Out on a Limb

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  And I do. And it works. For the moment at least. And it seems to be cumulative too. Jake is excited, thus I am excited. Even Spike is excited because he’s very intelligent and knows excitement invariably means extra choc drops and hugs. Sadly, however, there is an air of an entirely different flavour emanating from the phone. Ten past six and I pick up the receiver in my bedroom to find Dee hissing at me in a most un-Dee-like way.

  ‘Abbie?’

  ‘Dee? What is it? What’s the matter?’

  Her voice is so low as to be barely audible. Not good. ‘I need a favour. Can you come round? As in now ? Can you come round and get me?’

  Double not good. ‘Get you? Where are you?’

  ‘At home. In the en suite. And Malcolm’s…’ She takes a breath. ‘Malcolm’s taken my handbag and my car keys and everything, and I don’t have any money and I don’t know what to do. And if I don’t get out of here soon something bad is going to happen, and I can’t get hold of Tim, and –’

  Oh, God. ‘Dee, what’s happening? What’s going on?’

  ‘I told him.’

  ‘What, everything?’

  ‘Yes, everything. God, I’m so stupid, Abs. What possessed me? Why didn’t I do it somewhere public? Abs, I’m scared.’

  As well she might be. ‘Okay, so just leave. Just get out of there. Go. Start walking and I’ll leave now and I can…’

  ‘I can’t. I daren’t even go downstairs! He’s smashed. He’s gone ballistic. He’s bolted the front door and he’s thrown stuff and… God, Abbie, you’ve got to –’

  ‘Okay, okay. I’m coming! I’ll –’

  Click. A new voice. ‘Hello?’

  Oh, typical. ‘Mum,’ I say. ‘I’m on the line right now.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I do beg your pardon.’ Another click.

  ‘Dee?’

  ‘I’m still here.’

  ‘Are you calling from your mobile?’

  ‘Yes. Thank God. It was on the charger in the bedroom.’

  ‘Good. Right. Stay put. I’m on my way.’

  I negotiate the stair treads two at a time. My mother is standing at the foot of them.

  ‘Something the matter?’ she enquires over the top of her reading glasses.

  Should I call the police, perhaps ? Now? Before I leave? ‘Yes, actually,’ I answer, pulling my jacket from the newel post. ‘I have to go round to Dee’s house.’

  ‘Only I wanted to know if you might be able to give Celeste and I a lift to Wilfred’s on your way to the show.’

  ‘Um …er…I don’t know, Mum. It depends on –’

  ‘Gig, Nan,’ says Jake, emerging from the kitchen with some drumsticks. ‘It’s not called a show. It’s called a gig.’

  ‘Ah, Jake,’ I say, turning to him while I pull on my jacket and start looking for my bag. ‘I’ve got to pop over to Dee’s. What time do we have to leave here to set up?’ My heart, I realise, has already started thumping. Yes, police? No, police? No, police, I decide. It cannot be that bad. Bad but not that bad, surely. Can it?

  ‘Like, in half an hour, Mum!’ says Jake, following me back into the kitchen. ‘How long are you going to be?’

  ‘…for Brian’s birthday,’ continues my mother. ‘Only we can’t go to Brian’s because he’s had a flood in his kitchen…it’s not too much further. It’s only in –’

  ‘Nan,’ Jake explains, ‘we can’t fit you in. Not with the drum kit. There isn’t enough room. Mum, you’ve got to be back, okay?’

  ‘Yes I know. And I will. Don’t worry,’ I tell him, grabbing my mobile from its charger. ‘Straight there, straight back. No need to fret.’

  And perhaps I’m right, at that. Because when I get to Dee’s road there’s certainly no sign that anything bad has happened. No flashing lights. No gaggle of concerned neighbours at the gate. No pressmen or riot vans or packs of sniffer dogs or cordons. The house stands, in the watery remnants of a low October sun, as still and serene as any one of its fellows. As houses do. From the outside. Like marriages, I guess.

  Which is precisely why I ignore the evidence of my eyes and park the car expecting the worst. This day, I think, as I clamber out and stride purposefully across the road towards their house, has been too long in coming. Dee must be – I calculate – some eighteen or nineteen weeks pregnant. Almost beyond the point that even an idiot could fail to notice. She’s been putting it off, I know, and I understand her reasons. There was never going to be a right time to do this. I unlatch the gate and push it open. I don’t know where Malcolm is, of course, but if he’s in there, there’s at least some chance he’s watching me do so, and I want him to know I mean business.

  Malcolm, who works at the sort of impenetrable job of being something in procurement services for the council (beats me), is quite a big man. Six foot-ish, fairly beefy, good at hefting and digging and also, or so I am informed by Dee, currently drunk. Nothing new there, then. He very often is. Which presents a somewhat worrisome picture. But though I am only five foot five inches tall, slight-to-average of build and not particularly tough, there is one thing that both of us know. That I am not frightened of Malcolm.

  This certainty (and the action I’m taking as a consequence) might, of course, prove to be my bloody undoing very shortly, but somehow I think not. I have known Malcolm for over a decade; known him jolly, known him cross, known him drunk and known him sober. I have known him be aggressive to Dee on numerous occasions, known him scare her with words if not actually with deeds. But I have never known him raise so much as an eyebrow at anyone else, and he’s certainly never behaved badly towards me. Not in public and not in private. Not ever. He wouldn’t dare.

  In fact, sometimes I wonder if the opposite is true. And that Malcolm’s just a little scared of me. It’s a comforting thought, even if it’s fiction. I walk up the path and press my finger on the doorbell for a full and reassuringly sonorous ten seconds – I hope she’s heard it – and step back as I wait for him to answer the door.

  Which is precisely what he does, and in double quick time, sliding back the bolts and smiling easily and readily as he swings the front door back to greet me.

  Malcolm, who is dressed now in lichen-coloured cords and a loose black sweatshirt, is what I think experts usually call a ‘well-preserved’ alcoholic. He goes off to work, he functions when he gets there, he is socially competent among his friends (at least till he’s downed the first six or so, by which time everyone else is generally too merry themselves to notice that he’s two pints ahead at-all-times), and his outburst in the pasta place and the vinegar aside, anyone who didn’t know either of them well wouldn’t know that in private he lives a parallel life in which he mostly enjoys the company of his good friend Mr Daniels and his busty and Teutonic pal, Stella. Most important, however, for my purposes right now at least, is that he’s well aware that I do. And also that the consequences of me broadcasting the fact are potentially the end of the whole sorry charade.

  Though now we’re where we are (Dee pregnant. Dee divorcing him), it suddenly occurs to me that everything’s changed. He’s already lost much of what he was so anxious not to lose. Which means he has less to lose now. Perhaps I should be frightened after all.

  Except my best friend needs me not to be. I swallow and then I smile. ‘Hi, Malcolm,’ I say nicely. ‘Is Dee there?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, looking for all the world like he means it. Looking perfectly personable and almost sober, in fact. The only evidence that he isn’t is pretty hard to spot. He keeps his trembling hands fixed; one in pocket, one on door jamb. He shakes his head instead. ‘She’s gone out.’

  ‘Oh?’ I say, glancing at her car parked in the road. I gesture towards it. ‘Are you sure?’

  He glances, then. Past me. Then nods. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  I take a deep breath, happily conscious as I do so that there is a woman walking past the house right about now. I have to hope she’d see if I was yanked inside by my hair. ‘That’
s strange,’ I say, scratching my head. ‘She just rang me. Ten minutes back. We’re supposed to be going out. Er… Jake’s gig?’ He looks at me blankly.

  I look straight on back. ‘She didn’t mention?’ I go on, brow now furrowed. ‘I said I’d be straight here. Are you absolutely sure?’

  Where is she? Where is she? I can see his brain whirring. She’s called me. He’s cornered. He knows full well now that I’m fully aware. But thankfully, we don’t have to take things any further, because Dee now appears at the head of the stairs, holding her mobile in one hand and her stomach in the other.

  ‘Ah! There you are!’ I say, smiling nicely at Malcolm. ‘Are you ready? Come on.’ I make a big show of consulting my watch. ‘It’s getting late.’

  Dee starts down the stairs, pale-faced but managing to get sufficiently with the programme. ‘I’ll just grab my coat,’ she says.

  ‘And your bag,’ I remind her.

  ‘Ah,’ she says, casting about. ‘I think I left it in the kitchen. Hang on. Won’t be long.’ She heads down the hallway.

  ‘Lounge,’ Malcolm growls at her. ‘You left it in the lounge.’

  We hear Malcolm shut the front door almost as soon as we turn to walk back down the path. He’s said nothing more to either of us and I’m mightily glad of it. In fact I’m really quite astounded that it all went so smoothly. That we got her out with so little confrontation.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ says Dee, rummaging feverishly in her handbag as she climbs into my passenger seat. ‘They’re not here.’

  ‘What aren’t?’

  ‘My car keys. The sod’s taken them. What the hell am I going to do now?’

  I start the engine. ‘What’s going on, Dee?’

  She jangles her key ring in my face. ‘He’s taken them off. Look! The bloody sod!’ She thrusts them back into her bag and dumps it angrily down into the footwell. ‘That’s it. That’s the absolute last straw. I’m not going back, you know. Not tonight. Not ever. Oh, God, Abs. I so need this to be over.’

  ‘You’re telling me!’ I release the handbrake and flip down the indicator. ‘Never mind. We’ll get you back to mine and then you can –’

  ‘Oh, Lord!’ she cries suddenly. ‘Oh, I don’t believe it!’

  ‘What?’ I dip my head and strain to see out, beyond her. So much for it being so unbelievably simple. Malcolm, who clearly has a fine nose for farce, is lobbing clothes – Dee’s clothes – out of the bedroom window.

  It takes a good ten minutes to gather up all Dee’s possessions. Not just her clothes, but all her make-up, her books, a bunch of magazines, shoes. Everything, in short, that he can readily lay hands on. And all of which, being without bags in which to put it, we have no choice but to dump, in a muddle, in the boot.

  It’s now ten to seven. And I am seriously stressed.

  ‘Right,’ I say, starting the engine once more. ‘Home. And we’d better get our skates on or I’m for the chop.’

  Dee swivels. Checks her watch. ‘Can’t you drop me at Tim’s?’

  ‘I thought you said you couldn’t get hold of him?’

  ‘I couldn’t. I can’t. His phone’s off. I think he’s working on an installation or something. But he’ll be back soon enough, I’m sure. Please? It won’t take long.’

  ‘Dee, I can’t take you to Tim’s. I have to get back to take Jake to his gig.’

  She chews her lip. Checks the time. ‘It’s not far.’

  ‘Dee, I know that. But far enough. And besides, if he’s not in – and you have no reason to suppose he will be, have you? – I can’t just leave you sitting on his doorstep, can I? Supposing he has to work late? Suppose he’s been held up somewhere? Come on – let’s get you back to mine, okay? I’m sure he won’t mind collecting you from there, will he? Besides, I really do have to get back, Dee. I have to get Jake’s drum kit down to the club or there’s going to be all sorts of trouble.’

  As if a telepathic prompt, my own mobile starts ringing at this point. Dee answers it and listens. ‘It’s Jake,’ she says, finally. ‘Look, Mum’s driving, Jake. Can I take a…yes. Yes, okay…Right…okay, then…yup…okay, I’ll tell her.’

  She disconnects. ‘He’s okay. His friend’s dad is going to pick him up and take the kit down there. He said he’d see you there.’

  So I take her to Tim’s house, which is out towards Radyr. But Tim, as predicted, is still not at home.

  ‘Dee, I can’t leave you here. No. I won’t leave you here. It’s dark and it’s cold and it’s beginning to rain and there’s absolutely nowhere to shelter. I’m going to take you back to my house, and as soon as you get hold of him, you can have him come and pick you up from there.’

  ‘But what about Malcolm?’

  ‘What about Malcolm?’

  ‘Isn’t that just where he’ll expect me to be? Supposing he turns up there?’

  She does have a point. But I shake my head firmly. ‘I’m quite sure he won’t.’

  She looks unconvinced. As I guess she well might. I’m pretty unconvinced myself. Anything could happen.

  ‘Look,’ I say, trying to quell my ever-rising anxiety about the time. ‘I really do have to get down to town, Dee. If I don’t get there I know Jake will never forgive me. You’ll be quite safe at mine. Just bolt the front door. Spike will look after you.’

  ‘I think it will take more than Spike to do that, Abs, don’t you?’

  But I can’t, can’t, can’t spend so much as a minute more worrying about it. It takes another precious ten minutes to relocate all Dee’s belongings from car boot to hallway – something I almost forget to, but have to get done, as I need the car empty to bring the drum kit back home.

  Dee’s calmer, at least, once she’s safely inside. So I leave her with Mum, who’s still waiting for Wilfred to collect her, and rattle off back in the car, reflecting that acupuncture’s all very useful, but not half such a good way of dealing with pain as having a resident mother, an important gig with a deadline, and other people’s marital crises to deal with. Time to mope is a luxury I simply don’t have.

  By the time I get to the club it’s teeming with rain, and because it’s right in the middle of the main drag, I have to park some distance away and sprint back.

  I can hear before I see, but I’m much relieved to realise that I don’t recognise what’s being played.

  When I actually get inside it’s difficult to make out what’s going on at all. Every inch of the floor space is one amorphous, pulsating mass of bodies. But my ears didn’t deceive me, because I manage to establish that the frenzied quartet currently occupying the left side of the stage are not Jake and his pals, but some other band. Though Jake’s kit is, I notice, already pretty much set up. Thank God for Tom’s dad. I can breathe out again.

  The club consists of a large stage and a vast central dance floor, which forms a well between two opposing areas with bars, only one of which is open tonight. I thread my way behind the crush of people lining the railings, and pick out Charlie and Claire, with Oliver’s brother and stepsister, huddled with Tom’s parents beside the bar at the far end. Because it’s a teenagers’ night, there’s no alcohol available, and they are all of them swigging from bottles of juice.

  I make my way down to them, waving as I do so, and have almost reached them when I think I hear my name called out from behind me.

  ‘Thought so! Hello, you!’ says a voice. I turn around to see Lucy Whittall.

  Lucy Whittall Of All People. ‘Goodness!’ I say, shocked and completely appalled. Is he here, then? Oh please, no. I rearrange my expression by sheer force of will. ‘What a surprise!’ I say gaily. ‘What are you doing here?’

  She looks surprised that I’m surprised. ‘Oh?’ she says. ‘Didn’t Jake mention?’

  Mention? My brain fails to compute. ‘Well, he did tell me they mentioned the gig to you when you were at our house in the summer…but I never imagined…well, um…’ oh gawd, Abbie. ‘Well, how lovely that you found
the time to come along. Does he know you’re here? I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to –’

  She nods enthusiastically. ‘ Oh, God, yes. We just watched the last band together. Don’t worry,’ she adds. ‘Not a patch on your boys.’ She has a slight sheen of moisture across the tops of her cheekbones. Which on her manages to look like it was gently deposited from the wings of a tropical butterfly, en route to Paradise Island.

  ‘Well that’s really sweet of you,’ I reply. ‘I’m sure it’s really made his day that you came.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I was in town anyway. Been to some God-awful ad premiere. And later on I have to go to some God-awful aftershow party as well. So I thought, I know! I’ll nip down and check out how your lovely boys are getting on. This is so much more my sort of thing than poncing around with my arse of a publicist and a bunch of self-satisfied gonks, I can tell you –’ she lifts her bottle of juice. ‘– lack of vino notwithstanding, of course!’ she tips her mane of glossy hair back and laughs.

  So perhaps he’s not here, then. I feel the tension ebb slightly. ‘So,’ I say. ‘D’you want to come and join us?’

  ‘You’re all right,’ she says, winking, and gesturing back to the dance floor… ‘I’d rather be down there, if it’s all the same to you. Anyway –’ She leans towards me and brushes her fragrant cheek against my own. ‘Good to see you, Annie!’

  And then she’s gone. Tripping down the steps, and then sucked once again into the welcoming throng.

  I move further down the bar. Jake’s there now too, I see, his forehead shiny and his fingers rat-a-tat-tatting against the bar.

  ‘Yo, Mum! You made it!’ he shouts as I approach. ‘Just in time, too. We’re up next.’ He looks past me. ‘Yo, Hamish! Come on! Where you been ?’

  Charlie’s deep in conversation with Tom’s dad close by, having the sort of comedy exchange that you can’t help but do in these sort of decibel levels; making seeming close inspections of one another’s ear hair.

  His wife, Claire, pushes past them to get to me.

  ‘Isn’t this exciting?’ she says. She looks animated. Happier. Entirely different to the way she did last time I met her. Out of role, I suppose. And not so very different from me, after all. She grins, revealing dimples. ‘I’ve never been to anything like this before. Have you?’ I shake my head. ‘I think it’s wonderful that they lay this sort of thing on for young people, don’t you?’ She bends her mouth closer to me and gestures to her drink. ‘Have to say, I wouldn’t mind a G and T, though!’