All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye

by Christopher Brookmyre

  A table became free soon after as an elephantine pair of women vacated with an equally rotund brood.

  ‘Must be genetic,’ Michelle whispered. Jane knew Michelle was trying to get a rise out of her, provoke her disapproval, but she wasn’t biting. She didn’t like to dwell on whether Michelle’s bitchy streak was a genuine reaction to her own chronic preaching of tolerance, respect and general politeness. The more benign explanation was that it proved Michelle had absorbed all of the above and that the joke was in knowing her comments were unacceptable, but as far as Jane was concerned, the jury was still out. The only thing it had ruled on was that you didn’t stop worrying about your children’s upbringing even when they were bringing up children of their own.

  She circled the supermarket car park once more, following the one-way system until she reached the furthest corner, which abutted the cul-de-sac. The rear of the blue Civic was visible through the slatted wooden fence, unlikely to be going anywhere for a while, even in the implausible event that the driver had gone into the little hair salon. Lex picked a space further up the slope, with a clearer view of the play-house’s front doors, reversed into position and killed the engine.

  She reached across to the passenger-side footwell and lifted a briefcase on to the seat. From it she removed the nine-millimetre and silencer attachment, screwing the two together in her lap. Both parts were for ‘insurance’. She hated the idea of using the gun, but knew that if it came to it, she had no choice, and it would lead to fewer complications if there were no reports echoing around the area.

  Discretion was an underlined mission parameter. She had to acquire the target without being conspicuous, without either of them drawing attention to themselves. Tough gig. Forcibly rip a human being from their everyday life and demonstrate to them how the world is a far more evil and dangerous place than they ever feared, but please do it quietly and without anyone noticing.

  She wouldn’t be easily separated from the kid; Lex was under no illusions about that. It would therefore be all about choosing the moment. Unfortunately, she knew the number of moments from which she could choose was ever diminishing. Patience had to be allied to judgement, but patience against the clock meant judgement had to be allied to nerve.

  Their seats were close to the action, a row of tables back from the toddler zone. Jane stayed with Thomas for a while to let Michelle rest her feet, then tempted him over to the table with the promise of some chocolate buttons. He sat on Jane’s knee and smeared contentedly while she and Michelle had a coffee. Every so often, they’d make out a familiar voice calling ‘Mummy!’ or ‘Gran!’ amid the dozens of unfamiliar ones calling out the same thing, and look up to see Rachel wave at them from some vertiginously elevated part of the climbing structure.

  ‘It’s as well she does that now and again,’ Michelle remarked, ‘otherwise I’d lose track of her completely.’

  ‘In my experience, she comes back approximately every ten minutes for a drink of juice. I’d only worry if she exceeded that.’

  ‘This place is just mental. Too busy, too many weans. There’s a wee girl in here with the same dress as Rachel. I waved to her soon as I saw her through the crowd, a few minutes before you got here. Felt like an eejit.’

  ‘Glad it wasn’t me that waved, then,’ Jane said. ‘You’d have said I was having a “senior moment”.’

  ‘I’m telling you, you’re the one that must have your wits about you, taking Rachel to this place so often. I cannae handle it. She goes haring off and disappears, then my heart’s in my mouth when I do see her, because she’s hanging off something or diving head first down a slide.’

  ‘You’d better just accept it, Michelle, because it never ends. One minute she’s heading up that ladder, the next she’s asking for driving lessons.’

  ‘Please no motorbikes. Please no motorbikes. If I believed in God, that would be my prayer every night.’

  ‘Just don’t let them hear you saying it. Somehow they always find a way of doing the opposite of what you want for them.’

  ‘Well, that depends on whether what you want for them is reasonable or consistent, doesn’t it?’ Michelle replied, a slight edge coming into her voice. Jane immediately regretted her last remark. It was the kind of thing you could comfortably say to any mother on the planet apart from one who also happened to be your daughter.

  ‘I’m not having a go, Michelle. Just saying it’ll come to you.’

  ‘I’ll be ready. Donald and I talk about this all the time. You can have your hopes, but don’t have expectations. The fun’s not in guiding them, but in what they do on their own.’

  I’ll quote you on that a few years hence, Jane kept to herself. ‘Wise words,’ she said instead.

  ‘And anyway, Mum, I don’t think you can cry foul too loud. I must be about the only daughter whose mother complained about the fact that she quit playing in a rock band in order to study hard and get a good degree.’

  ‘I never complained,’ Jane protested. ‘I was just surprised you didn’t take it a bit further, see where it led.’

  ‘Take it further?’ Michelle asked, raising her voice, but laughing with it. She could have been screaming her lungs out and it would have attracted no more attention amid the din.

  They’d been over this umpteen times, Jane perhaps subconsciously picking at the scab as she so often found herself bringing it up. Michelle got less aggressive in response these days, but there was a tone of tired exasperation to her voice, asking the same question as Jane was right then asking of herself: why couldn’t she let this go?

  ‘Mum, it was a student band. We were called The Giorgio Marauders, for God’s sake. How far did you think we were going to take it?’

  As far as a mother’s daft dreams, was the answer; a mother who wanted her daughter to have the things she never had, whether her daughter wanted them or not. Sports cars and casinos, or maybe just the path less travelled by. It wasn’t about the band, it was about the marrying and settling down when Michelle had other choices that Jane didn’t.

  ‘I know the band was just a bit of fun, Michelle. I never complained,’ she reiterated. ‘I was just a little surprised – not disappointed, surprised – your choices at that age were, I don’t know, so conventional.’

  ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, Mum,’ Michelle replied, shaking her head. Michelle reached, too late, to grab Thomas’s hands before he could wipe them on Jane’s jacket, leaving her with three chocolatey streaks around either breast. ‘Sorry. Is it dry-clean only?’ she asked, with a wince.

  ‘No, no,’ Jane assured, lying. ‘But what do you mean, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?’

  Michelle laughed again, and Jane knew she was sugaring a pill.

  ‘You’re saying you’re surprised I’ve been conventional? Well, wherever did I get it from?’

  ‘You mean your father,’ Jane stated, relieved to divert but feeling slightly disloyal.

  ‘No, I mean you, Mum. You’ve never exactly been the essence of urban rebellion, have you? You keep a house so immaculate you could eat your dinner off the bathroom floor, you drive five miles below the speed limit at all times and when you’re not bailing me out at zero notice, you spend your spare time doing work for charity. You’re the soul of dutiful and responsible behaviour. What kind of an example is that to give your children?’

  Jane laughed to convey that she was taking it in the lighter spirit Michelle intended. Inside, part of her wanted to weep.

  ‘I’m not that responsible,’ she insisted, a little bashfully.

  ‘Oh come on, Mum. I don’t think you’ve ever had a parking ticket. How many times did you give us that speech about how respect for other people and respect for the law are one and the same thing, and that’s why you’ve never broken it?’

  ‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of about—’

  ‘I’m not ashamed of it, Mum. But I’m not so sure about you. Just because you stuck by the rules doesn’t necessarily mean you’re happy ab
out it.’

  Out of the mouths of babes. It was hard to take when your kids thought they knew you better than you knew yourself; harder still when they were right. On this form, she should ask Rachel to attempt a Jungian analysis.

  ‘And what I really don’t get,’ Michelle continued, the pill getting audibly more bitter, ‘is why you act like I was a mug for settling down when I supposedly had the world at my feet, yet you’re in the huff with Ross because he dumped his fiancée over that job in France. How does that work? He gets a hard time for breaking the rules and I get a hard time for sticking by them? Make up your mind.’

  ‘I’m not in the huff with Ross,’ Jane insisted, turning suddenly defensive to protect a vulnerable spot. ‘More like he’s the one in the huff with me.’

  ‘What’s the difference? When did you last speak? Ages, I’ll bet. You should call him.’

  ‘I do call him. He’s never in. I always get the answering machine.’

  ‘Do you leave a message? You don’t, do you?’

  ‘I hate those things.’

  ‘That’s a no.’

  ‘I have left messages,’ she said, which was true but only just into the plural, and the last had been several weeks ago. ‘He never calls me back.’

  ‘No, and knowing Ross, he’s not going to say he’s sorry, either. But one way or another, you need to talk, and I mean properly. Not five minutes with Dad about Celtic and then you asking him how the job’s going.’

  Jane winced. More preter-generational wisdom, Michelle describing fairly accurately most of their telephone exchanges with Ross even before their falling out.

  At that moment, Thomas climbed down from Jane’s lap and began tugging on his mum’s hand, indicating his desire to return to the toddler zone.

  ‘Balls, Mummy,’ he said, pretty much echoing Ross’s sentiments the last time they’d had a discussion of any substance.

  ‘Duty calls,’ Michelle said, allowing herself to be dragged from the bench. ‘But I’m serious, my last word – you need to talk to him.’

  ‘I will,’ Jane said, unsure whether this was a statement of intent or merely an optimistic prediction.

  She watched Michelle walking away, bent over Thomas, and reached for the last of her coffee. It was still just about warm enough to drink. She knocked back a big gulp and looked around the climbing structure for Rachel. So many little bodies, clambering, sliding, pushing, so many tunnels and barriers. She remembered bringing a camera here once, and trying for a frustratingly long time to get a picture of Rachel in action. She ended up with a few blurry shots of her bolting away from the end of a chute, and several of completely different children. Eventually Jane spotted her. She was up on the highest tier, her back visible through a grid of safety webbing, waiting – but not queuing – for her chance to slide down the big yellow tube that curved its way gently to ground level. Jane knew she’d wait there for ages, if necessary, not quite confident enough to take her shot while there were bigger kids around, nor understanding that the more polite of them were deferring right of way.

  Jane took a last mouthful of now barely drinkable coffee, and was about to look up at the structure again when her attention was distracted by a sudden outbreak of howling, a little voice frenziedly shrieking ‘Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!’ This was hardly unusual, and Jane was two generations adept at channelling it out, but it was accompanied by a flurry of movement at the corner of her eye, which involuntarily drew her gaze.

  It was the little girl Michelle had mentioned, wearing the same dress as Rachel, having a force-nine tantrum as she was carried towards the exit by the stressed man with the foreign accent. He was holding her across him, her face into his chest as she beat her arms and kicked and yelled. The man wore a weary and stoical smile to mask a familiar embarrassment most bystanders knew it was politest to look away from and ignore. Jane dutifully observed the etiquette herself, returning her attention to the structure.

  It took a moment to find Rachel again, and when she did Jane saw only a brief flash of her back before she disappeared down the tube. Jane looked down to where the slide exited on to a bank of soft mats. A couple of seconds later the child emerged, sliding out on to her tummy. She sat up and waved to someone nearby, finally facing Jane’s direction.

  She felt the world freeze for just a moment.

  It wasn’t Rachel.

  Jane turned around and looked at the man carrying the struggling girl towards the gate, now approaching the woman working the counter. She still couldn’t see the girl’s face. Her mind raced, balancing rationale against fear, logic against instinct. The dress came from Next; it was hardly unique. She could stand up and scream for him to be stopped, but it really would be a ‘senior moment’ if Rachel appeared looking for juice just as she made her hysterical accusation of abduction.

  The woman buzzed him through. Jane still couldn’t see Rachel anywhere, still couldn’t see the tantrumming girl’s face. She remembered him standing at the counter, pointing to his name on the list. Pointing to a name on the list. Mackie, he’d said, in that French-sounding accent.

  Mackie. How French was that?

  Jane got to her feet and began running for the exit.

  ‘Stop him,’ she shouted. ‘Stop him right now.’

  The woman on the counter looked bemusedly at Jane as she approached. The man was through the first set of double doors and into the foyer, where he looked back, caught sight of Jane and began to run. He turned around to back his way through the outside doors, changing his grip on the girl as he did so. Her head came up as she continued to squirm and flail. Jane saw her face: flushed, tear-soaked, howling, hysterical. Rachel.

  She hurdled the gate, putting one hand on the counter to give her more lift, then barrelled through the double doors and into the glass foyer. She could see him running diagonally across the cul-de-sac, heading towards the dead end where the only exit was the path leading to the supermarket car park. Ahead of him the lights flashed on a black Vectra, signalling its being remotely unlocked.

  Jane got to the front doors a crucial moment after a chubby couple in matching Celtic tracksuits began negotiating their way through them with a double-wide buggy and two sleeping kids. It must only have taken a few seconds, but their awkward and lumbering movements were excruciating enough for Jane to consider throwing herself through one of the plate-glass windows for a quicker exit. Jane squeezed around them as soon as there was a gap, barely registering the indignant tut this drew, and charged out on to the pavement, almost flattening one of the next-door hairdressers who was outside having a cigarette, scissors and comb tucked into his breast pocket.

  She looked to the black Vectra and felt her heart jump as she failed to see the man or Rachel. Then the top of his head became visible above the Audi next to him. He was leaning over an open rear door. The bastard had a child-seat or some other restraint, and was strapping Rachel into it. She heard the rear door slam and saw him pull open the driver’s one in front. Jane thrust her hand into her jacket pocket and gave thanks that she hadn’t taken it off when she let Thomas sit on her lap with his packet of melting chocolate buttons.

  She ran for the Civic, had the doors unlocked by the time she got there and turned the key in the ignition even as she climbed into the driver’s seat. She could see the Vectra moving as she put her car in gear and released the handbrake. It was gathering speed, but it wouldn’t be fast enough. She released the clutch and rolled the car forward across the single lane of tarmac, then ratcheted the handbrake and dived across the gearstick to the passenger side as the Vectra impacted.

  She fell into the passenger seat and cracked an elbow against the door as the driver-side airbag inflated, billowing out from the steering wheel into unoccupied space. The optional five hundred quid for the passenger-side airbag proved money well saved, as Jane was able to exit the car unencumbered. On the far side of the Civic she could see that two airbags had detonated inside the Vectra, temporarily pinning the driver to his seat.

  �
��Are you all right?’ the hairdresser asked, stepping towards her.

  ‘He’s got my granddaughter,’ she screamed, barging past him to get to the Vectra. ‘He’s got Rachel.’

  The Vectra’s bonnet had crumpled, its nose partially embedded in the Civic’s SIPS-galvanised driver-side door. Through the windscreen Jane could see hands grapple with the deflating airbag, and could hear Rachel’s muted screams from inside. She ran around the back of the Vectra to the rear passenger-side door and tugged at the handle. It was locked. She balled her fingers into a fist and drew back her arm. Caution should have told her that she would shred and mangle her hand, but something deeper was overriding all personal concerns. It was, however, the same instinct that stilled her fist, as she envisaged the spray of glass that would cover Rachel. In that moment, the Vectra began to reverse at speed. The man remained obstructed by the airbag, but his feet still had control of the pedals. Jane stepped clear just in time before a wing mirror could clip her middle. The hairdresser began to give chase, and she was about to follow until she realised what the driver intended to do.

  She ran across the tarmac and pushed the hairdresser between two parked cars as the Vectra leaped forward again with a squeal of hot rubber. It shot past, blind, clipping the fronts of several stationary vehicles before slamming once more into the Civic, which was spun ten or fifteen degrees, but still presented a sufficient barrier to prevent the Vectra from getting past. Standing between the parked cars, Jane was only feet away from Rachel, who was thrashing hysterically in the child-seat. In front, she could see the driver’s arms flailing and tugging, and the grey glint of a blade. He was ripping the airbag with a knife, and once free of it would be better able to guide the Vectra for another ramming charge.

  Jane turned to the hairdresser.