Lucie Whitehouse - Critical Incidents

‘You made a success out of a tough situation,’ she’d said.

‘Yeah, well, this time I’ve done the opposite, haven’t I?’

Back in her childhood bedroom, Robin felt a bead of sweat run between her breasts. Christine had finally got the full set of replacement windows she’d been craving and the room was nursing-home hot. Going over, she shoved one open. Like punching the lid off a Tupperware box. She sucked in as much air as her swollen stomach allowed. Below, dull little portions of garden stretched away on either side, rectangles of winter grass and anonymous shrubs, Homebase panel fencing. The Richardses, their immediate neighbours, had a Little Tikes slide and sandbox in chunky red-and-yellow plastic that confused her until she remembered her mother saying that Karen had ‘given John and Brenda grandchildren’. The right way , Robin had heard: house bought; wedding reception at a hotel in Solihull; tiny feet only thereafter. Rather than too young, out of wedlock, father never disclosed. Not so much given as foisted.

She turned and faced the bunk beds – the fact of the bunk beds. Back then, Luke used to lean over the side and flick snot-balls between the rungs of the ladder as she was falling asleep; now, at the age of thirty-five, she was going to share the beds with her daughter. Everything she’d struggled for in her adult life lay in pieces around her – how had it happened? How the fuck was she going to sort it out?

If you were really on the edge – and who was to say she wasn’t? – a wet February morning on an industrial estate in Stirchley might be enough to tip you over. Beyond the windscreen, a leaking grey sky bulged over a huddle of building-supply megastores and a near-empty car park, stacks of lumber, sodden nylon holdalls of shingle and sharp sand. In the twenty minutes they’d been here, they’d seen two people, and one of those had been a member of staff pulling a trolley out of the scrubby hedge in front of Toolstation. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. At this hour on a Monday morning her Murder Investigation team would be at full hum, the insect chatter of keyboards and phones stopping only when Freshwater, in all his ferrety majesty, swept in for the briefing, clutching the Starbucks cup he thought made him look au courant and dynamically caffeinated. She felt a swell of deep-tissue yearning that she quickly suppressed. She’d check in with Gid again later, see if anything new had come up.

The wipers made a grudging sweep of the windscreen and Maggie shifted, sending over another waft of her spicy perfume. Shalimar, was it, or Opium? Robin couldn’t remember. At this stage, it was basically her essence, anyway – getting into the car this morning, she’d breathed it in and felt a wave of comfort. Maggie was solid, unchanged in the thirty-five years she’d known her, from the eyeliner and jet-black hair, once natural, now courtesy of L’Oréal, to the revolving collection of chunky silver jewellery set with tiger’s eye and turquoise that she bought on her regular tanning trips to the Greek Islands. She looked less like a private detective, Robin always thought, than a pier-end palm reader, but likely that worked in her favour – who would suspect?

An hour ago, she’d swung her silver Ford Focus away from the kerb at St Saviour’s like they were Thelma and Louise. They’d started late so Robin could walk Lennie to school on her first day but normal kick-off could be six o’clock, or earlier. ‘Cul-de-sacs at dawn, basically,’ Maggie’d said. ‘Shots of people up bright and early, suited and booted and slinging their briefcase/toolbox in the back of the car/van, delete as applicable, are of the essence.’ She’d indicated right at a Tudorbethan pub strung with banners boasting Sky Sports and Gut Buster Burgers. ‘How did Lennie go off?’

‘Okay. I think. Nervous but putting a brave face on. You know what she’s like.’

After she’d turned the light off last night, she’d listened to her daughter flipping around overhead, the slats of the bunk creaking under her weight like a flight of arthritic stairs. ‘Are you all right up there?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Comfortable?’

A pause. ‘It’s kind of weird being this close to the ceiling.’

Two or three minutes had passed, another couple of all-body adjustments. ‘Mum?’ Not much more than a whisper this time. ‘I’m sorry I said that about Ade earlier. Sorry I got Gran on your case, I mean, not that I said it. I didn’t like it when Uncle Luke said that about him.’

Uncle Luke’s a cretin, Len – oh, the temptation. ‘I know,’ she said.

A minute or so; another revolution. ‘Mum?’

‘Hm?’

‘You know when you spoke to Ms Brampton? She said I could go back to RPG, didn’t she, when we move back to London?’

‘As long as they have a free place, she said, it’s yours.’

Another pause. She could almost hear Lennie’s mind whirring in the dark.

‘Do you think it’s going to be really different at St Saviour’s?’

No, no, no, my love, it’ll be just the same, just as cosy and sheltered and academically rigorous, and everyone will want to be friends with you straight away. ‘A bit,’ she said. ‘It’s a comprehensive and the area’s not very well off. There’ll be kids there from some tough backgrounds – and boys, obviously. But you’ll be fine wherever you go.’

‘You think so?’

The neediness, so rare coming from Lennie, had been a dart in her chest. ‘Yes. I do. And like we discussed, it’s not forever.’ Please god , let it not be forever.

Next to her now, Maggie snapped to attention. ‘Look lively,’ she murmured as a trolley loaded with sacks of cement nosed through the shop’s automatic doors, pushed by a man currently suing his employers for a work-related back injury. When he wasn’t doing hard physical labour, Robin thought, he must be spending most of his sick leave on the bench press: encased in sportswear, his upper arms looked like Christmas hams. Amazing how bloody stupid people could be.

Maggie waited until she had a straight shot of his face and then, under the guise of texting, took a volley of photographs. ‘We’ll get some of him loading the van,’ she muttered, ‘and Bob’s your uncle. Like shooting fish in a barrel, this one. Here, take this.’ She passed Robin the phone then sat forward to turn on the engine. ‘I’ll go round behind him on the way out so you get a clear view. Then we’ll wait a few minutes and drive over to the site.’

‘Iced buns,’ Maggie said as she dropped her outside Greggs. ‘Get a whole pack. And here,’ she pulled a twenty from her purse, ‘get some sausage rolls as well, or whatever you fancy for lunch. We might not have a chance later.’

Robin waved her away. ‘I’ll get it.’

‘Oh, shut up.’ Maggie reached over and stuffed the note into her pocket. Robin tried not to look relieved.

Inside, she joined the queue. It was mid-morning, lunchtime a way off yet, but the place was already busy, two tills going, a steady stream of customers, nasal-musical Brummie accents dipping and rising around her like carousel ponies. She had the accent herself though she’d never given it much thought until Isobel-from-Berkshire laughed at it in her first week at UCL. It was lighter these days, anyway, after a decade and a half away.

Isobel – god, when was the last time she’d thought about her? But the whole morning had been like that, an extended hobble down Memory Lane. Every time they turned a corner there was something else: the community centre where she’d been forced to do ballet; the bus stop for school; the wooden arch to John Morris Jones Walkway down which she and Corinna had disappeared to do their underage smoking. The same but different. The little precinct at the roundabout but the shops had changed. Gardens had been overhauled, extensions added. Instantly recognized, deeply known, but foreign. Even the general look of the place, the style – years in London had altered her aesthetic.