Jane Renshaw - Watch Over Me

Neil wiggled his fingers over the tray. ‘Come to Papa!’

‘You’re from Number 17, yes?’ mouthed Tony.

It wasn’t good that they’d been in the street over a year and didn’t know anyone properly apart from Ailish and Iain – although maybe that was just urban life rather than a consequence of Flora’s reluctance to get involved. When they’d lived at Backhill Croft, they’d known everyone within a mile radius, whether they’d wanted to or not.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Flora as Neil chomped down on the burger. ‘Have you been in the street a while?’

‘Yeah, a while. Over ten years.’

‘Great street,’ Neil mumbled with a full mouth.

‘Suits me fine. I don’t have a proper garden – mine’s an upper flat, so I just have the little bit of ground at the front of the building –’ Flora lost the rest of the sentence as it was drowned out by Mia shrieking. ‘But with the Botanics right across the street, I don’t feel the lack of it.’ He dropped his voice still further. ‘I’m in there most nights.’

‘Nights?’ said Flora.

‘Yes, just before it shuts, you have the place pretty much to yourself.’

She had an image of him stalking his victims in the shrubberies, through the glass houses…

‘And it’s a great place for kids.’

Beckie suddenly intruded into Flora’s imagined scene, happily skipping along a path, Tony lurking wolflike in the trees behind her.

‘Do you have kids?’ she asked.

‘No!’ He chortled, as if the idea was utterly ridiculous. ‘I like kids…’

Oh here we go.

‘… but I couldn’t eat a whole one.’ The punchline proudly delivered at normal decibels.

At this point Caroline appeared at his elbow and grabbed a burger from the tray. She had beautifully manicured hands, Flora noticed, with little shell-pink nails. ‘Maybe a premmie?’

While Neil choked on his burger, Tony smiled uncertainly. Flora imagined her own smile was just as unconvincing.

‘A premmie?’ queried Tony, turning to stare at Caroline. He did have rather an alarming stare, it had to be said. A hungry stare.

‘A premature baby,’ Neil explained.

‘Ah. Right. Ha, yes, maybe a premmie! Ha ha!’

Eventually he moved away, and Caroline said, ‘You see?’ and then she was back on Ailish again, going on about how Ailish had posted a scan of a certificate Jasmine had received at school for ‘Performance Above Expectation’ in her mock exams.

Neil assumed a bright, Ailish-esque smile. ‘“Beauty and brains! Super-proud mum!”’

Caroline raised her eyebrows.

‘Yep,’ said Flora. ‘He can practically recite the posts word for word. He’s obsessed.’

‘Oh God, me too!’ Caroline grinned at Neil. ‘But doesn’t she get that a certificate like that’s the equivalent of a prize for taking part? Doesn’t she get that posting it on Facebook is a major embarrassment for Jasmine?’

‘You could basically say the same thing about the whole Show,’ said Neil. And as Caroline raised her eyebrows: ‘Her page. We call it The Chipmunk Show.’

Caroline smiled. ‘But seriously, what about all that nasty stuff on there about Mia’s mum? What if Mia read that? And wee Thomas hardly even mentioned, like she doesn’t even have a son?’

‘I know,’ said Flora. ‘She doesn’t seem to spend any time with Thomas beyond the basic requirements of taking him to and from school and feeding him. As far as we can tell, the only photograph of Thomas ever to have appeared on The Chipmunk Show is that one of the whole family at Hallowe’en where Iain’s a zombie, Ailish is Marilyn Monroe –’

‘The scariest of the lot,’ put in Neil.

‘– Jasmine’s a sexy fairy and Thomas is a pumpkin, with only his eyes and feet showing. Other than that, he hasn’t featured. I suppose the problem is that she can’t put make-up on him.’

‘Although if she shot him in really soft focus… God, we are bitches. And whatever the male equivalent is…’

‘Hey, I’m happy with bitch,’ said Neil, and he and Caroline giggled away as Flora felt the smile stiffen on her face. Yes, she realised: Caroline was a bitch. And the worst of it was, Flora was enjoying her company. Vying with her, even, as to who could be meaner about people.

You’re playing with the big girls now .

She had to get away from this woman.

She had to get out of here.

She turned to put her glass down on the wall, and caught Ailish’s eye.

Oh God.

Had she heard that?

She was near enough to have heard, sitting down at a table just a few metres away, although the group of people she was with were making enough noise, hopefully, to have drowned out their conversation.

‘Well that was a lot better than expected,’ Neil said as they headed up the path to their own front door. ‘Caroline’s quite a character, isn’t she?’

‘Mm.’ Flora removed the massive original key from her bag and unlocked the door, and they filed into the spacious vestibule between the front door and the inner door with its original stained-glass panels in the upper section. There were two narrow stained-glass windows on either side too, and on the floor Victorian terracotta tiles in black and brown and ochre and white.

Beckie slipped off her trainers, lined them up neatly with the others under the pew, pulled on her pink slipper socks, danced through to the hall and grabbed her tablet from where she’d left it on the stairs.

‘Half an hour screen time max, Beckie!’ Flora called after her as she disappeared upstairs.

Neil kicked off his shoes – literally, sending them thumping into Beckie’s. ‘Didn’t you like her?’

‘Yes, she was fun.’

‘There’s a but coming.’

‘No there isn’t.’

Why was it always so cold in here? His feet must be cold on the tiles, with only those thin socks on. One blue and one green, she noted, with a surge of such tenderness that she had to blink back sudden tears.

She sat down on the pew, felt under it for Neil’s scabby moccasins, and chucked them over to him. Then she bent over her own shoes, taking her time with the laces, breathing long breaths.

‘Flora? What is it?’

She looked up at him and he looked down at her, his eyebrows slightly raised in enquiry, his eyes so kind, so full of puzzled concern.

‘Is it this stuff with Beckie at school? Listen, don’t worry about it. All kids go through these phases. Pushing boundaries, they call it, don’t they? I was a right little bastard to Pippa when I was Beckie’s age.’

And she wanted to get up and throw her arms round his neck, to rest her head on his shoulder and cry.

She wanted to tell him.

She wanted him to hold her and say that it was all right. That she wasn’t Rachel, and nor was Beckie. That Caroline wasn’t Tricia. That Mia wasn’t Tricia.

She looked back down at her shoes. ‘But I am worried about it.’

‘Look, I’ll come with you to the meeting on Monday. I’ll see if I can get Stephen to cover my honours class…’

‘No, I don’t mind going on my own. It’s not about the meeting, Neil. It’s not that.’

‘Okay.’ He puffed out a breath. ‘I know I’m not much good at this. You… It’d be good, wouldn’t it, to have a female friend to talk this stuff over with? Don’t you think that maybe Caroline…? You could ask her over for coffee sometime?’

Whenever she was upset or worried, Neil’s response was always to try to come up with a solution, which usually involved her doing something, as if the problem was quite easily resolvable if only she would think it through; as if there was always something she could and should be doing about it.