Gordon Reece - Mice

There was hardly any room to get out of the door on my side; Mum had even less on hers, and I could see the door cutting into her waist as she squeezed herself out. I’d managed to ease myself halfway out and was just swivelling round to free my right leg when the world around me suddenly exploded.

There was an ear-splitting noise and a flashing of orange lights. I looked around, expecting to see police cars closing in on all sides, but there was nothing. I stood in a daze, dumbfounded by the noise, blinking stupidly. Only slowly did it dawn on me that the four-wheel drive’s alarm had gone off.

Mum was suddenly beside me, leading me away by the arm. I could just hear what she was saying under the deafening wail of the alarm.

‘Don’t panic, Shelley. Just keep walking.’

I did as I was told, convinced that the alarm was going to bring all the diners out of the restaurant to see what was going on. Then suddenly it stopped.

We feigned indifference and kept walking quickly away. And then a man’s voice behind us called out.

‘Oi! Where d’you think you’re going?’

We stopped and looked around.

The owner of the four-wheel drive was standing there, his car key in his hand after deactivating the alarm. He was heavily built with a shaved head and dark goatee.

‘You don’t just walk off when you’ve damaged someone’s car,’ he snarled.

I tensed myself to run. We were meant to leave the car without being noticed, without attracting attention to ourselves . If we stopped now, this man would be able to describe us to the police. But Mum, who still held me firmly by the arm, didn’t move.

‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘We haven’t damaged your car.’

‘Yes, you did,’ he grunted. ‘I was watching you. She hit it with her door.’ He indicated me with a brutal butt of his bony head and bent to examine his car, running his hands over it like a vet stroking the flanks of an injured thoroughbred horse.

‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘The door never touched your car. I must have bumped it with my backside.’

‘I can’t see any damage,’ he said, almost with disappointment, ‘but then there’s not much light here. Let me take your details.’

We couldn’t let this happen. This was insane. We had to leave the car without being noticed. I suddenly remembered the torch in my pocket.

‘Use this,’ I said. ‘I didn’t touch your door.’

As he took the torch from me, he stared hard at my face and I saw a wrinkle of disgust pass across his features. My first thought was that he’d noticed my scars, so I was confused when he pointed to my left eye and said, ‘You’re bleeding.’

I put my hand up to my temple and sure enough, there was a small dark stain on the woollen tip of my glove. The branch! The branch I’d walked into when I was crossing the back garden in the dark!

He went back to his car and began running the beam over the driver’s door, meticulously examining the paintwork. He made no effort to hurry himself while Mum and I stood in the car park, battered by the capricious gusts of wind, completely at a loss what to do next.

Without looking up from the door, he said, ‘D’you always carry a torch around with you?’

My face burned as the magnitude of my mistake dawned on me. I’d given him the torch without thinking! What girl carries a torch like that around with her in her pocket? And when she’s meant to be going out to dinner! I looked at Mum in horror, but she just pressed my arm firmly as if to say, it’s OK, Shelley, it’s OK .

When he started moving towards the back of his car, Mum — to my astonishment — suddenly broke away from me and strode boldly towards him.

‘This is ridiculous!’ she exclaimed. ‘The car door’s up here, not down there! Give me the torch! We haven’t got time for this nonsense!’

He gave her back the torch, eyeing her contemptuously, an arrogant half-smile on his lips.

‘There’s no damage to your precious car! Maybe your alarm shouldn’t be so sensitive.’ She took my arm again and we started off towards the restaurant.

‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Where are you going? I still want to exchange details!’

Mum spun on her heel. ‘We haven’t damaged your stupid car! And that’s an end to it!’

We strode on purposefully until we were almost at the door to the restaurant. I could see the queue of people inside waiting to be seated, a girl who I thought I recognized from school offering a basket of bread to a group of Japanese businessmen wearing paper hats. We didn’t want to go inside the restaurant — that would only increase our chances of being noticed and remembered. I glanced back. The man had his back to us and seemed to be examining his car door again, his hands bunched on his hips.

‘Is he watching us?’ Mum asked.

‘No, he’s not.’

Mum looked to make sure for herself and then tugged me into the dark alley beside the restaurant. We only had to follow this alley to the end, and it would bring us out onto another main road. About half a mile along was the train station, where we’d be able to catch a taxi home.

Mum and I were wired when we got back to Honeysuckle Cottage, euphoric that we were free of the burglar’s car at last, and that it no longer squatted beside the house like a terrifying bird of ill omen.

We sat in the lounge going over our adventure again and again — not being able to find the car’s headlights, nearly going into the ditch, setting off the alarm in the car park, the confrontation with ‘Four-wheel-drive Man’, as we’d christened him.

‘You were amazing, Mum,’ I said. ‘The way you stood up to him! I’ve never seen you so — so fearless. You were like a completely different person!’

Mum didn’t say anything, but I could tell she was proud — and maybe a little surprised too — at the way she’d got us out of such a difficult situation.

‘I mean,’ I went on, ‘he was a really scary guy! He was like a gangster or something. I was getting ready to run!’

‘Well, this calls for a celebration,’ Mum said, and went to the kitchen, returning with a bottle of wine. She drank three glasses while I was still on my first, and before I could protest went off to open another bottle.

We were like players on a winning team or actors after a performance; we couldn’t come down after the intense excitement we’d just lived through. I had Mum in fits doing impressions of her confronting Four-wheel-drive Man — outrageously exaggerating her posh accent for effect — ‘I haven’t got time for this nonsense ! We haven’t damaged your stupid little car, you stupid little man!’

‘But your line was best of all,’ Mum said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What you said to him — I must have bumped it with my backside !’

I’d forgotten that I’d actually said that. It sent me off into hysterics, and the more I cracked up, the more Mum screamed with laughter too. We laughed and laughed until the tears streamed down our faces. At that moment, I must have bumped it with my backside was the funniest thing I’d ever heard in my life.

We talked for so long that it was nearly eleven before we got round to going through the items we’d brought in from the back garden. The tools in the canvas bag looked like ordinary work tools, but we assumed the burglar regularly put them to other uses. In the pockets of an anorak, which Mum had also taken from the boot, there was a Stanley knife, a filthy handkerchief, a disintegrated cigarette and a cinema ticket. We flicked through the road atlas, but there was nothing marked or written on any of the maps, just a few telephone numbers on the inside front cover. As I’d thought, the notepad was full of mathematical calculations. Mum sat back in her chair and flicked through the pages.