Ninepins (36 page)

At school, things were quiet. She seemed still to be friends with Rianna; at least, her name was mentioned from time to time, and Alice's and Gemma's, never. Nobody came to the house for supper, or round on their bikes, or to watch TV. If Laura occasionally suggested an invitation to a friend, she was met with an apathetic shrug. Beth spent less time on Facebook and more outside, alone or with Willow. The hot weather seemed to draw the two of them out into the garden and along the lode to roam like feral things; they went on long bicycle rides – with Willow's knees knocking the handlebars of Beth's old bike – or sat together in the tree house for hours on end.

Laura was disposed almost to be grateful when, the week after half term, Beth came home from school and asked to go to Rianna's house.

‘On Friday. She says, can I go there after school and have supper and sleep over? Her Mum's out and we're going to watch DVDs.'

‘Her Mum will be out?' said Laura doubtfully.

‘Yes, but it's OK, 'cos Rianna says Liam will probably be there, and he's nineteen. He might have some friends over, too.'

Quite how this made it ‘OK' was lost on Laura. Older boys, on a Friday night and probably drinking. But nineteen, she told herself. Don't be silly, Beth's just a child.

‘Rianna says they always have chips on a Friday when her mum's out. Not oven chips – proper ones from the chip shop. Liam fetches them in the van. Why don't we ever have proper chips?'

‘What DVDs was she thinking, do you know?' It might be the wrong thing to be worrying about, but you could bet it wouldn't be Wallace and Gromit.

‘Oh, I don't know. She says Liam sometimes gets films before they're out. But I don't think she's into horror or scary stuff or anything, if that's what you mean.'

‘All right. Well, I suppose I don't mind 15s, but you definitely shouldn't be watching anything that's an 18. You're only twelve, remember.'

On the Wednesday, two days before the projected sleepover, Laura came home from work early. Her office faced due west over a busy, narrow street; the afternoon sun struck the glass behind her desk, which amplified it to an insupportable intensity, but if she raised the sash the noise and fumes of buses and cars were equally unbearable. A small electric fan, clipped to the edge of her bookshelf, did nothing but slowly rotate the same clogged air. She craved the wide spaces of Ninepins.

Thus, with a back seat piled with books and papers, she drew up on to the dyke beside the house at barely ten past four. There was nothing unusual in seeing two bicycles lie sprawled by the front door; the surprise came as she climbed from the car and approached, with books and key in hand. Both bikes were full sized, and only one was familiar: Beth's birthday bicycle and a battered red mountain bike that Laura didn't recognise.

‘Hello there.'

When there was no reply she guessed they were on the computer, Beth and the owner of the foreign bike. But the sitting room was as deserted as the kitchen. The kettle was cold. Perhaps they had gone out for a walk, or to the tree house. It was too hot an afternoon, surely, for them to be closeted in Beth's stuffy bedroom; besides, from up there Beth would have heard her greeting, and shouted back or wandered out in search of tea. Laying down her books, Laura stood still for a moment to enjoy the empty calm of her kitchen, which always stayed cool in the summer.

That was when she heard it: the sound of strangled sobbing. Even through a floor, two walls and possibly a pillow there was no mistaking Beth. There could be no number to the times she had heard her daughter cry: from the first small Moses basket next to the bed, when one snuffle would have her wide awake and watchful, through grazed knees and bumped heads to the larger losses and disappointments that no mother could keep away. And still, every time when she heard the sound, it tugged at the same place beneath her ribs where the invisible line connected. She moved for the stairs.

The crying was coming from Beth's bedroom, of which the door stood slightly ajar.

‘Love?' called Laura softly as she grasped the handle.

Her mind had emptied of everything but Beth, so she was startled to come face to face with another girl. Dark-haired, slim, with a narrow nose and sharp cheekbones: it was the other one, Rianna's sidekick, Caitlin.
What have you done to my Beth? How have you upset her?

‘I brought her home, Mrs Blackwood. I thought I'd better.' Laura couldn't recall hearing her voice before – or else it was not how she'd remembered. ‘She was in a terrible state at the end of school. I didn't like to leave her to get home on her own. You know, on her bike and everything.'

‘Oh. Right. Er, thank you.'

Caitlin stepped meekly aside to let Laura to the bed, where her daughter lay doubled round a folded pillow, which she clutched like a life preserver. Her face was invisible, pressed down between her arms. Her back was tense but no longer shaking; the noise had ceased.

‘Love,' she said again, and placed a hand lightly on the nearest of Beth's shoulders. ‘What is it, sweetheart?'

A muffled moan was the only response, so she sat down on the bed and fretted gently at Beth's shoulder and neck, murmuring the usual nothings. ‘Never mind … later … doesn't matter … baby girl.'

From by the door, Caitlin, forgotten again, gave a cough. ‘Perhaps I'll go, then. Now that you're here.'

Laura looked up. ‘Oh, well, if you need to be off, then of course. Thank you so much for bringing Beth home and looking after her. It's terribly kind of you. But you know, you're very welcome to stay a bit, if you like. Stay and have supper with us.'

The girl shifted on to one foot. ‘Well …'

‘Go if you like. Or stay. We're grateful either way.'

‘It was Rianna.' Caitlin said the words quickly, and with her eyes downturned; they seemed to have cost her some effort of will.

‘Rianna?'

She nodded. ‘That made her cry, yes. It was at the end of last lesson, in the cloakroom, but I don't know what it was about. Just that they'd been talking and Rianna said something and Beth was really upset.' Then, with a surge of vehemence, she added, ‘Rianna's a cow.'

‘I see. Well, thank you for telling me.'

Rianna – again. So much for the sleepover and the DVDs, the chip shop chips.

‘Um, do you think …?' Caitlin sidled closer to the door. ‘Maybe Beth'd like a cup of tea or something?'

Laura smiled. ‘I'm sure she would. Maybe we could all have one? I'm sure you'll find the things. Thank you, Caitlin, you're a good girl. I expect we'll be down soon.'

Caitlin escaped for the kitchen, leaving them alone. Laura bent forward and snaked her arms round Beth, who shifted and rolled until she was cradled in her mother's lap. There was no need to say anything more, not for now; it was enough to hold her close and slowly, slowly, rock her to and fro.

It might have been two minutes, or five, or ten, before finally Beth stirred and made a throaty sound.

‘Thrrrghk.' Then, more distinctly, ‘Thanks.'

‘Feeling a bit better? Shall we go down in a minute?'

‘Uh-huh.'

‘I bought some Jaffa cakes. A cup of tea and a Jaffa cake.'

‘Mm.'

‘And macaroni cheese for supper?'

‘Mm. Mum?' Beth raised a blotched and tear-blurred face.

‘What, love?'

‘Tell me you didn't just call Caitlin a good girl.'

Downstairs, Caitlin had found the kettle and mugs and milk but not the tea bags; instead, the china tea pot, which had come from Laura's aunt and not been used in years, stood steaming in the middle of the kitchen table, next to a battered packet of leaf Darjeeling.

‘Where's Willow, I wonder?' said Laura, as she searched through her bag for the Jaffa cakes.

‘In the pumphouse, I should think.' Beth had rinsed her face in the bathroom before they came down, but her face was still mottled and her voice clotted thick. ‘She's always down there now.'

The sunny weather had finally shamed Laura into finishing the decorating, and Willow had been moving back in by slow degrees. The spare room was still very much hers, but bits and pieces of books and clothes had found their way down to the pumphouse, which she now used as a daytime bolthole and, just recently, an occasional place to spend the night.

‘Perhaps I won't call her, then, just at the moment. We'll see if she wants to come in and join us for supper, later on.'

The present arrangements seemed a good idea to Laura: let Willow acclimatise, move back out of the house at her own pace.

‘Can me and Caitlin take her down a Jaffa cake, though? After we've drunk our tea?'

‘Of course, love.'

‘Is Willow your sister?' asked Caitlin. Laura was curious. Had they really never met? Did Beth not talk about Willow to her school friends?

‘Lodger,' muttered Beth through a mouthful of orangey crumbs.

Caitlin put her mug down on the table. ‘My nan had a lodger,' she said. ‘He drank all her sherry and filled the bottle up with water. Then he took the electric drill out of the garage and left without paying the rent.'

‘Wow. Did she call the police and everything?'

‘Yes, but they never caught him. He said he was called Walter but the police said it might not be his real name. I hated him. He used to babysit for me sometimes and he stank.'

Beth stared at her. ‘Well, Willow's not like that. Willow's OK.'

The tea drunk, Beth stood up and reached for the packet of Jaffa cakes. ‘OK if we take them down there, then, Mum?'

‘Yes, you go.' Laura turned to Caitlin, who had also risen from her chair. ‘So, does that mean you're going to stay for supper?'

She smiled shyly. ‘If you're sure that's all right? Thank you very much, Mrs. Blackwood.'

 

The confounding of expectation, decided Laura as she sat alone at the kitchen table much later, could sometimes be a pleasurable thing. But if Caitlin, at least, was not the demon of her imaginings, that still left Rianna, and what she could have had said to cause so much distress to Beth.

It was after eleven thirty and she ought to be heading up to bed. But the kitchen was cool, the tiles fresh and smooth beneath her bare feet. Upstairs, beneath the eaves, the heat seemed to gather and coalesce to a warm syrup, clogging her lungs. Even with the window wide open since she first came home, her bedroom, she knew, would be stifling. Sleep would be impossible.

Willow might have the best idea. She was sleeping in the pumphouse again tonight, claiming it was cooler down there. Perhaps the damp soil at the base of the dyke, which for most of the year waged a siege to be resisted, was now to be counted a blessing. Yet it must be an airless spot; Laura was thankful for the house's elevation, giving it surrounding space.

Sitting here at the table, in any event, was hardly a solution, and she was too hot and tired to read. Perhaps she should go out for a stroll along the lode, take a look at the stars. But she feared to find the outside air as thick as that indoors, and to come back more oppressed than ever. Instead, she might go up and have a cool bath, or at least clean her teeth and splash cold water on her face.

As she stood, eyes screwed and dripping, at the basin and turned off the tap, she heard a stirring in her daughter's room. Evidently Beth could not sleep, either. Still with towel in hand, she walked along the landing and tapped at the door.

‘Beth,' she said quietly, ‘are you awake?'

A groan supplied her answer; she pushed the door open and stepped inside.

‘Urggh. Why's it so freaking hot?'

Beth was in the bed, or rather on it, but she wasn't lying down. The top sheet that Laura had given her as an alternative to the duvet when temperatures first began to spiral lay on the carpet in a tangled heap, while Beth sat sideways across the bed with her back to the wall and legs spread forward and wide, clad in knickers and a vest top. She tilted back her head and blew upwards, sending her fringe into a dance.

‘Too ho-o-ot.'

‘I know, love. I've had enough of it, too. It's hopeless for trying to get to sleep.'

‘Tell me about it.'

Laura picked up the discarded sheet and shook out the sticky creases, lifting it high and letting it billow. The movement caused the stilted air to shift a little.

‘Oh, yes, please. Do that again, Mum.'

Laughing softly, she began to rotate on the spot, flapping the sheet like a mainsail cut loose from its rig. Soon Beth was off the bed and grabbing for the bottom corners, lifting them up to join in the game. By the time they collapsed together on the bed with the sheet on top they were giggling like a pair of eight-year-olds but, if anything, even hotter than before.

Beth lay and panted, tongue out, until gradually her breaths returned to normal. When all was still again, she spoke. ‘I trusted her, Mum.'

Without turning to face her, or even raising herself from where she lay half-prone, Laura said, ‘Rianna?'

A short nod. Another pause, and then, ‘Stupid. So totally stupid of me, but I talked to her. I thought I could trust her. Why on earth did I ever tell her anything?'

The best thing was usually to bide her time and wait, but Laura's impatience overcame her. ‘What did you tell her, sweetheart?'

Beth pulled herself upright, and slightly away from her mother, face averted. Laura sat up awkwardly and cursed herself for a clumsy fool; she had pushed too hard. But after some moments' silence, Beth spoke again.

‘Dougie.' It was a croak, not much more than a whisper. But then she added, more strongly, ‘I told her about Dougie.'

‘
Oh, Beth
.'

Inadequately, she reached over and laid a hand on her daughter's knee. The skin was clammy with sweat.

‘I told her …' Her voice choked; the tears were back again, welling to the surface beneath which they had lain only shallowly buried. ‘I told her, and she … and she …'