by Alice Castle
Then she and Ben had come back home, with Colin now smelling like a damp doormat. Getting the dog dry and a touch less malodorous had taken most of Beth’s ingenuity until Harry had arrived in a towering temper. It was all she needed, frankly.
She was just wondering if she should go upstairs, dump him, throw him out, and wake him up, in no particular order, when the house phone rang. She jumped a little. Hardly anyone used landlines any more, except the poor souls condemned to pursue PPI claims. She only kept hers in case the house burnt down, though what use it would be then, she wasn’t sure. With trepidation, she answered it.
‘Hello?’ First there was an ominous crackle. Then just as she thought a far-flung double-glazing salesman was going to start a doomed attempt to reel her in, she heard Josh’s voice, as though from the bottom of a well.
‘Sis? That you? Got your message, you know, about the stuff that happened way back when,’ he drawled. ‘You need to get out more, stop fretting about the past. Honestly, girl. That was all over forever ago, just get over it,’ he said. Then, to her acute annoyance, he started singing, ‘Let it go, let it go…’ in a tuneless falsetto.
Beth sat up straight, all thoughts of peppermint tea and Harry banished. ‘Josh. Shut up,’ she said, instantly fourteen again and going from nought to incandescent as quickly as only someone with a sibling can.
Down the phone line, she heard his tinny laughter. ‘Well, all right then, if you insist…’
‘No, no, no, wait, don’t go!’ Beth said, realising just in time what she’d be losing if she let Josh vanish like the Cheshire Cat, leaving only his usual maddening smirk behind. ‘Just tell me. Please. Tell me everything.’
Beth was still thinking hard about what she’d heard when she picked up Colin’s lead and jangled it. He staggered to his feet, a happy smile on his wide mouth, and Beth quietly opened the door. Outside, the pavements shone, and a light drizzle made a nimbus around each street light. She turned up her collar. She was going to get wet again and so was stinky old Colin, but for once she didn’t care.
Halfway down the street, she bumped into Zoe Bentinck’s older sister walking their little black pug, Napoleon. For the thousandth time that day alone, Beth thanked her stars that she had Colin, not Teddy, or Napoleon might have met his Waterloo all over again. She stopped and smiled. By the time the two women parted ten minutes later, the cold rain was seeping into Beth’s neck – and she wasn’t smiling any more.
‘Thanks, and see you soon,’ she said grimly, and led Colin home.
Chapter Sixteen
Beth was feeling particularly virtuous as she strode past the porter at Wyatt’s the next morning, bright and early. Harry had been up and gone before either she or Ben had woken, which was just as well. He’d left her a note on the kitchen table with an X marking the spot, and had taken the cash, too. He’d carefully sealed it into an evidence bag the night before, with Beth pointing out that this was a little bit unnecessary so long after the horse of fingerprint evidence had waved a fond farewell to its stable.
Ben was by now safely at school and Beth herself was striding towards her in-tray, determined to make a massive dent in it. Once her conscience was a bit lighter, her plan was to turn to the much more interesting matters which Josh had been so helpful with last night, and for which Zoe’s big sister had also supplied a few surprising missing pieces of the jigsaw. She was busily imagining how it was all going to go, when she heard an ominous cough behind her. She faltered for a moment, then decided her best bet was to pretend sudden onset deafness and to pick up her pace, but it was no good. There were two things stopping her. Colin, who didn’t really do fast walking in the morning, and the Bursar, who abandoned the cough tactic and just shouted her name, several times, in a successively crosser and ruder fashion.
She turned round, slowly and reluctantly, but with a hopeful smile pinned to her face. ‘Good morning, Tom, how are you?’ she said, inwardly full of trepidation but doing her best impression of chirpy good cheer.
As usual, the Bursar looked as though he had been poured into his suit but had forgotten to say ‘when’. And he was also extremely red in the face. ‘Not having trouble with your blood pressure, I hope?’ Beth added as a cheeky afterthought.
As she was pretty sure she was in for a gale force telling off, she decided boldly that she might as well get some retaliation in first.
‘What is that?’ the Bursar thundered.
Beth looked around innocently, taking in the rag-tag of pupils rushing across the tarmac playground to get to registration in their form rooms, seeing the head of English dashing in the opposite direction, shedding hairpins as she went, then finally spotting Nina making her way over to the Reception office in her distinctive white puffy coat, her arm raised in greeting. Beth waved in return, then let her hand drop and looked back at the Bursar, her eyebrows raised as though she simply couldn’t think what he meant.
Quivering now, and with his face taking on a worryingly purple hue, the Bursar pointed directly at Colin, who’d plopped himself down at Beth’s feet as they appeared to be taking a bit of a rest. The old dog panted up at the Bursar with a wide smile, as though he’d just spotted a great friend. Beth looked down at the dog with a small but slightly sorrowful smile. Colin had probably made his most flawed judgement yet about a human.
Beth was a bit surprised later that her hearing appeared to be intact, as the Bursar had reached decibel levels which he’d previously saved for the rugby pitch in his role as coach, and even then only when stuff was happening way over on the other side of the field that he needed to intervene in urgently. Although he managed to string the whole tirade out for what seemed like hours, his point could be summed up fairly succinctly. It seemed that dogs were not allowed on the premises.
Beth had always suspected as much, though the somewhat lax regime that was in operation while Janice was at home playing with young baby Grover, had allowed her to hope. But bringing in a well-behaved dog for short periods of time – the only periods that Beth worked, to be honest – did not seem, to her, to be a major crime. And besides, she was fairly sure that Janice would side with her over the Bursar any day, particularly as Beth was now godmother to her beloved daughter.
Unfortunately, though, Janice was not there to rush to Beth’s rescue. No-one was. And if it hadn’t been for poor Colin letting out a piteous howl once the first ten minutes or so of the Bursar’s shouting had passed, then she probably would still have been stuck in the playground now, having her ears belaboured by the horrible man’s cascade of unpleasant adjectives.
Though the Bursar seemed to have no respect at all for Beth – something she’d always guessed at but was now having confirmed lavishly – he did draw the line at causing suffering to animals. Here, he differed markedly from some of his recent associates, Beth was glad to note.
‘Just get that creature off the premises. I’ll deal with you later,’ he rasped.
Beth didn’t need to be asked twice. She had coped with his outburst by angling her head slightly away from the man and looking fixedly over his shoulder. While that seemed to inflame his anger, it did keep her from wanting to answer back, which might easily have cost her the job she loved.
Once she was at home again, she put in a call to Janice, explaining the situation from her point of view, and got ticked off again – much more gently – for bringing Colin into the school. Now, with that out of the way and with Janice’s assurances that of course she’d stick up for her friend and that she wouldn’t get the sack, Beth breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief – and took stock.
She was at the kitchen table, in exactly the spot where she’d talked to Josh only last night. She still couldn’t quite believe how useful he’d been. He was her big brother, and when he wasn’t winding her up, she adored him, but she’d never seen him as an asset before, particularly not in one of her investigations. True, he did manage her mother much better than she did herself, and that could be very helpful at Christmas and other big famil
y occasions. But, in return, she almost always then had to keep an eye on his girlfriends. That meant not only shielding them from her mother and her sudden interest in weddings and christenings, which tended to break through even Wendy’s cast-iron self-absorption, but also deflecting any questions the girlfriend might have about Josh’s non-existent interest in settling down.
But last night, Josh had surprised her. Once his teasing was over, he’d proved to have an impressive recall of those events which had taken place so long ago. She hugged the knowledge to herself. And another nugget of priceless information had fallen into her lap like a wonderful, unexpected gift. If Beth hadn’t popped out to walk Colin at exactly the right moment, she’d still be blundering about in the dark with way too many suspects.
Things were now at a delicate stage. What she needed to do was flush a few things out into the open. She knew to her cost, this could be dangerous, and she fingered the scar on her forehead absent-mindedly. It wasn’t only the Bursar at Wyatt’s School who seemed to have distinctly aggressive feelings towards her. In recent months, she’d discovered that people weren’t exactly at their best when cornered.
She looked over at Colin, who was having a little snooze in the corner by the French windows, his paws up by his ears as though trying to block out the memory of all that shouting. He’d been through enough. Magpie, stepping gingerly through her cat flap, checked that the Labrador was properly asleep, then walked stiff-legged to her bowl and sniffed her nuggets of food with the air of a connoisseur before selecting a few to crunch into oblivion. She gave Beth a quick stare as if to say that went for her, too. Beth nodded, as if in agreement. This time around, she was going to be very, very careful.
Fishing out her phone, she sent two quick texts, then got Colin’s lead off the chair next to her. ‘Come on then, boy, we’ve got unfinished business, you and I.’
As Colin opened his eyes, Magpie disappeared through her flap in a streak of black and white, circumspect as ever in the face of a possible threat to her glossy fur and whiskers. Beth smiled her approval. She’d definitely be following Magpie’s lead from now on. She quickly stuffed a few things into her bag and they were off.
It was only a short walk to the park, and Beth marvelled on the way at how safe and familiar everything looked, though for her, it was all irrevocably changed by her discoveries of the past few days. Dulwich, with its white palings, its guileless blue skies, and its seemingly endless promise of order and prosperity, was as much of a construct as any artfully-created canvas.
She felt a little wistful as she walked through the park gates on Court Lane. Then she spotted someone, and try as she might, she couldn’t stop a wide smile from spreading over her face.
It was Katie, with Teddy dancing this way and that at the end of a long lead. But it wasn’t the puppy’s boundless exuberance that had lightened her heart. It was her friend’s outfit. Gone was yesterday’s trench coat. In its place was a tweedy jacket that Beth had never seen before, a long woolly skirt that hid Katie’s magnificently long and toned legs, and surely that couldn’t be – but somehow was – a shapeless, saggy bag, the type that could well have a brace of knitting needles poking out of the top?
‘Don’t tell me. It’s Miss Marple today,’ said Beth, once the regulation Dulwich kisses had been exchanged.
‘You guessed! I know you think it’s silly, but it really helps me to get into character,’ Katie said.
‘You haven’t actually got knitting in there, have you?’ marvelled Beth.
‘I would have, but I can’t knit. I did find some string, though, left over from that class project on measuring,’ Katie happily dug out a ball of twine. Teddy immediately jumped up at the loose end and tugged it, worrying it into the ground with a selection of impressive little growls.
Beth shook her head but contented herself with simply patting her friend’s arm. ‘Well, if it works for you. Maybe I should take up crosswords and start driving a Jag?’
‘You don’t need the props, Beth, but I do – I’m just starting out. I’ll find my feet soon and then I’ll be unstoppable,’ said Katie, yanking at Teddy now.
‘Okey-doke. Any word yet?’
‘Nothing, how about you?’
Beth shook her head. She wasn’t entirely surprised. But she was disappointed. While she hadn’t been at all sure they’d get a reply, it would really have helped matters if they had. ‘Well, come on, let’s give these two a nice walk anyway, and we might as well discuss what we’re going to do about the interviews.’
‘Oh, don’t,’ said Katie. ‘My heart sinks every time I think about them.’
‘But Charlie is just about the best-prepared boy in Dulwich. Excepting poor old Billy MacKenzie, of course.’
‘I pity that boy if he doesn’t get in,’ said Katie, and Beth nodded. It didn’t really bear thinking about. Even though it meant one fewer precious place for her Ben to snatch at, she wouldn’t really wish failure on any of Belinda’s children; the consequences would be too awful to contemplate. Her own son would just pootle off elsewhere if he had to, but Belinda would probably commit suttee on her front lawn rather than live with the shame of a boy in a school that wasn’t Wyatt’s.
‘Can you believe tomorrow is the big day?’ Katie asked.
Beth shook her head. She was having trouble accepting it. All this stuff about Smeaton had taken her mind off the whole business, rather too successfully. She couldn’t help contrasting levels of preparedness between Ben and Billy. Yes, she’d taken him for that stint at tutoring, but that had been a while ago. Ben would definitely have forgotten any topics that had been covered, and she’d made precious little effort to top up his general knowledge levels since. Oh well, it was in the lap of the gods now. Though things must be bad if even unflappable Katie was dressing up as an old lady sleuth to distract herself.
Despite the looming shadow of the interviews, they had a lovely walk, wending through the rhododendron bushes at the far end of the park, out of the way of all but the most hardened dog-walkers, as Katie was still apt to throw herself behind a shrub and hide if anyone with a dog smaller than a St Bernard crossed their path. ‘Just in case, you understand,’ she explained to Beth, while dragging a romantically-inclined Teddy out of range of a pretty little Chihuahua.
For once, even Ben seemed a little subdued at pick-up, and Beth guessed that Billy had been sharing his mother’s favourite topic – the interviews – at break time. Both Ben and Charlie seemed content to go their separate ways for once, and the dogs plodded off in the separate directions, too, with Katie and Beth turning round and crossing fingers at each other in a moment of solidarity as they walked away from each other. Though in theory both boys were rivals for places, their mothers were prepared to bet that neither one would enjoy their school career much without each other. It was another reason to hope against hope for the best possible outcome tomorrow.
Anticipating a somewhat sombre evening, Beth started trying to think of strategies which might lessen any gathering tension yet be wonderfully educational. Even at this last moment she was hoping for a miracle that would convert her very ordinary small boy into an intellectual powerhouse. But just at the moment after supper when she was about to raise the topic of global warming in what she had hoped would be a carefully off-hand manner, she was glad to hear the distinctive scrape of Harry’s key in the lock.
Ben’s look of joy told her that he’d seen right through her, yet again, and she gave up any attempt to make the PlayStation off-limits. Soon she was washing up to the merry zing and thud of a clash between gaming Titans, and wondering if she was blowing her son’s last chance.
Chapter Seventeen
There was a sick feeling at the pit of Beth’s stomach the next morning, and it wasn’t caused by the prospect of seeing the Bursar again so soon after her very public ticking off. As she looked at Ben’s pinched little face, she wondered if he was a mass of nerves, too. They were walking along the quiet streets, straight past the little Village Prima
ry School, and on up to the daunting magnificence of the gates to Wyatt’s. Interview day was here at last. It had only taken a matter of weeks to get from the exam to this point. Or it had taken every day of Ben’s life so far. It all depended on how you calculated it.
Beth was sad that they couldn’t take Colin with them. His measured plod would have been reassuring for both of them. But the chocolate Lab had proved a red rag as far as the powers-that-be at Wyatt’s were concerned, and she’d had to shut the front door on his disappointed face and leave him to the tender mercies of Magpie.
A little while later, they were ensconced in the waiting room opposite the Reception desk at Wyatt’s, with two other boys and their palpably nervous parents. As usual, Beth wondered whether things would have been different if James had still been alive. She was sure they would have been. She would have been calmer, as she wouldn’t have had to worry for two. And James would have been quietly amused by all the hoopla around Wyatt’s, and less bothered whether Ben made the grade or not. That, Beth thought sadly, would probably have helped a lot.
One of the mothers opposite was pecking her way through a copy of the school prospectus, transparently not taking in a word the glossy pages had to say; the other was simultaneously telling her son off for gawping at his phone, while surreptitiously trying to check her emails on her own. The fathers, in both cases, seemed to have zoned out – one with the aid of a widely-spread Financial Times, the other with his own thoughts.
Beth was just wondering how much longer the boy before them was going to take, when her own phone shrilled. How embarrassing. She was sure she’d turned it to silent. Ben caught her eye, smiling, even as the two mothers gave her an identical chilly stare. Oh well, it could have been worse, she thought. At least it didn’t play the Star Wars theme tune.
