heid that maybe we’ll find them, that maybe they’ll have to disappear, and she’s got an ace up her sleeve – she’s got somewhere to run to, somewhere she lived when she was wee, and she’s no giving away nothing about it to any fucker, not even her best pal Pammie. I’ll bet a million fucking pounds she’s no even from Australia.’
‘No bastard can stay off the radar these days,’ goes Ryan. ‘Dinnae you worry, Maw. We’ll find them. Torridon and they places, aye we’ll check them out, but if the bastards arenae there, we get looking into Ruth Morrison and where she was at before she was married. There’ll be records, digital footprints. We’ll get Connor on it. Get the wee fucker earning his keep, aye?’
I bite another bit wrap and take a swally ginger and say ‘Aye son,’ but I’ve still got that bad feeling.
There’s something no right about that bint Ruth.
There’s just something no right.
And she’s got Bekki.
9
Eighteen Months Later
‘Could it have been slugs?’ said Beckie, squatting on the path to poke at one of the holes that marked where the tulips had been.
Flora kept her voice light. ‘Would have to be very hungry slugs.’
Did Beckie do it? Did she sneak out here last night, when they thought she was upstairs asleep, and rip out all the tulips? To punish Flora for losing it at her yesterday? But then she’d have to somehow dispose of them. Maybe under the hedge?
Flora couldn’t accuse her, not without evidence. She mustn’t overreact. At least, she mustn’t overreact any more than she already had done. She mustn’t start blaming Beckie for everything.
This was probably just random bored kids intent on some easy vandalism. They always locked the gates at night, but the small one at the end of the path from the front door to the pavement was only three feet high. Easy enough to climb over.
And Mia had been staying next door with Ailish and Iain last night. Flora wouldn’t put it past that girl to sneak out in the small hours for some ‘fun’ making all the tulips mysteriously disappear.
She looked up, over the hedge that divided the front gardens, to the first-floor windows of Ailish and Iain’s house. Maybe Mia’s bedroom was at the front. If so, the tulips would have been in full view if she’d been looking around deciding on her next ‘project’, as Ailish called her niece’s schemes.
‘Is it time now?’ said Beckie. She’d been looking forward to this damn barbeque for weeks. A barbeque in early May, for God’s sake – Flora had been hoping for rain, but of course it was a lovely sunny day, perfect for an outdoor party. The thought that Mia was just next door was driving Beckie nuts – every minute they remained apart was a minute wasted, apparently.
When Flora had suggested to Neil that there might be a link between Beckie’s behaviour at school and her friendship with Mia, he’d laughed.
He’d actually laughed.
‘Poor Mia’s getting blamed for this as well now, is she?’
This. This. As if it was nothing.
She looked at Beckie.
What was going on in that little head?
Beckie didn’t seem in the least bit worried about the ‘mediation discussion’ Mrs Jenner had arranged for Monday after school, when Beckie and Edith and their respective parents were going to ‘sit down and talk through the issues and agree on resolutions’. This apparently was going to involve an ‘acknowledgement of wrongdoing and harm’ by Beckie and ‘restorative gestures’. In other words, she would have to say she was sorry.
But was she sorry?
‘Mum?’
‘What?’
Beckie bit her lip.
Flora made herself smile. ‘Sorry, darling, I was miles away. What is it?’
‘Is it time yet?’
‘Almost. Go and put on a fleece or a jumper. It’s not that warm out of the sun.’
Beckie ran off back inside and Flora followed her, looking up at the elegant sandstone façade of their own house. Or rather, the house they were living in. Despite all her efforts to make it theirs – the kitchen extension to make a ‘family room’, the frantic redecorating, the fact that they’d taken every single stick of furniture with them, even the things that really could do with replacing – it still didn’t feel like home.
It felt like somewhere they had washed up, the three of them: a strange shore.
Gardens Terrace was, of course, a wonderful place to live. It was one of the nicest streets in one of the nicest cities in the world: a single row of big Victorian and Edwardian houses looking across a quiet road to the Botanic Gardens and backing onto their own huge gardens, and beyond them the huge gardens of the street behind. The houses all had relatively generous front gardens too, most with mature hedges and trees.
They were very lucky to live here.
At certain times of day when there wasn’t much traffic, it was almost like being in the country. You heard bird song, and the wind in the trees, and squirrels chattering. Sometimes, to Beckie’s delight, ducks from the pond in the Botanic Gardens flew over the house.
They had only been able to afford Number 17 thanks to their inheritances, thanks to both sets of parents being dead. They had paid an obscene price for a semidetached house. But it had been worth it, she kept telling herself, for the location and the garden and the beautifully proportioned Victorian rooms with shutters on the windows and deep skirting boards and cornices, and a working fireplace to sit round on a winter evening watching Strictly or an old film or, when Beckie was in bed, a Scandi noir box set.
They were very lucky to live here.
Did Beckie think so?
Was she happy?
Or did she still secretly miss Arden, and their old lives, as much as ever?
The problem was that Beckie was always so eager to please, so concerned about ‘bothering’ them, that trying to get her to reveal her true feelings was always a challenge. ‘Yeah, it’s great here,’ she’d say, whatever she felt about it.
The leaves were coming out on the little silver birch tree by the gate, and there was a smell of new shoots and cut grass and freshly turned soil: the promise of summer.
She took a deep breath of it.
Surely Beckie was happy?
She seemed happy, didn’t she?
This problem at school – it was probably just a blip, as Neil said. Beckie had always been such a good child that any bad behaviour was always going to be magnified, to seem a much bigger deal than it would have been in any other child.
No one was perfect, as Neil kept saying.
But it was just so hard to believe that she’d done it.
Beckie?
Their Beckie? Their sweet little girl, their popular, easy, laid-back little girl who made friends effortlessly wherever she went, who had so many invitations to birthday parties it was getting to be a logistical nightmare? Their Beckie, held up by other parents as an example to their own kids?
When Flora had arrived in the playground yes
terday afternoon, the headmistress, Mrs Jenner, had come over and asked if she could have ‘a quick word’. Flora had gone with her quite happily to the little office overlooking the playing field at the back of the school. It hadn’t even crossed her mind that Beckie could be in any sort of trouble.
Mrs Jenner had sat down at her desk and waved Flora to one of the comfortable chairs in front of it. Flora had still been relaxed, reflecting that there was something not right about a headmistress who looked younger, rather than older, than her actual age. Mrs Jenner, who was in her early sixties according to one of the other mums, wore a bright cerise blouse under her fitted jacket, which was low enough to show cleavage. Her hair was a tumble of honey curls on her shoulders.
She looked Flora straight in the eye, as she’d presumably been instructed to do on some training course or other, and said, ‘I’m afraid it seems Beckie has been bullying another girl.’
Flora had repeated, stupidly, ‘Bullying another girl?’
‘I’m afraid so. I witnessed her hitting Edith myself. Beckie has denied it, but I saw her with my own eyes.’ She gestured at the window, from which there was a view of the playing field with its miniature goal posts.
‘Edith?’ Flora couldn’t remember an Edith.
‘When I spoke to her, Edith at first refused to admit there was a problem but then broke down and revealed that Beckie has been bullying her for some time. Physically, and in other ways. Beckie has told the other girls not to play with Edith. She makes fun of her and encourages the others to do so too. She has instigated a particularly cruel ruse which involves getting two or three other girls to pretend to Edith that they now want to be her friends, not Beckie’s, and are going to play with her, and then, at a signal from Beckie, they run away at top speed. Poor Edith falls for it every time. She tries to run after them, and then they all turn and shout insults at her and laugh. Some of the name-calling has been disablist, although Edith isn’t technically disabled, just… a bit uncoordinated. Spastic, mong, et cetera.’ She said the awful words in a brisk, businesslike tone that somehow made them all the worse.
Flora felt the room recede and fade.
Mrs Jenner’s voice was very faint, and then suddenly very loud.
‘Mrs Parry?’
There were grey spots in front of her eyes.
And then Mrs Jenner was round the desk and pushing Flora’s head down past her knees, pushing a plastic cup of water into her hand.
Flora found herself repeating weakly: ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
She brought the cup to her lips and gulped at the lukewarm, synthetic-tasting water.
‘Now, Mrs Parry,’ Mrs Jenner said briskly, like a nurse would speak to a difficult patient. ‘There’s no need to work yourself up.’ How pathetic, she was probably thinking. No wonder Beckie’s out of control. ‘It’s really nothing to worry about – children can be very cruel to each other, you know, and this sort of thing will happen from time to time. I’ve known far worse, believe me. I’m sure we can nip it in the bud.’ And Flora felt a quick pat on her back. A little rub between her shoulder blades.
‘But…’ She sat up and looked into the other woman’s bright blue, heavily mascara-ed eyes. There was a big clump of mascara sticking together several of the upper lashes of her right eye, like the lashes were melting, like this was a face in some surreal dream, melting away as soon as you got up close. ‘Are you sure?’
This wasn’t Beckie. It just wasn’t.
Beckie was so good with children with problems; so kind. At break and lunchtime, she and her friends always passed by the Buddy Bench, where children could sit to indicate they needed a ‘buddy’, and asked whoever was there if they wanted to join them.
Mrs Jenner nodded, and retreated once more behind the desk.
‘I’ve spoken to Beckie, of course, myself. She’s unrepentant. She denies that she’s been bullying Edith – says it’s Edith who’s the problem and “everyone hates her”. A common justification, I’m afraid. She maintains that people run away from Edith because they hate her.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m just –’ Flora gulped down more water. ‘I’m having a really hard time believing that Beckie would do that.’
‘I realise it’s a shock. We’re all very surprised. Beckie has always been a pleasure to have in the school. There hasn’t been anything… Any problems at home…?’ And the bright blue eyes scanned Flora up and down.
Flora could only shake her head as all the statistics gleaned from furtive late-night Googling flashed through her mind, about schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and their age of onset and possible triggers. Was that what this was? Was this her nightmare coming to pass? Was this the monster Beckie carried inside her, in her genes, awakening, stretching and yawning and flexing its muscles, because of something Flora had done? Something she’d done to trigger it?
Of course not.
As bullying went, this was pretty mild, really. Every child went through phases of being naughty, difficult, acting out. As Mrs Jenner had said, this wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. And it could be nipped in the bud in this ‘mediation discussion’ she was talking about, asking Flora if Monday after school would be convenient.
‘Yes, of course,’ Flora had said. ‘Of course. Monday would be fine. Obviously, we’ll make sure – we’ll make sure Beckie stops it. That she stops bullying this poor girl. Poor Edith.’
When they’d got home, Flora had chosen her moment to broach the subject with Beckie. They’d got out Beckie’s favourite jigsaw, featuring a litter of Labrador puppies, and knelt opposite each other at the coffee table in the family room to work on it.
When she’d gently told Beckie what Mrs Jenner had said about her being unkind to Edith, Beckie had looked from the piece of puzzle she was holding to Flora’s face in indignation. ‘It’s not my fault Edith’s horrible.’
‘Oh Beckie. I’m sure she isn’t “horrible”. And even if she was, that’s no excuse for bullying.’
‘But I didn’t bully her! She’s twisting it all round, Mum. I’ve never hit her.’
‘Beckie, Mrs Jenner saw you.’
‘But I was just pushing her away after she tried to hit me!’
Oh God.
‘So you’re saying Edith is bullying you?’
‘No! No one’s bullying anyone, Mum. Edith is just so stupid and horrible that she spoils everything.’
‘That’s a really silly thing to say.’
Beckie shrugged.
‘Darling… Is there something wrong at school? Is there anything… Maybe some other girl or boy is bullying you, or… getting you to do things you don’t want to do?’
Beckie shook her head in what seemed like genuine puzzlement.
‘Did another girl or boy make you be unkind to Edith?’
‘No. Edith made me be “unkind” to Edith.’
Flora sighed. ‘Darling… Nobody wants people to be unkind to them, do they? Just try to imagine for a second what it must be like to be Edith… Yes, I know, but just try to imagine. The bell goes and you run out to the playground and everyone’s having fun, and you see some girls from your class that you’d really like to chat to and play with, but then they start calling you cruel names and laughing at you and telling you you’re horrible. How do you think you would feel then?’
Beckie shrugged. ‘Edith’s not like that. Edith doesn’t care what we say.’
‘How do you know that? If it were you, how would you feel?’
Beckie, looking at her sideways, muttered reluctantly: ‘Lonely?’
‘Yes, you would feel really lonely, wouldn’t you. And upset? Maybe even scared, when the girls all start ganging up on you?’
Beckie had nodded, and her lip had trembled. ‘Can you not tell Dad?’
‘Dad will have to know, Beckie – it’s too serious not to tell him about it. And we have to go to a meeting with Edith and her parents after school on Monday, and you’re going to tell Edith you’re sorry and you won’t be unkind to her any more
.’
And just when Flora had thought she was getting through to her, Beckie had wrinkled her nose and said, ‘Do I have to?’
‘Yes you do.’
And Beckie had sighed, in that way she had, as if to say: another adult stupidity I have to go along with to humour the poor deluded souls.
She’d got that sigh from Mia.
Mia, Mia, Mia.
Flora shut the front door behind her, eased her feet out of her shoes, and stood leaning back against the door. Sometimes she wished she could shut out the whole world. Keep Beckie from it. Like the Wanderers in their own little boat, adrift. Apart.
Safe.
But Beckie had been looking forward to this damn barbeque for weeks.
Beckie was wearing her favourite leggings with tiny daisies all over them, and a furry blue fleece on top of her T-shirt. In one hand she swung the little silver gift bag with the present for Mia in it – a fart machine, which Ailish was really going to be thrilled about – even though, as Flora had reminded her, it wasn’t a birthday party and a present wasn’t necessary. Beckie would have spent all her pocket money on presents if Flora had let her.
She’d always been a kind little girl.
She ran ahead down the path to the gate, but then stopped and waited for them.
A good little girl.
‘Okay, Beckie,’ said Flora.
Beckie opened their gate, skipped along the pavement ten metres, and opened next door’s, which was identical to their own, right down to the twists in the Victorian wrought iron.
‘Can I ring the bell?’
‘Of course you can, darling.’
Beckie skipped to the door and reached for the pebble-like pottery bell-push with ‘PRESS’ on it, set in a metal disk – identical to their own bell.
Neil said, ‘How long do we have to stay?’
‘Two hours minimum.’
The door opened on a blast of noise: ABBA, overlaid by the shrieks and howls of what sounded like women in pain. Dozens of them. Flora had a sudden image of Ailish’s head flung back, mouth open, cackling in glee as she skipped about the kitchen from one instrument of torture to the next – coordinating thumbscrews, maybe in Cath Kidston prints, for all her guests, and more elaborate offerings for her special friends: a cage fashioned from shabby chic wirework swinging above the hob for Katie, who’d be pretending to be enjoying it and doing her utmost not to drip sweat on the Rayburn; a rack rigged up on the kitchen table for Marianne, spread-eagled, her bouncy curls full of bits of scone and cake and broken pastel crockery, gasping an apology to Ailish for the mess…