The Girls (16 page)

‘I know,’ said Clare. ‘I miss the playing.’

‘Such a funny age, isn’t it?’ said Adele. ‘Thirteen?’

‘Bittersweet,’ said Leo.

‘Animals,’ Gordon growled from the terrace. ‘Animals when they’re born, animals when they’re grown. That’s all there is to it. And you lot, you modern parents, you sit and you talk and you talk and you talk, like you can make any difference to any of it.’ He snapped his left hand open and shut. ‘Well, you can’t. Keep them clean. Keep them fed. Tell them what the rules are. Give them a good hard nip if they break the rules. Let them know who’s boss. Then, when they’re not animals any more, let them go. That’s all there is to it. I fear for this generation of children, I really do. Can’t take a fucking crap without Mummy and Daddy standing over them and analysing it all. Making fucking
notes
.’ He mimed scribbling into a notepad and snarled.

Adele and Leo groaned.

‘Gordon, for Christ’s sake,’ said Adele. ‘Every generation does things differently. And it’s all about getting the balance right. I personally think all these kids are amazing. They’re confident and focused and sociable.’

‘Call that middle one of yours confident, Mrs H.? Really? What sort of thirteen-year-old still needs a comfort blanket?’

‘It’s not a comfort blanket, Gordon, it’s a sensory thing. She just likes the feel of it.’

‘Bullshit. It’s a comfort blanket. Poor child probably can’t get over the fact that she’s not a baby any more. Wants to crawl back up your front passage and into the womb.’

Adele, Clare and Leo all exchanged outraged looks. Then they shook their heads and laughed. It got to a certain point with Gordon when there was no suitable response. When you just needed to shake your head and change the subject.

As the sky glowered and the sun slid behind the terrace beyond, Leo lit a match and set his campfire alight. The children emerged from the tent, tousled and eager. Adele passed around the special toasting marshmallows she’d found in a local deli: big, fat ones, the size of muffins, speared on to extra-long wooden stakes. Clare finished her wine and said she was going in. ‘I want you in when it’s dark, girls,’ she said to Grace and Pip. ‘I mean it. I don’t care what everyone else is doing. Ten o’clock and no later.’ Adele watched her walking back across the lawn, tiny and unsteady on her feet. She’d only had two cups of wine but seemed slightly unstitched. The campfire crackled red and amber, sending tiny sparkles of gold into the grey night sky. The children were peaceful and contemplative, their faces patterned with coppery shadows.

Adele let her soul fill up with it all and poured herself another glass of wine.

Fifteen

Clare sat in her own back garden. It was ten o’clock and the sun had finally gone down leaving behind a sky that was a curious, reddish shade of black. But the garden was still bustling and alive, filled with the echoing whoop and holler of children roaming freely, the sounds of wine glasses and raised voices.

The flat seemed eerily quiet without the girls in it. Every moment or two Clare would stretch her neck just a little, looking out through the trees for the shadowy outlines of her girls, silently hoping for one of them to appear at the back gate moaning about something or maybe even crying a bit, at which juncture Clare would be able to stride across the garden bristling with annoyance, call the other one in, lock the back door on all three of them and go peacefully to bed.

Her thoughts returned to her drinks earlier with Leo and Adele. She’d only stayed an hour. Just long enough for two glasses of wine. She was a feeble drinker, more than a glass or two and her eyes would cross, her legs turn to jelly, people would have to help her home or tuck her into a spare bed. More than three or four drinks and in all likelihood she would throw up. Possibly endearing as a young girl, but now in her early thirties, with two children the same height as her, horribly unseemly.

A breeze blew across from the trees and ruffled the pages of that morning’s edition of
Metro
on the chair next to her. She’d picked it up at the tube station earlier even though she wasn’t getting on a tube. She liked the commuter papers. They were written for people who inhabited a different world to hers. She’d never been a commuter. She’d been a student. Then she’d been a wife. Then she’d been a mother. All before she was twenty-one. And she liked to live vicariously in this world of stolen glances across carriages and texted quick-fire observations, of delayed trains from Orpington and people looking after fainting strangers on the underground. It made her feel like a part of it all. It made her feel normal.

There was no response from Grace’s phone so she called Pip’s. No response from there either. She sighed and went inside to fetch a torch.

The air was still so warm, even with the light breeze that had begun to pick up. As she reached the brow of the hill she looked up and saw the old woman still sitting on her balcony. The sweeping curve of the stucco terrace on the other side was patterned with rectangular cut-outs, each a different shade of gold, each framing a different life, a different set of secrets and problems. It reminded Clare of one of those old-fashioned nativity calendars, with a beautiful vignette behind each door instead of a chocolate.

Leo sat out on his terrace, his laptop open on the table in front of him, a bottle of beer at his elbow, the dog by his feet. He smiled as she approached. ‘Hello, again,’ he said. She could see the lines in his handsome face in the harsh up-light from his screen. His heavy eyebrows threw dark shadows up on to his brow and he looked vaguely ghoulish.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Just looking for the girls. Have you seen them?’

He cupped his hand around his ear. ‘I can certainly hear them,’ he said. ‘But I can’t say I’ve seen any of them for a while.’

‘Oh,’ said Clare, her heart rate picking up. It was bright here in the light of the big houses, but in other corners of the garden it was dark. She turned and looked over her shoulder. ‘Do you think …?’

‘They’re fine,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about them. They’re all together.’ Then he turned and looked over his shoulder, through the doors behind him. He beckoned her over. He patted the other side of the bench he was sitting on. She sat next to him, conscious of the warmth emanating from him, his square-tipped fingers wrapped around the beer bottle, his bare feet close to hers beneath the table. She breathed in the smell of him and briefly allowed herself a moment’s imagining of another world, a parallel world, where she had met a man like Leo, married a man like Leo, had her children with a man like Leo. A world where she woke up next to this fragrant, sane man every day. Where she got to keep him and her daughters got to keep him and every day was blissful in its simplicity and predictability. Did Adele have any idea how lucky she was? she wondered.

‘Look,’ he said, checking over his shoulder again that there was no one standing behind them, and then angling the screen of his laptop towards her. ‘Roxy Hancock. 13 Basildon Gardens, E11. And there’s her mobile phone number.’

Clare widened her eyes at him. ‘How did you—?’

‘Easy,’ he said. ‘I told you. Found her name on IMDb, Googled her name with the Walthamstow postcode. It came up on a movie freelancers’ site. Took less than a minute.’

‘Right,’ she said, staring at the information on the screen. ‘God.’

Leo leaned back and stretched himself out. His T-shirt rode up slightly, revealing a strip of soft, hairy stomach. Clare pulled her gaze from it.

‘So, now you know where he’s living.’

‘Yes, I do, thank you. But, God, I’m not sure I …’

‘You could call her?’ he said, leaning forward again, closing the gap between his T-shirt and the waistband of his shorts. ‘Send her a text? Whatever. It’s up to you. But I think it’s important you know. Just in case. Here.’ He passed her a piece of paper. ‘I wrote it all down for you. Keep it somewhere safe. And now’ – he turned his attention back to the screen – ‘I am going to delete my search history. Because in a house full of people like this you really don’t know who might stumble across things they shouldn’t.’

He did this and then turned to smile at her. ‘There you go. All safe and hidden away.’

She wanted to touch him in some way. Place the palm of her hand against his cheek. Squeeze his knee. Kiss his hand. She wanted, in some way, to claim him. Instead she said, ‘Thank you. That’s really kind of you.’ And he smiled at her in that soft-eyed, attentive way of his and said, ‘You are very welcome.’

The garden felt terrifyingly alive. Bushes rustled and crackled. Things darted across the lawns. Shadows grew and shrank and grew again.

Pip jumped.

‘It’s just cats,’ Tyler said. ‘You know they’re nocturnal, right?’

They were sitting on the grass on the brow of the hill, hiding in the shadows of a full-grown chestnut tree. It was just the two of them. Pip wasn’t sure why. It had been a really strange evening. She hadn’t wanted to come out in the first place and then Willow had come to the back door and basically bullied her into coming to the campfire. And then it had been fun for a while; they’d mucked about in the tent and toasted giant marshmallows and her mum had been there for a while too and Pip had been having a really nice time. And then, when the campfire had burned itself down and her mum had gone home, things had changed. The older ones had disappeared into the shadows by the benches and Pip and Willow had hung out in the playground. Then a few minutes later Tyler had joined them.

That had been OK for a while too. It was still light then and Willow had been there and Tyler had been happy playing along with their slightly weird, hyper game where they were pretending to be orphans who’d run away to the circus (this was Willow’s game, of course. Willow was totally mad and, like Pip, a big fan of Jacqueline Wilson). And then Willow had gone inside and Tyler had said, ‘Let’s go and sit over there.’ And that was about an hour ago and they were still sitting here.

Every now and then Tyler would jump to her feet and peer around the chestnut tree at the other kids on the benches at the top.

‘What are they doing?’ asked Pip.

‘Not a lot,’ she replied. ‘Just sort of hanging out.’

‘Shall we go and sit with them?’

‘No. Let’s stay here.’

Pip’s shoulders dropped. She felt manipulated and uncomfortable.

‘Have you got a boyfriend?’ Tyler asked, suddenly and unexpectedly.

‘What? No! Of course not. I’m only twelve. Have you?’

Tyler grimaced. ‘No fucking way,’ she said. ‘Boys my age are all losers.’

‘Apart from Dylan?’

‘Yeah. Well. I used to think that. Now I’m not so sure.’ She picked at the skin around her fingernails and threw a fleeting glance in the direction of the others. Then she turned abruptly to look at Pip. ‘Has Grace said anything?’ she asked. ‘About her and Dylan?’

‘No. Not really. I did ask her about that photo on Instagram. The one you showed me. And she said there were other people in the room. Like, some friend of Dylan’s from school or something.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘Well, that’s what she said.’

‘Dylan never invites friends home. He’s too embarrassed. You know his mum’s like virtually a hoarder and their flat is really tiny and dirty and his mum’s really weird and unfriendly. No,’ she said conclusively, ‘they were on their own up there. And your sister is a liar.’

The accusation rankled. Pip felt she should be able to tell Tyler that she was wrong. That Grace would never lie to her. But she didn’t believe that to be the case any more.

‘Well, even if she was lying about that, what does it matter?’ she countered. ‘She’s twelve years old. He’s thirteen. It’s not like they’d be having sex or anything.’

Tyler looked at her pityingly. ‘Shit,’ she said, ‘really? Do you really believe that?’

‘What time is it?’ Pip asked, desperate now to get away from Tyler, to go home to her mother. She’d left her phone in the tent and she was too scared to go and get it in the dark on her own.

Tyler pulled out her own phone, looked at it and said, ‘Five past ten.’

‘Shit,’ said Pip, ‘I need to go. I told my mum I’d be home at ten.’

‘Five minutes isn’t going to make any difference,’ Tyler snapped. Then she put a finger to her lips and shushed her. ‘
Listen
,’ she whispered.

‘What?’

‘It’s gone really quiet up there. Come on.’

‘What?’ She scrambled to her feet after Tyler. ‘Where are we going?’

Tyler shushed her again. ‘Just come.’

They tiptoed together through the darkness towards the benches at the top of the hill.

‘Stop!’ Tyler put a hand against Pip’s chest, her gaze straight ahead of them, like a hunter with their prey in view. ‘Get down!’

Pip dropped to her knees. They were a few feet from the benches. ‘Look!’ Tyler said, turning to Pip, her eyes burning with triumph and hurt. ‘Just look!’

It was darker here; no light from the houses reached this part of the garden and it took Pip’s eyes a second or two to work out what she was seeing. And then she knew. Lying side by side on the grass, staring into the starless sky, were Fern and Catkin. They were passing a lit cigarette between them, a tiny nub of glowing gold that shone hot red every time one of them inhaled. And there, on the bench, a kind of two-headed animal which, as Pip’s eyes made sense of things, slowly revealed itself to be her sister astride Dylan, her legs wrapped fully around his torso, her face planted entirely on his, his hands in her hair, their twinned bodies rolling together like a dance.

Pip felt her stomach lurch, a huge surge of molten marshmallows rising through her gut towards her mouth. And then a terrible pang of something else. Something wrong and bad. Almost like excitement. She turned away.

‘Where are you going?’ Tyler hissed.

‘Home.’

‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like that you saw her? Like that she’s a slag?’

‘She’s not a slag!’

‘Er …’ Tyler directed Pip’s gaze back to the benches.

‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ she said. ‘I don’t even care.’

Tyler grabbed her shoulder and turned her round to face her. ‘This’, she snarled, ‘is disgusting. Someone needs to know about this. They are
children
,’ she said, her fingertips digging into Pip’s bones. ‘They are fucking
children
.’