The Playdate (19 page)

So who would have done this?

Debs looked down. That was strange. Sticking out underneath the bottom corner of the box were strokes of green chalk.

It looked like writing.

She leaned down and removed ten of the pebbles, placing them beside the box. Then, using all her effort, she pushed the box hard, inch by inch, till she could lever it off the paving stone.

The words started to appear in random order:
your, head, back.
What on earth was this?

Puffing with the effort, Debs finally managed to push the box sideways until it dipped a few inches down into a flower bed, its heavy bottom lifting up off the paving stone.

She crouched down on the ground and tried to make out the rest of the message.

Each word was written boldly in dark green chalk. It was the calculated neatness of the writing that made the message even more insidious than it already was.

“BE VERY CAREFUL, BITCH, OR I’LL PUT YOUR TEETH THROUGH THE BACK OF YOUR FUCKING HEAD.”

“Oh!” Debs gasped, jumping up as though she had been stung. Desperately, she looked around her, peering round the hedge out onto the street.

The boy on the bike. He must have followed her. Was he watching her right now?

Debs put her head in her hands and shook it desperately. She was right. The Poplars had found her.

They weren’t giving up.

*     *     *

Her hands were still shaking ten minutes later. On autopilot, she moved round the kitchen, trying to make sense of the fractured
images that spun through her mind from last night. What had that boy looked like? Was it the brother?

Her memories came randomly. There was the click of metal—maybe the bike changing gear? Then the slush of rubber on wet tarmac, followed by this sensation of a menacing presence behind her, coming close but not moving past.

She had turned round. She had. But that’s where things went hazy. All that came to mind was the shape of a boy with gray fog where the face should have been. And then an overwhelming urge to lift her hand.

And then Rae lying there in the middle of the road.

Oh Lord. What had happened?

Grabbing her tea, Debs sat down at the table. How had the Poplars found her?

She pulled her dressing gown farther round her, feeling unnaturally cold. Allen had made her take a pill last night to help her sleep after she had told him what had happened. It was him who’d gone next door last night and spoken to Jez on the doorstep.

“Her leg is cut, but she’s fine,” he said on his return, sitting beside her, and resting his hand on her arm. “Apparently she has poor coordination. They’re keeping her in tonight as a precaution. So try not to worry too much, love. Let’s see what happens tomorrow.”

“Hmm,” she had murmured back.

His voice had been calm but she knew he was reaching the end of his patience. And she couldn’t blame him.

So, today, much as she wanted to ring him, she didn’t. Instead she rang a different number, already doubting her choice.

“Payroll,” said a loud voice.

“Alison, it’s me,” she said, knowing her sister’s tone would immediately change.

“Oh, hello,” Alison said flatly. “What’s up with you, then?”

“Um . . .”

“I have a meeting with the finance director in a sec, so you’ll have to be quick.”

Alison was always about to do something important.

“I’m being harassed again,” Debs said.

There was a pause.

“What’ve they done?”

“I think one of them tried to frighten me in the street last night. The brother, on a bike. And I think he filled up our recycling box with stones. And left a very nasty note.”

Alison said nothing for a moment.

“What does Allen say?” she finally replied.

Debs gritted her teeth. How quickly her sister always got to her.

“I haven’t told him.”

There was another pause from Alison’s end as she spotted the weakness she’d been waiting for.

“Oh, I see!” she said. “So you ring up poor old muggins instead!”

Debs bit her tongue.

“Listen, I just wanted to tell you. Don’t worry. I’ll—I’ll ring the police if I have to.”

“You need to get that husband of yours to have a word with them,” Alison said. It sounded like a taunt.

“Better go,” Debs said. She couldn’t help herself. “I’m making dinner for Allen tonight. It’s our six-month anniversary.”

Alison paused. “I’ll let you go, then.”

The ironic thing was that if it hadn’t been for Alison, she would never have met Allen. And none of this trouble would have happened.

Maybe it had been her fault—for breaking the status quo
between them. Before, her sister could keep the upper hand she had always demanded, with her better-paid job at the accounting firm and the more interesting hobbies. Ladies’ choir was the best Debs could muster. Alison, on the other hand, learned to sail and went on singles yachting holidays in Turkey. She’d showed Debs photos of one holiday romance, Graham, who she said “just worshipped” her. He had a red face, and a shirt opened to reveal a sunburned chest covered in gray hair to match his head, a bottle of beer in one hand, the other on Alison’s thigh. She spent a week torturing Debs with details about his proposed trip down from Peterborough. The day of the date came and went, and she never mentioned him again. Debs knew better than to ask. Oddly, it was that which prompted her to look in the
Guardian
’s Soulmates section.

“Shorter than you,” Alison had whispered the first time Debs took Allen round to her sister’s brand-new estate house in Palmers Green and he’d gone to the bathroom. She’d met them at the door with that flushed, hyperactive way she had when she felt under attack. “You still look tired, Debs—is that the same cold sore or another one?” she’d exclaimed, grasping the bottle of Italian Chianti that Allen proffered with a nod but no thanks. When Debs broke the news they were getting married, Alison hadn’t spoken to her for two months.

Debs wondered sometimes if Alison had been pleased about what had happened at her wedding.

*     *     *

In the end, Debs’s mind had raced with so many dark thoughts that she’d had to leave the house and walk up the hill to Ally Pally, checking nervously every few seconds to make sure the boy on the bike wasn’t following her again.

It was quiet today. Too early for the packs of teenagers who gathered at the school lunch break, showing off how many swear words they knew in blaring voices; too late for the mothers who had taken their toddlers home from the playground for morning naps.

Debs set off and walked briskly round the boating pond three times, hoping the light breeze would clear her head. To distract herself, she watched packs of geese and pigeons fighting it out with the ducks for bread thrown in by a pensioner. Too late, she realized that the smiling woman trying to catch her eye from a table at the café was a parent from after-school. Dropping her eyes to the ground, she pretended not to see her. What would they all be saying? Lisa Buck had sounded hesitant on the phone this morning. “No, that’s fine, Debs. Let us know when you’re feeling better—I think the head will want to have a chat about what happened with Rae when you get back, but no hurry.” Debs knew what that meant. Take the week off and in the meantime the other staff and I will get together and talk about what happened and start digging into your past to find out if there is anything to be concerned about. The thought of them discovering the Daisy Poplar incident was so terrifying she started singing to herself to block the images from her mind.

It wasn’t until she was back home, however, and filing the last few books on her shelves that she was finally able to force all the dark thoughts back into a box.

Books. Thank goodness for her books. They always calmed her. She looked down at the ones on the floor, wondering which to weed out from the packed shelves to make room for these final few. She picked out a couple of possibles and held them in her hands, weighing up what each one meant to her.
From the age of eleven, thanks to Mrs. Shaw at school who lent her a leather-bound copy of
Oliver Twist
, she’d loved books. For the beauty of their weight and shape as much as the escape their contents offered her from her mother’s stuffy little Walthamstow flat, with its factory-molded ballet dancers and TV guides.

There were two copies of
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
—one would have to go. The first was bought in a teetering old antiquarian bookshop that smelled of dust and sunlight on a lonely day trip to Oxford one Saturday before Allen, and had a hard green cover with gold lettering. The second was a battered paperback that fell open to reveal her name and the name of the teaching college she had attended two decades ago. The sight abruptly took her back to her coffin of a university room, and the German exchange student, Bruno, whom she’d let drunkenly grapple away her virginity after a party thrown by their lecturer with free wine. It had taken her two hopeful days to realize Bruno wasn’t going to ask her out. Or speak to her again.

She threw the paperback on the pile for Oxfam.

The Poplars could not win. She could not lose Allen. She couldn’t.

*     *     *

He had rung to say he’d be home early to see how she was, so she began to get a sandwich ready. Tuna and sweet corn. That was his favorite. She had tried to learn all his preferences. No fabric conditioner on his shirts. “Don’t want to smell of flowers at the office, love,” he’d said, making her giggle unexpectedly. A nice dark ale, too. And a good crossword.

It took her a second to realize when Allen opened the door that he was speaking to someone.

She walked into the hall and saw a young policeman behind him.

“Love,” he called, seeing her panic-stricken face. “It’s OK, this officer has just come to ask you a few questions about the little girl across the road. Nothing to worry about.”

“Oh. Of course,” she mumbled, showing him into the front sitting room.

He was young, probably in his twenties, but had a surprising confidence in his manner.

“We had a call yesterday from a witness who said a five-year-old girl in your care fell into the road in front of a bike on Churchill Road yesterday. I wonder if you could tell me what happened? I understand you’re her teacher?”

The implication of his statement hung in the air.

“Officer, my understanding is that the child fell into the road probably due to poor coordination,” Allen said, sternly. “Could we start from that assumption, please? My wife was not in her official capacity when the accident happened. She was helping a neighbor out in a work-related emergency. She is very upset and has nothing to hide, but as you can see, she is shaken up by the incident.”

Debs looked at him. She hadn’t seen Allen like this before. This must be how he got bus stops put in inconvenient places where elderly people needed them.

“OK,” said the young police officer. “Do you want to tell me what happened in your own words?”

“Yes,” said Debs, trying desperately to think of what to say. “To be truthful, I don’t really know what happened. One minute she was walking beside me nicely and there was a bike coming up behind me, and the next she wasn’t there and she was ahead of me, falling into the road.”

The police officer watched her carefully as if he were checking the moles on her face.

She dropped her eyes to the floor.

“Did you see the cyclist’s face?”

“I . . . I am not sure.”

“And were you holding the child’s hand?” he asked.

“I can’t remember . . . No—I don’t think so,” Debs said. “She was walking nicely. I didn’t need to.”

“But her mother says you’d been warned to hold her hand on the road.”

What was he saying? Debs looked at Allen, shaking her head.

“Was I? I know the mother worries about her health—all the teachers do at after-school club—but I don’t remember being told I had to hold her hand on the road.” A tightness came round her chest, making her squirm to remove it. “Things go blank sometimes.”

The police officer looked at his notes.

“Are you formerly Deborah Jurdon, formerly of Weir Close, Hackney?”

Oh no. She knew what was coming.

“Yes,” she replied weakly.

“Were you involved in an assault on a child at Queenstock Academy?”

Debs dropped her eyes to the floor. Her hands were shaking so badly she could hardly lift them to adjust her glasses.

Allen jumped up. “Now, listen, this has absolutely nothing to do with that incident, Officer,” he said crossly. “Please leave my wife alone. You can see she is upset.”

Keep the lids on, she shouted inside her head. Keep the lids on. But she couldn’t. The lids all flew off.

Panic-stricken, she blurted: “Actually, whilst you’re here,
Officer, and you are talking about the Daisy Poplar incident, I think I’m being harassed by her family. I know you don’t like me talking about it, Allen, but last night. On the bike. I think it was the Poplar boy. The brother. Coming up behind me in the street, trying to frighten me. That’s why I can’t remember what happened with the little girl. I was scared. And now I think they are calling me on the phone all day. And . . . and . . . this morning someone filled up our recycling box with stones and left me a note on the ground. In chalk. A horrible note.”

Allen shook his head. “Debs, no. You have to stop, love.”

“But Allen, it’s true! You have to listen to me. I didn’t want to worry you with this, but it’s happening again, Allen. They must have found me . . .”

Allen looked harassed. Upset. “Love, please don’t bother the police with this—she’s been suffering from anxiety since the school incident,” he said, turning to the young officer. “Seeing a therapist.”

Debs glared at her husband. How could he?

“I am NOT imagining it, Allen!” she shouted. “Please stop telling me that. If you don’t believe me, come and look!”

“Mrs. Ribwell,” the young police officer said, looking concerned, “I have to say that I think it is unlikely that you are being harassed by the Poplar family. Our file notes show that the family have relocated to the Spanish coast after all the unwelcome press attention. Mrs. Poplar works in a bar there now, owned by her brother, I believe.”