The Island Escape. Kerry Fisher
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Название: The Island Escape
Автор: Kerry Fisher
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Контркультура
isbn: 9780007570263
isbn:
The policeman looked down at me, waiting for an answer. I trusted him. Even his name – Joe Miller, according to his name badge – was solid. GI Joe. He looked like the sort of chap who knew how to fix a dripping tap, who could change a tyre without swearing, who could accept there might be an opinion in the world that was different from his.
‘I’d like to call my best friend, Octavia Shelton.’
He ushered me out of the cell to a side room and I told him the number to dial. I knew she’d be in bed. I imagined her spooned up to Jonathan, all fleecy nightshirt and woolly socks. I was always teasing her about her utilitarian choice of bedwear. Scott would never have put up with it. She seemed to take forever to answer. GI Joe announced himself as calling from Surrey police, quickly saying there was nothing to worry about – though that, of course, depended on your perspective. He handed the phone to me.
Relief coursed through me. Octavia would get it sorted.
She always did.
I hated the bloody phone ringing in the middle of the night. Good news could always wait until morning. My first thought was Mum. I’d never liked her living alone in that big house after Dad died. I was awake on the first ring; it just took me a little longer to find the flaming handset under yesterday’s jeans.
I was still trying to get my head around the Surrey police announcement when Roberta came on the line. She sounded strained, as though she was being forced to speak in front of a hostile audience. As soon as she said, ‘Arrested’, she started blubbing and couldn’t get proper sentences out. I got ‘Scott’ and ‘solicitor’ and something about bringing a T-shirt. I ended up speaking slowly into the receiver, not sure whether she could even hear me.
I told her I’d be there as soon as I could, already grabbing a jumper from the end of the bed. Then the police officer came back on the phone. When I asked if I’d be able to see her, he told me that ‘detainees weren’t permitted visitors while in custody’. That did freak the shit out of me. Even though he said he didn’t know how long it would take for Roberta to be ‘processed’, I decided to go down anyway.
I pulled at Jonathan’s wrist, trying to read his watch in the dark. Nearly one o’clock. He shrugged in his sleep. I shook him. Then again, much harder. The whole family could be hacked to death with a machete and Jonathan would just tug the duvet a little higher. In desperation, I held his nose. I thought he might suffocate before he opened his eyes. Panic that Roberta might be in real trouble made me pinch hard.
When he did finally gasp into life, he squinted around as though he’d never woken up in our bedroom before. If the house had been on fire, I would have saved the three children, dog, hamster and been back for the giant African land snails before Jonathan had worked out where he was.
‘Roberta’s been arrested. I’m going to the police station,’ I said, while he was still peering round, mole-like. It really hacked me off that my husband could breathe life into any ailing computer but had the slowest thought processes on the planet when it came to getting to grips with the bare bones of a midnight phone call.
‘Arrested? Wha-? What’s happened?’ He started getting out of bed, almost knocking over his water glass. ‘Is she hurt?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘How long are you going to be?’
‘I don’t know, she couldn’t really speak. Not sure what’s happened, something to do with Scott.’
‘God, bloody Roberta. She can never have a drama at a civilised hour, can she?’
‘She can’t help it. Let’s hope she hasn’t murdered Scott,’ I said, tying my hair back with one of Polly’s school hairbands.
‘Can’t see that the world would be a worse place if she had done away with that arrogant git.’
‘Don’t say that. Anyway, go back to sleep.’ I wasn’t up for a rant about how Scott thought he was the dog’s bollocks with his great big banger of a house, even if it was the truth.
He snuggled down again but stuck out his hand to squeeze mine. I held it for a second. He was warm, as always. I flicked away the grain of resentment at having to turn out on a freezing December night to hoover up the shards of someone else’s life. Just for once I would have liked Jonathan to come and help me de-ice the car, make sure the stupid Volvo started. I snatched up my handbag and hoped Roberta hadn’t done something very silly.
Though God knows, Scott deserved it.
By the time I knew I was going to be released, I’d been swabbed, fingerprinted and photographed like a common criminal. I’d explained everything to a solicitor, then again to yet another policewoman who kept telling me that she knew how difficult this was for me.
Actually, she didn’t have the faintest clue. Everything about Scott had been complicated: meeting in Italy when he was on a gap year and I was an art student, the ensuing courtship that survived to- and fro-ing from Australia to England, our differences in culture, manners and upbringing.
Not to mention everyone else’s opinions on the subject.
I’d tried to be that obedient girl, destined for a future with a City boy. But I was no match for Scott’s persistence. He’d torn through my staid world, bringing spontaneity and irreverence. Springing out on me in the university library, straight off the plane from Australia. Spraying ‘I love you’ in shaving foam on the Mini my dad bought me for my twenty-first. Asking me to marry him in Sydney’s Waverley Cemetery, overlooking the sea.
This softly-spoken DC Smithfield probably thought I was a spoilt housewife, clinging on to a wealthy husband so I could shop for shoes every day. I didn’t have the energy to explain that we’d toiled away together, building up Scott’s property business, renovation by renovation.
By the time I signed the caution, accepting my guilt, I was punch-drunk, too exhausted to care about anything as long as I could lie down soon on a bed that wasn’t in a cell.
DC Smithfield told me that they’d have to finish processing me outside the custody suite because they were dealing with some ‘violent detainees’ in there. I wasn’t about to start splitting hairs over my preferred exit location. She led me into the normal part of the police station, where I’d once come to report the lawnmower being stolen from our shed.
And to my delight, Octavia was sitting there. My whole soul lifted as though I’d been staggering along with a box of encyclopaedias and had just found a table to rest it on.
She rushed over. ‘What the hell’s going on? Are you okay?’
I threw my arms round her, breathing in a trace of White Musk, the perfume oil she’d been wearing since we were about thirteen. I’d be able to pick her out blindfolded. Octavia was quick to prise me off her. She preferred the Swiss Army knife approach to drama.
She СКАЧАТЬ