Cath Staincliffe: Split Second

Luke seized the distraction to leap into the aisle and run to the doors as the bus drew in to the stop.

‘Get him!’ Gazza roared, and the three of them scrambled after Luke. Pandemonium. Shouts of outrage and curses as they spilled off the bus.

The lad in the hat righted himself and followed at speed.

Emma felt sick. The doors closed, and she saw the woman with the baby shake her head at an old man on the disabled seats at the other side. But still no one spoke.

Emma looked out of the window as the bus drove away, tyres hissing on the wet tarmac, and saw Luke trip and recover and dart into a garden. The kids were close on his heels and the one in the hat behind them. It was the first house with lights on and there was a car parked at the side. Luke would be able to knock on the door, get help.

Should she ring the police now? And say what? There were some youths on the bus shouting abuse and making threats and now they’re chasing this lad? It would be hard to make the call on the bus with all the noise and people earwigging, and by the time she got home there wouldn’t really be any point. And they’d probably tell her they’d look into it but it wasn’t like anything definite had really happened. Well – one slap and the insults. It wasn’t up to her, really; perhaps the driver would report it when he reached the terminus. Maybe he’d not done anything because he knew it wasn’t actually worth reporting.

The bus trundled on and she sat, just like the rest of them, isolated and dumb, wanting to be anywhere but there.

Louise

‘Brilliant!’ Louise clapped as her daughter’s voice faded along with the backing track. ‘Dead good!’

Ruby was flushed, her brown eyes glittering, a sheen on her face from the exertion making her coppery skin glisten.

‘Yer nan’d be proud of you.’ Louise got up from the sofa, ready for a cup of tea.

‘You always say that.’ Ruby switched off the sound system.

‘’Cos it’s true.’ Louise had spent half her childhood applauding her mother, who’d made a living as a singer, fronting a twelve-piece band and crooning ballads or belting out show tunes. She’d spent the other half of it pining for the woman off criss-crossing the ocean singing for her supper on the cruise ships. Now she was here cheering on her daughter; the musical gene, the exhibitionist gene, had skipped a generation.

‘Did Dad sing?’ Ruby asked quietly.

Louise paused in the doorway to the kitchen. It had been ages since Ruby had spoken about her dad Eddie, who’d died suddenly at the wheel of his taxi when Ruby was only four years old. Heart attack.

‘Yeah, he did, he loved it. Couldn’t hold a tune for toffee, though.’

Ruby grinned.

Louise went on, ‘He’d sing hymns and football songs. Didn’t matter to him which. He’d sing to you – d’you remember?’

Ruby shook her head, disappointed. Four was so young to lose him, Louise thought, so few memories to cling to.

‘What did he sing to me?’

‘Hymns and football songs,’ Louise said wryly.

Ruby laughed, then swung round to face the mirror on the wall. ‘What about my hair?’ Her voice now leaking frustration. In the gene stakes, she had won her dad’s Caribbean features: dark brown eyes, a wide nose and full mouth and tightly crinkled hair that she regarded as a total nightmare. They spent a small fortune on hair products: relaxing treatments, straighteners and the like. Louise, of Irish descent, with blue-white skin, wore her own wavy dark brown hair scooped back in a barrette. She saw little of herself in either of her children. Though they both had her fingers, thin and spidery, and her large feet.

‘You could get it plaited, cornrows, like before.’

‘Then I’d be stuck with it.’

And we’d be sixty quid worse off, Louise thought. But she didn’t want to play that card now. Ruby was auditioning for stage school. She had wanted to act, to sing and dance all her life. Every spare penny, the precious few they had, went on ballet and tap and modern dance lessons, leotards and pumps. Now fourteen, Ruby was stunning, slender and gamine, with Eddie’s high cheekbones, her teeth naturally white and straight. She moaned about being flat-chested, but all Louise saw was her beauty. And her drive, the ambition that Louise supported to the hilt.

‘In a bun, then? Like it is but higher?’ Louise suggested.

‘A chignon?’

‘Whatever they call it. Or wear something over it.’

‘A paper bag,’ Ruby slung back, and they both cracked up laughing.

‘One of those…’ Louise put her hand above her head, waggled her fingers.

‘A fascinator.’ Ruby curled her lip.

‘You’ll have to decide soon,’ her mother cautioned. ‘First week of January – and if you do want it styling, some places will be closed over the holidays. Now – I need a cuppa.’

‘Get us a hot chocolate?’

Louise raised an eyebrow.

‘Please.’ Ruby curtsied. She began to practise one of her dance steps, the furniture around the edge of the room juddering as the floor shook.

‘Watch the china,’ Louise said.

‘Cheek. Where’s Luke?’

‘Out,’ Louise answered as she walked into the kitchen.

‘Where?’

‘God knows,’ she called out. ‘I told him to be back by eleven.’ She filled the kettle. She peered through the window. It was snowing. Maybe they’d have a white Christmas.

‘I don’t know why you bother.’ Ruby came into the kitchen.

Louise didn’t reply. She switched the kettle on. ‘When we get the tree up, you’ll have to practise upstairs.’

‘My room’s too small.’

‘Use mine, then.’

‘Cool. When are we getting it?’

‘Tomorrow,’ Louise said. ‘Carl’s bringing one down.’

‘Is it big?’

‘Big enough.’ She got the drinking chocolate out.

‘That means it’s titchy.’

‘Wait and see.’ Louise smiled. She’d paid for a six-footer. It would look great. And she was off Christmas Day.

Carl was at the agency with her, home help, social care. Closest thing she had to a boyfriend, but she kept it casual. She liked the company, someone to share a meal or a laugh or a bed with, but nothing more serious. He was a nice bloke, a bit dim, but well-meaning, sociable. Polish. The agency work was crap money really, but for Carl it was way more than he could make back home. The job itself was okay: cleaning, shopping, feeding, changing, a lot of listening. Some of the people Louise had been calling on for years, knew more about them than their own families did. But the agency was always trying to screw as much as they could from you.

Louise looked back out at the garden. Some of the snow had settled, on the grass and the shed roof, but the path was gleaming wet. Be nice if it did stay. Course, it caused problems, people falling and fractures and buses not running, but it looked lovely.

‘Or a wig?’ Ruby said. ‘Like a dead bright colour, yeah? Red, like my shoes.’

Andrew

He thought he heard something over the noise of the shower. Banging? Perhaps Jason had forgotten his key. More than likely. Andrew tipped his head back, let the water play on his face. In fact it was unusual for Jason to remember his key. A dreamer. It drove Val round the bend, her son’s lack of focus, his apparent ineptitude.

‘Is it a boy thing?’ she’d demanded of Andrew one day when Jason was about six. Still struggling to tie his shoelaces, still forgetting his book bag, his games kit, his permission slip, to brush his teeth, to turn the television off.

‘He’s just made like that, I guess,’ Andrew said.

‘All I do is nag,’ she complained. ‘And if I don’t, nothing happens.’

‘He’s only little.’ Andrew pulled her to him, kissed her. ‘D’you want me to nag?’