‘I’m gonna wet myself.’
‘You better not.’
‘I am. I so badly need a piss.’
‘You think he’s gone?’
‘Honest to God, it’s coming out.
‘Shush. I can hear him breathing.’
There was a silence, then a plaintive cry.
‘You are gross, man! I don’t believe it!’
‘I told you!’
Spiralling laughter looped up out of the urn and Laura’s head shot out of the top of it like a fast-growing tropical shrub. She tried to hoist herself free of the neck, her face a pantomime of horror and hysteria. Adrian put one hand experimentally against the curved side of the rocking urn and held it there a moment before giving it a little push and scrabbling away behind the garden pots. He heard the rumble, the screams and the laughter but didn’t hang around to see the damage.
At the checkout, Urban was lifting a water butt and a humane squirrel trap on to Bea’s trolley while she paid the assistant.
‘There you are,’ said Bea to Adrian. ‘Where are the others? Thank you so much, Urban.’ She was keen to be rid of him now. He was loitering and she sensed that Adrian was judging her. She shouldn’t really flirt in front of the children. ‘Adrian can help me get it in the car.’ Be bright and light, she told herself. Just be bright and light, Precious had told her. Patrick’s not going to want a weeping wreck on his hands, is he? And it was good advice. It had worked for years and years.
They wheeled their trolley out of the shop towards the car park, where they found Laura and Chanel, who had stopped by a stand of cyclamens with their pale pink and lilac flowers. Laura pushed Chanel towards the plants. Chanel squealed. Laura’s laughter made her whole body jerk and stagger. She tried to run but Chanel held her school bag so that she boomeranged backwards. Both girls half fell and found their faces inches away from the flowers’ purple-stained mouths. There was a silence.
‘They’re freakin’ me out. I’m serious, man, they’re pervy!’
Laura stared, then pranced back from the flowers. ‘Ik! Uggers! They look like them old singers my granny likes.’
Chanel got to her feet, stuck her hands deep into her pockets and backed into a table of pansies. She shook her head and said, ‘They ain’t natural, man, I swear. No way.’
Bea looked at the cyclamens and started to laugh. ‘Come on,’ she called. If they didn’t get back soon there would be no time for food. And she still hadn’t done anything about her mother’s birthday party. But she would definitely come back for a few trays of cyclamens. They’d look lovely on the patio.
When they reached the car, Adrian said, ‘What do you do with them?’
‘What?’ said Bea. ‘They’re just being girls. They’ll be women soon and they won’t find that so funny,’ and she added a laugh to let Adrian know she was only joking. Sort of.
‘The squirrels.’ Adrian wasn’t laughing.
Bea opened the boot and put the squirrel trap inside. ‘We release them,’ she lied. Actually she was going to lower them inside their traps into the water butt. The squirrels had decimated her garden. They were going to have to go. But humanely. Drowning was reputedly one of the easy ways – some struggle and panic but then a sleepy dreaminess.
‘Help me in with this butt.’
They heaved it into the boot and tried to shut the door.
‘It’s too big.’ She started to laugh again. Laughing was the other side of crying, she thought. You could go weeks without doing either, becoming more and more wound up and burdened, and then, snap, out it would come. They took out the water butt, put the squirrel trap on the roof of the car and tried the butt the other way. The boot door only half closed. Bea took a step back and looked at the car.
‘Damn,’ she said, laughing. She looked at Adrian. ‘Don’t say it.’
‘Don’t say what?’
‘What you’re about to say.’
‘What?’
Laura and Chanel danced up to them, their school ties pulled almost out, their skirts rolled over at the top so that they only just covered their bottoms and their shirts knotted just below their push-up bras. Urban watched from the Sand, Pebbles and Gravel section.
‘That geezer thinks he’s so sprung and he’s so not sprung,’ said Chanel.
‘He’s
un
sprung,’ said Laura.
‘Yeah, zero sprung.’ Chanel glowered in Urban’s direction and sucked her teeth.
‘Come on,’ said Bea. ‘Get in.’ She gave the butt a final shove. They would just have to drive home with the boot half open. She got in the driver’s seat and slammed the door. The children bundled in through the passenger door and Bea started the engine. She put the car in reverse and backed into the fence.
Adrian said, ‘Mind the fence.’
‘Whoops,’ said Bea. ‘I can’t see a thing.’
The car leapt forward and then stalled.
‘Laura’s boob just popped out!’ shouted Chanel.
‘Don’t look, Adrian, you
paedo
,’ said Laura.
‘
Paedo
?’ said Bea.
Adrian turned to Bea. ‘Your butt’s too big,’ he said.
Pray
T
HE NEXT
Tuesday, Bea half walked and half ran up the hill to school, two bags of documents tugging her arms and a laptop banging at her hip. She prayed she hadn’t missed the children. She had promised to take them to the cinema, a promise she made before she realised it was the council inspection the following day, but she never cancelled a Tuesday or a treat with the children. Tuesday was their day together come what may, and so, breathless and sweating, here she was when she should have been in the office and getting the paperwork done. She heard Laura’s voice from twenty paces. She was arguing with Chanel on the other side of the hawthorn hedge. Bea waited out of sight. She loved their noise and their chutzpah. It enraged and dismayed Katharine and Frank, but she found that it made her glad. No one was going to grind these girls down. Well, not for a while anyhow.
‘No. Listen, right? It’s. Thing is. Everyone’s different. You get. You got your. Take me, right? Other. Other people. Other people, right? Other people might. Like other people might pray for. Pray for their daily bread. Right? But. But I. But I pray for. I pray. I pray for—’
‘Praying, Chanel. Praying. Praying’s gonna get you like. Nowhere. No. Where, Chanel. It’s a waste of time. Who prays these days?’
‘What you saying? That’s bad, man. What you saying?’
‘I’m saying. I’m saying, right? I mean, if there was a God? If there was a God then how come we’re not all millionaires?’
‘You saying there int a God? I’m movin’ from next to you, man. ’Cos something bad’s gonna happen. You say stuff like that. Something bad’s gonna happen.’
‘’S right though, innit? If there is a God then how come there’s bad stuff happening in . . . A God wouldn’t. A God wouldn’t do that.’
‘If there ain’t a God, then how come there’s prayers? Answer that. Answer that then. Answer that then ’cos you can’t, see! Can you? Can’t answer that one, can you?’
‘No, shut up, yeah? I dint say that. I dint say there weren’t. Didn’t say there weren’t a God. I said, right? I said how come, right? If you was listening. I said—’
‘You’re gonna get a thunderbolt, you are. I’m movin’ to here, man! I ain’t standin’ here to be struck down!’
‘Why int everyone millionaires, yeah? ’Cos. Think about it. Think about it. If there was a God and you pray to him—’
‘You’re a. You’re a. What they call it? You’re a. You’re gonna burn at the stake!’
‘Shut up! Listen. Shut up! Listen. We could all be rich, yeah? Have whatever we want. You know, a Nokia thingy. Live on nothing but Twixes.’
‘Twixes? Creme Eggs. Creme Eggs and KitKats. And M&Ms. And a. A Motorola—’
‘They’re ming. Samsung more like.’
‘Like that one you jacked?’
‘I never jacked that, man!’
‘You said you jacked it.’
‘I never. I was given it.’
‘Yeah. You so jacked it, man. You told me. You so jacked that phone.’
‘That was a Sony whatsit. They’re hot. Buff, man. I mean it, man! Them phones are buff. That’s what I’d get.’
‘And Twixes.’
‘And Creme Eggs!’
‘And Bounties. Innit though?’
Chanel popped her face round the corner of the hedge.
‘It’s your auntie.’
Bea stepped through the school gates and waved hello. It had always been her day since they started nursery, although lately they had been at her house most days. Katharine’s work was getting more pressured and Richard’s work had always been impossible. ‘Impossible,’ Katharine said, when Bea asked how things were. ‘Absolutely impossible. We’re going to have to move.’ Meanwhile, on Tuesdays, and sometimes Fridays, and last week Monday too, Bea left work early and made up the hours getting in early and working late on the other days. She always felt guilty, though, creeping out at two forty-five while Precious and Karen stayed at their desks.
‘You don’t have to be good,’ Precious told her. ‘You do more than enough hours for this place. And you’ve never had maternity leave. Go on. Take your Tuesdays and enjoy them.’
But Tuesdays had become awkward since Barry Charles’s arrival. Nothing had been said, but Bea sensed the disapproval. So today she had left work late and then she had missed the bus.
Laura put her face right up in front of Bea’s.
‘Can I go to the shop?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Please, Bea, please.’
‘Well, I suppose so, but Laura, where’s Adrian?’
‘In homework club!’ Laura ran down the pavement after Chanel. ‘I won’t be long!’
Bea looked back up the road and her heart jumped. There was Katharine getting out of her Jeep and talking to a waiting mother. What was Katharine doing here on a Tuesday?
Bea collected up her bags again and wandered over to her sister and waited for her to finish her conversation. Passing mothers and children nodded and smiled when they saw Bea standing there. She smiled back and leaned against Katharine’s car, feeling like a child herself. When people asked her whether she had children, as they inevitably did, there was always the pause after she said no. Sometimes during school holidays, like the one that had just finished, it felt to Bea like the answer to that question should be yes. After all, Laura and Adrian spent almost as much time with her and Frank as they did with their own parents. But really the answer was no, and the pause that followed would rise up sometimes only as far as her thighs while the questioner changed the subject; sometimes it would rise right up to her chest, and on a bad day it would lap at her throat so that Bea had to stretch out her chin and draw a long breath in. And in the pause, she would see the questioner realise what a trespass the question was, as if they had asked about her bowels or her sex life.
Katharine’s voice was getting shrill and strained.
‘Well I’ll have a word with Laura, but I absolutely know that she would never do anything to jeopardise her relationship with Stella . . .’
The woman talking to Katharine shifted her feet unhappily, turning her head away as Katharine tried to plough on.
‘As I say, I’ll have a word, but—’
‘But I’m not sure that discussing it is going to help. I just want you to tell Laura to stop the negative comments.’
‘Absolutely. I think we may very well find that this is something that has been blown right out of proportion. Obviously, I will sit down with Laura and ask her if she has friendship issues she’d like to look at . . .’
‘I don’t think Stella’s blowing anything out of proportion. She doesn’t want to go to school. There are things written on the toilet walls about her that—’
‘I absolutely and totally understand how upsetting it must be. Honestly. You see, the thing is,
because
of Laura’s dyslexia . . . she is in actual fact very very bright and she’s really interested in boundaries and where she can take them. We’re not happy with the way the school has been failing to support her, and as you may know we are moving very very soon . . . Bea! What are you doing here?’
Bea smiled at the two women. Someone’s phone bleated.
‘Is that your phone?’ said Bea.
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’
‘Not me,’ said Bea. ‘My phone’s been nicked.’
‘God! It hasn’t, has it? Then it must be me. God. I pray that doesn’t happen to me. It is. It’s me again. Hello? Damn, missed it.’ She waved off the aggrieved mother.
‘Katharine. I think one of us has the days wrong.’ Bea looked away, up towards the school gates. ‘I thought Tuesday was my day.’
‘God, that woman is a pain in the arse. She’s paranoid about her bloody daughter. Convinced that Laura is getting at her. I mean, can you imagine Laura being a bully? The real problem is with the mother, of course. The poor child is in dire need of a parentectomy—’
‘Today’s Tuesday. Tuesday’s my day.’
‘Well it is. Normally. But didn’t you get my text?’ Katharine grasped the shoulder strap of her handbag, lifted her sunglasses up on to her head and took a few steps towards the school fence. Trip-trap, trip-trap.
Bea looked at Katharine’s shoes, patent black leather slingbacks. They pointed north, north-east, east and then north again. Leaves scuttled along the gutter. I am paying too much attention to everything, Bea told herself, and concentrated on slowing her breathing. Adrian appeared by her side. Laura slunk up behind him.
‘There you are,’ said Katharine. ‘Come on now, we need to get back.’ She looked at Bea and added, ‘I’ll take you home, Bea.’
‘We’re leaving,’ said Adrian.
Bea felt something let go inside her. ‘What?’
Katharine shooed everyone into the car. ‘Bea, come home with us for a short while. Then I can tell you what’s happened.’
Go
I
NSIDE
K
ATHARINE
’
S
car, Bea sat in the passenger seat and watched as Cambridge peeled past her, silenced and removed. This is what money buys, she thought. This is the reward that success brings: a hermetically sealed corridor through the world.