She strolled downstairs, swinging her keys. She'd take Anna to lunch in the beer-garden or at the hotel. It made Anna feel proud of herself, and why not? Blue sky shone in all the windows, light filled the house; in the hall the telephone was bright as a ripe tomato. She was almost downstairs when it rang.
She couldn't help starting. She mustn't react as if every call was a threat; it would only make her nerves worse. Anyway, it might be good news. Perhaps it might even be Barbara. She lifted the receiver.
'Mrs Knight? Mrs Alan Knight?' a woman said.
Liz wasn't fond of that usage. 'I'm Alan Knight's wife, yes.'
'He's still away, isn't he?'
'Yes, I'm afraid he is. Who's speaking, please?'
'Don't let him come home.'
Liz must have misheard her. 'I'm sorry, what was that you said?'
'If you love your child, don't let your husband come home.' The woman's voice had already been shrill, but now it was rising. 'Go away – take her far away, and don't let him know where you are. You mustn't stay there, it's too dangerous.'
'Look, I don't know who you are,' Liz said, her throat suddenly so dry that it was threatening her voice, 'but I'm going to put this phone down right now unless you tell me who you are and what you want.'
'It doesn't matter who I am.' The woman's voice came scraping through the earpiece, until Liz felt as though a piece of metal was deep in her ear. 'Don't you understand what I'm saying? Your child is in danger. For God's sake go away.'
Twenty-nine
Anna sat in the room behind Rebecca's counter and gazed at a stain of red paint on the table. Out in the sunlight beyond the counter, painted stones and glass shelves gleamed, people strolled chatting among the shelves or brought things to the counter, everything was bright and cheerful. She didn't like sitting alone in the room; there were too many shadows, the red stain looked too much like a monster, the stones waiting to be made into things reminded her of Joseph, who might well have collected some of them. She was doing nothing in here, she didn't want to glue or even to paint. But if she went out, she'd want to speak to Rebecca, want to speak so much that she mightn't be able to stop herself, and she was afraid to think what she wanted to say.
Mummy was worried, that was all. Mummy was still mummy, whatever she did. Anna told herself that fiercely, over and over. Mummy was worried because she didn't know when daddy was coming home – Anna was sure of that now. Perhaps she was also worried about having lost the claw; perhaps that was the something of daddy's she'd been looking for on the beach; she must blame herself, just as Anna did. Those were the reasons why mummy was on edge, why Anna couldn't be sure any longer what mummy would do.
Rebecca came behind the counter, and Anna put her hand over the scratches on her arm. She couldn't tell Rebecca what had happened, she would feel too disloyal. It was between her and mummy. Everything would be all right once mummy stopped being worried. But the scratches on her arm were throbbing, the stones on the dim shelves looked like blank eyes watching her, the jingle of the bell above the shop door made her jump. When Rebecca said, 'Hi Liz,' she couldn't help growing tense.
'Where's Anna?' Mummy sounded almost as if she was accusing Rebecca of hiding her.
'Why, here she is.'
In a moment mummy was at the counter, peering beneath her thick frown into the room. Suddenly Anna felt as if the dimness of the room was her friend, saying that she didn't have to go. 'Come on then, don't keep me waiting,' mummy said.
Perhaps it was because mummy sounded so impatient that Rebecca said, 'You're just in time. I'll take you both for lunch and then Anna can stay for the afternoon if she likes.'
'Thanks very much, Rebecca,' mummy said without looking at her, 'but I don't feel like going to a pub just now.'
'I wasn't thinking of a pub.'
'Thanks anyway, but we really can't stay.' Mummy's voice was colder, as if she thought Rebecca had meant to tell her off. 'We're going straight into Yarmouth.'
T didn't know you were going anywhere this afternoon.'
Anna hadn't known either, but the way mummy was behaving, she thought she'd better not say so. 'Well, now you do,' mummy said. 'I'll speak to you again, Rebecca.'
She hurried Anna out to the car and tipped the driver's seat forward so that Anna could climb in the back. Anna had hardly settled herself when mummy slammed the door and drove into the crowd. Why was she so anxious to get to Great Yarmouth? Calling it Yarmouth always seemed to Anna like not calling a grown-up 'Mr' or 'Mrs'. Or was mummy just anxious to get out of the village? Somehow that seemed right, though Anna couldn't tell why and knew she shouldn't ask – not the way mummy was now.
Mummy drove fast once they were out of the village. Usually Anna liked going fast, but now she remembered the day daddy had driven home from Cromer after someone had banged his car. She looked at mummy's eyes in the driving mirror, mummy's eyes hanging above the speeding road, and wasn't sure if she liked what she saw. Perhaps you were supposed to stare like' that when you were driving. She looked away from the mirror and caught sight of the letter propped above the dashboard, a letter to mummy's friend Barbara. 'Is Auntie Barbara coming to stay?'
'Why? Do you want someone else interfering as well?' Mummy seemed to mean 'as well as Rebecca', and Anna was dismayed. Mummy seemed a bit ashamed of herself. 'Yes, I've asked her,' she said more gently. 'We'll have to see.'
Her voice was gentler, but not her driving. The road swung back and forth between sandhills and glimpses of fiat water, toward the sea, then inland to villages. Some of the villages were hardly even streets. Lonely birds hovered over fields. Anna couldn't help it: the letter to Barbara made her feel safer – though why she should need to feel safe she didn't know. Mummy wouldn't harm her, she knew how to drive. Eventually she managed to enjoy the ride, the twists and surprises of the road, and by the time they reached Yarmouth she was hungry.
She ought to have waited instead of saying she was hungry as soon as she saw a place to eat. Mummy stopped the car at once, even though the pizza parlour was so crowded that they couldn't have a table to themselves. Anna hadn't really meant here, but she felt she'd better not say anything.
The place was full of screaming babies and smeary trays and spilled ketchup. They had to share their plastic table with two little boys, one of whom kept spitting out his food onto his plate while the other tried to tell their parents, who were busy with more children at the next table. Anna's patch of table was sticky with a mixture of sugar and ketchup, and she wiped it as best she could. She sensed that mummy was growing tense with all the heat and noise and cigarette smoke.
When the pizzas arrived, Anna's was lukewarm on top and soggy underneath. Cutting it felt like cutting a bathroom sponge. 'Poo pie, mummy,' she joked, to help herself eat.
'Nobody's forcing you to eat it,' mummy said, so savagely that people turned to look and laugh.
Anna ate the rest of it in silence, though now she didn't feel like eating. She and mummy could always share jokes – mummy never lost her temper over them like that, especially not in public. Anna always used to say poo pie when she was little and didn't like her food. Now mummy had made her feel like the boy across the table who kept spitting on his plate. Her ears were burning, and each mouthful of pizza tasted nastier. 'I've finished, mummy,' she said at last, and mummy threw a penny into the mess on the table for a tip and stalked to the cashier's glass cage.
Anna felt depressed and hurt. She couldn't enjoy anything now. Mummy held her arm like a policeman as they strolled through the crowds on the promenade. She knew mummy was waiting for her to say what she wanted to do, but there was nothing. The beach here was full of people, she preferred the beach at home. The boating lake was like going for a sail in the bath once you'd been on the Broads. The Crazy Golf was crowded and anyway stupid, and the Kiddies' Cars were full of babies, except for the ones stuffed with big kids, their knees and elbows poking out on both sides. She found a pinball machine that she liked, that shouted at you in a monster voice when you were winning, but when she made to squeeze through the crowd at the fruit machines to look for
