The One Plus One

11. Ed

It took Edward Nicholls about fifteen minutes after he had left Danehall estate to question what the bloody hell he had just done. He had agreed to transport his stroppy cleaner, her two weird kids and an enormous reeking dog all the way to Scotland. What the hell had he been thinking? He could hear Gemma’s voice, the scepticism with which she had repeated his statement: ‘You’re taking a little girl you don’t know and her family to the other end of the country and it’s an “emergency”. Right.’ He could hear the inverted commas. A pause. ‘Pretty, is she?’

‘What?’

‘The mother. Big tits? Long eyelashes? Damsel in distress?’

‘That’s not it. Er …’ He couldn’t say anything with them all in the car.

‘I’ll take both those as a yes, then.’ She sighed deeply. ‘For Christ’s sake, Ed.’

Tomorrow morning he would pop by first thing, apologize and explain that something had come up. She’d understand. She probably felt weird about sharing a car with a near-stranger too. She hadn’t exactly jumped at the offer.

He would donate something towards the kid’s train fare. It wasn’t his fault the woman – Jess? – had decided to drive an untaxed, uninsured car, after all. If you looked at it on paper – the cops, the weird kids, the night-time joyriding – she was trouble. And Ed Nicholls did not need any more trouble in his life.

With these thoughts in his head, he washed, brushed his teeth and fell into the first decent sleep he’d had in weeks.

He pulled up outside the gate shortly after nine. He had meant to be there earlier but couldn’t remember where the house was, and given that the estate was a sprawling mass of identikit streets, he had driven up and down blindly for almost thirty minutes until he recognized Seacole Avenue. It was only the pub that got him there in the end.

It was a damp, still morning, the air heavy with moisture. The street was empty, apart from a ginger cat, which stalked its way along the pavement, its tail a question mark. Danehall seemed a little less unfriendly in daylight, but he still found himself double-checking he’d locked the car once he’d stepped out of it.

He gazed up at the windows, hoping he’d got the right place. Pink and white bunting hung in one of the upstairs rooms, and two hanging baskets swung listlessly from the front porch. A car sat under a tarpaulin in the next driveway. But the real giveaway was lumbering slowly around the front garden, pausing only to lift its leg against a child’s bicycle. Jesus. That dog. The size of it. Ed pictured it lolling over his back seat the previous evening. A faint echo of its scent had remained when he climbed back in this morning.

He opened the latch of the gate warily, in case it went for him, but it simply turned its enormous head with mild disinterest, walked to the shade of a weedy tree and flopped down on its side, lifting a desultory front leg as if in the vague hope it might get its stomach scratched.

‘I’ll pass, thanks,’ Ed said.

He walked up the path and paused at the door. He had his little speech all prepared.

Hi, I’m really sorry but something very important has come up with work and I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to take the next couple of days off. However, I’d be happy to contribute something to your daughter’s Olympiad fund. I think it’s great that she’s working so hard at her studies. So here’s her train fare.

If it sounded a little less convincing in his head this morning than it had done last night, well, it couldn’t be helped. He was about to knock when he saw the note, half attached to the door with a pin, flapping in the breeze:

FISHER YOU LITTLE WASTE OF SKIN I HAVE TOLD THE POLICE THAT IF ANYONE BREAKS IN IT WILL BE YOU AND THEY ARE WATCHING

As he straightened up the door opened. The little girl stood there. ‘We’re all packed,’ she said, squinting, her head tilted to one side. ‘Mum said you wouldn’t come but I knew you would so I said I wouldn’t let her unpack the suitcases until ten. And you made it with fifty-three minutes to spare. Which is actually about thirty-three minutes better than I estimated.’

He blinked.

‘Mum!’ She pushed the door open. Jess was standing in the hallway, as if she had stopped dead halfway down it. She was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her hair was clipped up. She did not look like someone preparing to travel the length of the country.

‘Hi.’ Ed smiled awkwardly.

‘Oh. Okay.’

She shook her head. And he realized the child had been telling the truth: she really hadn’t expected him to turn up. ‘I’d offer you a coffee, but I got rid of the last of the milk before we set off last night.’

Before he could answer, the boy sloped past, rubbing his eyes. His face was still swollen, and now coloured an impressionist palette of purples and yellows. He gazed at the pile of holdalls and bin bags in the hall and said, ‘Which of these are we taking?’

‘All of them,’ said the little girl. ‘And I packed Norman’s blanket.’

Jess looked at Ed warily. He made to open his mouth, but nothing came out. The entire length of the hallway was lined with battered paperbacks. He wasn’t sure why that surprised him.

‘Can you pick up this bag, Mr Nicholls?’ The little girl tugged it towards him. ‘I did try and lift it earlier because Nicky can’t pick stuff up right now but it’s too heavy for me.’

‘Sure.’ He found himself stooping, but stopped for a moment before he lifted it. How was he going to do this?

‘Listen. Mr Nicholls …’ Jess was in front of him. She looked as uncomfortable as he did. ‘About this trip –’

And then the front door flew open. A woman stood in jogging bottoms and a T-shirt, a baseball bat raised in her hand.

‘DROP THEM!’ she roared.

He froze.

‘PUT YOUR HANDS UP!’

‘Nat!’ Jess shouted. ‘Don’t hit him!’

He lifted them slowly, turning to face her.

‘What the –’ The woman looked past Ed at Jess. ‘Jess? Oh, my God. I thought someone was in your house.’

‘Someone is in my house. Me.’

The woman dropped the bat, then looked in horror at him. ‘Oh, my God. It’s – Oh, God, oh, God, I’m so sorry. I saw the front door and I honestly thought you were a burglar. I thought you were … you know who.’ She laughed nervously, then pulled an agonized face at Jess, as if he couldn’t see her.

Ed let out a breath. The woman put the bat behind her and tried to smile. ‘You know how it is around here …’

He took a step backwards and gave a small nod. ‘Okay, well … I just need to get my phone. Left it in the car.’

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 walked halfway back up the path, trying to formulate the right words. As he approached the house, he could just hear 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 Nielsen’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 towards 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 0101 at the end? Or 1010?’

‘0101. Duh.’ He used to play this game with Ronan.

‘Wow. You actually spelt 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 Nicholls 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 missed out Gary Ridgway. The Green River Killer. But you’re fine. They were all short-sighted. And my glasses are long.’

It took three-quarters of an hour to leave town. The lights were out on the top of the hill and that, combined with Easter-holidays traffic, slowed the queue of cars to a bad-tempered crawl. Jess sat in the car beside him, silent and oddly awkward, her hands pressed together between her knees. He guessed she knew that he’d overheard the whole conversation. She had barely said a single word since they’d left her house.

The boy – Nicky – sat on the other side of the dog to his sister. He had the air-con 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. And into this odd silence, 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 any more.’

‘Were you unfaithful?’

‘Tanzie,’ said Jess.

He blinked. Glanced into the rear-view 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.’

She 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 satnav.

‘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. 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 rear-view 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. Ed put his foot down. 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 silently with a 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 satnav 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 she 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 rear-view 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 rear-view 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 back seat, 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 afterwards.’

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 down again.

‘Well, okay, I’ll do it. It will smell better, whatever.’

Some time 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 satnav.

‘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 through 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.

Nicky fell asleep. Jess muttered something about him only coming out of hospital the previous day. He half wanted to ask her what had happened, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know quite how much trouble this family was likely to be.

Given the snail’s 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 her hallway now, demanding money, her chin tilted (she was quite short) and her unfriendly eyes unblinking. And then he remembered her behaviour at the bar, that she had had to babysit him all the way home. 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?’

Her face closed. ‘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.’ She blushed.

‘So what do you do, Mr Nicholls?’ said Tanzie.

‘I work for a company that creates software. You know what that is?’

‘Of course.’

Nicky looked up. In the rear-view mirror Ed watched him remove his ear-buds. 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 will hopefully 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, cheques … 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 swivelled 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 supermarket own-brand.’ She thought for a minute. ‘Or one month’s council tax for a Band D property. We’re Band D, right, Mum?’

‘Yes, we are. Unless we get re-banded.’

‘Or an out-of-season three-day holiday at the holiday village in Kent. One hundred and seventy-five pounds, inclusive of VAT.’ She leant 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 a 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. Give or take a pound.’ She leant 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 found his voice had temporarily disappeared. Behind him, Nicky put his ear-buds 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?’