Something Good (12 page)

J
ane stood on Max's doorstep, fluffing her hair to erase an imprint caused by the Santa hat she'd worn all day. She'd come straight from Nippers' Christmas party; her entire body felt coated by a fine layer of sugar. She raised a hand, about to knock. “I just want a holiday,” came Veronica's voice, “a bloody
holiday,
Max, like normal people have.”

Jane had come to show Max glass samples for his window, and to take Hannah home. She couldn't decipher Max's response, didn't want to hear it. She'd turned into a snoop: first Hannah and Zoë, gleefully speculating on her crumbling bones and withering vagina. And now this. She could picture Max, his mouth set firm, his eyes gone cloudy—his I'm-not-really-here face.

“I work hard,” Veronica charged on, “and I deserve some little treats. D'you know how much effort I've put in to get this range off the ground? I'm exhausted, Max. Look at me. I'm completely shredded.”

It must be exhausting,
Jane thought,
blending aphrodisiacs all day.
“You go,” Max snapped, “with Dylan and Zoë.”

“Are you kidding? I'm not taking
them
. I'm meeting up with Hettie and Jasper in Chamonix like I always do, I—”

“So why d'you need me?”

A pause. “Of course I need you,” Veronica declared.

Jane gripped the handle of her sample box. If she hurried away they'd hear her and think—and
know
—she'd been listening. How humiliating would it be to be caught creeping back down the steps? Hannah was in there, hearing all this—or maybe the girls were beautifying themselves at Veronica's. They seemed to drift between Max's house and Veronica Villas. Perhaps Max should build a bloody tunnel.

Jane felt stranded on the step, hating the bitterness that was flooding her veins. This was where Hannah preferred to be these days. Jane was aware that teenagers push their parents away; what she hadn't been prepared for was the ragged hole they left behind.

A slight figure with heavy fringe had stopped on the pavement. Dylan, the canapé server, cocked his head and gazed up at her. “What's the matter?” he asked.

“I've come to collect Hannah.” Max and Veronica's voices had faded. Jane clattered quickly down the steps.

“Why didn't you knock?” Dylan enquired.

“They sounded…busy.”

Dylan smirked. “Having one of their
moments?
Thought they might. She wants a holiday—not with us, of course. She never takes us.” He sounded resigned.

“Have you seen Hannah?” Jane asked, not wishing to be drawn into criticizing his mother.

“They're at our place. Come on, I'll show you. They're just back from one of their little…sprees.”

 

All Veronica had been able to afford after the divorce was an immaculate three-story town house with vast bay windows and what looked from outside like a loft conversion. “Better take off your shoes,” Dylan said, showing Jane into the faintly perfumed hall.

“Really?”

He grinned, indicating three small chrome cages on the floor. They looked like little prison cells for shoes. “One of Mum's rules.”

Obediently, Jane pulled off her boots. She noticed that Dylan's trainers remained on his feet, and wondered if he was having her on. “Zoë, Han, you up there?” he yelled upstairs.

Jane peered into the living room. It was immaculate, almost a replica of Max's porridgy room. There was no evidence that human beings actually engaged in activities or even breathed in there. Shrugging at the girls' lack of response, Dylan led her into the room. In his scruffy black T-shirt and jeans, he looked like he'd wandered into the wrong house. He had pale, gangly arms, a flicker of mischief about him, and looked about fourteen. “Sit down,” he said. It sounded like an order, so she did.

“Dylan,” she said, “do Max and your mum, do they usually—”

“What, argue like that? Yeah, sometimes. Mum likes her own way.”

She glanced at her stockinged feet. “Max isn't really the skiing sort.”

“She reckons that if he's the cycling sort, then skiing shouldn't be a problem….”

Jane laughed. “They're kind of…different.”

“Mum and Max?”

“Skiing and cycling,” she said, thinking,
yes, that too.
A ripple of laughter came from upstairs, and Dylan went up to fetch the girls. A typed sheet of A4 lay on the coffee table. Jane speed-read the text:

There was a picture of her at the top—the fox herself—with her hair mussed forward and lips hanging ajar in a half-pout.

“Hi, Mum.”

Jane sprang up. “Oh, Han, I didn't hear—”

Hannah's mouth was set firm. She glanced from her mother to the leaf let. Zoë appeared beside her, quickly rearranging her features to appear marginally less hostile. “Hi, Jane,” she said with fake brightness.

Jane smiled tightly. “Han, are you ready? I'd like to get back.” She snatched the box of glass samples at her feet.

“Okay.” Hannah sighed.

They would leave, Jane realized, without her seeing Max or showing him the samples; she had no intention of interrupting the skiing row. She wouldn't see him now until after Christmas, a thought that made her feel hollow, and which she tried to banish. Hannah slung her bag over her shoulder. There was something different about her; something around the eye region. Jane frowned. “Have you plucked your eyebrows?”

“Yes.”

Behind the girls, Dylan shuffled uncomfortably. “They look…different,” Jane hedged. Hannah's dark, dramatic eyebrows—her former eyebrows—had been mercilessly plucked into cotton-thin curves. The entire brow area was puffy and pink.

Don't flip out, Jane warned herself as they left Veronica's house. It wasn't as if her fifteen-year-old daughter had gotten a tattoo or had a bolt put through her tongue.

It was only
eyebrows
.

Jane hadn't expected a reply from Archie himself. She'd imagined that several assistants would run the admin side. Those swooped-down eyebrows—then Hannah's, plucked to near-invisibility—flashed into her mind.

Heck, she'd book a place. Hannah regarded her with such disdain—and was it any wonder when she lived her life so cautiously? With anticipation fizzling in her stomach, Jane tapped out her reply.

H
annah glanced around the small, cramped shop. Strings of sequinned felt birds hung from the ceiling. Among the usual selection of jewelry, photo frames and trinkets someone had managed to squeeze in a Christmas tree festooned with glittering baubles. It was Christmas Eve. Hannah's breath felt tight in her throat. The salesgirl was tapping on a laptop on the counter. “Looking for something?” she asked, glancing up.

“Just browsing, thanks,” Hannah said. There was a tremor in her voice. Now she was here—on the verge of doing it—she was feeling less sure of herself. She'd never done it without Zoë lurking nearby, projecting silent support.

Zoë had begun to feel like a big sister to her. Hannah had always wanted a sister, but even an annoying, grubby-nosed brother would have been better than the big fat nothing her parents had produced. That's how she'd thought of the worry dolls. Not as bickering sisters but the kind who'd be happy to listen and always knew how you were feeling. Like little Zoës, come to think of it. She glanced at a heap of multicolored glass beads and coils of silver wire on the counter beside the laptop. So the girl made her own jewelry. Zoë had nicked a bracelet from here but had somehow managed to lose it by they time they'd got back to Hannah's. “What's it matter?” Zoë had said. “It's not like it cost me anything.”

It didn't seem right, stealing something that someone had made with their own hands. It could have been one of her mum's glass panels, and Hannah knew how much care went into making those. Of course, everything was made
somewhere
—yet stealing was easier to justify if the trinket had been mass-produced by the billion in some factory in China.

A hippyish elderly woman was putting on clip-on earrings and asking the salesgirl if they suited her.
They're lovely, really bring out of the blue of your eyes.
At the back of the shop a dad and his bored-looking son were deliberating over packs of Christmas cards. This time, Hannah hadn't asked Zoë to come with her. She'd wanted to do this alone, to pick a present for Ollie in exchange for the pink crystal necklace. Zoë would have taken over, picking something horribly expensive, which wasn't what Hannah wanted at all.

She scanned carved wooden boxes and a selection of silver-colored lighters in a wicker basket. That was it: a lighter. Small, understated, kind of grown-up. She picked one up, enjoying its cold weight in her hand. It was curved, almost kidney-bean shaped. It felt classy.

Her fingers curled around it. She imagined giving it to Ollie that evening. She'd just turn up, and if he wasn't in she'd leave it with his mum—she wanted to meet this Celia Tibbs in the flesh—or tuck it in the corner of the landing by the door to his flat. She felt that familiar surge of excitement. Shoplifting wasn't about needing things; look at Zoë and the plastic doll's head. It was about being daring—experiencing that heady rush the moment before you did it. It was about feeling
alive
.

Hannah glanced up at a shelf laden with hand-painted vases, and moved her hand clutching the lighter to the open zip of her bag. She uncoiled her fingers. Drop—in it went. That would do it. Unlike Zoë, she knew when to stop. She wouldn't be greedy; she'd just have the lighter and leave. Then, to make her excursion worthwhile, she nicked a tan leather purse, a pen encrusted with fuchsia sequins and a tiny mirrored photo frame.

The salesgirl was threading beads on to wire and didn't acknowledge Hannah leaving the shop. The bell dinged as she opened the door. After the warmth and the incense smells, the air felt cool on her face.

Hannah checked her watch, surprised by how long she'd been in there. A good twenty minutes. She'd have to be quicker next time—more efficient. She glanced around the bustling street. It was almost dusk; the street glinted with Christmas lights, which usually looked tacky but today seemed oddly beautiful.

Hannah started to walk, feeling carefree and happy until it landed—a hand, the fingers spread—on her upper arm. Hannah tried to speak but no sound came out. The Christmas lights blurred before her eyes. And a voice said, “Excuse me, I think there's something in your bag you haven't paid for. Could you come back into the shop?”

J
ane sat beside Hannah at a fake wood desk in an interview room at the police station. On the chair beside her, Hannah was hunched with her hands flopped on to her knees. The windowless room smelt faintly of armpit. It was slightly less grim than the detention room where Hannah had been waiting when Jane had arrived, flustered and breathless, at the station. More than anything, she'd yearned to rewind to the point just before Hannah went into that damn shop. Why couldn't you manipulate time like that?

“So,” she said flatly, “why did you do it?”

“I don't know.” Hannah voice was tiny, virtually lost in the room.

“Is this anything to do with Zoë? Do you feel you have to keep up with her, have as much stuff as she—”

“No!” Hannah protested. She rubbed a fist into an eye.

“Not copying her, are you? Does she shoplift? She's always wearing new clothes, God knows how her mother—”

“Veronica buys her stuff. She gets whatever she wants.”

“Lucky Zoë,” Jane snapped.

Tears were rolling down Hannah's cheeks. “Mum, it was just…stupid. I wasn't thinking.” Max had said much the same thing after the night with that woman; he hadn't been thinking.
Just a little mistake,
he'd said.

“Jesus, Han, you'll have a criminal record, you know that? Are you trying to ruin your life?”

“Of course not!”

“Who were those things for?” Jane demanded.

“Me,” Hannah whispered.

“What—a lighter? Started smoking now, have you?” Jane didn't care about making a spectacle of herself; things could hardly get any worse.

Han shook her head. “That was for…a friend.”

“What friend?”

“Just…a friend.”

Jane rubbed her hands across her own face, cutting Hannah from her line of vision. This wouldn't have happened if she'd been out shopping with her instead of holing herself up in the studio. Did Hannah feel neglected? Perhaps she and Max were too mean with her. Look at the clothes and makeup Zoë managed to acquire. What you had or didn't have really mattered to girls of Hannah's age. Their home was a mess; Hannah was probably ashamed of it. Jane visualized Veronica's pristine hallway, and Max taking off his shoes obediently to slip into one of the cages.

Hannah's eyes had acquired a vivid pink tinge. Her hands looked pale and fragile on her lap. Maybe, Jane thought, it had been a mistake. She'd genuinely forgotten to pay. She wasn't a thief—not someone who should have been brought to the station in a police van. She'd been photographed and fingerprinted. She'd been treated like someone who robbed old ladies or mugged joggers in parks. She was on record, on police computers: Hannah Deakin the criminal.

An inspector with cropped graying hair and a vein-covered nose entered the room. He cleared his throat and sat in the vacant chair across the table. “Now, Hannah,” he said, “because you admitted your offence and haven't offended before, I'm going to issue a reprimand. That's a formal verbal warning. Your file will be sent to the youth offending team.”

He sounded as if he was recovering from a cold. Hannah's eyes gleamed with fear; Jane put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, as if she were a little girl again. “What's the youth offending team?” she asked.

“They're part of social services and set up voluntary programs to help with offending behavior. But in this instance,” he added, “I'll mark Hannah's report as no further action.”

Jane nodded, feeling sick in this horrible room with its stained beige walls and the man's coffee breath. “So is this the end of it?” she asked.

“Yes,” the inspector said, “this time.” He studied Hannah across the desk. He's just a man, Jane told herself; just an ordinary man doing his job. “Before you go,” he added, “I want you to be quite clear that shoplifting is a serous offence. If you're caught again you could be placed in a young offenders' institute. Do you understand that, Hannah?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Can we leave now?” Jane asked.

The inspector nodded. “You're free to go.”

Jane stood up and gripped Hannah's hand. For once, she didn't pull it away.

“Well,” came the voice just outside the police station, “look at you two with your long faces!” Donna, Amy's mother, had ground to a halt in front of them. She dumped a shopping bag at her feet and narrowed her eyes at Hannah. Amy lurked awkwardly behind her.

“Hello, Donna,” said Jane.

“Last-minute Christmas shopping?” Donna asked, widening her eyes.

“Just a few bits and pieces,” Jane replied.

“Hi, Han,” said Amy. “How's Zoë these days?”

“She's fine,” Hannah murmured.

Donna faked a smile. “Mind you, I don't blame you for looking pissed off. Nightmare, isn't it? So busy at this time of year. A load of commercial nonsense. I'll be glad when it's all over.”

Jane nodded. “Me, too.”

“Anyway, we'd better get on. We've still got crackers and stuffing to buy. Enjoy your Christmas—if you don't mind me saying, Jane, you look worn-out. Make sure you have a rest over the holiday.”

Jane forced a smile. “Yes, I will.”

As they parted she heard Donna muttering, “God, Amy, did you see the state of Hannah's face?”