Jane Renshaw - Watch Over Me

Rolliston Avenue was usually one of the best parts of the walk to school: leafy and quiet and genteel, with its high stone walls overhung by beech and magnolia and lilac trees, so you got a glimpse of the ground floors of the grand detached houses only at their gates. Number 6 was her favourite, with its brief view up the gravel drive to a wide, white-painted front door under an elegant fanlight, and wisteria growing around a sash-and-case window. You could almost imagine the door opening and a wasp-waisted Victorian maidservant appearing, a basket swinging on her arm, to do her morning shopping in the long-vanished grocers and butchers and haberdashers on Raeburn Place.

But today Flora didn’t slow her pace at all as they passed the gate of Number 6.

She was cursing herself for not staying in the car and asking some nice passer-by for the use of their mobile phone. No matter how embarrassing it would have been to have to admit to running out of petrol, at least they would have been safe.

How could she have run out of petrol?

Had they tampered with the car? Had they been watching her, following her on the route to school every day? Had they calculated exactly how much petrol to leave in it to strand them in this quiet street?

‘Mum –’

‘I said don’t look round at them, Beckie.’

Behind, the yobs were barking like animals, scuffling with each other, laughing raucously, shouting sudden streams of obscenities.

‘Are they the Johnsons?’

‘No, they’re just some silly boys.’ She gripped Beckie’s hand more tightly, and Beckie gripped hers.

But Flora was almost certain, the one time she’d looked back at them, that she’d recognised the one with the little fringe plastered to his forehead.

Travis Johnson.

When she’d looked round, he had grinned at her.

She scanned the street for potential saviours, but the pavements ahead to where the road curved were empty. She was walking so fast now that poor Beckie was half tripping along at her side and, despite what Flora had told her, kept swivelling her head to look behind.

‘Mum, are –’

BANG!

A plastic bottle full of bright orange liquid exploded on the wall just in front of Beckie, spattering her hair.

‘It’s okay, Beckie. Just keep walking and don’t look round at them .’

Distantly, she could hear the traffic on Raeburn Place.

But there was still no one in sight.

Should she turn in at the gate of the house ahead? Walk briskly to the door as if this had been their destination all along, as if she knew the people there?

But what if the Johnsons followed them into the garden, into the seclusion afforded by the high wall and the trees, blocking their exit to the street?

No. There would be people soon, surely, on the street if they just kept walking?

‘Fucking snobs,’ one of them shouted.

Beckie looked back again.

‘Beckie!’ Flora hissed furiously, tugging her arm and making her stumble. ‘Would you stop looking ?’

Now they were approaching the curve in the road. The street had never seemed so long.

‘It’s okay, darling, just ignore them.’

Beckie’s face had closed, as if an expressionless mask had been pulled down over it.

What would she do if they made a grab for Beckie?

She would scream. She would fight. She would kick them in the balls.

She couldn’t call 999 because she still hadn’t found her fucking phone. Why hadn’t she taken Neil’s?

But they weren’t going to do anything, not in public like this. Surely? When they got to the school she would call the police. Call Neil. At least this was the evidence she needed that the Johnsons really were a threat.

It seemed to take hours to reach the bend in the road. But at last the new vista opened up in front of them and there were people, a group of students slouching along, all skinny jeans and huge boots and ridiculous hair, crossing the junction with Raeburn Place.

Holding tight to Beckie’s hand, Flora broke into a jog.

‘Excuse me!’ she shouted, and one of the boys – he looked like a giant insect, his limbs impossibly thin in black jeans and top, a pair of outsized, heavy-framed glasses on his pointed nose – stopped and looked at them.

‘Excuse me!’ she repeated, gasping, at last daring to look back as she approached the students.

The street behind was empty.

‘There were some men,’ she gabbled at them. ‘Following us, shouting things…’

‘It was the Johnsons,’ Beckie said in a small voice. ‘They’re bad people, basically… It was , Mum – I recognised one of them from before.’

‘Or it could have been someone who just looked a bit like one of them.’

‘Wanna call the cops?’ Insect Boy handed her a phone.

‘Oh!’ Flora took it gratefully. ‘Thank you. I’ve lost my phone… Can we walk up the road with you while I call them?’

‘Yeah, sure you can.’

She decided to call 101, the non-emergency number, rather than 999. She didn’t want to seem as if she was hysterical and overreacting. She explained to the woman who answered what had happened, and she was put through to the local police station. She then had to explain it all again to a bored-sounding man, all the time checking the pavements ahead and across the road and behind.

She explained that the family of her adoptive daughter had been harassing them again, that there would be a record of the previous incident on file. The bored man said police officers would meet her at the school to take a statement.

At the school gate they said goodbye and thank you to the students, and then they were safely on the expanse of tarmacked playground in front of the school buildings, thronging with yelling children and groups of helicopter mums standing about talking with half their attention, the other half dedicated to tracking their children.

Beckie suddenly stopped. ‘Why did you lie?’

‘What?’

‘It was the Johnsons. You just told the police it was them.’

‘Well – actually I don’t know for sure that it was…’

‘Of course it was them, Mum. It was that big muscly one from before. They’re going to come back and try and like grab me or do something to me –’

‘No, darling –’

‘I’m not a baby!’

‘They’re not going to “grab” you. Dad and I would never let that happen.’

‘Yes you would. You couldn’t do anything to stop them. If they’d grabbed me just now, there’s nothing you could have done about it.’

‘Beckie –’

‘I want to go home.’

‘I’ll tell Miss Douglas and Mrs Jenner what’s been happening, and they’ll keep you safe inside at break and at lunchtime – and Dad and I will both come and collect you in his car.’

‘No, I mean I want to go home home. I hate it here. I hate this school. And I hate Miss Douglas and Mrs Jenner! They would probably want the Johnsons to take me! They’re fucking cows .’

‘Beckie!’

Beckie tugged her hand out of Flora’s, and Flora grabbed it back and began pulling her towards the P4 extension where Beckie’s classroom was. Beckie wriggled and struggled, tears and snot on her reddened face.

‘ Behave yourself! ’ Flora shouted.

And Beckie cringed away.

She cringed away and sort of ducked her head as if to avoid the blow that was coming.

Oh God .

Flora had never turned her anger on Beckie before; never once.

Her own tears coming, Flora folded Beckie in her arms. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I’m so sorry.’

Beckie was stiff in her embrace.

Guiding her blindly across the tarmac, Flora was aware for the first time of all the eyes upon them – children frozen mid-chase; groups of mums staring. And there was Ailish, in her usual prime position in the middle of the playground under the big horse chestnut, standing there in her high boots and swingy beige coat, muttering out of the side of her mouth to Marianne, her gaze fixed coldly on Flora.