by Jane Renshaw
The driver sighs and gets out his seat and goes down the bus and says to Granda:
‘Okay sir. Aff.’
And that’s their nice wee day out turned to pish.
12
The corner shop was literally on a corner, the door across the angle of the block, with fresh fruit and vegetables displayed on stands to either side – although Flora never bought any of them because she worried about them soaking up pollution from the busy road. Inside, though, one whole wall contained shelf after shelf of wonderful old-fashioned sweets in big glass jars, all with natural colours and flavourings.
On a Monday after school she and Beckie always came this way rather than taking the quieter, more scenic walk through the leafy back streets, so that Beckie could get her treat. Compensation for it being a Monday. She usually chose jelly babies. They weren’t the usual kind, they were smaller and sharper and ‘more diverse’, as Beckie put it. They had counted nine different flavours in total. Beckie’s favourites were the purple ones, and Jennifer, the girl who usually served them, always tried to get as many of those on the little shovel as she could.
Flora was partial to the jelly babies herself – Atkins was ancient history. They always got a little bag each and ate them as they walked home.
But today, Flora had come this way on automatic pilot.
She had no intention of going in.
She turned and looked at her daughter, who’d been walking a couple of paces behind her all the way rather than bouncing and chattering at her side as usual.
‘Are we getting jelly babies?’ Beckie muttered.
‘No.’
‘Is it my punishment?’
‘Well Beckie, don’t you think you should be punished?’
Beckie shrugged.
She’d done a lot of that in the mediation discussion. A lot of shrugging and sighing and saying ‘Yeah,’ while little Edith had sat so still on her chair next to her mum, and kept aiming pathetic little mini-smiles at Beckie, identical to the ones her mum, Shona, gave Flora. As if it were Edith and Shona who were at fault here.
Mother and daughter were both very petite, almost malnourished-looking, with pale, thin hair pulled back from their bony faces, pink scalps prominent along their partings. Like old photographs of Victorian slum-dwellers. Flora had wondered if maybe Shona was anorexic and Edith didn’t get enough to eat at home. Maybe she could give Beckie some nutritious snacks to take to school, with strict instructions to give them to Edith? Falafels or some of those mini-rolls with chicken salad, or houmous and avocado. And dried fruit and unsalted nuts. It could be part of Beckie’s reparations.
Beckie’s so-called apology had been just embarrassing. ‘I’m sorry I pushed you, Edith, I –’
‘Uh, Beckie, I don’t think it was just a push, was it?’ Mrs Jenner had interrupted.
Beckie had sighed. ‘I’m sorry I “hit” you, Edith.’
And Edith – little Edith had smiled and said, ‘That’s okay.’
Now Beckie was kicking at a crisp bag, not looking at her.
Flora said, ‘You’re not getting any jelly babies, and you won’t be until I see a big improvement in your behaviour generally, and in particular until I hear from the teachers and Mrs Jenner that you’ve stopped being so nasty to Edith. Now come on.’
Flora started walking.
At the end of the block she looked back to make sure Beckie was following. She was scuffing along with her head down, the picture of martyred dejection.
She fixed a smile to her face. ‘Come on, darling.’
Beckie looked up. She wasn’t crying – Beckie rarely cried. But she didn’t return Flora’s smile.
Flora walked back to her and pulled her against her side. ‘It’s okay. I’m not angry. I’m not happy about it, and yes, you do need to be punished when you do something so wrong, but I’m not angry, and neither is Dad. But you have to talk to us and tell us the truth, so we can sort it out and work out why you’ve been doing this.’
If there was a why.
There hadn’t been a why for Tricia and Rachel.
They hadn’t been acting out. Neither of them had had problems at home.
They’d done it because it had been fun.
It had been fun to scare little Adrian Drummond in Primary 3 so much he skittered in his shorts – she could still see the brown stream of it running down his leg; remember the feeling of amazement that she had such power over someone else’s bowel movements. It had been fun to chase poor Gail round the bike shelter, after they’d found out she’d been born on a Wednesday, and chant: ‘Wednesday’s child is full of woe! Wednesday’s child is full of woe!’ until Gail broke down crying: ‘I am not full of woe!’
Beckie was glaring up at her. ‘I haven’t done anything. But you don’t believe me.’
‘We can sit down and you can tell us your side of it.’
‘And you still won’t believe me.’ Beckie wriggled out from under her arm and began to run away up the pavement, rucksack bouncing on the back of her maroon sweatshirt.
‘Beckie!’ Flora ran after her. ‘Beckie, stop right there!’
As it became obvious that Beckie wasn’t going to stop, and that Flora wasn’t going to catch up, she yelled: ‘Be careful of the traffic!’
God, Flora was unfit. She had to slow to a walk within two blocks, chest heaving.
Beckie was out of sight.
She was almost nine. She had good road sense. She’d be fine.
Flora had handled this so badly.
Okay, so, despite what Neil might think, it was pretty much cut and dried that Beckie was guilty as charged, given what Mrs Jenner had herself witnessed, but Flora should have heard Beckie out properly. When she’d first broached the subject of Edith on Friday over that jigsaw, she should have said something like, ‘Are you having a problem with a girl called Edith at school?’ and let Beckie talk, let her give her side, and then carefully bring up the hitting, and if Beckie denied it, gently point out why she knew Beckie wasn’t telling the truth – pulling Mrs Jenner out of the bag as star witness – and encourage her to own up to what had really happened.
At last she was crossing the road and turning into their street, breathing in the fresh green smells, relaxing a little, as she always did, at the sight of trees and hedges and grass and flowers. In the garden of the Tudor-effect house there was a carpet of bluebells on the raised grassy area in front of one of the mullioned windows.
Rather spoiling the ambience, though, was the man walking a hundred metres or so ahead of her. He was in dirty jeans and a football top which revealed tattooed arms, quite sinewy for a man in, what, his sixties? He looked like he might be drunk, walking with a sort of rolling swagger.
Further down the road she could see Beckie. She was standing by the privet hedge that belonged to one of the other semidetached houses a few down from theirs, plucking leaves off it. Flora waved, but Beckie didn’t respond.
Flora increased her pace.
The man had weaved across the pavement, putting himself on course for a collision with Beckie.
‘Beckie!’ she called, and started to run.
The man stopped a few paces from Beckie and said something to her.
Beckie shrugged.
‘Beckie, come here!’ Flora shouted.
The man turned.
He had protruding ears, a long, gaunt face with a stubbly chin and stubbly close-cropped hair.
It was the face that had stared out at her from the mugshot Saskia Mair had shown her, from the photographs in the press she’d dredged up about his convictions, from her own imagination in recurring, half-remembered nightmares.
It was Jed Johnson.
She was running full tilt now, her bag bouncing on her hip.
‘Beckie!’
But Beckie just stood there.
‘Get away from her!’
As she came running up he lurched towards Beckie, and Beckie whimpered and dodged past him to clutch at Flora.
‘I’m cal
ling the police,’ she said, her arms tight round Beckie.
‘Aye, call the fucking polis!’ He staggered and half-fell against the hedge. ‘I need to report a fucking theft! Fucking theft of my fucking granddaughter!’
Flora edged round him, Beckie clinging to her.
‘There y’are hen! Wee Beckie!’ He pushed himself upright. ‘I’m your granda! I’m your granda, hen!’
‘No you’re not!’ Beckie wailed.
Flora pulled her along the pavement in the direction of Number 17 and safety, but suddenly there were two more men in front of them, a grinning thug and a handsome man in a suit, and oh God, she recognised them too, they were Travis and Ryan Johnson, and then Flora was screaming, stupidly screaming:
‘Help! Please help us!’
She pulled Beckie towards the road but there was a huge four-by-four parked tight up against the kerb, close up to the car in front. She turned round but Jed had moved up behind them. Beyond him, she could see Ailish and Thomas coming along the pavement.
‘Ailish!’ she screamed. ‘Help! Ailish!’
Beckie was clutching Flora’s arm so hard it hurt. Flora pressed her to her chest. ‘Get away from us! Get away! You’d better go before the police get here!’
‘Oh I’m so scared!’ Travis Johnson tittered.
‘She fucking stole you off of us!’ Jed suddenly roared in Beckie’s face. ‘You want to stay with her? You want that?’
Beyond him, she could see Ailish’s rapidly retreating back. She had Thomas by the hand and was trotting away in her high-heeled boots. Thomas was staring back at Flora, mouth open.
‘Help us!’ Flora yelled, hugging Beckie.
Across the road there was an elderly couple on the pavement that ran alongside the high hedge of the Botanic Gardens. They had stopped and were staring across.
‘Please help us!’ she yelled at them. ‘They’re trying to take my little girl!’
And then suddenly someone else was yelling, a woman was yelling, ‘Flora! It’s okay, the police are coming!’ and Caroline came running out at a gate and barging past Jed Johnson to stand between the two thugs and Flora and Beckie, phone held aloft like a weapon. ‘I’m filming this! Back off!’
‘They’re trying to take Beckie!’ Flora gasped, and now Beckie was properly crying, wailing, shaking against her. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ Flora kept repeating, stupidly. She could see wee on the pavement by Beckie’s feet.
‘It’s okay Beckie, they’re not going to touch you,’ said Caroline.
And it was a miracle, because the thugs did back off.
‘Come on, Da. Leave it.’
The one in the suit, the one she was sure was Ryan Johnson, pointed a fob at the four-by-four and it flashed its lights. He opened the back door and half-threw Jed into the back seat. Then he turned to Caroline, and then Flora, aiming his hand at them like a gun.
‘See yous later.’
He jumped up into the driver’s seat and the four-by-four was reversing, and then roaring away almost before he’d closed his door.
Caroline still had her phone pointed at it.
‘Oh thank you thank you,’ Flora babbled.
‘Number plate,’ said Caroline briskly: ‘RJ MAG16.’
‘I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘You saved our lives!’ Beckie sobbed.
Caroline smiled. ‘Oh, I don’t think so, sweetheart. They were just cowards, weren’t they? Amazing how many people are, when they realise they’re being recorded. Right. I didn’t actually have time to call the police. I’ll do that now. I can show them this footage… You get inside. Lock the doors. Or actually, no, you’d better come to mine. Yeah?’
‘Thank you.’ It was all Flora could find to say.
‘No problem.’
‘Mum,’ whispered Beckie.
‘It’s all right, darling. It’s all right now.’
‘I’ve wet myself.’
Flora hugged her tight. ‘Oh Beckie, don’t worry about that, silly.’
Caroline ushered them back along the pavement and in at the gate to Number 13.
‘I can’t go into her house all wee,’ whispered Beckie.
The Victorian hallway of Number 13 had an ugly 1970s partition across it, in which were set two frosted-glass doors. Through the left-hand one she could see the distorted shape of the stairs which must lead to the upper flat. Caroline unlocked the door on the right, saying:
‘I don’t know about you, but I could murder a cuppa.’
‘Mum!’ said Beckie, desperately, pulling back against Flora’s arm, standing carefully on the mat.
‘Beckie’s had a little accident,’ said Flora. ‘Would it be okay if we cleaned up…?’ She hunkered down and started to unbuckle Beckie’s shoes.
‘Of course, don’t worry about it, sweetheart!’
Shoes and socks off and stuffed into a carrier from Flora’s bag, Beckie clutched onto Flora again. The two of them moved crab-like through the doorway. Beckie’s bare feet, very white against the parquet floor, were small in relation to the rest of her, as if the growth spurt of last year hadn’t reached them yet, still little and chubby and babyish.
‘Bathroom’s just in there.’ Caroline gestured. ‘Come through to the kitchen when you’re ready, okay-doke? There’re clean flannels and towels and that in the cupboard in there.’
They joined Caroline in the kitchen five minutes later, Beckie with her arms held stiffly at her sides against her skirt, mortified that underneath she wasn’t wearing any pants. The kitchen was at the back of the house, like theirs was, but there the resemblance ended. Catherine’s kitchen was a 1980s country ‘oak’ monstrosity. It was neat as a pin, though, with the minimalist look that younger people seemed to favour. No fridge magnets, no colourful oilcloth on the table, no bits and bobs. No ‘clutter’, as Caroline would probably refer to the stuff in their kitchen.
‘Here’s some socks and slippers – they’ll be a wee bit big…’ Caroline indicated a pair of socks with dogs all over them and some fluffy slippers which she’d set on one of the kitchen chairs. ‘Tea? And what about you, sweetheart? The only juice I’ve got is apple. That do you?’
Beckie nodded as she pulled on the socks. ‘Thank you.’
Caroline went to the fridge, brought out a carton of juice – the stuff made from concentrate, but who the hell cared – and turned back to Flora. ‘Tea, coffee?’
‘Whatever you’re having.’
‘Tea with sugar’s meant to be good for shock, eh, according to Coronation Street anyway?’
Flora smiled.
Caroline made the drinks and shook some plain digestives onto a plate. ‘Sorry, haven’t got anything more exciting. I’m a crap hostess at the best of times, but I’m just back from a week away with work and the cupboard is bare. Ish. Let’s go through to the lounge, yeah, and relax? Till the police get here anyway. I think they’ll probably class this as non-urgent – they asked me whether the situation was “ongoing” and like an idiot I said no. So it could be a while.’
‘Oh, but we won’t hang around – I mean we won’t take up your time. I’m sure you’re busy.’
‘Nothing that can’t wait.’
Translation: I am busy, but I’m being nice. Yeah?
The lounge was a depressing room decorated in beige and brown and silver. Flora and Beckie sat on the sofa and Caroline took one of the armchairs.
‘Thank you so much for what you did,’ said Flora.
Caroline was offering Beckie a biscuit. ‘Honestly, Flora, stop it, it was nothing. It wasn’t any more than anyone else would have done.’
‘No – that’s not true. Ailish was there. I shouted to her and she couldn’t run fast enough in the opposite direction.’
Caroline made a face. ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’
They both smiled.
‘They were the Johnsons, weren’t they?’ said Beckie suddenly.
Flora hugged her. ‘Don’t worry darling, they’re not going to co
me anywhere near us again. The police will sort it all out.’
‘But it was them?’
‘Yes.’
‘That man – he’s really my – grandad?’
‘No. The only connection you have with them is genetic.’
‘But he’s my genetic grandad?’
Caroline was pretending she wasn’t hearing this, sipping her tea and looking out of the window. There was a lovely view over the privet hedge of the cherry blossom across the street in the Botanics.
‘He’s genetically your biological mother’s father. Yes.’
Beckie’s lips trembled. ‘He’s horrible. They’re all horrible. They’re evil. That’s why I was taken away from them, isn’t it?’
‘Well darling, they weren’t able to look after you properly, and maybe some of them aren’t very nice people, but I wouldn’t say they were evil.’ Wouldn’t she? ‘They’ve had – difficult lives, I should think, and when people –’
‘They might come back. They probably will. How can the police stop them?’
Oh God.
‘Beckie,’ said Caroline. ‘You saw how they reacted when all I did was point my phone at them, didn’t you?’
Beckie nodded.
‘I mean, look at me. Okay so I do kick-boxing and karate, and I once punched my big brother’s nose and made it bleed… But really? There were three of them, two of them big strong guys, but when a skinny wee woman stood up to them they legged it out of here, didn’t they? You don’t need to be scared of them.’
‘But you might not be there next time.’
Shame flooded through Flora. She should be the one Beckie looked to to protect her, not some random neighbour they hardly even knew.
Caroline, she saw, was looking at her. ‘Well, how about I teach your mum some self-defence moves so she can kick their arses, eh? Oops, sorry, bad word slipped out there.’
‘That’s okay.’ Beckie was grinning now. ‘Stress of the moment.’ It was what Neil said when he accidentally swore in Beckie’s hearing. ‘Could you teach me too?’