Selected Stories

They turned off the towpath into a lane with a row of garage doors running along it, and walled back gardens on the other side. They came out on to a suburban road, and crossed it to a crescent. He dropped her hand before they reached it and pulled down the back of his jacket where it had ridden up a bit. He buttoned all three buttons.

‘Would you wait five minutes, Jas?’

It was as if she knew about that, as if she knew why she had to wait and why it should be five minutes, as if he’d told her something she’d forgotten. She knew he hadn’t. It didn’t matter.

‘You be all right, Jas?’

‘Course I will.’

She watched him walking off and when he reached a front gate painted blue. She watched him as she had when he crossed the street to the off-licence. She waited, as she had waited then too, seeing again the little tortoises and the racing cars, hearing the Spice Girls. Across the road a delivery van drew up. No one got out, and a minute or so later it drove off. A dog went by. A woman started a lawnmower in one of the front gardens.

She waited for longer than he’d said, for ages it felt like, but when he came back he was hurrying, as if he was making up for that. He almost ran, his flannel trousers flapping. He was out of breath when he reached her. He shook his head and said they’d best go back.

‘Back?’

‘Best to go back, Jas.’

He took her arm, but he was edgy and didn’t take it as he had before. He didn’t search for her hand. He pulled her anorak when it was difficult for her to keep up with him. Behind them somewhere a car door banged.

‘Oh God,’ he said.

A red car slowed down beside them as they were turning into the lane with the garage doors. When it stopped a woman with glasses on a string around her neck got out. She was wearing a brown skirt, and a cardigan that matched it over a pale silk blouse. Her dark hair was coiled round her head, her lipstick glistened, as if she hadn’t had time to powder it over or had forgotten to. The glasses bobbed about on her blouse and then were still. Her voice was angry when she spoke but she kept it low, giving the impression that her teeth were clenched.

‘I don’t believe this,’ she said.

She spoke as if Jasmin wasn’t there. She didn’t look at her, not even glancing in her direction.

‘For God’s sake!’ she almost shouted, and slammed the door of the car shut, as if she had to do something, as if only noise could express what she felt. ‘For God’s sake, after all we’ve been through!’

Her face was quivering with rage, one hand made into a fist that struck the roof of the car once and then opened, to fall by her side. There was silence then.

‘Who is she?’ The woman spoke when the silence had gone on, at last recognizing Jasmin’s presence. Her question came wearily, in a bleak, dull tone. ‘You’re on probation,’ she said. ‘Did you forget somehow that you were on probation?’

The man whom she abused had not attempted to speak, had made no protestation, but words were muttered now.

‘She was looking for the towpath. She asked me where it was. I don’t know who she is.’

The long, peaky features might never that afternoon, or any afternoon, have been other than they had become in the brief time that had passed: devoid of all expression, dead, a dribble of tears beginning.

Then Jasmin’s companion of so many conversations, and whom she had begun to love, shambled off, and the woman said nothing until he reached the blue-painted ornamental gate and again disappeared around the side of the house.

‘Was there anything?’ she asked then. She stared at Jasmin. Slowly she looked her up and down. Jasmin didn’t know what her question meant.

‘Did he do anything to you?’ the woman asked, and Jasmin understood and yet did not. What mattered more was that he had cried, his happiness taken from him, his smile too. He had cried for her. He had cried for both of them. All that she understood too well.

‘Who are you?’ the woman asked. Her clenched-back voice, deprived of the energy of its anger, was frightened, and fear clung to the tiredness in her face.

‘Clive’s my friend,’ Jasmin said. ‘There wasn’t nothing wrong. We done nothing wrong.’

‘That’s not his name.’

‘Clive, he said.’

‘He says anything. Did he give you drink?’

Jasmin shook her head. Why should she say? Why should she get him into trouble?

‘You reek of drink,’ the woman said. ‘Every time he gives them drink.’

‘He done nothing.’

‘His mother was my sister. He lives with us.’

If she’d asked him, Jasmin said, he would have explained about his name. But the woman just stared at her when she began to tell her that she, also, had given herself a name, that sometimes people wanted to.

‘My sister died,’ the woman said. ‘He’s been living with us since that. He thought the house would be empty this afternoon but it wasn’t because I changed my mind about going out. You worry and you change your mind. Quite often you do. Well, naturally, I suppose. He’s been on charges.’

‘He was only going to show me, like, where it is he lived.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Jasmin.’