Final Demand (20 page)

‘Please believe me—'

‘You cheated on me and you cheated on them. All this time, stealing all that money—'

‘Who says I did it?' she asked weakly. Looking at him, she realized there was no point in protesting her innocence.

He was trying to take it all in. Rigid with shock, he was trying
to catch up with it all. ‘How could you do it, Natalie? I wondered where it was coming from . . . I can't believe it . . .'

‘I'm sorry, Stumpy, I really am.' She tried to light a cigarette but the matches spilled. ‘I didn't hurt anybody. Remember when we talked about the little people, people like us?' She scrabbled on the floor. ‘I haven't hurt them, have I? You said how you hated the gas board, how they clobber old ladies, how they don't give a fuck . . .' She picked up a match and tried to strike it. ‘Well, NT's the same . . . they didn't even notice it, they make such a stonking profit, so what's the harm?'

He stared at her. A tear hung on his lower lip. ‘What's the harm? You ask, what's the harm?'

He turned away and started up the engine.

That night Colin slept on the settee. He didn't have the heart, it seemed, to pull it out into a bed. Natalie gazed into the lounge. He lay curled in his anorak, the lights blazing.

‘Come to bed, Colin,' she said.

There was no reply.

Natalie overslept. Her first thought, when she woke, was: Christ, I'm late for work. And then she remembered. She wouldn't be going to NuLine, ever again.

She had woken to a changed world. No – a world that carried on regardless, but from which she had been removed. It was as if she had been diagnosed with cancer. A few words, and she was dispatched into a parallel universe which had been there all the time, but unvisited by all except the unlucky ones.

And now she was caught up in the momentum of this new life: another appointment with the solicitor, an appearance on Monday at the Magistrates' Court. This new existence brought with it a new vocabulary:
Custody Officer, Notice of Entitlements
 . . . She had entered a foreign country with its own language and there was no going back.

On the floor lay her rain-stained shoes. Yesterday, in another lifetime, she had dressed for work. That young woman was
unreachable now; for a panic-stricken moment Natalie felt a stranger even to herself. Somebody wrote the wrong date on a cheque and now she was a criminal. She hadn't felt like one before; in fact, she had got so accustomed to what she was doing that it had long ago lost its fizz. She thought of her desk at work: its partition stuck with postcards. Already it had the elegiac quality of an old photograph, of an existence taken for granted but now gone for ever.

Natalie stood in the bathroom, brushing her teeth. Her hand was shaking; the toothpaste smeared on her lip. Where was her mother, now she needed her? And where was Colin – her simple, decent husband whom she had hurt so deeply?

She saw him down in the garden. He hadn't gone to work; he must have phoned in sick. It was still raining. Head bowed, he tramped through the mud.

She ran downstairs and followed Colin into the big new shed she had bought him. He was feeding his cane toads.
Watch them!
he had told her once.
Look at them, the fat greedy whatsits, they'll eat anything – bread, cheese, the kitchen sink.
Today he just tipped in a carton of crickets, then turned away, listlessly, and looked at her.

Colin didn't move. The only sound was the trill-phone warbling of the crickets. She remembered larking around.
Hello, this is Natalie speaking, how may I help you?
Today she said nothing. In the tank there was a flurry of activity; one by one, the crickets were silenced.

Natalie took her husband's hand. For the first time, oddly enough, she felt truly married to him.

Colin followed as she led him upstairs. In the bedroom, she took off his woolly hat and unzipped his anorak. She lifted the duvet and they climbed into bed. It was still warm.

Fully clothed, Colin lay down beside her. She pulled up the duvet up over them. ‘Our tortoise shell,' she whispered. ‘Nobody can get at us now.'

Colin lay flat on his back. She turned to him and stroked his cheek; it was as plump and smooth as a child's – just a faint
sandpapering of stubble round the chin. Was he going to be able to cope with this?

She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight. ‘I need you, Stumpy,' she said. ‘Don't leave me.'

So Colin stood by her. He was a loyal young man and he loved her deeply. Her crime bemused him; it was beyond his comprehension. What could have caused her to cheat, so continuously and on such an umimaginable scale? As the weekend passed, however, he started to accept it simply as a part of her personality. He was a rock-climber; he saw it as a fault-line in otherwise solid granite, a stratum of something soft and treacherous like chalk.

But who cared? He rallied. In fact, he felt a stirring of pride, that he could adapt to these new circumstances with such fortitude.
For better or worse.
Wasn't that the point of the marriage vows – that they were tested?

Besides, he had benefited from her criminal activity; they were in it together. He thought, guiltily, of the ease that money had brought to their lives – not just a house, but a lack of hesitation in gratifying their desires: a Sony wide-screen TV, a new washing-machine for his mother. Over the months he had started to take things for granted – that they would fill up the tank instead of buying only ten pounds' worth of petrol; that if something broke down they needn't worry, they could get it mended or buy another one. None of this had bothered him once; he had lived frugally enough and been perfectly content. Now he felt tainted by his raised expectations; he deserved to be punished. Would somebody take it all away from them – the house, the items they had bought? More to the point, what was going to happen to Natalie? Would they take her away too? He didn't say the word
prison
even to himself, he couldn't bring himself to think about it.

Her betrayal of him, of course, had wounded him deeply. However, she had been so loving towards him since then – more loving than he had ever known her – that at times he
was almost grateful for this crisis which had flung them together.

For they were very close now, the two of them clinging to each other in the midst of a hostile world. At last Natalie needed him. How helpless she was, with nobody else to care for her! His protective instincts had usually been frustrated, for she was a feisty young woman. Now, however, they blossomed. He looked after her as if she were an invalid. A few people phoned – a girl from the office, the man called Phillip from the personnel department – but, gratifyingly, she didn't want to speak to them. ‘Get rid of them,' she whispered.

Later, Colin remembered that weekend with great tenderness.
Nothing can take that away
, Natalie had said. Amidst all the fear and anxiety he felt true happiness. Soon the outside world would know – reporters, his mother – but just for now normal life was suspended, it was just himself and Natalie, alone. And to no one else, except her solicitor, had she confided her guilt.

They went out together into the countryside. She even accompanied him on his trip to catch meadow plankton, a nutritious fresh food for small lizards and frogs. He gave her a butterfly net and watched her as she swept it through the weeds. For the first time in their marriage she helped him, putting the bags of insects in the fridge until, stunned by the cold, they were ready to be dispensed.

He took her up on the moors, far north, up to Wensleydale. He showed her the ruins of his grandfather's farmhouse and the fields his family had toiled in all their lives. On the fells above, a satellite mast had been erected. It shocked him by its size. Maybe NuLine, the wrecker of Natalie's life, had put it there, but even that failed to blight their time together.

For he was happy. High up in the sky a lark sang, as if flung there by a fist. It was the most secret of holidays, the honeymoon they had never had. Holding hands like sweethearts, they walked until they were exhausted. The windswept, uncaring hills comforted him. They knew that this was a trifling matter
and that love would endure, as they had, beyond the pettiness of the present. Natalie trotted beside him in her silly shoes; she was all his, undistracted by her normal, baffling preoccupations. It would be months before the trial but already he felt the possible loss of her. It was in the balmy air, like the scent of autumn.

‘Wear what you wore when you came to tea with my mam,' Colin said. ‘You looked really nice then.'

Natalie laughed.

‘I don't mean—' he stumbled ‘I mean, course you look nice, normally . . .' He meant demure and respectable. He hadn't seen those clothes on her since then, in fact.

She ruffled his hair. ‘It's OK.'

Natalie looked remarkably calm. He was already perspiring in his white shirt and tie. They were due at the Magistrates' Court at ten. Mr Wigton was meeting them there.
It's only a formality
, he had said.
Nothing to be nervous about.
To Mr Wigton, of course, it was all in a day's work.

Natalie dressed in the pale suit she had worn to Farida's wedding, and pushed back her hair with the velvet band. She looked unfamiliar to him, elegant and yet vulnerable. He wondered at her variety. She was a chameleon, changing her colour according to circumstances. Of course, chameleons also had the ability to rotate their eyes in different directions. He thought: Criminals can do that too. They could talk to someone's mother whilst eyeing the family silver. Despite their closeness, Natalie unsettled him. All these months, while seemingly focused on him, she had in fact been leading a secret life. Another man might have gone back over the past, re-examining events and searching for clues – when had she lied? – but Colin wasn't the type. He trusted her; he had to trust her. It was as simple as that.

He drove her to the court. There was no sign of his mother, thank goodness; he'd feared she had got wind of it. People sat in the lobby, waiting for their cases to be called. Criminals
through and through, they sat smoking under the THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING sign. They looked both defiant and defeated, the way people do when they expect to be found guilty. He had seen that look on his mates at school. By contrast, Natalie radiated an innocent sort of energy. Colin marvelled at her dewy skin and bright eyes. She would give the law a run for its money!

Oh, but it was painful to surrender her up. She was led away from him; a door clicked behind her. The next time he saw her she was being escorted into the dock. How small she looked! She glanced up at the public gallery, which was nearly empty, and searched along the rows. She didn't seem to see Colin, however; her eyes stopped at somebody else. Colin turned; he recognized the person – it was the man called Phillip, from her office.

She was sworn in and the clerk read out the charge.

‘You have been brought here today on a charge of fraud, handling and deception . . .' Colin flinched.

The magistrate was a severe-looking woman. While the clerk spoke, she gazed at Natalie over her glasses. Everyone else, whoever they were, looked casual – even cheerful. Didn't they realize the momentousness of this moment? They looked like old friends, with his wife an irrelevance. He longed to rush across and take her in his arms.

The clerk addressed Natalie. ‘How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?'

‘Not guilty!' called out Natalie, loud and clear.

‘You shall be summoned to a Crown Court,' said the clerk, ‘to appear at a future date, and time, to be set . . .'

The magistrate beckoned to Mr Wigton; they spoke together in lowered voices. He nodded twice.

The magistrate turned again to Natalie. ‘I shall set bail at five thousand pounds.'

Colin's mouth dropped open. Bail? And then Natalie was whisked away and another person stood in her place.

Colin returned to the lobby. A man approached him, with a notebook.

‘Are you Mr Taylor?'

Colin, distracted, nodded.

‘This must be a big shock for you.'

Colin nodded. ‘It is that.'

‘Are you going to stand by your wife?'

‘Course,' said Colin. ‘She needs me and I need her.'

Natalie hurried up. ‘Fuck off!' she said to the man.

‘Natalie—'

‘He's a reporter, can't you see? A fucking reptile.'

‘Reptile?' Colin turned to the man. ‘She didn't mean it badly – see, I keep reptiles, I'm a herpetologist.'

‘How do you spell that?' asked the man.

‘H-e-r-p—'

‘I said fuck off.' Natalie pulled Colin away. ‘Oh Colin, what'll I do with you?'

Colin's head spun. Could nobody be trusted?

Mr Wigton was waiting for them in a side room. ‘I must admit, I wasn't expecting them to set bail at that sort of sum.'

‘She was a woman,' replied Natalie. ‘She didn't like me, the old bat.' She pulled off her hairband and rubbed her forehead. ‘She thinks I can't be trusted.'

Back home Natalie mixed Colin a gin and tonic. Never in his life had he drunk a gin and tonic in the middle of the day; in fact, he seldom drank at all.

‘How much money have we got?' he asked.

‘Not as much as that. Not even half.' She kicked off her shoes, flung herself on the settee and closed her eyes. ‘Not a quarter.'

They wouldn't need it, of course. She wasn't going to run away. But they needed money for legal fees – was she going to get Legal Aid? Colin's head spun, he couldn't remember. And she had no wages coming in. They needed money simply to carry on.

‘You haven't got . . .?' He stopped.

She opened one eye. ‘What?'

‘Any more money anywhere?'

‘Any more? What do you mean?'

‘Nothing.'