Cath Staincliffe - Looking for Trouble

‘It didn’t did it. Jesus!’ He turned back to throw tea bags in the pot. The set of his shoulders said everything. ‘I’ll find out why it wasn’t passed on. Okay?’

No, not okay. Not at all okay. My ankle hurt, Chris was pissed off with me, Ray didn’t care, a thug called Smiley was asking about me. ‘I’m going to lie down for a bit,’ I said. I shuffled out of the room.

‘Don’t forget we’re meeting Clive,’ Ray called after me.

Shit. ‘I won’t,’ I said. I had.

So had Clive. Least that’s what he claimed on Sunday when he finally reappeared. Friday night, Ray and I had sat waiting for him to show. At ten o’ clock we put the telly on. The Maltese Falcon was just starting. When it finished an hour and a half later, there was still no Clive.

Ray stood up and stretched. He still wore the navy bermuda shorts and white T-shirt he’d arrived home in. His legs were covered in long, straight, black hairs, unlike the curls on his head. He yawned, smoothed his moustache. I tried to recall what sort of hairs Harry had on his legs, caught myself at it and for an awful moment wondered if I’d said anything aloud.

‘So now what?’ I asked.

‘Rearrange it.’ Ray yawned again. ‘Your turn.’

Groan. I lay back and watched two flies buzz in and out of the lampshade.

‘Digger.’ Ray whistled and the dog appeared. ‘Walk.’ Ray had taken to walking him last thing at night.

‘Where do you take him?’ I asked.

‘Park and back.’

‘Ray, I don’t want him fouling the park.’

‘He doesn’t. He’s a good boy, aren’t you Digger?’ He fondled the dog’s ears. ‘He still goes in the front; I clear it up.’

‘I should never have brought him home.’

‘He’s fine,’ Ray protested. ‘I like him, the kids like him.’

‘But I can’t be bothered with it all, the feeding and the walking…’

‘I’ve noticed. Let’s just say he’s my dog now – I’ll look after him – no longer a shared responsibility.’

‘You sure?’ I stared at the dog. I didn’t feel any affection for it at all. Just a tinge of guilt. ‘We could always send it to a home or whatever.’

‘Bloody won’t.’

There was real urgency in his voice. I propped myself up on my elbows to look at him. ‘You really like that dog, don’t you?’

‘We’re not all cold and unfeeling.’

They left. I watched the flies a bit longer, then left myself.

The swelling on my ankle had gone down quite a bit by morning, though it was still very tender. I was itching to call on Leanne. The warning, friendly or otherwise, lingered like a hangover, making me uneasy. But I needed to rest my ankle so it’d heal quicker. And I wanted time with Maddie.

The two of us spent most of the day in the garden. Ray took Tom off to Nana Tello’s. We played make-believe. I had speaking parts only. The baddie, the judge, the teacher, the daddy. In between, Maddie messed in the sand-pit and dragged armfuls of toys from the house out into the garden. Maddie chattered away, a stream of consciousness, scolding, informing, protesting. I loved to watch her play. The intensity of it all, the fluidity of her movements; hunkering down to rearrange her teddy, then up in a flowing sequence.

‘Maddie.’

‘And you be the policeman.’

‘Maddie, I want to tell you something.’

‘What?’ She frowned, straightened up and stared.

‘You know your body is yours, don’t you?’

‘Course it is,’ she retorted, as though I’d said something incredibly stupid.

‘And no-one’s allowed to touch you if you don’t want them to.’

‘I hate washing my hair.’

‘I don’t mean that. I mean your private bits, like your fanny or your bottom. You can say no, ‘cos it’s your body.’

‘I know.’ She was impatient, didn’t want to hear me.

‘And if anyone, anyone at all, ever hurts you, or touches you when you don’t want them to, or if they make you touch their body, you tell me.’ I sounded like some health promotion leaflet. ‘I promise I won’t be cross…’

‘Yeah. You be the policeman.’

‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ she shouted. ‘Now play. You be the policeman.’

I sighed. Had any of it got through? Should I have given her more graphic examples and risked frightening her?

‘I’ll be a policewoman instead.’

‘No, a man. You’ve got to be a man.’

‘Why?’

‘Cos there isn’t a policewoman in this game.’

On Sunday, my ankle was strong enough to put a bit of weight on it so I drove over to Bev and Harry’s with Tom and Maddie. Harry looked exhausted; there was a grey tinge to his complexion, purple hammocks under his eyes. Bev was brittle and prickly. Of course, the kids were on their worst behaviour.

After a strained lunch, I dried the dishes while Harry washed. I asked him if he’d any way of checking up on a business I was investigating.

‘I can access data on corporations, holding companies, directors, that sort of stuff. What you after?’

‘I don’t know, anything at all.’

‘That specific, huh?’

‘I don’t even know that there is anything.’

‘But it would be nice?’ He grinned.

I followed him through to the front room and stood behind him as he sat at the console.

‘Okay, what’s the name?’

‘M.K.C. or M.K. Communications.’

He punched it in. Lists scrolled up the screen. ‘There we are.’ He pointed to the initials. ‘So it does exist. Directors…’ He keyed in some more commands and a list of names appeared. The only one I recognised was Fraser Mackinlay.

‘Anything?’ Harry asked.

‘Nothing unexpected.’

‘Okay – sister companies.’ Another list. M.K. Software, M.K. Distribution, Kincoma Products, M.K.C. International.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t mean anything. It’s a waste of time.’

“S fine. Leave it with me. I’ll print these out for you, run a list of directors for this lot. Leave it at that.’

“Erm.’ I wasn’t sure it was worth the trouble.

‘Won’t take a minute.’

‘Go on then.’

In the back room, Bev had persuaded the kids to set up the clockwork train set.

‘Tom’s ruining it,’ screamed Maddie. He was trying to run the train over the half-finished track.

‘Wait Tom, wait till it’s finished.’

‘Let’s go out the back,’ said Bev. It was hot, but cloudy and close. Storm coming.

‘You look tired,’ I said, once we’d settled.

‘I am. Work’s awful; all this talk of the hospital closing, merging with Wythenshawe. We just don’t know what’s going to happen.’

‘But what about the campaign? It’s so popular…’

She shrugged. ‘It is. But whether it’ll actually stop them closing us down in the long run…We’ll be the last to find out. On top of all that, Harry’s driving himself into the ground with the Salford stuff – he’s hardly here and when he is, he’s plugged into that bloody machine. I’m sorry Sal. I just hate living like this. It was never part of the plan.’ She smiled ruefully.

I’d heard a lot about the plan. Bev and Harry had wanted to raise their children jointly. They’d both taken part-time work; Bev at the lab at Withington Hospital and Harry with his free-lancing. They’d been poorer as a result and hadn’t been able to go up the career structure like full-timers. But, from the outside, it seemed to have worked, till now.

‘I hate having to do all the childcare,’ said Bev. ‘I don’t understand how single parents cope. How did you manage before Ray moved in?’

‘I don’t know. You just do, you have to. You’re always, always knackered. But worse than that, there’s no-one to talk to, no adult company. And you’re skint all the time so you can’t go to nice places with your child.’ I shuddered at the memory.