The Age of Misadventure

Jade puts a steady hand on my shoulder.

I frown. ‘Where is she, Adie?’ My mind’s accelerating. She’s probably under the bed.

‘At the airport. She’s telling me to meet her there. We can catch a plane somewhere – get away together.’ He gapes at me for a moment. ‘She’s okay. Thank goodness. She said she heard someone downstairs and knew instinctively we’d need to get away for a bit. My clever little Bonnie. I’ll go back to the house quickly, pack a bag and we’ll be gone.’

He turns away. He’s not interested in me any more. He’s off, through the kitchen and reception, towards the door.

‘I’ll be in touch, Georgie.’

He flips the bolt and is outside, letting chilly air whoosh into the house. He slips into the darkness and he’s a shadow. I hear the clip of his car door, the growl of an engine. Then he’s gone. I close the door and lock it.

‘And good riddance to Adie. Well done, Bonnie. She played a genius card there.’

Jade’s face contorts. ‘But when he gets to the airport, she won’t be there. What then?’

‘It buys us time.’ I shrug. ‘But we’ll have to think of something.’

I go back to the lounge and Bonnie’s standing in the doorway, holding her phone in her fist.

‘In an hour or two, I’ll message him again. I’ll tell him I was nervous, I imagined someone was following me and I took a cab to Edinburgh Airport. I’ll send him on a goose chase.’

‘You heard it all, Bon?’

Her brows are knit in a frown. She’s clearly furious.

‘I snuck down and listened. Adie’s messed up one of his deals. I tiptoed back upstairs and texted him. I’m not being frightened out of my own house by his dodgy friends. I want out.’

Jade links her arm through Bonnie’s. ‘What are you going to do?’

Bonnie’s new resolve and determination fills me with optimism. She’ll be better away from Adie. I plaster a smile on my face and launch in.

‘We have to avoid Adie until he’s out of trouble. We need to think carefully and come up with a plan.’

I gaze from my daughter to my sister. Jade’s face is calm, her skin luminous. She’s off to Brighton to start a new life with her Spanish beau. Bonnie’s pale, anxious. I have to get her away from Adie. I think of what might have happened to Bonnie if she hadn’t left the house in Frodsham and my mind shuffles thoughts about what to do next.

Jade leans back in her seat and stretches her arms out, flexing the muscles. I’ll miss her when she’s in Brighton. The feeling of loss is already starting to squat on my shoulders and clutch at my heart. Then an idea flashes in my mind, perfectly formed. It’s an opportunity, exploding in front of me like a firework. In one move, I can persuade my sister to leave her philandering husband and stay close to my daughter at the same time. Adie and his criminal capers are the perfect excuse.

My mind moves to Nanny, all alone in her cold home. At once, I know how to resolve all of our problems in a single checkmate move. And we can have some fun at the same time. It’s the perfect opportunity to be together, to bond, three generations of women celebrating independence. A wide grin stretches across my face and, quick as lightning, I change it to a serious frown.

‘Bonnie, Jade – I know what we have to do. It’s as clear as daylight. We can’t stay here and wait for Adie to find out we’ve sent him on a goose chase. We’ll take things into our own hands, be in charge of the situation. Until this problem with Adie blows over, we have to put ourselves first. So, we’ll all go away together, tonight. And I know the perfect place.’

Chapter Eight (#ulink_bae7f607-5571-56ad-b01b-5ae1ef8b8b91)

The sky is full of stars, little diamonds set in metres of black velvet. It’s almost three in the morning and the cold has started to bite at the exposed bits of my flesh. Bonnie’s helped herself to items from my wardrobe; she’s wearing a long faux-fur coat and matching hat and she looks like a movie star. Jade’s on the phone to Luis, multitasking at the same time, packing cases and boxes into the back of my BMW. Her movements are smooth and athletic.

I raid the till for the unbanked day’s takings, text Amanda that I’ll be away for a few days and promise to ring her soon with the details, but please could she hold the fort. Then we lock the front door, leave a light on in the hallway and drive through empty roads to a terraced street on the other side of the park. There are no lights on anywhere: the row of little houses is all in spongy darkness, behind scratchy hedges as straight as sentries.

I slip the key in and open the front door. The three of us are in blackout, walking on our toes, hunched over in a line like the kids in Scooby Doo. I flick the kitchen light on and suggest Bonnie and Jade wait downstairs. Nanny’s not going to like being disturbed. I’m scared about waking her. What if she has a heart attack?

I creep upstairs, stand on the top step and a floorboard creaks. I hold my breath for ages, thinking what to say.

Then an old lady’s voice rasps, ‘I have a shotgun in here. And if you don’t believe me, you burgling bastard, try me. Come in here and I’ll blow your bloody head off.’

‘Nan?’ I whisper as loudly as I can. ‘Nanny, it’s me, Georgie.’

I hear the expletive under her breath. Then she calls, ‘I haven’t got my teeth in. Don’t come in yet.’ I wait, staring in the dark, then she says, ‘All right. You can come in.’

I tiptoe into her bedroom and she switches the bedside lamp on. The room floods with orange light. She sits up in bed in a duck-egg blue winceyette nightie with ruffles at the neck and blinks. Her hair’s dishevelled, tufty and tucked under the green woolly hat. I glance round the room. The old wardrobe with the silver mirror reflects our shapes back to us: a ghostlike sliver of a woman sitting up in a bed with rumpled blankets and another woman in a bulky coat, shivering. The room’s bare except for the wardrobe, a pile of old books and newspapers in the corner, and several cardboard boxes full of junk. There’s a pervasive smell of dusty old clothes and stale piss.

I take a breath. ‘You haven’t really got a shotgun, have you, Nan?’

‘Don’t be daft. You think I’m mad? What do you want here at this time of night? Your house burned down, has it?’

I move to the edge of the bed and sit down next to her, taking her hand. Her fingers are stone cold.

‘Nan, I have some news for you. I don’t want you to worry.’

She leans forwards and her lip trembles. ‘Bonnie, is it? Is she all right?’

‘She’s downstairs. With Jade. We’ve got the car outside. We have to go away.’

It takes her a while to take this in. She frowns, her face a creased map of the tropics, and her eyes glitter.

‘What about me?’

This is it, I think. Here we go. ‘You’re coming with us. To Brighton.’

‘Over my dead body, Georgina. I’m not going anywhere.’

‘I can’t take care of you here, Nan. Not now. Please, trust me on this. It’s not good for Bonnie to stay here. Adie’s done something stupid; he owes money and he’s made some enemies.’ I take a deep breath, finding the right words to coax her to leave the house she’s lived in for over sixty years. ‘We have to go, Nan. All of us. Jade’s going to Brighton to live with Luis. Bonnie needs to get away, just for a short while. We’ll all go with Jade.’ I stop there: I’m about to say ‘to keep an eye on her’, but it’s best to say nothing.

Nanny stares, her mouth a straight line, and I wonder how I’m going to persuade her. Then she eases her legs out of bed, feet encased in hairy socks, and turns to me.

‘We’d better get packing then, Georgina. I can’t do it myself, can I? I’m in my eighties. You make sure I have plenty of warm clothes. My own towel. Plenty of Guinness. And I’ll need to take my heart tablets and my arthritis tablets. And some photos – Wilf and the one of us and our Josie and Kenny at the caravan site in Wales.’

I must have my mouth open, because she says, ‘Stop staring, Georgina. Come on. You can tell me about it as we go. I hope you’ve brought some sandwiches and a flask for the journey. I like my tea sweet. And I’m not sitting in the front seat. I don’t like all those blinding headlights. They give me a headache.’ She struggles to her feet. ‘Well, I suppose it’ll be an adventure. I don’t get out much.’ She pushes me away with her hand. ‘Go on with you, then. I’m going to get dressed. I don’t want you staring at my bits and bobs. Get packing. I’m going to Brighton.’

It takes us two hours to pack to Nanny’s satisfaction. I do most of it. Nanny spends the time patting my faux-fur coat with Bonnie in it and asking Jade what Spanish men are like between the sheets and whether sex is banned the night before a football match. Jade replies with deliberately outrageous comments.

‘We have this game, Nanny, where I wave a red sheet at Luis and he puts his fingers on his head like bulls’ horns and chases me naked round the bedroom.’

Nanny believes her. Her eyebrows shoot up under her woolly hat like circumflexes.

By five o’clock, we have her strapped in the back of the car next to Bonnie. She’s still stroking the arm of the faux-fur coat like it was Blofeld’s white cat. Jade’s next to me, chatting to me to keep me alert. Bonnie looks miserable.

‘What’s the plan, Georgie?’

The idea came to me straight away, before we collected Nanny, and it seems like a good strategy for escape.