In Hampton Close Janet was wondering where Bridget was, too. Ray and Paul were in from football, she’d made Pauly a ham sandwich, he sat in the kitchen, swinging his legs and reading his comic, Ray had his feet up in the front room. She’d already been to church, when she’d got back she’d knocked gingerly on Bridget’s bedroom door and when there’d been no answer she’d opened it softly and peeked in and seen it empty and stood for a bit and gone downstairs. Ray and Pauly had got in and she’d sorted them out, muddy boots, cup of tea, ham sandwich in the kitchen and then she’d popped upstairs again just to check she hadn’t missed something, a trail of clothes to the bathroom, the sounds of splashing but there was nothing, no Bridget anywhere, not hunched under the duvet or locked in the bathroom, so she’d come downstairs and paused in the doorway to the front room.
“Have you seen Bridge?”
“What’s that love?” Ray was snoozing.
“She’s not in her room.”
“She’s probably gone down the shops.” He opened one eye, reached for his glasses.
“I didn’t ask her for anything.”
“You know what she’s like.” He sighed and closed his eyes again.
Janet did know what her teenage daughter was like. She’d known what she was like when she was a sweet little boisterous girl and she knew what she’d become when the spots and greasy hair and sulks had come. When the bosoms had sprouted bigger than Janet’s ever were at that age and the weight had piled on and she’d taken her down C&A for a bra, and to the chemist.
She went out the front door in her slippers and looked up and down the street. Kate Hilperton’s Volvo was there. She saw the husband come out with the four little ones and pile them into it. He looked up and waved.
Janet came out further to meet him. “Off somewhere nice?”
“My mother’s.”
“No Kate?”
“She’s at that thing.” Four little girls, the twins and two others. No Peggy.
“What thing’s that then?” She knew perfectly well what thing. She’d known when Kate Hilperton had stuck that leaflet through their door. She’d gone on about it every time she caught her on the street which wasn’t often as Janet had taken to avoiding her. She didn’t want her Bridget getting caught up in all that. It was bad enough with Ray commandeering the downstairs toilet.
She’d only managed to stop him bricking up the front door by telling him he’d have to give up his Saturday nights coming home at all hours. She couldn’t have him tripping over the flowerpots, crashing about trying to find the back door. He was like a horse with three legs and one eye; feet too large, heart too big for his narrow frame; it would burst one day, she was sure of it. If he didn’t knock himself out going headfirst into something it would be his heart that would give way, serve her right for marrying a man twice her age. Before the bomb it was the IRA and before that goodness knows what, she’d blanked it out, always something he’d got in a twist about. Punks coming to Surbiton. Just because he’d seen some lad with orange hair on the high street.
It had been sweet once upon a time when he’d strung his arm around her and said he’d keep her safe, she’d never felt unsafe, but there it was, if it pleased him, she’d been happy to go along with it, but had she known – it was here that Janet’s thoughts would wash away into a blur of never mind, and that’s how it is, and she’d made her bed so she’d better lie in it. She had bigger things to worry about than what might have been, like stopping him knocking out the seat of another one of her kitchen chairs. That bloody booklet. Janet didn’t like to swear but she swore in her head. What she wouldn’t give, to give Maggie a piece of her mind. She wished it would all go away, not in the way that Kate Hilperton wanted, but disappear as if the Russians and Americans had never existed, go back to life like it used to be when the children were little and all Ray was worried about was Sid Vicious and Sinn Fein, before he got fixed on the idea that all that stood between them and certain death was him and his bloody shelter.
She felt exposed in her slippers, standing there on the street, not close enough to Kate Hilperton’s husband to not have to shout. Simon, he’d said when they moved into Janet’s street, his hand outstretched but Janet had kept her distance as she did now. She never felt sure about men in the flesh. She didn’t mind them on telly, but up close they were too real. She’d only managed to let Ray get near her because he’d been so much older, almost like her dad, and he hadn’t hardly been interested in sex, only enough to have Bridget and Pauly and that had been that. Simon Hilperton was tall like Ray but with brown hair that was already thinning on top, too young to be losing it. Ray’s used to blonde before it went grey, but he hadn’t lost a thread hardly.
Simon worked in the city, she’d had one awkward conversation with him at a barbeque, been stuck with him by the paddling pool keeping an eye on the children. Since then she’d avoided him, had concentrated on Kate, if she had to, at the bloody awful endless parties the Hilperton’s insisted on throwing, inviting everyone in the street, as if the entire collection of Hampton Close had been dying for some hoity-toity family to bring them all together, like for the Jubilee when Kate had made a point of telling Janet she wasn’t for the royal family but this was an exception, or the royal wedding when she’d done the same.
Simon Hilperton took the car keys out of his mouth where he’d put them when he needed two hands to get the youngest in the front. “That women’s thing. For the bomb.” He paused his efforts, his girls at least in the car if not sitting down. “Can I help you with something, Janet?”
It felt a bit intimate hearing him use her name, as if she was standing on the street with no clothes on. “Oh, no, nothing. Enjoy yourselves.”
One long leg threaded under the steering wheel, he waved before she’d finished her sentence. She went back in her house, into the front room, but Ray was asleep in his chair, the paper dropped on his chest. He’d be expecting lunch on the table when he woke.
Janet served up carrots and roast potatoes as Ray carved the chicken.
“Maybe she’s gone for a walk.” The electric carving knife ripped through chicken breast.
“Bridget?” Janet knew it was the last thing her daughter would do. She’d hardly leave the tent when they went camping. The only place she walked was to school.
“Maybe she’s run away,” said Paul, dipping a finger in the gravy.
“She’ll be back when she’s hungry,” said Ray, flopping a torn slice of breast meat onto his wife’s plate.
Paul kicked his feet against his sister’s empty chair and both of them told him to stop it.
At gone five there was still no sign of Bridget and they’d cancelled the afternoon visit to Ray’s mother.
“I think we should call the police.” Janet couldn’t sit down. She kept going to the front door and looking out. She wished she’d prayed at church this morning, but she hadn’t known this morning as she’d knelt in the pew that her girl wasn’t up in bed snoring.
Ray switched on the news. A helicopter showed an ariel view of RAF Greenham Common. Around the fence bodies moved like ants, thickly spread. Above the whirring of the helicopter blades, the newsman told what the women did.
“Will you look at that,” said Janet over her husband’s shoulder, he in the front room chair.
“They’ll never succeed,” said Ray, his feet up on the leather pouf.
“I don’t see why not,” said Janet.
“Don’t be mad, woman.”
Michael Heseltine replaced the ariel view of Greenham.
“He gives me the creeps,” said Janet, perching on the edge of the sofa.
“He’s talking sense,” said Ray, mesmerised by the wafts of blonde lifting in the breeze outside Westminster.
But by six o’clock Ray decided to raise a search party. At least he would have done if the doorbell hadn’t rung, if they hadn’t both opened the door to find a bedraggled woman standing there, red nose, red hair limp, a woman Janet recognised from school.
“Can I come in?” asked Annabel.
“Heavens,” said Janet.
"It had been sweet once upon a time when he’d strung his arm around her and said he’d keep her safe, she’d never felt unsafe, but there it was, if it pleased him, she’d been happy to go along with it, but had she known – it was here that Janet’s thoughts would wash away into a blur of never mind, and that’s how it is, and she’d made her bed so she’d better lie in it." Great to get a glimpse into Janet's character. The elision in her thoughts feels so powerful.
Ooh where is she?!