Belinda Bauer - Rubbernecker

‘You have to find Number 19,’ said Patrick firmly. ‘We made a deal.’

‘Patrick, how can I? I can’t march over to the body bags in the middle of class and unzip them all until I find him. And then take photos .’

‘But we made a deal.’

‘The deal’s off. I’m sorry. Really sorry.’

Patrick looked lost. ‘How will we get the proof now?’

‘I’m not sure we can,’ sighed Meg.

Patrick turned away from her and stared broodingly at the kitchen tap. He could see Meg reflected in the stainless steel, looking at the back of his head. He realized that it was easier to look at her this way – without having to face her. For the first time he studied her without having to avoid catching her eye. The reflection was slightly distorted, but it made him remember his mother’s question at Christmas.

Is she pretty?

Meg had dark eyebrows over brown eyes, pale skin and a curved mouth. He didn’t know if she was pretty because that was not something he’d ever registered in anyone in the fleeting glances that were all he could manage. But her face was even, and calming to look at, even in a tap.

For the first time in his life he wondered what she saw when she looked at him . The curved steel tap stretched his face to a narrow strip, his eyes bugging out at the top like an alien stick insect. He closed them and refocused on the struggle to connect the dots of events and motivations.

The body was no longer available. But the peanut hadn’t been with the body. Therefore the peanut was still there to be found. Somewhere. It wasn’t much, but it would be better than nothing, which was what they had now.

He opened his eyes and glanced at Meg’s shoulder. ‘Where does Scott live?’ he demanded.

‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘He could have taken the peanut.’

‘Why would he have taken it?’

Patrick didn’t know the answer to that. He was desperate – that was all. At least Scott had threatened to kill him, and had tried to uncover the eyes of the corpse. If it wasn’t Scott, he was lost again.

‘I think you’re clutching at straws,’ said Meg.

‘I want to speak to him,’ he said stubbornly.

‘Really?’ She sighed.

‘Yes,’ said Patrick. ‘Really.’

‘In that case,’ said Meg with a wry little smile, ‘tomorrow night we par- tay .’

It was the second Thursday. Sarah hadn’t even noticed the first one after she’d received Professor Madoc’s letter; that week had passed in a liquid blur of calling in sick to the card shop, and the smell of her own unwashed sheets.

But this was the second Thursday, and now she sat by the phone all evening, with the cat on her lap, watching the local news. Every bulletin that passed without word of a young man hanged or drowned or found on the railway tracks allowed her to uncap the Vladivar and drink to the fact that Patrick was probably still alive.

Or that he hadn’t come home yet; she wasn’t sure which.

The thought of his return filled her with a slow panic. So much so that she had not called Professor Madoc or the Cardiff police to enquire as to where Patrick might be now that he’d been expelled. Nor had she driven the forty-odd miles to Cardiff and knocked on the door of the little terraced house where she had left him last September.

Not even when she was sober.

There was no reason for her to worry. She had paid Patrick’s rent until the end of the spring term, and he had twenty pounds a week to live on. It wasn’t much, but it was all she’d been able to afford without making applications and supplications, and coming to the attention of who knew what authorities? Easier just to tighten their belts. Luckily Patrick didn’t really care about clothing or food – or how little there was of either.

Sarah Fort eyed the phone warily. It was already gone eleven. It was unlikely to ring now.

The relief was immense and she celebrated by finishing the bottle.

If Patrick came back, he came back, and she would deal with it then. If he did not – then it would release her in more ways than one.

TRACY EVANS WAS fat.

Fat, fat, fat .

She glared at herself in the mirror at the top of the stairs. It wasn’t just her tummy; fat seemed to be laying itself down in rude slabs on her cheeks, her neck, her upper arms.

She’d looked forward to pregnancy. Gone were the days when a pregnant woman had to waddle around wearing a pup tent to cover her bulge. Nowadays young women flaunted their bumps in little black dresses and posed naked in magazines cradling their perfect, smooth bellies.

Nowhere in the celebrity gossip columns did she remember seeing anyone who looked the way she did after a mere five months – like a pumped-up version of herself, with trucker’s arms and increasingly piggy eyes. She’d bought a little black maternity dress, but she’d blown up so fast that she’d never had a chance to show it off, and now it mocked her every time she opened the wardrobe, where Mr Deal – Raymond – had cleared a space at the end of his rail for her. The dress was so narrow she couldn’t imagine getting a leg into it, let alone her entire bulk.

Mr Deal said she looked fine, but he’d stopped touching her in bed. She had failed to interest him even by expanding her range of sexual positions – like unlocking another level in Mario Kart. She still stayed over three nights a week, but now he only kissed her goodnight on the cheek, with his hand on her beefy shoulder.

Tracy watched the corners of her mouth suddenly tug downwards, as if operated by strings. She loved him. She loved him! Shouldn’t that have made it easier to eat for one and a tiny weeny foetus, instead of for six men and a boy?

Apparently not.

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and looked at the ceiling, to avoid smudging her mascara. She didn’t have time to fix it; they were going for a Valentine’s Day dinner at the Thai House. Just the name of the restaurant made Tracy’s burgeoning tummy rumble and she was seized by a sudden hostility for the child within her. She imagined a troll: a rubber-faced, sharp-toothed predator, selfish and demanding and always ravenous. Of course, she knew that everything would be different four months from now when she held her in her arms and fell in love for the second time, but until then, her daughter (Jordan or Jamelia, she couldn’t decide) felt like an enemy to be routed from her body at the first possible opportunity.

In the meantime, outside the bedroom Mr Deal was displaying surprising enthusiasm. He had painted the fifth bedroom a happy yellow and she’d come round one day to find all kinds of baby stuff – clothes and toys, and a new crib. Not just new to them , but new to anyone . It wasn’t the crib with the white fairy-tale canopy that she would have chosen, but, whatever, the ticket said it had cost £895 from Mothercare, and Tracy had never spent that much on a car !

Raymond’s choice of baby clothes left a lot to be desired, too – all neutrals and whites and yellows, when everyone knew a little girl needed to be smothered in pink.

She thought it a bit strange that they hadn’t gone shopping together but she hid her disappointment. At least he was involved , which was more than she could have expected from most men of her own age, and she told him it was all wonderful .

And Tracy was sure it would be.

Sure because the nursery was her insurance. Where else would the baby live but that bright, sunshiny room? And where else would she live, if not with her baby? Raymond just did things differently from other men, that was all – and it was part of the reason she loved him.