The Baby-Snatcher

Chapter Eighteen

Claire had already brought small but significant changes to life at two Cotter’s Row.

She’d cleared away some of Kath’s things. Not the personal stuff like clothes. Bernie could see to that. But she’d got rid of the monstrous spinning wheel from the front room. At first Bernie has been reluctant to let it go.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it a bit soon?’

‘You don’t want to keep it?’

‘No,’ he said uncertainly, then, without any hesitation, ‘No, you do what you think best.’

Mrs Coulthard had a friend who was into arts and crafts and she’d given Claire fifty quid for the wheel. Claire hadn’t kept the money. It wasn’t as if she needed if for herself. She handed it over to Bernie.

‘Put it away for Marilyn,’ she said. ‘For the next time there’s a school trip. Kath would have liked that.’

With the wheel out of the way the front room looked really grubby so she’d given it a good clean. She scrubbed the paintwork and shampooed the carpet. There was a nasty stain in front of the grate which she’d never noticed before, but it came up as good as new. She opened the windows for the first time ever, washed the curtains, bought a bunch of daffs on her weekly trip to the supermarket and stuck them in a milk jug on the coffee table.

If Bernie and Marilyn noticed the change they didn’t comment.

They did comment on her cooking, though. She cooked a meal every evening. A proper meal. Kathleen always claimed to be too busy to cook. Too disorganized, Claire thought. Too wrapped up in Marilyn and her own improving evening classes. There had never been much except beans on toast or pizza. For a woman who despised modern machines, Kath had taken very easily to the freezer and the microwave. She didn’t really think food mattered.

Claire thought food mattered a lot. Now, when Emma Coulthard went shopping to the supermarket on the Otterbridge bypass she asked if she might go too. She filled a trolley with fresh meat and vegetables, cheese and crusty bread. Sometimes she bought treats, taking the money from her wages, not the housekeeping – sticky buns for her and Marilyn and a couple of cans of beer for Bernard. Every evening when she got home she started to prepare the meal. She enjoyed planning for it. She had cooked for her father since she started secondary school. Now she would cook for Marilyn and Bernard.

Tonight the detour to Kim Houghton’s house had made her later than usual. She hurried up the poorly lit street eager to begin. It was almost six o’clock. A sliver of light showed where a neighbour’s upstairs curtain was pulled back but she took no notice. Let them talk, she thought. I’ve nothing to hide.

She let herself into the house. Marilyn was in the back room. She had drawn the curtains but she was still wearing her coat.

‘Have you only just got here?’ Claire kept her voice cheerful. Marilyn had put up with enough interrogation from Kath. ‘That’s the second time this week you’ve been late.’

‘Choir practice again. I got the five thirty bus. Is there anything I can do?’

Claire shook her head. The kitchen was her territory now. She didn’t want Marilyn muscling in. Besides, Marilyn was bright. A couple of years and she’d be away to university if she passed her exams. She should be doing her homework.

Tonight, however, Marilyn didn’t take her books straight upstairs. She hovered in the doorway to the kitchen.

‘Claire.’

‘Yes?’ Claire had put on an apron over her working clothes and had already started to peel potatoes. She’d bought some nice slices of lambs’ liver the day before. She’d cook them slowly with a rich gravy and lots of onions. Her dad had always liked liver done that way. He’d shown her how to do it.

‘I was wondering…’ Marilyn spoke uncertainly. She was fiddling with the strap of her school bag. ‘I was wondering whether we might rent a television. I’ve been asking round. It wouldn’t cost very much.’

‘You’d have to ask your dad.’

‘But you could put in a word. He’d listen to you.’

Claire smiled. ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ she said. ‘Why not?’

‘I’ll go up then. Do some violin practice before I start my essay.’

Claire splashed vegetable oil into a frying pan and slid in chopped onions from a board. She shook flour on to a plate and picked up the liver slices, turning them with a deft movement to cover both sides with flour, then she rinsed her hands under the tap.

Above the sound of violin scales she heard the front door open. Although Claire could not see the hall from where she was standing in the kitchen, she could imagine what was happening. Bernard would have propped his bike against the outside of the house while he unlocked the door, then he would wheel it in to stand at the foot of the stairs. Kath had wanted him to keep it in the old privy in the back yard but for once in his life he had stood up for himself and refused. He’d said anyone could steal if from there and didn’t Kath realize he’d be lost without his bike.

Claire could see his point but if she decided to decorate they might have to make a different arrangement. The rubber end of the handle bar had made a terrible mark on the wallpaper, and quite often there was mud on the carpet.

The front door was slammed shut and Bernard walked through to the kitchen. His cheeks were flushed from exercise and the wind. He beamed at Claire.

‘Something smells good.’

In his hand was a plastic lunch box. Claire had taken to making sandwiches for him before he set out to work. He tipped crumbs into the bin, then set it on the draining board.

Claire turned from the cooker to face him.

‘I’m going out tonight,’ she said. ‘Kim Houghton’s asked me to babysit.’

‘Oh.’

‘I thought you and Marilyn would like some time on your own.’

‘Yes,’ he said uncertainly. ‘I see.’

‘You should get to know her better. It’s important.’

‘I ought to practise,’ he said quickly. ‘I’m doing a party in Otterbridge on Saturday. A Sunday school. They said they’d understand if I wanted to cancel but I couldn’t let them down and it doesn’t do to get rusty.’

‘You ought to talk to Marilyn. About her mother. About the future.’

‘Oh no, not yet. Now wouldn’t be the right time at all.’ Panic made him sweat. He wiped his forehead and his upper lip with a handkerchief. ‘Of course I will tell her, but later, when things have settled down a bit.’

Claire shrugged and turned back to stir the frying pan. She knew with Bernard it was no good pushing.

‘Look,’ he said in an attempt to get back into her good books. ‘Perhaps Marilyn would like to help me practise. She always used to, when she was little.’

And Claire was pleased to see, on her way upstairs to get tidied up before going to Kim’s, that father and daughter were working together on Bernie’s magic. She looked in on the scene with satisfaction. Bernie had brought his box of magic tricks into the warm of the back room and Marilyn was sitting on the floor beside his chair sorting through a pack of playing cards. Not really enjoying it, Claire could see, but making the effort. Altogether she thought things were going very well.

It was only as she paused in the hall to put on her coat and glanced into the front room, where all trace of Kathleen had been removed, that she was reminded of a picture in a book she had been given as a child. When she turned to look at herself in the gilt-edged mirror by the door, the thought of the picture remained. It was of a large brown cuckoo with a bright eye and powerful claws tipping a smaller fledgling from a nest. She had been expected to feel sorry for the fledgling, but it had been the cuckoo which had caught her imagination.