Away From It All (16 page)

She didn't feel at all nervous being alone in the dusk, but revelled in the freedom to walk where she chose. She didn't go out by herself in the evenings back at home. She didn't know any other girls who did, either. If they went out to a party or to see a film they were delivered and collected by car, as if the busy suburban streets were full of pervy murderers or
pre-teen mobile-phone muggers lying in wait for defenceless girls. It was brilliant here. Her mother seemed to think bad stuff like that wouldn't happen and Grace felt as if she had, like the cat, a personal territory with no real boundaries other than the distance she could cover on foot.

The village shop was just closing up. Mrs Rice was picking up a box of courgettes from the vegetable selection outside the store. ‘Your uncle Harry should grow these,' she called out to Grace as she approached. ‘We could soon shift them here.' Grace doubted it, the box Mrs Rice was carrying looked full and heavy.

‘He does grow them,' she said. ‘He sells them to the organic shop down at Chapel Creek.'

‘Oh well,
organic
.' Mrs Rice sniffed. ‘That's a bit of a fancy thing. An excuse for fancy prices too. It'll just be a fad, you know, what folks round here want is
value
.'

Grace smiled politely, feeling unqualified to argue any kind of case, and went to walk on past the shop. Mrs Rice hadn't finished with her. ‘So what else does Uncle Harry grow up there in his plastic tunnels?' A note of sly inquisitiveness in her voice made Grace wary. Theo had said he was growing a load of dope but had also told her that Chas and Sam had dried some of the leaves and smoked it but it wasn't any good.

‘Tomatoes, aubergines, peppers, that sort of thing,' Grace said, thinking quickly and listing the contents of her mother's luscious ratatouille recipe. ‘And garlic and shallots and onions and all sorts of stuff really.'

Mrs Rice stood square in front of the shop doorway, resting the box of courgettes on her hips and looking as if she was expecting additional information. ‘I
wouldn't mind coming up and taking a look myself,' she said. ‘See if I can get my Bill interested. After all if there's a profit in
organic
, it might be worth looking into.' She gave Grace a smile that didn't quite hide suspicion and disappeared into the shop.

‘You don't have to do that.' Mo took the pile of dirty plates from Katie and clattered them down hard on the draining board.

‘No? Oh, but I like to do my bit, join in, you know?' Katie made a move towards the tea towel that hung on the Aga rail but Mo was too quick for her.

‘Alice and I can manage. It's a fine starry night. Why don't you go and sit outside on the porch?' Katie looked doubtful.

‘Take the rest of the wine,' Alice suggested. ‘Noel's out there.'

‘OK, no worries.' Katie's dainty shoes tripped across the rough flag floor as she went out. Jocelyn had gone to bed early, to be fresh, she'd told Alice privately, for Patrice's arrival the next day. Aidan had gone to his room to sort out notes for a complicated chapter about Jocelyn's time in New York with Andy Warhol, and the boys had gone to watch something lurid and violent on the TV in the twins' room. Alice could smell cigarettes: this was one house that Noel felt free to smoke in and she could hear the swing seat on the verandah creaking gently. There were tiny lights out there, little star-shaped silvery things strung along the length of the porch which gave an almost glamorous feel to the old place, casting wispy angular shadows over the flaking purple paintwork and splintery wood. The wind chimes by the doorway jangled softly.

‘What do you think of her?' Mo whispered, jerking
her head in the direction of the doorway as soon as Katie was out of sight.

‘Katie? She's all right, why?'

Mo frowned and shoved a pair of plates into the last available slot in the dishwasher.

‘She's not all right, she's trouble.'

Alice laughed, then wished she hadn't. Mo straightened up and scowled ferociously at her. It just wasn't possible to explain to Mo that she wasn't laughing
at
her, only at her instant decision that Katie was ‘trouble'. Was this what happened if you never travelled beyond the county boundary?

Mo shook her shaggy head at her as if in despair that Alice couldn't see what she could see. The kitchen light shone through her cloud of parched wiry hair strands and through the thin cheesecloth fibres of her white smock top, making Mo look as if her entire self was a loosely woven being. It was an odd illusion: she usually gave an impression of utter solidity, plodding around the place in her splay-footed plum-coloured single-strapped shoes, broad, flat and roomy as a baby's first sandal. And she seemed weighed down by layers of clothes, the smock tops over voluminous crushed velvet skirts over ancient broderie anglaise petticoats that she'd found in a chest in the attic. Now, charged with some demonic feeling of premonition, Alice had the impression that she was close to levitating.

‘She's after your Noel, that one,' Mo went on, flinging knives into their slots in the machine with frightening accuracy. Chillingly, Alice had a vision of herself standing barefoot on the damp dewy grass while Mo aimed daggers at her toes. She smiled at Mo, trying to erase the image. ‘Oh I don't suppose she is, I expect she's just a friendly sort,' she said, then added,
before she could stop herself, ‘and anyway, if you really think that's true, why did you insist she go out there?'

Mo turned from the dishes and smiled at her. ‘To see what would happen,' she told her. ‘We simple country folk take our entertainment where we can get it. And anyway, you were the one who told her to take the wine and go and sit with Noel.'

Mo left the room before Alice could think of a retort. Alice filled the sink and started washing the salad bowls and sharp knives, splashing them about crossly. There were no sounds from the verandah other than the slight creaking of the seat. It was rhythmic, insistent, as if a couple were having leisurely sex on a squeaky bed. The thought of sex brought Aidan to her mind, not Noel, and she tried to banish the picture that was taking shape in her head, of herself and Aidan continuing what had started up against the old oak tree. Light footsteps sounded behind her and she looked round, half-expecting him to have guessed at her reverie and turned up to drag her out to get on with it. Instead, Noel was there with two empty glasses.

‘Another bottle, I think,' he said, putting the glasses on the table, then pulling her towards him and squeezing her tight against him. ‘Unless . . .' he went on, nuzzling her hair, ‘unless we make a dash for the cottage and get a passion session in before Grace gets back. What do you say?'

Alice pushed him away gently. ‘And what about Theo? He sleeps on the sofa bed just below our room. Every creak and squeak . . .'

‘Ah but he's watching telly with the primitive cousins. Ah come on Alice, it's been ages.' He closed in on her again and put a hand behind her back,
pulling her against him. ‘And feel for yourself.' He took her hand – oblivious to it being wet and sudsy from the sink – and held it against the taut front of his chinos. ‘See? I'm feeling very pleased to see you!'

He sounded a bit drunk and smelled of too many cigarettes. Alice considered for a moment. Years ago she'd been an avid reader of agony columns in women's magazines. If she was now asking, ‘Shall I, shan't I?' she knew the answer had to be, ‘Yes you should.' Instead she disentangled her hand from his and smiled at him. ‘Better save it for another time, Noel. When it'll be a bit less risky.'

‘Ah, “risky”,' he said, his leer turning to a sneer. ‘Well you wouldn't want to do anything “risky”, now would you Alice? Shall we book an hour in for Thursday week then? Got your diary?'

‘Ssh! Do you want the whole house to hear you?' she hissed at him. ‘I only meant what's the point of starting something that will have to be stopped the minute the kids walk into the house? You can hear every whisper in Gosling. When I'm trying to get to sleep I can even hear the bloody cat purring downstairs!' But he'd gone. Grabbing another bottle, the glasses and the corkscrew all in a swift manoeuvre, he'd swung out of the door. Alice turned back to her dishes, feeling like a foolish Cinderella, and out on the verandah the swing seat creaked on.

There were loads of rabbits up on the top of the hill but from where she was, only halfway up, Grace couldn't see her white one. A couple of times she thought he was there, but it was always one of the cross-breeds, a wild ordinary taupe one with a flash of white across its back or a black one with white
patches. She climbed further up the cliff, slightly nervous now that it was almost properly dark. The layout of the shrubs and undergrowth was less familiar to her than on the Penmorrow side. Here, she couldn't immediately tell which places she should race past in case a crazed murderer was lurking in the hope of finding a lone wandering female. Far more likely, and almost worse because it was so possible, was that round any dense shrub there could be a couple having torrid sex. Theo had once told her that Sam had said he'd seen someone doing exactly that up on this cliffside. Of course that probably wasn't true. It was the sort of thing Sam and Chas would invent to impress Theo and make him think they knew stuff that he didn't. Hardly likely – Theo had more girls from her school with his number stored in their phones than any other boy in his year. Even Sophy's mum (a
mum
!) when she came to pick up Sophy from their house, did that silly smiley thing and flicked her hair about if he was there.

Grace was almost at the top of the hill now, creeping slowly and carefully so as not to frighten any rabbits. Just ahead she could see some by the old bench, grazing in the gloom and not seeming to care that she was there. She wondered if that was because some of them were crossed with pet-shop ones and were half tame. Surely then, they'd have been easy prey for foxes? Missing her step on the path, she kicked a big stone which clattered down towards the beach. The rabbits scattered, racing off in different directions among the trees. Grace caught a glimpse of a big flash of white as they ran. So he was safe, the latest rabbit, so far.

Grace sat on the bench and looked out across the bay. The lights on the Penmorrow porch made the
place look a bit like a ship's deck with its rigging all festively lit. The Big Shepherd statue on the grass in front of the house was a looming silhouette, surely enough to frighten off anyone who thought they'd go burgling at the house. She could see someone moving about so she raised her binoculars to view what was happening over there. The Australian woman, Katie, was sitting on the swing seat, one long leg crossed over the other. The binoculars were good ones – Joss used them for bird-watching up at the Hayle estuary and had told her that through them she could make out the brands of shampoo on bathroom window ledges half a mile away. Katie had her shoe hanging off, dangling from her foot. Grace had liked the shoes. They were London ones, high and long and pointy, the sort her mother wore for parties and Sophy's mum wore any old time. Noel came into view just then and sat next to Katie on the swing seat. Grace watched him hand her a glass of wine. Then, mystified, she watched him take hold of Katie's foot, place it on his lap and start massaging it.

Katie didn't look very comfortable, Grace thought, with her leg crossed high up and hauled across to Noel.
She
didn't feel completely comfortable now either, as she realized that this was something she maybe shouldn't be watching. Then Noel released the foot and ran his hand slowly up Katie's leg. What the hell did he think he was doing, Grace wondered, and where was her mum? The hand didn't stop when it got to the edge of Katie's skirt either, but disappeared beneath. Katie was lying back in the seat, her long hair draped over the back of it. Instead of clamping her knees together and brushing Noel's hand away, she was sprawled out like a relaxed cat, enjoying herself, enjoying him.

Quickly Grace moved the binoculars to another part of the house. She focused on the sitting-room window, the hexagonal one with the all-round view. Jocelyn was there, standing like one of Arthur's statues, watching Noel and Katie. Grace knew she'd never tell what she saw; Jocelyn wouldn't either, but she'd make sure Noel knew what she knew.

ALICE WAS DOWN
in the kitchen early, making herself a pot of tea really quietly so that she didn't disturb Theo. Noel was all right, he was so deeply asleep that only a screaming Harrier jet from the nearby naval base would stir him. Grace too was comatose, stretched across her bed with one foot poking out from beneath the duvet and the plump tabby body of her cat sprawled on top of her. The white patch of fur under Monty's chin had a pinkish tinge to it. Blood from a recently devoured mouse, Alice guessed, seeing as he hadn't leapt up and raced down the stairs ahead of her in crazed anticipation of a tin being opened.

In the sitting room Alice could see Theo snuggled deep into his pillows with his mobile phone, like a comfort toy, propped up on the arm of the sofa bed. For a teenager he was a relatively light sleeper, and Alice tiptoed around the kitchen hoping he wouldn't wake up and decide that this was a good time to do some talking. Knowing that she'd been so furious with him over the seagulls, his way of getting back into favour would be to sit with her and chat, on the basis that few adults can resist a teenager who is making an effort to connect. He'd noisily munch toast and
marmalade (having picked out any bits of peel and heaped them up like kindling for a miniature fire) and chatter away about almost anything that came into his head, rambling on about football or music, about his exams and which universities he should apply to, all to make her feel that he needed her and cared about her opinions. He might be a moody teenager, he'd be telling her, but as a special concession he could do the thing called ‘conversation' when necessary.