Ninepins (6 page)

The site was at the top of a cliff, but it can't have been a high one because there were wooden steps down to the beach and she counted them each time she went up and down. Seventeen. The beach was a mixture of sand and pebbles in stripes, and the cliff was made of sand as well, rather than rock or the white chalk that you see in picture books. It was soft and had crumbled away beneath the steps, so that in places you looked down through the gaps at empty air as if you were crossing a bridge; the sand settled on the steps, too, in a thin layer, silting up the grooves in the woodgrain and turning it as smooth and treacherous as a freshly polished floor. Clambering up was no trouble, but Willow always came down backwards, holding on tight to the step above with both hands. She counted backwards, too, starting with seventeen and ending on zero with her bare feet sunk in the fine, warm sand. There was no memory of rain, and the weather must have been hot because sometimes the sand was almost burning, so that she had to run to the line where the sea had been, where it was cooler and firmer. She didn't recollect ever wearing shoes.

One day stood out from the others. It could have been morning or afternoon but it was certainly sunny, and Willow was on the beach, on her own as usual. She had walked a little way out into the sea. The water was always cold to begin with and the first few times she'd gone in she'd hopped and splashed about to keep warm, or run straight out again. But then she found out that it stopped being cold if you stood really still. Sometimes, like this time, she went in deeper, up to her knees or even beyond, half way to the hem of her blue flannel shorts. If she stood there for long enough and then turned and walked back to the shore, something amazing happened to the sea. From being cold on the way in, the water at the edge was transformed on the way back out; it grew warmer and warmer, and the very last bit, where it lapped on the sand, was actually hot, as if you were in the bath. Willow had tried telling her mother about it but she hadn't seemed to hear. On this particular day, she was standing thigh-deep and waiting for the cold to stop when a woman in a sun-dress with big yellow roses on it called out to her from the beach. Willow turned but she didn't smile because she didn't know who she was.

To her surprise the woman hitched up her dress and waded out to where Willow stood, taking her by the hand and leading her back to the sand. She didn't like it but she didn't struggle or protest, because the woman's grip was gentle and the skin of her palm was smooth, and she had a nice smell of tangerines and sun lotion. Then she bent down to a level with Willow's fringe and asked her what her name was and where she was staying, and Willow told her and said that hers was the caravan with the cream up above and the pink down below.

They climbed the steps together, still holding hands, and then the woman went into the caravan, leaving Willow outside. She hung from the rail by the steps and watched the faint white smudges appear as the salt water dried on her legs. There was a lot of angry, quiet talking and afterwards some shouting, though none of it was at Willow.

She didn't go back to the sea again, after that.

Laura scanned the homework room and experienced a moment of pure terror. It was the same physical, mind-blanking panic she had felt on occasion in the supermarket when Beth was small, or queueing for a bus, when she'd turned round to find her momentarily missing from her side. It was no different, she discovered, as her daughter grew older: the context might change but the essential fear persisted. The empty pushchair. Beth, gone.

It lasted no more than a second, of course. Reason returned and she went to check the common room next door; there was only the faintest resurgence of fear when the pool and ping pong tables, too, yielded no result. It was a fine evening, and mild: she must be outside. Perhaps she was reading a book, on the benches round by the sports hall.

The benches were empty. But as Laura was turning to retrace her steps and go to see if the school library was still open, she heard laughter. Girls laughing – not Beth, but there was an edge to it that made her follow the sound, past the corner of the building and into a narrow courtyard lined on one side with large, green plastic bins. To the other side was a windowless wall – the back wall of the gymnasium, Laura thought – and against it lolled three girls. The furthest from her was Beth.

All three looked across at her approach, and the laughter ceased abruptly. There were no smiles. The two unfamiliar faces were composed into the careful blanks presented to the world by the uncompliant young; Beth looked merely awkward.

‘Hello,' Laura ventured. ‘I wondered where you were hiding, Beth.'

Beth looked at her shoes. Her two companions held Laura's gaze a little longer before rolling away their eyes in studied boredom. Were they allowed to wear that eyeliner at school?

‘Shall we go, then? The car's round by the front entrance, in the pull-in.' You weren't supposed to park there for more than a minute or two. ‘I've bought kippers for supper.'

Her daughter shot her an agonised glance and then stared back at her feet.

One of the girls sniggered – the taller of the two, with the curtain of sheer blonde hair. ‘Better go home to tea.'

The other – darker, sharp-featured – produced a perfectly manufactured smile. ‘You mustn't keep Mrs Blackwood waiting.'

Eyes still cast down, Beth peeled herself off the wall and away from her companions.

Don't drag your bag on the floor
: Laura carefully swallowed the words.

‘See ya,' muttered Beth, without looking back.

‘Later,' tossed back the blonde.

They walked to the car in silence; Laura, conscious of her unauthorised parking spot, had to slow her steps with conscious effort so as not to draw ahead of her daughter.

‘Here we are.' She flicked the central locking as they came up. ‘Do you want to sling your bag in the back?'

At five feet two and a secondary school pupil, Beth had recently been promoted to the front passenger seat. It had caused a subtle shift in things. In the driving mirror, she had been used to scrutinising her daughter's face as they talked; now, Beth was closer but her head was often turned away. Like tonight, for example, as she sat and looked out of her own side window, and Laura had no idea what she was thinking.

‘How was school?'

‘ 'Kay.'

It was the maths test today – the square numbers she'd been learning. Drama, too, and the day they'd been going to do impro. But Laura knew better than to ask direct questions. She'd hear about it in the end – over supper, perhaps, or after Beth's bath.

‘So, was that Rianna?' she said, remembering the hair extensions.

An affirmative grunt.

‘The one with the long hair? And how about the other girl, the dark one?'

‘Caitlin.'

‘They weren't at the primary, were they, those two? I don't remember them.'

Silence.

‘Not at Elswell, anyway. I suppose they were at a different school. Longfenton, maybe, or Wade?'

Another grunt, possibly affirmative. Then, still facing the window, Beth asked, ‘Why d'you have to say that? About having kippers for supper?'

‘You love kippers. I was going to do us a poached egg on the top, the way you like it.'

Beth's shoulders were hunched and tight. ‘Nobody else has kippers.'

This must plainly be nonsense. No doubt plenty of Beth's classmates lived off chicken dippers and frozen pizza but there had to be some families who occasionally ate smoked fish.

‘I got them in the Co-op.' The defence was oblique; if they stocked them in the village, then other people must buy them.

‘Old grannies eat kippers.'

‘Well, I am old.' The attempt at humour fell heavily in the car. It was too close to the truth to be funny: at forty-five she was ten years older than a lot of the mums. Her jeans were neither skintight nor voguishly labelled. Regardless, she soldiered on. ‘Kipper's good for the elderly. I can chew it without putting my teeth in.'

‘Shut up, Mum.' Beth wasn't laughing, but at least her shoulders softened and she turned into three-quarter profile.

‘We could have ice-cream for pudding, if you like. That's also good for the aged and infirm.'

But it was too soon; she had overplayed her hand. Her daughter's jaw was again firmly set.

The best way, she had come to the conclusion in recent weeks, was to fill the difficult space with chatter, the kind requiring no response. ‘Sylvia was off sick today. It was a nightmare – honestly, the whole place grinds to a halt without her. Students kept coming in demanding lecture handouts and nobody knew which ones were which. We had to put through one another's phone calls, but none of us understands how the system works. I cut myself off twice.'

They were out of the village now, and on the main road towards Ninepins. It was too dark to see anything much in the lightless spaces beyond the side window, but Beth turned that way anyway, tracing circles in the beads of condensation which lingered on the glass.

‘And then, inevitably, the photocopier jammed, as it always does, and Sylvia's the only one who can un-jam it. It's a crabby old machine, and bares its fangs at anyone else. You risk losing a hand.'

Paying these banalities the heed they deserved, Beth suddenly demanded, ‘Did you get three?'

‘Sorry?'

‘Kippers. Did you get one for Willow as well?'

‘Well, no, I – We hadn't invited her for supper tonight, had we?' Arrangements were fluid. Willow came and ate with them if they happened to run into her, or if Beth was down in the pumphouse before supper and brought her back up with her. Or else she didn't.

‘I really wanted her to come.'

‘All right. Of course, if she wants to, she's very welcome. We can save the kippers for another night. I'll do spaghetti.'

Nothing was right, though, when her daughter was in this mood, which seemed always to infect her after school these days. From Laura's left came a sigh of deep frustration. ‘Why couldn't you have said that?'

‘Said what?'

‘Spaghetti. To Rianna and Caitlin. That would have been OK. But, no – you had to go and say freaking kippers.'

 

As soon as they were home, Beth threw her fleece and bag on the kitchen table, pausing only to extract her lunchbox and deposit it unceremoniously on the draining board. ‘No homework tonight – only that geography, and it's not due in 'til Monday. Can I go to Willow's?'

Unable to think of a reason not to say yes, Laura bent to put the kippers in the fridge; as she rose again, she heard the front door clang without a goodbye. Radio voices – even the impish Eddie Mair – failed to fill the emptiness of the kitchen.

Probably she should seize the opportunity, should go upstairs and work for half an hour. Lethargy, however, exerted its pull; she'd make a cup of tea first, then think about it. There'd been no shortage of time alone just recently to spend in her study, but she felt less and less inclined to use it. Concentration, in a deserted house, should have come easily; instead, it frequently eluded her. The empty rooms held a strange oppression. After school and at weekends, Beth was spending long hours in the pumphouse. Yesterday she'd fled down there straight from the car, returning with Willow at supper-time; after a meal of silences and the exchange of surreptitious glances, the two had escaped again directly afterwards.

It was hard to say exactly why she minded so much. Willow herself had done nothing to justify alarm, but Laura had to admit to a nagging unease about her. If spoken to directly, she answered; she said please and thank you; but there was a privateness, a guardedness about her which Laura found intimidating. Nor was it as if, had Beth been here in the house, the two of them would have communicated very much in the space before supper. She seldom came home talkative, particularly since September and the new school. But with Beth in the next room watching TV, or upstairs reading on her bed, the coolness was less of a threat, as if somehow the smaller physical distance made the emotional distance less. It had felt like necessary recovery time, time to recapture the closeness of home. Now every hour that her daughter stayed out of the house – stayed down there with Willow, talking about Laura knew not what – seemed only to place her further out of reach.

She filled the kettle at the tap and found herself a mug, still drying on the rack from breakfast. Beth's fleece lay sprawled across the table; Laura picked it up and smoothed it out, pulling the sleeves back right side out. From the lip of her daughter's school bag trailed a single, scarlet mitten. She opened the bag, thinking to reunite it with its mate; Beth went through five or six pairs of gloves per winter. Inside, there was no sign of the other mitten: just pencil case and exercise books and the fleecy cover of her mobile phone, with the face of Shaun the Sheep. And, tucked to the side and coiled in a knot, something mauve and chiffony and foreign. Laura pulled it out and unravelled it. It was a broad, rectangular scarf of fine, filmy cotton, the kind which is textured into permanent creases. Rianna's? Or Willow's. She raised the scarf to her face and inhaled, testing the unfamiliar smell – then chided herself for her foolish possessiveness. The mother vixen, jealous of the scent of her young.

Instead of taking her tea to the desk upstairs, she laid out her work at the kitchen table, propping a lever arch file on Beth's bag. It contained a new Forestry Commission paper on sustainable forest management that she had printed off the web that afternoon. But continuous cover silviculture failed to hold her attention; she could not absorb herself in wood energy or biomass initiatives. Her eyes kept drifting from the text – and finding their way back to her daughter's school fleece, which she had laid across the back of the adjacent chair. Really, all these unfocused anxieties were quite groundless, she told herself; she was acting like some dreadful, clingy parent, controlling and neurotic. Beth was simply growing up. She should learn to let go.