Wishful Thinking (37 page)

‘Which cab?' the driver asked, bored. Plainly he had heard it all before.

‘That one,' said Lin, pointing. ‘No – that one . . .'

‘It's all right,' I said. ‘I know Cal's address.' I'd had to send some stuff round to him once when he had a day off. I couldn't recall the house number, but I knew the street. Our driver took his time, getting bogged down in traffic, and we didn't see Georgie anywhere up ahead. When we eventually reached Lyndhall Road it was dark and quiet, with no sign of any other vehicle.

‘What do we do now?' Lin said in an undervoice, while I paid the fare. ‘Knock on all the doors?'

‘Walk along till we come to the scene of the crime?' I offered.

We found Georgie leaning against a wall about halfway down the road. She, too, couldn't remember the number. ‘I rang the doorbell,' she said, ‘but it was the wrong house. There was an old woman in a dressing-gown who was cross. I asked if she knew the McGregors but she said no . . .'

We coaxed her to walk back with us, or at least to start walking. We each put an arm round her; the gin was taking effect and she needed support. At one point she stopped, insisting she wanted Cal – she had to go to him – and there was a struggle, and she lashed out at me, saying I'd tried to take him from her. Then she began to sob, dry racking sobs that tore at her gut, growing more and more violent, until her body shook with them. She doubled up, expelling a stream of thin vomit flecked with peanuts. Some of it splashed over my leg. There were no taxis any more, and even if there had been, I was sure the driver would have refused to take us. In the end, I called the minicab firm used by Ransome and booked one on the company account. (I could pay it back later.) We waited what seemed like ages, and Georgie was sick again, though she had very little left to be sick with, and then passed out on Lin's shoulder. I saw a curtain twitch in an upper window, and wondered which house Cal was in, and whether he was sleeping, and if he knew what was happening outside. But no; if he'd heard Georgie, he would have come out to help her, I was sure of that. Nearly sure, anyway.

When the minicab came we roused her enough to get her in, and gave the driver her address. Once there we asked him to wait, found her keys, took her indoors and arranged her on the sofa (the stairs were out of the question). ‘Will she be all right?' Lin asked, doubtfully.

‘I think so. She can't be sick any more: she's too empty. I expect she'll just sleep it off.'

We removed her shoes and covered her with a throw which was draped over one of the chairs. Lin scribbled a note which she hoped would be reassuring – ‘Cookie and I brought you home. Call when you feel better' – and we left it on a nearby table with a bottle of Paracetamol from the bathroom and a glass of water. Then we went back to the cab. By the time he had taken us both home I calculated the fare would be astronomical. Perhaps I wouldn't pay it back after all.

When I crawled into bed at last I was exhausted and desperate for sleep, but it didn't come. My brain was still in overdrive, fizzing away with unwelcome thoughts like a bottle of cheap champagne. I was shocked to the core that Georgie – Georgie who always seemed so on top of things, so in charge of her life (if not her credit-card bill) – could suddenly fall apart like that. She had invariably been poised, self-assured, sophisticated, funny, taking nothing too seriously, feeling nothing too deeply, a role model for those of us (i.e. me) who were gauche and unconfident and took everything to heart, falling over our own feet in the process. Whatever her troubles she'd dealt with them, laughed at them, made light of them, one of the natural winners at the great Monopoly-board of destiny. Georgie never came a cropper.

But tonight I'd seen her reduced, like other women, sobbing and frantic and helpless, battered by emotions she couldn't control. There was an element of shame in it, a kind of guilt because I'd seen her that way. That's what love does to you, I thought. Suddenly you don't own yourself any more. Someone else pushes the buttons that work your spirit, the ones marked ‘Happiness' and ‘Sorrow' and ‘Pain', not to mention the red one marked ‘Danger: Do Not Touch'. It can happen to anyone, at any time, any age. It terrified me. I tried to visualise what I'd felt for Nigel, multiplied by about a thousand. Wherever Georgie had gone was a place I hadn't been and didn't wish to go, however bittersweet the rewards. What was the poem?

I didn't want to be beautiful, and I didn't want to be in love. I fished for pleasanter thoughts to divert my mind, and the image of Todd Jarman hovered, but I banished it. That way lay trouble – or it might, if it hadn't been for Helen Aucham getting in the way. Thank God for Helen Aucham. At least, I thought, drowsing at last, nothing further could happen this weekend. I'd had two days of soul-searing emotion, upheaval and trauma. It couldn't possibly get worse.

I was wrong.

It must have been about eleven the following morning when the buzzer sounded on my entryphone. I was making tea, and I might not have heard it over the hiss of the kettle if the caller hadn't been so persistent. I picked up the handset. ‘Who is it?'

A very small voice said: ‘Is that Cookie, please?'

‘Yes.'

‘It's Meredith Grimes. Can you come down and pay my taxi?'

I've measured out my life in taxi fares, I thought, paraphrasing T. S. Eliot. I had no idea what Meredith was doing there, but I'd only just got up and my brain wasn't working well enough to think about it. I tied the sash more tightly round my tatty kimono and ran downstairs. I'd paid the cab and taken Meredith up to the flat before I got a good look at her, but I knew already something wasn't right. Not just because she'd turned up at my place alone, unannounced, unsupervised. When I put my arm around her I could feel the tension in her little body: the muscles in her shoulders were tight as wire. In the kitchen, I saw her face for the first time. She was never a pretty child, with her squashed-up features and lumpy brow, but now she looked uglier than ever, a small brown gnome knuckled inside herself as if her spirit was bunched into a fist.

‘What are you doing here?' I asked her. ‘Where's Mummy?'

‘I've run away.'

‘I see.' It might be important, it might not. I remembered my own childhood, and the huge miseries that seemed so trivial now. ‘I was just making some tea, but I expect you'd prefer juice.'

‘I like tea,' Meredith said. ‘Lots of sugar.'

‘Magic word?'

‘Please.'

‘Why did you come to me?' I ventured, pouring water on tea-bags.

‘I couldn't think of anyone else. Grandma Vee belongs to the twins, not me, and Grandma Grimes doesn't like me, and Nana and Grandpop Macleod are in Scotland. I thought maybe I could go to them, but I haven't enough money. Could you lend me some?'

‘Of course,' I said. ‘D'you want a biscuit with your tea?'

‘Yes, please.'

We went into the living room and sat on the sofa. Meredith looked at her biscuit, then put it down. ‘I thought I could live on the streets,' she went on, ‘like a beggar or a gipsy. But I'm not old enough, and there are people who come and find you, and make you go to school. And there are bad men who steal little girls, like the Child Catcher.'

I remembered she had just seen
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
. ‘Were you scared of the Child Catcher?' I said. ‘I know I was, when I was your age.'

‘I'm not scared of anything!' Normally, she would have said it without the exclamation mark. ‘It's just make-believe. It's silly to be scared of make-believe.'

‘I'm scared of lots of things,' I said. ‘Most people are. You can't be brave unless you're scared first. Actually, I was scared of you, to start off with.' I grinned at her, but she barely responded. The biscuit was still untouched, though she sipped her tea. (I'd cooled it down with tap water.) ‘Why have you run away? Did you have a row with Mummy?'

‘Sort of.' Pause. ‘She doesn't love me any more. It's all Ivor.'

Ah. The textbook problem. New boyfriend taking up mum's attention and affection; result: jealousy. If only Lin had taken things more slowly, given the children time to get used to him . . .

‘Of course she still loves you,' I said. ‘It's just that she loves Ivor as well. That's natural. I thought you quite liked him. You said he was sensible.'

Meredith said nothing.

‘Did you have a row with
him
?' I asked.

Eventually, she gave a tiny nod. ‘He says I'm wicked.'

I was aware of a flicker of anger, but I didn't show it. ‘He didn't mean it,' I said. ‘Children aren't wicked; children are naughty. Only grownups are wicked.' She looked at me, her face unreadable as ever, but I sensed something hidden, a secret tumult of feeling. Rage, hatred, distress – I wasn't sure. ‘What happened?' I inquired gently.

A further pause. ‘It was about the porno stuff I got for the twins. I don't
like
it; I just did it for them. They pay me. I think sex is yukky and boring. But he said . . . he said . . .'

Suddenly, my skin crawled. A lot of things flashed through my head very fast: ‘
Ivor's been a star – babysitting again
' – ‘
he found them looking at porno pictures – he laughed
' –
Lin meeting a stranger in a chatroom, getting the bad news out there first –
‘
I'm a single parent, twin boys and a girl – no dads around
—'

There are some things so terrible that you don't even want to think them. You read them in the newspapers, you see them on the television, but that's at a distance, unreal; you don't expect them to invade your life. The big horrors belong in thriller fiction, in tabloid headlines – they don't happen to you, or to people you know. That's a cliché, of course, but when horror comes you think in cliché: your imagination freezes. You think:
No
.
Please no
 . . .

‘What did he say?' Somehow, I kept my voice gentle.

‘He said . . . I
did
like it. He said I was wicked. It's not true. I
don't
 . . .'

I put my arms around her, but she was still rigid, unyielding. I stroked the knotted braids of her hair. ‘Did this happen last night?' I had to repeat the question before she managed another nod. ‘Listen . . . I want you to tell me everything. I know it's difficult – you'll have to be very brave. Sometimes, bravery isn't what you expect. It can mean having to tell things, bad things, that you don't want to tell. But I promise you, I don't think you're wicked. Whatever you tell me. Understand?' Hesitant nod. ‘Believe me?'

‘Mm.'

‘D'you know what a paedophile is?'

‘Someone like the Child Catcher,' Meredith said promptly. ‘Only they offer you sweets and presents, and you mustn't go with them, or you could end up dead, like those children on the news.'

‘Okay. Now back to Ivor. He said you liked the porno stuff. What did he do next?'

‘He said – he would show me some I would like better. Just for me.' The words came out brokenly, in a shrinking whisper. I had to lean closer to hear it. ‘He went on to a website with pictures of children. They were undressed . . . doing things. Porno things. He said he could get the pix because I'd bypassed the security. He said, if I told Mummy, she'd think it was me. She'd think I wanted to look at those pictures – do those things. She'd know how wicked I am . . . He said he wouldn't tell her if I didn't, it would be a secret, our secret . . .'

‘He lied,' I said. ‘He lied and lied. He's the wicked one.' I coaxed her to drink more tea, gave her the biscuit. She still didn't eat, just sat clutching it, tight, tight, like a comforter. ‘Did he do anything else?'

Silence.

I fished for the right words, the necessary words – words to encourage and reassure. It was like groping in a pitch-black room for something that is lost, when you're not even sure what shape it is.

‘There will have been other girls, did you know that? He'll have told them they were wicked, just like you, and made them do things. There'll be more after you. You're not alone. If you're brave – if you tell – we can stop him. D'you want to stop him?'

‘How do you know,' she said, ‘about the other girls?'

‘I just know. There always are.'

Mandelson jumped up on the sofa beside her, sniffing the biscuit. ‘Can I give it him?'

‘Yes.'

He took it in his mouth, played with it and discarded it, in the way of cats. I lifted him on to Meredith's knees, where he dug his claws in and settled down, allowing her to stroke him. His warmth and softness and the rhythmic motion of her hand seemed to help her. Or so I hoped.

‘Did he do anything else?'

‘Rude things,' she said at last. ‘Like . . . in the pictures.'

My heart clenched – that's how it felt, like a cold hand clenching inside me. I thought of Lin, all shiny with love and happiness. Oh Lin . . . Lin . . .

I said, very softly: ‘What things? You have to tell, Meredith. If we're going to stop him, you have to tell.'

‘He touched my . . . my rude bits. He took my knickers off, and put his finger . . .' The stroking stopped. Her grip tightened on Mandy, who whined in protest, and wriggled free. ‘He said . . . I was pretty there. Those bits. How can they be pretty?' For the first time, there were tears. Her voice rose. ‘I'm ugly – I know I'm ugly – but he said he'd make me pretty . . . buy me pretty clothes. He said we'd do pretty things together . . . I said how could it be pretty, if it was wicked? He said he'd show me. He'd show me lots of things . . . I want Mandy back. Give me Mandy!'