Every Good Girl (31 page)

‘I'll take that. Come on, let's get going,' the detective
said, pulling it sharply out of his hand.

‘If I don't go home Mother will be worried,' Graham found himself saying as he was marched back towards the road by some of the uniformed retinue. Others, when he looked back, could be seen with torches weaving, like children with sparklers on Bonfire Night. ‘Live with your mum, do you? Yeah well that figures.' The one with the sneer gave a short, knowing laugh.

‘What do you mean?' Graham was becoming even more mystified, if that was possible. It was as if they knew stuff about him that he hadn't been told about. He remembered when the boys at junior school had sniggered about how babies were made and he hadn't known what on earth they were talking about and then they'd laughed at his ignorance. ‘
Ask Mummy!
' they'd jeered. There wasn't going to be any laughing here though, he felt sure.

‘Shut it, tosser.' The man pushed his shoulder hard, sending him stumbling on the bracken. One of the dark shapes laughed. He was really frightened now. Something awful was happening and he had no idea what or why. He knew there might be evil people out there, he'd read the papers, but he wasn't one of them. If that was what they thought, they'd made a mistake and he'd say so if any of them were up for listening.

It was very late in the night when Graham was allowed to phone Nina. She was asleep, dreaming that she was about to give birth but couldn't find a safe place to do it. It wasn't a biblical thing, like Mary looking for a room. She was more like a cat fretting to find somewhere that wasn't public, where no-one knew her. She was walking on a busy midnight road, then in a restaurant full of men in shining green suits, then in a library that had no chairs, no carpet, no sympathy.
When the phone rang she reached across to grab it and felt her stomach with her other hand, strangely disappointed to find it as soft and flat as ever.

‘Nina it's me. I've been arrested. Can you come?'

Graham as ever was not wasting words. Nina sat up abruptly, which made her head spin. ‘What have you done? Have you been charged?'

There was a wobbly sigh from Graham's end. ‘I haven't done anything. It's a mistake. But they won't let me out because they think I'm . . .' his voice went soft and he seemed to be having trouble with organizing how to put the words. Nina held her breath. ‘They think I've done something horrible on the Common,' he said eventually, all of a rush. ‘You know, like that man in the local paper.'

Nina choked back a dreadful laugh which she recognized as nervous relief. It was all a mistake. ‘Oh, well they've obviously got that wrong. What about Mother? Does she know?'

‘That's the thing, why I'm ringing. She'll be worried. Can you think of something to tell her?'

‘The truth?'

‘I don't think so,' he said quickly. ‘She might think . . .'

‘No she wouldn't,' Nina reassured him. Though she might, of course. One thing was sure: Monica had never been known to settle to sleep until Graham was safely home. Even when he worked on the night shift she liked to say that she never closed her eyes when he wasn't there, though whether that was actually true or not . . . Right now, she was probably lying in bed with the lamp still on, dozing over a book, the cat kneading its big paws on her legs.

Nina got dressed quickly and padded up the stairs to Emily's room. She would have to go to Monica and tell
her what had happened and leave Emily in charge of the house and Lucy.

‘Em? Can you wake up a bit?' Emily stirred and grunted. Teenage sleep wasn't like baby sleep with its milky soapy smell. Teenage sleep had a scent of cigarettes and slightly greasy hair, of make-up not well enough removed and the astringent tang of optimistic spot-treatment.

‘Emily? Please wake up!' Nina shook her arm gently and Emily at last opened her eyes. ‘What?' she demanded.

‘I have to go out to the police station and to see Grandma. Graham's been arrested.'

‘You're kidding?' Nina now had Emily's full attention. ‘What's he done, broken into a secret air base?'

Nina thought for a moment then decided the truth was the simplest. ‘The police think he's the man on the Common.'

‘You're joking. They're so wrong. Do they think I wouldn't know my own uncle?' Emily was wide awake now, climbing out of bed and reaching for her underwear. ‘I'm coming with you. It
wasn't him
. The real one smokes, something strong and horrible. And uses fancy aftershave, I smelt him, I told them. They wrote it down.'

Emily was hurling on clothes faster than Nina had ever seen her. She felt touched that the girl was so angry on behalf of her strange, vague uncle. Shy Graham had hardly said a dozen words to Emily since she'd hit stroppy teenagerhood and gone beyond his field of comprehension. When she was little, though, he'd patiently taught her how to identify the planes that flew out of Heathrow across the Common, taken her to Farnborough Air Show on a special enthusiasts' outing and helped her to build her own Airfix Harrier
Jump Jet, when she'd said she liked them best because they looked like big naughty flies.

‘Ready. Let's go, then.' Emily was at the door looking back at Nina.

‘But what about Lucy? We can't just leave Lucy, and I really don't think we should take her,' Nina said, thinking fast. ‘I'll call Joe. He'll have to come. I hope he will. Or there's Henry. Yes, I'll call him.'

‘Henry's gone to that all-night darts-and-piss-up thing in Southampton,' Emily reminded her. ‘Get Dad. Graham's a grown-up,
and
he didn't do it, so he can wait another hour.'

Joe felt absurdly pleased to have been summoned. It felt like such an awful long time since he had been of any real use to anyone. It had been lonely, not being needed, as if he'd lost his place in the world's scheme. Catherine didn't need him, not really, not unless he counted her impregnation plans, with which he was absolutely not going to co-operate.

‘Where are you going? What's happening?' she murmured sleepily as he stumbled around the hated floral bedroom, trying to find his shoes.

‘Nina's. She's got to go out and she needs me there for Lucy,' he explained.

‘I need you here,' Catherine whined. Her hand stretched out and got hold of his arm. Her silver-polished nails gleamed on his skin.

‘No you don't,' he told her firmly. He would tell her a whole lot more in the morning, he decided. It was time.

Nina drove fast to Monica's house. It was after two and no-one was around. Cats darted into hedges as she approached and as she drove past the Common she
could sense the activity of night creatures out there beyond the trees going about their hunting and mating. It was no place for people, in the dark. They, with their pathetic limited eyesight and clumsy crushing tread, could only be intruders.

‘She might be asleep, not worrying at all,' Emily suddenly said as they turned the last corner into Monica's road.

‘No, I don't think so. You know what she's like about Graham,' Nina said. ‘If anything, she's probably already been on to the police by now.'

‘Then she really will be worried,' Emily pointed out.

‘No. She'll know it was a mistake. She shouldn't be on her own, but we'll have to go on to get Graham out, if they'll let him go. God they'll have to . . .'

‘
Will
Gran know it's a mistake? They're always someone's son or husband or boyfriend. She might think they're right. I'm the only one who knows for sure that they've got it wrong.'

As they pulled up outside Monica's house, Nina could see immediately that she'd been right about her mother. Lights blazed at every window, a sure sign of emergency for Monica was habitually thrifty, and the front door stood open to the cold night air as if Graham was really just a lost kitten who she hoped would simply wander back in.

Nina and Emily walked cautiously up the path and into the hall. ‘Mother? Are you there?' Nina called tentatively, suddenly nervous that these signs of activity might just be one enormous coincidence and that she might be interrupting a ruthless burglary. Or perhaps the police were already swarming everywhere, upturning beds, rifling through Graham's collection of plane magazines in search of damning pornography and a stash of girlish knickers.

‘Nina is that you?' Monica in her pink satin dressing gown emerged from the kitchen. Her face was alight with anxiety and a certain triumphant excitement. ‘Jennifer's here with me,' she announced importantly, ‘so I'm all right.'

Nina looked past her into the kitchen and saw a stout brisk woman bustling with cups and saucers and the kettle. So this was Graham's new friend. She looked capable, motherly,
happy
. She seemed to know her way around the kitchen, opening and closing drawers with practised confidence. Her body, Nina thought, resembled a very large pair of scones stacked one on top of the other. Her cream Aran cardigan was having difficulty staying fastened across her large breasts.

‘Hello Nina,' Jennifer said with a bright smile and no sign of real anxiety. ‘Sorry to be meeting you in such dreadful circumstances. Would you like some tea?' Jennifer was clearly in charge and Monica looked as calm as was possible. The pair of women were already a unit, bonded by their concern for this all-important male who shared their lives. Nina felt oddly depressed. Jennifer wasn't going to represent an invigorating escape from smother-love for Graham, just an extension of it. It was simply life as he knew it, what presumably made him happy or at least contented.

‘He didn't do it, you know,' Monica stated firmly. ‘I wanted to go straight down there and tell them but Jennifer says no, not yet, because they'll have to let him out in the end. So we're just going to wait.' Monica sat down at the kitchen table and took a biscuit from the selection on a plate in front of her. Nina thought the whole scene looked as if Jennifer was setting up a snug midnight tea party. It hadn't occurred to either woman, clearly, that Graham might really be about to
be charged with a horrendous sexual offence and that he might have trouble extricating himself.

‘How did you know where he was?' Nina asked.

‘Well his car came back, and then he didn't,' Monica explained. ‘And then an hour later he still didn't come back so I started to worry. And then . . .' she looked rather guilty, ‘I, er, I looked up Jennifer's number in his address book up in his room. I don't think he'll mind, just this once, do you?'

‘No, I'm sure he won't,' Nina said, stifling a smile. Monica wouldn't have had to look up the number; she'd have done it ages ago, as soon as she'd started wondering where he was off to at night. She'd always claimed personal privacy was a devious affront to family life. ‘The truth will out!' she used to declare when teenage Nina was less than accurate about where she was spending a night and Monica had weaselled out the truth somehow. The only bit of DIY that Graham had been known to do was to attach a bolt to the door of the downstairs loo when he was twelve years old.

‘Haven't you got school tomorrow, dear? It's awfully late,' Jennifer addressed Emily anxiously.

Emily looked startled. ‘So? Don't you want me to get Graham off this thing?' she challenged. Nina held her breath, waiting for Emily to start asking what business it was of hers and so on.

‘Oh yes, of course dear, if you think you can help.'

‘You don't know about what happened to me, do you?' Emily suddenly said. Monica looked puzzled.

‘Well I'll tell you. Some fucking tosser flashed at me out on the Common by the bit where the horses go and it was, well . . . So I know it wasn't Graham.' Emily shuddered and folded her hands round the hot mug of tea for comfort.

‘We didn't want to worry you,' Nina explained into the silence.

‘Well I'm not surprised,' Jennifer contributed.

‘She didn't mean you,' Emily said rudely, glaring.

‘She knows that,' Nina said gently. ‘Just stay calm.'

‘Don't you worry about your mother, Nina,' Jennifer said, resting a claiming hand on Monica's arm. ‘I'll stay here for the night and take care of her. And of course Graham will be back soon and I expect he'll be hungry.' She got up and went to look in the fridge. ‘Yes, bacon and eggs. I expect he'd like that. And lots of tea, for the shock of being in that dreadful place . . .'

‘She's even worse than Gran, fussing over Graham,' Emily commented as she and Nina climbed back into the car. Nina didn't reply. She was feeling horribly sick again. It had come over her at the mention of bacon and eggs, a combination that made her think about lakes of grease and the smell of stale frying. She started the car and swallowed hard, then reached across and fidgeted in the glove compartment for mints. There was just one dusty one, unwrapped in a corner under the
A to Z
. She shoved it in her mouth and prayed it would pacify her troubled stomach. It was either nerves or – the weird dream she'd had earlier flashed across her mind. It would have to be thought about properly later. Jennifer still stood in the doorway, waiting to watch her drive away. ‘You're right,' Nina told Emily when she could trust herself to speak. ‘Jennifer's either the best or the worst thing for Graham. I just can't tell. I do hope it's the best.'

‘Well he's old enough to decide.'

‘You'd think so,' Nina said doubtfully. She didn't really think Graham doing any real ‘deciding' was going to come into it.