‘No,’ Becky said.
‘But—’
‘I’m not carrying all my stuff, and I’m not leaving it in the car either. It doesn’t lock.’
Nadine said, with an edge of sarcasm, ‘So what are you going to do instead, may I ask?’
‘Go to the farm.’
‘What farm?’
‘The one up there. The one the cows belong to.’
‘But we don’t know them—’
‘Not yet,’ Becky said.
She had made Rory go with her, and they had gone off in the dark together and returned, in a surprisingly short time, in a Land Rover with a farmer called Tim Huntley. He was youngish and grinning, with heavy shoulders and hands. He winked at Nadine and told her she’d run out of petrol.
‘I haven’t—’
‘You have—’
‘You have!’ Becky shouted.
Tim Huntley had filled the tank from a can in the back of his Land Rover.
‘You all right in that cottage?’ he said to Nadine.
‘No. How could anyone be?’
He grinned.
‘We never thought they’d let it again.’
‘It was all we could afford,’ Nadine said. She saw the children shrink back as she spoke. In the light of the Land Rover headlights, Tim Huntley looked at them all, consideringly.
‘Start her up now,’ he said.
Nadine tried.
‘Plenty of choke.’
Nadine tried again.
He put his hand on the driver’s door.
‘Hop out,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it.’
He got into the driver’s seat and pumped the accelerator. Then he turned the key. The engine coughed once or twice, and turned.
‘There.’
He got out of the car and held the door open for Nadine.
‘I’ll be down in the morning,’ he said, ‘to see if she’ll still fire.’
‘Thank you—’
‘No problem. Up at five for the cows anyhow.’
He’d come at nine in the morning, on Christmas Day, dumping the meat and vegetables on the kitchen table. He patted the pork.
‘One of ours. Should crackle well.’
Nadine had been in her dressing gown, with her hair down her back, making tea and apprehensively counting bread slices, to see if there were enough. She smiled at him.
‘You are really, really kind.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘I mean it. Thank you.’
He had blushed very slightly and slapped the pork again.
‘Thirty-five minutes to the pound. Hot oven. Don’t salt the crackle.’
She had suddenly felt extremely happy, standing there in her kitchen with such a reassuring bulk of food on the table. She gave him a deliberate, quick glance.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it—’
Later, she heard her car being started up in the lean-to, and later still, she found a pile of logs outside the door. She’d said to the children, ‘See? See? You were meant to be home for Christmas, weren’t you?’
Clare had muttered something.
‘What?’ Nadine said. ‘What? What did you say?’
But Clare, who had said, with some desperation, ‘I don’t know where we’re meant to be,’ wouldn’t repeat herself.
They’d eaten the pork on Christmas Day and Boxing Day and on the day after, and then the children wouldn’t eat it any more. Nadine put the rest of the meat – it was a huge, real farmer’s joint – in the damp larder where blue and green moulds lived under the shelves, and baked potatoes instead for every meal. In between baked potatoes, the children did things she asked them to – washed up or brought wood in or emptied the kitchen bin – but listlessly, and at every opportunity escaped upstairs to do things with Christmas presents they tried to pretend they hadn’t got. Nadine told herself she was too proud to ask what these furtive presents were, but she could hear the whine and tattoo-like beat of battery-operated games and Becky, under her mitten, was wearing a silver ring shaped like a fish curled round on itself. It came from the Indian craft shop in Sedgebury, Nadine was sure. It was probably the one Becky had wanted for her birthday but which Matthew, in one of his suburban frenzies about money, had said she couldn’t have. But plainly she could have it now, couldn’t she? Now that Becky had to be bribed to love him, to stay with him and the Randy Redhead in their dinky little house.
‘Mum,’ Becky said, from behind her.
‘Do you think we could curry that?’ Nadine said. She pointed to the pork. A pinkish liquid had seeped from it and congealed into a thin layer of jelly.
‘No,’ Becky said. ‘Can we go into Ross?’
Nadine looked at her.
‘No. Why?’
Becky twisted her hidden ring under her mitten.
‘Just – wanted to – wanted to go somewhere. We’ve been stuck here for days—’
‘What will you do if we go to Ross?’
Becky shrugged.
‘Go round the shops—’
‘With what?’
Becky muttered something. She ducked her head so that her hair fell forward. Josie had given her a black nylon wallet for Christmas with a ten-pound note in it. The wallet was gross, of course, but the ten pounds were OK.
‘Did she give you money?’ Nadine asked.
‘A bit—’
‘Don’t you know,’ Nadine demanded, ‘when you’re being bought, when someone is trying to bribe you?’
Becky thought of all those meals she had refused to eat, the beds she had declined to make, the washing-up she had just left, defying her father to push her towards the sink, to dare to touch her. Nadine’s unfairness, in the face of this steady opposition to her father’s new marriage, made her eyes water.
‘How can you be so disloyal,’ Nadine shouted suddenly, ‘as to take anything from her?’
Becky moved away from the larder door and slumped in a chair by the kitchen table.
She said, into her hair, ‘It’s all the money I’ve got.’
‘Hah!’ Nadine said. She marched past Becky with a handful of potatoes and dropped them thudding into the sink. ‘Welcome to the club.’
Becky leaned her elbows on the table and put the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. If she pressed, coloured flashes and stars and rings exploded against the blackness, and briefly, blessedly, cleared her mind of thoughts. Such as the thoughts that had pursued her all morning, which she had sought to escape by suggesting an expedition to Ross, thoughts of her father, and how she wanted him to be there and how she kept remembering times when he was there, bringing with him a sense that not only were some things in life to be relied upon but that there were other things to be aimed for, striven for, which would bring mysterious and potent reward. Without her father there, Becky had lost a sense of the future, a sense that round the next corner might be something other than just more of the same. She raised her head and looked at Nadine’s narrow back, bent over the sink.
‘Mum—’
‘What?’
‘When you and Dad sold our house—’ She paused.
‘Well?’
‘Where did the money go?’
‘Into the bank,’ Nadine said shortly.
‘Couldn’t – couldn’t we use just some of it?’
Nadine turned round. She was holding a potato and an old nailbrush.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ Nadine said, ‘it’s all the money I’ve got. All I’ll ever have.’
Becky didn’t look at her. She spread her hands out flat on the table and said in a rush, before her courage fled, ‘Why don’t you get a job?’
There was an ominous silence. Becky heard the potato and nailbrush fall into the sink.
‘Sorry?’ Nadine said. Her voice was cold.
Becky mumbled, ‘You heard me—’
‘Yes, I did,’ Nadine said. She came away from the sink and leaned on the opposite side of the table, staring at Becky. ‘I heard you. I heard you the other night, too, when you said the same thing. Do you remember what I said to you?’