She looked at him, this man who was her husband, as if seeing him properly for the first time. The typical beta male. The typical nerd. A ten-stone botanist who couldn’t swat a fly without tripping over his own feet and knocking his front crown off on the edge of the coffee table.
But, ‘Good,’ was all she said.
And as he took her hand, sitting there in their bubble as the lunchtime hubbub of everyone else’s nice normal lives swept past them, she made the same promise to Beckie.
Whatever it takes.
‘Oh, hi, Ruth!’ Neil’s sister Pippa’s voice across nine thousand miles sounded unbearably cheerful. In the background there were other happy voices – she was probably in a bar somewhere. ‘I was just thinking about you! How’re you all doing?’
Where to start?
‘Not great.’ Flora was standing in the garden in the rain, the landline handset pressed to her ear, watching a man in an orange jacket up a ladder, positioning one of the tiny hidden CCTV cameras under the eaves. The glass doors had been replaced that morning and the glaziers had swept up the broken fragments of glass. She could see a few tiny mosaic-sized pieces, though, along the edges of the paving. She pushed at them with the toe of her shoe.
‘The Johnsons have found us.’
‘Oh – fuck!’
‘Yep. They’ve been harassing us, and I’m terrified they’re going to do something… Try to take Beckie.’ She told Pippa everything that had happened.
‘Fuck, Ruth! Fuck! Surely the police can do something?’
‘The problem is, the Johnsons are wise to all the dodges. They’ve set up alibis for the times the incidents happened – quite honestly, the police don’t seem to have a clue. We’re getting CCTV put up around the house, but… It’s just not safe to stay here now. I’m going to try to persuade Alec to leave, to disappear again, but he’s saying we should stand and fight. Which is ridiculous, obviously – I mean, they’re a family of hardened criminals, murderers…’
‘But there are much stricter laws now, aren’t there, about harassment? The police will have to do something once you have evidence. CCTV is a great idea. Once you get them on that…’
‘They’ll probably just get given another caution. And there are so many of them – even if one of them did get convicted and locked up, that would still leave half a dozen more…’
‘But, Ruth… Say, worst-case scenario, they did take Beckie… they’d have to give her back. There’s no way they’re coming out of this the winners. If they keep harassing you, they’re going to get into trouble, and the police will have to stop them somehow – tag them and stuff like that to stop them coming anywhere near you. They can put electronic detectors on people’s houses now so that if the tagged person comes anywhere near it an alarm goes off…’
Fleetingly, it occurred to Flora to wonder how Pippa knew all this. Some of the men she’d hooked up with in the past had seemed a bit dodgy, to put it mildly. And she suspected that Pippa herself might have had a few brushes with the law.
‘But what if they attacked us in the street again, not at the house?’
‘They can probably put the detector on a person as well as on a house. And why would they attack you? That’s not going to get them anywhere.’
‘I don’t know if they’re that rational.’
‘If they’re setting up alibis for themselves, they sound pretty rational to me.’
Flora puffed out a sigh.
‘Much as I hate to say it, I think Alec’s right. You can’t keep running away from them. You have to sort this. I know, easy for me to say…’
Flora waited for Pippa’s offer to come back and help, but of course that didn’t materialise. Under the friendly charm, Pippa was one of the most selfish people she knew. Flora finished the call with a vague promise to keep Pippa updated.
‘And thanks a lot,’ she muttered as she strode back to the house to break open the Hobnobs for the CCTV men.
It was no good tackling Neil directly about leaving. She would have to be more subtle than that – make him think he’d come round to the idea on his own. So over the next two days she didn’t even mention the possibility, pretending she was satisfied now they had the CCTV and continuing to bombard Saskia with voice and text messages which went unanswered.
Just before bed on Wednesday night, sitting with Neil on the sofa in the Family Room watching a Danish series on BBC Four, she mentioned, casually, that she’d called Pippa.
‘Oh? How’s she doing?’
‘She seemed fine. She was talking about this new tagging system where the perpetrator wears an electronic tag that sets off an alarm if they come near the person who’s being targeted, or their house…’
Neil’s expression became irritatingly patient and courteous. ‘Uh-huh?’
But he was saved from having to humour her further by the door flying open.
Beckie erupted into the room in a blur of purple pyjamas and flying hair. ‘There’s a man!’
Neil bolted from the sofa. ‘Where?’
‘In the garden!’
‘Flora, get into the loo! Got your phone? Call 999.’
Hugging Beckie to her, Flora locked them both in the downstairs loo, which had the twin benefits of a lock on the door and a tiny high window. Flora had decorated it in a bright quirky yellow and hung the Larson cartoon of the two crocodiles relaxing after dining on canoeist in a prominent position above the towel rail. How could she ever have found that funny?
Beckie looked up at her as she tapped the nine on her phone. ‘It was him again. It was that man. I heard someone shouting and I looked out and that man was there!’
20
‘And then there’s Mr Bean running at me like a spastic that’s shat itself.’ Travis takes another swally of lager and puts his other hand up the inside of Mackenzie’s thigh. She’s on his lap, wriggling against him like he’s her fucking hero. ‘And then he’s tripping on a stane, flat on his fucking face, and I cannae get up the wall for pissing myself. And he’s all “Stop right there, my man” and I make like I’m gonnae jump back down and he’s bricking it.’
Connor’s in the kitchen making us coffees, but he’s earwigging, and I can see him through the door having a wee chuckle to hisself.
‘Magic,’ goes Jed.
I point at Travis. ‘You’d better no have frighted Bekki.’
‘Bekki wasnae there.’
‘And no touching they bastards. We want them bricking it, aye, but no so they’re gonnae up and go.’
‘I didnae touch no one!’
Connor comes in with the coffees, lattes for him and Carly and Mandy, flat blacks for Ryan and Jed, a wee cappuccino for me. Mackenzie’s on the ginger.
Connor’s put a wee bit Flake on the side. I dip it in the foam and lick it. That coffee machine’s barry so it is. ‘Right Connor, me and you’s off to St Andrews the morn.’
Connor sits on the floor with the dug, his back against Mandy’s chair, and Mandy pats him on the heid like he’s a dug an’ all. ‘Thanks Wee Man.’ She’s eating a packet of prawn cocktail with her latte, the mad cow.
‘Cannae do the morn,’ goes Connor. ‘I’ve got my shift.’
‘Pull a sickie, son.’
Connor’s got a foam moustache on him. He doesnae lick it off like Travis would, he gets a bit tissue out his pocket and dabs it. ‘Cannae. I’m already on a verbal.’
‘What for?’ goes Carly.
‘Absenteeism.’
‘Oh, absenteeism,’ goes Travis.
‘You can get cream for that,’ goes Ryan.
‘Who cares about your fucking job?’ goes Carly. ‘By the time they get round to a written warning, you’ll be Bye bye wankers any road. Fucking numptie.’