“What’s going to happen to me?” he asks Liz.
When he looks her way this time, that perplexed frown has subtly altered and become a look of dismay.
Andy pulls his shirt back on before the nurse catches him.
FIFTEEN
At the bus stop Big Sue looked nervy. Jane sighed. Sue’s still not getting out much. It’s like Elsie; by all accounts she’s afraid of leaving the house, too. What’s happening to people round here? She tried to get Big Sue talking, which wasn’t hard usually. Today all Sue wanted to talk about was the state of the world. How the young people were running amok. Big Sue pointed out the graffiti on the bus-shelter wall.
Phil Says: Tina I love you
Tina Says...Phil fuck off
Sandra loves Tiger Taxis driver (Kevin Costner look-alike)
Someone had drawn a TV screen with an aerial on the top. They’d drawn a newsreader next to a picture of a fat person made of circles. The headline was Fat Fuckers Take Over.
Big Sue had a point. Bairns would be reading that kind of language. Filthy language written down struck Jane as worse than that said out loud. When she read it she never failed to blush. Jane loved to read romantic novels, tumultuous, thick blockbusters which, on some wary, insomniac nights, she could finish before dawn so that in the morning her head would spin with passion and adventure. But she would snag and trip over, jolt out of her spell if there was bad language. It made the blood burn in her ears and she would go back to reread, trying to justify it to herself, mouthing the words.
There was no excuse for this in the bus shelter.
“That’ll be them lads over the road,” Jane said.
“We’re not safe in our beds,” Big Sue said, though she said it all in one rush, as if it was just a thing to say. “Are you heading into Darlington, pet?” she asked Jane. “Where’s your little boy?”
“School,” Jane said and felt a moment of guilt since, as a teacher’s helper-volunteer, she should be there too. She couldn’t face it. Spring was in the air. The sky was bluer than it had been for months. The tarmac was wet and sizzled with melted ice water, as if the sun was deliberately sucking it all back up. Jane wanted to be off round the shops. She was meeting her mam in Binn’s cafe, mercifully minus the one-legged stepfather.
Jane said, “What about Nesta having another bairn?”
“Eee, yes.” Big Sue bit her lip.
“I don’t think she looks after the others proper.”
Big Sue looked pained, as if she wasn’t the type to pick fault. “I think the thing with Nesta is that she’s subnormal.”
“You what?”
“Subnormal in the mental department. She was adopted, you know, by a lovely couple. Very clean, from over Faulkner Road way. And Nesta grew up like she is, quite different from them. I don’t know what they think about her. It just shows, it doesn’t matter how you get brung up, it’s all in your genes. I suppose.” Big Sue clutched her handbag under her bosom.
Jane thought about how Nesta’s daughter came running out of the house at eight every morning, seeing herself off to school. By all reports Nesta was still in bed at that time. She had Vicki, who was eight, and one who was little more than a baby, and Vicki had to get herself up and fed and deal with the baby as well. And if you saw Vicki...she was like a street urchin.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Jane, stepping half out of the bus shelter to watch for the bus, “if they got reported and social services came and took that new baby off them straight after it was born.”
Big Sue looked shocked. She tried to remember which fairy tale it was, when the wicked fairy takes the princess as soon as she’s born. The queen knows this will happen even as she gives birth. “Oh, that would be terrible!”
Where was this bus? They’d been waiting over twenty minutes here. “‘You worry about bairns being kept in a house like that,” Jane said. “It’s a kindness, I think, to report the parents. Look at Fred West and Rosemary West and the House of Horror. That was allowed to go on because people didn’t think to phone in. Nesta shouldn’t have been allowed to have any bairns.”
“Oh, now,” said Big Sue worriedly.
The bus had appeared at the bottom of Woodham Way, down by the private houses.
At the back of them there was the clang of a gate and Penny came running. She’s dressed up too warm for the weather, Big Sue thought. What a mess she looks! All them layers of candies and shirts! Pretty girl like that, spoiling herself! Penny was just in time for the bus, breathless as it drew to a halt before them. Jane gave her a tight smile and thought, Typical of a daughter of Liz to swan up to the bus exactly at the right moment. When the likes of me have to wait nearly an hour!
They got tickets and Jane turned to ask over her shoulder, “How’s the great romance?”
“The what?” Penny scowled. “Well. That’s over with.”
Jane hurried down the gangway to sit with Big Sue and tell her. They watched Penny find a seat near the front. Then, as the bus shunted off, it stopped abruptly to let on a latecomer. Mark Kelly was wearing a white T-shirt and tight blue jeans. He grinned at Penny and sat down with her and immediately they started chatting. From the back of the bus you couldn’t hear a word they said, but they looked thick as thieves.
The bus
