Free Sugar & Spice by Saffina Desforges Page B

as a generous tip, and slipped out while the cafe owner tended fried
eggs out back. Driving out of town, back towards Rhyl, he spied a girl on her
way home after a sleep-over at a friend’s house, struggling to pedal her bike
against the strong breeze.
He drove past slowly, watching her in the wing mirror. The wind whipped her
skirt about her legs revealing glimpses of thigh. He felt the stirrings in his
groin.
He pulled to a halt ahead of her, watching in the mirror as she drew closer,
savouring the view. He switched the engine off, leaving just the sound of the
wind and the gulls. He pushed the CD into the player and turned the volume down
low. His lips parted in a smile as the music started.
There was no-one else about. A car disappeared into the distance.
The girl pedalled nearer, oblivious to his presence, ever closer, behind the
van, moving out to overtake. He put his fingers on the door handle and stopped,
taking deep breaths.
She was nine. Ten, maybe.
White ankle socks.
A skirt much too short for cycling.
A glimpse of her underwear and he was breathing heavily.
She was alongside now.
Riding alongside the van, level with his door.
And then she was past, her hair flailing behind her in the wind.
Still cycling.
Safe.
Alive.
She’d never know how close she’d come.
How lucky she was to have been in the wrong place at the right time.
He turned the key and drove slowly away.
    34
    Tina was a tomboy. Everybody said so.
Especially Tina.
She hated being a girl and playing girlie games. She’d only grown her hair this
long because her favourite footballer wore his in a pony-tail. And she hated
wearing school uniform. It was the only time her mother could ever get her to
wear a skirt. Even then it was a battle. Tina would wear her jeans on the
journey to school, with the regulation school skirt stuffed in her bag, ready to
change into before morning assembly.
But today was the last week of the school holidays, and she had no intention of
wearing anything but jeans. As a concession to the grandmother she was on her
way to see, she’d put on her pink jeans for the visit. Pink jeans savagely cut
off at mid-thigh, with a loose fitting top that barely covered her navel, a
cotton crop top underneath. Chunky socks and trainers. It was as near to looking
like a girl as she intended to get outside of school hours.
Her grandmother always asserted that when Tina dressed in long blue jeans and
t-shirts she looked just like a boy. She never could understand why her
grand-daughter was so delighted with this statement. Nor would she ever
understand why, had she not been so pernickety about her grand-daughter’s
fashion sense, Tina might have completed the journey alive.
She pedalled stubbornly against the wind as she cycled along the narrow, winding
B5119 that linked Dyserth with Rhyl. Her mother insisted that if she wanted to
cycle instead of taking the bus it had to be by this quiet route. It was safer.
The innocuous white van cruised past the child without slowing, but his eyes
never left the mirror until he took the bend. The land was flat, leading across
to the sea, the fields broken by hedges and ditches, but from the vantage point
of the drivers’ seat he could see the child approach. He flicked on the CD and
turned up the volume.
As she drew nearer he unlocked the back doors of the van and leant in, as if
retrieving something. Tina never gave him a second thought. Another broken down
van. She wanted a Harley Davison when she grew up.
As she came level he was uher in an instant, one hand round her mouth, the other
around her waist, throwing her into the back of the van like a toy, slamming the
doors closed behind her. Seconds later, the girl still too dazed to comprehend
what had happened, the doors opened again and the bike was thrown in with her,
smashing into her leg, but the screams of pain were lost as the doors slammed
shut and darkness enveloped her. Outside nothing could be heard but the wind in
the rushes and the seagulls