No Place For a Man

by Judy Astley

  ‘Bit sort of “sexist” isn’t it?’ Ben pronounced the word as if it was one he’d not actually used before and wasn’t sure if he was allowed to.

  ‘Nah, she’s right really. After all, she’s spent all day working.’

  A football whistled past Eddy’s head and landed under the next table. A girl that Matt recognized as a primary-school friend of Natasha’s grinned at him as she bent to retrieve it. She was wearing a very short skirt. Matt, politely, turned away as she bent down but heard an under-the-breath lusty groan from Eddy.

  ‘You got nowhere better to go?’ Ben asked the girl. Mel expertly twirled the football in her hand and grinned at them all. ‘Hi Mr Nelson,’ she said shyly, then to Ben she said, ‘No, got any ideas?’ Ben shrugged. ‘Here’s good enough so long as you don’t frighten away my customers.’

  ‘What, this lot?’ she said cheekily. ‘It would take more than me!’

  ‘You know, it’s not a bad idea,’ Matt said suddenly as Mel went back to her keepy-uppy competition with a pair of gangly teenage boys.

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘This time of the day. It’s a sort of down-time, isn’t it. I mean, we’ve been coming here and staying past lunch and there’s no rush of customers till the office workers are in for Happy Hour at 5.30.’

  ‘But it’s the only peace I get all day,’ Ben complained.

  ‘Get extra staff, after-school kids. And have a Happy Hour for the teenagers, though not alcohol obviously. If they want that they can go to the dodgy little shops or nick it from their parents. No, give them coffee, Coke, hot chocolate and a menu of pancakes and ice cream and biscuits. Then they’d have somewhere to go to get together after school. And you’d get more of the different schools mixing, which would be a good thing, stop them fighting and calling each other snobs.’

  Ben looked deeply thoughtful. Matt could almost see the idea being filtered through his brain. Eddy was quiet too, as if working out where the catch was. Only the urgent wails of police sirens cut through the quiet, and the bounce, bounce of the footballs. The sirens were getting nearer, brakes were screeching.

  ‘It’s getting like bloody New York round here,’ Eddy said eventually, just as a black Mondeo squealed round the corner into the square. Mel shrieked as she leapt out of its path. The car, hurtling across the pavement, skidded sideways as the driver stood too hard on the brakes, and crashed into the lamp post, bounced off onto the bench and turned over onto its side. Three police cars surrounded it, speeding across the paved area with no apparent regard for anyone who might be in the way. Officers leapt out and ran to the car.

  ‘I hope someone’s called for a bloody ambulance,’ Eddy said. ‘There were kids in that car.’

  Shakily, as if expecting the worst, Matt followed him to the crippled Mondeo. There was still music coming from it, though the engine had, unsurprisingly, stalled. The underside of the vehicle looked like a monstrous scar, rearing up there in the middle of the square.

  ‘There’s someone trying to get out!’ Matt ran the last few yards, joined a pale and frightened-looking policeman on top of what was left of the bench and peered down into the car’s inside.

  ‘We’re for it if they’re dead,’ the young constable muttered. Matt glared at him, shoved him aside with the kind of force that came with anger and reached across to the door handle. ‘Push it if you can!’ he yelled, praying the occupants were in a state to comply.

  ‘I am,’ sobbed a frantic voice, ‘I’m pushing it as hard as I can! It’s stuck! Get me out!’ Fists banged against the window.

  ‘Jesus! Natasha!’ Matt yelled.

  Sixteen

  Natasha’s injuries looked worse than they were, but they didn’t, according to the disapproving and pessimistic doctor, look as bad as they would in a couple of days. Bruising took time to ripen, he told Jess with an unsuppressable quotient of glee in his voice, and after twenty-four hours or so Natasha would be wanting to keep well out of the public gaze for a while. The stitches on her forehead, he warned, would also become sore as the swelling continued, her limbs would feel stiff and her body would ache as if she’d got flu and for all this she’d have to make do with nothing stronger than a couple of paracetamol.

  ‘She was lucky to have got away without any broken bones,’ he said, scowling at Jess across the bed in the treatment room at St Michael’s accident and emergency department. ‘These kids …’ He shook his head slowly, leaving Jess in no doubt that in his opinion the long years of expensive medical training had definitely not been for the purpose of treating a bunch of young vandals who deserved all they got.

  ‘What about “these kids”?’ Matthew said with quiet anger.

  The doctor removed his glasses, braced himself on the end rails of the bed (in readiness, Jess assumed, for when Matthew gave him a furious shove) and continued, ‘Without people like these kids, who are here as a result of criminal behaviour and carelessness, the waiting times that everyone’s forever beefing about in these places would be at least half what they are. You wouldn’t believe how many drunks, louts, aggressive cretins who’ve punched each other senseless …’

  ‘Er, so where do you stand on sports injuries then?’ Matthew was smiling now. ‘Do you make these irresponsible idiots who’ve chosen to risk their all in a rugby match wait at the back of the queue, just to teach them a lesson?’

  ‘Sport is different. Sport is good for you. It would keep young yobs’ minds off the so-called thrills of crime.’

  The doctor was on a roll. Jess could see that Matthew, now reassured that Natasha was going to be completely all right, was about to move into a full-scale debate and needed distracting. ‘Come on, Matt, let’s get Tasha home. We don’t want to keep the doctor from his more deserving patients, do we?’

  Natasha slid down from the bed and staggered slightly. ‘Did the nurse ask you if you’ve been drinking?’ the doctor said, loading an additional dose of contempt into his voice.

  ‘Yes and I haven’t,’ Natasha snapped. ‘I’m just …’ She burst into tears at that point.

  ‘It’s all right Tash, let’s get you home.’ Jess took hold of her arm and led her out of the cubicle and back towards the way out. Zoe was in the waiting area, reading Marie Claire and keeping an eye on a gaggle of police officers who were hanging around the coffee machine and telling each other jokes.

  ‘They’re waiting to talk to Tom,’ Zoe whispered as they walked towards the car park.

  ‘What, all of them?’ Matt said. ‘I mean how many does it take to arrest one young boy?’

  ‘One young boy with a broken arm and possibly serious head injuries,’ Jess added. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll be doing any twocking for a while.’

  ‘Twocking?’ Zoe said as she got into the back of the Golf. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Taking Without Owner’s Consent. Nicking cars, basically,’ Natasha said.

  She sounded weary. Zoe glanced at her warily as they sat together in the car. Natasha was staring straight ahead, looking as if she wanted to sleep for about a year. Her face was smeary from dried-out tears and her hair looked as if she hadn’t brushed it for a week.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ Zoe asked quietly.

  ‘Yes.’ The reply didn’t invite any more questions and Zoe gazed out of the window feeling tearful. It was all her fault. She should have refused to tell the lie about Natasha going to Claire’s. All the way home on the bus she’d been so sure this was one secret too many and that it would be the one that made the most deeply serious trouble. When she’d got home, she’d just prayed that no-one would say, as Jess had, ‘Oh just you, is it? Where’s Tash?’ If Zoe had only said, ‘Actually, she’s gone off with Tom in a car that can’t possibly be his,’ all this might not have happened. Or it might have been even worse, she thought. Because either way, the police knew about Tom taking the car and were going to chase it. Natasha could have been killed. Tom couldn’t drive that well, no-one of sixteen could drive well enough to outrun three police cars who seemed, acc
ording to her dad, to be in some kind of competition to make the arrest.

  Zoe had heard the crash from her bedroom. It was a horrible, sickening sound, all huge metallic crunch and shattering glass. It was the kind of sound that made you sure no-one in the middle of it could have survived. She’d sat on her bed feeling sick, waiting for someone to tell her the worst. She wasn’t even slightly surprised when Ben called from the Leo to tell her mum that Natasha was being taken to the hospital, with Matt in the ambulance.

  There was a strange calm hush in the house. Natasha, looking deeply sad and more battered by the minute (the doctor would be delighted, Jess thought), asked for a bowl of tomato soup, some hot chocolate and then went to have a long hot bath and get into bed. Jess wouldn’t ask her any questions. There was no point: she was pretty sure they knew all they needed to know about what had happened. If there was anything to add, it would come out when the police questioned Natasha. At least, she thought, as she prepared a simple pasta carbonara for the rest of them, Tom would be off the scene. Permanently, if Jess had anything to do with it.

  ‘It’s all my fault, isn’t it?’ Matt said as soon as Zoe had gone to watch television after a quiet and morose supper.

  ‘What, all this? No of course not, why do you think so?’

  ‘I’ve not exactly been a shining example of upright citizenship since the job went. I could have been a bit more of a support, backed you up when you grounded Tasha. I could have picked her up from school in the afternoons, made sure she knew we were serious about her not seeing Tom – especially after the burglary. How is she supposed to toe the line when I spend all my time avoiding responsibility?’

  Jess thought about what he’d said. There was more than an ounce of truth in his words, but not much more. Teenagers made their own choices, it was part of the process. And because they were teenagers they tended to pick the thrill option. You couldn’t put them on reins like toddlers.

  ‘You can’t blame yourself. We trusted her. If we said she couldn’t do something, we assumed, perhaps naively and lazily, she’d do as we said. But she’s nearly sixteen, it’s a breakaway age. Hell, we haven’t given her a lot to rebel about, we’re pretty easy-going. Perhaps she just had to kick against the grown-up world one way or another and this was her way.’

  ‘You mean you don’t know all there is to know about teen life?’ Matt leaned across and kissed her. ‘You’re actually fallible?’

  ‘Of course I am!’ Jess laughed. ‘And come on, he was an attractive boy. She’s a girl with imagination; it must have been a massive thrill that someone like him wanted to go out with her. He represents danger, the forbidden, something way beyond the boring selection on offer at St Dominic’s. I just hope …’

  ‘Hope what?’

  ‘I hope she’s got it out of her system.’

  George waited till the morning to come and see Natasha. When Jess had phoned the night before and told him what had happened to her he’d felt quite weak with distress. It was all so stupidly unnecessary. In delaying telling the police about the stolen goods in the Sierra, it could be that he’d put the life of his adored granddaughter at risk. That was what came of putting things off, wishing that things were different from the way they were instead of facing reality and acting on what was actually true. Now, he couldn’t think why he’d waited before making that call to the police. Perhaps he’d been hoping that things would be different when he’d had a night’s sleep. However old you got, he thought as he walked up the Grove with the huge bunch of flowers for Tash, you never stopped hoping that the president of the immortals would make things all right overnight.

  ‘Hallo Grandad.’ George was surprised when Natasha opened the door. ‘Ooh are those for me? No-one’s ever given me flowers before! Come in.’

  ‘Well you poor girl, you do look a bit battered around the edges.’ George gently kissed her swollen, purple cheek. ‘I’m glad you’re up and about though, I thought you’d be lying around in bed and resting.’

  ‘It’s only because I didn’t have to get up,’ she said, grinning at him. ‘I’m a teenager, I only stay in bed when it annoys people, like most of Saturday mornings when Mum wants me to tidy my room or do homework or something truly gross like that. Come and have a cup of coffee, Mum’s in the kitchen, sorting through all her old work stuff.’

  ‘Hi Dad, come to see our invalid?’ Jess, glancing at her father, couldn’t miss the change in him. He looked older, more frail somehow, as if he’d shrunk slightly in the past couple of weeks.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, looking through the cupboard in search of a packet of biscuits, as if just the smallest amount of quick-fix food would restore him to his former vigour.

  George sat at the table, idly turning over the loose pages from Jess’s file of past work. ‘I’m well in myself. I’ve got a confession to make though.’ He hesitated, coughed a little and then rallied. ‘I found all your stolen stuff the night before I rang the police. If they’d known, they might have caught … you know, before …’ He hesitated, unable to continue. Jess sat down next to him and put her arm round him. ‘It’s all right, they were already looking for Tom. The stuff wasn’t really relevant – and we got it back, so it made no difference in the end. You really mustn’t worry about it.’

  ‘The crash wasn’t anyone’s fault,’ Natasha said. ‘Except the police, they just panicked Tom, I mean there were three lots of them all with the sirens going. All he could do was go faster.’

  ‘Well, he could have stopped.’ George, let off the hook, seemed instantly more sprightly, almost back to his normal rather confrontational self. ‘I mean that would have been the honest thing to do, wouldn’t it? Or just not steal things in the first place?’

  ‘Yes, but …’ Jess began then stopped. What was the point? They all knew, even Natasha, where honesty ranked with Tom.

  It was all over the school. Girls Zoe had never spoken to in her life, even girls from the sixth form, kept coming up to her and asking if it was true that her sister had been in a crash in a stolen car. It was that day’s sensation. Girls from Julia Perry’s occasionally became pregnant, frequently severely anorexic and sometimes went in for a little light shoplifting. They didn’t tend, generally, to go out with genuine hard-case criminals. The fact that Natasha had done so, blatantly and disastrously, had sent a vicarious collective thrill through much of the school. Guiltily, Zoe couldn’t help at least half-enjoying the second-hand glamour of the situation.

  ‘So is she OK, like she’s not going to be scarred or anything?’ Claire asked Zoe in the lunch queue. ‘Shall I come and see her? Will after school today be all right?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Zoe shrugged. ‘Why don’t you ring her?’ In fact, why haven’t you called for absolutely bloody ages, she wanted to ask, not at all taken in by Claire’s renewed enthusiasm for her sister’s company and welfare. Zoe wasn’t stupid, she knew there’d been a rift. Claire and Natasha, in the past weeks, had definitely not been together so much. Claire had started hanging around with the group in her year who were known as the ball girls. This was nothing to do with tennis but was all about attending as many upmarket parties as possible and keeping a coloured-in chart listing the leading boys’ boarding schools and the best snoggers therein. Only a few weeks before, Natasha and Claire had been equally damning in their scorn for this childish and silly-girl pursuit, but as Zoe listened to Claire’s avid questioning for details of Tash’s accident, she could see the unmistakeable blotching of a love-bite on her neck. Claire probably couldn’t remember, Zoe assumed with possibly overjudgemental contempt, who it was who’d given it to her: she knew quite well that with the ball girls it was a matter of clocking up the numbers. Pondering the girls in her own year at the school, she could think of only a handful, apart from herself, who definitely wouldn’t be a ball girl in a couple of years’ time. It didn’t seem a lot to look forward to.

  The fortune-teller was everything Paula had promised, although her premises were uncompromisingly
domestic. Jess had anticipated being shown into a musky, exotic den, festooned from ceiling to floor with splendid drapes of moss green velvet, and offered a seat at a table hung with gold-fringed cloth. Instead she was ushered into a shabby sitting room with a faded floral carpet in shades of orange and blotchy hessian wallpaper, the colour of ground ginger, which must have been up since the mid-Sixties. The fire was a gas-effect one, ruling out, Jess assumed, any staring into it to read pictures in the flames. A pair of massive scuffed leather chesterfield sofas took up most of the space. Between these was a low table covered with a purple satin cloth, which, reminding Jess of Matthew’s choice of coffin lining, rather unnerved her. On the cloth was a gratifyingly archetypal selection of the tools of a fortune-teller’s trade: a pack of tarot cards, a crystal ball (into which Jess peered, hoping she might discover she had The Gift) and a little silver dragon figure which contained something that was causing whiffs of scented smoke to come from its mouth. Even pessimism-supremo Robin, who’d been in earlier to photograph the set-up, must have found something to please him here.

  ‘Coffee? Herbal tea?’ Bella the mystic (in jeans and a tight pink tee shirt) offered as Jess settled herself next to a massive tabby cat.

  ‘Er, no thanks, I’m OK.’ Jess smiled and stroked the cat which stretched itself out to its full length and took up most of the sofa.

  ‘This must be about the biggest cat I’ve ever seen,’ she commented as Bella sat down opposite her and started shuffling the tarot cards. Her nails were spectacularly long, Jess noted, and painted with pale blue shimmery varnish and her hands were loaded with thick silver rings studded with chunky opals and amethysts.

  ‘He wasn’t very well, as a kitten.’ Bella smiled fondly at the cat. ‘So I treated him with reiki healing. It makes them grow, you see, all that stroking. Would you like to try it? Reiki? It helps with emotional problems as well as physical.’ Jess turned the offer down as politely as she could, making a light joke about not wanting to grow any more thank you, which seemed to go right over Bella’s head. She did wonder though if it was really that obvious that she wasn’t currently in the most settled frame of mind, or if Bella was truly psychic. Ashamed of her cynicism, for Bella was gentle, hospitable and genuinely certain of her powers, Jess found herself seeking out the party-trick aspect of the business: surely it was easy enough to guess that any suburban working mother/journalist was going to have the odd emotional problem. There were whole hospitals in the area set up for just that kind of sorting out; Yellow Pages had several pages of private counsellors well able to afford the cost of the advertising.