Читать книгу The Only Game - Reginald Hill - Страница 7

It was still raining when Jane Maguire came out of the pub.

She’d had three gin-and-tonics and a packet of crisps which she’d only bought because the barman had said, ‘You OK, darling?’ as she ordered the third gin, as if buying something to eat changed her from a woman with a problem to a working girl on her lunch break.

Coatless, she ran across the car park, feeling as light and easy as when she’d been fourteen and one of the best sprint prospects in England. She hadn’t bothered to lock the car. Once inside, only a madman would steal it. There were spoors of rain down the windows where the sealing had perished, and the carpet was soggy through the rust holes in the floor.

But at least it started first time. There was always something to be grateful for, as her mother used to say. Including presumably slaps across the leg.

She didn’t want to think about that, not after this morning.

She drove steadily, blanking out past and future. Dead on three, she turned into Charnwood Grove. Perhaps once the narrow street had been lined with trees, but now only a few lamp posts rose between the twin terraces of big bayed Edwardian villas confronting each other so self-importantly, like wise guardians of the poor … where had that phrase popped up from? It was hardly apt, especially at this time of day. Until the arrival of her mobile rust bucket, there was little sign of poverty outside Number Twenty-nine which housed the Vestey Kindergarten. Mercs, BMWs and Audis gleamed and purred here, most of them newish and many, she guessed, second cars. Fathers sometimes figured in the morning drop, but the afternoon pick-up was entirely female.

As she went up the steps a couple of women, expensively wrapped against the rain, looked at her strangely. Nearly three months of twice daily encounters hadn’t got her past the nodding stage with any of them. She didn’t blame them. People who drove cars like theirs steered clear of people who drove cars like hers – in every sense! She paused in the doorway to confirm their wisdom by shaking the raindrops out of her hair, then stepped inside.

Mrs Vestey did her best with beeswax polish and ozone-friendly aerosols, but on a wet day it was beyond even her powers to stop the school from smelling like a school. As usual she was standing by the entrance to the cloakroom, in which a melee of staff and mothers were preparing the youngsters for the perilous passage from front door to kerb. She was a tall, dark woman with a slightly hooked nose and long white teeth which she flashed in a welcoming smile as she said, ‘Hello, Mrs Maguire. No problems, I hope?’

‘No,’ said Jane harshly.

‘Oh, good. I feared that you might be going to tell me that the little upset had turned into something communicable. It’s a constant nightmare as I’m sure you can imagine. So, what can I do for you?’

‘Nothing,’ said Jane. ‘I’ll just pick up Noll and be on my way.’

She pushed past the headmistress into the cloakroom and stood there a minute looking at the children.

Then she turned and said quietly to Mrs Vestey, ‘Where’s Noll?’

The woman gave her another long-toothed smile, this time not of welcome but incomprehension. At the same time her nostrils flared as though catching a worrying scent.

And Jane knew that the moment was close, the moment when fear became fact. But there were still lines to speak.

‘Please, Mrs Vestey,’ she said, ‘has something happened? Has he been taken ill?’

‘Yes, yes … at least I understood so …’ said the woman uncertainly. ‘But you yourself …’

She paused, took a deep breath, and when she spoke again, it was in the assertive tone of someone who needs to get basic facts established in a welter of uncertainty.

‘Noll is not here, Mrs Maguire,’ she said.

‘Not here? Where is he then? Has he been taken to hospital? Why wasn’t I …’

‘No! Mrs Maguire,’ interrupted Mrs Vestey, ‘I mean Noll has never been here today. You yourself rang to say he was ill …’

‘I rang? What do you mean? Why should I …’

‘Someone rang,’ said Mrs Vestey firmly. ‘But if it wasn’t you, then why didn’t you bring Noll to school as usual?’

‘I did!’ cried Jane, her voice rising now and attracting the attention of other parents. ‘I did!’

‘You brought him yourself? And brought him inside?’

‘No,’ admitted Jane. ‘Not inside. I was going to, but I was very late, so I left him on the steps with Miss Gosling …’

‘I’m sorry? With whom?’

‘Miss Gosling. For God’s sake, what kind of school is this where you don’t know your own staff?’

‘I know my staff very well,’ said Mrs Vestey. ‘And I assure you, I employ no one called Gosling.’

‘So I’ve got the name wrong!’ cried Jane in a voice of rising panic. ‘She’s the new one. She started last week. I want to see her, where is she? What’s she done with Noll?’

And now a little compassion crept into Mrs Vestey’s voice as she produced her clinching argument.

‘Perhaps you’d better sit down, Mrs Maguire. I can assure you I have appointed no new member of staff for over a year now, so whoever you left your son with had no connection with this establishment. Mrs Maguire, are you all right? Mrs Maguire!’

But Jane was swaying away from her. This was worse than her worst imaginings. Her body was no longer her own. She heard a voice say, ‘It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have hit him.’ The room turned and a carousel of anxious races undulated round her. But she could see beneath their surface concern to the grinning skulls, and the wintry light was flickering at the edges as though cast by flame.

It was time to fall into that flame and let it consume her.