The Good Neighbour (29 page)

‘Miss, I’ll have to disqualify you if you don’t come back now,’ the official said, coming over and taking hold of her arm. She shook him off, feeling she might sob, and the official must have seen the despair on her face because he let her alone.

Every part of her was exhausted and aching, and now there was this. She knew what was coming and she was powerless to stop it: the only option was to leave tonight and she didn’t have the energy, but Christ she was going to have to find it. She ran here and there like a crazed person, and at last she saw Gina, sitting with the kids next to a cold drink stall.

‘Oh!’ Gina gasped as Cath appeared. ‘What happened? We were going to come to the line to watch you come in. You can’t have finished yet.’

‘Where’s your phone, give me your phone.’

‘It’s here, hang on.’ Gina got it out of her bag and Cath snatched it from her hand.

‘What’s the matter, Rubes?’ Gina said.

Cath didn’t answer, just pressed buttons frantically. Her fingers were sweaty and it took for ever. There was nothing there, just endless calls to Ryan. Texts, then. She scrolled through the list. There were texts to Ryan again, to her, to various members of Gina’s family. There was nothing there. But she knew. That blue area of her brain knew, had known all along.

She swung round to face Davey. ‘You’ve deleted it, haven’t you?’

Davey looked at her with his Andy-expression, and didn’t answer.

‘Davey, you little shit, don’t give me that innocent look, I know you have, I can see it on your face. It was Minette, wasn’t it? She told you.’

‘What’s Minette told him?’ Gina said.

‘Gee, I’m going to need your help tonight like I’ve never needed it before.’

‘Oh my god,’ Gina said, getting to her feet, ‘will you please tell me what’s going on?’

‘Are you in, or out?’

‘In, of course. What is it, Rubes?’

Cath sank down onto the ground, and started to cry.

NAP WHEN THE
baby naps. Minette was too exhausted even for her usual cynical laugh. Last night she was kept awake by her thoughts, whirling round and round. She prayed that she’d done the right thing, imagined terrible scenarios that were all her fault. She finally dropped off about two, only to be woken barely an hour later by noises from next door. She was too tired to get up and see what was going on, and went back to sleep, the noise weaving in and out of her dreams. Then Tilly woke for the day at five thirty. After Abe went to work, Minette spent the morning in a zombie-like state, trailing wearily round the house after a manically toddling child. When Tilly showed the first signs of readiness for her pre-lunch nap, Minette was beyond relieved. She whisked Tilly into her cot, yanked out her lenses, and crawled gratefully into bed. She was asleep in moments.

She briefly surfaced sometime later, disturbed by a vehicle in the street. Its engine shook the floor beneath her bed, then it cut out and there was silence again. Her brain groggily flickered, trying to remember if she was expecting any deliveries, decided she wasn’t, and drifted back to sleep. A couple of minutes later she was woken properly by someone ringing the doorbell. She lay inert, her limbs reluctant to uncoil. She was so warm and comfortable. Let the guy leave a card. Or if it was a parcel for a neighbour, he could sod off. She closed her eyes again. Then someone started hammering at the door. For god’s sake! They’d wake Tilly, the idiot. She put on her glasses and tore downstairs. If it was Liam, come to try and make things up, she would give him such a bollocking. But it would also be fantastic to see him. She flung open the front door, but the man standing there wasn’t Liam. He was stocky, medium height, scruffily dressed, messy sandy-coloured hair. Two sharp vertical lines on his forehead made him look worried. An enormous lorry was parked in the street behind him.

‘Are you Minette?’

It seemed a bit forward to use her first name, but maybe his company had the misguided notion that it was friendlier.

‘Er, yes.’ He didn’t have a parcel in his hand. ‘What’s it regarding?’ She sounded like her mother-in-law.

‘I’m Andy. We spoke a few times on the phone.’

Minette’s tired brain took a few seconds to catch up. Then she understood. Oh, clever Davey!

‘Oh god, hello, sorry. Do you want to come in?’

‘No, I want to know where they are.’ He pointed at Cath’s house. ‘There’s no one there.’

‘Well, the children will be at school and nursery. Cath’s probably at the shops, or something.’

‘There’s no one there,’ he said again, his voice rising into a wail. ‘They’ve gone.’

Minette stepped outside and closed the door behind her. Tilly would be OK for a bit longer. She and Andy walked up to Cath’s door, and Minette rang the bell. There was no answer. Andy beckoned her to look through the ground floor window, Davey’s room. The hospital bed was neatly made up. His books, the ones she herself had put on the shelves, were still there, and the American flag was on the wall. But all the drawers were hanging out of the chest, emptied of clothes, and something about the atmosphere of the room told her Andy was right. They had gone. She turned to Andy and saw her shock reflected in his eyes. ‘But, but, I saw them yesterday,’ she said.

‘Adam sent me a message yesterday, on Gina’s phone.’

‘I know.’

‘He sent me his address.’

‘I told him to,’ Minette said. ‘I gave him your number. I told him to delete the message after he’d sent it. I don’t understand what’s happened. Where have they gone?’

‘Thank you.’ He clasped her hand, and tears poured down his face. ‘Thank you for trying.’

‘Eastbourne’s not exactly a tiny place,’ Minette said. ‘We can’t just go there and knock on doors.’

Abe was home, having taken a half-day’s leave in response to Minette’s phone call, and was drawing a blank on the electoral roll. Gina Grainger had almost no internet presence. The two links that mentioned her name didn’t give her address. One link just had a photo of her and a younger man looking rather drunk outside a football ground. They’d given up phoning her – she simply wasn’t answering.

Andy was slumped on the sofa, berating himself for not having arrived sooner. From the moment he got Davey’s message, he’d driven through the night. ‘But if I’d gone faster, I might have been in time.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Minette said, remembering the noises that had woken her. ‘I think they left in the early hours.’

‘Something I don’t understand,’ Abe said, turning away from the computer, ‘is that the other week, when you came back from Cath’s, you said you’d got it all wrong, that she’d been telling the truth.’

Minette opened her mouth to explain, then realised she couldn’t. That night she’d stumbled back from Cath’s, reeling from seeing the photos, she’d excused her addled state to Abe by explaining that she and Cath had made up and got pissed together. ‘Andy’s clearly not to be trusted,’ Minette had said, looking straight at Abe. She couldn’t see him properly, which made things easier. ‘Cath’s got an official diagnosis of Davey’s condition, and Davey showed me the few steps he can do. I also saw the hospital letter about Lola’s allergies. It’s all legit.’

To her shame, the lies came easily. It’s to save us, she reminded herself, and to save Liam and Josie. It’s the right thing to do. Abe asked her twice if she was quite sure. ‘Absolutely! Like you said, Andy had his excuses down pat. It’s all good with Cath.’

She said she was exhausted and went to bed, pretending to be asleep when he came up. She knew she had just added another layer of deception to her relationship with Abe, but she didn’t know what else to do.

‘Ruby’s very convincing,’ Andy said now, saving Minette from having to answer.

‘But what made you change your mind back again?’ Abe said, staring at Minette. ‘And why didn’t you text the address to Andy yourself, once you’d decided to tell him, rather than give the number to Davey?’

‘Because I
didn’t
decide to tell him,’ Minette said, hoping Abe wouldn’t notice that she was only answering the second of his questions. ‘I knew it had to be up to Davey. All I did was give him the means to call his father, if he wanted to. How you getting on with Gina’s address there?’

Answer the question with a question. How could she explain to Abe that it wasn’t about changing her mind, so much as having the balls to make the right choice: protect her relationship and Liam’s marriage, or protect Cath’s children? She had spent the last week in a state of torment, trying in vain to find a solution which allowed her to do both. In despair, she rang Ros, not expecting great things, just wanting to hear a different voice to the one in her head. To her surprise, she found she was talking to the old thoughtful Ros. It was Ros who came up with the halfway house answer, to give Davey the means of contacting his dad if he decided to, allowing Minette to distance herself from whatever came afterwards. ‘If he’s as savvy as you reckon,’ Ros said, ‘he won’t say who gave him the number.’

Minette would one day tell Ros the exchange she’d had with Davey at the triathlon, while Cath was still in the sea. But she’d decided not to tell Andy, because she didn’t want to upset him any more than he was already. And she wasn’t going to say anything to Abe either, because it would raise yet more questions that she couldn’t answer. He was looking at her rather oddly now, and to escape from his scrutiny she went to make more tea.

‘Davey,’ she’d said in a low voice, crouching uncomfortably in her wetsuit next to his wheelchair, ‘do you sometimes watch me out of your upstairs window?’

‘Yes.’

Minette kept a careful eye on Gina, who was walking round the esplanade shouting into her phone at her boyfriend, and said, ‘Have you been thinking that maybe I could help you?’

Davey’s eyes grew big as he gazed at her. He nodded.

‘For god’s sake, Ryan!’ Gina yelled. ‘It needs to be delicates. Right, you can just buy me a new one. No, today. Before I get home.’

Minette and Davey grinned at each other, and Gina saw. ‘Got people gawking here,’ she said, and moved further away.

Minette said, ‘I’m going to ask you one more thing. Think carefully before you answer, but whatever you say, I won’t tell on you, I promise. Davey, are you ever frightened by your mum?’

‘Yes.’ Not a second’s hesitation.

‘I don’t mean when she shouts, I mean …’

‘I know what you mean,’ he said.

‘And your dad? Did he ever frighten you?’

‘No.’ Emphatic. ‘No.’

‘OK. I don’t know the truth about what’s gone on in your family, Davey. Your mum would tell me not to interfere. But you’re a bright boy. I think you’ll be able to decide what to do about this.’

She handed him a tiny slip of paper, which she’d been keeping in her kit bag. On it was written Andy’s number, and her own. She asked Davey if he thought he could memorise them, in case he lost it. As she spoke, she prayed that she was right about Cath, that she wasn’t doing the worst thing in the world: putting a woman and her children in danger.

‘I’m good at remembering numbers,’ Davey said, staring at the paper. His lips mouthed them out silently.

Gina came over, and he slipped the paper into his pocket.

‘You won’t believe what that eejit I live with has done,’ Gina said to Minette. ‘Only took it into his head to put my brand new Elle Macpherson silk teddy in with his red Sheffield jersey. On a hot wash too, thank you very much.’

‘Mummy washed my teddy,’ Lola said, ‘and his fur went funny.’

‘Yeah, well it sounds like the fur on my teddy’s gone bloody funny,’ Gina said.

Davey said, ‘Gina, can I show Lola your phone?’

‘You’re not allowed to use the internet, Davey, and anyway there’s no 3G here,’ she said.

‘We don’t want the internet, I just want to show her the calculator,’ Davey said.

‘Why can’t you kids just sit nice and quietly?’

‘Pleee-eeese,’ Davey moaned. Minette thought she saw him nudge Lola, and the little girl immediately starting whining. ‘WANNA LOOK AT THE PHONE! PHONE! PHONE!’

‘Oh, god, OK,’ Gina said, and handed it over.

Minette didn’t know how Davey was going to make a call discreetly, but she had to leave it with him. She could see that he was going to act quickly and she wanted to get out of there, remove herself from suspicion. She ran over to Abe, got out of her wetsuit and onto her bike, and suggested Abe take Tilly for a stroll along the promenade.

‘He sent me a text,’ Andy said, which explained why Gina hadn’t seen Davey make a call.

‘How did he know how to do that?’ Abe asked. Both Andy and Minette started answering at the same time – ‘he’s incredibly bright’ and ‘he’s very resourceful’ – and smiled at each other.

‘Couldn’t believe it when I saw it. I didn’t know the number, because Gina’s never given it to me. Thought it was a hoax at first. Then I just turned the lorry round and drove.’

‘Where were you?’ Abe asked.

‘Spain.’

‘My god, that’s a hell of a way. Min, what about the school? Would Cath – Ruby, I mean – have given them a forwarding address?’

‘I doubt it,’ Andy answered. ‘She’ll have just not turned up, no explanation, that’s what she did in Harrogate. But anyway, schools and nurseries never give out information like that. Believe me, I’ve come up against this enough times. Data protection.’

‘That’s it!’ Minette cried. ‘I know how we can get Gina’s address.’

Andy kept apologising about the mess in the cab, the food wrappers underfoot, the dust on the dashboard. The lorry smelled stale, and so did he. He had five o’clock shadow, and then some; his clothes were crumpled and grubby. Minette wondered how long it had been since he’d had any sleep. She wound her window down a little – an old-fashioned manual handle – to let in some air, and gazed out at the streets as they passed. She had never been in a lorry before. Being so high up, the people down on the pavement looked very small and defenceless. How vulnerable we all were, really. It was incredible that anyone made it past infancy. All the things that could go wrong. All the random accidents. She thought of the people she’d known who’d died. Cancer, car crash, heart attack, brain tumour, septicaemia, stroke. And yet. Here she was, having made it through almost thirty years. Here was Andy. Here were all these other people, walking around.