Bad Little Girl(43)

‘Is Lorna there?’ Claire spoke with a local accent.

‘Who?’

‘Is Lorna there?’ There was a silence. One of her nails snagged painfully in the carpet, broke, and she breathed quickly, shallowly, like a cornered animal, waiting for questions.

But Carl asked no questions. He’d dropped the phone on the floor. A curious dog, sniffing at the receiver, gave one, piercing, bark. And then, Lorna was there.

Relief made Claire’s head swim. It didn’t matter that she’d run a risk calling. It didn’t matter that Lorna sounded cold, hurt and distant. All that mattered was that she was there, at the other end of the line. She was there.

‘Happy Christmas, Lorna!’

‘Miss! Happy Christmas!’

‘Is everything all right?’

The girl made an evasive noise. Claire’s hand tightened on the receiver.

‘I’ve been reading,’ Lorna whispered. ‘Some of those books you gave me – Famous Five? I’ve been reading about the sea.’

There was a long silence. ‘We’ll go one day,’ Claire found herself saying.

‘We will? Mean it?’ The trembling eagerness in the girl’s voice was so welcome. ‘We’ll go? And swim in the sea? And have a picnic in a cave carpeted with pure white sand?’ She was back to her old self; whimsical, confiding. ‘And hire a sailboat. And ride bikes and have picnic lunches?’

‘Yes,’ Claire said again, the words out of her mouth before she could check them. ‘Yes. And, and – ice creams?’

‘Oooooh! Ice creams!’ Lorna giggled. ‘And ginger beer?’

‘Yes!’

‘What actually is ginger beer?’

‘It’s not like real beer. It’s pop, fizzy pop.’

‘Good. I don’t like real beer.’

There was another silence.

‘Lorna? Are you OK? What I said before, about the police—’

‘I can’t go to them. They’ll tell them I’m lying. Mum, and Pete, they always tell people I’m lying. And Pete’s in trouble with someone. With his ex-girlfriend. He says she wants to stop him seeing his kids. And if I tell anyone about what’s happening here, he’ll lose the court case and then he’ll kill me, I’m sure.’ All this was said in a breathless little rush.

‘What is happening there?’ Silence. ‘Lorna?’

‘He has pills,’ the girl whispered. ‘He puts them in Mum’s tea, and Carl’s sometimes, and they go to sleep. And then he can get to me. Are you OK, Miss?’

Claire closed her eyes and thought feverishly. This, THIS was concrete. This was something she could take to the police! And then she thought of PC Jones, friends – probably best friends – with Mervyn Pryce. Her report would mysteriously disappear, and Lorna would be made to suffer even more. She felt sick. ‘Yes, I mean no. But, I’m just so . . .’

‘Sorry for me? I know. That’s why I’ve always trusted you. That’s why I know you’ll look after me. I feel it. I speak to you in my head, like you’re meant to do with God. But I do it with you.’

‘Lorna—’

But the phone went suddenly dead. Claire frantically dialled again, but the line was engaged.

Cousin Derek took her pallor and long absence from the front room as proof of too much Christmas spirit. ‘Praying to the porcelain God, eh? Ask Pippa for some of her herbal tea. Camomile? Worked wonders for her when she had stomach flu. While you’re in there, can you have a scout about for the TV guide?’



* * *



Claire let herself back in the dark house, shivering with cold. She’d left the car at Derek’s – too much Liebfraumilch to drive – and had walked home, despite Derek’s admonishments – ‘Go back in the morning! We have the study – won’t take long to get the camp bed in there!’ – and despite Pippa’s raised eyebrows and pursed lips.

Riven with tension, she sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, and tried to put her mind into some sort of order. She daren’t call again. Oh God, why had she left the car? It wasn’t as if she was really drunk. She could have driven past Lorna’s house, looking for signs of life . . . slept in the car if necessary . . . She put on her coat to walk back to Derek’s to collect it. But then realised they’d see her. Derek and Pippa were curtain-twitchers at the best of times; someone starting a car in their quiet cul-de-sac on Christmas night would be sure to arouse their interest. And once they realised it was Claire, she’d never hear the end of it – ‘You storm off and then don’t have the decency to pop back and say goodbye properly? After all Pippa’s hard work?’ She shuddered. And then, what if, while she was out, Lorna did call? Or even came over, cold, frightened, injured maybe, and found no-one home, no-one to take care of her? No, no. Best just to sit tight here. Sit tight and wait.





17





Lorna did arrive, shivering, that evening. She still wore her school shoes with no socks, but now had a hoodie over her pyjamas. She said she’d walked the whole way. That was all she said.

Claire put some more wood on the fire, brought down a quilt, and wrapped it around the child, who stared quietly at the TV, ignoring Claire’s timid questions. After a while, she stopped shaking, and allowed Claire to take off her shoes, run her a bath. While she soaked, Claire pressed her lips together into a hard white line, and cried, silently, behind the door so that Lorna wouldn’t see her.