Ли Чайлд - Belfast Noir

“Come on, Tan,” I said.

“I have a bad feeling,” she said. “I just don’t think we should.”

But when I turned to go after the others, she pushed herself from the wall and followed.

We found the house where the Peugeot was parked: right at the bottom of the street. It was the left-hand side of a semi, and it had an unkempt hedge and a stunted palm tree in the middle of the little front lawn. You somehow didn’t picture Mr. Knox with a miniature palm tree in his garden. We clustered on the opposite side of the road, half-hidden behind a white van, giggling at it; and then we realised that Davina was still in the car.

“What’s she at?” Donna said. “Stupid bitch.”

We stood and watched awhile longer, but nothing happened. You could see the dark blur of her head and the back of her shoulders, just sitting there.

“Well, fuck this for a game of soldiers,” Donna said. “I’m not standing here like a big lemon all day.” She turned and walked a few steps down the road and waited for the rest of us to follow.

“Yeah,” Tanya said, “I’m going too. I said I’d be home for lunch.”

Neither Lisa nor I moved.

“What do you think she’s doing ?” Lisa asked.

“Listening to the radio?” I said. “Mum does that sometimes if it’s The Archers . She doesn’t want to leave the car until it’s over.”

“I suppose,” Lisa said, looking disappointed.

“Come on,” Tanya said. “We’ve seen where he lives, now let’s just go.”

Donna was standing with her hands on her hips, annoyed that we were ignoring her. “Seriously,” she shouted, “I’m away on!”

They were expecting me and Lisa to follow, but we didn’t. As soon as they were out of earshot, Lisa said, “God, Donna’s doing my fucking head in today.”

She glanced at me sideways as she said it.

“Hah,” I said, vaguely. It didn’t do to be too committal: Lisa and Donna were thick as thieves these days. Lisa’s mum and mine had gone to school together and the two of us had been friends since we were babies: there were photographs of us in the bath together, covered in bubbles, bashing each other with bottles of Matey. We’d been inseparable through primary school, and into secondary. Recently, though, Lisa had started hanging out more with Donna, smoking Silk Cuts nicked from Donna’s mum and drinking White Lightning in the park at weekends. Both of them had gone pretty far with boys. Not full-on sex, but close, or so they both claimed. I’d kissed a boy once. It was better than Tanya—but still, it made me weird and awkward around Lisa when it was just the two of us. I’d always imagined we’d do everything together, like we always had done. I could feel Lisa still looking at me. I scuffed the ground with the heel of one of my gutties.

“I mean, seriously doing my head in,” she said, and she pulled a face that was recognisably an impression of Donna, and I let myself start giggling. Lisa looked pleased. “Here,” she said, and she slipped her arm through mine. “What do you think Davina’s like ? I mean, d’you know what I mean?”

I knew exactly what she meant.

“Well, she’s got to be gorgeous,” I said.

“You big lesbo,” Lisa said, digging me in the ribs.

I dug her back. “No, being serious. She’s got to be—he left his wife for her. She’s got to be gorgeous.”

“What else?”

“She doesn’t care what people think. I mean, think of all the gossip. Think of what you’d say to your parents.”

“My dad would go nuts .”

“Yeah,” I said.

We were silent for a moment then, watching the blurred figure in the Peugeot.

“D’you think anything did happen while they were at school?” Lisa suddenly said. “I mean it must have, mustn’t it? Otherwise why would you bother going all that way to visit her? I mean like, lying to your wife and flying all the way to Granada?”

“I know. I don’t know.”

I’d wondered about it before: we all had. But it was especially strange, standing right outside his house, his and Davina’s. Did she linger at his desk after class? Did he stop and give her a lift somewhere? Did she hang around where he lived and bump into him, as if by chance, or pretend she was having problems with her Spanish grammar? Who started it, and how exactly did it start, and did either of them ever imagine it would end up here?

“She might have been our age,” Lisa said.

“I know.”

“Or only, like, two or three years older.”

“I know.”

We must have been standing there for ten minutes by now. A minute longer and we might have turned to go. But all of a sudden the door of the Peugeot swung open and Davina got out: there she was, Davina Calvert, Davina Knox.

Except that the Davina in our heads had been glamorous, like the movie sirens on Mr. Knox’s classroom walls, but this Davina had messy hair in a ponytail and bags under her eyes, and she was wearing scruffy jeans and a raincoat. And she was crying: her face was puffy and she was weeping openly, tears just running down her face.

I felt Lisa take my hand and squeeze it. “Oh my God,” she breathed.

We watched Davina walk around to the other side of the car and unstrap a toddler from the backseat. She lifted him to his feet and then hauled a baby car-seat out.

We had forgotten—if we’d ever known—that Mr. Knox had babies. He never mentioned them or had photos on his desk like some of the other teachers. You somehow didn’t think of Mr. Knox with babies.

“Oh my God,” Lisa said again.

The toddler was wailing: we watched Davina wrestle him up the drive and onto the porch, the baby car-seat over the crook of her arm. She had to put it down while she found her keys, and we watched as she scrabbled in her bag and then her coat pockets before locating them, unlocking the door, and going inside. The door swung shut behind her.

We stood there for a moment longer. Then: “Come on,” I found myself saying. “Let’s knock on her door.” I have no idea where the impulse came from, but as soon as I said it, I knew I was going to do it.

Lisa turned to face me. “Are you insane?”

“Come on,” I said.

“But what will we say?”

“We’ll say we’re lost—we’ll say we’re after a glass of water—I don’t know. We’ll think of something. Come on.”

Lisa stared at me. “Oh my God, you’re mad.” But she giggled. And then we were crossing the road and walking up the driveway and there we were standing on Mr. Knox’s porch.

“You’re not seriously going to do this,” Lisa said.

“Watch me,” I said, and I fisted my hand and knocked on the door.

* * *

I can still picture every moment of what happens next. Davina opens the door (Davina Calvert, Davina Knox) with the baby in one arm and the toddler hanging off one of her legs. We blurt out—it comes to me, inspired—that we live just round the corner and we’re going door-to-door to see if anyone needs a babysitter. All at once, we’re like a team again, me and Leese. I start a sentence, she finishes it. She says something, I elaborate. We sound calm, and totally plausible. Davina says, Thank you, but the baby’s too young to be left. Lisa says can we leave our details anyway, for maybe in a few months’ time. Davina blinks and says okay, sure, and the two of us inch our way into her hallway while she gets a pen and paper. Lisa calls me Judith and I call her Carol. We write down, Judith and Carol , and give a made-up number. We are invincible. We are on fire. Davina asks what school do we go to, and Lisa says, not missing a beat, Dundonald High. Why aren’t you at school today? Davina asks, and I say it’s a Baker Day. I suddenly wonder if all schools have the same Baker Days and a dart of fear goes through me: but Davina just says, Oh, and doesn’t ask anything more. We sense she’s going to usher us out now and before she can do it, Lisa asks what the baby’s called, and Davina says, Melissa. That’s a pretty name, I say, and Davina says thank you. So we admire the baby, her screwed-up little face and flexing fingers, and I think of having Mr. Knox’s baby growing inside me, and a huge rush of heat goes through me. When Davina says, as we knew she was going to, Girls, as I’m sure you can see, I’ve really got my hands full here, and Lisa says, No, no, of course, we’ll have to be going—and she’s getting the giggles now, I can see them rising in her, the way the corners of her lips pucker and tweak—I say, Yes, of course, but do you mind if I use your toilet first? Davina blinks again, her red-raw eyes, as if she can sense a trap but doesn’t know quite what it is, and then she says, No problem, but the downstairs loo’s blocked. Wee Reuben has a habit of flushing things down it and they haven’t gotten round to calling out the plumber, you’ll have to go upstairs, it’s straight up and first on the left. I can feel Lisa staring at me but I don’t meet her eye, I just say, Thank you, and make my way upstairs.