Marina found the door to the records room. Turned the handle. Open. She went inside.
‘Don? You in here?’
No reply.
She looked down the first aisle. It was exactly as she had expected it to be. Long rows of shelving piled with old cardboard boxes. Dark in there, especially for daytime. Bad, infrequent overhead lighting. Several of the tubes were buzzing, flickering. Strobing the room.
Like in a horror film, she thought.
Then mentally pinched herself.
She paused, listening. Called again.
‘Don? You there?’
A noise. Down at the end of one of the aisles. Someone was in there with her.
‘Don, it’s Marina. Are you… ’
A figure detached itself from the shadowed end of the aisle. Moved towards her.
‘Don? Is that you?’
The figure moved into a pool of flickering light.
Marina let loose a breath she didn’t realise she had been holding. ‘It is you. I thought for a minute it was… ’ She stopped, sentence unfinished. ‘What have you got there, Don? What are you doing?’
Don was frantically stuffing something inside his jacket. From the look on his face, it appeared that he wasn’t pleased to be caught doing it.
‘Marina… ’ The flickering overhead light picked out his eyes, lit by a strange cast. Not a pleasant one.
Marina was beginning to get scared. This wasn’t the kindly old grandfather who looked after her daughter. This was… someone she had never seen before.
‘Don, what are you… ’
Papers successfully hidden inside his jacket, he advanced towards her.
60
Donna turned the car off Barrack Street into her own road. Slowly eased it along, looking for a parking space. One foot hovering over the accelerator, ready to drive off, speed away at the first sign of trouble.
Ben sat next to her, silent but full of unanswered questions. He had started asking them as soon as she had stopped crying and let him go, standing outside the car earlier that day. She hadn’t had the strength to argue, shout or contradict him. She had even tried to answer him, although what she could tell him was limited. But something the boy had said had made her think. At first she had dismissed it, but once she had stopped and thought, she realised that what he had said might be important.
‘Have you got her storybook?’
‘No,’ Donna had said straight away, not knowing what he was talking about. ‘No storybooks.’
‘Mum always had her storybook.’ Ben had sat down on the ground on his own. Kicking at the hard-packed dirt of the forest floor with the heel of his shoe, working up a cloud of dust and grit. ‘She wrote in it all the time. Said it was her life story. Said it was important to someone.’
‘Yeah, well we don’t have it, so it can’t be.’
More kicking, more dust. ‘Said it was important, though. Said someone would want to read it one day and pay her for it.’
‘Yeah.’ Donna had lit up a fag, ignoring the boy. Just about everyone she knew thought their life story was fascinating. Thought it was so unique someone would pay a lot of money for it. Well Donna had read misery memoirs. Knew there was nothing unique about them. W. H. Smith had a whole section of them. Tragic Lives. Why the hell would anyone want to read about someone else’s tragic life? Losers.
But no wonder Faith wanted to write about hers. There must be a lot of money in that kind of shit.
‘That’s where she went, isn’t it?’ Ben had stopped kicking the dirt. He looked up at Donna. ‘When she went out. She was going to sell her storybook.’
Donna had been about to answer the boy, give him some dismissive reply, not even diverting breath from her fag. But she stopped. Thought about what he had said.
‘She told you that? She was going to sell her storybook?’
Ben nodded, head down, fascinated once again by the dust.
Donna didn’t move. Stared straight ahead. Thinking. About what the boy had said. About what it meant. About all the vague stories Faith had told her in their time together: her childhood, her escape, her life with Ben. All the drunken stoned hints she’d dropped about her plan, how she was going to get revenge and make money in the process. About how she would sober up and pretend she had never said anything.
But just because she hadn’t said anything didn’t mean she hadn’t been doing anything…
Donna dropped the fag at her feet, ground it out.
‘Tell me about this book, Ben. Tell me all about it… ’
And he had. As much as he had known.
And that was why they had come back to the house.
A few days ago, Donna would have said the book didn’t exist. Or if it did, it was just some fairy story Faith had made up. But after the things she had been through, the fear she had encountered, the loss… she was willing to believe anything now.
She found a space down from her house, pulled in. Checked the street. Both directions. Nothing that looked suspicious. Nothing that screamed law. She had seen enough stakeouts – been caught in enough – to know what to look for. And she prided herself on her street sense. She knew just which punter to go with, which one to drop if she got a bad vibe about him, thought he would hurt her and not pay. And she was always right. Always.
But she saw nothing on the street. Nothing – and no one – that got her senses tingling.
She switched the engine off, turned to Ben. ‘Right then, kid. Where did your mum keep this book, d’you know?’
He shook his head. Then thought a little. Eyes screwed up tight, trying to work it out. Bless him, thought Donna. The kid really wanted to help.
‘My room,’ he said at last. ‘Or yours. And Mum’s.’
‘Right.’ Another look up and down the street. ‘You stay here, then. Keep your head down, don’t talk to anyone. Don’t let anyone know you’re here, OK? Just be as quiet as you can.’
‘But I want to come with you.’
‘I know you do, kid. But it’s better if you stay here.’
‘Might them men be waitin’ in the house?’ Fear in his voice.
‘’Cos I’m strong,’ Ben said. ‘If they attack you, I’ll defend you. I will.’
Donna looked at the boy. Saw fear on his features. Bravery, too. He had lost his mother. And he didn’t want to lose her too. Emotions swirled round inside Donna. Loss. Responsibility. Protection. She had never felt like this before. All the things she had tried to avoid, to keep herself immune from. Here, now, all together. She was all over the place.
She opened her jacket. The kitchen knife glinted. ‘Still got this. Don’t worry. You just keep your head down. Won’t be long.’
She thought about kissing him, decided against it. She wasn’t ready for that yet. Even though her heart was saying she was.
Donna crossed the street, found the front-door key and, with another quick look round, was in the house, door closed behind her. She stood with her back to it, listened. Nothing. Only the sound of the street outside, her own heavy breathing.
She scoped the living room. Exactly as she had left it. Or it seemed to be. She looked for little things, ornaments, magazines, things only she would know the correct positioning of, indicators of whether someone had
