Chapter 25 Tuesday 18 June 2024 Sally
Sally
It’s almost completely dark by the time Sally sees the sign saying “Norfolk.” Grateful as she is for all Corinne’s help, she hasn’t been relishing the prospect of spending the night (maybe several nights—who knows?) in a kennel, but now that she’s feeling sleepier, she’s willing to concede that it might be fine.
Corinne’s kennels of choice are bound to be snugglier than most.
Sally has always felt safe in the dark. When she was little, her parents used to take her out to their friends’ houses in the evenings, and she would sleep in a dark bedroom while the grown-ups chatted downstairs until it was time for her dad to drive them home.
She can remember a tea trolley in one of the houses; she would pass it as she was carried to the front door.
It was orange, which she could only have known if she’d seen it.
That means what her mum likes to say to Ree and Tobes can’t be true: “Sally was brilliant as a baby. We could take her anywhere with us and we never heard a peep out of her. She just stayed sound asleep while we carted her around.”
Sally’s earliest memory is of the comfortable lulling motion of the car and warm streetlights studding the night sky, receding from view as they passed.
She loved looking at those lights; there was a sense of being part of something exciting that she wasn’t old enough to understand—thrilling and at the same time risk-free, because her mum’s arms were around her.
It’s nice to remember this, pleasing to acknowledge that there was a time when being looked after by her parents had felt warm and safe. Has Corinne become her temporary parent substitute?
When Sally wakes up, she remembers asking herself that question but not answering it. The lights must have lulled her to sleep, just as they used to when she was little. This time, though, they’re coming at her from ahead, on both sides. I’m supposed to be a grown-up now, she says to herself.
“Okay, my turn,” says Tobes. “Oh, Mum’s awake. Feel better, Mum?”
“I’m fine.” Sally is groggy and disorientated. And, fleetingly, guilty. Is she shirking her responsibilities as a parent? Should she be letting Corinne take them off to yet another new place?
“We’re playing the truth game,” says Ree. “It’s Tobes’s turn. I’ve just had mine and I abstained. Trust me, you don’t want to hear my worst truth.”
“All right, my turn,” says Tobes. “And it doesn’t have to be worst. I’m proud of mine. Mum, remember all those fights I used to get into at school before I turned into a fine, upstanding citizen?”
“Oh, yes,” says Sally. “Painfully clearly.”
“Oh, this is a good one,” Ree says with relish.
“Ree always wanted me to tell you, because school never did, but I thought it’d make you worry even more about whether I was going to end up in prison one day—”
“I’ve always been your biggest fan, bro.”
“—but it’s probably safe to tell you now,” Tobes goes on. “No one’s worried about me anymore, right? I’m much more mature and haven’t given in to any violent impulses for at least four years.”
“I’m not sure I want to hear this,” Mark says wearily.
“I never lost,” Toby announces with feeling. “Not once.”
“What do you mean?” asks Sally.
“He means he’s got an unbroken record of victory,” Ree says impatiently. “Isn’t that cool?”
“It’s true, Mum,” Tobes chips in. He sounds hopeful.
“I’ve never lost a single fight. Even when the opp was twice my size, as happened sometimes.
I saw a lot of what you might call active combat for quite a few years—some, I’ll admit I started; some, I got started on by someone else—and I was the clear winner, every single time. ”
“That’s amazing, Toby,” says Corinne. “Well done!” A small squeal of anguish comes from Sally.
Corinne adds quickly, “And obviously it’s brilliant that you’re now mature enough to be able to find other, nonviolent solutions to problems. But winning every fight you’ve ever fought? That’s still an achievement.”
“I think so,” says Tobes.
“We’re all proud of you, Toblerone,” Ree tells him, and for once he doesn’t say Don’t call me that!
“You know who else would have been proud of you? Furbs.” Ree sighs as she always does when she mentions his name.
“Furbs was a fighter. I’m not talking about his biting—that was just an anxiety response.
I’m saying: If anyone had broken into our house and gone for any of us, Furbs would have destroyed them. ”
“Champ wouldn’t,” says Tobes. “He’d mooch over sleepily and try to get his belly scratched.”
Everyone apart from Mark says, “Awwww.” He says, “What I still don’t understand is: Why aren’t we being fighters? I don’t mean going back and knocking the Gaveys’ teeth out or anything—”
“That sounds like fun!” says Ree.
“I mean, we go back and we strategize, work out how to prove Champ was nowhere near Tess when she’s claiming he bit her. We—”
“No.” Shutting him down whenever he says this has become part of Sally’s daily routine.
“Let’s not have this argument again,” says Tobes, and Sally thinks: From schoolyard brawler to diplomat. “Your turn, Dad. What’s your worst, most difficult truth to admit?”
“Here’s one you’re not going to like,” says Mark. “If I were back at the Hayloft now and it was still yesterday, I’d refuse to leave. I certainly wouldn’t agree to leave my car behind, or my phone.”
“Oh, like we didn’t all totally know that already.” Ree groans. “What a stunning revelation. Not. Okay, I’ll do one, but don’t go mad, Mum. I made a little video on my burner phone of me singing Champ’s night song, and… Well, put it this way: I posted it online.”
“‘Land of Cute and Furry’?” Sally smiles. “I thought it was so embarrassing, I wasn’t allowed to sing it in front of anyone you knew.”
“Yeah, that was before. Anyway, I posted it, and this really cool thing happened. Other people—my friends—all decided…” Ree breaks off.
Sally looks in the rearview mirror but it’s dark and she can’t see much. She hears Ree and Tobes mumbling to each other but she can’t make out the words. “What?” She turns round in her seat to inspect their faces. Did Toby just stop Ree from saying something? “What’s going on?”
“Just online stuff, Mum,” Tobes says with a reassuring smile. “Some of our friends saw Ree’s video and made videos of themselves singing ‘Land of Cute and Furry’ too. You know, in support of Champ. That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Which friends?” asks Sally.
“I’ll tell you all about it later, okay? Don’t worry, Mum.” Tobes leans forward and pats her arm. “It’s all good, trust. Champ’s got a solid posse behind him. That’s the main thing.”
“Then let’s go home and—” Mark tries again.
“Dad, for God’s sake!” says Ree. “We’ve just driven all the way to Norfolk.”
“Yes, which I knew was a big mistake before we set off.”
“Then you shouldn’t have come with us, should you? You numpty.”
“Do not call me a numpty, Rhiannon. I’m your father.”
“I mean… Do you have to rub it in?” she says. “That’s just sadistic.”
This is typical Mark, Sally thinks. Regretting things is a bit of a hobby for him, though he’d never admit it.
No sooner has he put on a jumper or chosen a route than he starts to say plaintively, “I should have worn my blue jumper—it’s warmer,” or “Damn, I knew it was a mistake to go this way.” In the early days of their marriage, Sally used to try to investigate these little mysteries.
She would say things like, “I don’t understand.
If you knew it was a mistake, then why didn’t you choose to go the other way, the way you thought was better?
” Mark would get flustered and say, “I don’t know!
” as if she’d presented him with the most impossible conundrum in the world.
“Right, your turn, Mum,” says Tobes. “Tell us something about you that’s true that we don’t already know.” Sally would rather get to the bottom of why he was being so suspiciously reassuring a moment ago, but she knows that to say so would lead to her being labeled a fun sponge.
“Once I pretended to walk Champ at 2:00 a.m.,” she says.
“What?” says Ree. “Why?”
“I mean, I didn’t really pretend—I did take Champ out at two in the morning, that bit was true—but it wasn’t because he needed or wanted a walk. I had to wake him up. I felt terrible for days afterward for interrupting his sleep.”
“Then why did you?” says Mark.
“I wanted to go and see Shukes.”
“In the middle of the night?”
Sally nods. “Henry Christensen was fast asleep, poor chap. I woke him up: kept ringing the doorbell till he came downstairs. In my defense, I was in a state and not thinking straight. I’d had a dream—”
“Sally, what the hell were you thinking?” Mark is irate.
“Relax, Dad,” says Tobes. “Jeez. Everything’s fine. Carry on, Mum.”
Ree says, “Please don’t be about to tell us you cheated on Dad with Mr. Christensen, because if you are? That’s a confession you should make privately first, just to Dad.”
“Of course I didn’t do that,” says Sally.
It baffles her the way her children occasionally suggest she might have some kind of bit on the side.
Even if she ever saw a man she desperately fancied, which hadn’t happened for at least ten years, she’d be happy simply to imagine his face and think about the sound of his voice.
That would be far more pleasurable than actually engaging with the reality of him and discovering all the infuriating nonsense clogging up his mind and life that Sally knew she’d be unwilling to make room for.
“Then what, if not an affair?” asks Ree. “Why else would you go round to Mr. Christensen’s house in the middle of the night?”
Because it’s not his home. It’s mine. Ours.
“I begged him to sell Shukes back to us,” Sally confesses.
“I’d had such an upsetting dream, in which I hated the Hayloft and all I wanted was to get Shukes back.
It’s funny, but I’m pretty sure it was soon after we found out the Gaveys were moving to Bussow Court.
I don’t think I realized that at the time. ”