Хилари Боннер - The Cruellest Game

‘You may book into a hotel, if you wish, madam,’ said the custody sergeant. ‘We would accept that.’

I turned to look directly at him. ‘Without any cash or credit cards?’ I queried sarcastically.

He shrugged, more or less ignoring my inflection.

‘It’ll have to be Gladys’s, bless her,’ I said. Actually, the thought of being forced into the company of the vicar’s wife and having to listen to her endless garrulous outpourings appalled me, though I knew I was being ungrateful. But anything, anything at all, was better than spending another minute in police custody.

‘I’ll drive you to Blackstone,’ Marti said, when we’d completed all the paperwork.

‘But don’t you have to be in court?’

‘It’s not seven o’clock yet,’ she replied. ‘I’ve hours to spare and it won’t take long to get to Gladys’s at this hour.’

Weary, but relieved to be free again, I allowed myself to be led from the station. As much for something to say as anything else I asked Marti if she knew whose clothes I might be wearing. Were they some kind of standard police issue?

She shook her head. ‘Gladys told me she’d left clothes for you yesterday,’ said Marti. ‘Never underestimate that woman. She knows the form when someone’s arrested almost as well as I do, and she has a totally practical approach.’

I managed a small smile as we stepped out onto the pavement. But that was when more trouble started.

Half the world seemed to be outside. The news of my arrest had obviously broken with a vengeance. A crowd of locals, apparently furious that I was being released, shouted and screamed abuse at me. Was everyone in this part of Devon an excessively early riser, I wondered? Press photographers half blinded me with a cacophony of flash bulbs; reporters, from newspapers and radio and television stations, called out questions I could not even comprehend in the state I was in, let alone answer.

I suppose it was stupid; I had watched this kind of scene many times on TV news bulletins before, but I had not even thought about anything like it happening to me.

‘Just look straight ahead and walk tall,’ said Marti Smith. I tried to take her advice. It wasn’t easy. At one point I was hit in the side of the face by a rotting orange. Apart from the humiliation, it really hurt. The fruit imploded as it smashed into my cheekbone. Unpleasant brownish juice ran down over my chin. I stumbled as I tried to wipe it away with the back of one hand. A uniformed police officer launched himself into the crowd in search of the offender. But the damage had been done.

Once settled in Marti Smith’s convertible Mini Cooper I couldn’t hold the tears back.

‘How long do you think it will be before I can return to Highrise?’ I asked through my sniffles.

‘Hopefully not more than a day or two,’ Marti replied.

Even after all that had happened I wanted to be in my own home. But I would just have to be patient, it seemed. At least I wouldn’t be spending another night in that cell.

Gladys welcomed us warmly at the vicarage and fed us tea and toast in the Formica kitchen. Marti stayed almost an hour before slipping out to her car to fetch a tailored black pinstriped jacket and black court shoes, which she put on in Gladys’s downstairs toilet. When she returned to the kitchen her hair, though still pink, had been flattened and slicked neatly back behind her ears. The tailored jacket exposed little more than the white collar of her blinged shirt, and reached almost to her knees. The leggings protruding beneath it, now that Marti’s feet were clad in the court shoes instead of biker boots, looked surprisingly conventional. So that’s how she does it, I thought, as she left for her appearance at the crown court. She promised to call in later in the day before returning to Bristol. I wondered if she was this attentive to all her clients. I suspected probably not, and that the treatment I was receiving was almost certainly down to Marti Smith’s friendship with the Ponsonby Smythes. Something else I had to be grateful to Gladys for.

After Marti had departed I asked Gladys if I could phone Dad, and she left me alone in the kitchen while I did so. He was indeed frantic with worry, though at least it seemed that Marti Smith had broken the news of my arrest to him before he saw it on TV or read about it in a newspaper. He had, however, watched my traumatic release from police custody live on television earlier that morning.

‘Terrible, terrible it was, them people throwing things at you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been calling Highrise and your mobile ever since. Couldn’t get hold of Robert either.’

I explained that my mobile had been detained, I was not yet allowed to return home, and Robert was still somewhere in the North Sea. Predictably, he at once invited me to Hartland, but I told him I hoped to be back home very soon. He wanted to join me there as soon as I was reinstalled, ‘to look after you, maid’ as he put it. I managed, with some difficulty, to talk my way out of that too.

The whole conversation was extremely fraught, which was no more than I’d expected. Ultimately I informed him that my arrest was just a terrible misunderstanding, and with a confidence I did not really feel assured him that soon things would be resolved.

After the call to Dad I spoke to Gladys about having no credit cards and no cash. I really wasn’t functioning properly. I needed her help to apply for replacement cards. She found me phone numbers for Barclays and American Express. My new Connect card and Barclaycard had to be sent to my home address, but I could pick up the AmEx card from the company’s Exeter office the following day.

Gladys then offered to drive me into Okehampton so that I could draw some cash at my local Barclays. Fortunately this was still the kind of branch where the clerks often knew the customers, and I was lucky, albeit a tad embarrassed under the circumstances, to find on duty a woman who had been there so long we were on casual first-name terms, so I didn’t have a problem with identification. Curly haired Mavis smiled as I approached the counter, but I saw the colour rise in her cheeks and I’m sure there was more than just a flicker of recognition in her eyes. I wondered if she knew of my arrest. Judging from the commotion outside the police station, it was quite likely that she did.

She made no comment, though, just asked for my postcode, presumably as a cursory security check as I assumed it was on the screen before her. I drew out £500 and was surprised at how much better it made me feel to have money in my pocket.

Gladys and I then made a quick stop at Peacocks, Okehampton’s budget lady’s clothing store, where I bought some clothes that fitted me: jeans, sweater and a pair of trainers, and some night things. As we walked around the store I thought I noticed a couple of other shoppers stare at me, then look away and whisper to each other. But it could have been my imagination.

During the drive to and from Okehampton, Gladys, true to form, chattered non-stop. I have absolutely no idea what about. But I found I didn’t mind as much as I’d thought I might. It meant I barely had to speak. And she asked me no questions, which was an enormous relief.

Back at the vicarage she made a sandwich lunch, which again I could barely eat. The Reverend Gerald joined us, greeting me warmly but in such a way that I suspected he probably had no idea who I was. Afterwards Gladys showed me into a bedroom furnished in shabby G Plan, another legacy from the 1970s when I guessed the vicarage had last had a makeover. Surprisingly, there was a small flat-screen digital TV in one corner of the room.

‘You’d probably like some time on your own,’ said Gladys, displaying again that innate sensitivity which was so often belied by her manner. She gestured towards the television. ‘We have all sorts staying here, and find the TV can be quite a comfort to people. Come and go as you please, anywhere in the house.’