Part 6 (1/2)

'Excuse me, have you seen Abigail?' Very polite.

'No,' they would reply, already looking suspicious, twitching their reins. 'Abigail who?'

'Well, if you see Abigail, could you tell her not, under any circ.u.mstances, to use the toilets over there?'

'STAND!' they would bark at their nervous ponies. 'Stand! Why?'

'It's just that there are some boys going round looking through the holes in the wood when people are using the toilets. I think she ought to know I mean, it's not very nice is it? so I'd be grateful if you'd tell her. Thanks very much.'

The girls would flick a glance at the toilets and then look back at Terry as he walked away, and he would sense rather, he would know that the girls would be calculating when they last used the toilets or when they would next need to. Although the novelty of this exercise quickly wore off for Sam and Clive, Terry could have cheerfully continued the game all afternoon.

They bought lemonade from the refreshments counter inside the pavilion. 'You've got a broken window,' Clive observed to the lady engaged in serving.

'Vandals,' she said, opening the till.

'I wish I could get 'em,' said a red-faced man with a cloth cap and green Wellington boots. Purple veins in his cheeks seemed set to explode. 'I'd make 'em into pulp.'

'It's so senseless,' Clive pointed out, accepting his change.

'They must be sick,' Sam added.

They slurped their lemonade and watched the compet.i.tors without interest. The commentator's disembodied voice requested a big hand for Lucinda on Shandy. Terry left them to go to the toilet. While p.i.s.sing he glanced up and saw an eye looking at him through a knot-hole. The eye disappeared, to be replaced by another one.

When he came out two girls in jodhpurs, holding their riding hats in their hands, were giggling at him. 'f.u.c.king perverts,' he growled.

He found the other two standing near a practice jump, hoping to see someone fall off. Ponies cantered up in regular order to leap the bales of straw. Terry was about to tell them about the giggling girls when he heard pounding hooves accelerating behind them. 'Out of the way!' a rider screamed. The boys scattered as a horse twice the size of most of the ponies galloped between them and cleared the practice jump by at least three feet. The rider reined in the horse, turned it in a circle and walked it back towards them.

It was a girl. She wore cream-coloured jodhpurs and a tweed hacking jacket. Her long, dark hair was stuffed into a net under her peaked riding hat. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes blazed.

'Could have killed us!' bellowed Clive.

'Then don't stand in the middle of the practice ring, stupid!'

The horse loomed overhead. She sat six feet above them, twisting in her saddle, struggling to restrain the excited, walleyed animal. Sam recognized the girl with whom he had locked eyes when he was hiding in the pavilion. He instinctively took off his gla.s.ses, and then put them back on again. 'Just watch where you're going.'

'You stay there if you're dumb enough to want to get trampled.' She spurred on the horse with the heels of her gleaming black riding boots, and the boys had to part a second time to get out of her way.

'b.i.t.c.h,' shouted one of the boys, but she was already cantering away.

's.l.u.t!'

'Tart!'

'Slag!'

They were silent, gazing after her as she disappeared inside the compet.i.tion ring.

'She's f.u.c.king gorgeous,' breathed Sam.

'Yeah,' Terry agreed, still in awe.

'Yes,' said Clive, doubtfully.

12.

Gun 'How long have I been seeing you now?' Skelton made a cursory flick through the file in his hands.

Sam shrugged. He wasn't certain if it was three years or four. Terry had stopped seeing Skelton after the first year, when his nightmares began to subside. Sam, however, had taken Clive's advice.

Indeed, Sam had never objected at all to having his head looked at. It meant, after you'd endured an hour answering pointless questions and drawing pictures for the nicotine-stained psychiatrist, a respite from school. When Terry had been 'cured', thereby losing his bonus holiday, Clive had advised Sam how to secure a day off school indefinitely. 'Next time he asks you, draw a picture of your own gravestone.'

So Sam had done just that. After the usual round of tedious and baffling questions about his mother and father, Skelton had given him a pencil and a large sheet of cartridge paper, instructing him to draw a scene 'with water'. Sam had hastily scribbled a picture of a pond surrounded by trees, under which was beautifully rendered a Celtic-cross gravestone, shadowed with lush moss and tangled with ivy. His name was engraved in the stone.

SAMUEL SOUTHALL.

REST IN PEACE.

GNAWED TO DEATH BY A TOOTH FAIRY.

For good measure, Sam had included a bat swooping towards the headstone and a skull pierced by a dagger resting alongside the grave mound. Skelton had taken the sheet of paper and studied it closely. 'Good,' he'd said in a disturbingly quiet voice, 'good, very good.' Then he'd made extensive notes as Sam sat playing with his thumbs. Appointments had quickened in frequency after that offering and had then thinned out to one meeting every twelve weeks over the last three years. With Skelton now flicking through the manila folder and asking him how long it had been, Sam wondered if it was time to sketch another gothic picture.

Placing the folder flat on the large, polished oak desk, Skelton came from behind it to plump heavily in the armchair next to Sam. Crossing his legs, he placed his fingertips together, prayer-like, under his chin. He exuded stale tobacco. 'Are we still seeing the Tooth Fairy?'

Sam croaked an answer. He had to say it again. 'Yes.'

'How often?' Skelton's answer was met with a shrug. The Scotsman thrust out his jaw, exposing the yellowing, stone tablets of his own lower teeth. He seemed barely to have enough room in his mouth for them. 'Often, occasionally or rarely?'

'Occasionally.'

'And does he still instruct you not to tell me about him?'

'Yes.'

'Always?'

'Yes.'

Skelton tilted his head radically to one side, fluttering his eyes closed, as if listening to far-away music. Suddenly he jerked upright. 'What?'

'I didn't say anything,' Sam insisted, pus.h.i.+ng his gla.s.ses up the bridge of his nose.

'Quite. I think it's time we said goodbye to this Tooth Fairy, don't you?' Sam shrugged another answer. Skelton mimicked with a return shrug. 'Yes, farewell to the spiritus dentatus, methinks, G.o.d speed, safe journey, bon voyage, mind how ye go, be on yer way, old chap, only goodbye. What say you? Hmmm?'

Sam looked at his shoelaces.