Peter Robinson: Not Safe After Dark

‘If you like,’ Banks said. He’d been thinking the same thing. What had happened had been about the past, unfinished business, passing magic. It had been time out of time. Tomorrow they would both go back to their real lives and probably never see one another again. Banks thought about how their relationship had ended all those years ago, and how he had believed he would never see her again after he went to London. This was enough. This was more than enough. It had to be.

They went back inside. The party went on, as these things do. Banks and Kay talked to Mrs Green for a while, and Banks promised not to be such a stranger. Aunt Florence regaled him with her cataracts, and Aunt Lynn went on about her gall-bladder operation. He also heard about Cousin Patrick’s prostate problems, Uncle Gerald’s haemorrhoids and Cousin Louise’s manic depression. It was enough to make him want to kill himself before he got old. Then there was Cousin Beth’s divorce, Nick and Janet’s third baby, a girl they had named Shania, Sharon’s promotion, Gail’s miscarriage and Ayesha’s boob job. All the while Kay stood politely by, asking questions and making sympathetic comments or noises. Roy continued to work the room, seemingly indefatigable.

Inevitably, Uncle Ted fell asleep. Cousin Angie had too much to drink and was sick in the kitchen sink, dislodging a nose stud in the process, which she nearly inhaled. Uncle Gerald and Uncle Frank almost came to blows. Aunt Ruth wet herself, and young, lovely, anorexic Cousin Sue, with all the self-esteem of a blade of grass, became tearful and made a pathetic attempt to seduce Banks.

All in all, it was just another typical family do.

Roy and Corinne left early. They sought out Banks and Kay to say their goodbyes, and as usual Roy invited Banks to the South Kensington house, said they really must see more of one another and that he hoped Banks could make it to the wedding next year. Banks promised he would try, gave the blushing bride-to-be a chaste kiss on her pale, cool cheek, and they were gone.

When Banks looked around, he noticed that Geoff Salisbury had left too. Only one or two relatives remained, and they were either very close or very drunk. Banks found his mother having a heart-to-heart with her sister, Flo, and said he’d see Kay home and be right back.

The street was quiet, the evening air cool. They saw only a few people as they walked the short distance to Kay’s house.

‘I’d better not come in,’ he said at the doorstep.

‘No.’

He wondered what would happen if he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. Would their resolve melt? Somehow, he didn’t think it was very strong.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘if you’re ever up Eastvale way-’

‘Of course I will.’ She gave him the sort of smile that said she never would be, then after a quick kiss on the cheek, the door opened and closed and Banks was left standing there alone.

He didn’t want to go back to the dregs of the party immediately, didn’t want to face the drunken relatives desperately sobering up for the drive home, didn’t want to face the mess of spilled drinks and food smeared on the carpets. He knew he would have to – he owed it to his parents to help clean up at least – but he could put it off for a little while longer.

The moon was higher now and Banks could see stars, planets, constellations even, beyond the amber glow of the street lights. He wandered the quiet Sunday night streets of the estate feeling oddly melancholy, past the maisonettes where he used to deliver newspapers, past the house where his old, late friend Steve Hill used to live. Steve had kept toads in a bell jar at the bottom of the garden, Banks remembered, but he was forgetful, and one summer he neglected them for so long that they shrivelled up and died. They looked like dried mushrooms. That was what happened to living things you were supposed to love and care for but neglected.

His melancholy was probably something to do with Kay, he realized, though he hadn’t really wanted to repeat last night, either. Last night had had a magic about it that any attempt at repetition would fall well short of. He remembered how their relationship had fallen apart all those years ago. His fault.

It had all started to change when Kay left school at sixteen and got a job at Lloyd’s bank in the town centre. She made new friends, had money to spare, started going for drinks with the office crowd regularly after work on a Friday. Banks was still at school, having stayed on for his A levels, and somehow a schoolboy had less appeal than these slightly older, better dressed, more sophisticated men of the world at the office. They had more money to flash around and, even more important, some of them had cars. One pillock called Nigel, with a plummy accent and a Triumph MG, particularly got up Banks’s nose. Kay insisted there was no hanky-panky going on, but Banks became tortured with jealousy, racked by imagined infidelities, and in the end Kay walked away. She couldn’t stand his constant harping on about who she was seeing and what she was doing, she said, and the way he got stroppy if she even so much as looked at another man.

The irony was, given that his A level results weren’t good enough for university – the first bone of contention between him and his parents – he might as well not have bothered staying on. He’d spent far too much time with Kay, away from his studies, listening to Hendrix, Dylan and Pink Floyd, reading books that weren’t on the syllabus.

Shortly after the break up, Banks moved to London and went to pursue business studies at the poly. A year or two after that and several brief, unsatisfactory, casual relationships later, he met Sandra.

A dog barked as he reached the edge of the estate by the railway lines. A local train rattled by, one or two silhouettes visible through the windows. Banks started towards home. He had only got a few yards when the mobile in his pocket rang. He had forgotten to turn it off.

‘Alan? I hope I’m not disturbing your party.’

It was Annie Cabbot. Banks wondered how he would have felt if he had gone in with Kay and the phone had rung just as they were… it didn’t bear thinking about.

‘No,’ he said quietly. He happened to be passing the telephone boxes at the end of the street, so he decided to stand inside one and take the call. That way he didn’t seem like one of those silly buggers walking around talking to his girlfriend on his mobile phone.

‘I’m sorry to call so late,’ Annie said.

‘That’s all right. Aren’t you off duty?’

‘Yes, but I was waiting to hear from DS Ryan in Loughborough. He was out at the pictures.’

‘DS Ryan? So this is about Geoff Salisbury?’

‘Yes. What’s wrong, Alan? You sound funny. Distant.’

‘So would you if you were standing in the middle of a council estate talking on your mobile.’

Annie laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m not quite as conservative as you are.’

‘OK. Point taken. What did this DS Ryan come up with?’

‘It’s interesting, actually,’ said Annie. ‘At least, I thought you’d want to know.’

‘Fill me in.’

‘As Winsome told you, Salisbury was actually convicted of fraud. It was a neighbour, an elderly woman, and he started by helping out around the place, that sort of thing.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ said Banks. ‘Go on.’

‘Seems he managed to come between her and her children and get himself written into her will. She didn’t have much. Only a few hundred quid and an insurance policy, but he copped for most of it.’

‘What happened?’

‘The family contested it. Undue influence, that sort of thing. Hard to prove. Anyway, in the end Mr Salisbury won out.’

‘Where does the conviction come in?’