Elizabeth George - Careless in Red

She said, “Why?”

“Time to leave here.”

Her expression didn’t change, but her eyes did. The shape of them. Just like her auntie Nan, Selevan thought. Just like the time he’d told Nan that she could sodding shove off if she didn’t like the house rules, one of which was her dad deciding bloody who his daughter would see and when she would see him and believe you me, lass, it’s not going to be that yob with the motorbikes over my dead body. Five of them, mind you. Five bleeding motorbikes and every time he’d roar up on a new one with his fingernails all gone to grease and his knuckles blacked and who the bloody hell would have thought he’d make a go of it and create those…what did they call them? Choppings? Chopped? No, choppers. That was it. Choppers. Just like in America, where everyone was bloody crazy and rich enough to buy just about anything, weren’t they. This is what you want? he’d bellowed at Nan. This? This?

Tammy didn’t argue as Nan might have done. She didn’t storm round the shop and slam things about to make a scene. She said, “All right, then, Grandie,” and she sounded resigned. She added, “But I don’t take it back.”

“What’s that?”

“What I said before.”

Selevan frowned and tried to recall their last conversation which had been a conversation and not merely a request to pass the salt or the mustard or the bottle of brown sauce. He recalled her reaction when he’d waved the letter in her face. He said, “That. Well. Can’t be helped, can it.”

“ Can be helped. But it doesn’t matter now. This doesn’t change anything, you know, no matter what you think.”

“What’s that?”

“This. Sending me off. Mum and Dad thought it would change things as well, when they made me leave Africa. But it won’t change a thing.”

“Think that, do you?”

“I know it.”

“I don’t mean the bit about leaving and the things changing in your head. I mean the bit about what I think.”

She looked confused. But then her expression altered in that quicksilver way of hers. Did every adolescent do that? he wondered.

“S’pose,” he said, “your grandie’s more’n he seems to be. Ever reckon that? I wager not. So collect your belongings and make that phone call to your guv. Tell him where you’ll leave the key and let’s shove off.”

Having said that, he left the shop. He watched the traffic coming up the Strand as townsfolk returned from their jobs in the industrial estate at the edge of town and farther away, as far as Okehampton, some of them. In time, Tammy joined him and he set off back towards the wharf with her trailing at a slower pace that he took as she likely meant it: reluctant cooperation with her grandfather’s plans for her.

He said to her, “Got your passport with you, I take it. How long’ve you had it out of its hidey place?”

She said, “A while.”

“What’d you mean to do with it?”

“Didn’t know at first.”

“But you do now, do you?”

“I was saving up.”

“For what?”

“To go to France.”

“France, is it? You heading for gay Paree?”

“Lisieux,” she said.

“Leer-what?”

“Lisieux. That’s where…you know…”

“Oh. A pilgrimage, is it? Or something more.”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t have enough money yet anyway. But if I had it, I’d be gone from here.” She came up to his side then and walked along with him. She said as if finally relenting, “It’s nothing personal, Grandie.”

“Didn’t take it that way. But I’m glad you didn’t do a runner. Would’ve been a rough one to explain to your mum and dad. Off to France, she is, praying at the shrine of some saint that she read about in one of her sainty books that’s she’s not supposed to be reading anyways but I let her read cos I reckoned words’s not going to do much to her head one way or ’nother.”

“That’s not precisely true, you know.”

“Anyways, I’m glad you didn’t scarper cos they’d have my skin for that one, your mum and dad. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, but, Grandie, some things can’t be helped.”

“And this is one of them, is it?”

“That’s how it is.”

“Sure of it, are you? Because that’s what they all say when the cults get hold of them and send them out on the streets to beg money. Which they then take off them, by the way. So they’re trapped like rats on a sinking ship. You know that, don’t you? Some big guru with an eye for girls-just like you-who’re meant to have his babies like a sheik in a tent with two dozen wives. Or one of them, you know, polygammers.”

“Polygamists,” she said. “Oh, you really can’t think this is like that, Grandie. You’re joking about it. Only I don’t think it’s funny, see?”

They’d reached his car. She looked in the back as she got in, and she saw her old duffel bag. Her lip jutted out, but she drew it back in. Home to Africa, her expression said, which meant home to Mum and Dad until they thought of another plan to shake her resolve. They’d tick Send Her to Her Grandfather off their list and come up with the next idea. Something like Send Her to Siberia. Or Send Her to the Australian Bush.

She got into the car. She fastened her seat belt and crossed her arms. She looked stonily forward at the canal, and her expression didn’t soften even when she took in the ducklings and how their little webbed feet raised them above the water when they hastened to follow their mother, making them look like tiny runners on the surface of the canal, just the sort of harkening back to a miracle that Selevan reckoned she’d appreciate. She didn’t, however. She was concentrating on what she thought she knew: how long a drive it was to Heathrow or Gatwick and whether her plane left for Africa tonight or tomorrow. Likely tomorrow, which would mean a long night in a hotel somewhere. Perhaps even now she was making her plan to escape. Out of the hotel window or down the stairs and then to France by hook or by crook.

He wondered if he should let her think that was where he was taking her. But it seemed cruel to let the poor lass suffer. Truth of the matter was that she’d suffered enough. She’d held firm through everything that had been thrown at her and that had to mean something even if it meant what none of the rest of them could bear considering.

He said as he started up the car, “I made a phone call, I did. Day or two ago.”

She said dully, “Well, you’d have to, wouldn’t you.”

“Truth in that. They said come along. Wanted to talk to you as well, but I told ’em you were unavailable at present-”

“Ta for that, at least.” Tammy turned her head and examined the scenery. They were passing through Stratton, heading north on A39. There was no easy way to get out of Cornwall, but that had long been part of its draw. “I don’t much want to talk to them, Grandie. We’ve already said all there is to say.”

“Think that, do you?”

“We’ve talked and talked. We’ve rowed. I’ve tried to explain, but they don’t understand. They don’t want to understand. They’ve got their plans and I’ve got mine and that’s how it is.”

“Didn’t know you’d talked to them at all.” Selevan made his voice deliberately thoughtful, a man considering the ramifications of what his granddaughter was telling him.

“What d’you mean you didn’t know I’d talked to them?” Tammy demanded. “That’s all we did before I got here. I talked, Mum cried. I talked, Dad shouted. I talked, they argued with me. Only I didn’t want to argue because far as I can tell there’s nothing to argue about. You understand or you don’t, and they don’t. Well, how could they? I mean, Mum’s whole way of living should’ve told me she’d never be able to come onboard. A life of contemplation? Not very likely when your real interest is looking at fashion magazines and gossip magazines and wondering how you can make yourself into Posh Spice while you’re living in a place where, frankly, there’s not a whole lot of designer shops. And you weigh about fifteen stone more ’n she does anyway. Or whatever she’s called these days.”