by Jane Renshaw
And she must be freezing.
‘Oh, so that’s what those posts were about?’ Neil grinned. ‘The inspirational quotes…’
‘“You can mess with me but mess with my kid and I’m coming after you with fifty shades of crazy”?’
‘Where does one actually get those things?’ Neil was loving this. ‘Is there a website specifically catering to offended parents of fifteen-year-old girls dressed up for a walk round Leith docks?’
‘Some of those posts aren’t even private.’
Flora grimaced. ‘I don’t think she feels there’s anything wrong with the way Jasmine dresses. I think she just considers it teenage culture… All the celebrities are doing it. She’s desperate for Jasmine to fit in and be popular; to be an object of desire, I suppose. It’s kind of sad, really.’
Good. That had sounded like Flora was trying to understand rather than judge.
A big part of the problem, she suspected, was that Jasmine wasn’t pretty enough for Ailish’s purposes. And so, to achieve the ‘stunning’ accolades Ailish was always fishing for on Facebook, a lot of work was required. The girl was always heavily made up, with those thick eyebrows, huge false eyelashes, heavy smoky eye make-up, lip-liner and glossy lipstick. Her clothes were designed to showcase her figure, which, thanks to being on a diet since she was eleven, was straight up and down with little in the way of breasts or hips. Flora suspected that the calorie restrictions may have prevented her going through puberty properly.
Neil and Apprentice Woman had assumed suitably serious faces, like kids who’d just been told off by the teacher.
‘Oh oh, here she comes,’ said Flora, feeling herself flushing as Ailish tottered out onto the patio with her retinue, Marianne screaming with laughter, her arm hooked through Ailish’s. But then she found herself muttering at Apprentice Woman: ‘Phone at the ready to get a Facebookable shot of Princess Prozzie.’
‘Shot into the sun. With maximum soft-focus. God, we’re such bitches.’
Flora couldn’t help grinning. ‘This is going to sound really bad, but I can’t remember your name.’ Somehow it was okay to admit this to her.
‘Caroline, right?’ said Neil.
‘Give the man a cigar! Caroline Turnbull. And you’re Flora?’
‘You could at least have pretended to get it wrong.’
‘Yeah, sorry, I forgot to mention I’m also irritatingly anal, so I know your daughter is Beckie and she’s eight going on nine and in Thomas’s class at school, and she’s quite the chess champ and is teaching Thomas the finer points. Now, that’s impressive, you have to admit, given that Ailish hardly ever refers to Thomas – or, for that matter, to the accomplishments of other people’s children.’
‘That is impressive,’ said Neil, sitting down on the low wall of the raised pond, crossing his feet at the ankles and smiling up at Caroline. ‘Being anal is a very underrated quality.’
‘It is! Thank you!’
‘Okay, so you can tell us all about our fellow guests, then?’ said Flora, keen to divert the conversation from Ailish and her parenting shortcomings.
‘Probably the only one of any interest is that guy.’ Caroline tipped her head in the direction of a man standing on the edge of the barbeque group, who was looking beyond them to the table of teenagers. ‘Mr Rapist.’
‘Mister what?’
‘Or Mr Serial Killer. Or Mr Rapist-hyphen-Serial Killer. Not sure. Need a few more months probably to decide. He lives upstairs from me, so I’m likely to be a target at some point.’
‘And here was I,’ said Flora, ‘berating myself for being judgemental.’
‘Hey, you’re playing with the big girls now. But actually I think I could be right about him. Maybe being judgemental’s not such a bad thing? Could actually save your life?’
‘Yes!’ Neil was really enjoying this. ‘It could be that humans have adapted through natural selection to living among rapists and serial killers and what have you – only the judgemental have stayed out of their clutches and passed on their genes.’
‘Looks like we’re all safe then,’ said Flora drily. ‘So what’s his real name?’
‘Tony Hewson.’
‘Just a rapist then,’ said Neil. ‘Hasn’t got the serial killer ring.’
‘Anthony Hewson?’
‘Better. But he calls himself Tony to throw people off the scent. But okay, I’ll bite – what makes you think he’s either a rapist or a serial killer?’
‘Oh… The usual. Stands too close when he’s talking to you… Weird whispery voice… Stary eyes… Obsessed with the outflow pipe.’
‘The what?’
‘Or whatever it’s called, the waste pipe thing that goes down the outside of the building? Which the baths and sinks and loos feed into? He’s obsessed with it. Keeps asking me if I’ve had any problems with it getting blocked.’
‘Body parts?’ Flora mused.
‘Yep, I reckon he’s flushing body parts and he’s worried they might back up into my bath –’ Caroline broke off as a football came sailing across the pond right at her. She did a sort of hop and a jump and stopped the ball dead with her foot, then turned and flicked it up over her back to send it arcing back onto the grass.
Beckie and Thomas came running up.
‘Sorry!’ panted Thomas, mouth hanging open as he stared at Caroline.
‘How do you do that?’ said Beckie in awe, going to the ball and trying to flick it up with her foot like Caroline had done.
‘Easy-peasy,’ grinned Caroline, setting down her glass and jogging round the pond and onto the lawn. ‘I’ll show you…’
The other kids were soon gathering round. Flora heard, somewhere behind them, Marianne saying, ‘She’s probably in a women’s football team or something,’ and Ailish: ‘Or just hangs around men’s ones a lot,’ and shrieking.
‘Mr Rapist-hyphen-Serial Killer at nine o’clock,’ Neil muttered.
‘Shh!’
The poor man seemed more like victim material: thinning, greasy hair that looked like he cut it himself, stary eyes as advertised, and a shuffling walk. He was carrying a tray of burgers in buns.
‘Hi. Tony… Can I interest you in one of these?’ His voice wasn’t so much whispery as very soft, so you had to lean towards him to hear.
‘Oh, no thanks, I’ve been stuffing my face with macarons,’ said Flora. ‘I’m Flora and this is my husband Neil.’
Neil wiggled his fingers over the tray. ‘Come to Papa!’
‘You’re from Number 17, yes?’ mouthed Tony.
It wasn’t good that they’d been in the street over a year and didn’t know anyone properly apart from Ailish and Iain – although maybe that was just urban life rather than a consequence of Flora’s reluctance to get involved. When they’d lived at Backhill Croft, they’d known everyone within a mile radius, whether they’d wanted to or not.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Flora as Neil chomped down on the burger. ‘Have you been in the street a while?’
‘Yeah, a while. Over ten years.’
‘Great street,’ Neil mumbled with a full mouth.
‘Suits me fine. I don’t have a proper garden – mine’s an upper flat, so I just have the little bit of ground at the front of the building –’ Flora lost the rest of the sentence as it was drowned out by Mia shrieking. ‘But with the Botanics right across the street, I don’t feel the lack of it.’ He dropped his voice still further. ‘I’m in there most nights.’
‘Nights?’ said Flora.
‘Yes, just before it shuts, you have the place pretty much to yourself.’
She had an image of him stalking his victims in the shrubberies, through the glass houses…
‘And it’s a great place for kids.’
Beckie suddenly intruded into Flora’s imagined scene, happily skipping along a path, Tony lurking wolflike in the trees behind her.
‘Do you have kids?’ she asked.
‘No!’ He chortled, as if the idea was utterly ridiculous. ‘I l
ike kids…’
Oh here we go.
‘… but I couldn’t eat a whole one.’ The punchline proudly delivered at normal decibels.
At this point Caroline appeared at his elbow and grabbed a burger from the tray. She had beautifully manicured hands, Flora noticed, with little shell-pink nails. ‘Maybe a premmie?’
While Neil choked on his burger, Tony smiled uncertainly. Flora imagined her own smile was just as unconvincing.
‘A premmie?’ queried Tony, turning to stare at Caroline. He did have rather an alarming stare, it had to be said. A hungry stare.
‘A premature baby,’ Neil explained.
‘Ah. Right. Ha, yes, maybe a premmie! Ha ha!’
Eventually he moved away, and Caroline said, ‘You see?’ and then she was back on Ailish again, going on about how Ailish had posted a scan of a certificate Jasmine had received at school for ‘Performance Above Expectation’ in her mock exams.
Neil assumed a bright, Ailish-esque smile. ‘“Beauty and brains! Super-proud mum!”’
Caroline raised her eyebrows.
‘Yep,’ said Flora. ‘He can practically recite the posts word for word. He’s obsessed.’
‘Oh God, me too!’ Caroline grinned at Neil. ‘But doesn’t she get that a certificate like that’s the equivalent of a prize for taking part? Doesn’t she get that posting it on Facebook is a major embarrassment for Jasmine?’
‘You could basically say the same thing about the whole Show,’ said Neil. And as Caroline raised her eyebrows: ‘Her page. We call it The Chipmunk Show.’
Caroline smiled. ‘But seriously, what about all that nasty stuff on there about Mia’s mum? What if Mia read that? And wee Thomas hardly even mentioned, like she doesn’t even have a son?’
‘I know,’ said Flora. ‘She doesn’t seem to spend any time with Thomas beyond the basic requirements of taking him to and from school and feeding him. As far as we can tell, the only photograph of Thomas ever to have appeared on The Chipmunk Show is that one of the whole family at Hallowe’en where Iain’s a zombie, Ailish is Marilyn Monroe –’
‘The scariest of the lot,’ put in Neil.
‘– Jasmine’s a sexy fairy and Thomas is a pumpkin, with only his eyes and feet showing. Other than that, he hasn’t featured. I suppose the problem is that she can’t put make-up on him.’
‘Although if she shot him in really soft focus… God, we are bitches. And whatever the male equivalent is…’
‘Hey, I’m happy with bitch,’ said Neil, and he and Caroline giggled away as Flora felt the smile stiffen on her face. Yes, she realised: Caroline was a bitch. And the worst of it was, Flora was enjoying her company. Vying with her, even, as to who could be meaner about people.
You’re playing with the big girls now.
She had to get away from this woman.
She had to get out of here.
She turned to put her glass down on the wall, and caught Ailish’s eye.
Oh God.
Had she heard that?
She was near enough to have heard, sitting down at a table just a few metres away, although the group of people she was with were making enough noise, hopefully, to have drowned out their conversation.
10
‘Well that was a lot better than expected,’ Neil said as they headed up the path to their own front door. ‘Caroline’s quite a character, isn’t she?’
‘Mm.’ Flora removed the massive original key from her bag and unlocked the door, and they filed into the spacious vestibule between the front door and the inner door with its original stained-glass panels in the upper section. There were two narrow stained-glass windows on either side too, and on the floor Victorian terracotta tiles in black and brown and ochre and white.
Beckie slipped off her trainers, lined them up neatly with the others under the pew, pulled on her pink slipper socks, danced through to the hall and grabbed her tablet from where she’d left it on the stairs.
‘Half an hour screen time max, Beckie!’ Flora called after her as she disappeared upstairs.
Neil kicked off his shoes – literally, sending them thumping into Beckie’s. ‘Didn’t you like her?’
‘Yes, she was fun.’
‘There’s a but coming.’
‘No there isn’t.’
Why was it always so cold in here? His feet must be cold on the tiles, with only those thin socks on. One blue and one green, she noted, with a surge of such tenderness that she had to blink back sudden tears.
She sat down on the pew, felt under it for Neil’s scabby moccasins, and chucked them over to him. Then she bent over her own shoes, taking her time with the laces, breathing long breaths.
‘Flora? What is it?’
She looked up at him and he looked down at her, his eyebrows slightly raised in enquiry, his eyes so kind, so full of puzzled concern.
‘Is it this stuff with Beckie at school? Listen, don’t worry about it. All kids go through these phases. Pushing boundaries, they call it, don’t they? I was a right little bastard to Pippa when I was Beckie’s age.’
And she wanted to get up and throw her arms round his neck, to rest her head on his shoulder and cry.
She wanted to tell him.
She wanted him to hold her and say that it was all right. That she wasn’t Rachel, and nor was Beckie. That Caroline wasn’t Tricia. That Mia wasn’t Tricia.
She looked back down at her shoes. ‘But I am worried about it.’
‘Look, I’ll come with you to the meeting on Monday. I’ll see if I can get Stephen to cover my honours class…’
‘No, I don’t mind going on my own. It’s not about the meeting, Neil. It’s not that.’
‘Okay.’ He puffed out a breath. ‘I know I’m not much good at this. You… It’d be good, wouldn’t it, to have a female friend to talk this stuff over with? Don’t you think that maybe Caroline…? You could ask her over for coffee sometime?’
Whenever she was upset or worried, Neil’s response was always to try to come up with a solution, which usually involved her doing something, as if the problem was quite easily resolvable if only she would think it through; as if there was always something she could and should be doing about it.
So: Neil realises he’s no good at talking about ‘stuff’ with her. Solution? Neil tries harder? Neil sits down with her and just listens? Nope. The obvious solution is that Flora needs to find someone else to talk to.
She swallowed the hysteria rising in her throat.
‘Well. I could, yes. But Caroline’s not the kind of woman who has many female friends, I don’t think.’
‘Why on earth not? Because other women feel threatened by her?’
‘And why should I feel threatened by her?’
He started to splutter, ‘No no. I don’t mean –’
She took pity. ‘I don’t feel threatened by her, thanks very much.’ Not in the way he meant, anyway. ‘But I very much doubt she’s got any interest in being friends with a boring old fogey like me.’
‘But you must be about the same age?’
She smiled. ‘Nice try. But I doubt she’s even forty.’ She pushed her feet into her sheepskin slippers. ‘And, more importantly, she’s obviously horribly indiscreet. And – well, we were as bad, weren’t we?’ She stood, and made herself look him in the eye. ‘Two seconds into talking to her and you’ve regressed to Mr Tourette’s and I’m not far behind. What do you think will happen if we make friends with her? We’ll probably get drunk and blurt out all about Beckie and the Johnsons and having to change our names and everything.’
‘No we wouldn’t. And even if we did let something slip, she’s hardly going to go looking for the Johnsons to tell them where we are.’
‘She wouldn’t have to. She’d just have to spread it about a bit, and before we knew it someone would be tipping the Johnsons off. I wouldn’t put it past Ailish to do it anonymously.’
‘Okay, so now you’re being ridiculous.’
‘Do you think she heard?’
>
‘Do I think who heard what?’
‘Ailish! Do you think she heard me saying –’ She felt her face flushing all over again. ‘That stuff about her not being able to put make-up on Thomas? She was right behind us. And she had this look on her face… I’m sure she heard!’
‘So what if she did? Serves her right!’
‘We have to live next door to these people, Neil.’
If Ailish took against her… If Flora was ever to warrant, in Ailish’s eyes, the same treatment as Mia’s mum, what lengths might she not go to? And Ailish was sharp. Flora could just imagine her picking up on tiny little things she had said, tiny mistakes, and sitting up into the small hours on Google.
Although, if the Linkwood Adoption Agency hadn’t picked anything up, surely Ailish wouldn’t?
Neil shrugged. ‘Doesn’t mean we have to be bosom buddies. God, I hope she bloody well did hear, if it means no more having to socialise with that lot.’
Flora felt some of the tension leave her shoulders. ‘There is that. Although you realise she’d probably defriend us? No more Chipmunk Show?’
Neil stared at her. ‘Christ, Flora, what were you thinking?… Although maybe Caroline will give us continued access to The Show, if she’s not defriended by association.’
But we can’t be friends with Caroline! Flora wanted to shout. I can’t be!
Instead, she gave him a thin smile and went ahead of him into the hall.
As Neil slumbered at her side, Flora lay awake, staring at the strip of yellow streetlight in the gap between the shutters, wanting to get out of bed and draw the curtains across it but somehow not managing to summon the energy.
Every time she tried to stop thinking about Tricia her brain went crazy, whirling random thoughts around so fast that she couldn’t catch hold of any of them long enough for them to be a distraction.
Tricia.
All she could think about was Tricia.
Tricia Fisher, the new girl in the last term of Primary 6. She’d been such an exotic creature, all the way from Toronto in Canada. In the little rural school near Peebles, whose windows looked out on nothing but a field of damp, windblown sheep and the bleak hillside beyond, any new child had been an excitement, but a girl from Canada…!