‘Next up.’
I glanced at my watch as I took up position on the field. It was only twenty past four. Time was crawling by. The next bowler, Merriman, managed to knock Martin out of his complacency; he scooped the ball like a beginner and suddenly everyone was yelling at me. I flubbed the catch: the ball slipped through my fingers and, falling almost vertically, hammered the toes of my left foot. I staggered around like a wounded deer while everyone groaned at me.
‘Thank you all. If you can, get some catching in before Saturday.’
Puzzled, I looked at my watch again – it was ten to six. First, time had practically stopped. Now. it was racing out of my grip. Nothing added up. Nothing made sense.
In the shower room, people left me alone. The shame of my missed catch steered them away from me. This far into the tournament they feared a jinx.
Dad was waiting for me out the front of the school. He was standing, leaning against the car. When he saw me, he said, ‘Where’s your kit?’
I had left it behind. I couldn’t bear the idea of opening the boot again. I couldn’t bear it. ‘It’s in my locker. There’s another practice at lunchtime tomorrow.’
Dad shrugged and went round to the driver’s side and started the engine.
I climbed in beside him.
‘Come on,’ he sighed. ‘Let’s go for a drink.’
And so it went on, and on, and on – it was never going to stop – there was never going to be an end to it, never. Now we were off to the Margrave, with its lead-roofed veranda smothered in lilac. Beer straight out of the barrel, because the barrels were kept directly behind the bar. I was old enough to drink if Dad bought. This had become our summer treat – a half, maybe a pint, in the pub around the corner, away from the smell of Mum’s patchouli, clary sage, dyes, inks and paints.
The Margrave had no car park as such – just this verge, badly churned, along the lane that turned from tarmac outside the pub, to gravel and dirt where it became no more than the driveway to the mill house at the bottom of the hill.
Dad, an old hand at this, reversed us down the lane about as far as you could park without blocking the drive. From here the lane descended, unlit, through a tunnel of trees to the mill house, the millrace, the river. It was part of our cross-country course.
He ran the nearside tyres up on the bank a little, so that we both had to climb out the passenger’s side. I stood by the car, fearing to breathe. The odd thing was, I couldn’t smell a thing. Nothing bad, anyway. The earth churned by our tyres, and a cut-grass smell, and something dusty and ticklish from the field behind the hedge.
‘Come on, then,’ Dad said, pocketing his car keys.
There was a slatted bench in front of the house, under the soft leaden roof. It wasn’t a whole lot more comfortable than the window seat in my room at home, but Dad wanted us to sit outside. He took off his jacket – in summer he wore this ice-cream linen jacket – and dumped it on the bench beside me. ‘Mild?’
The local mild was frothy and liquorice-sweet. ‘A meal in itself.’
We drank. We talked cricket. At least, I set Dad talking about cricket, knowing how reliably he would spin off if I gave him his cue. The daylight was going. A lamp blinked on above our heads and within a minute the air was a blizzard of moths.
‘I might walk home,’ I said at last.
‘Okay.’ The hotel was only round the corner – closer, if you cut the corner and followed the river. ‘Can you manage in the dark?’ If he’d known how treacherous the ground was along the river bank, how precarious the brick edging of the millrace, he would have tried to stop me. Instead, he accepted what I told him: my shortcut home was simply a stretch of our cross-country run – not difficult at all. ‘I’ll be back after this,’ he said, lifting the remains of his pint. I was fairly sure he would stay for another. There were men here he knew, and he would stay to talk with them tonight, making the most of his little moment of freedom.
‘Sure, Dad. Thanks.’
I headed down the lane, down the hill, into the dark.
Half-way down I stopped and turned. I watched the top of Dad’s head as he entered the pub. Even if he came out again he wouldn’t see me. The glare from the porch lights would blind him to movement this far down the lane. The stars were out. No street lamps. No house glow.
I took out the keys I had filched from the pocket of his jacket and unlocked the car. The rubber button gave against my thumb. The boot was on a spring, it pulled away from me and swung all the way up before I could catch it. I stared into the boot. There was nothing to see. It was too dark to see anything. Was she even there? Imagine her awake, her head wrapped in that plastic bag. Jesus. I put my hand out, imagining her there, willing on the original, familiar horror of her presence to bat away the terror that she might have climbed undead from here, be standing at my back . . .
The touch of her hand, so dry, so cold, so stiff, was an electric shock, knocking me back and away. I paused, trying to gather my breath again, trying to force it down, trying to cram it into my lungs. My eyes began to accommodate the deeper darkness of the boot. There were cryptic shapes there, hard to separate and decipher.
I had no choice. I had to reach inside. I had to touch her. I leant in and found her arms and got my hands under her armpits. The cold there was a shock. It dizzied me. I pulled at her, shifting her about in the boot. Lifting her into my arms was impossible. Though thin, she was too heavy for me.
Low laughter came from drinkers on the veranda.
I reached for her feet. They felt small and familiar. I gripped them roughly, as you would clasp a nettle. I figured the harder I squeezed, the less I would feel. I had them now in my hands. I pulled.
Her knee joints bent stiffly, smoothly, as though steeped in cold oil. Was this the onset of rigor mortis, or the end of it? I pulled her round so her legs dangled over the lip of the boot. I had to reach in further now to lift her hips up and out. I bent down and wrapped my arms under her legs. My head pulsed as I pulled at her. It was no use. I had somehow to get my weight behind her. I would have to prise her out of the boot. If I climbed in there with her, maybe I could push her out.
I was practically on top of her now, fumbling for the right hold, and suddenly I could not bear it any more. I rolled out of the boot and sat down in the road, clenching my teeth against the sound rising in my throat.
Her feet dangled in front of me.
I had an idea.
I shuffled around and leant my back against the boot, my head between her legs. I clamped her legs to my shoulders and clambered onto my knees. The tarmac bit into my knees as I hefted her up. With the backs of her knees round my shoulders, I tried to stand, slowly, straining. I paused half-way, getting my balance, poised like a weightlifter, one leg locked behind me, the other bent forward. At least this way I was facing away from the boot. I took a deep breath, held it, and stood up straight, trembling against her weight. I tottered forward and she came with me, out of the boot. Fresh from its baking confines, she came out cool, inert as earth. There was a double jolt as first her shoulders and then her head bumped against the sill and slid away. Her weight was too much for me. I dropped her and her head smacked the tarmac.
I staggered forward into the dark and froze, listening. I couldn’t hear a thing. No murmurs, no laughter.
Mum lay sprawled on the tarmac – an indeterminate shape. I could not be sure what I was actually seeing. She lay every which way. She made no sense. I reached for her in the dark. I found her feet again.
But I couldn’t just drag her. Not over the tarmac, Christ. (My knees stung where I had broken the skin trying to lift her from the boot. They were wet, bleeding.)
There was a blanket in the boot, laid there to stop luggage sliding around. I found it bunched up in a corner. I pulled it out and tucked it under her feet. I tried to tie it around her ankles but the blanket was too small, the material too thick. I tucked the corners around each other so the blanket protected her feet as I dragged her down the road.