by Jane Renshaw
‘You’re the scientist. You know mental illnesses can have their onset around puberty or before… Of course I’m worried she might have inherited a predisposition… But no, that’s not why I’m watching her like a hawk. The supposed threat from the Johnsons is actually the reason for that, believe it or not.’ She set the glass down on the worktop, so abruptly that water sloshed over its rim, and pushed past him, making for the open doors to the garden.
This time, he didn’t come after her.
She had to call Saskia. She had to get the Johnsons’ address from Saskia, and go and speak to their neighbours. He wanted evidence? She’d get it. From the neighbours, and anyone else Saskia could point her towards, maybe other victims of the Johnsons, if they were willing to speak to her.
And then maybe she could persuade Alec that they needed to disappear again.
Where was her bloody mobile?
Not on the table or the loungers.
She returned to the family room, scanning the sofas, the coffee table… Neil had disappeared, thank God. She walked round the room, trying to think of where she could last remember looking at her phone.
Maybe she’d left it in the car.
She felt tears pricking at the back of her nose as she searched the car, the study, the front room, the bedroom – where the hell was her phone? All her numbers were in it, including Saskia’s. She needed her fucking phone.
In the bedroom, she lay down on the carpet and flailed her hand around under the bed.
Nothing but dust and hair.
Sweat was trickling from her armpits down her sides.
She sat back against the bed and closed her eyes against the tears.
‘Flora? Hey, Flora?’ It was Caroline’s voice, Caroline’s steps on the stairs.
Flora took a big breath, opened her eyes and got to her feet, like an old woman, supporting herself on the bed. What now?
‘In here.’
Caroline grinned at her from the door. Her hair was up in a jaunty ponytail and her face was flushed from the exercise. ‘I’m just off… Hey, are you okay?’
‘Still can’t find my bloody phone.’
Caroline made a sympathetic face. ‘Where were you when you last used it?’
‘I’ve been trying to remember.’ Flora sank down on the bed. ‘I thought I had it in the garden. I thought I checked it and put it down on the table…’
‘Have you tried ringing it?’
I’m not stupid! Flora wanted to snap. ‘It’s turned off.’
‘Well, it’ll turn up, eh? Gimme paper and I’ll write my number down for you.’
Flora reached for a Post-it pad on her bedside table and opened the drawer for a pen. As Caroline wrote down her number, Flora said, ‘Thanks for spending so much time with Beckie. It’s – I know it really means a lot to her to be able to have fun with you. You’re so good with her.’
Caroline smiled. ‘Yeah, I’m just a big kid, let’s face it.’
The great thing about Caroline was that she was so easy to have around. And somehow Flora knew she could trust her with Beckie. It seemed that Neil could have been right, and Caroline may well be the friend Flora needed. The difference in their ages didn’t seem to matter at all.
‘You don’t need to thank me, Flora. I love hanging out with Beckie. She’s a little sweetheart.’
Flora smiled and puffed out a laugh, feeling hysteria rushing up behind it. She clamped her lips together and turned away from Caroline to replace the pen and the pad, shoving the yellow Post-it with Caroline’s number on it into the pocket of her jeans.
‘Ahhhhhhh!’
The door behind Caroline was flung back against the wall and Jed-Bag burst into the room, legs flying out in front of him, sinister grinning Mr Blobby face wobbling. All she could see of Beckie was her trainers and some of her jeans behind Jed-Bag’s. At his crotch, bits of flaky onion skin were poking out of the mesh bag, and the carrot was in bits.
‘She’s my fucking granddaughter, you bloody buggering bitch!’ Jed-Bag jiggled across the room towards her.
‘Beckie!’ Flora said weakly.
‘You have to hit him, Mum.’
Flora looked at Caroline, who grinned and shrugged.
She had always found Mr Blobby disturbing. She aimed a feeble punch at his shoulder.
‘Go for his face!’ came Beckie’s muffled voice.
Flora whacked at the lipstick grin, sending the head on its thin neck bouncing around satisfyingly.
‘Go for his balls!’
‘Beckie,’ she said again.
‘Sorry,’ Caroline muttered through her grin.
‘The willy’s broken but the balls are still good. Kick him in the balls! That’s the best place to go for. Look Mum, he’s attacking you!’
Jed-Bag flew through the air.
‘That’s my fucking buggery granddaughter!’
And as he sailed through the air towards her, all the rage that had been building seemed to whoosh through her and she was conscious only of her limbs flailing, of someone shouting, of jumping, of herself screaming, and ‘Fucking old bastard’ coming out of her mouth, and when she came back to herself she was letting go of Jed-Bag’s ankles and he was flying in a centrifugal arc through the wide-open window.
Gasping, she stood in the rectangle of sun on the carpet and looked around her.
What had just happened?
Beckie was grabbing the windowsill to haul herself up and look down at the patio, shrieking, ‘You’ve killed him!’ in delight.
‘Who?’ came faintly back. Thomas.
‘Jed-Bag!’ yelled Beckie. ‘My biological grandad! Mum smashed up his balls and his willy then she threw him out of the window! He’s definitely dead now!’
Flora staggered to the window. Jed-Bag was sprawled on his back on the patio, legs and arms spreadeagled, the sorry collection of objects at his crotch pulverised beyond recognition. On the other side of the high wall, in next door’s garden, Ailish, Iain and Thomas were standing staring up at them.
She waved weakly, shut the window, and sank down on the bed.
Beckie flung herself down full-length beside her and started to laugh, uninhibitedly, delightedly, and Caroline was peeking out of the window and saying, ‘Her mouth is literally hanging open,’ and then Flora was laughing too, and Caroline flung back her head and joined them, the three of them howling like a pack of wolves.
17
Rolliston Avenue was usually one of the best parts of the walk to school: leafy and quiet and genteel, with its high stone walls overhung by beech and magnolia and lilac trees, so you got a glimpse of the ground floors of the grand detached houses only at their gates. Number 6 was her favourite, with its brief view up the gravel drive to a wide, white-painted front door under an elegant fanlight, and wisteria growing around a sash-and-case window. You could almost imagine the door opening and a wasp-waisted Victorian maidservant appearing, a basket swinging on her arm, to do her morning shopping in the long-vanished grocers and butchers and haberdashers on Raeburn Place.
But today Flora didn’t slow her pace at all as they passed the gate of Number 6.
She was cursing herself for not staying in the car and asking some nice passer-by for the use of their mobile phone. No matter how embarrassing it would have been to have to admit to running out of petrol, at least they would have been safe.
How could she have run out of petrol?
Had they tampered with the car? Had they been watching her, following her on the route to school every day? Had they calculated exactly how much petrol to leave in it to strand them in this quiet street?
‘Mum –’
‘I said don’t look round at them, Beckie.’
Behind, the yobs were barking like animals, scuffling with each other, laughing raucously, shouting sudden streams of obscenities.
‘Are they the Johnsons?’
‘No, they’re just some silly boys.’ She gripped Beckie’s hand more tightly, and Beckie gripped hers.
; But Flora was almost certain, the one time she’d looked back at them, that she’d recognised the one with the little fringe plastered to his forehead.
Travis Johnson.
When she’d looked round, he had grinned at her.
She scanned the street for potential saviours, but the pavements ahead to where the road curved were empty. She was walking so fast now that poor Beckie was half tripping along at her side and, despite what Flora had told her, kept swivelling her head to look behind.
‘Mum, are –’
BANG!
A plastic bottle full of bright orange liquid exploded on the wall just in front of Beckie, spattering her hair.
‘It’s okay, Beckie. Just keep walking and don’t look round at them.’
Distantly, she could hear the traffic on Raeburn Place.
But there was still no one in sight.
Should she turn in at the gate of the house ahead? Walk briskly to the door as if this had been their destination all along, as if she knew the people there?
But what if the Johnsons followed them into the garden, into the seclusion afforded by the high wall and the trees, blocking their exit to the street?
No. There would be people soon, surely, on the street if they just kept walking?
‘Fucking snobs,’ one of them shouted.
Beckie looked back again.
‘Beckie!’ Flora hissed furiously, tugging her arm and making her stumble. ‘Would you stop looking?’
Now they were approaching the curve in the road. The street had never seemed so long.
‘It’s okay, darling, just ignore them.’
Beckie’s face had closed, as if an expressionless mask had been pulled down over it.
What would she do if they made a grab for Beckie?
She would scream. She would fight. She would kick them in the balls.
She couldn’t call 999 because she still hadn’t found her fucking phone. Why hadn’t she taken Neil’s?
But they weren’t going to do anything, not in public like this. Surely? When they got to the school she would call the police. Call Neil. At least this was the evidence she needed that the Johnsons really were a threat.
It seemed to take hours to reach the bend in the road. But at last the new vista opened up in front of them and there were people, a group of students slouching along, all skinny jeans and huge boots and ridiculous hair, crossing the junction with Raeburn Place.
Holding tight to Beckie’s hand, Flora broke into a jog.
‘Excuse me!’ she shouted, and one of the boys – he looked like a giant insect, his limbs impossibly thin in black jeans and top, a pair of outsized, heavy-framed glasses on his pointed nose – stopped and looked at them.
‘Excuse me!’ she repeated, gasping, at last daring to look back as she approached the students.
The street behind was empty.
‘There were some men,’ she gabbled at them. ‘Following us, shouting things…’
‘It was the Johnsons,’ Beckie said in a small voice. ‘They’re bad people, basically… It was, Mum – I recognised one of them from before.’
‘Or it could have been someone who just looked a bit like one of them.’
‘Wanna call the cops?’ Insect Boy handed her a phone.
‘Oh!’ Flora took it gratefully. ‘Thank you. I’ve lost my phone… Can we walk up the road with you while I call them?’
‘Yeah, sure you can.’
She decided to call 101, the non-emergency number, rather than 999. She didn’t want to seem as if she was hysterical and overreacting. She explained to the woman who answered what had happened, and she was put through to the local police station. She then had to explain it all again to a bored-sounding man, all the time checking the pavements ahead and across the road and behind.
She explained that the family of her adoptive daughter had been harassing them again, that there would be a record of the previous incident on file. The bored man said police officers would meet her at the school to take a statement.
At the school gate they said goodbye and thank you to the students, and then they were safely on the expanse of tarmacked playground in front of the school buildings, thronging with yelling children and groups of helicopter mums standing about talking with half their attention, the other half dedicated to tracking their children.
Beckie suddenly stopped. ‘Why did you lie?’
‘What?’
‘It was the Johnsons. You just told the police it was them.’
‘Well – actually I don’t know for sure that it was…’
‘Of course it was them, Mum. It was that big muscly one from before. They’re going to come back and try and like grab me or do something to me –’
‘No, darling –’
‘I’m not a baby!’
‘They’re not going to “grab” you. Dad and I would never let that happen.’
‘Yes you would. You couldn’t do anything to stop them. If they’d grabbed me just now, there’s nothing you could have done about it.’
‘Beckie –’
‘I want to go home.’
‘I’ll tell Miss Douglas and Mrs Jenner what’s been happening, and they’ll keep you safe inside at break and at lunchtime – and Dad and I will both come and collect you in his car.’
‘No, I mean I want to go home home. I hate it here. I hate this school. And I hate Miss Douglas and Mrs Jenner! They would probably want the Johnsons to take me! They’re fucking cows.’
‘Beckie!’
Beckie tugged her hand out of Flora’s, and Flora grabbed it back and began pulling her towards the P4 extension where Beckie’s classroom was. Beckie wriggled and struggled, tears and snot on her reddened face.
‘Behave yourself!’ Flora shouted.
And Beckie cringed away.
She cringed away and sort of ducked her head as if to avoid the blow that was coming.
Oh God.
Flora had never turned her anger on Beckie before; never once.
Her own tears coming, Flora folded Beckie in her arms. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I’m so sorry.’
Beckie was stiff in her embrace.
Guiding her blindly across the tarmac, Flora was aware for the first time of all the eyes upon them – children frozen mid-chase; groups of mums staring. And there was Ailish, in her usual prime position in the middle of the playground under the big horse chestnut, standing there in her high boots and swingy beige coat, muttering out of the side of her mouth to Marianne, her gaze fixed coldly on Flora.
That bitch.
Flora had seen her hurrying Thomas past on the street earlier as she and Beckie were leaving the house.
‘Thanks a lot for your support, Ailish!’ she shouted across at her, like someone on EastEnders.
She didn’t wait for her response. She focused on the cheerful turquoise double doors of the extension, on the cut-out children’s drawings of animals stuck to the safety glass, mutant deer and badgers and foxes.
Then she was pulling open the left-hand door and pushing Beckie inside.
The little lobby smelt of disinfectant and printer ink and glue.
She sat Beckie down in a chair and hunkered down in front of her, wiping her face with a tissue.
‘I’m sorry I shouted at you. And I know it’s very scary, darling, but Daddy and I both love you far too much to let anyone take you anywhere. We couldn’t do without you, you know.’
She thought Beckie was going to stay mute – maybe she’d never speak to Flora again, and maybe she would deserve it – but then, without looking at Flora, she whispered, ‘I couldn’t do without you.’
Tears prickled again at the back of her nose, but Flora managed to smile and push Beckie’s hair back off her face and say, ‘Just as well I’m here, then, isn’t it. And I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to speak to the policemen, and then I’m going to call Dad and he’ll come and get us.’
‘So I can skive off?’
‘You can skive off. And if Mrs Jenn
er doesn’t like it, she can lump it.’
They shared a little rebellious smile.
But Mrs Jenner was more than kind about the whole situation, insisting that Flora and the policemen use her office to take the statement while Beckie read a book in the outer sanctum where Mrs Jenner’s secretary worked.
Ushering them into her office, she said, ‘What a terrible stressful time you’re having.’
Flora could only nod.
The ordinary sounds of the school could be heard faintly – a teacher’s voice raised with calm, measured authority; the squeak of rubber shoes on polished vinyl flooring; a distant clatter.
Blinking her false eyelashes rapidly at Flora, Mrs Jenner murmured, ‘We do take security extremely seriously – all schools must, these days, sadly. I’m afraid this sort of situation isn’t unheard of – estranged parents threatening to snatch a child… We have systems in place.’
‘Oh,’ said Flora weakly.
Mrs Jenner nodded briskly. ‘I’m with a class all morning, so please take all the time you need. And when you’re finished, of course you can just take Beckie home – use the phone in my office to call your husband if you like.’
‘You’re so kind. Thank you.’
When Mrs Jenner had gone, the two young policemen looked at her rather helplessly, as if transported back to their own – not very far off – schooldays and a summons to the headmistress’s office. Flora went round behind the desk and sat in Mrs Jenner’s chair, hoping this might lend her an air of authority.
The policemen sat down on the other side of the desk, and one of them produced a notebook to take down Flora’s account of the morning.
But in this portentous setting, after all the build-up, somehow it fell flat when she actually began to tell them what had happened. Three youths had walked behind them on the pavement being loud and sweary and throwing a plastic bottle at a wall.
‘So they didn’t throw it at you or your daughter?’
‘Maybe they did and missed.’
‘They didn’t actually speak to you? They didn’t confront you?’
‘They were shouting things – like “Fucking snobs”.’
‘And this was directed at you?’
‘Well – yes, I’m sure it was.’