Ninepins

by Rosy Thorton

  Their formal parts played out, there was relief but at the same time more awkwardness. Sergeant Peverill went back to smiling; she couldn’t be more than twenty-two or -three. Mrs Leighton smuggled a glance at her wall clock. Mr Burdett was the first to rise, just a little too eagerly.

  ‘Come on, then, Beth. Back to lessons. It will still be double science – let’s get you to Mrs Farrell in the biology lab.’

  Mother and daughter exchanged no word but they moved close together as they passed through the door; Beth slipped her hand briefly into Laura’s, and Laura gave it a squeeze.

  When she reached the end of the school drive, Laura did something normally unthinkable. Instead of swinging the car left towards Cambridge and her office, she turned right and headed home.

  She needed space, and there was plenty of it at Ninepins. She needed to get out and walk. In her bedroom, she swapped her work shoes for outdoor boots and pulled on a fleece over her blouse. Changing her clothes would take too long; she burned with impatience to be out of doors.

  Work had begun on the pumphouse, but she was relieved to see that the builders’ van was not in evidence today; she couldn’t have faced a conversation about studwork and draught sealing. For once she walked in neither direction along the lode but took a third footpath, which struck off at an angle from near the garden gate, across the fields to the north-west. Most winters, this path would have been prohibitively muddy, but not this year, or at least not in the past few weeks. The snow that came in January had not stayed long, dispatched by a day of wintry rain. But the thaw had been brief and although no new snow had fallen, they’d had night after night of hard, penetrating frost, day after day when temperatures stuttered barely above zero. The soil was churned to clods but Laura’s boots made scarcely an indentation on the ridged and rutted surface. In all the small drains and ditches, water stood solid.

  For more than two hours she strode along without caring where she went, eventually finding herself on a farm track which took her to the edge of Elswell village, and thence back home along the lode. But if she’d thought by walking to clear her mind and bring some measure of calm to her spirit before she had to face her daughter, the plan was not a success. Stooping to unlace her boots by the back door, she felt her blood pumping from the exertion, and with it the same hammering, half-formed thoughts that had chased round her head all morning.

  After a sandwich – most of which she threw away uneaten – she went upstairs and tried to do some reading. She turned the pages; she moved her eyes assiduously over the words, but the ideas refused to take hold. By three o’clock, when it was time to collect Beth, she was strung to a worse pitch than if she’d been at work.

  Beth’s whispered ‘I’m sorry, Mum’ as she fumbled with her seatbelt eased things slightly, but the car was still tight with tension all the way home. In the kitchen, Laura played for more time, putting on the kettle, finding mugs. But then it could be put off no longer. She took one chair and pulled out another for Beth.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  Any hopes that it might be easy dissolved at once. The answer came quickly. Too quickly. ‘Tell you what?’

  Quietly, she insisted. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘I took the stuff. Like I told them – like I told you. I took it.’

  If she’d been less adamant, if she hadn’t inflected that final pronoun, Laura might have remained in doubt. But she knew her daughter. She knew Beth. She knew.

  ‘Who made you do it?’

  ‘What d’you mean? Nobody did. I just took the stuff. It was me.’

  ‘Three chocolate bars? Was it all for you? Or were you going to give it to somebody?’

  ‘I – I dunno. Might have given some to people. Everyone shares round their sweets.’

  Three chocolate bars. Three. Very gently, she asked, ‘And Rianna and Caitlin? Have they given you a lot of sweets?’

  She waited for the outburst, the defensive assault. The wounded loyalty: leave my friends alone. When it didn’t come, Laura’s certainty wavered. But she plugged on anyway.

  ‘Did you feel you owed them, maybe? If they’re always giving you things and you have nothing to give back? Because you know, I could always let you have chocolate to take in and share.’

  Beth was fiddling with the ends of her scarf, which she hadn’t taken off. Nor her fleece, either; she looked bunched, lumpy, miserable. She said nothing.

  ‘Was it their idea? Did they tell you what to take?’

  Still there was no angry reaction, no vehement denial.

  ‘Were they there with you, in the shop?’

  Then, quite suddenly, her mind spun off at a lurching tangent. The matches.

  ‘Or was it Willow? Did Willow ask you to steal the things?’

  Finally, to this there was a response. Beth looked up at her, aghast. ‘No!’

  ‘All right.’ Laura drew a breath and held it. ‘So, then,’ she said gently, ‘tell me.’

  Head down again, mouth half muffled in her scarf, Beth began to talk. ‘The matches were for Caitlin. She wanted cigarettes, she said. But they were behind the counter and I didn’t dare.’

  Closing her eyes, Laura breathed out slowly.

  ‘Mr French was over by the newspapers. They said they’d keep a lookout. The cigarettes were too hard but the matches were on the corner, near the sweets. I just put them in my pocket.’

  There was a pause. Laura kept very still, waiting.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Beth, and the end of the word was lost in the first sob.

  It all became simpler, then. Laura pulled her chair up close to her daughter’s and put an arm around her, shielding her, letting her cry.

  ‘Baby,’ she murmured, hardly knowing what words she chose. ‘Sweet love. My baby girl.’

  And after that, after the weeping had stopped, it was easy to ask the rest of her questions.

  ‘What about the chocolate bars?’

  Beth gulped wetly. ‘They said it’d be no problem.’ Laura wondered if there were more tears to come, but Beth swallowed again and her voice came out steady, if flat. ‘The sweets are just there on the counter. They said it’s easy, they do it all the time. Rianna went along the row of magazines and sort of messed them up, opening them and not putting them back properly, you know, so Mr French had to go and straighten them. Rianna went out of the shop when she’d done the magazines, but Caitlin stayed inside to signal when.’

  Laura nodded, but Beth was gathered to her chest and couldn’t see.

  ‘I got them in my pocket OK. He hadn’t seen, I know he hadn’t, he was still looking down at the magazines. Caitlin ran for it but he came over and, oh, I don’t know, maybe ’cos I had my hand in my pocket, or he saw there weren’t as many KitKats left or something, but he looked at me and just said ‘Empty your pockets, please’ and it was horrible.’

  ‘And they just left you there.’

  Beth grunted her assent. Then her shoulders jerked and she was sobbing again, forcing out words between the gulps. ‘But they … didn’t mean … not their fault …’

  Say nothing else, Laura warned herself. Say nothing for now, at least. She tugged Beth closer against her and crushed her hard, contenting herself with that. But of one thing she was now absolutely certain. If Rianna or Caitlin crossed her path any time soon, so help her, she would kill them with her bare hands.

  ‘I don’t suppose it’s the start of a life of crime.’ Vince took a sip of beer and sat back comfortably in his chair.

  Laura looked at him with some ambivalence. On the one hand, this was exactly what she wanted to be told, and actually the reason she had asked him to join her for this second evening in the pub. Vince, in his professional capacity, must have seen it all before, and ten times worse besides. She needed his broader and calmer perspective. On the other hand, he might have shown just a little more concern.

  ‘Half the kids I knew at school tried shoplifting.’

  He sounded like Beth. Everyone tries cigarettes.r />
  ‘Charlie Leadbetter used to nick chewing gum – and he’s in the police force now. Gareth Fraine: he runs a road haulage firm in Slough. Ed Howell’s a geography teacher.’

  This was meant to mean something. He was being kind.

  ‘Really, with Beth I don’t think you need to worry. She’ll have had her warning, I’m sure. She’s much too sensible not to heed it.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She raised her gin and lemon, wet her lips abstractedly and put it down again.

  He was studying her more seriously now. ‘You’re not convinced?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe. You’re right about Beth, I suppose. She’s a good girl.’

  ‘But?’

  She tried, but failed, to muster a smile. ‘As you say – but.’

  Vince was waiting, placid, unhurried. She could see how he’d be good at his job.

  ‘It’s the others,’ she said eventually. ‘These girls she’s got herself in with, Rianna and Caitlin, the ones who put her up to it. I suppose I’m scared they’ll do it again. Put pressure on her to shoplift, or other things – worse things.’

  ‘You don’t think Beth can stand up to them?’

  She hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. They’re … well, they’re pretty intimidating.’ This time she managed the smile. ‘They certainly intimidate me.’

  He smiled back and sat passive for a while, allowing her thoughts to settle. Then, quietly, he said, ‘Don’t underestimate your daughter.’

  The words were spoken without any note of reproof, but she felt their cut nonetheless.

  ‘It’s easy to underestimate the people closest to us. We want to protect them, we’re afraid for them, it’s only natural. So we see their vulnerabilities and not their strengths.’

  She examined his face and willed herself to believe him. It was so beguiling: to believe in her daughter’s toughness and resilience. But dare she trust to it? Beth still seemed to her so unprepared to deal with a world of Riannas and Caitlins.

  An oblique idea occurred to her. ‘Did he get caught? Your friend the policeman. And the other two, the teacher and the haulier. Did they ever get caught?’

  Vince narrowed his eyes, temporising. ‘We all knew.’

  ‘But none of them was actually caught by the authorities, right?’ Because that was the difference, wasn’t it? That was Beth’s true vulnerability. It was the same with the cigarettes, the night of the carol concert: it might not have been her smoking, but she was the one left holding the goods. Her sweetness, her honesty, her naïveté, this was where it was going to land her: being the one who took the rap.

  She picked up her gin, which she had barely touched, and swallowed a large mouthful, wincing as the burn hit her chest.

  ‘Look at it this way, Laura.’ Across the table, Vince leaned forward in his chair. ‘Yes, she was found out, when lots of kids aren’t. But that just makes it doubly certain she won’t be doing it again. Now drink that one up, and let me fetch you another.’

  This time it was his car they’d come in, so she could have said yes, but the warm candlelit bar felt claustrophobic all of a sudden.

  ‘No, thanks. Look, do you mind if we go outside? I’d really like some air.’

  The inappropriateness of her proposal struck her, along with the icy air, as soon as they stepped beyond the airlock of the pub’s porch. A fen night in early February, in the middle of a cold snap, was hardly the time or place for a social stroll. Nor could they harbour in the shelter of Elswell High Street. For tonight’s rendezvous they had rejected the dubious comforts of the Fisherman’s Arms for a smarter pub slightly further afield, with scrubbed pine tables and an adventurous menu designed to attract diners out from Cambridge. In summer it traded on its ‘riverside’ billing, although an eight foot bank divided the outdoor dining terrace from a view of the water. In winter, it was a bleak and cheerless spot.

  ‘Along the river?’ Vince suggested economically, from behind a swathe of scarf. The air furred at his escaping breath.

  They mounted the bank together at the trot required to give them the impetus to climb its sharp sides. ‘River’, in fact, might be deemed a misnomer, even though one title attached to this waterway was the Bedford New River. Its other name, the Hundred Foot Drain, was a more honest description. One hundred feet was its width from the top of one embankment to the other; the drain was a man-made cut-off of the river Great Ouse.

  ‘Goodness.’ On reaching the path which topped the bank, Laura stood rooted. ‘Is that ice?’

  They both peered down through the darkness at the surface of the drain. Even without adjustment of her vision to the night, she could make out the too-black glitter. She kept her head very still until she could be sure of it: there was no movement at all. The whorls and craters that she saw were frozen solid.

  ‘It’s funny,’ she said. ‘You expect ice to be smooth and flat, don’t you? Not textured like that.’ It was almost lumpy; as if the water had set fast in the middle of swirling motion.

  Vince nodded, chin still buried in his scarf. ‘You’d wonder how it could freeze at all. So much of it, I mean – such a big body of water. And with a current, presumably.’

  ‘Yes. It runs up to Denver Sluice. It’s even tidal, I think, further up. Not here, though, I don’t suppose.’ She shifted her feet, raising her toes away from the ground, which seemed to transmit cold even through the soles of her boots. ‘The lode at home has been frozen for the best part of a week. But that’s much smaller, and has much less flow. I don’t remember ever seeing the Hundred Foot iced over before.’

  ‘That’s global warming for you.’

  They both grinned, though there was nothing funny about it. Then they turned and began to walk along the embankment, away from the pub and the road and into the denser darkness beyond.

  ‘Shit.’ Vince stumbled sideways, then stopped and flexed his foot, catching hold of her wrist for balance. ‘Ouch. Lump of wood or something. Should have brought a torch.’

  ‘My fault, sorry. You hardly expected to be dragged out for a moonlit ramble.’

  ‘No bloody moon, or it might be all right. Hey – your hands are as frozen as the river. Don’t you have gloves?’

  ‘Forgot them. Stupid.’

  ‘Here.’ He took off his own gloves as they walked along and she put them on without argument. They were square and leather, cotton-lined, warm from his blood.

  ‘There’s something else you shouldn’t forget,’ he said, ‘about Beth. She cares a great deal for your feelings. She’ll have seen how this has hurt you, her being in trouble. She won’t want to be the cause of that again.’

  They had reached a place where a fence rose to cross the bank, surmounted by a small stile. Laura stopped and stared out across the expanse of eerie, motionless water.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Come on.’ He turned round. ‘Bollocks to this, if you’ll excuse my French. It’s like Siberia out here. Let’s get back to the car. Unless you fancy that other drink?’

  The heating in Vince’s old, red saloon could best be described as temperamental. By the time they reached Ninepins they were both chilled to the core, so he came in for a coffee and a warm-up by the Rayburn.

  ‘I should get one of these,’ he said, leaning back against it with his hands behind his haunches. ‘Except it would fill the entire kitchen in my flat. Might be room in the bedroom, though. That would be an idea.’

  She laughed as she filled the kettle. ‘Handy for breakfast in bed.’

  There was another thing, though, that she needed to talk to him about, a thing she’d put off until now. Pressing down the plunger on the cafetière, she took the plunge herself.

  ‘Vince, do you mind if I ask you something? It’s about Willow.’

  He looked across at her, hands now flat on the top of the Rayburn behind him. He didn’t speak or nod, but his face was open, attentive.

  ‘It’s probably nothing. Probably just me being foolish. And none of my business, either.’

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sp; His gaze was steady. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well … does Willow smoke?’

  ‘Not as far as I’m aware, no. In fact, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t.’

  ‘Right. I thought not.’

  Now it came to the point, she felt how ridiculous it was going to sound.

  ‘The thing is, I sometimes find matches. Just piles of used matches, in her room and around the place. I expect you think it’s odd – an odd thing to worry about, I mean. But, I don’t know, I just can’t help wondering – ’

  There she broke off. Willow was standing in the hall doorway, and with her, in pyjamas and dressing gown, was Beth.

  ‘Mum, your mobile was switched off.’

  ‘Oh. Was it?’ She collected her thoughts. ‘I’m sorry, love, I didn’t realise. Why – did you need me? Is everything all right?’

  ‘Fine.’ Beth grinned at Willow. ‘We’ve been playing Ludo. But it’s Dad. He was trying to reach you. Says could you call him tonight and to tell you it’s urgent.’

  Chapter 13

  Urgency was an everyday feature of her ex-husband’s domestic life, so she saw Vince off before she lifted the phone, and then not with any great sense of apprehension.

  ‘Oh, Laura – fantastic. Thanks so much for calling back. Where were you? I couldn’t reach your mobile.’

  ‘I must have had it switched off by mistake.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got you now, thank the Lord. Laura, you are my life-saver. My rescuing angel. What would I do without you?’

  It was impossible not to smile. ‘And?’

  ‘I need to ask a desperate favour. It’s quite beyond the call of duty – beyond all reasonable expectation. But you know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t an emergency.’ How many times, she wondered, had he used those words to her? ‘I wouldn’t ask it of anyone but you.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Thing is, I’m at the hospital.’

  Her smile disappeared on the instant. Her heart tripped a beat.

  ‘Simon. What’s happened? Is everyone – ?’

  ‘We’re all right. Don’t panic. Nobody died. It’s really not too serious. It’s Alfie.’