The School Gate Survival Guide (38 page)

I pulled at Jonathan’s wrist, trying to read his watch in the dark. Nearly one o’clock. He shrugged in his sleep. I shook him. Then again, much harder. The whole family could be hacked to death with a machete and Jonathan would just tug the duvet a little higher. In desperation, I held his nose. I thought he might suffocate before he opened his eyes. Panic that Roberta might be in real trouble made me pinch hard.

When he did finally gasp into life, he squinted around as though he’d never woken up in our bedroom before. If the house had been on fire, I would have saved the three children, dog, hamster and been back for the giant African land snails before Jonathan had worked out where he was.

‘Roberta’s at the police station. I’m going down,’ I said while he was still peering round, mole-like. It really hacked me off that my husband could breathe life into any ailing computer but had the slowest thought processes on the planet when it came to getting to grips with the bare bones of a midnight phone call.

‘Police station? Wha-? What’s happened? Is she OK?’ He started getting out of bed, almost knocking over his water glass. ‘Is she hurt?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘How long are you going to be?’

‘I don’t know, she couldn’t really speak. Not sure what’s happened, something to do with Scott and that she’d been arrested.’

‘God, bloody Roberta. She can never have a drama at a civilised hour, can she?’

‘She can’t help it. Let’s hope she hasn’t murdered Scott,’ I said, tying my hair back with one of Polly’s school hairbands.

‘Can’t see that the world would be a worse place if she had done away with that arrogant git.’

‘Don’t say that. Anyway, go back to sleep.’ I wasn’t up for a rant about how Scott thought he was the dog’s bollocks with his great big banger of a house.

He snuggled down again but stuck out his hand to squeeze mine. ‘Don’t forget I’ve got to leave for the office at five-thirty tomorrow. Immi’s too young to stay in the house on her own.’

As if I needed reminding of family responsibilities. I held his hand for a second. He was warm, as always. I flicked away the grain of resentment at having to turn out on a freezing December night to hoover up the shards of someone else’s life. Just for once I would have liked Jonathan to come and help me de-ice the car, make sure the stupid Volvo started. I snatched up my handbag and hoped Roberta hadn’t done something very silly.

Though God knows, Scott deserved it.

By the time GI Joe led me into reception, the formalities were over. I’d been swabbed, fingerprinted and photographed like a common criminal. I’d told everything to the solicitor, then again to the police sergeant who kept telling me that she knew how difficult this was for me.

Actually, she didn’t have the faintest clue. Nothing about Scott had been straightforward – meeting in Italy, a courtship carried out to- and fro-ing from one side of the world to another, our differences in culture, manners and upbringing, everyone else’s opinions on the subject. I’d tried to be that obedient girl, destined for a future with a City boy. But I was no match for Scott’s persistence. He’d torn through my staid world, bringing spontaneity and irreverence. Springing out on me in the university library, straight off the plane from Australia. Spraying ‘I love you’ in shaving foam on the Mini my Dad bought me for my twenty-first. Asking me to marry him in Sydney’s Waverley Cemetery, overlooking the sea.

This softly spoken sergeant probably thought I was a spoilt housewife, clinging onto a wealthy husband so I could shop for shoes every day. I didn’t have the energy to explain that we’d toiled away together, building up Scott’s property business, renovation by renovation.

By the time I signed the caution, accepting my guilt, I was punch drunk, too exhausted to care about anything as long as I could lie down soon.

I could see Octavia waiting outside through the glass, the furry hood of her parka framing her face. Her breath was coming out in foggy clouds. I waved, my whole soul lifting as though I’d been staggering along with a box of encyclopaedias and had just found a table to rest it on.

She mouthed, ‘What the hell’s going on?’

GI Joe glanced outside. ‘It looks freezing out there. We shouldn’t really do this, but she can wait in here while we finish sorting you out.’

He unlocked the side door and ushered her in. I threw my arms round her, breathing in a trace of White Musk, the perfume oil she’d been wearing since we were about thirteen. I’d be able to pick her out blindfolded. Octavia was quick to prise me off her. She preferred the Swiss Army knife approach to drama.

She stepped back to look at me, taking in the boiler suit. ‘Jesus. Didn’t know you’d be dressed as Frosty the Snowman. Have they finished with you already? I was expecting to do the fingertips through the glass malarkey.’

‘They did me first while they were waiting for the others to sober up.’

She looked over at the police officers milling about behind the desk, then leant into my ear and whispered, ‘Tell me you didn’t kill him.’

I saw PC Ryan nudge GI Joe and glance in my direction. I turned my back on them and kept my voice low. ‘God, no, nothing like that. It’s all resolved now. I just need to collect my belongings. Things got slightly out of hand. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other.’

‘So what did happen?’ Octavia said.

‘Same old, same old.’ I held out my hand for the T-shirt she’d brought me. A sudden weariness engulfed me. I was tired of talking about what had happened, of thinking about it.

Octavia was shaking her head. ‘Hardly same old. You’ve never been arrested before.’

‘Same old, but one step further. Scott was furious because I’d let Alicia wear an off-the-shoulder T-shirt to go to the cinema. It wasn’t a sexy thing, just an ordinary T-shirt. He thought it was too tarty.’

‘So?’ Octavia positioned herself to act as a curtain while I struggled into her top without exposing myself to the world.

My stomach clenched as I remembered Scott shouting in my face, his Sydneysider accent becoming more pronounced.

‘The Australian side of the business isn’t going well and he’s been a fight waiting to happen recently. I carried on cooking dinner, refusing to get dragged in. He wouldn’t let it drop, kept on and on, right at me, how I’m so self-obsessed I can’t see that my daughter is turning into a little floozy, and I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t disappear back to Australia with her, the usual stuff. I tried to push him away but he was standing there, holding me back with one arm and laughing.’ I paused. ‘I’d just had enough. I picked up the frying pan and cracked it into the side of his head. The edge caught his forehead and it poured with blood. You know me, I was lucky not to faint. I shouldn’t have done it. Though if I’d known he was going to send me here, I’d have cracked it a bit harder.’

Octavia flickered out a smile at that. ‘Whoo-bloody-hoo. Poor little Scott got a bit of a bang on the head, bless his little cottons. Presumably he didn’t bleed to death and stain the limestone?’ As the words left Octavia’s mouth, I saw her lips twitch. I started to giggle too, a spirally sort of laughter that made a good alternative to crying.

Octavia grew serious again. ‘So how did you end up here?’

‘He phoned the police. Said I’d assaulted him. So Warren Drive had the glorious spectacle of blue lights flashing outside our house and me being escorted away. No doubt the Surrey grapevine is quivering as we speak.’

Octavia’s shoulders went back. For one horrible moment, I thought she was going to march off and start grabbing a few ties over the reception desk. I was poised, ready to grip her arm. Luckily, they were busy trying to get straight answers out of a young man who was wobbling about and going off into hysterics every time he tried to spell his name.

‘He called the cops on you? Did they not look at the fact that he is about eighteen stone with arms like hams and you are, what? About eight stone? Bloody hell. I suppose they don’t count all the times he’s kicked up a fuss about nothing. Talk about piss up in a brewery. No such thing as common sense in British policing, then.’

I tried to answer Octavia. ‘Scott’s behaviour has never been serious enough to report. And I shouldn’t have hit him.’

‘Even so, it doesn’t take a brain box to work out that he could probably stand up for himself. What was it? A scratch? I’ve got a plaster in my bag. Perhaps I’ll pop over there and put some ice on his little head while I’m at it. Maybe he’ll piss off back to Sydney and do us all a favour.’ She gathered up my discarded overall and flung it onto the bench.

‘Don’t. His mother arrives tomorrow for Christmas.’ I busied myself with the buttons on the T-shirt.

Octavia stared. ‘Tomorrow? Make her stay in a hotel. You can’t go home as if nothing has happened after this.’

‘I have to. It’s Christmas and I am not ruining it for Alicia. When it’s over, I’ll work out what I’m going to do. If anything.’

Octavia was shaking her head. It was astonishing how much disapproval I’d managed to engender in my life.

I shrugged. ‘It’s not as though I’ve got a proper criminal record. It’s just a caution.’

‘A caution? What for?’

‘Abuse by beating.’

‘Abuse by beating for a scratch and a bit of a bruise? That’s bloody ridiculous. What an arsehole.’

‘A caution’s not the end of the world. I did assault him. I shouldn’t have allowed him to antagonise me. It doesn’t mean anything unless I want to work in a school. Which obviously I don’t.’ I tried to smile. I loved my own daughter but had nothing like Octavia’s natural affinity with kids of all ages.

‘Could you have refused to accept the caution?’

‘Yes, but if he didn’t drop the charge, then it would have gone to court.’

‘Scott wouldn’t have done that, surely? Maybe he liked the idea of you sweating in a cell for a bit. He should have married some brainless drip, who never stands up to him. What would all his beefy business mates say if they found out his missus had clouted him one with a frying pan? He’d be a laughing stock.’

Octavia knew that Scott had a short fuse but I’d been economical with how often and how ferociously we’d argued. She simply wouldn’t get it. She’d always seen marriage as a pie chart of household chores, parenting and work, with the tiniest sliver of romance and passion. The rollercoaster ride of love and anguish that I’d experienced with Scott was alien to her.

Octavia had her hands on her hips, waiting for me to explain.

‘They interviewed Scott. He said he would definitely press charges, so the solicitor advised me to admit ‘the offence’ as he called it and agree to the caution. I just wanted to get out of here.’

Shock washed across Octavia’s face. She spoke in a low voice. ‘Robbie. Where is all this going to end? Are you going to stay with him until he’s sucked every last bit of joy out of your life? Perhaps next time he will get you sent to prison. You can’t go on like this.’

‘I know that.’

Octavia was expecting me to be like her. Make a decision, there and then, pack suitcases and be gone. I owed it to Alicia to get through Christmas, at least one more time. It was a massive leap from accepting that I couldn’t live like this to separating from Scott permanently. If he went back to Australia, I’d probably never see him again. My growing up history, the bedrock of my adult life, would be wiped out at a stroke.

There would be plenty of people celebrating that.

‘Do your Mum and Dad know you’re here?’ Octavia asked.

‘No. I decided I didn’t need to burden them with this latest escapade. I think I’ve probably heard enough ‘
Oh darling!’
to last a lifetime.’

‘You wouldn’t consider going to stay with them for a few days?’ Octavia asked.

I shook my head. ‘Definitely not.’

There wouldn’t be enough room in Surrey to accommodate such a vast quantity of ‘I told you so’s’.

‘Come and stay at mine, then. Bring Alicia. I’ll put Immi in with Polly. You can have her room,’ Octavia said.

‘I won’t, but thank you. Alicia’s been looking forward to spending Christmas with her grandmother for months and I’m not going to disappoint her. Scott probably didn’t mean to push it this far. It’s a cultural thing. You know how he feels about people respecting him. I suppose smacking him over the head with a frying pan wasn’t quite the adulation he thought he deserved. I imagine he’ll be grovelling apologies when I get home.’

Octavia rolled her eyes. ‘Christ. Respect. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. Are you really going to go home and act like nothing’s happened?
Cup of tea, darling? Polish your shoes?
’ She was throwing her hands up in frustration. ‘
Blow job?
’

Black. Or white. That was Octavia. I usually envied her decisiveness. And I loved her for her loyalty. But right now, I wasn’t in the mood for a lecture on the absurdity of my life. I could see her point. I didn’t know how I was going to go home and put my Happy Christmas face on.

But going home I was.

I sat on the bench waiting for Roberta to sign for her stuff. I was reeling from the idea that my friend, my funny, gorgeous friend, now had a police record. I had absolutely no doubt that a week from now she’d be making out that Scott landing her in the clink was no big deal, simply the inevitable downside of a passionate relationship. She just didn’t help herself. This was the girl who got a new boater and lacrosse stick every year while us scholarship girls were fannying about in grey gym kit and blazers several sizes too big. The girl who never had to sit out at school dances, who should have glided into the perfect life, bubble-wrapped and protected from struggle and worry. But she could never pick the easy option.

I watched her talking to a police officer. The faint sense of guilt I always felt surfaced again. At heart Roberta was a goody-goody, all dainty teacups, poncey art exhibitions and god-awful obscure authors. But she’d been desperate to be my friend at school, joining me on my shoplifting jaunts, though never stealing herself, hanging out with me while I smoked my Dad’s fags at the park, lying to my parents about where I was.