Free Death of a Perfect Mother by Robert Barnard Page B

puddings.
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    â€˜What were you and Achituko talking about?’ asked Brian as he and Debbie climbed breathless on to the school bus.
    â€˜Just passing the time of day,’ said Debbie. ‘Get off my back, will you?’ And she went up front and sat with her friends, where they talked about various spotty and loudmouthed youths whom her friends fancied and Debbie felt she was now infinitely too experienced to contemplate seriously. But she hugged her secret to herself, and gave bored attention to the discussion of the finer points of these adolescents.
    Brian sat in the back seat of the upper deck, surrounded by his fellow sixth-formers touching up their last night’s prep. But after a minute or two Brian, remembering that encounter between Debbie and Achituko at the Carstairs’ gate, went off into a dream. Was there something between those two? No—couldn’t possibly be. Debbie was much too young. Still, there were girls who . . . he knew there were girls that age at the High School who . . . But Debbie wasn’t the type. She was just an ordinary schoolgirl. He’d seen her grow up. Now Lill at that age! . . . She’d once told a story about herself at sixteen, an encounter with the shop-floor manager of the cuddly-toy factory in Leicester where she had worked . . . ‘Oh, he was a saucy one!’ Lill had ended, having got herself and him into the works canteen after the rest had knocked off. Brian had laughed with the rest, and later he had gone up and been sick in the bathroom.
    He remembered Lill in Tunisia . . . Why was it always Tunisia? . . . He remembered Lill and the middle-aged German with the bulbous body like a potter’s discard . . . the way he lingered heavily round them by the swimming-pool in the first days, the way he started buying Lill expensive drinks, pawing her when Fred was not around, uttering guttural endearments and giggling obscenities when the younger ones went off into the pool . . .
    He remembered Lill on the beach, surrounded by thesellers of bangles and pots and rugs and sunhats—swarthy men and boys, haphazardly clad, men the other English declared were terrible pests and waved away, fearful of being swindled. But Lill had welcomed them, and chattered away to them in pidgin Midlands, admiring their wares, trying them on, exacting their homage, now and then fetching out her purse and buying one of the pots that now sat unsteadily on the mantelpieces and coffee-tables around the house (the pot-seller had been young, younger than her sons, and doe-eyed, and wicked). Lill had lapped it up. ‘They think I’m marvellous,’ she would announce at dinner. ‘Nobody else will talk to them, stuck-up lot. I could fancy one or two of them too, even if they are wogs! I wish they’d come selling things round my back door at home!’
    And he remembered the boys that day he and Gordon had walked alone into Hammamet, the boys who ran after them as they lounged around the medina, laughing, prancing, joking and shouting—shouting ‘Voulez-vous coucher avec ma sœur? ’ and then . . .
    â€˜Here wake up, dreamy,’ said the boy next to him. ‘I want to read your answer to the question on Lord of the Flies.’
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    As luck would have it, Lill and Mrs Carstairs found themselves alone behind the butcher’s counter that morning, Lill waiting to buy a pound and a half of snags, while Eve Carstairs bought some nice kidney chops.
    â€˜That’s right,’ yelled Lill, with that unconsciousness of her effect on others that was her hallmark and her death-warrant, ‘you feed up my Archie. Don’t want my lover-boy wasting away.’
    Mrs Carstairs compressed her lips, looked straight across the counter at the butcher with an expression of conspiratorial long-suffering, and said: