“I wish I’d known,” Alison says. “If I’d known all he wanted was a refund, I could have written him a cheque myself.”
“And Aitkenside,” her mum says, “was overseeing it all. Thank the Lord for Donnie Aitkenside. He was advising me, like. But then how was I supposed to make a living, after you was offering all-in for a shilling? I even lent you my nightdress, and that’s all the thanks I get.”
“You said I was a good kid.”
“When?”
“A while back.”
“I changed my mind,” said Em, sulking.
Her coffee is cold, and she raises her head to the tap-tap-tap. Mr. Fox, are you there? Are your friends with you? Click by click, she lifts the kitchen blind. Dawn: there is a dazing light, a bar of thunderous black across the sky: hail-stones are falling. These summers since the millennium have been all the same: days of clammy unnatural heat, sapping to the will. She puts her fingers against her forehead and finds her skin damp, but she couldn’t say whether she’s hot or cold. She needs a hot drink, to banish that deep internal quaking; I could try again, she thinks, with the kettle and a teabag. Will the police come back? She hears the neighbours chanting Out out out: a swell of distant voices, like a choir.
“Jesus,” Colette said. “Where did you get this clapped-out dodgem car?”
“My garage lent it. It’s only temporary. A courtesy car.” Gavin looked at her out of the tail of his eye. “You look done in,” he said.
“Done in,” she said. “Tired out.”
“Washed up,” Gavin offered.
“Look, I realize this isn’t convenient for you. I promise I won’t be in your way. I just need a few hours to catch up on my sleep, then I can think straight. I’ll soon put my life to rights. I’m by no means penniless, I just need to work out how to extricate myself from my ties with Alison. I may need to see a solicitor.”
“Oh. She in trouble?”
“Yes.”
“Small businesses going under all over the show,” Gavin said. “Easy to run up a tax bill. They claim there’s not a recession, but I dunno.”
“What about you, did you get fixed up?”
“Bit of contract work. Take it as it comes. Here and there. As and when.”
“Hand to mouth,” she said.
For a while they drove in silence. The suburbs were beginning to wake up. “What about Zoë?” Colette said. “What will she think about me turning up like this?”
“She’ll understand. She knows we used to be related.”
“Related? If that’s what you call it.”
“Married is a relation, isn’t it? I mean, you’re related to your wife?”
“She’s got no cause for jealousy. I shall make that perfectly clear. So don’t worry. It’s just for the emergency. It’s strictly temporary. I’ll make sure she knows that. I’ll soon be out of her way.”
“Anyway,” her mum says, “Gloria got sawed once too often. And then they had to get rid of her, didn’t they? It wasn’t even on the premises, that was the big nuisance of it. They had to fetch her back as consignments. But then the dogs came in handy, didn’t they? But Pete said, you got to watch them dogs now, Keith. You got to watch dogs, once they get a taste for human flesh. Which was proved, of course. With the dog flying out at you. And then the way he cleaned his dish, when you served him up a slice of Keith.”
She leaves the house now, young Alison, she leaves the house at Aldershot, kicking open the back door that is swollen with damp. MacArthur sees her go. He winks at her. It has rained that day and the ground is soft underfoot as she makes her way towards the lockup garages.
Emmie says, “Where there is waste ground, there is outbuildings. It stands to reason. That’s where the boys used to keep their knocked-off ciggies and their bottles of spirits, they was always bringing in spirits by the case—oops, I think I’ve spoken out of turn now, it’s a good thing MacArthur’s not around, he’d have walloped me one, do me a favour and don’t mention to the boys it was me what told you.”
“I’m not the police,” Al says.
“Police? That’s a laugh. They was all in on it, only you don’t want to mention it to MacArthur. I’ll only get my eye blacked and my teef knocked out—not that I have any teef, but I wouldn’t like a smack in the gums. Police used to come round, saying I’m after the whereabouts of MacArthur, I’m attempting to locate a gypsy fella name of Pete, they was having a laugh, they weren’t locating, all they was wanting was a rolled-up fiver in their top pocket and a glass of whisky and lemonade, and if I couldn’t oblige them, on account of I’d spent me last fiver and you’d drunk the lemonade, they’d say, well now, Mrs. Cheetham, well now, I’ll just get my leg over before I depart your premises.”
She walks past the van, young Alison, the van where Gloria rests in pieces: past the dog run, where Harry, Blighto and Serene lie dreaming; past the empty chicken runs, where the chickens are all dead because Pikey Pete has wrung their necks. Past the caravan with its blacked-out windows: back to the hut where she lies and howls. She peeps in, she sees herself, lying bleeding onto newspapers they’ve put down: it will be hygienic, Aitkenside says, because we can burn them once she’s clotted.
Aitkenside says, you’d better stay off school, till it scabs over. We don’t want questions asked, into our private business. If they say anything to you, say you was trying to jump barbed wire, right? Say you did it scrambling over broken glass.
She lies, moaning and thrashing. They have turned her over on her back now. She screams out: if anybody asks I’m sixteen, right? No, officer sir, my mummy is not at home. No officer sir, I have never seen this man before. No, officer, sir, I don’t know that man either. No sir, for certain I never saw a head in a bath, but if I do I will be faithfully sure to come to the station and tell you.
She hears the men saying, we said she’d get a lesson, she’s had one now.
The telephone again. She won’t answer. She has lowered the kitchen blind, in case despite the new locks the police have installed the neighbours are so furious as to swarm over the side gate. Colette was right, she thinks; those gates are no good, really, but I don’t think she was serious when she mentioned getting barbed wire.
She goes upstairs. The door of Colette’s room stands open. The room is tidy, as you would expect; and Colette, before leaving, has stripped the bed. She lifts the lid of the laundry basket. Colette has left her soiled sheets behind; she stirs them, but finds nothing else, not a single item of hers. She opens the wardrobe doors. Colette’s clothes hang like a rack of phantoms.
They are in Windsor, at the Harte and Garter. It is summer, they are younger; it is seven years ago; an era has passed. They are drinking coffee. She plays with the paper straws with the sugar in. She tells Colette, a man called M will enter your life.
At Whitton, Colette’s hand reached out in the darkness of the communal hall; accurately, she found the light switch at the foot of the stairs. As if I’d never been away, she thought. In seven years they say every cell of your body is renewed; she looked around her and remarked, the same is not true of gloss paintwork.
She walked upstairs ahead of Gavin, to her ex-front door. He reached around her to put the key in the lock; his body touched hers, his forearm brushed her upper arm.
“Sorry,” she said. She inched aside, shrinking herself, folding her arms across her chest.
“No, my fault,” he said.
She held her breath as she stepped in. Would Zoë, like Alison, be one of those people who fills up the rooms with her scent, a person who is present even when she’s absent, who sprays the sheets with rose or lavender water and who burns expensive oils in every room? She stood, inhaling. But the air was lifeless, a little stale. If it hadn’t been such a wet morning, she would have hurried to open all the windows.