The Library of Lost and Found(18)
* * *
The bus came to a halt in Maltsborough and everyone but Martha got off. She stayed on board and waited, wanting to get even farther away from Sandshift. The driver poked his head out and called down the aisle. “This is the last stop, darlin’. Hop off.”
Reluctantly, she stepped off and found herself on the promenade.
Even though Maltsborough was shutting down for the day, it hummed with noise and activity. Some shop owners were already locking their doors and pulling down metal shutters over the windows. A line of traffic curved along the high street, car lights illuminating the rain that fired down. In an hour’s time, all that would be open in the town were the bars and restaurants, and the amusement arcades.
Rain bounced off pavements and made people yelp, jump and run with their coats held over their heads.
Martha stooped over. Moving quickly along the seafront, she passed a group of teenagers who were bunched together, spearing chips with plastic forks.
The rain grew heavier, slinking its way down the back of her neck and soaking through the toes of her shoes. Unsure of where to go, she ducked under a shiny yellow canopy and found herself standing inside an arcade.
As children, she and Lilian weren’t allowed to play on the amusements. Thomas said it was gambling, and that “No one benefits except for the arcade owners.” Martha used to gaze longingly at the bright flashing lights and plastic horses jerking along their racetrack as he tugged her past them. Sometimes Zelda gave her and Lilian a sneaky penny or two to spend, but it was under strict instruction that they didn’t tell their father.
Martha could usually tell when Zelda had defied Thomas, because there’d be a sticky silence around the table at teatime. Every scrape of cutlery, each bite of food would be amplified. Betty tried to overcompensate for Zelda’s misdemeanors by fussing around Thomas.
Martha and Lilian had learned to be on their best behavior when this happened. They tried to be nice and good for their father, until his stormy mood blew over.
Now Martha stood and watched the rain pouncing down, and she edged farther inside the arcade. She found herself standing next to an electronic game machine where large plastic crustaceans crept out from under jagged red rocks. They chanted, “We are the bad crabs.” For fifty pence, you could take up a big mallet and bash them.
“We are the bad crabs,” the voice repeated and Martha’s fingers twitched. There was an unusual stirring inside her stomach, of wanting to do something for herself, for once. A touch of rebellion. She had already made a fool of herself in front of people she knew.
Does it really matter if I do it again, in front of ones I don’t know?
Tensing her jaw, she delved into her pocket for a fifty-pence piece and held it over the slot. A high-pitched electronic voice said, “We’re ready to begin!” and Martha defiantly pushed her coin in.
Taking hold of the mallet attached to a chain, she poised, ready. Even though she still felt exhausted, she found the energy to swipe the mallet through the air. Missing the first crab, her shoulder jolted as it connected with the plastic rocks. But then she thought about the members of the reading group and managed to bring it crashing down on the head of the second crab and then the third. She hit the fourth and the fifth and kept on hammering as the crabs said “Ouch,” and “Yow.”
Adrenaline coursed through her veins and, with each bash, an urge to laugh rose inside her. She was so focused on the bright plastic and flashing lights that her shame and embarrassment of running away from the library evaporated.
When the game ended, she frantically felt in her pocket for more coins, eager to feel the rush of whatever-it-was again. It had been a long time since she felt so invigorated. She fed more money into the machine, then swiped and bashed until her right shoulder felt like it was on fire.
Her eyes glinted as red numbers rolled, reaching the high score, then shooting fifty points above it. This was glorious. A strange sensation enveloped her body but she couldn’t pin down what it was.
She stared down at the last fifty-pence piece in her hand. One last go. As she pushed in her coin, across the room she saw a man holding on to the hand of a toddler. The girl clung onto a soft Minion toy and her eyes were wide open. The man pointed in Martha’s direction and she saw he was talking to a police officer. The officer started to walk and there was no doubt he was headed in her direction.
“Madam,” he said when he reached her. He had hairy hands like a werewolf and his eyebrows almost met in the middle. He had the weary stoop of someone who’d been dealing with minor seaside offences all day. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises. A father has complained that you’re scaring his little girl.”
* * *
With her cheeks afire, Martha traipsed away from the arcade. She examined the timetable on the bus stop and there was a forty-seven-minute wait until the next one. She also remembered that the ticket she’d bought was a single, and she’d just used up all her cash. She was stuck in Maltsborough, unsure how she was going to get home.
The rain had subsided a little and was now more of a sprinkle, so she decided to go for a walk, to stretch her legs and allow her adrenaline to subside. The bright lights of the bars on the promenade shone in her eyes, so she stepped inland, behind the lifeboat station.
The street was in shadows, with the lights in the upstairs windows above the shops giving the pavement a golden glow. It was easy to imagine this part of town in the earlier days, with smugglers creeping along the skinny alleys between the houses, to cart their bounty to awaiting boats.