Is There Anything You Want? (14 page)

By this time, as Mrs Hibbert knew, Emma had moved into the playground hut with ‘Sluke. She'd phoned Mrs Hibbert the day she did this, saying she couldn't come because she and Luke were making the hut more ‘homely'. Luke was going to make a table out of some packing cases and they'd got hold of an inflatable mattress they were going to mend (it had a puncture) and blow up, and she, Emma, was going to paint the walls. The following week when she did turn up she was wildly enthusiastic about what she referred to as ‘our little pad' in which she and Luke were blissfully comfortable. Mrs Hibbert, aghast, had wondered aloud what Emma's parents thought. They'd gone away, on holiday, a long holiday, completely unlike them, according to Emma. She and her sister Laura were on their own, but at the moment Laura was away on holiday too and knew nothing about Emma's squat. She assured Mrs Hibbert that she was looking after the house, visiting it each day to feed the cat and to check that everything was fine. She went there for baths too, but – and Mrs Hibbert found this rather telling – didn't let Luke go there, because she knew her parents would not like it. He had, in fact, suggested that they could use the Greens' family house while her parents were away, but Emma had vetoed this. She preferred the hut, she said.

That evening, when Emma had gone off to the hut, Mrs Hibbert tried to analyse why she felt so dreadfully anxious. There was no need for her to feel responsible for the girl, none at all. She hardly knew her and whatever happened no blame could ever be laid at her door. But that was a cheat. Mrs Hibbert hated cheats, people who absolved themselves from what they perfectly well knew was their
moral
responsibility. The point was, Emma had put her in possession of the facts by telling her about the squatting, and so she could not truthfully claim to have no involvement in the girl's life. Emma was vulnerable. ‘Sluke dominated her easily and completely. This was dangerous, and something should be done about it, but what? That was what kept Mrs Hibbert awake at night. She went over and over what Emma had told her about ‘Sluke: he had dropped
out of the sixth form, he worked in a bar ‘sometimes', his parents were divorced, he lived with his mother when he wasn't in the hut, he didn't get on with her, he was going to go travelling when he'd got some cash together. Emma was worth ten of him, but it was no good telling her that. Mrs Hibbert just wished that Mr and Mrs Green would hurry home, or that at least the sister would.

Meanwhile, living in the squat Emma started to look worn. If ‘Sluke was using her gardening wages to buy food (which Mrs Hibbert doubted – she was convinced he was buying something else entirely) then he was buying the wrong sort. Emma's healthy complexion vanished. She became very pale, no colour in her cheeks at all, and spotty. Her hair grew lank, and she lost weight. She still smiled cheerfully, but the smile was strained and looked false. Mrs Hibbert began making her nourishing fruit juice drinks and offering her a bowl of home-made soup with some wholemeal bread at the end of her gardening. Everything she offered was gratefully accepted and gobbled up in seconds. One day, just as Emma was about to leave, it started to rain heavily. It had rained at the end of many of Emma's afternoons in the garden and Mrs Hibbert had not offered to drive her home, but suddenly she decided to do so, realising that she needed to see this hut to be able properly to assess Emma's situation (that was how she justified her offer, but really she knew it was just that she wanted to satisfy her curiosity). Emma was not as keen to be driven home as might have been expected, though the rain was torrential and she would have got very wet cycling. She hesitated, and said she didn't want to put Mrs Hibbert to any bother, and suggested maybe she could just wait in the kitchen till the rain eased off, but Mrs Hibbert said no, that would not be convenient. So the bike was put in the tool shed, to be collected later in the week, and the two of them got into the car. Emma told Mrs Hibbert where the playground was – right on the other side of town, on its very outskirts – and she drove there in fifteen minutes. She pulled up at its gates, which were of course padlocked together. Emma got out, thanked her, and went on standing there, getting soaked. Mrs Hibbert had no intention of moving. She sat watching as
the girl finally turned away from the car and trudged along the railings until she reached a gap where they were bent out of shape. She squeezed through, and skirted the swings to reach the hut. Mrs Hibbert saw that it was a very small hut and that as Emma had described it was boarded up. Emma looked round, gave a limp wave to Mrs Hibbert, took a key from her pocket – so ‘Sluke had either found or fashioned a key to the lock – and went inside.

It was too pathetic. Something had to be done. Mrs Hibbert raged all the way home, thinking of that poor girl alone in that horrible dark hut, waiting for that feckless boy to join her. Scandalous. She felt she should have marched across to that hut (except she couldn't have got through the railings, she reminded herself) and hammered on the door, and when Emma had opened it, grabbed her by the hand and pulled her out. She should have brought her home and insisted that she see sense and return to the family home. She would have been called an interfering old busybody perhaps, but sometimes one had to interfere. She couldn't settle to anything that evening. Her hand kept going to lift the telephone but she couldn't think whom to phone. And then, about nine o'clock, she found herself dialling (she had kept her old-fashioned telephone, not wanting one of those push-button abominations) the Greens' family house, just on the off-chance that Emma's sister had returned. When Mrs Green answered, Mrs Hibbert was so surprised she was momentarily speechless. ‘Oh!' she managed to say, sounding stupid. ‘Yes?' Mrs Green said, impatiently. ‘Who is this, please?' Mrs Hibbert told her who she was, gathering her normal confidence as she went on. She expressed her concern for Emma, said she knew the Greens had been on a long holiday and probably were unaware that Emma was squatting in a derelict playground hut, but that she had taken her there today and had been appalled at the circumstances in which their daughter was choosing to live. She didn't mention ‘Sluke. Mrs Green's reaction was very strange. There was a long pause, and then she said, ‘Emma is nearly 18 now. She isn't a child. She knows what she wants.' There was no thank you for calling, thank you for caring, thank you for informing us, how kind and thoughtful of you. Just
‘Emma is nearly 18 now. She isn't a child. She knows what she wants.'

Finally, the woman did add that she understood Mrs Hibbert's concern but urged her not to worry. Emma was stronger than she looked and would be able to survive such minor hardships as living in a playground hut. ‘It will probably do her good,' Mrs Green said. And then she asked, ‘What did you say your name was?' and when Mrs Hibbert repeated it there was another silence. ‘Thank you,' said Mrs Green and hung up. As soon as she'd replaced the receiver, Mrs Hibbert regretted what she had done. What would Emma think, what would she say? She would surely feel betrayed. But then, as she got ready for bed, Mrs Hibbert consoled herself with the thought that, as Mrs Green was so very odd, she might never mention the phone call at all. This, it seemed, was true. The next time Emma came (twice a week, now her exams were over), nothing was mentioned about a phone call to her mother. She just said her parents were home again and that she'd told them she'd moved in with Luke. Mrs Hibbert didn't ask what they had said, but Emma volunteered the information anyway. ‘Dad's furious,' she said, ‘but Mum says it's my own affair.' ‘How extraordinary,' Mrs Hibbert couldn't help commenting. ‘What?' said Emma. ‘Well, that your
mother
should be so untroubled.'

She gave a great deal of thought to Mrs Green's attitude after that. Did her lack of concern, or apparent lack of concern, mean that she didn't care about her daughter? Or was it, on the contrary, a sign that she trusted her and respected her wishes? Mrs Hibbert couldn't decide. The father's reaction, on the other hand, was entirely appropriate and easy to understand. She wondered if he would seek out ‘Sluke and try to talk to him. Emma did let drop that she wasn't going home at the moment because her father's anger had not abated. This meant, as Mrs Hibbert quickly noted, that she was not having a bath or shower. She looked grubbier each time she came to garden and finally, when she'd arrived bedraggled anyway, with her hair positively greasy, and had dug out and transplanted some small potentillas, Mrs Hibbert had offered her the chance to have a bath. Emma stayed in the bathroom an irritatingly long time and
emerged with her skin glowing and her hair smelling sweetly of lemon shampoo. This was a little disconcerting. The shampoo had been in the bathroom cabinet, which meant the girl must have opened it. Permission had not been given to do this. Still, Mrs Hibbert let the trivial intrusion go. What she could not let go was how Emma left the bathroom: wet towel in a heap on the floor, hairs in the plughole – quite disgusting for someone else to have to remove. She spoke sharply to the girl, but privately blamed that mother of hers for not bringing her up properly.

Having a bath before her tea soon became Emma's habit, but though this improved her appearance it did not improve it enough. Her clothes sometimes looked filthy, especially her jeans. Emma said she hadn't been able to wash them because of the weather. ‘The weather?' said Mrs Hibbert. ‘Good heavens, what an excuse. There are two launderettes in town, Emma, and I believe they have drying machines.' Emma's eyes filled with tears and she said she couldn't afford to use a launderette, and she didn't want to take her dirty clothes to her parents' home to put them in the washing machine there because her father would be sure to find out and he'd say it was proof that she couldn't manage on her own. ‘Well, you can't,' snapped Mrs Hibbert. Emma then wept. Between hiccuping sobs, she said that she and Luke had run out of money. They hadn't enough to feed Charlie's dog. It was the first Mrs Hibbert had heard of Charlie or his dog. She was scandalised to hear that Luke had agreed to look after his friend's dog, because he, Charlie, was going to work on an oil rig for three months. Charlie had left money but Luke had lost it. Naturally, Mrs Hibbert wanted ‘lost' defined. It turned out that the money had to be used to pay Luke's fine, which was for a driving offence – it was all so ridiculous. She began to lecture Emma on the necessity of ‘Sluke getting a job and of Emma herself returning home, but the sobs only grew louder. By then the girl had her head down on the kitchen table, where she'd been having her tea (and Mrs Hibbert had certainly observed scones being slipped into the bag at her feet). Her arms were over her head and what she was saying was muffled, but her words could
still be made out: ‘I love him! I can't leave him! You don't understand! I
love
him!'

It was all rather upsetting, and Mrs Hibbert felt quite shaky when Emma had trailed off. What upset her most was that the girl would imagine that she knew nothing about what it was like to be hopelessly in love. She would be bound to think, from everything she knew about her employer (not much, so far as feelings went) that she would be scornful of being in love. Mrs Hibbert had badly wanted to tell Emma that this was not true, but it was too embarrassing. She simply could not have embarked on the story of how much in love she had been, not just with Francis, long before he had even noticed her, but with someone before that. The emotion – love, not lust, definitely not lust – welling up inside her at the mere sight of Francis had made her light-headed and giddy and for the first time in her life she had lost weight. It had all been torture. She had known she wasn't pretty, that she was too serious, she wasn't young, and that there was nothing about her to attract him. If Francis had asked her to live in a derelict playground hut with him, she would not have hesitated.

She could tell none of this to Emma. Her role was to be the voice of common sense, to repeat over and over again that Emma must extricate herself from this situation before she made herself any more miserable. Then something unexpected happened. Emma was left some money. She arrived one afternoon, breathless and with cheeks flushed, waving a letter in her hand. She'd been left the enormous sum of £10,000 by a great-aunt whom she had never met. Her sister Laura had been left the same. She was almost hysterical with joy, smiling as she had not done for weeks, but Mrs Hibbert glared at her and was immediately at her most formidably stem. ‘Emma!' she said. ‘Emma, I hope you are not going to be foolish. I hope your father has spoken to you, I hope he has told you to bank that money in a deposit account while you take advice on how to invest it.' Emma laughed. She said he had. ‘And Emma,' went on Mrs Hibbert, ‘I trust you will not tell Luke.' Emma looked shocked, but before she could speak Mrs Hibbert added that it would be most unwise because Luke was a spendthrift and would encourage her to waste it. ‘But I
can't keep secrets from Luke,' Emma said, eyes wide with innocence. ‘We share everything.' ‘As far as I am aware,' said Mrs Hibbert, ‘he has nothing to share. You earn the money and you do the only sharing.' Emma was silent, and stopped smiling, but she looked mutinous. ‘I want to tell Luke,' she said. ‘It will relieve him. It will mean we can rent a flat and maybe buy a second-hand car, and . . .' ‘A car!' shouted Mrs Hibbert. ‘Are you quite mad, Emma? The money will run out in no time if you buy a car, second-hand cars eat money. This is your insurance, it's your rainy-day money, you must
not
squander it, you must listen to your father. And what does your mother say? You haven't mentioned her.' ‘She says I should give it to charity,' Emma said, ‘to a Jewish charity. Or else to Cancer Research.'

This did stop Mrs Hibbert's ranting. She was completely taken aback. Emma couldn't help being pleased. She watched Mrs Hibbert struggle to decide what she thought about this, and then she said, ‘I'm not going to, of course. I don't see why I should. Aunt Marlene could have left it to charity if she'd wanted to, but she didn't. She left it to me and Laura, and I'm sure she wanted us to enjoy it. Dad says she had a terrible childhood, she was in some awful camp, and then afterwards she was ill. She never had any fun. I'm sure she would have wanted Laura and me to have fun.' Mrs Hibbert groaned. ‘You having fun is one thing, Emma, but Luke having it at your expense is another. Be sensible. At least bank half.' Emma nodded. She said that was what she would do. But she refused to promise not to tell Luke the whole truth. She said she trusted him, even if no one else did, and she wanted no secrets from him. Mrs Hibbert had to be content with that. For a while, all went well. Emma turned up nicely dressed in a new bright red shirt and black cotton shorts and her hair was always washed, with no need of Mrs Hibbert's shampoo. She and Luke had moved into a rented flat which had a proper bathroom and a washing machine. ‘Bliss!' said Emma. The only problem now was Charlie's dog (known simply as ‘Dog'). Pets were not allowed in the flat, but Luke had been unable to find anyone to take the dog until Charlie returned from the oil rig, and so they were trying to keep it hidden, which was difficult. Emma admired Luke for keeping his word to
Charlie and was hurt when Mrs Hibbert said that there was nothing to admire in someone flouting rules. ‘Luke is loyal,' she said. ‘He's like that, he's that sort of person.' Privately, Mrs Hibbert thought, he was quite a different sort of person, but she managed to say no more.