‘Whatever you say.’
She went to open the door but it had stuck in the frame. He leant forward to pull it free. Her skirt brushed his knee and he wanted to cry out. Their faces were close enough to touch noses and she was looking hard at him, like she was reading his thoughts. He saw the moment in her eyes when she understood and pulled away as the door opened.
‘We’re just friends, Sean.’
‘You and Guy?’ Pointless, but worth a try.
‘You and me. Aren’t we?’
‘Of course.’
When she’d gone, he wanted to smash his head against the door. He settled for giving it a hard kick.
‘Sean? Everything all right?’
‘Door’s sticking, just making sure it’s properly shut.’
He went upstairs to the bathroom and washed his face. He lifted his head and looked in the shaving mirror. She was so out of his league. Why had he ever imagined anything else? He could hear the Audi revving up and the sound of its engine trailing away down the street.
He came back downstairs. Maureen was sitting on the sofa in the front room holding Arieta’s hand and telling her again not to worry, everything would be all right. He stood in the doorway and was just about to say something, when the girl turned to Maureen and started to cry, speaking quickly between blowing her nose and wiping her running mascara. He stepped back and listened at the open door.
She was talking about how she’d fled her alcoholic father to marry the man in Birmingham. She’d met him on the Internet. After six months he’d become possessive and violent, so she ran away. She got to the railway station and jumped on a train. When the guard finally asked for her ticket, she was just outside Doncaster. She got thrown off and sat on a bench for what seemed like hours, until the young girl with the pram offered her a cigarette. She went with the girl, who said she knew someone who could give her a job with a room above the business: a massage parlour.
‘Not nice job. First massage with extras. Then upstairs. Not nice but it pays. Soon I don’t care.’
When she hesitated, Sean could hear his nan quietly encouraging her to go on. She never sounded shocked. Arieta was telling her how Flora was already working at the massage parlour. Although she’d come from Kosovo ten years before, she still spoke Albanian.
‘Refugee girl. Very sad story. Fighting with foster parents, then running away.’
Her friend was getting more and more dependent on heroin and couldn’t earn enough to keep herself going. Arieta stayed clean.
‘You won’t believe, but I never do drugs, only a little bit drink. You have to do something, to get through the day.’
She had worked for both of them, trying to put a bit by all the time. The madam was nasty, she said, and took too much of the girls’ money. She ripped them off when they needed to score.
‘Always there was something we had to pay, rent for bed, cleaning cost, percentage.’
She thought Flora was going to die, so she got them both out of Miss Estelle’s place. She found Flora the flat and paid the first month’s rent for her with what she’d saved. Her friend promised her she was going to get clean and Arieta believed her. She took another ‘situation’ as she put it, but it went wrong, very wrong. She went back to her friend Flora but the other girl was still using, a few days later she was dead. Sean heard her blow her nose and try to say something else, but she was sobbing too hard to speak.
This was all hearsay. But if they could check it out, find the massage parlour, maybe find someone else willing to talk and if he could persuade Arieta to stay with them a little longer, maybe she would learn to trust him and then he might find out more. Maureen was speaking now. Sean backed away into the kitchen as he heard her getting to her feet. She went upstairs and came down with sheets and blankets.
‘Fix us a hot water bottle will you, love?’ She put her head round the kitchen door. ‘She’s exhausted, poor thing. You and me, we’ll have a talk about this in the morning.’
Chapter Seventeen
Karen took her father’s bag at the door. The journey had washed the colour from his face.
‘I would have been perfectly all right in my own home.’ He tugged at his scarf and she fumbled him out of his coat.
‘You can’t be on your own at Christmas, especially this year.’
‘I’ve managed before.’
‘I’m sorry, Dad.’
‘What for? Not your fault.’
Ben wandered out of the living room, trying to balance a light sabre on his nose. ‘What’s not Mum’s fault?’
‘Nothing, Ben. Careful, you’ll drop it!’
She took the bag upstairs while Reg went for a smoke. He didn’t argue about being sent out into the garden. She sat on the spare bed and poked her fingers in and out of the crevices of the candlewick bedspread.
‘Happy bloody Christmas,’ she said to herself.
She came down to find Reg looking at the cards on the mantelpiece. He picked up each one and checked the writing.
‘Just wondered if you’d heard from him.’ He dropped one, like a small boy caught snooping. A Victorian family fell to the floor.
‘Don’t you think I’d have told you?’
‘Of course.’ He rubbed at the papery skin that hung loose around his jaw-line. ‘I’m sorry.’
Charlie’s card was hidden towards the back. She had thought twice about putting it out with the others, but then decided it would look more suspicious if Max came across a card tucked out of sight in a drawer. This way it could be explained as a card from a friend at work or the children’s school. ‘C’ could be easily be a Cathy or a Claire.
Christmas Day played out in slow motion. At ten o’clock, Max opened a bottle of Champagne. By eleven, Karen was peeling sprouts with heavy arms and legs like dead tree trunks. From the living room the whine of something battery-operated started and stopped, started and stopped. And stopped. She counted the seconds of silence until Ben’s wail cut through the air.
‘You’ve broken it! Mummeeeee! Sophie’s broken it!’
‘Shall I try and have a word?’ Reg put down the tea towel he was holding and went towards the hall. He turned in the doorway. ‘Takes me right back to you and your brother at …’
But the words didn’t come. He cleared his throat and shook his head.
‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll sort it. Is Max in there?’
‘Upstairs on the computer. Mind if I pop out to stretch my legs? Need a bit of fresh air. I’ll just walk round the block. Back in a tick.’
She found him later in the park, hunched on a bench watching a squirrel on the edge of a litter bin. The squirrel saw her coming, and glared at her fiercely, as if she was the thief.
‘Come on, Dad.’
‘Just wish we knew,’ he said quietly. ‘Even if… even if he is dead. It would be easier knowing.’ He got up slowly, taking her hand to steady himself. ‘You get used to the idea that you’re there to protect your children, Karen. Then you have to get used to the idea that you can’t.’
When she opened the front door, they were greeted by the smell of burning and Max flapping a tea towel around the kitchen.
‘Shit! I kept watching them. Then I forgot. Sprouts. Little buggers have burnt to the bottom of the pan.’
‘For God’s sake Max, can’t you even cook a simple vegetable?’
He turned then, a wooden spoon in his hand, his bald skull red. He didn’t need to be told how to cook, it wasn’t his fault if he’d had to go and sort the children out because they were fighting again. And where had she been? Her father didn’t need fussing over like a half-wit.
‘If you hadn’t been messing around on the computer, then you would have noticed the sprouts.’
‘Pull yourself together Karen. You and I both know what’s goin
g on here.’
‘Do we?’
In the silence, turkey fat spat against the insides of the hot oven.
‘You’ve got to let it go,’ Max’s voice softened.
‘What? What do I have to let go?’
‘This business with Phil. This is your family, me, the children. We need you here. You can’t do it all, something has to give.’ He put the wooden spoon down. Wiping his hands on his blue and white apron, he hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure whether to hug her. ‘You don’t need to work too, you know, we’re doing all right. If you need more time for your Dad, well that’s okay, but perhaps you shouldn’t try to cram work in too. That’s all I’m trying to say.’
Karen held her breath. Part of her wanted to give in, give up. He turned away and ran the water into the sink to wash his hands. He seemed to have forgotten the impulse to hold her. Perhaps she’d imagined it. He dried his hands on the towel and folded it neatly over the radiator.
When the meal was finally on the table, Max did most of the talking. He did most of the drinking too. He filled every silence with attempts to draw Reg into conversation, including telling him about the Ptarmigan Project, a vast out-of-town shopping mall he was designing. According to Max it would regenerate a community blighted by high unemployment.
‘What was there before?’ Reg asked, a dry shred of turkey halfway to his mouth. Karen watched. It was like the beginning of a car crash, the moment when one notices that the light is red, that the car is still moving, that the road is not entirely clear. Max saw nothing.
‘Load of old factories. Terrible mess really.’
‘Factories eh? Where people worked. Mmm... Skilled labour.’ He chewed slowly. ‘What do those working men and women do in the new shopping centre? Window shop? Shelf stack?’
While Max launched further into his sales pitch, Karen watched her father’s jaw tighten. Her husband finally remembered to whom he was talking, and just before the moment of impact, steered drunkenly in another direction. They were saved from further disaster by Max’s phone.
‘Does he ever turn it off?’ Reg muttered, not quietly enough.
‘Text, from Trisha and Paul.’ Max said. ‘Happy Christmas! They’re having lunch at Middlewood Hall. They took Trisha’s mum and dad.’
Later, while Karen washed up, her father stood outside the back door with his pipe. As the smoke-sweet smell reached her, she felt like a little girl again, ready to throw her arms round his legs and be swung up into the air. When he back came in, there was a drip on the end of his nose. He hadn’t felt it. She handed him a piece of kitchen towel and wished he wasn’t getting older.
‘I suppose you’d rather be at Middlewood Hall too,’ he said, ‘if you didn’t have your poor old Dad staying. I bet they don’t burn the sprouts.’
‘I bet they do. They probably call it Bruxelles Brulées and charge extra.’
He almost laughed, but it came out as a sigh.
‘I don’t know what to think, Karen,’ he cleared his throat. ‘I haven’t felt very close to your brother for the last few years. But every Christmas, he did at least send a card, pick up the phone.’
‘I know.’ She put her arm round his tweedy shoulders.
They were in bed early. Max turned away from her, his nose in a new book about men and their ties.
‘We should have goose next year. Everyone has goose.’ And then, almost immediately, he was snoring and the book slid to the floor.
On her bedside table her mobile phone was plugged into its charger. She turned it on. There were no messages. She thought about tiptoeing downstairs to get Charlie’s card. She could text him a Happy Christmas, but he was probably with someone. She didn’t want to cause any trouble.
Bonfire Night: 4.30pm
Phil turned off the dual carriageway and slowed into the narrow lane towards the quarry. The light was almost gone and he flicked his headlights on to full beam, startling a rabbit, which froze before turning and scarpering with a flick of its white tail. Where the lane dipped down towards the quarry itself, the trees and bushes appeared blacker. Beyond them an endless darkness looked like it could suck in an unwary traveller. He laughed at how easily he could scare himself, but he couldn’t wait to get the stock in the shed and be on his way home.
He veered right on to the track and noticed a glow leaking through the caravan’s thin curtains. There was another car parked in front, a dark green Vauxhall Astra. He cut the van engine and got out, leaving the lights on. He circled the empty car. There was a grey suit jacket hanging from the handle above the rear window. Phil tapped on the door of the caravan and it was opened immediately. The girl was wearing a long baggy tee shirt and her legs were bare.
‘Hello again.’ She smiled as if she was pleased to see him. He was confused for a moment.
‘I thought you’d be at work,’ he said.
A man’s voice from inside the caravan called out, ‘Eh! What’s going on?’
‘I am at work.’ The smile fell. ‘I’ve got to go now.’
She closed the door. Phil stood for a moment, looking at the scratched plastic window, frosted with condensation trapped behind a dirty orange curtain. A drop of water detached itself and ran like a tear towards a greenish strip of rubber sealant.
‘You thick bugger,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Potato picking in November?’
He turned back to his van. The last cup of coffee had made its way through his system and he needed to pee. He liberally sprayed the nearside wheel of the Astra and was reminded of the neighbours’ cats marking territory in his dad’s suburban garden.
Over beyond the dual carriageway the haze, which lit up the ragged edge of the Chasebridge Estate, was interrupted by a sudden burst of bright green; like a flower-head spitting stars. It was the first firework, sent up early as dusk turned to evening. He rolled a cigarette and walked along the field edge, watching the skyline for the next firework. The whole situation in the caravan made him feel sick. Another burst of colour, a cluster of purple and gold exploding above the streetlights. He lit his cigarette and drew on it, pinpointing the moment when the nicotine rush claimed that quiet spot in the centre of his brain. Then he heard someone cry out.
Phil turned back towards the caravan. His boots ground the loose stones of the track, picking up a rhythm until he was running. The cold metal catch sprang under his fingers, the door so flimsy that it bounced as he flung it back. Then he was inside. A tea-light in a saucer on the edge of the sink cast shadows over a landscape of two dirty cups, nesting on the plates they’d eaten their sandwiches off at lunchtime. Beyond this was another tableau, framed by the sweating walls of the van itself, candlelit and frozen at Phil’s entrance. The girl was on the far corner of the bed, her mouth gagged with a pair of tights, her wrists tied with a man’s leather belt and hooked above her head on the edge of the curtain pelmet. She was naked. A dark-haired man, fully dressed in a shirt and tie but with his trousers round his ankles, stood leaning forward, his hands taking his weight. Phil was reminded of the stance of a mountain gorrilla. The man turned and his mouth opened but no sound came. He tried to grab at the waistband of his trousers but Phil was already on him, his right fist raised and then dropped square into the man’s face. Something under his knuckle seemed to crumple. Cartilage, bone maybe. The man was sprawled backwards on the bed and then someone was screaming. It was the girl, the tights in her hand, the belt hanging empty on the edge of the pelmet. She threw herself at Phil.
‘What you doing? Stop it!’
She was pushing him backwards towards the sink. His back hit the edge of the unit and he felt the pile of crockery slide away. Cups and plates landed and shattered on the floor. The blood was spreading across the man’s face. He seemed to forget about his trousers as he felt for his nose.
‘You fucking bitch!’ he shouted. ‘That’s your g
ame is it? Well you’re not going to rob me, you and your fucking pimp!’
The man picked up a broken plate from the floor and then he was on his feet, lunging forward in that tiny space, the light of the candles flickering off the sharp edge of the china.
Chapter Eighteen
The Doncaster Central Police Christmas party was well underway in the room above the New Moon Chinese Restaurant. Sean was on his third JD and Coke when Sandy Schofield dragged him on to the dance floor, singing at the top of her voice.
‘All I want for Christmas is you!’
‘You could give Mariah Carey a run for her money,’ Sean said.
‘Is it Mariah Carey?’ Sandy shouted. ‘I thought it was, whatsisname. Oh, I’ve forgotten.’ She did a twirl and crashed into Carly.
‘It is Mariah Carey,’ Carly said. ‘It’s a cover. What’s up, Sean? Dancing with my missus?’
‘What did she call me?’ Sandy asked.
They were good-humoured enough, but the drink was flowing.
‘Go on, Sean,’ Carly had a wicked look in her eye, ‘can’t you find someone your own age?’
‘Course I can, watch me now!’ He spun round and spotted Lizzie by the buffet. ‘Miss Morrison, are you dancing?’
He didn’t wait for an answer but took Lizzie by the arms and drew her on to the sticky dance floor. She was saying something, but he couldn’t hear over the music. He reached round her waist in what he imagined was a ballroom hold.
‘Don’t be an arsehole, Sean,’ she shouted. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’
Then she made a move so fast and hard with her hands that he thought his arm was going to come out of its socket.
To Catch a Rabbit Page 14