Me and Mr Jones (9 page)

She stared at the message again, feeling cold all over, willing it to have been a misread, a mad brain-melt, where she’d got the wrong end of the stick. But they stayed the same, the words drumming around her head as she heard his voice say them.
You can’t get away from me that easy, Iz.

God. Getting away from him had been the most crucial thing she’d ever had to do, and definitely the most terrifying. She would never forget the way her heart had galloped as they’d sneaked away, her and the girls with their few measly possessions; how she had bundled the cases into the car – quick, quick, before he comes back! She should have known that Gary wasn’t the kind of man to take such a slight without retribution.

Help. Now what should she do? Were they going to have to move again? Would they have to find another shelter to hide in? The refuge they’d first come to, in Dorchester, had been brilliantly helpful, but returning there would feel like a giant leap back. And what about the girls’ school, what about work? She didn’t want to have to unpick all the progress she had made, just for him.

‘Everything all right?’ Charlie had appeared by her side and she jumped. ‘Izzy – are you okay?’

She must have been looking freaked out, because he sounded concerned, the usual jokiness stripped from his voice. ‘Sure,’ she replied briskly, avoiding his eye. She glanced at her watch, suddenly keen to be somewhere quieter, safer, less public. Somewhere she could slide across bolts and close the curtains. The frightened mice needed to scurry back to their mousehole and hide. ‘We’d better push off now,’ she said. ‘GIRLS! Time to go!’

‘Oh, but . . .’ He sagged with disappointment. ‘Really? Already? But it’s only midday. I thought . . .’ He scratched his head as Willow and Hazel galloped over, hair dishevelled, sand in their fingernails. ‘How about I shout us chips and a pasty for lunch first?’

Sneaky. Like she could say no, when her daughters’ eyes were already gleaming.

‘Can we, Mum?’

‘PLEASE?’

‘Oh, all right then,’ she said, trying to keep up a fake smile. Inside her mind was still ricocheting between potential dangers, and she forced herself to breathe deeply.
You’re overreacting
, she told herself firmly. Gary couldn’t possibly know where they were – there was no way Lou or Monique would have ratted on her.

No. Of course not. Get a grip, Izzy.

But what if Louise had let something slip? What if Gary had somehow got hold of an email or postcard Izzy had sent, with her new contact details? It could have happened – Gary was friends with Lou’s boyfriend Ricky, and he might have gone on the snoop round at their place one evening. He’d got her new phone number, hadn’t he? What else had he found out?

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Charlie asked as they began walking towards the café. ‘You’ve gone a bit pale.’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, hunching over her phone and deleting the text before he could see it. There. Gone. She stuffed the phone in her pocket, trying not to think about it any more. Salty chips and a strong coffee would take her mind off Gary, she told herself.

But they didn’t.

She’d first met Gary when she was fourteen and put into a care home in Burnage. Before then, she’d had a foster placement with the McCreedys, Evangelical Christians who had turfed her out when they caught her smoking at the bottom of the garden. Which, in hindsight, hadn’t exactly been Christian-spirited – throwing an unwanted child back to the wolves – but there you go. People were strange.

Angry and disempowered by yet another rejection, she’d lashed out at the world, pushing away everyone who tried to help her: her dance teacher, her social worker and Kirsty and Derek, the live-in carers at this particular home. She kept her distance, spending long hours hunched in her room, wrapped in the old leopard-spot coat, which was the only thing of her mother’s that she’d ever owned. Once it had smelled of her (Shalimar, she came to discover, years later), and she’d gone to sleep many times breathing in that scent, imagining she was in her mother’s embrace. Now the perfume had vanished and it just smelled of nothing, but slipping her arms into its cold, silky lining still proved a comfort.

Then she met Gary. He was in the home too, dogged by his own troubled past. His mum had been an alcoholic who had died months earlier, and his dad was completely off the scene. For some reason, he was the one person she could tolerate during those first few months, the one person who encouraged her out of the coat, and out of her shell.

Back then, he seemed lovely. Her soulmate, who understood what she’d been through, who could comfort her when the demons attacked. They clung to each other like sole survivors of an earthquake.

Admittedly, the warning signs were already there. He got into fights at school, sometimes drank too much, lunged too quickly into random acts of violence. Then he lost it and tried to burn down the school one night and was sent to a remand centre. They fell out of contact and didn’t see each other for five long years. Everyone told Izzy it was for the best, but she felt as if her heart had been split open.

Just when she had turned her life into some kind of order – living in Albert Road, studying for A-levels in between waitressing and cleaning jobs – he came back. He strolled into the café where she worked, and it was as if he’d never been away.

‘I’ll always be here for you, Iz,’ he told her as they held each other after her shift that evening. ‘Let’s get married and be together for the rest of our lives. We’ll be our own little family for ever and ever.’

It had seemed a good idea at the time.

After lunch, Charlie’s phone beeped and she heard him swear under his breath as he read the text.

‘Everything all right?’ she asked, stuffing the chip papers into a bin.

‘Yeah, sure,’ he said. ‘That was my brother – I just lost track of time. I was supposed to be at my parents’ place by now.’

‘Oh, right,’ she said. She gazed around helplessly. They’d come in Charlie’s car, and she’d been counting on a lift home later on. ‘Well . . . we could get a bus from here, if you need to go.’

He waved her suggestion away. ‘Don’t be silly. I can take you back, unless . . .’ He paused, making calculations in his head. ‘Look, tell you what. Why don’t you come with me, pop in there for a cup of tea. It’s on the way to yours.’

‘What, all of us?’ She glanced at the girls, who were crouched by some tussocky seagrass, whispering like explorers as they rummaged through its spikes. This was awkward. She didn’t really want to meet his parents today. The girls looked like ragamuffins, their hair wild and tangled from the wind. She no doubt looked every bit as windswept herself, with no make-up and her scruffiest jeans, a hole in one knee. ‘Actually, it’s probably not the best time to—’ she began, but he was already speaking.

‘Yeah, course,’ he said. ‘No problemo. They’ll love you guys.’

‘LOOK! We got it – a sandhopper!’ exclaimed Hazel just then, straightening up with her fingers curled around to form a cage. Her dimples flashed as she beamed. ‘See him?’

She opened her palm and a sand-coloured insect immediately leapt to freedom, making her shriek. ‘Oh no. Where did he go?’

Willow stood up too. ‘What are we doing now?’ she asked.

‘Well, you can come and meet my family if you want,’ Charlie said. ‘There’ll probably be some cake on offer . . .’

‘Ooh, yes please,’ Hazel said immediately, sandhopper forgotten. ‘Can we, Mum?’

Right. This was where Izzy came up with a really good excuse for saying no, thank you, and goodbye . . . but her brain failed her. ‘I suppose so,’ she said weakly in the end. One cup of tea and a piece of cake with Charlie’s apparently lovely parents, and then home again. How bad could it be, after all?

THIS BAD
, was the answer, when they arrived at the Joneses’ twenty minutes later. Badder than the baddest badness ever experienced before. Flaming heck, as her granny used to say. She’d had nicer welcomes from social services.

‘You could have
told
us you were bringing some other people,’ his mum glowered reproachfully on the doorstep, her eyes beady with dislike as she gave Izzy and her daughters the once-over. ‘Other people’ indeed, like they weren’t just standing there. ‘Honestly, Charlie!’

Izzy’s fists tightened. She felt like spitting in this woman’s face. How dare she make judgements about her and the girls, how dare she dismiss them with a single glance? She put her arms protectively around Willow and Hazel. Oh, why hadn’t she followed her instincts and asked Charlie to take them home?

Once they’d been permitted over the threshold, things became even worse: there had been a whole room full of people around a dinner table, spoons in hand, all gawping at them in surprise. Matilda’s mum – whatever her name was – stared dumbly, her gob hanging open in shock as she put two and two together. Probably didn’t think a dance teacher was good enough for their precious Charlie, just like his cow of a mum. Awk-WARD, as Louise used to say.

Unnerved, Izzy followed Charlie into the kitchen, holding the girls’ hands. ‘I think we should go,’ she hissed. ‘They don’t want us here.’

‘It’s cool,’ he said cheerfully and she gritted her teeth. ‘Orange squash all right, girls?’

But it wasn’t cool, not in the slightest. The rejection she’d felt loud and clear from Charlie’s family brought back a flood of old feelings, and all she wanted to do was escape. She was just about to make a dash for freedom with the girls when a woman in a blue dress came into the kitchen, her arms full of pudding bowls.

‘Hi, Charlie,’ she said, opening the dishwasher and stacking them inside. ‘Hello, I’m Emma,’ she added to Izzy, then gave an extra-big smile to the girls. ‘I love your names,’ she said. ‘Willow and Hazel, right? Beautiful. So who’s who?’

Willow introduced them shyly, gazing up at Emma through her eyelashes. Hazel beamed and butted in with their ages, their middle names and her favourite colour (lilac). ‘We’ve been fossil-hunting,’ she added proudly, ‘but we didn’t see any dinosaurs.’

‘Maybe next time,’ Emma said, then turned to Izzy. ‘Sorry about the welcome you’ve had,’ she added in a low voice. ‘I promise we’re not all like that.’

Before Izzy could reply, Matilda’s mum walked in with a serving dish, closely followed by Lilian. Immediately the atmosphere changed.

‘Charlie, I did
say
we were going to have a family talk later, don’t you remember?’ the witch snapped, giving Izzy a meaningful look, in case she was stupid as well as deaf.

‘Yeah – sorry, Mum, it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing because . . . Well, I thought it would be nice for everyone to meet Izzy, Willow and Hazel, that’s all.’

Nice?
For whom? Izzy was starting to think Charlie was insane. ‘Well,’ she said, unable to keep quiet any longer. Time to abort this mission and bail out, she decided. ‘It really has been an absolute
pleasure
to come here and receive such a friendly reception, but oh, gosh, is that the time?’ Sarcasm dripped through her voice – it was impossible to stop it. ‘Girls, you’ve got all that homework to do this afternoon, and I have a ton of ironing. We’d better go.’

‘Ohhh!’ Willow moaned. ‘Homework? Can’t we do that later, Mum?’

‘We haven’t even had a BISCUIT!’ Hazel protested.

Charlie’s expression was full of dismay. ‘Already? Oh, but Iz—’

A shudder went through her, and it was like Gary was in the room, like he’d never really been away. ‘Don’t call me that,’ she said, pulling her cardigan tight around her. ‘Don’t
ever
call me that.’ She grabbed Willow by one hand and Hazel by the other. ‘Come on, girls, we’re off.’

Moments later they were out of the front door. ‘Big mistake, Izzy,’ she said to herself under her breath as she marched away. Huge mistake. Rule number one: do not get involved with a charmer. When would she ever learn?

‘Wait!’ Charlie yelled, running after them. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t know it would be like that. Let me drive you home. Please!’

‘No thank you,’ she replied icily.

‘But how are you going to get back? It’s miles! Come on, don’t be like this, let me give you a lift.’

‘We’ll walk,’ she said, then rounded on him with venom in her eyes. ‘Just sod off,’ she hissed savagely. ‘We don’t need you. Not for anything!’

His shoulders sagged and she left him there, a pathetic figure alone in his parents’ driveway. She couldn’t have cared less.

‘Are we really going to walk all the way home?’ Willow asked in a whisper as they strode along together. The sun had gone in and a mean east wind was making the trees shiver.

Guilt swamped her. Here they were, stuck in the middle of bloody nowhere, with hardly any money and several miles from their flat. She didn’t even know if buses ran on a Sunday around here. Some mother she was.

Swallowing hard, she forced an unnatural brightness into her voice. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, without a clue how she was going to get out of this. ‘We can—’

Then she heard a car and Charlie pulled up alongside them in his old Escort. ‘Please,’ he said humbly, leaning across the wheel to catch her eye. ‘I can’t let you walk.’

Nose in the air, Izzy opened the back door and the girls clambered in gratefully. She sat next to them and they drove in silence back to Lyme.

Lesson learned
, she thought to herself.
Lesson bloody learned
.