I did not say anything just then. I wanted her to finish.
‘Only it’s a lot to ask,’ she continued. ‘I’ve got my own life, and yes I feel sorry for you, but it’s a lot. And besides, you and Cathy are fairly self-sufficient. You two wouldn’t want to move in here with me. You’re your own family. You’ve got each other. And I’m not one to share my space. I’m too old and too used to living alone, now. Perhaps years ago it would have worked. There was a time in my life when it might have been a lovely thing. But not now. It’s too late.’
‘Daddy asked you to do that?’
‘Yes, he asked that.’
I thought about it for a moment. A scene in which somebody who is running for their life asks an old friend to care for their children, and that old friend refuses. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I suppose you’re right. Cathy and I can make do at the house.’
‘That’s what I thought. You be careful though.’
She seemed to want me to leave.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, we will.’
‘Because Price and his men might come for you, you see. To get to Daddy.’
‘I suppose they might.’
‘So don’t open the door to any strangers.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘We won’t.’
I took a step back. ‘Thank you for letting me in.’
For a moment she had forgotten that initially she had not. She looked taken aback. ‘Oh, no, I mean, of course. Of course I was going to let you in. I was upstairs with the vacuum on, that’s all. You’re always welcome here. To visit.’
‘Thank you, that’s kind.’
I opened the front door and stepped out into the sun. I closed the door behind myself, thinking that the right thing to do but it was stiff in its frame and I had to shunt it a couple of times, and Vivien, saying something muffled that I did not hear, pushed it from within.
The walk home was slow.
We hid in the trees when Price’s men came to search the house. It was mid-morning and we heard the dirty, claggy exhausts of their vans long before they got to the top of our hill. Cathy suggested that we stay in the house and confront them. She said we should show them we were not cowards. I persuaded her to leave off on this idea and instead we let ourselves out the back and ducked and skipped as quietly as we could until we hit the cover of the copse. There was no sign of Jess or Becky. I looked for them out on the horizon as we skulked across the open ground but caught no sight.
The soft, wet moss on the woodland floor and the sallow bark of the ash smelt more familiar this morning than ever before. Birds in the branches and the small mammals in the undergrowth kept the silence with us, though I saw shining eyes and flickering indigo feathers through apertures in the leaves.
I breathed slowly and deliberately and felt Cathy do the same. The vans parked on the stony earth outside our front door, and the men in the front seats got out. One rushed to the back to unstick the big double doors of both vehicles and five men climbed from the galley of each. Fourteen there were in total. I squinted to see if any were recognisable, feeling sick at the thought that it might be anyone we knew here, and, clearly, something had shifted. At least four were farm labourers who had come up to our bonfire on that night, weeks ago now. And all the men looked set on work like they were climbing out of the backs of vans to pick strawberries or sort potatoes. A couple even had spades, though to be put to a different use. Others gripped baseball bats and crowbars.
The men started circling the house. No one wanted to knock on the front door but a few – the bravest – went up to the windows, stuck an eyeball against the glass and shielded it from glare with a cupped hand. They paced for the best part of a minute before a smallish man with bulldog shoulders shuffled his crowbar to his right hand then swung it at the door, by way of a knock. I heard the sound briefly resonate within the house, like he had thumped an empty oil-drum.
‘Open up, John! You know why we’re here!’ the man called.
Of course there was no answer. Daddy, as we knew, was not there.
‘Open up, John!’ called another from behind the bulldog man, encouraged by his companion’s engagement. His accent was from north of here: still England but near the Scottish border.
Taking courage, the other men came closer to the house and some started beating on the walls and windows. A pane of glass smashed as one man tapped it too hard with his bat. He jumped back from the scene, shocked. Everybody was on edge. I could feel it.
A man in a grey tracksuit with soft blonde hair and a mawkish face, who could not have been much older than Cathy, went over to the man with bulldog shoulders, who appeared to be in charge. ‘I don’t think he’s in, Doug,’ said the mawkish man.
‘Not answering his door more like. Holed up inside there with the kids, he is.’
‘None of us can see owt through the windows. There’s no sign of them.’
‘So you want us to just leave it, do you?’
‘That’s not what I’m saying.’
‘You want us to go back to Price empty-handed. Do you think that’ll go well for us?’
‘That’s not what I’m saying. If they’re not there, there’s nowt we can do, is what I’m saying.’
‘We better check,’ another man called from around the other side of the house. I could not see him, only hear his voice.
‘That’s right,’ said the man with bulldog shoulders. ‘We’d better check.’
He went back to the front door and started beating at the lock with his crowbar. Others went to the windows and smashed the glass, deliberately this time. I became aware of Cathy at my side. She was flexing the muscles in her arms and thighs as if ready to leap but her fists were clenched tight around the uncovered roots of a large ash, holding her to the ground. Impetuous as she was, at least she had the sense not to run at them. I considered doing something small to reassure her – to remind her that I was still there. My right hand hovered for a moment at the crook of her elbow but I thought better of it. Her whole body was held taut like a hunting trap, and any touch, no matter how slight, might set her off. We had to wait it out.
Our front door was made of oak and it held fast even when attacked at its weakest point. He tried the corners, but still it held. Had Cathy and I been inside we could have locked the extra bolts that Daddy had fitted – for situations like this, no doubt – but as it was, the single lock, fixed from the outside, was enough.
Until they brought out the battering ram, that was. Police issue, by the look of it. Wielded by four men, the door frame came away from the wall and fell to the floor with a single, ponderous thud. The wood was too heavy to bounce. And then they were inside, and we could no longer see them apart from the two stationed at the door, keeping watch.