Caroline Graham - A Place Of Safety

Charlie cut smaller. And smaller still. Selecting a paragraph, a sentence, a final word, a letter. He released a rattling sigh of satisfaction. That hadn’t been too difficult. Only six words needed and all what you might call common or garden.

Charlie removed his gloves and picked up a Rizla packet to make himself a smoke. Laid the pungent ginger threads of Samson tobacco in an untidy pile, rolled up, ran the grey, corrugated tip of his tongue along the width of the paper and lit the end.

A click of the latch and his wife stood on the threshold. Charlie sprang to his feet, scarlet with rage.

‘Get out!’

‘I wondered if you were—’

‘Can’t a man read the papers in peace?’

‘I’m sorry.’

Charlie Leathers glared at his wife as she backed away. At her meek scrawniness and straggly grey hair and sorrowful hunched shoulders. God, she was a whingeing pain in the arse. In normal circumstances he would have followed her out into the kitchen and given her what for.

But not tonight. Because tonight, for Charlie, was far from normal. Tonight you might say the writing was on the wall. In front of him were six wallet-cramming hieroglyphs that could spell freedom. He looked around the tiny room, treating himself to a good snigger at the pockmarked vinyl suite, cheap veneer sideboard and old-fashioned cabinet television. Because soon he would be saying goodbye to all this. It would be your nice fur recliner, a bottle of Scotch on ice, Players High Tar to hand and something young and blonde and cuddly on his knee.

Because you could buy anything if you had the money. And he would have the money. Oh yes. For the first time in his life he would have the money. A modest amount at first. Be reasonable. No point in frightening people unnecessarily. But there would be more where that came from. Plenty more. Enough to keep him nice and comfortable for the rest of his life.

As nothing further was mentioned about the trouble at the Misbourne weir on the nine o’clock local news, the clientele of the Red Lion decided it had all been some sort of joke and turned their attention to matters more substantial. The discovery of six pheasants in old Gordon Cherry’s outhouse. And the shameful matter of Ada Lucas’s grandma’s tea set which had been valued, while still in her front room cabinet, by an itinerant dealer for fifty pounds when everyone knew it was hallmarked Rockingham and worth all of a hundred.

By turning-out time the business on the river had been practically forgotten. People wandered off in the moonlight or drove home, their minds full of other things. As the landlord said to his wife while she was funnelling the drips tray back into the cellar jug, ‘I reckon we’ve had our ration of excitement for this year.’

Which just goes to show how cosmically wrong a man can be.

Ann Lawrence checked over her husband’s breakfast tray. Weak china tea. A four-minute egg. Fresh toast. An apple. Some Flora and Cooper’s Oxford marmalade. She put a sprig of lady’s mantle in a little flowered jug.

‘Would you mind taking this up, Hetty?’

Ann had called Mrs Leathers Hetty since she was a toddler and Mrs Leathers had always called her either Annie or Pickle or one of several other affectionate nicknames. But, on the day she married, Ann had mysteriously become Mrs Lawrence and no amount of argument, whether teasing or serious, could persuade Hetty to address her otherwise. It simply wouldn’t be right.

‘Course not,’ replied Mrs Leathers, immediately wondering where on earth she would put herself if the vicar (as she still thought of him) opened the door in his nightshirt. Or worse.

‘Just knock and leave it outside his room.’

Ann poured herself a third cup of coffee and took it into the library. It was almost ten o’clock, but she had thought it best to let Lionel sleep. He had been out very late checking various refuge centres, hostels and halfway houses and pestering his contacts in the probation service. Eventually, alarm for Carlotta’s wellbeing had overcome his anxiety not to offend her and he had called at Causton police station to report the girl missing. Back at home he had described at some length and in disgust their ‘complete and inhuman lack of interest’.

Ann had listened consumed by misery and guilt. She longed to turn back the clock and recall the ease of spirit and absence of anxiety with which she had once lived her life. How dull this state had sometimes seemed. Now she yearned for it to return.

The postman’s van was driving away. Ann went into the hall and emptied the large wire cage on the back of the door. There was always plenty of post. Lionel believed in keeping in touch - sometimes, Ann felt, with every person he had ever met in his entire life. Fortunately a great many of them appeared to have no wish to keep in touch with him. A common complaint at breakfast was that so and so had still not replied to his second (or third) letter.

Diocesan business had long ago tailed off but there was always correspondence relating to the various charities Lionel was involved with, journals (today the New Statesman ) and begging letters. There were two for her. One she recognised as from an aged great-aunt in Northumberland who always wrote in August to remind her that it would soon be her mother’s birthday and she must not forget to pray for her. The other simply had her name on. No address. Someone must have pushed it through the door. People often did, especially in the evening when they did not like to disturb. Ann took the letter to the window seat in the dining room and opened it.

She was to remember that moment for the rest of her life: the vividness of deep pink hollyhocks pressing against the window, the raised petit point upholstery rough against the backs of her legs, a rim of dust next to her slippered foot, and herself unfolding the thin, slightly dirty paper out into a single sheet.

For one blessed fraction of a second she stared at the strange cut-out words, stuck on haphazardly, in bewilderment. Was it yet another sample of junk mail? Some new sort of advertisement? Then she read the words consecutively to see if they made sense.

There was a rush of sound inside her head. Then a staggering of the heart as if it had received a blow from a powerful fist. She sucked in air. And read the words again. ‘I Saw You Push Her In.’

Ann became aware of extreme cold. A quick upsurge of sour liquid filled her mouth. Struggling not to vomit or faint she rested her head on her knees. As she crouched, trembling, a shadow fell across the carpet.

‘You all right, Mrs Lawrence?’

‘What?’ Ann lifted her head. Then jumped to her feet. The paper fell, butter side up, onto the carpet. ‘What are you doing in here?’

A man was standing in the doorway, one hand resting casually on the frame. An extremely good-looking young man with short, curly hair so blond it was almost white and dazzling dark-blue eyes. There was a tattoo - suprisingly delicate - on his forearm. A dragonfly, azure and vivid green, the body a black exclamation point. He removed his battered denim cap, managing somehow to make this seeming courtesy an insult.

‘Lionel wanted the car at eleven but it won’t start. I think it’s the carburettor.’

‘You’re supposed to phone through.’ Her voice ran off the scale. He’d never done this before. Come into the house. Of all the times for him to choose.

‘The blower’s fucked.’ He smiled as Ann’s cheeks went scarlet. ‘I went to the kitchen to tell Mrs L but she’s not there.’

Having explained himself, the young man made no attempt to leave, just slipped both thumbs into the waistband of his jeans and stared at her with mock respect. The room suddenly became a lot smaller, crammed with tensions she willed herself not to understand.