Ninepins

by Rosy Thorton

  ‘Hi,’ said Laura gently. ‘You had me scared half to death. Are you OK?’

  Willow raised her face, which was streaked with runnels of dirt from what could have been rain or floodwater or tears. Her eyes were blankly dark, focused inwards the way Beth’s had been during the asthma attack.

  ‘You must be freezing.’ Laura pulled herself up to sit on the rim of the tree house floor; she peeled off her raincoat to pass around the girl, who sat unmoving and quite silent.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked, for now that she was closer she saw that Willow was clasping something between her chest and knees. ‘You managed to rescue a few things, then?’

  With a slow collapse of the shoulders, Willow let out the breath she had been holding; her grip slackened slightly on the object she held. Laura could make it out now: blue, rectangular and cardboard. It was a shoebox with a fitted lid.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We need to get you indoors into a hot bath. I could do with one myself, as well.’ She moved back to the ladder and stepped down a few treads, then reached to lend an arm to Willow. ‘Looks like you’ll be moving into the spare room.’

  Chapter 9

  The following Saturday, Vince came over for lunch again. This time it wasn’t unpacking he was helping with but salvage operations. Apart from one further expedition into the flood on that first day to save what they could of value and importance, they had not ventured down to the pumphouse again for almost a week. The water had taken an age to subside. For a day or so, although the rain had ceased, the flood continued to rise, and even when it began at last to ebb away, it did so with inexorable slowness. And it left behind wherever it had been a fine coating of silt, filthy black and stinking of ditches.

  Beth’s breathing had gradually trickled back to normal. She’d spent the weekend propped up in bed, or else installed in state upon the settee with Laura in hovering attendance. Willow had come through her own adventure apparently unscathed, but it entitled her to a blanket, too, and to keep Beth company watching daytime TV. After the one treatment, Beth didn’t need the nebuliser again; with just her inhaler and a high-dose course of oral steroids, she seemed to have turned the corner. By Sunday afternoon she could make the walk to the sitting room window to gaze at the flooded garden without taking more than one rest. On Monday, Laura went in to work for half a day, and left the two of them together. On Wednesday Beth went back to school.

  She still wasn’t fit enough for lifting and carrying, but Laura allowed her down to the pumphouse to help retrieve and sift. All afternoon, or so it seemed, Vince and Willow had been hauling furniture and bedding up to the house, and black dustbin bags full of Willow’s things, with Beth under strict instructions only to watch. Up at the house, Laura was on washing duty. The washing machine and dryer had been running constantly. Even on the hottest wash and with double the usual quantity of fabric softener, the clothes came out still reeking; she put them all through twice. By four o’clock, when dusk brought down a halt upon the work, the pumphouse was declared cleared. All round the house, every rack and radiator was draped with drying clothes and sheets and pillows, or propped with books, splay-paged. An odour of cloying damp pervaded the air. It couldn’t be doing Beth’s asthma any good at all.

  As darkness fell beyond the windows, the recovery party, after a thorough wash and scrub up, gathered round the kitchen table for a mug of tea.

  ‘Is there much that can’t be rescued?’ asked Laura, as she placed their drinks before them and sat down.

  ‘A fair bit.’ It was Vince who answered, with a glance at Willow. ‘We’ve bagged up five or six bin liners down there of stuff that’s for the tip.’

  ‘Some of it’s disgusting,’ said Beth, with pleasurable satisfaction. ‘Just totally slimy and stinky and revolting. Seriously, you should see it. You should smell it.’

  Laura grinned and wrinkled her nose. ‘I rather think I still can.

  ‘God, yes. Sorry about that,’ said Vince, raising one sleeve to his nose. ‘I think we’re all going to need a good shower.’

  ‘It’s oozing out of the bottom of the bin bags,’ continued Beth. ‘They’re all squidgy underneath when you lift them up.’

  ‘I hope you haven’t been lifting them,’ said Laura quickly.

  ‘ ’Course I haven’t!’

  ‘Has she?’ She looked at Vince, who smiled at Beth.

  ‘ ’Course she hasn’t.’

  ‘It’s going to make a horrible mess in the car, Mum. Those slimy bags.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Vince waved a hand. ‘I’ll do it. I can stick it all in the boot when I go, and take it to the tip in the morning.’

  ‘Oh, no. Really, I can easily – ’

  ‘My car’s filthy already. You’ve seen it – old rustbucket. And the inside’s even worse. A bit more mud will scarcely make a difference.’

  With a nod, Laura capitulated. Then she turned to Willow. ‘You must make me a list. For the insurance. A list of all the things you’ve lost or that are damaged and need replacing. It should be covered on the contents insurance – I’ve checked, and they seemed to think it was.’

  Willow’s nose was buried in her mug. ‘None of it’s worth anything.’

  ‘What about your stereo?’ said Vince gently. ‘And the CDs?’

  ‘She had loads of CDs, Mum. At least thirty.’

  ‘And I thought you’d lost your mobile, too?’ added Laura.

  ‘Oh, she found that,’ said Beth. ‘It was in the pocket of this pair of jeans, under the bed, but they were all wrecked and the phone was wrecked, too, even after Vince wiped it clean. Totally knackered.’

  ‘Clothes, too.’ Laura was looking at Willow. ‘And shoes. We can claim for all of it, if you just make me a list.’

  She didn’t raise her eyes. ‘It was only old stuff.’

  ‘But it still costs money to replace, doesn’t it? You’ll need new things.’ Willow had been wearing one hoody and one pair of jeans for a week; Beth had lent her a T shirt, and goodness knows what she was doing for underwear.

  ‘What about your box?’ Beth indicated the shelf at the back of the Rayburn, where the blue cardboard shoebox had been slowly desiccating since it came down, with Willow, from the tree house. ‘Is it dry now, d’you think? What’s in there, anyway?’

  Laura looked at Willow and hoped her curiosity didn’t show too much. She’d passed the box fifty times and resisted the temptation to lift the lid.

  ‘Oh, nothing much. Just some old photos and things.’

  Beth stared at her. ‘Of before, you mean – when you were little?’

  The dismissive shrug did not deter her.

  ‘Have you got pictures of your mum in there? Can I see?’

  ‘Beth!’

  ‘ ’S’OK,’ said Willow. ‘Show you later, if you want.’

  There was a short pause. Then Vince, who had been leaning back in his chair, sat forward and faced Willow. ‘I wish you’d let me make you a life story book. We could do it together.’

  The girl’s eyes slanted away; it was clearly a discussion they’d had before.

  ‘I’m not a child. I’m not some five-year-old you’re preparing for adoption.’

  ‘It would still be – ’

  ‘It’s my life, Vince.’ Her eyes rose, green and sharp. ‘I’ve lived it, remember? I’m still bloody living it. I don’t need it sticking in some book.’

  In the awkward silence which followed, Laura rose to refill the kettle in case anyone wanted a top-up. But still, she thought, it was the shoebox you chose to save from the flood.

  Presently, Beth headed off upstairs, announcing her intention of having a bath.

  ‘Can you wash my jumper, please, Mum, if I stick it in the basket? It stinks like toilets, and fish, and old cabbage.’

  When she’d gone, Laura found a torch and they went down into the dark garden to load the rubbish into Vince’s car. As Beth had warned, foul black liquid had soaked its way to the bottoms of the bags, which left a glittering tra
il when moved, like some kind of monstrous slugs. Laura brought old newspapers to line the car boot, but they were quickly sodden.

  ‘It’s going to leave an interesting smell,’ said Vince, as he banged the boot shut. ‘When I have clients in here, they’re going to think I have issues with personal hygiene.’

  Another cup of tea, and Vince had twice said he ought to think about getting on the road, when Beth came back down. Laura had expected her dressing gown, at least over her clothes. All week, she’d been treating her convalescence as an excuse to wear it at any hour: after school, before supper. But she was fully dressed in her favourite skirt, and even wearing tights.

  ‘Hello, love. You look nice. Good to feel clean again?’

  ‘Mm.’ Her eyes were fixed on her feet. But she always did hate compliments, especially public ones.

  ‘Very chic,’ said Vince, making it worse.

  ‘What do you fancy for supper? Willow, I assume you’re staying for supper? And Vince, are you sure we can’t persuade you?’

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘Stop tempting me. It’s much too comfortable here. At this rate it’ll be me moving into your spare room next.’

  ‘Chilli,’ she suggested. ‘That will warm us all up. I’ve got some mince I can defrost.’

  ‘Devil,’ said Vince. ‘Begone with your wicked lures.’

  ‘Why don’t you help me, Beth? And Willow, too, if you like? Beth is a dab hand at chilli.’

  ‘I’m not really hungry.’

  Laura frowned. Her daughter’s voice still sounded scratchy; using the inhaler frequently over a prolonged period always left her throat strafed and sore.

  ‘Are you feeling all right, sweetheart? Maybe you ought to go and have a sit down in the sitting room, while I cook?’ She hoped Beth hadn’t overdone it today. Her face was pale, even after the hot water. But, oddly, it looked as if she had put on mascara. And some of her raspberry lip gloss.

  ‘No. It’s all right. I’m going out.’

  She said it with perfectly rehearsed casualness; the effect was weakened only by her gaze fixing not on Laura but on the wall somewhere behind her right shoulder.

  ‘You’re doing what?’ Laura, conscious of playing a part in turn, wished her voice hadn’t risen at the end on that shrill tone.

  ‘Going out, if that’s OK.’

  So many objections crowded into Laura’s head; she focused upon the most immediate. ‘Without anything to eat?’

  ‘There isn’t time. I’m meeting Caitlin and Rianna at seven, and I’ve got to get the bus. There’s a party at this boy’s house in Longfenton. There’ll probably be something there, crisps and stuff, if I’m hungry.’

  So many questions, too. ‘What boy?’

  ‘Oh, just a boy in Year 9. He’s called Joe, I think.’

  ‘Joe, you think.’ The shrill note again. ‘And do you even have his address?’

  ‘Rianna does.’

  ‘Oh, great. So, Rianna will know where you are. But I won’t.’

  ‘I’ll take my mobile. I recharged it.’

  ‘And are you invited to this party? Does Joe’s mother know you’re coming?’

  The eyes rolled, just a little. ‘It’s not that sort of party. He doesn’t mind – Rianna said. Anyone can go.’

  ‘No.’ She didn’t say it loudly, she certainly didn’t shout, but all three of them looked at her: Vince, Willow and – now, finally – Beth. ‘You’re not well. You’ve been really sick, and you’re still weak, still not back to normal. I don’t want you going out on a cold evening, on the bus by yourself, without my even knowing where you’re going or if you’ll be welcome there. If you want to go out, you ask me beforehand. We arrange it. I could have driven you in – if you’d been well enough to go, that is.’

  Beth’s focus had dropped back to the floor and she was looking truculent. ‘I didn’t know beforehand. Rianna only texted me this afternoon.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but you’re not going out. You’ll have to text Rianna back and apologise. Tell her that you can’t come.’

  ‘It’s not fair.’ Beth was kicking her toe against the corner of a kitchen unit. ‘You never let me do anything. Like come home on the bus, or go out, or have any fun. Just because of my stupid asthma.’

  ‘It isn’t just because – ’

  ‘You treat me like a little kid. And anyway, I’ve told them I’m going. So now they’re going to think I’m a baby who’s not allowed out.’

  ‘I’m sorry, love, but my mind’s made up. You can’t go.’

  A brief silence descended on the room. Trying to forget about Vince and Willow, Laura kept her eyes determinedly on her daughter.

  Then, quietly, Beth spoke. ‘You can’t tell me what to do.’

  It was said neither in open defiance nor for effect, exactly, in spite of the audience. It was more as if she were trying it out for sound. Experimenting.

  There were a lot of answers Laura might have given. My house, my rules. You’re twelve. But she just kept silent and held her ground.

  It was Beth who turned away first. ‘C’mon, Willow. Let’s go to your room. You can show me your photos.’ She went across to the Rayburn, reached behind and picked up the blue shoebox, then headed for the stairs.

  With a glance at Vince but not at Laura, Willow rose and followed her from the room. Under the table, Laura steadied her hands by wrapping them tightly together.

  ‘Leave her.’ Vince’s voice was gentle. It ought to feel good, having another adult for reinforcement, to validate her decisions. Instead, she found it unexpectedly irksome to be told what she already knew.

  ‘Yes. She always comes round quickly enough. She’s a good girl.’

  ‘She is.’ He was nodding seriously, seeking her eye. ‘She’s a sweet kid. Open and spontaneous, and friendly and helpful. Clever, too.’

  Laura blinked at him. Of course she never tired of hearing her daughter praised, but … she sensed there was a ‘but’.

  ‘Doesn’t mean it isn’t hard, though.’

  For a moment she stared, attempting to locate her own feelings. Then she unwound a notch, unknotted her hands. ‘It is. Sometimes it’s bloody hard.’

  ‘It must be. On your own.’ He did this thing, this earnest thing, where he looked from one of her eyes to the other. It made her feel strangely exposed. ‘Laura, I hope you don’t mind if I say something?’

  He paused; she frowned and waited.

  ‘Do you think maybe, sometimes, you might let go a bit?’

  She did mind. It was a damned cheek.

  ‘Not on this one, perhaps. I’m not saying you weren’t quite right, this time. But there’s nothing wrong with cutting some slack – for yourself as well as her.’

  Laura stared at him. Who was he, to butt in on her life? A stranger. Worse than that, a professional stranger, with a head full of social work textbooks. What right had he to assume he knew anything about her – about her and Beth?

  As she continued to stare, she felt, to her horror, a dry prickling invade her eyes. She closed them, swallowed, tried to pull herself together. When she opened them again, Vince was still regarding her steadily.

  Weary all at once, the abdication of responsibility was suddenly an attractive proposition. She let her chin slump into cupped palms. Cut some slack. Let go.

  ‘You’re probably right,’ she said.

  By the following weekend, friendly relations between Laura and Beth were restored. On Friday night, Beth went to Simon’s straight from school, and Laura picked her up and brought her home on Sunday afternoon to tea and home-made mince pies – the first of the season.

  ‘Seriously good pies, Mum,’ said Beth through a mouthful of rich butter pastry. ‘Really – they’re legendary. Can I have another?’

  December having begun, there was a perfect excuse for such indulgences, and then to spend the evening cutting sheets of paper from Laura’s printer tray into snowflakes for the windows. Willow, who had joined them for supper, stayed to help, and her snowfl
akes were the best of all: meticulous confections of fine filigree. By nine, the kitchen looked as if it had witnessed the passing of a ticker tape parade.

  Beth was almost off her inhaler, now, during the day, but she still wasn’t sleeping well, so Laura packed her off to bath and bed while she and Willow swept the floor. All round the downstairs, she left the curtains open wide, to set off the clustering white circles against the night outside. The effect was striking; it should have been festive, but instead it set her shivering and sent her upstairs in search of her daughter’s bedroom and story-time warmth.

  She was already in bed, sitting up, with the duvet tucked round concertinaed knees.

  ‘I’ve had pie twice today,’ she announced. ‘Except, the first time it wasn’t, exactly.’

  Laura shifted Beth’s feet over a little and perched herself beside them.

  ‘Tess was making chicken pie for lunch and she left the top on the table, all rolled out ready, and went off to the loo because Roly had got himself in a mess, and when she came back Dougie had grabbed it was eating it on the floor. She must have left it near the edge, or he climbed up on a chair. He’s very clever.’

  ‘So you had pie without the top? A sort of chicken tart?’

  ‘Worse than that.’ Beth’s eyes narrowed and her top lip curled in disgust. ‘Dad got it off him and picked the bits off. He said it looked OK, and he got Alfie and Jack to cut circles from the best part with a cutter, like for jam tarts. Then he sort of arranged them on the top to cover up some of the filling. He called it a gobbler or something.’

  ‘Cobbler,’ said Laura, smiling. Simon’s mother used to make blackberry and apple cobbler; she made one the very first Sunday he’d taken Laura home for lunch.

  ‘Honestly, they’re so unhygienic. I’m amazed they don’t all get dysentery and diarrhoea and yellow fever.’ She hunched the duvet up higher round her shoulders and closed her eyes. ‘It was really nice, though. And we had sprouts with it.’

  Laura went to bed herself at half past ten. It cannot have been long afterwards – it felt like mere moments – that she woke to the sound of her daughter’s coughing. Dragging on her dressing gown, she padded along the landing in bare feet, stopping at the bathroom cabinet for the bottle of throat linctus. It was always this way in the weeks following an attack, the same vicious circle: the coughing which left her short of breath, the inhaler which settled her breathing but inflamed her cough.