Scar Tissue

by Judith Cutler

  I didn’t argue, couldn’t, really, the way my lower lip was trembling. So I slipped out of the car, and headed by a back route to what I’d come to think of as home. No one stopped me. My key slid into the lock I’d always kept well-oiled and there I was. I didn’t have all that much in the way of clothes, so it wasn’t hard to cram them into my holiday rucksack. The rest went into a holdall. Cosmetics, ditto. All those books, though. How could I leave them behind? They weren’t what you’d call collectors’ items, of course – none had cost much more than 50 pence from charity shops – but they’d been the education I should have had at school. There was only room for a handful in my holdall. I waved the rest a sad farewell. But as I reached the door I turned back. It was one thing leaving sheets behind, but not my old friends. Grabbing a couple of supermarket carriers, I crammed in as many as I could: I’d ask Jan to stow them in some corner of Fullers.

  ‘I thought for one crazy minute you were going to try to take them with you,’ she declared, relief replacing exasperation as I explained. ‘Come on. I reckon we shall just make the ten-fifty.’ She put the car into gear with an expression that didn’t invite conversation.

  I couldn’t blame her. She must know that by giving me so much as a lift she might be making herself vulnerable.

  As we rounded the last island to the station – Ashford has more islands than any town I know – she asked, ‘Have you enough money?’

  Enough for what? A single to wherever, plus a couple of nights in a seedy bedsit?

  ‘Plenty,’ I lied. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as that. Paula owed me for this week, and I’d trust her to pop it into my bank account on time. I might get another job quite easily. But I’d made myself unemployed, so if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be entitled to social security unemployment benefit for literally weeks.

  ‘Where will you go? You know I have to be able to tell the police.’

  ‘I’ll phone as soon as I’ve decided.’ It’d cost a lot more to get to Brum, but accommodation would be cheaper there. And like buggery I’d phone.

  ‘I’ll park and meet you on the platform,’ she said.

  So she was going to make sure I went, was she? I slung my rucksack over my shoulder and picked up my holdall as defiantly as I could – heavens, how many books had I decided I couldn’t sacrifice? – and made my way to the booking hall.

  ‘You’ll have to book the Birmingham ticket when you get to Euston,’ the clerk said.

  ‘For God’s sake, whatever happened to integrated rail travel?’ I exploded. Then I remembered he probably wasn’t paid any more than I was – certainly not enough to have to take the stick for my misery – so I mumbled an apology. We exchanged a half-smile. But to my horror, when he asked me if I wanted single or return, two huge tears dropped on to the notes I was passing him. More would follow any moment.

  ‘Single,’ I said, grabbing the ticket for Charing Cross and running.

  The train was already pulling in as I staggered up the steps. Jan seemed to be in some sort of dispute with the woman serving in the Lemon Tree café and I had to go and interrupt, almost dragging her on to the platform, now empty apart from a couple of women with pushchairs who’d got off the train. The guard was about to wave the train off. Jan pushed me into the last carriage, slamming the door behind me. As she did so, she thrust an envelope through the window. ‘Read this now!’ she said. ‘Immediately.’ She managed such a half-hearted wave I hardly wanted to.

  But I did. ‘GET OUT AT PLUCKLEY. J. And make sure you bring this note too,’ she’d added in ordinary writing.

  I stowed it in my deepest pocket. What the hell was going on? But the ticket inspector was here already, stamping the ticket, and now the guy with the miserable job of pushing the refreshment trolley backwards and forwards all day was asking me what I wanted. Suddenly sure that Jan would want me to draw attention to myself, I asked him for crisps, arguing about the flavour. He’d remember such an awkward customer, if anyone asked.

  I slipped off the train – not easy to slip at all with my baggage – at the very last minute. Straight into the arms of Paula.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Quick! Into the Ladies’!’ Paula said, thrusting a Marks and Sparks carrier bag at me and grabbing my holdall.

  There wasn’t a single cubicle that locked, of course. But I wedged the rucksack against the door and, despite the huge – but empty – loo roll holder, transformed myself into a rather frilly young lady, complete with strappy sandals, a floppy sunhat and wrap-around sunspecs. Pity they’d left the price tag on the sunhat – but one bite sorted that. No, mustn’t drop it. I’m always pretty Green about litter – with Paula who’d dare be anything else? – but today I was meticulous. No evidence. Not with my DNA on it. If Granville wanted me badly enough he’d even get that checked.

  Paula walked unhurriedly towards me as I emerged, tucking her arm into mine as if we were heading for a girlie day out – though I’d have said that in Pluckley, your quintessential commuter village, the opportunities for two women on the loose were pretty limited, shopwise. She let me into a car I’d not seen before, a nondescript old Astra on trade-plates.

  ‘From my brother’s workshop,’ she said briefly. ‘I shall stop round the corner and you’ll get in the back of the car parked there and lie down. No, leave your bags.’

  I did as I was told, diving into the back of a Focus driven by a tall blond young man with the same broad serene face as Paula, her no doubt long-suffering brother. I covered myself with a travelling rug for good measure. I could quite get into this cloak and dagger stuff – if it hadn’t had the vicious hand of Clive Granville behind it.

  And if it hadn’t been so hot. Kent does hot quite well when it decides not to rain, and today it had decided to go for very hot. Some kind person had tucked a bottle of water beside me – one of those with a clever sort of teat, so it wouldn’t spill. But what goes in has to come out, and goodness knows how many hours it would be before I could use a loo. All the same… So to feel the car slowing and stopping and have the door flung open was like being released from the fiery furnace into heaven, especially when I discovered where we were. We were parked right by the back door of Fullers, and all the gang – Helen, Paula, Meg – were there cheering and ready to hug me, as were the Daweses. The champagne Todd produced as soon as the Focus was out of sight was nice but a bit OTT, I thought, given the fact that Clive Granville might not have bought my escape to Brum story.

  ‘Oh, yes, he will,’ Jan said, when I voiced my doubts. She gave me another in what was becoming a series of hugs, before she topped up my glass. ‘If he checks up, he’ll learn that you looked like death warmed up when you were buying your ticket. Yes, the guy on the desk remembered you –’

  ‘How –?’

  ‘I went to buy a ticket for myself – one of these annual saver jobs – and asked if he knew what was wrong with this girl I’d seen crying. He didn’t know of course, but said you were so upset he thought someone must have died.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘Then there was that woman in the Lemon Tree –’

  ‘And the ticket collector and refreshment guy might remember me too. But they may have missed me later,’ I added dubiously.

  ‘Come and see where you’ll be staying,’ Jan said, taking me by the shoulders and drawing me into the cool of the old kitchen. ‘Caffy, I hated being so nasty to you, but I didn’t know how well you could act and I really wanted everyone to see an unhappy young woman.’

  ‘Sounds as if I was more like a dying duck in a thunderstorm,’ I said. But I wouldn’t have wanted to go through that bleak half hour again. Being miserable on my own was one thing. I was quite used to it. But being miserable because someone I had thought liked me as much as I liked her had rejected me, was another. Liked? Jan had never been quite as warm as Todd, but if I’d ever had a choice about replacing my mother, she’d have been my number one candidate. And numbers two, three, four and five. I didn’t mind sternness in women, not if I respected them. Without being gushy, she
’d been warmer than Paula, who was the next best candidate for surrogate mum.

  ‘You were entitled to be as miserable as a wet Monday.’ Todd had followed us in. The rest of Paula’s Pots got on with doing what they did best: applying paint.

  ‘We didn’t know where was safest for you,’ Todd said. ‘And then we saw this.’ He put an arm round my shoulder to turn me round, then pointed. Not that he needed to – the huge mobile home spoke very well for itself. How on earth had they organised it so quickly? I could only suppose that their money had talked loud and clear.

  ‘You mean I sleep in –’ I could scarcely keep the awe from my voice: it was about three times the size of my flat and –

  ‘No. That’s where we sleep.’ He tried to hug away my damned fool disappointment. How dared I expect anything like that? ‘Sorry: I didn’t mean to raise your hopes. We actually bought it with the intention of installing you in it and staying on in our hotel. But Jan said you’d be too vulnerable. And I’m afraid she’s right.’

  I nodded, trying not to look as crestfallen as I still felt. Maybe I was just tired: I usually had my hopes under better control than this. Maybe it was a case of them giving me a yard and my wanting a mile. I wasn’t pleased with myself.

  ‘So we’re going to sleep there and you, Caffy, are going to sleep – well, somewhere else. Not the Ritz, I’m afraid, nothing like it – though you will be mistress of Fullers. I hope you’re not claustrophobic?’ Still talking, he led the way upstairs. His hand trailed on the banister rail – he turned and smiled when he saw mine doing the same.

  He took me through the servants’ quarters under the eaves, pushing into a big walk-in cupboard. As he demonstrated, it locked inside and out. There was just enough room for a sleeping bag.

  ‘The trouble is, there’s no window, so you’d bake if you had to stay here long. But we thought you could sleep up here in the ordinary bedroom area and retreat if you got nervous.’

  Jan had been right. It was altogether safer than the caravan. So I meant it when I said, ‘This is perfect. Just perfect. Look, if we push a couple of trestles and some dustsheets over by the door I could just scramble over them and maybe no one would notice it was there.’

  He smiled and patted my shoulder, as if to tell me I was trying too hard and I didn’t need to bother. I bet he’d have been great with his kids’ scraped knees and first hangovers. Hang on: he’d never mentioned kids. Perhaps I was their substitute child, just as they were my replacement parents. Only I’d be nicer to them than their real child would ever have been.

  ‘I hope and pray it doesn’t get that far.’ He returned to the main room, leaning his head against the dormer window and looking down at what would one day no doubt become a wonderful garden.

  I swallowed hard. I had to say it, after all – couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. ‘You don’t have to do this, you and Jan. You could pop me in your car and just drop me off somewhere where there’s a big floating population, like Brighton, and I could disappear.’

  He turned to look me straight in the eye; the trouble was, because the light streaming in was so bright I couldn’t see his face at all. ‘How would you survive?’ His voice told me how anxious he was.

  What I wanted to do was yell, ‘I couldn’t! Don’t let me even try!’ What I actually said, quite quietly, was, ‘I could find some casual work. Waitressing, that sort of thing.’ I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of that before. I lie. I had thought of it before. And with it the thought had flitted through what passes for my brain that I could even earn a few bob on the game. I suppose I’d been so anxious to suppress that idea that I’d closed down the other little brain cells too.

  I’d have bet a pound that Todd had read my mind, at least some of it. ‘The other Pots want to keep an eye on you. Jan and I want to keep an eye on you. As part of our refurbishment here we’re having all sorts of surveillance equipment installed – they start putting it in tomorrow. You’ve already done the hard bit – leaving your home as if you were on the run. And doing a very convincing imitation of being on the run. If whoever …’ He tailed off.

  ‘Sent me the bomb,’ I supplied, keeping my voice as matter-of-fact as I could.

  ‘Quite. He’ll hear on the radio or TV that he got the wrong person, so he’ll come looking for you – we’ve all worked that out. If he asks questions, he’ll learn you’ve gone to London. But you’ve got other hard bits to do too.’

  ‘Like not communicating with anyone except through me,’ Jan said, stepping into the room. ‘Even the police don’t know where you’ve gone, remember.’

  ‘And a bloody good job that is too!’ I explained.

  They wore twin masks of disbelief. ‘But this is England,’ Todd said stupidly.

  My eyebrow went up of its own accord, telling them how innocent they were. A short account of my encounters with Sergeant Marsh had them literally tearing their hair.

  ‘But this is England!’ Todd repeated when I’d finished. ‘We must do something. We must contact the media – get someone to do an exposé!’

  ‘More realistically,’ Jan overrode him, ‘we get my old law firm to provide a representative to accompany Caffy when she makes a formal complaint at another police station.’

  ‘Of course!’ Todd was already digging in his pocket for his mobile.

  ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘That means revealing my whereabouts. Being seen, at the very least. Corrupt officers know some pretty nasty criminals – it wouldn’t surprise me if Granville was on Marsh’s Christmas card list.’

  ‘No! Honestly, you’d get police protection and –’

  ‘For the time being I’m happier here with your protection,’ I said firmly. ‘I know I’ve got to do something but I need a bit of time to think things through.’

  They exchanged glances. Could I trust them? I didn’t for one moment think they’d deliberately harm me – I had plenty of evidence that they really cared for me – but sometimes people think they know best. And in my experience they don’t. Not when they’re dabbling with criminals, who don’t play by the rules that Guardian readers observe. If I dabbled with criminals, I’d make damn sure I was playing by their rules, not mine.

  Jan might have had the presence of mind to claim to be my lawyer and flash her card at Mascara, but her idea of an unobtrusive lunch was to lay a trestle table in front of the mobile home complete with table cloth, carafe of wine and a selection of greenish recycled wine glasses. We were all to sit down together, employers and employees in one happy family.

  Any other day, I’d have loved them for their openheartedness: today their naïvety almost made me swear. Fortunately Todd gave a discreet cough.

  ‘Are you sure people swarming up ladders should touch any more alcohol?’ he enquired, putting his arm round her. ‘I think you should consult Paula.’ As Jan toddled off, he turned to me, raising an eyebrow. There were a couple of white hairs sprouting eccentrically from each. I’d have trimmed or plucked them for him if I’d been Jan – they made him look much older than the rest of him suggested.

  ‘It’s very kind of you,’ I said. ‘More than kind. Like you’ve been all along. I don’t deserve –’ Hell, why did kindness always prick my eyes? His too, by the speed with which he popped on his sunglasses. ‘But the less attention we attract the better. I’d have thought Paula would want them to stick to their usual routine: we always gather round a radio and eat our sarnies listening to the one o’clock news. Yes, honestly! It helps Meg’s kids’ homework.’

  He took a moment to work that out, but at last he grinned and nodded. ‘So it would be better if anyone passing just saw the three of them, gloomily speculating, no doubt, on where you’d gone.’

  ‘Quite. And you and Jan should do whatever you usually do for lunch. You wouldn’t normally eat with the lower orders, would you?’

  He winced. ‘I told you, I’d have been very much below stairs when this place was at its best.’

  ‘But you’re not now, Todd. And however much
you’d like to muck in with us, and us with you, of course, to an outsider it’d look dead odd.’

  ‘And the last thing we want is to do anything that’d attract anyone’s attention: right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘OK. That’s all of us accounted for,’ he said. ‘But what about you? You need to eat.’

  ‘I’ll do what I usually do if I’m working on my own: get a book and read while I eat. Only trouble is,’ I added, as Jan returned, shaking her head with disappointment, ‘I don’t have any books and I don’t have any food.’ Hell! Little Nell on a bad day! God knows why I said that. Technically it might have been true. But Jan had my bags with books in them, and the rucksack and holdall would be around somewhere. As for food, they’d expected to feed six, not just the two of them. It wasn’t like me to indulge in self-pity. But I couldn’t switch it off. ‘So I might as well get my overalls on and start work on part of the house where no one’ll see me.’ Bugger it, I really was going for broke, wasn’t I?

  ‘Not until you’ve eaten,’ Jan declared, confirming that the others were already gathered round the radio. ‘And I’ve got not just the books you gave me earlier but some of my own. Plus, I should imagine, some in that bag that weighed a ton! So come and choose something while I put a plate of food together for you.’ She held open the door of their temporary palace, putting a motherly arm round me.

  Now I could have guilted for Europe – might even have made it to be captain of the team.

  Wide-eyed, I looked about me. I suppressed a grin: they were too kind to deserve it. But while they might have moved in here to guard me no one could accuse them of stinting themselves. Come on: in their place I wouldn’t have either. According to the bill lying open on the pristine kitchen work surface, they’d been staying at Eastwell Manor. Had they meant to stay there as long as it took us to restore the house? I’ve never even speculated on how much it would cost to eat there, let alone stay, but several people we’ve worked for have celebrated big anniversaries or major promotions there and come back sucking their teeth at the cost. Everyone’s always said it was worth it, however, for the service and sheer luxury. So Todd and Jan had given up the comforts of one of the region’s chicest hotels just to come and look after me. That was bad enough, but what if they’d gone all hair-shirt and stayed in the sort of caravan my great aunt Gladys used to own in Weston-super-Mare? I’d have cringed with guilt every time I’d seen it. And believe me, a bit of old-fashioned envy is better than cringing with guilt.