Thieving Fear

FOURTEEN

The schoolchildren on the back seats of the bus found Hugh's ringtone hilarious. Even though they were sharing the kind of cigarette Rory had once offered him, they made him feel childish. Perhaps he ought to substitute the Frugo ringtone, the melody of 'We're cheap so you'll be cheerful'. As he cut the Sesame Street theme short Ellen said 'Can you talk?'

'What's going to stop me?'

'You aren't busy at work.'

'I won't be there for . . .' He peered at the two-storey houses packed together on either side of him. Surely he'd slept off his bout of disorientation, which must have been some kind of summer virus, even if he was glad that the bus stopped at the end of his road. 'We've got plenty of time,' he promised Ellen as well as himself.

'Can I ask you a question, then?'

'Anything,' Hugh said and held his breath.

'What do you remember about Thurstaston?'

This was so much less intimate than he'd hoped or feared that his breath emerged in a kind of tentative gasp if not exactly a sigh. 'What sort of thing?'

'I don't want to prompt you. Whatever comes into your mind.'

'Us all being together. I wish some of us could be more often.'

'Just some?'

'I see quite a lot of Rory. Not so much lately.' Hugh tried to detain his retreating pluck by admitting 'It'd be nice to see you.'

'Do you think so?' With a weightiness he didn't understand Ellen said 'You're kind.'

'I'm not. I mean, I hope I am, but I'm not being now.'

'Anyway, we're talking about Thurstaston.'

Hugh felt rebuffed if not rebuked. 'So what do you remember?'

'I said I didn't want to prompt you.'

'I expect we all remember Charlotte sleepwalking best,' he said and risked adding 'I wouldn't have minded if it had been me.'

'Why not?'

Her voice had grown sharp, and Hugh's was ready to falter. 'Never mind. Just a silly idea.'

'Tell me anyway.'

Hugh could see no way out except to speak. As his face continued reddening he mumbled 'I might have wandered into your tent. That'd have been my excuse.'

He didn't realise the schoolchildren were listening until they dawdled giggling past him and looked back from the stairs to aggravate his mortification. 'Go away,' he blurted. 'Leave me alone.'

'I'm sorry if you think I –'

'Not you,' he pleaded as the children piled downstairs. 'They've gone now.'

'Who? Are you sure?'

'I saw them go. Just kids being like kids are – well, we weren't, I don't think.'

'Listen, Hugh.' As he wondered what she was urging him to listen for she said 'I appreciate what you were saying before, truly I do, but this isn't the right time for me just now. I can't expect you to understand, but will you try and be patient with me?'

'Maybe if you told me what's –'

'Trust me, Hugh, it couldn't be wronger. Just let me say it's not your fault. It's nothing to do with you.'

He couldn't claim any right to feel excluded. As he uttered rather less than a word of agreement she said 'Any other memories?'

Hugh had no idea how she could use it, but he wasn't a writer. 'Just a dream I had when we were sleeping there.'

'You remember that.'

'I just did. I was in some house with no lights and I didn't know which way to go.'

'Where did you need to?'

'Out.' Even if this was for her book, he regretted having brought it up. 'Away,' he said.

His brusqueness failed to truncate the memory of knowing he wasn't alone in the darkness as thick as the clay it had smelled of. He'd sensed that any way he turned would deliver him into the clutches of whoever was waiting, so silently it seemed they'd given up the need to breathe. He was sure his outstretched hands would touch a face, if it was recognisable as such. Perhaps it would bare its teeth in delight, if they could be exposed any further, and widen its eyes as his fingertips groped at them, although that was assuming it still had – 'I'm there,' Hugh gasped.

'Where? Hugh, where are you?'

'My stop,' he said and struggled to laugh at the misunderstanding, not least to overcome the panic she seemed to have communicated to him. If this was how it felt to be as imaginative as his cousins and his brother, he should be glad that he ordinarily wasn't. He had never looked forward so much to his supermarket work, the more mechanical the better. He clattered downstairs just in time to halt the bus beside a shelter surrounded by the hailstorm of its glass. 'I'm off,' he said.

'Should I let you go?'

Beyond the concrete path into the retail park Frugo was visible across hundreds of emptied cars. 'Not unless you want to,' he said. 'I've got minutes yet.'

'I haven't upset you, have I? I wouldn't want to.'

'It's like you said, there'll be a better time. You can tell me when.'

'I meant about your bad dream.'

'Forget it,' Hugh said and glanced around to see that nobody was observing how mottled his face had grown as he struck out across the car park. 'I found out something for you,' he managed to admit.

'Will I like it?'

'I don't know.' He had the sudden wholly irrational notion that he should invent a discovery rather than tell her the real one, but of course he was incapable of any such invention. 'Where we all slept,' he said, 'it's the same.'

'I should think so, but I don't think Rory would.' He couldn't tell if she was disappointed in him or with the information as she added 'Does it make much difference either way?'

There was only one, Hugh thought, and that was straight ahead. The gaps between the cars didn't constitute a maze, or if they did he could see his route. He oughtn't to feel distracted by saying 'It's been like that for, I don't know, a hundred years?'

'Watch where you're going, son,' a driver apparently felt entitled to protest as he backed a van almost too large for its parking space into Hugh's path.

By this time Ellen was repeating 'Like what, Hugh?'

'The cliff where we were, it was the same shape eighty years ago. All the rest has changed but it's still sticking out like there's something inside it. You'd wonder what's keeping it that way.'

The van hadn't made him late for work, but he kept an eye on the supermarket while he dodged around car after parked car. He was so intent on it that he had to make an effort to grasp Ellen's question. 'What are you suggesting?' she hardly seemed to want to know.

'Will the rock be harder? That's just me being unimaginative. I'm sure you can think of something, I don't know, more magical.'

'It isn't rock, it's clay.' Quite as sharply she said 'How do you know about it?'

'Found it on the Internet for you.' At last he was clear of the labyrinth of parked cars. 'I've got to go in now,' he said.

He sounded like a child summoned by a parent. Had Tamara and Mishel overheard him? They'd just emerged blonder than ever from Hair You Are. As they sauntered to the nearest Frugo entrance Ellen said 'Let's speak again soon. Shall I let you know how my book goes down with Charlotte?'

Hugh found her turn of phrase inexplicably ominous, but he said 'I'd love you to.'

The girls shared a glance about this and loitered as he made for the entrance, pocketing his mobile. 'Girlfriend, Hugh?' Tamara said.

If he hadn't been struggling to forget his dream he mightn't have mumbled 'Are you offering?'

The girls produced identical momentary frowns. 'Justin warned you about that,' said Mishel.

'Stop doing it to me, then.'

'She was asking if you'd got your girlfriend there.'

'Might be.'

'How long have you been with her, Hugh?' Tamara said.

'I haven't.' To fend off their instant sympathy he said 'I've known her a lot longer than I've known you.'

'Lucky her,' Tamara said without quite winking at Mishel. 'Have you told her how you feel about her, Hugh?'