Jane Renshaw - Watch Over Me

Every day she walked along the beach in a floppy hat and sunglasses, scrutinising everyone she saw. She sat in the shade of the awning at Victor’s pretending to read books and magazines, an empty coffee cup at her elbow. But mostly she sat up here, at the window of her hotel room, scanning the beach and the road below with a pair of binoculars.

The hotel staff had been great, bringing meals and drinks to her room. They had even enlisted their friends and families in the search for Beckie. Her picture was all over the press and social media, both in the UK and in Spain, although Flora had tried to make sure the name Fuerte Blanco wasn’t mentioned – she didn’t want the Johnsons warned off coming here. She had been touched to see a batch of homemade laminated notices tied to lampposts and in windows of local houses, with Beckie’s photograph and a plea to ‘ Encuentre Beckie ’. It had turned out to be lovely Sofia, the maid who cleaned her room, who was responsible, and Flora had felt awful asking her to take them down, explaining that if the Johnsons did turn up here, she didn’t want them to see the notices and be scared off.

‘But maybe they never come,’ Sofia had said.

Flora wasn’t even going to contemplate that possibility.

They would come, and when they did, she’d be ready.

The local police were primed to expect her call. She was paying Victor, café owner and former member of the Guardia Civil , and his two brothers a retainer of £300 a week each to be on hand in case of trouble, their phones always turned on, ready to receive her SOS.

Money wasn’t an issue. She’d sold the Gardens Terrace house for three-quarters of its valuation, which had still netted her an obscene amount of money, and she had Alec’s life insurance payout now too. Plus there would be the compensation, eventually, from the police for their incompetence and from the press for their slanderous coverage of the case leading up to her conviction.

She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, drawn back, as always, to the view. Standing at the window, she trained the binoculars on the line of little cafés and bars strung out along the beach; on the people on the pavement; on two shadowy figures on the beach… Her breath caught in her throat, but a car turning in the hotel car park briefly illuminated two dark heads and slim figures in bikini tops and cut-off jeans. It was Sofia’s teenage daughters, heads bent together over a match as they lit illicit cigarettes.

If Alec were here, he’d be down there presenting to them the evidence of how many people who smoked as teenagers ended up in an early grave.

She hadn’t been able to think about Alec at all in prison – and when she had had to talk about him, to Charles, to Brian, to the court, she had always referred to him as Neil. But now, for some reason, he was ever-present in her head. She kept thinking how he’d react to this or that, and what he would say; she kept imagining his smile, his touch on her back, her face, her hand; she kept hearing him telling her that the Johnsons, despite everything, loved Beckie and wouldn’t harm her.

How desperately he would want to be here.

How he would hate having had to abandon them.

Only, he hadn’t. He was with her, as he would always be with her, as she was sure he was with Beckie, not just in her thoughts and her memories but in the very fabric of her being. In how she looked at the world.

With his scientist’s knowledge, he had been able to show them layers and layers of life that most people never even imagined existed, let alone experienced. She smiled as she remembered the day, soon after that awful scene on the street with the Johnsons, when they’d taken Beckie to the Botanic Gardens and Alec had picked a leaf off a beech hedge and explained that two cells shaped like lips formed the pores that let gases and water in and out of the leaf. When the cells were swollen with water, they were like the lips of women who had had too much Botox and couldn’t close their mouths: the pore was forced open. And when there was a drought, enzymes and hormones acted to expel potassium ions and water from the pore cells so that they shrank and closed the pore to stop water escaping.

‘The world is a wonderful place, Beckie,’ he had said. ‘And when you take notice of something wonderful in it – how this leaf protects itself, or what a fossil inside a rock did when it was alive millions of years ago, or why a bird sings – you get a little bit of the wonderful to have for yourself, no matter what not-so-wonderful things might be going on in your life at the time.’

And then Beckie, of course, had wanted to know all about why birds sang, and they had gone round the Gardens listening out for robins as Neil explained that robins had territories all the time, not just in summer, so they sang all year round – except when they were moulting in late summer and felt vulnerable – in order to tell other birds to keep off.

Was there a robin where Beckie was, to sing for her? Did you even get robins in Spain? And Beckie would probably object: ‘It wouldn’t be singing for me anyway. It would be singing to tell other birds to get lost.’

She set the binoculars down on the windowsill.

Was she happy, with Caroline? Did she hate Flora now? Or was she wondering Why?

Why doesn’t Mum come and get me?

Flora’s hand went to her pocket, her fingers closing round the smooth length of the flick-knife Wendy’s partner Sol had procured for her.

I will come.

I will come for you, my darling.

I will come .

‘Corrigan!’ I yell.

Wee fucker’s jumped in the pool on Jordaine’s head and she’s yowling.

‘Right yous, picnic’s ready so get your arses outta there, aye? Ryan son, you coming?’

‘Naw Maw, I’m gonnae hit the gym.’ He’s never out that fucking gym.

‘Carly and Willow are gonnae be done at WaterBabies 12:20, 12:30 at the latest, but dinnae get there till one, aye? Place gets locked up so she’s gonnae have to fry her arse out on that pavement. Maybe teach the bint a fucking lesson.’ Princess Fucking Carly cannae drive cos why should she, she’s got three fucking brothers chauffeuring her arse any place she needs to go.

Ryan chuckles. ‘She’ll be a wee ray of sunshine, eh?’

‘Aye, and that reminds me, go and tell Madison she’s fucking coming on this fucking picnic.’

Ryan sits up on the lounger and takes off his shades. I cannae get used to the shaved head and blue contacts. Aye, he needs to lie low, but Christ on a cheesy biscuit. He looks like a fucking skinhead.

‘Can Connor no go? Or Mandy?’

‘Better coming from you, son.’

He loves Bekki to bits and he’s gutted she’s feart of him and doesnae want a bar of him because of all the shite she’s read on the net about Ryan being wanted for murdering her da. After all he’s done for her, it’s a kick in the fucking teeth. He cannae ever go back to the UK.

And aye, I’ve telt Bekki over and over that it’s all shite, that it was Flora killed her da and she knows it, but just in case that wean’s got it in her heid she’s going to the polis and that? I’m ‘Polis catch up with us, you’re going into fucking care, Bekki, cos that fucking woman doesnae want you back, right?’

Ryan gets up and gets on his flip-flops but then here’s Bekki running out the patio doors giving it ‘He killed Dave!’

Dave’s her hamster. She’s got the wee fucker in her hand, and I can see from here it’s an ex hamster right enough. Brains chirted out its wee heid.

‘Aw Jesus,’ goes Mandy.

I yell, ‘Corrigan!’

‘It wasn’t Corrigan,’ goes Bekki. ‘It was that fucking old alky bastard!’