by Jane Renshaw
She took her phone from her bag, which she’d left perched on the arm of Caroline’s sofa. She’d had to buy a new phone – her old one had never turned up.
She would call Saskia and ask her if the Johnsons had ever used a garage before to provide them with alibis.
Caroline’s head appeared round the door. ‘I’m having a nightcap – a brandy. Want one?’
Three brandies and several unanswered calls to Saskia later, she was feeling woozy and weepy and all she wanted to do was go to bed and cuddle her little girl and forget about everything else.
Caroline made her a hot water bottle and gave her a hug as they said goodnight.
She had thought she’d drop straight off, but she had restless legs and arms and had to get up in the end so as not to wake Beckie with all her tossing and turning. In the harsh light of the sitting room she paced, back and forward in front of the fireplace and round the coffee table with its half-finished picture of a flock of parakeets; to the darkened window and back to the door. What was Neil doing, five doors down? Was he sitting up waiting for something he knew wasn’t going to happen? Or had he just gone to bed?
She was going to find out.
The front door was locked and she didn’t know where Caroline kept the key.
Back door?
Fumbling on the wall for the kitchen light switch, she banged a shelf and something fell off it to the floor with a clatter.
Ten seconds later Caroline was in the hall in ninja mode, eyes wide, hair on end, feet spread ready for action. Flora giggled, and then found she couldn’t stop.
‘Sorry,’ she gasped, as Caroline flicked on the light.
‘God’s sakes, Flora.’
The polka dots of the pyjama top Caroline was wearing were doing funny things to Flora’s eyes. She looked away. ‘I need to go back to the house. Just for ten minutes. Can you let me out?’
‘You must have had more brandy than I thought. Are you drunk?’
‘No!’
‘What do you want to go home for? Can’t it wait till morning?’
‘I want to see if he really is sitting up.’
Caroline folded her arms with a stern expression. ‘Oh, right. So if he is, you’re going to give him a heart attack. If he isn’t, the two of you will have another row, and where will that get you? Both of you zonked out tomorrow and no use whatsoever to Beckie.’
Flora could only nod.
‘Sit down. I’m making you a hot chocolate. Okay?’
Sitting down suddenly seemed like a very good idea.
It wasn’t a nice table. It was one of those cheap varnished orangey pine ones, and there was a sticky patch of something under the palm of her hand. Caroline wasn’t what you’d call houseproud – better things to do with her time. There was dust all over the shelf in the bathroom and mouldy grout in the shower, although the loo was clean enough.
The smell of the hot chocolate made her feel sick, but she smiled at Caroline as she handed Flora the steaming mug and sat with her hands around it.
‘Ailish was right,’ she said. ‘I am MegaParentFail.’
Caroline spluttered into her hot chocolate. ‘Like a character in a cartoon. This is a job for MegaParentFail!’
‘No, but really – I lost it with Beckie this morning. I just lost it. As if things aren’t bad enough for her already.’
‘Give yourself a break, Flora. You’re a good person in a really difficult situation.’
‘But I’m not! That’s the whole problem – I’m not a good person, I’m –’ She stopped herself just in time.
‘You’re what?’ Caroline put her slim, elegant hand over Flora’s podgy one.
‘I – when I was young…’
But she couldn’t tell Caroline. She couldn’t tell anyone. If the Johnsons found out –
‘We’ve all done mad things when we were younger.’ Caroline made a face. ‘Don’t tell Ailish, whatever you do, but I’ve got a conviction for drunk and disorderly. Apparently I was actually dancing on the roof of this poor bastard’s car. In stilettos. Knickers on display. Can’t remember a fucking thing about it, but there is photographic evidence in a dusty police file somewhere. Whatever you did, it can’t be as bad as that? Can it?’
Flora stared at her, this wonderful friend she had somehow made. She felt closer to Caroline, already, than she’d ever felt to Pam. Could she tell her? If she swore her to secrecy?
‘Eh, Flora?’ said Caroline gently.
She shook her head. No.
She just couldn’t take that risk.
She made herself smile, and the lie came smoothly: ‘Well, no, nothing I did ever resulted in a conviction.’ She pulled her hand out from under Caroline’s and stood. ‘Sorry. You must be so sick of us and all our dramas.’
‘Don’t be daft. You can talk to me, you know, any time. If you want to. About anything.’
‘Thank you. You’re… I don’t know what we would do without you.’
Caroline stood too. ‘Everything seems a hundred times worse than it is at 2:15 in the morning. Look, why don’t you go and see your GP tomorrow and they can maybe give you something – just for now, just to help you sleep and stuff. I’m guessing you’ve not been sleeping much.’
‘Not much.’
‘You’re going to get through this, Flora. You’re –’ She stopped, staring past Flora’s shoulder.
Flora whipped round, scanning from window to door –
‘What?’
Caroline shot round the table to the back door, cupping her hands round her face to peer out through one of the glass panels in its upper section. ‘I thought… I thought I saw…’
‘Oh God. You saw someone out there?’ Flora went to the window, but all she could see was a reflection of herself, a madwoman with staring eyes in an old towelling robe. She pressed her face up against it, but it was too dark out there. The light from the kitchen illuminated only a few square feet of weedy concrete slabs.
She rested her palm on the cool glass: single-glazed, as all the windows in these listed old houses were. No protection at all.
‘Just something moving,’ said Caroline. ‘It was probably a fox. Little bastards seem to be making themselves at home in the jungle I call a garden.’ She expelled a breath. ‘God, what are we like? Jumping at shadows. Come on, back to bed with you. You don’t want Beckie waking and wondering where you are, do you?’ But Flora noted that she turned the doorknob and pulled at the door to check it, and then removed the key that had been left in the lock.
19
Flora was virtually certain that the yob sitting across the waiting room staring at her was a Johnson, or a Johnson’s minion. She knew she’d seen him before. He had a long neck and a little head and a big Adam’s apple like a turkey, and sharp little eyes fixed on her.
There were three other patients in the room, but they were all elderly women. They’d be no help if he went for her. And Sheena, the receptionist in the little office behind the glass window, probably had a non-intervention clause in her contract that meant she would sit there watching if one patient decided to attack another in front of her.
He was definitely looking at Flora.
Thank God Beckie wasn’t here.
Neil had driven Beckie to school while Flora walked to the Health Centre. She’d felt the need for exercise, the need to get rid of all the pent-up energy inside her. She had expected Neil to object, to worry that it might be unsafe for her to walk even three streets to the Health Centre in broad daylight.
But he hadn’t.
He’d just said, ‘Can you pick Beckie up this afternoon?’
And the energy was still inside her, still making her legs twitch, her heels jig up and down on the carpet as if she was some hyperactive child come for her Ritalin.
The waiting room was smaller than she remembered.
A lot smaller. She felt as if she could reach out and touch the wall opposite, reach out and punch that yob right in the Adam’s apple – he’d better watch it, she was
ninja trained – oh God, Ailish’s face when Jed-Bag had gone flying out of the window!
And then suddenly the yob was up and out of his chair and coming for her, out of nowhere, and she caught a huge gulp of air and jumped up and yelled something, and she was kicking out at his crotch and he was yelling too, and he was staggering back, away, and ‘Bastard!’ she was shouting, and now, thank God, there was Dr Swain and she was telling him what had happened and the Johnson was whining and denying it, ‘I never touched her,’ and she was screaming, ‘Keep away from me, you fucking bastard! Keep away from my daughter!’
Her head felt enormous and fragile, like her brain had swollen up and her skull was a thin bony balloon and all the nerves inside it were being squashed up against it and soon the whole thing was going to burst open. It hurt to open her eyes. She was lying down on something that felt funny – a piece of paper of all things, a giant piece of paper. She was on one of those narrow beds in a consulting room.
She could hear Neil’s voice and another man’s, talking too quietly for her to hear.
‘Neil?’
‘It’s okay, Flora. You’re okay.’ Her hand was squeezed tight. ‘You’ve had a sort of panic attack, the doctor thinks… Do you remember?’
In the queue of traffic up Inverleith Row, she sat on the passenger seat, clutching her bag in her lap and looking out at all the people strolling by on the pavement, all the people with nice safe normal lives.
‘I’m not going mad,’ she finally said.
Neil, always a nervous driver, gave her a distracted look. ‘Of course you’re not. No one’s suggesting that.’
Dr Swain had told her he thought her ‘panic attack’ had been a result of a combination of stress and sleep deprivation. He’d written her a prescription for an SSRI – just a short course of it, for a month. Then she was to go back and see him again.
‘Neil, that man –’
Neil grimaced. ‘Yeah, he’s not pressing charges or anything. I explained our situation –’
‘Oh, I imagine he already knows all about our situation. They’re messing with me, Neil. Trying to make out I’m mad and an unfit mother so they can get Beckie back. He did try to attack me. Surely the other people in the waiting room could confirm that?’
‘Apparently he stood up, tripped, and you – you went for him, basically. He didn’t attack you.’ His eyes were back on the road, on the brake lights of the white van in front.
‘Okay, maybe he didn’t actually touch me, but he wanted me to think he was about to. So I’d react. So I’d look like a nutter.’
‘He’s not a Johnson.’ His voice was wearily patient. ‘In fact, we know him – Darren, dunno his surname, but he’s the lad who works with Bill Allen.’
Bill Allen was the builder who’d done their kitchen extension last year.
‘His apprentice?’ Neil prompted. ‘Shy young lad? But nice – he made Beckie that wooden hamster from an offcut. The one she has on her windowsill.’
‘Oh God.’
‘He said he was wondering whether he should say hello or not. He got up to go to the toilet and tripped on the leg of the play table and sort of lurched forward – in your direction – and that’s when you…’
‘Kicked him in the balls. Oh God.’
‘I think he saw the funny side. Said he wouldn’t be suing you – didn’t fancy producing the evidence in court.’
‘But – okay, so maybe it was this Darren boy, but how do we know he’s not in league with the Johnsons? Maybe that’s how they found us – maybe he’s a cousin or something –’
‘Flora, they finished the extension a year ago. If that’s how they found us, how come they’ve only now shown up? Of course Darren isn’t involved.’
‘You don’t even believe it was them yesterday, do you? The Johnsons are all sweetness and light and it’ll be lovely when they’re part of Beckie’s life – Let’s throw them a party, in fact, let’s have them all round for a barbeque and get this open adoption rolling!’
Neil didn’t say anything. He indicated left, pulled over onto a double yellow line and stopped the car.
‘Okay. So what do you want to do?’
‘Right. For a start, can we expedite the CCTV installation? Pay them extra to hurry things along? We need to get firm evidence of the Johnsons harassing and intimidating us, and as soon as possible. Enough evidence to get them put away, ideally.’
He nodded. ‘Evidence would be good.’
‘And we need to be writing everything down, like the police said.’
‘Yep, and also… Flora, if we’re ever going to end up appearing as witnesses against the Johnsons in court… We need to be… um… well, credible. We need to hold it together.’
‘No more kicking random people in the balls.’
‘That would help.’ He was drumming his fingertips on the steering wheel. ‘And we’ll also need other, independent witnesses against them. I’ve been Googling their criminal trials and found out their address. Thirty-four Meadowlands Crescent. I was thinking we might go round there and talk to them, but –’
‘Whoa! What would be the point in that?’
‘But, I was saying… But, okay, if we’re going down this road, what I’m thinking is we could go round there and speak to the neighbours. See what dirt we can dig up, if any.’
She ignored that if any. ‘Yes! I thought of doing that too! And I was going to ask Saskia if they’ve got a history of using this garage for alibis… And we need to know which of the neighbours to approach – which ones we can trust.’
‘Saskia would know that too,’ Neil nodded. ‘We could go and see her again – talk to her.’
One thing about Neil – he was a scientist through and through. It was all about the evidence. And no matter what theories he might hold, he was always open to changing his mind if the evidence led elsewhere. He knew Saskia was rabidly anti-Johnson, obviously, but he was prepared to listen to her. He was prepared to be open-minded.
‘I’ve been trying to get through to her.’ Flora found her phone in her bag and tried again. ‘Still not picking up.’ She frowned out of the window, at the sun dappling a bank of bright yellow and red tulips in the front garden opposite. ‘But Neil. I don’t think there’s anything we can do to beat them. They’re criminals. They’re psychopaths. I think we’re going to have to disappear again.’
‘No,’ he said at once. ‘We can’t keep running away from this. We can’t spend our lives wondering when they’re going to find us again. Beckie can’t spend her life that way. Especially if… Let’s face it, Flora, we don’t know that they’re a danger to us. Maybe we’d be running from something that doesn’t even exist.’
‘Oh, so you’re just humouring me here? You’re thinking that all this evidence gathering is going to come up with a big fat zero and then I’m going to have to concede that the Johnsons are no threat? I’m going to have to let them see Beckie? That’s not happening, Alec. Not while I have breath in my body.’
‘Hey, I’m not the enemy here, Ruth. If it looks like the Johnsons are a threat, don’t worry, I’m prepared to do whatever it takes. And I mean whatever it takes to stop them getting to Beckie.’
She looked at him, this man who was her husband, as if seeing him properly for the first time. The typical beta male. The typical nerd. A ten-stone botanist who couldn’t swat a fly without tripping over his own feet and knocking his front crown off on the edge of the coffee table.
But, ‘Good,’ was all she said.
And as he took her hand, sitting there in their bubble as the lunchtime hubbub of everyone else’s nice normal lives swept past them, she made the same promise to Beckie.
Whatever it takes.
‘Oh, hi, Ruth!’ Neil’s sister Pippa’s voice across nine thousand miles sounded unbearably cheerful. In the background there were other happy voices – she was probably in a bar somewhere. ‘I was just thinking about you! How’re you all doing?’
Where to start?
‘Not grea
t.’ Flora was standing in the garden in the rain, the landline handset pressed to her ear, watching a man in an orange jacket up a ladder, positioning one of the tiny hidden CCTV cameras under the eaves. The glass doors had been replaced that morning and the glaziers had swept up the broken fragments of glass. She could see a few tiny mosaic-sized pieces, though, along the edges of the paving. She pushed at them with the toe of her shoe.
‘The Johnsons have found us.’
‘Oh – fuck!’
‘Yep. They’ve been harassing us, and I’m terrified they’re going to do something… Try to take Beckie.’ She told Pippa everything that had happened.
‘Fuck, Ruth! Fuck! Surely the police can do something?’
‘The problem is, the Johnsons are wise to all the dodges. They’ve set up alibis for the times the incidents happened – quite honestly, the police don’t seem to have a clue. We’re getting CCTV put up around the house, but… It’s just not safe to stay here now. I’m going to try to persuade Alec to leave, to disappear again, but he’s saying we should stand and fight. Which is ridiculous, obviously – I mean, they’re a family of hardened criminals, murderers…’
‘But there are much stricter laws now, aren’t there, about harassment? The police will have to do something once you have evidence. CCTV is a great idea. Once you get them on that…’
‘They’ll probably just get given another caution. And there are so many of them – even if one of them did get convicted and locked up, that would still leave half a dozen more…’
‘But, Ruth… Say, worst-case scenario, they did take Beckie… they’d have to give her back. There’s no way they’re coming out of this the winners. If they keep harassing you, they’re going to get into trouble, and the police will have to stop them somehow – tag them and stuff like that to stop them coming anywhere near you. They can put electronic detectors on people’s houses now so that if the tagged person comes anywhere near it an alarm goes off…’
Fleetingly, it occurred to Flora to wonder how Pippa knew all this. Some of the men she’d hooked up with in the past had seemed a bit dodgy, to put it mildly. And she suspected that Pippa herself might have had a few brushes with the law.