Seven For a Secret (25 page)

Simon considered for a moment. ‘I'll have that fag now if that's OK.'

‘Fine,' Darren said, grinning across to the others, ‘and then you just come with us and we'll show you what we need you to do.'

It was a pity she'd gone home, Simon thought, it would have been good if she'd seen him, ambling along comfortably next to Darren with his hands tucked into his jeans. He felt a bit embarrassed about the gloves – all he'd got was padded stuff for skiing, packed away somewhere in a tea-chest in the rectory attic, and Darren had said to be sure to bring
thin
ones, so he wouldn't get clumsy. Also, he'd said they'd stay on better. ‘You know, like johnnies' he'd said with a nudge and a smirk. The pink rubbery Marigolds, purloined from the cupboard underneath the Garden Cottage sink, had a mixed aroma of Jif and J-cloth that was so strong it reached his offended nostrils all the way from his inside pocket. This made it impossible to pretend, as he would have quite liked to, that he was out with the SAS on a clandestine moonlight rescue mission. Like trained soldiers, the group of boys was moving fast and surprisingly quietly. Simon had never seen Darren and his mates when they weren't taking up maximum space and acting up with maximum volume. Now it was as if they'd been turned into street foxes, slinking along silently and with purpose. He still hadn't much of a clue what they were all up to, but he felt quite heady with importance. Whatever it was they wanted to do, they obviously couldn't do it without
him.
Eventually, at the far end of the small modern development at the back of the High Street, Darren came to a halt against a wall, out of the range of the street lamp.

‘Look, Neighbourhood sodding Watch,' Shane sniggered, pointing up at a poster clipped to the lamp post.

‘Gives it an edge,' Darren said, grinning evilly. Simon felt nervous, suddenly wondering if it was all a ploy and he was actually about to be beaten up for being just too posh. But they could have done that as they passed the rec, could have dragged him beyond the swings, given him a thumping (or worse) and left him for dead behind the cricket pavilion.

‘This one,' Darren was saying, pointing across to where a green VW Polo was parked on a slope in front of its garage. The gardens were all open at the front, with no fences or gates for thieves to have to contend with, but providing nowhere but a few tatty laurels to hide behind as a result. Simon stared at the car, trying to put together the awfulness of what he was slowly realizing he was about to do.

‘It's one we prepared earlier,' Darren explained with another wolfish grin, putting a firm hand on Simon's shoulder to help him not to have a sudden change of mind. ‘It's already open, Bugsy just needs one second for hot-wiring, then we're all off, OK? Any questions?'

‘Off to where?' Simon's voice came out more squeakily than he expected.

‘It's only round the corner, Harbutt's Hi-Fi. You don't even have to look where you're going, we'll tell you what to do. You just listen and do it.'

The words ‘do it' were accompanied by a punch on the shoulder that was not to be argued with. Simon, thinking about Kate in the way that drowning men are supposed to think about their mothers, would rather die (and at that moment this seemed like a real option) than not do as Darren asked. He didn't, he reminded himself, even have to break into the car, all that was done for him, although he wouldn't swear that the police would appreciate the difference. He crossed the road behind Darren, terrified that bedroom lights would go on along Meadowside and that furious junior executives would stream out in Paisley pyjamas, armed with umbrellas and lawn rakes. Some fast fumbling went on under the Polo's steering column and then Simon, in the shaming Marigold gloves, climbed in to the driving seat and immediately set off much too fast, skidding out of the cul-de-sac into the main road.

‘Hey, I thought you could drive,' Shane complained scornfully.

‘Leave it, he's just nervous,' Darren, in the front passenger seat retorted quickly.

Simon was glad he wasn't expected to speak, terrified that at any moment he would hear his own voice blurting out a confession of just exactly how limited his behind-the-wheel experience really was.

‘Stop!' Darren ordered suddenly and Simon stood on the brake pedal, forgetting about the clutch and stalling the engine.

‘Wanker!' Bugsy yelled in a panic. ‘Now I'll have to get it started again!'

‘Sorry,' Simon murmured.

While Bugsy restarted the car, Simon tried to imagine what was going to happen next. He assumed he would wait in the car, engine running, while the others dashed round the corner and speedily did their out-of-hours shopping, probably via a broken window.

‘OK drive. Just past the shop and then reverse it, quick as you can,' Darren ordered.

‘Reverse it to where?' Simon asked, mystified.

‘Through the fucking window, cretin,' Bugsy said.

Simon grinned through the mirror at him, pretending he could see a joke.

‘That's right. Through the window – you drive it hard, backwards. We pick up everything we can and then we all piss off. Thirty seconds, max,' Darren said proudly.

The sound of so much glass breaking all over and round the car in the still dark night was really very thrilling, Simon had to admit. It stopped him feeling quite so sick, anyway. He concentrated on keeping the car from stalling again while the others frantically hurled in as much stock as they could gather. It reminded him of a supermarket trolley-dash he'd once seen on an early morning TV show, competition winners, greedily snatching at anything in their path, all dignity gone. When they'd finished, and thrown themselves breathlessly back into the car, he pulled the severely dented car away from the shattered shop-front with a roar that wouldn't disgrace Damon Hill and as they raced out of the village on to the Didcot road, Simon wondered if he was the only one with an erection.

‘Not bad,' Darren told Simon.

‘Yeah, ace,' Shane echoed. ‘Wanna CD Walkman?' he asked, handing over a package from the back seat.

‘Got one already,' Simon replied, wishing immediately that he hadn't.

‘Oh yeah, I nearly forgot. You don't
need
to do this do you, rich boy?' Shane sneered. ‘Mummy buys you everything you want. I bet you've even got a TV and video in your room.'

Simon, who had, denied it. ‘Don't be stupid. OK I'll have it, thanks. Actually I could do with another CD player,' he said. ‘Where shall I put the car?'

‘Take it back to the owners if you like. Then they can check out the damage in the morning,' Darren said loading a pile of loose CDs, the CD Walkman and a clock radio into Simon's lap. ‘Otherwise you can drop us off behind the rec.'

Kate heard the crash just as she was getting ready for bed. She'd been quite enjoying having the house to herself. She didn't count Jasper who was snoring on a rug in the kitchen, or Suzy who had collapsed into bed with yet another Arthur Ransome book and was likely to fall asleep with her light on and her teeth unbrushed. Not my responsibility, Kate thought as she smoothed Body Shop oatmeal cleanser across the bridge of her nose where spots might just dare to consider appearing. She liked the efficient little cosmetic rituals that involved sweet-smelling pots of gloopy stuff. She didn't really care whether they worked or not, she was just happy to be part of the grown-up sisterhood, linked worldwide by the daily application of magic potions. She switched off the bathroom light and, outside in the night the crash happened right then, as if she'd triggered it. She stood still on the landing, listening carefully in case any tremendous noises were going to follow the first one. She'd heard glass, and imagined it strewn all over the road. Along with the glass, only a millisecond later, her imagination had added large chunks of car, lots of blood and the twisted limbs of her mother and grandmother.

‘What's happening?' Suzy emerged from her room and asked Kate.

Kate, scared-frozen with her hand on her bedroom door-knob, looked at her crossly. ‘How should I know? Do you think I'm psychic?' Then she felt mean, it was hardly Suzy's fault she'd interrupted a horrific stream of imaginings. ‘Sorry. I mean it was probably just a car backfiring or something. Go on back to bed, Suze. I expect we'll find out in the morning if it's anything else.'

Suzy was too tired to argue, and tottered straight back to bed quite willing to find anything Kate said, as resident grown-up, conveniently comforting.

Kate, though, couldn't comfort herself. She was too scared, and too undressed now, to go out into the road and find out exactly what had happened. Outside was now eerily silent, and her mind went on doing its worst – her mother and Delia were now lying and dying unattended, while the indifferent village slept and ignored them. Perhaps the car had gone off the road into a ditch, the corner just before the church was pretty sharp, and maybe no-one would see them down there. Her heart was beating hard inside her, and she pulled her old towelling dressing-gown tight round herself and crept downstairs, wondering what to do. Her mother, she remembered, had her phone with her, so she went into the kitchen where Suzy would not be able to hear her and worry and dialled the number. A cool voice told her that the number she was calling was temporarily switched off. Did that mean, awful thought, that it was lying in pieces in the ditch under the car? Under her mother?

Kate opened the front door warily, hoping it wouldn't creak and disturb Suzy. She could tell her she was letting Jasper out for his late-night pee. It was too much, the responsibility of being the house adult suddenly – why was her father so many thousands of miles away? Her ears strained for the expected sounds of ambulance and police sirens. Surely someone should be there by now. All she could hear were the normal sounds of the few passing cars outside, someone driving much too fast was shrieking their tyres round the church corner, and someone else was revving up a motor bike. Kate came back in and went back to the phone, deciding that the thing to do was to phone Margot. Her fingers were shaky as they dialled the rectory number, and only when Iain answered did she remember that Margot would be fast asleep in the Garden Cottage and not in her own palatial home.

‘I heard a crash, and I'm scared it might be Mum coming home and missing the corner,' she told him, on the basis that one older person would do as well as another.

‘I'll be right round, don't worry. I'll check out what's been happening on my way,' he told her.

She felt instantly reassured, in the same childlike way that Suzy had been. Suddenly she knew it wasn't her mother, just because she was about to find out what the damage really was. She knew she felt better when she realized she was in front of the hall mirror, brushing her hair and smudging the last trace of the oatmeal cleanser away from the side of her face.

‘Everything's fine, well almost. It was a bunch of yobs ram-raiding the hi-fi shop,' Iain reported only minutes later. ‘The police have just arrived. No sign of the villains, of course. They'll be long gone.' He grinned at her, watching her face relax into a hugely relieved smile.

‘I am sorry to drag you out,' she said, ‘it's just that Mum's not answering her phone, and she might be driving all upset or something, and not be concentrating, and I sort of imagined . . .' Kate felt she was starting to crumble and her voice was giving way.

Iain had his arms round her, gathering her in and softly rocking all the worry out of her. His mouth gently brushed against her hairline as he soothed her, until she realized that she wasn't feeling exactly soothed at all, but was a long way from calm, in a completely pleasurable way.

Abruptly, as car headlights lit the drive, Iain pulled away and Kate was left startled. ‘I'd better disappear,' he said quickly, kissing his index finger and putting it to her lips. ‘Sleep well,' he added, with a strange, lopsided grin.

He's teasing, she thought, feeling her face fall into a glare as he made for the kitchen and the back door. She could hear the car doors slamming outside and went to open the front door for Heather, just as Iain changed his mind, returned and, with his hand warm on the back of her head, planted a less than gentle kiss on her mouth.

‘Happy dreams,' he ordered for her and fled through the back door.

Kate waited at the front door, hoping her mother would assume she was trembling from the cold night air. They looked exhausted, and Delia was clutching a handkerchief so Kate knew the papery old man had died. She waited patiently to be told, but her mother had a suspicious and wary look about her, grasped Kate's arm firmly and pulled her into the kitchen. ‘OK, tell me. Who did I just see leaving by the back door?'

At least Kate hadn't been devious enough to lie, that was something, Heather thought the next morning as she drove out of the village to take Delia shopping in Oxford for Edward's funeral.

‘It was only Iain,' Kate had explained, reluctantly and stroppily. ‘I heard this awful crash, like a bad car accident and I got worried.'

‘Why ever didn't you ring Margot?' Heather had asked over breakfast, wishing she didn't sound like an amateur courtroom cross-examiner.

There was an immediate huff of exasperation from Kate. ‘I
did.
But I forgot where she was and rang the rectory.' It was all a very typical adolescent muddle. Kate, sleep-dishevelled and slopping around in her T-shirt-nightdress, was giving her mother the ‘what on earth did you expect, I'm only a teenager' look across the toast crumbs on the kitchen table.

Heather could hardly blame her, could hardly accuse her of being up to something, something she didn't quite, herself, want to put into words. She could hear her own mother's voice, echoing in her head from long ago, commenting on neighbours' misfortunes. ‘The apple doesn't fall far from the tree,' had been one of her favourites, although when Heather had come back from running off with Iain, this had changed to mutterings about some unfortunate families being blighted with black sheep.