‘Oh,’ the man said again. ‘Well, it’s just as well they’re not the ones going out with her then.’ He smiled, and Ben could tell he was pleased with that. He assumed that it made him feel younger in himself.
‘They have their reasons,’ Ben said. He hadn’t told them yet that he wasn’t going to America. He could imagine their faces, his mother’s. He looked away from it. The sleep was still on the man’s nose. He willed him to wipe it away. ‘Her name is Madeline,’ he continued. ‘I like her name, but some people call her Maddi.’ He looked at the climbing frame where the graffiti was. Suddenly his mouth dropped open and in one movement he hurdled over the rail and began sprinting across the ground.
Eight. Ni– Ruby was surprised when she suddenly let go of the bar before she’d even got to ten. She saw her open hands like two starfish against the sky. She could scream now if she wanted. The game was over.
She had still been hanging there when Ben noticed her, but he was still a few yards away when her hands let go. He lunged forwards and caught her when she was waist high. He was bent double and expected her weight plus his momentum to drag them both down, but there was almost nothing of her. It was like bracing to lift a heavy box only to find it empty. He collected her in his arms without breaking stride, trotted to a standstill and then placed her down gently on the grass.
‘That was a close one,’ Tim said to Ruby, as they walked back across the field. ‘He’s a very fast runner, isn’t he? I can’t believe he got there in time.’ They were holding hands, but Ruby was sullen and she didn’t answer him. She hadn’t been afraid when the bar had twisted out of her hands. He had always come for her before and she had just assumed he would again. But even before those arms that caught her had settled her down safely she’d known they weren’t his. They didn’t have his smell, and when she had turned around and looked at the other face that was staring at her it had made her burst into tears and run past him to her father, who was still panting and red-faced by the slide.
‘It’s okay,’ he had said, thinking it was the fall that had scared her. ‘You didn’t hurt yourself.’
He’d picked her up and walked over to the other man to thank him, and her whole body had gone rigid and she’d stuck her head into his shoulder and refused to look.
‘She’s shy,’ her father had said.
He’d finally taken her away again and now they were out of the park and nearly at the stairs that would lead them home. ‘We won’t tell Mummy about this,’ he said, but Ruby wasn’t listening. She was scared. Not because of the fall, or because of the man who had saved her, although he did scare her and she wasn’t sure why; she was scared because her father, for the first time, hadn’t been there for her, like he promised he always would be.
Ben was sitting on the swing watching their shrinking shapes go up and down as they crossed the swells. He was rocking slowly back and forth, the way Madeline had that first time. He remembered her shoe bouncing along the ground. When he was fourteen a train had come off the rails near their town. Someone – they never found out who – had placed a rock on the line. The first four carriages had screeched through the hedges and toppled onto their side. Six people had lost their lives. Ben and a few friends had gone there soon afterwards out of morbid curiosity.
They had walked where the grass was still flat and searched among the broken branches for bits of debris left over. There wasn’t much to find, splinters of smashed glass, a square of yellow foam with half a seat cover still on it. But while his friends had picked their way through it with excited glee, like children climbing over the rubble of bombed-out houses, Ben had moved off to the side and sat down alone. ‘Don’t you think it’s weird that people died here the other day, I mean, right here, exactly where we are? Doesn’t that make you feel a bit strange?’ They ignored him, and soon afterwards he got on his bike and rode away as fast as he could. But that feeling of being so close to death had followed him. He had that same feeling again now. He stood up and walked to where he’d caught the child. Maybe if he’d not got there in time – maybe that’s what it was. What did her father say her name was? Oh yes. He didn’t say it though, not even in his head.
CHAPTER TWELVE
By the time Ben arrived home he’d worked up quite a head of steam. It was nervousness that agitated him. He wasn’t used to letting people down and the prospect of doing so, especially his parents, created an emotion that looked like belligerence but wasn’t. He burst through the front door and went quickly from room to room. The curtains were still drawn in the lounge. The back door was still locked. In the kitchen a carton of milk was on the counter and the stem of a teaspoon rose awkwardly out the top of the sugar bowl. The kettle, against his palm, was still hot. They were awake. Not that it mattered. He would have his say. They would hear it. He took the stairs two at a time and opened their door without knocking. They were sitting up in bed staring at him.
‘I’m not going to America,’ Ben said. Saying it felt like discharging a weapon, and the recoil jolted him back a step.
His father was holding a cup in front of his mouth, not drinking, looking at his son steadily over the rim. Slowly he lowered it and placed it carefully on the bedside table.
‘Benjamin,’ he said evenly, ‘under no circumstances do you come storming into our bedroom like this. Please close the door behind you, and we will discuss this when your mother and I are up.’
Ben looked from one to the other, saw her hand slide over the blanket and nestle on his, and then backed feebly out of the room.
‘Well,’ Ben’s father said, once he’d gone, ‘turns out you were right, after all.’ He squeezed the hand holding his, smiled a little. ‘But don’t be hasty.’
‘Don’t be hasty? Don’t be hasty? Honestly.’ She wrenched her hand away and was sat on the edge of the bed, pulling a pair of trousers up under her nightdress. ‘It’s that – that – that whore! I’m sorry. She is. There’s no other word for it.’
‘If you go down there now you’ll only make it worse.’
‘How can it get any worse? Oh yes. He’s going to tell us she’s pregnant, too.’ She had put on a jumper and was leaning down in front of the dresser, looking at herself in the mirror. ‘Good heavens,’ she said, ‘look at me.’ She picked a brush and held it above her head but her hand was shaking too much and she threw it down again. ‘I’m not waiting for you,’ she said, striding to the door.
Ben was sitting at the kitchen table when she came in and sat opposite him. It was Saturday morning. ‘Your father is on his way,’ she said. She sat back in her chair with her hands folded, or clenched, on the table. Light glinted on her wedding ring. Dust floated in a slanting sunbeam. Last night’s plates were in the sink and droplets formed on the end of the tap and then fell into the dirty water. She stood up suddenly and went to the kettle.
‘Tea.’
‘No thanks.’
A minute later she slammed a cup down in front of him and sat opposite. He watched the spilled liquid flow across the flat tabletop and then mopped it up with the front of his T-shirt. She glanced at him. ‘I’m trying to be calm,’ she said. His T-shirt was sticky against his stomach and he tried to fold the material away from himself. She watched him for a moment and then got up again and snatched a cloth, half dropping it, half throwing it at him. It came to rest against his forearm, and he slowly pushed it away and then continued fiddling with the hem of his T-shirt. He heard her tut, saw her through the top of his eyes glaring at him.
‘I’m just amazed though. Honestly.’ She simply couldn’t help herself. ‘What on earth are you thinking? This is what you’ve always wanted. And now you’re just going to say, pfft, and forget it? The mind boggles. It really does. What are you going to do instead? Have you even thought about that? Because you can’t stay here forever.’
‘I’ll pack now then, shall I?’ It angered him, how immature he sometimes acted around her. He tried constantly to keep the little boy at bay, but he always found a way to undermine him.
‘I forget sometimes you’re still just a child. But you remind me soon enough. It’s a serious question though.’
‘I don’t know what I’ll do.’ He shrugged moodily. ‘I’ll put a proposal together and then run it past you for your approval.’ He’d not have said it had his father been there. He waited for her comeback, but she said nothing. In the pause that followed they heard his footsteps coming down the stairs. Not before time, he arrived in the doorway and stood there with a wry half-smile. They waited. They seemed always to be waiting for him to say something.
‘You’re not going to talk about the bloody badgers again, are you?’
‘Are they back?’ He wandered over to the window and craned his head against the glass, scanning all the angles. ‘Seems not.’ He sounded genuinely disappointed. ‘I wonder where they are.’
‘Probably dead in the gutter.’
He looked again out the window, this way and that, and then for a long time his head hardly moved. Eventually he sighed heavily. ‘The sad truth is you’re probably right.’ He turned around. There was a cloud on the glass where his breath had been. ‘Anyway, enough of that. I mean, that’s just life and death stuff. What have I missed here?’ Neither answered and he sat down at the table with them. ‘It’s the girl, yes? The reason you want to stay? Just so we have all the necessary information, do you need to stay, or do you want to?’ Ben looked at him nonplussed. ‘I’m asking if she is pregnant.’
‘What? No. Of course not. I’m not that stupid.’ He felt himself begin to blush. He saw her face above his, the bulb bobbing and weaving behind it. He felt his hands on her hips, trying to lift her off him, and her weight pressing down even harder. He remembered how easily he’d allowed it to happen, that first time, down there in the basement, with the cold floor at his back, and other times since then. His father was talking again.
‘Not “of course not”,’ he was saying, ‘not at all. These things happen all the time. And she does have a certain – what word do I want, mother? – a certain charm?’ His wife stared at him.
‘I thought you hated her?’ Ben said.
