blanket, waiting for a call. Waiting for the call .
I dialled her number.
11. PHOEBE
Wednesday morning
I TOYED WITH THE THOUGHT OF dropping in to Nan’s townhouse as I passed by. To tell her about the letter. She’d want to know. But it was hard to even speak about Tommy with her. She still couldn’t understand how someone was able to snatch Tommy away on my watch. She fixed me with that vaguely unforgiving look whenever I mentioned his name. I couldn’t shoulder that right now. I’d wait a couple of days, until I was stronger.
I kept walking.
Next door to Nan’s, Mrs Wick trod down her garden path, her cat winding itself around her frail, stick-like legs. She and Nan had been friends ever since they were children themselves, growing up in the same houses they lived in now. To me, it seemed their friendship was based on their mutual disapproval for just about everything in existence. Most of their conversation circled around cuts to pensioner benefits, how useless doctors were, and the general downfall of society.
Mrs Wick sped up a little, which was unusual for her. Especially with the cat threatening to trip her up at any step. She reached her mailbox just as I was about to walk past.
“Is everything all right?” Her eyes were bright beneath her glasses.
“Everything’s . . . yes, fine, thank you.”
“It isn’t your nan is it, that had you running down the street earlier? I saw you from the living room.”
Yes, you old busybody. Of course you saw me. Well, I’m not going to hand you the latest tasty morsel of gossip on our street.
“No, it wasn’t Nan. I was just late for an appointment.”
“Oh. I guess you have lots of appointments, you people from the high end of the street.”
Luke and I had become you people ever since we’d bought the very expensive high-end-of-the-street property. Before then, she’d called us you young people .
Mrs Wick’s daughter—Bernice—peered through the blinds, her eyes squinty in her pudgy face.
Bernice broke off her engagement to a man twelve years ago and had come back home to stay with her mother. Since then, she’d never been out with another man (as far as I knew.) And she’d barely worked. She’d studied at a technical college to become a safety officer, and she’d worked as a combined yacht hand/safety officer in the yacht races for less than two years before throwing it in. I had no idea what she did with her time now. I remembered her as a kid, hanging on the fringes of the Southern Sails Street gang—Sass, Pria, Kate, Luke, and me. She was skinny then and awkward. She’d been at least two years older than Sass and three years older than the rest of us. From the time she was thirteen, she started ditching school—she’d hang around the streets and talk to the boys when they got out of class. She’d been anxious for a boyfriend and anxiously trying to hide the fact that she wanted one.
When Luke was twelve and she fifteen, he made up a terrible rhyme about her:
Bernice Wick
Sittin’ in a tree
Waitin’ for the boys
’Til half past three
Couldn’t catch a dick
’Cos she made ’em all sick
’Cos she got hit
By the ugly stick
A couple of times, I knew she overheard him chanting that. I’d like to say that Kate, Pria, and I didn’t giggle at it. But we did.
Luke made up stuff like that about everyone, only usually not quite so insulting. Despite his rhyme, Bernice was never ugly. She was gangly, but lots of kids that age were. She’d kept her blonde hair long and half-hiding her face.
But there was something about Bernice that was ugly. It was Bernice that had carried out the terrible thing next door at number 29, back when she was a teenager. It was one of those things that you couldn’t explain, no matter which way you tried to look at it. In the darkest moments of Luke and me, our suspicions about the abduction of our son had turned to her. We’d told Detective
I dialled her number.
11. PHOEBE
Wednesday morning
I TOYED WITH THE THOUGHT OF dropping in to Nan’s townhouse as I passed by. To tell her about the letter. She’d want to know. But it was hard to even speak about Tommy with her. She still couldn’t understand how someone was able to snatch Tommy away on my watch. She fixed me with that vaguely unforgiving look whenever I mentioned his name. I couldn’t shoulder that right now. I’d wait a couple of days, until I was stronger.
I kept walking.
Next door to Nan’s, Mrs Wick trod down her garden path, her cat winding itself around her frail, stick-like legs. She and Nan had been friends ever since they were children themselves, growing up in the same houses they lived in now. To me, it seemed their friendship was based on their mutual disapproval for just about everything in existence. Most of their conversation circled around cuts to pensioner benefits, how useless doctors were, and the general downfall of society.
Mrs Wick sped up a little, which was unusual for her. Especially with the cat threatening to trip her up at any step. She reached her mailbox just as I was about to walk past.
“Is everything all right?” Her eyes were bright beneath her glasses.
“Everything’s . . . yes, fine, thank you.”
“It isn’t your nan is it, that had you running down the street earlier? I saw you from the living room.”
Yes, you old busybody. Of course you saw me. Well, I’m not going to hand you the latest tasty morsel of gossip on our street.
“No, it wasn’t Nan. I was just late for an appointment.”
“Oh. I guess you have lots of appointments, you people from the high end of the street.”
Luke and I had become you people ever since we’d bought the very expensive high-end-of-the-street property. Before then, she’d called us you young people .
Mrs Wick’s daughter—Bernice—peered through the blinds, her eyes squinty in her pudgy face.
Bernice broke off her engagement to a man twelve years ago and had come back home to stay with her mother. Since then, she’d never been out with another man (as far as I knew.) And she’d barely worked. She’d studied at a technical college to become a safety officer, and she’d worked as a combined yacht hand/safety officer in the yacht races for less than two years before throwing it in. I had no idea what she did with her time now. I remembered her as a kid, hanging on the fringes of the Southern Sails Street gang—Sass, Pria, Kate, Luke, and me. She was skinny then and awkward. She’d been at least two years older than Sass and three years older than the rest of us. From the time she was thirteen, she started ditching school—she’d hang around the streets and talk to the boys when they got out of class. She’d been anxious for a boyfriend and anxiously trying to hide the fact that she wanted one.
When Luke was twelve and she fifteen, he made up a terrible rhyme about her:
Bernice Wick
Sittin’ in a tree
Waitin’ for the boys
’Til half past three
Couldn’t catch a dick
’Cos she made ’em all sick
’Cos she got hit
By the ugly stick
A couple of times, I knew she overheard him chanting that. I’d like to say that Kate, Pria, and I didn’t giggle at it. But we did.
Luke made up stuff like that about everyone, only usually not quite so insulting. Despite his rhyme, Bernice was never ugly. She was gangly, but lots of kids that age were. She’d kept her blonde hair long and half-hiding her face.
But there was something about Bernice that was ugly. It was Bernice that had carried out the terrible thing next door at number 29, back when she was a teenager. It was one of those things that you couldn’t explain, no matter which way you tried to look at it. In the darkest moments of Luke and me, our suspicions about the abduction of our son had turned to her. We’d told Detective
Similar Books
