by Jojo Moyes
He edged past her with his palms up and headed down the path. He opened and shut the car door, then locked it again, just to give himself something to do, trying to think clearly over the ringing in his ears. Just drive off, a little voice said. Just go. You never have to see her again. You do not need this right now.
Ed liked order. He liked to know what was coming. Everything about this woman suggested the kind of . . . boundarylessness that made him nervous.
He was halfway up the path when he heard them talking behind the half-closed door, their voices carrying across the little garden.
"I'm going to tell him no."
"You can't, Jess." The boy's voice. "Why?"
"Because it's too complicated. I work for him."
"You clean his house. That's not the same thing."
"We don't know him, then. How can I tell Tanzie not to get in cars with men she doesn't know, and then do exactly that?"
"He wears glasses. He's hardly going to be a serial killer."
"Tell that to Dennis Nilsen's victims. And Harold Shipman's."
"You know way too many serial killers. We'll set Norman on him if he does anything bad." The boy's voice again.
"Yes. Because Norman has been so useful, protecting this family in the past."
"Mr. Nicholls doesn't know that, does he?"
"Look. He's just some bloke. He probably got caught up in the drama last night. It's obvious he doesn't want to do it. We'll . . . we'll just let Tanzie down gently."
Tanzie. Ed watched her running around the back garden, her hair flying out behind her. He watched the dog shambling back toward the door, half dog, half yak, leaving an intermittent snail trail of drool behind him.
"I'm wearing him out so that he'll sleep most of the journey." She appeared in front of him, panting.
"Right."
"I'm really good at maths. We're going to an Olympiad so I can win money to go to a school where I can do A-level maths. Do you know what my name is, converted to binary code?"
He looked at her. "Is Tanzie your full name?"
"No. But it's the one I use."
He blew out his cheeks. "Um. Okay. 01010100 01100001 01101110 01111010 01101001 01100101."
"Did you say 1010 at the end? Or 0101?"
"1010. Duh." He used to play this game with Ronan.
"Wow. You actually spelled it right." She walked past him and pushed the door. "I've never been to Scotland. Nicky keeps trying to tell me there are herds of wild haggis. But that's a lie, right?"
"To the best of my knowledge they're all farmed these days," he said.
Tanzie stared at him. Then she beamed, and sort of growled at the same time.
And Ed realized he was headed for Scotland.
The two women fell silent as he pushed the door open. Their eyes dropped to the bags that he picked up in each hand.
"I need to get some stuff before we go," he said, as he let the door swing behind him. "And you left out Gary Ridgway. The Green River Killer. But you're fine. They were all nearsighted, and I'm farsighted."
--
It took half an hour to leave town. The lights were out on the top of the hill and that, combined with Easter holiday traffic, slowed the queue of cars to a bad-tempered crawl. Jess sat in the car beside him, silent and awkward, her hands pressed together between her knees.
He had the air conditioner on, but it couldn't disguise the smell of the dog, so he turned it off and they sat with all four windows open instead. Tanzie kept up a constant stream of chatter.
"Have you been to Scotland before?"
"Where do you come from?"
"Do you have a house there?"
"Why are you staying here then?"
He had some work to sort out, he said. It was easier than "I'm awaiting possible prosecution and a jail term of up to seven years."
"Do you have a wife?"
"Not anymore."
"Were you unfaithful?"
"Tanzie," said Jess.
He blinked. Glanced into the rearview mirror. "Nope."
"On Jeremy Kyle one person is usually unfaithful. Sometimes they have another baby and they have to do a DNA test and usually when it's right, the woman looks like she wants to hit someone. But mostly they just start crying."
Tanzie squinted out of the window.
"They're a bit mad, these women, mostly. Because the men have all got another baby with someone else. Or lots of girlfriends. So statistically they're really likely to do it again. But none of the women ever seem to think about statistics."
"I don't really watch Jeremy Kyle," he said, glancing at the GPS.
"Nor do I. Only when I go to Nathalie's house when Mum's working. She records it while she's cleaning so she can watch it in the evenings. She has forty-seven episodes on her hard drive."
"Tanzie," Jess said. "I think Mr. Nicholls probably wants to concentrate."
"It's fine."
Jess was twisting a strand of her hair. She had her feet up on the seat. Ed really hated people putting their feet on seats. Even if they did take their shoes off.
"So why did your wife leave you?"
"Tanzie."
"I'm being polite. You said it was good to make polite conversation."
"I'm sorry," Jess said.
"Really. It's fine." He addressed Tanzie through the rearview mirror: "She thought I worked too much."
"They never say that on Jeremy Kyle."
The traffic cleared, and they headed out onto the dual carriageway. It was a beautiful day, and he was tempted to take the coast road, but he didn't want to risk getting caught in traffic again. The dog whined, the boy played Nintendo, his head down in intense concentration, and Tanzie grew quieter. He turned the radio on--a hits channel--and for a moment or two he started to think this could be okay. It was just a day out of his life, if they didn't hit too much traffic. And it was better than being stuck in the house.
"The GPS reckons about eight hours if we don't hit any jams," he said.
"By motorway?"
"Well, yeah." He glanced left. "Even a top-of-the-range Audi doesn't have wings." He tried to smile, to show her he was joking, but Jess was still straight-faced.
"Uh . . . there's a bit of a problem."
"A problem."
"Tanzie gets sick if we go fast."
"What do you mean 'fast'? Eighty? Ninety?"
"Um . . . actually, fifty. Okay, maybe forty."
Ed glanced into the rearview mirror. Was it his imagination or had the child grown a little paler? She was gazing out of the window, her hand resting on the dog's head. "Forty?" He slowed. "You're joking, right? You're saying we have to drive to Scotland via B roads?"
"No. Well, maybe. Look, it's possible she's grown out of it. But she doesn't travel by car very much and we used to have big problems with it and . . . I just don't want to mess up your nice car."
Ed glanced into the rearview mirror again. "We can't take the minor roads--that's ridiculous. It would take days to get there. Anyway, she'll be fine. This car is brand new. It has award-winning suspension. Nobody gets sick in it."
She looked straight ahead. "You don't have kids, do you?"
"Why do you ask?"
"No reason."
--
It took twenty-five minutes to disinfect and shampoo the backseat, and even then every time he put his head inside the interior Ed got a faint whiff of vomit. Jess borrowed a bucket from a petrol station and used shampoo that she had packed in one of the kids' bags. Nicky sat on the verge beside the garage, hiding behind a pair of oversized shades, and Tanzie sat with the dog, holding a balled tissue to her mouth, like a consumptive.
"I'm so sorry," Jess kept saying, her sleeves rolled up, her face set in a grim line of concentration.
"It's fine. You're the one cleaning it."
"I'll pay for you to get your car valeted afterward."
He raised an eyebrow at her. He was laying a plastic bin bag over the seat so that the kids wouldn't get damp when they sat dow
n again.
"Well, okay, I'll do it. It will smell better, whatever."
Sometime later they climbed back into the car. Nobody remarked on the smell. He ensured his window was as low as it could go, and began reprogramming the GPS.
"So," he said. "Scotland it is. Via B roads." He pressed the "destination" button. "Glasgow or Edinburgh?"
"Aberdeen."
He looked at Jess.
"Aberdeen. Of course." He looked behind him, trying not to let the despair seep into his voice. "Everyone happy? Water? Plastic bag on seat? Sick bags in place? Good. Let's go."
Ed heard his sister's voice as he pulled back onto the road. Ha ha ha, Ed. Served.
--
It began to rain shortly after Portsmouth. Ed drove along the back roads, keeping at a steady thirty-eight all the way, feeling the fine spit of raindrops from the half inch of window he had not felt able to close. He found he had to focus on not putting his foot too far down on the accelerator the whole time. It was a constant frustration, going at this sedate speed, like having an itch you couldn't quite scratch. In the end he switched on cruise control.
Given their pace, he had time to study Jess surreptitiously. She remained silent, her head mostly turned away from him, as if he had done something to annoy her. He remembered her in his hallway now, demanding money, her chin tilted up--she was quite short. She still seemed to think he was an arsehole. Come on, he told himself. Two, three days maximum. And then you never have to see them again. Let's play nice.
"So . . . do you clean many houses?"
She frowned a little. "Yes."
"You have a lot of regulars?"
"It's a holiday park."
"Did you . . . Was it something you wanted to do?"
"Did I grow up wanting to clean houses?" She raised an eyebrow, as if checking that he had seriously asked that question. "Um, no. I wanted to be a professional scuba diver. But I had Tanze and I couldn't work out how to get the pram to float."
"Okay, it was a dumb question."
She rubbed her nose. "It's not my dream job, no. But it's fine. I can work around the kids and I like most of the people I clean for."
Most of.
"Can you make a living out of it?"
Her head shot round. "What do you mean?"
"Just what I said. Can you make a living? Is it lucrative?"
She looked away from him. "We get by."
"No, we don't," said Tanzie, from the back.
"Tanze."
"You're always saying we haven't got enough money."
"It's just a figure of speech." Jess blushed.
"So what do you do, Mr. Nicholls?" said Tanzie.
"I work for a company that creates software. Do you know what that is?"
"Of course."
Nicky looked up. In the rearview mirror Ed watched him remove his earbuds. When the boy saw him looking, he glanced away.
"Do you design games?"
"Not games, no."
"What, then?"
"Well, for the last few years we've been working on a piece of software that we hope will move us closer to a cashless society."
"How would that work?"
"Well, when you buy something or pay a bill, you wave your phone, which has a thing a bit like a bar code, and for every transaction you pay a tiny, tiny amount, like nought point nought one of a pound."
"We would pay to pay?" said Jess. "No one will want that."
"That's where you're wrong. The banks love it. Retailers like it because it gives them one uniform system instead of cards, cash, checks . . . and you'll pay less per transaction than you do on a credit card. So it works for both sides."
"Some of us don't use credit cards unless we're desperate."
"Then it would just be linked to your bank account. You wouldn't, like, have to do anything."
"So if every bank and retailer picks this up, we won't get a choice."
"That's a long way off."
There was a brief silence. Jess pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them. "So basically the rich get richer--the banks and the retailers--and the poor get poorer."
"Well, in theory, perhaps. But that's the joy of it. It's such a tiny amount you won't notice it. And it will be very convenient."
Jess muttered something he didn't catch.
"How much is it again?" said Tanzie.
"Point nought one per transaction. So it works out as a little less than a penny."
"How many transactions a day?"
"Twenty? Fifty? Depends how much you do."
"So that's fifty pence a day."
"Exactly. Nothing."
"Three pounds fifty a week," said Jess.
"One hundred and eighty-two pounds a year," said Tanzie. "Depending on how close the fee actually is to a penny. And whether it's a leap year."
Ed lifted one hand from the wheel. "At the outside. Even you can't say that's very much."
Jess turned in her seat. "What does one hundred and eighty-two pounds buy us, Tanze?"
"Two supermarket pairs of school trousers, four school blouses, a pair of shoes. A gym kit and a five-pack of white socks. If you buy them from the supermarket. That comes to eighty-five pounds ninety-seven. The one hundred is exactly nine point two days of groceries, depending on whether anyone comes round and whether Mum buys a bottle of wine. That would be the supermarket's brand." Tanzie paused. "Or one month's council tax for a Band D property. We're Band D, right, Mum?"
"Yes, we are. Unless we get rebanded."
"Or an out-of-season three-day holiday at the holiday village in Kent. One hundred and seventy-five pounds, inclusive of VAT." She leaned forward. "That's where we went last year. We got an extra night free because Mum mended the man's curtains. And they had a waterslide."
There was another brief silence.
Ed was about to speak when Tanzie's head appeared between the two front seats. "Or a whole month's cleaning of a four-bedroom house from Mum, laundering of sheets and towels included, at her current rates. That would be three hours' cleaning, one point three hours laundering." She leaned back in her seat, apparently satisfied.
They drove three miles, turned right at a T-junction, left onto a narrow lane. Ed wanted to say something but his voice had temporarily disappeared. Behind him, Nicky put his earbuds back in and turned away. The sun hid briefly behind a cloud.
"Still," said Jess, putting her bare feet up on the dashboard, and leaning forward to turn up the music, "let's hope you do really well with it, eh?"
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jess
Jess's grandmother had often said that the key to a happy life was a short memory. Admittedly, that was before she got dementia and used to forget where she lived, but Jess took her point. She had to forget about that money. She was never going to survive being stuck in a car with Mr. Nicholls if she let herself think too hard about what she had done. Marty used to tell her she had the world's worst poker face: her feelings floated across her features like reflections on a still pond. She would blurt out a confession within hours. Or she would go crazy with the tension and start plucking at bits of the upholstery with her fingernails.
She sat in the car and listened to Tanzie chatting, and she told herself she would find a way to pay it all back before he discovered what she had done. She would take it out of Tanzie's winnings. She would work it out somehow. She told herself he was just a man who had offered them a lift and with whom she had to make polite conversation for a few hours a day.
And periodically she glanced behind her at the two kids and thought, What else could I have done?
It shouldn't have been hard to sit back and enjoy the ride. The country lanes were banked with wildflowers, and when the rain cleared, the clouds revealed skies the azure blue of 1950s postcards. Tanzie wasn't sick again, and with every mile they traveled from home she found her shoulders starting to inch downward from her ears. She saw now that it had been months since she had felt even remotely at ease. Her l
ife these days held a constant underlying drumbeat of worry: What were the Fishers going to do next? What was going on in Nicky's head? What was she to do about Tanzie? And the grim bass percussion underneath it all: Money. Money. Money.
"You okay?" said Mr. Nicholls.
Hauled from her thoughts, Jess muttered, "Fine. Thanks." They nodded awkwardly at each other. He hadn't relaxed. It was obvious in his intermittently tightened jaw, the way his knuckles showed white on the steering wheel. Jess wasn't sure what on earth had been behind his decision to offer to drive, but she was pretty sure he had regretted it ever since.
"Um, is there any chance you could stop with the tapping?"
"Tapping?"
"Your feet. On the dashboard."
She looked at her feet.
"It's really distracting."
"You want me to stop tapping my feet."
He looked straight ahead through the windscreen. "Yes. Please."
She let her feet slide down, but she was uncomfortable, so after a moment she lifted them and tucked them under her on the seat. She rested her head on the window.
"Your hand."
"What?"
"Your hand. You're hitting your knee now."
She had been tapping it absentmindedly. "You want me to stay completely still while you drive."
"I'm not saying that. But the tapping thing is making it hard for me to focus."
"You can't drive if I'm moving any part of my body?"
"That's not it."
"What is it, then?"
"It's tapping. I just find . . . tapping . . . irritating."
Jess took a deep breath. "Kids, nobody is to move. Okay? We don't want to irritate Mr. Nicholls."
"The kids aren't doing it," he said mildly. "It's just you."
"You do fidget a lot, Mum."
"Thanks, Tanze." Jess clasped her hands in front of her. She sat and clenched her teeth and concentrated on staying still. She closed her eyes and cleared her mind of money, of Marty's stupid car, of her worries for the children, letting them float away with the miles. And as the breeze from the open window rippled over her face and the music filled her ears, just briefly she felt like a woman in a different sort of life altogether.
--
They stopped for lunch at a pub somewhere outside Oxford, unfurling themselves and letting out little sighs of relief as they cracked joints and stretched cramped limbs. Mr. Nicholls disappeared into the pub and she sat on a picnic table and unpacked the sandwiches she had made hastily that morning when it turned out they were going to get a lift after all.