Courting Trouble (23 page)

‘If I changed you so much, why did you bugger off?’

‘I didn’t want to shatter your illusions. How you would have hated me had you known the truth – that I was working undercover.’

‘People trusted me, Danny! People believed you were who you said you were because I had welcomed you into my life.’

‘Yeah. I know. Doesn’t exactly win me Boyfriend of the Year, right?’

‘And why now? Why come back after all this time?’

‘Do you really want to know?’ Danny sat down opposite Roxy.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’ve always had this inclination to small, invigorating bursts of danger. Jesus. I’ve got so many bullet scars and wounds after my Special Services mission in Afghanistan, my chest X-rays look like the national grid. But then I really nearly did die. I was bodysurfing. In Sierra Leone. Got dragged out by a rip. It was a remote, ugly place. I can only remember the floppiness of my arms and that feeling of shifting apart from everything. I lay on my back, I cried, swore, said things like “Oh God!” a lot.’

‘There’s no such thing as an atheist in a big surf,’ Roxy interjected flippantly.

‘And then all I could think about was you, Roxy . . . Okay, I’ve had a lot of women. Sure. But I never felt the same connection. I couldn’t settle . . . Anyways, my next memory is of touching a sandbank with my foot. By giving up trying to swim, I’d drifted free of the rip and washed ashore like an old bit of driftwood. I crawled up the beach, threw up, then lay on the warm sand, waiting for the loneliness to go away. Only it didn’t . . . and I realized for the first time that I won’t be here for ever. And that there’s only ever been one person I’ve ever given a damn about.’

‘A woman would have to have a heart of stone to listen to that story . . . and not guffaw hysterically,’ Roxy scoffed.

‘Fair enough. I don’t blame you for being sceptical. But actions speak louder than words. Your line of work is dangerous, Roxy. You ruffle a lot of feathers. And, well, with my training and skills, I just figured there could be times when I could be useful. Protection, phone tapping, breaking and entering, surveillance, some persuasive conversations with wife beaters in which they’re dangled by the scrotum from the odd windowledge . . . Is there anything I could do for you right now, for example?’ When Roxy ignored him, he turned to me. ‘Matilda?’

‘Well,’ I sighed, ‘I have been feeling the need to wear a bulletproof bra of late . . . what with all these abusive tweets.’

‘Abusive? How abusive?’

‘Let’s just say that the word “pussy” is being used in a nonfeline context.’

Danny flinched and his jaw muscles flexed.

‘It’s just some scrote of a troll.’ Roxy waved a dismissive arm. ‘Just tweet back suggesting he try not to use words that are bigger than his dick.’

‘Roxy doesn’t take death threats seriously. When she got a Twitter message recently from some maniac, warning that he was going to hunt her down and kill her, she tweeted back “I’m in Boots on Camden High Street, buying haemorrhoid cream. See you there!”’

Danny’s face went granite hard. ‘This isn’t funny, Roxanne.’

I looked at my mother, amazed. I’d never heard anybody use her full name.

‘Trolls hate women because they’re so repulsive they never get laid. If a troll went to a prostitute, she’d get a headache.’

‘Roxy’s blasé, but I’m terrified. Portia’s safety’s my only priority. One guy is threatening to throw battery acid over us, like some crazed Muslims did to those poor English girls in Zanzibar. “Do you like to eat?” he tweeted. “Coz acid likes to eat you.”’

‘Show me,’ Danny said stonily, putting his hand out for my mobile.

I helped him click on to my Twitter feed and let the abuse scroll down the screen:

‘I’m gonna be the first thing u c when u wake up, man-hating bitch.’

‘Drink bleach and die, fuckface.’

‘Silence is golden, but duck tape is silver.’

‘You carpet-munching cunts needs to get raped.’

‘RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE.’ #hopeyougetraped.

‘A car bomb will go off outside your house at midnight. I will be watching you to make sure you burn.’

‘Hi again slut!! It took twitter 30 minutes to ban me before. I am here again to tell you I will rape you tomorrow at 6.pm.’

‘Do these assholes know where you live?’ Danny asked quietly.

‘Well, I did get a rock through my window. And, I don’t know if it’s related, but my bike was chained up outside the house the other night and it got mangled.’

I clicked on to my iPhone camera icon and showed Danny a photo of my twisted bicycle. ‘As you can see, I think it might be time to buy a new bike.’

‘What kind? Armoured? Steel-plated? Or perhaps a stealth bicycle with long-range missiles and a couple of drones aboard?’

‘For God’s sake, calm down, both of you.’ Roxy sighed. ‘Truth is, if you’re possessed of breasts and an opinion, you attract trolls quicker than the three Billy Goats Gruff. It’s all bluster and bullshit.’

‘You don’t know that, Rox. You need protection. Call the cops again. Or let me hassle them for you. I’ve still got some good mates on the force.’

‘We’re big girls. Phyllis’s case will be over in two weeks and then things will go back to normal.’

‘Roxanne, this is serious. You need help.’

‘Don’t tell me what I do and don’t need!’ She wagged a chastening finger.

‘You can’t be expected to cope with this kind of threat on your own.’

‘Well, I’ve coped very well on my own so far. Where the hell were you when I
did
need you, ’eh? To do the midnight feeds and go to parent–teacher night? If I can cope with
that
on my own, I can cope with these filth-breathing fleabags.’

‘I have all the gadgets and gizmos of the PI trade. Let me help you. I’ll do surveillance on your house. I have GPS trackers that can be deployed magnetically anywhere on a vehicle. Anyone acting suspiciously, I can track him and see exactly where he lives, then, thanks to Google Earth, focus on his kitchen and see what he’s having for fucking breakfast.’

‘Maybe we should take up Danny’s offer of help, Mum? If only for Portia’s sake. The police aren’t doing much. And so many of the Twitter accounts are bogus anyway, set up on stolen phones with aliases . . .’

‘Let’s just compromise and say I’m right, shall we?’ Roxy said curtly. ‘After the court case, this will all blow over.’

‘Maybe so, but it would make me feel safer to have a little protection,’ I countered.

My mother took a beat. ‘Really? And who do you think has been protecting this family all these years? The whole reason we started Pandora’s, Tilly, was to protect women from men like him.’ She pointed at Danny.

Danny’s face drooped. ‘The trouble with you, Roxy, is that you can’t see a belt without wanting to kick below it.’

‘And who do you think made me that way?’ Anger was bubbling beneath the surface of her words. ‘I brought up Matilda as a single parent. I blamed myself for the fact that my daughter had lost her father . . . When all the time you were probably working undercover a few friggin’ miles away.’

Whatever brief camaraderie had flared between my parents was now extinguished.

‘Yes, Danny’s a submarine dad,’ I agreed. ‘I mean, the man just sank without trace. But now that he’s surfaced unexpectedly, why don’t we let him make amends by helping us?’ I suggested.

‘Absolutely not.’ She rounded on Danny, her mouth a thin slit. ‘You see the mess you’re making? You’re already dividing me from my daughter and granddaughter. No wonder you made a good fighter. You’re a born soldier. You just go around lobbing hand grenades into people’s lives.’

Danny shook his head emphatically. ‘When I nearly drowned, Christ, all I could think about was how I’d wasted my life . . . The sour taste of that. It changed me, Roxy.’

‘You say you’ve changed, but the point is, who the hell
are
“you”? Cop? Crusader? Masquerader? . . . “Hi, I’m Danny. Allow me to introduce my selves.” You should hire a detective and have yourself followed!’

‘I want to make up for all the deceit, Roxy.’

‘You can never make up for it. Don’t you get it? I don’t know how else to say it without a police restraining order. We don’t need men. And we most certainly don’t need you. Come on, Matilda.’

My mother clomped out of the apartment and down the rickety stairs. I followed reluctantly. Halfway down, I turned to look back up at my father. He had the look of a drowning man.

After a tense afternoon we ate dinner in uncustomary silence. Even though it was Portia’s thirteenth birthday, and she was heaped high with presents, the mood remained muted. Despondency had set in. Chantelle spent so much time crying, I expected volunteers to start stacking sandbags around her. She was also making noises about leaving the country rather than testifying in any rape trial. She told us she’d even called the police officer in charge of the case, who’d informed her that the evidence was pretty shaky already – the defendants had denied rape, claiming consent. There were no witnesses. Whether the case went on at all depended on her testimony. But dropping the rape charge would seriously imperil Phyllis’s defence . . . Which was no doubt why Phyllis was now making noises, too – about skipping bail. This in turn made the Countess, who’d stood £20,000 bail, decidedly jittery and she doubled her alcohol intake. Portia, after half-heartedly thanking us for her presents, maintained that the best gift of all would be if she could move out and live with her BFF, Amelia, in a ‘normal’ family for a while. She was giving us the cold shoulder for not inviting Danny to her birthday party. Only ‘cold’ was an understatement. Put it this way, if we were at a funeral, she’d be confused with the deceased.

After dinner, I found myself scanning the Employment pages of the
Guardian.
Nathaniel was away at a conference, so I didn’t even have the delicious distraction of his visits. At a low ebb, we all retired early to toss and turn the night away.

It was after 1 a.m. when I heard the thud – the unmistakable thud of an intruder. I flicked on my side-table lamp. My mother was already on the landing, wearing her alarmingly short, frilly pink nightie covered in pictures of cupcakes – not the most ideal crime-fighting ensemble. Her beehive was listing to the left in full leaning-tower-of-hirsute-Pisa mode. She had Portia’s hockey stick in one hand and her capsicum spray in the other. I picked up an umbrella. Thus brilliantly armed, we rattled down the staircase in tandem. I am normally cowed and cowardly, but Portia’s presence in the house lent me strength and resolution. Besides which, I had my formidable mother as a human shield.

Roxy called out ‘Oy! Who’s there?! I’ve rung the cops, dirtbag.’ From the living room came a wailing sound which might have been feral or human. Or both.

My mother leapt down the last remaining stairs, bellowing obscenities. I followed behind, prepared to face whatever acid-throwing, bomb-planting, bike-mangling rapist troll lay in wait.

When my mother flicked on the light switch, the man in our living room looked ill-defined and blurry at the edges, like a watercolour smudged by rain. His hands were jammed deeply into his pockets, his mouth tightly drawn, his eyes puffy from drinking. At his feet lay the chair he’d tripped over.

‘See? If
I
can get in so easily, so can a killer. You never would have known I was here if this chair had only taken evasive action . . . But that’s not the real reason I popped by.’ He dropped to one knee. ‘Roxy, will you marry me? Marrying at our age, well, there’s not so much p–p–pressure on the happy–ever–after c–c–clause, right?’

Roxy slowly lowered her hockey stick but, by her stance – legs planted firmly apart, face like thunder – I knew that she hadn’t yet abandoned the idea of clobbering the intruder into a coma.

‘You’re looking at me as though I’ve p–p–pissed on your s–s–shoes.’

‘I’d forgotten how eloquent you are when you’re drunk,’ Roxy finally said.

‘Kiss me, Roxy, darlin’.’ And with that, all six rugged foot of Danny Kincade lunged towards my mother, his mouth puckered.

‘Ugh,’ she said, side-stepping, ‘that’s what I also remember about you. You always want sex when you’re hammered.’

‘That’s not true . . . Sometimes I want a kebab,’ Danny replied from his prone position, where he’d crash-landed on the carpet.

After Roxy had thrown him out, my mother assembled the sleepy female inhabitants of our house into the living room, including a yawning Portia.

‘So, Tilly, what led us to branch out, together, into an alien world of surveillance and sleuthing by starting Pandora’s?’ I looked at her blankly. ‘It can be summed up in one word.’

‘Desperation?’ I suggested.

‘Equality. So, let me say this once and for all. We are not going to be intimidated by any bloke. Now, Chantelle, the Crown Prosecution Service will soon bring charges against your rapists based on your evidence. And yes, there’s a very good chance that the vile footage of your attack, disgustingly overdubbed with moans of pleasure, will be posted online. If you want to back out, nobody would judge you . . . But do you really want those blackmailing bastards to get away with it? And for them to have this power over you for the rest of your life? I do
not
want to let you become nothing more than a sad statistic. I say we fight back! I say we don’t take rape lying down! I say we nail those amoral monsters so they can never do this to any other woman! I say we fight for Phyllis’s acquittal! Then help Chantelle get those misogynistic ratbags put away in prison, where they’ll hopefully be buggered against their will on a regular basis by twenty-stone, syphilitic psychopaths! Are you with me, girls? What do you say, Phizz?’

Phyllis drew herself up to her full five-foot-nothing height.

‘I say . . . let’s go through ’em for a short cut. Shall we nail ’em . . . Chanty?’

‘I will do it for you, Gran. As long as I can change schools,’ she whispered.

‘Excellent! No woman in this house will ever just lie back and think of England . . . or of Canberra!’ Roxy concluded.

Buoyed up by Roxy’s indomitable spirit – and real spirits, in the form of half a glass of nerve-steadying whiskey – we hugged, a group hug: Chantelle, Phyllis, Portia, Roxy, the Countess and me. My mother then took another husky slug of Glenfiddich and proposed a toast.