by Judy Astley
‘I don’t need to. You’re just assuming,’ Nina said. ‘I was captain of the college darts team. We beat everyone over three counties.’
‘Sam doesn’t want to go to bed yet, do you Sam? He’s extra excited because his mum’s coming home.’ Sam and Emily glared at each other but he gave Lucy a big smile. ‘So I said he could play with you for a while.’ Paul patted Emily on the shoulder in a matey sort of way and reached across her to get his jacket from the hook.
Emily gave Sam a look of hostile suspicion. She’d heard about the snail-treading incident. She’d seen Megan applauding his every tantrum, squealing ‘oh he’s a real boy!’ as he smashed up Sophie’s Lego castle with his wooden hammer. Here was a small child who might think it was fun to sneak up behind the sofa and pull her hair out, strand by strand. Or he might, while playing angelically quietly, pour Fairy Liquid all down the stair carpet.
‘What time does he go to bed?’ Emily asked, hoping the answer would be ‘soon’.
‘When he’s tired,’ Paul shrugged. ‘Isn’t that when you go?’ His hand was now on the door latch.
‘Yes but I’m not five,’ Emily snarled under her breath.
‘We won’t be too late, unless the plane’s delayed, so have fun all of you. There’s Coke in the fridge and biscuits in the jar.’
‘Thank you very much Mr Brocklehurst. We’ll take good care of Sam.’ Lucy smiled up at him.
‘Creep,’ Emily said when he’d gone. ‘You’re only hoping you’ll get paid extra.’
‘Well you don’t deserve to get paid at all. You’re horrid to Sam.’
‘I’m here aren’t I? That’s babysitting. You sit, they’re babies, end of story.’ Sam was standing by the front door, looking bereft and as if he was in two minds whether crying might bring back a parent or not.
‘I’ll play with him, just for a bit, then it’s your turn,’ Lucy volunteered, feeling sorry for him and worried for herself. Sophie would have to be faced in a couple of hours, Sophie and her mum who had had two weeks to work out exactly how horrible Lucy had been, giving her that disgusting suntan lotion concoction. If she played with Sam, Emily might be persuaded to be on her side later.
‘Thanks.’ Emily relented and grinned at her. ‘And I’ll split the money, just this once. Just give me half an hour’s television peace.’
She went into the sitting room, flopped onto the sofa and picked up the remote control. Lucy took Sam up the stairs and for nearly ten minutes there was blissful quiet, broken only by the occasional burst of Lucy’s donkey-laugh.
‘That’s not fair!’ Emily heard Sam shriek. His voice, for one so young, carried right through the whole fabric of the house. Emily was sure she could feel his fury vibrating in the sofa. She sighed, giving up any hope that this would be any kind of successful or even restful evening. Sam was simply too indulged and pampered to be anything but a hundred per cent demanding.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said to Sam who sat huddled and brooding halfway down the stairs. He was dressed in a green beret, a khaki sweater with elbow patches and his face was smeared with brown and grey eye make-up. Glittery flecks lay on his cheeks like Christmas dust. He carried a plastic hand grenade.
‘She won’t play war. Sophie plays war with me. She likes it.’
‘I don’t,’ Lucy insisted. ‘Well not much. That’s Sophie’s thing, not really mine. I only played it with Sophie because I was being nice then.’
‘Can’t you be nice now?’ Emily asked.
‘No. I’ll play cars and I’ll play doing gym or something but I’m not wearing Sophie’s smelly old army clothes. And I’m definitely not putting that stuff on my face. I might get allergic. Sophie can play all that with him tomorrow. If she’s not too jet-lagged.’
She stamped off into the sitting room and dropped onto the sofa, immediately engrossed in a TV ad for shampoo. Emily watched her running her fingers through her long hair, copying the actress. Sam looked up at Emily, large brown eyes appealing like Genghis when he could smell food. Emily softened. The poor child’s mother had been away for ages. It must seem half a lifetime to him. It wasn’t his fault that he was so cherished and spoilt. Perhaps, left alone like this, he deserved to be. His daddy could at least have taken him to the airport. She used to love going there with Graham when she was little.
‘OK Sam, what do we do?’ Sam leapt up and ran back up the stairs. Emily followed. In Sophie’s room (SAS posters, army leaf-camouflage netting draped over the top of a junior four-poster bed), Sam opened a cupboard and started pulling out clothes.
‘Are you allowed to do this?’
He looked back at her, wondering at the sense of the question, and didn’t reply. ‘You wear some of this,’ he instructed. Emily climbed into the only pair of trousers that looked big enough for her. Goodness only knew how Sophie managed to wear them, they seemed big enough for a full-sized man. ‘And this,’ Sam said, pulling out a toy gun-belt complete with silver Lone Star gun. ‘And then we kill each other.’ He grinned.
‘OK,’ Emily groaned, trying to fit the gun-belt round her waist.
‘And you can wear this.’ Sam handed her a black knitted object. ‘You put it on your head. It’s special,’ he told her.
Emily pulled the black balaclava over her head, praying that Nick (or even Simon) wouldn’t choose this moment to come and visit. It was hot under the wool, and there was a smell. She started feeling sick and sat down on Sophie’s bed. Slowly, deliberately, she inhaled, letting her senses do sorting and recalling.
‘Come on, let’s play.’ Sam was tugging at her arm. Emily felt limp. It was the smell. It was the smell of those cigarettes and that aftershave. She could almost feel the man pressed against her, shoving at her body, forcing her against the tree. She could feel the bark again digging into her back. She’d been right, it could be any man, from any family.
Chapter Nineteen
‘So where is Joe tonight and what’s he doing now he’s all on his own?’ Henry asked.
Nina threw her second dart, which hit the edge ring of the five and bounced uselessly to the floor. This ‘all on his own’ thing kept coming up now that people knew Catherine had gone. It was just like all those months ago when she and Joe had first separated and everyone assumed he, turfed out of the family nest, was suddenly a lost soul. She’d been all on her own too for the past year, if anyone had noticed. Apart from Henry, who had spent just as much time in her kitchen when Joe was living in the house as he did now, there hadn’t exactly been a queue for the comforting.
‘Is it only selfish women who chuck out their men?’ she asked Henry.
Henry shrugged. ‘And misunderstood men who chuck out their women? I don’t know. The usual mixture I suppose. Badly treated women don’t chuck their men out often enough, and badly treated men . . .’ he laughed. ‘They pay alimony.’ Nina grinned at him and threw her third dart.
‘Double ten. Not bad when I’m out of practice.’ She took a sip of her bitter lemon and thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know where Joe is tonight. And you didn’t really think I would, you’re just being conversational. Actually, he’s probably out in some restaurant with a new young thing,’ she giggled. ‘Either that or he’s stripping flowered wallpaper from their bedroom at the flat. Really Henry, you should see it. Swagged, dragged and smothered. The rest of the flat is just like Joe, uncluttered, casual and probably more expensive than you’d think.’
‘You’ve been inspecting the premises then?’
‘Mmm. Briefly. I hope she’s taken her art deco lamps with her. We’ve got some lovely spiralled steel ones in the gallery. Perhaps I’ll take one round as a Catherine-moving-out present.’ She pulled the darts out of the board, handed them to Henry and smiled. ‘Your go. You need fifty-six. Ten, six and double top?’
‘If I smile inscrutably and say “possibly” you’ll never know whether I missed on purpose or not, will you?’
‘I don’t think you’d miss on purpose Henry, not unless you’d got the urge for our re
lationship to be on a totally different level.’
Henry pouted, mocking. ‘Even if I did, there’d be no way of convincing you I was more worthy of your life-long devotion than Joe is.’
‘Don’t be daft, Henry,’ she told him, pushing him towards the dartboard. ‘There’s no point spoiling things.’
Henry picked up the darts and threw them with casual negligence. ‘My game, your round. Look how talented I can be when you make me cross. Kiss for the winner? Just a between-friends one for no hard feelings?’ Henry leaned across and kissed her gently just on her jawbone. It tickled, nothing more.
‘Sorry to interrupt. Emily said to come and get you.’ Cool air swept through the door and Joe was standing in front of Nina, his hair awry and the collar of his jacket twisted. He was frowning, worried enough to be rude, ignoring Henry.
‘What’s happened? Where are the girls?’ Nina’s insides lurched. Like all mothers, within milliseconds she’d imagined them burnt to ashy flakes in Megan and Paul’s house, huddled with little Sam under a locked bedroom window, firemen in tears carrying bodies.
‘They’re fine. But . . .’ Joe said, taking Nina’s arm and pulling her firmly out of the pub door. Focusing hard on Joe’s face for clues, she could only just make out Henry, trailing and wondering what could possibly have happened that needed to be explained out on the pavement.
‘Emily says she knows who the man who attacked her was. She’s babysitting for him. She called me and I told her I’d find you, go back there and we’ll talk to the police. She can’t leave the child or Lucy, she says. That’s why she rang me.’
‘But she’s babysitting for neighbours, for . . . for Paul across the road. But she can’t mean . . . he’s . . .’ Nina felt confused, waiting for some kind of information to take hold. ‘I don’t like him that much, but surely . . .’ her voice trailed away. Surely what? Surely not a nice nuclear-family man with a gorgeous wife, all the desirable trappings that made up middle-class life. There was nothing ‘surely’ about it. After all, she’d even briefly suspected her own brother, ignoring the ‘surely it’s not him’ that was instinctive, protective.
‘How does she know?’ Henry asked as they walked towards Joe’s car. Nina, held between them, felt like an injured footballer being led off the pitch by concerned team-mates.
‘Something to do with the smell of Sophie’s hat,’ Joe said. ‘At least that’s what she said on the phone. I didn’t much understand, but I believed her.’
‘If she says it’s him, then it’s him,’ Nina said, climbing into the Audi. She was feeling nauseous again and put it down to the bitter lemon – and also to the shock of another proven instinct, this time one she’d ignored: her kitchen knives were still in the tea-towel drawer after Paul’s visit, and yet she’d let her children babysit for him.
‘Exactly,’ Joe said, switching on the engine.
Emily felt strangely calm as soon as she’d put the phone down. Dad would fix it, just like when she was little. She didn’t tell Lucy. Lucy might panic, get theatrical and upset Sam. And then Sam would cry and be frightened and everything would be chaos and no control. They were upstairs, tired, thumbs in their mouths, lying on Paul and Megan’s high brass bed watching a film of dreadful violence.
Emily sat on the sofa and waited. The balaclava was in her bag, safely stashed in a self-seal freezer bag. The police would be pleased about that. The coat he’d been wearing that day was hanging in the hallway, just as if it was any old real coat. She couldn’t touch that.
Breathing quietly and concentrating on not looking at the clock, Emily calculated how long it would take for Paul and Megan and Sophie to get from Gatwick if the plane and the customs and baggage had no delays. She imagined them, as her nervousness started to cut through the calm, bursting in through the door and shouting ‘We’re home! Record time!’ They’d be all smiles and family life because Paul wouldn’t be an evil violent creep all the time. When the doorbell actually rang, and she knew that her parents had got there first, she almost flung herself into the hallway. But the shapes through the window were not theirs.
‘Hi. Thought you might want some company!’ Chloe and Nick were standing on the doorstep looking eager. Emily laughed, a disjointed shriek, mildly hysterical at the shock of it being them.
‘I mean, sorry, if you want us to go away, that’s cool, but—’
‘No! No come in. The more the better!’ It sounded sarcastic, even to Emily’s ears, but she didn’t bother to apologize. She didn’t mean it to sound like that but they’d have to understand. They would if they were real friends.
‘We brought you some drink. Ready mixed, Archer’s and lemonade.’ Chloe was holding out a Perrier bottle full of clear, fizzy liquid. ‘You’d never know, would you?’ she said, making herself comfortable on the sofa, ‘just what that innocent little bottle contained.’
‘You’re so right,’ Emily murmured vaguely. Nick was standing with his hands in his pockets, eyeing her tits. She pulled her T-shirt away from her body, making it baggy and giving herself more air next to her skin. Nick looked down at the floor, going pink.
‘My parents are on their way,’ Emily told them very quickly. ‘And then the police will come because the man I’m babysitting for is the man who grabbed me that day on the Common.’ She said it calmly enough, but she kept looking at the window, willing Joe’s Audi to pull up outside, now, right now. ‘So if you’re carrying anything you shouldn’t be, like the odd spliff . . .’ she glanced at Nick and shrugged, her hands stuffed in her pockets, as if none of what she’d said mattered really, it was just one of those things to be dealt with.
‘Shit! Are you sure? I mean are you really sure?’ Chloe said, her eyes wide and amazed.
‘Well of course I’m sure. Stay if you want, then you’ll see. I already called the police station and spoke to that nice woman officer that they gave me that time. You get one allocated, sex crime victims. She said to call again after he’s come back and she’d do some checking while we wait. I think I’m supposed to just get paid for the babysitting, be like nothing’s different and go home. Except that I called Dad.’
‘You’re very, well, businesslike about it,’ Chloe commented. She didn’t, Emily thought, looking particularly approving.
‘What do you want me to do, scream and yell? Bit late for that. Nothing’s going to happen to me now.’ She picked up a wedding photo of Megan and Paul, all smiles and confetti. ‘It’s going to happen to him.’
‘You’d better be really, really sure. Surer than you’ve ever been about anything,’ Nick said in a slow, considered way. His voice sounded discordantly male, as if, right now, it had no real business being heard. The doorbell rang before she could even think of a reply.
‘Em! Are you all right? Are they back yet?’ Nina hugged Emily and peered beyond her.
‘What’s happening, why are you here, Mum? And Dad?’ Lucy appeared on the stairs. Nina looked at her over Emily’s shoulder. She shouldn’t be there, she thought, and neither should Sam, but she wanted Joe with them all.
‘I’ll take them to my place, shall I?’ Henry suggested.
‘Oh Henry, thanks. That would be great.’
Lucy stepped backwards up the stairs, sensing she was to miss a drama. ‘Why? Why can’t we be here? Megan will be really cross if Sam’s not home.’
‘Tough,’ Joe said. ‘Lucy my love, we’ll explain later. Just go with Henry for now.’
‘Fish and chips?’ Henry said, opening the door and ushering Lucy and a quite amiable Sam out onto the path.
‘It might be an idea if you left, too,’ Joe said to Chloe and Nick. The two of them looked at each other and then at Emily. She could tell they wanted to stay, but that they also knew they’d wish they hadn’t.
‘Tell us about it at school,’ Chloe said, hugging Emily. ‘Or call me in the morning.’ Nick said nothing. Emily watched him from the window, walking down the path and waiting till the gate was almost shut before he put his arm round Chloe. Australia, E
mily thought with longing. New people.
There was nothing like the urgent nee-nawing of police sirens for linking a community. Doors edged open as the cars stopped, lights flashing, outside number 26 and eager nosy onlookers gathered in small speculating groups on the pavement at the shortest distance they could consider discreet. Even posh Penelope, still shoving her arms into a jacket, indulged her curiosity quite shamelessly and bustled along the Crescent to see what was going on. ‘Look at that,’ Joe commented to Nina. ‘She’s not even got the dog with her so she can be pretending to be just passing on her way to the Common.’ Far more accustomed to being the victims of burglary than perpetrators of anything more criminal than a dodgy tax return, the residents clung together in outrage and shock as the truth emerged. ‘But he’s so . . . Paul’s just . . .’ Penelope waffled to one of the policemen. ‘So what, love? So like everyone else? Like you and me? They all are.’
Megan blamed Nina. ‘Why couldn’t you just leave things alone?’ she hissed at her over the luggage still cluttering the hallway. ‘He only did it because of this. He’d have been all right when I’d finished being pregnant, he was before.’ She clutched the baby-bulge that had clearly grown in the Caribbean sun.
Nina was close to feeling sorry for her: she imagined the twins cuddled safely together under the stretched skin, innocently growing their limbs, their hair and their beautiful baby faces. Megan’s own face was frantic with anger and terror and she looked from Sam to Sophie and back to Nina with furious desperation.
‘What about them? You didn’t think, did you? Their lives will be ruined, don’t you realize?’
‘What about his victims’ lives?’ Nina asked her quietly. ‘If you knew he was doing this, why didn’t you ask him to think about them?’
‘You can never tell, with men,’ Monica stated ominously when she heard about Paul’s arrest from Nina. ‘I suppose, all things considered, it’s just as well that you’ve let Joe move back in again.’ Her tone was somewhat grudging, Nina thought with amusement and rather implied that he shouldn’t even have been considered for another chance if Genghis had been more use as a guard dog.