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Beth wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but at least Maggie shrugged and stopped telling him off. ‘You’d better put them in the boot.’
* * *
‘Do you have any idea what the hell is going on?’ Maggie said this to Sam as soon as Beth was safely inside the shop. She didn’t know how long it would take the girl to buy herself some sweets. She had given her three pounds, and as soon as she saw Beth running eagerly across the garage forecourt she had felt a stab of guilt. Three pounds for sweets? That was surely the act of a bad mother. Three pounds worth of flavoured sugar and fat. Not that Beth was in danger of putting on weight. But Maggie knew all too well how bad food habits could lead to obesity and how difficult it was to reverse the process. A pound would have been plenty.
Sam didn’t answer her question immediately. He was staring off into space. Maggie wasn’t sure he had even heard what she had said. But just before she opened her mouth to repeat herself, he turned and looked at her. ‘They’re fishing.’
If Sam was trying to wind Maggie up, this was the perfect answer — a real steam-out-the-ears one. She clasped her hands together and counted silently to three. ‘Why did you come to the shop, Sam, and why did you bring Beth?’
‘Matt,’ he said.
Maggie swore. ‘It’s not a game, Sam, for crying out loud.’
‘They offered me a deal.’
‘A deal?’
‘They said they would protect Beth if I did what they wanted.’
Maggie swore again. ‘And you believed them?’
‘What alternative was there?’
This time Maggie didn’t reply. They both sat silent in the car. Sam turned on the CD player. Bob Dylan kicked into immediate life, droning on about how times they were a-changin’. Sam had always liked Dylan, but he had only ever been a passing phase for Maggie, a musical fling. He had seemed to promise the world for people like Ellie and herself, but it had all been a mirage. She and Sam had argued viciously about him once. At least, she had been vicious. ‘A protest poet who struck lucky. A sexist bastard.’ Or words to that effect. Anyway, as far as she was concerned it didn’t feel like the times had changed at all.
Maggie bit back the urge to resurrect that distant spat. ‘For God’s sake, Sam, don’t go silent on me.’
He was still moving his head in time to the music.
‘Sam!’ It was a final warning.
Sam’s head slowed imperceptibly until it was just a tremor. ‘I thought I could keep one step ahead of them,’ he said.
Maggie let out a screech of frustration. ‘For crying out loud, Sam, you couldn’t keep one step ahead of a one-legged octogenarian!’ That was totally unfair, and she knew it. He was pretty clever at keeping ahead of things and people. But she needed him to engage with her and to acknowledge that they were in deep shit. ‘They tried to kill us, all three of us. You, me and Beth!’
Sam turned reluctantly towards her. ‘No they didn’t,’ he said.
‘What are you talking about? They blew up the shop.’
‘No they didn’t,’ he parroted. He was still looking at her, impassive, giving away nothing. Then he did something with his face, sucking in his cheeks and blowing out his nostrils. ‘I blew the shop up,’ he said quietly. ‘Once I knew there was no one inside to get hurt.’
‘You what?’ For several seconds her brain went into freefall.
Sam gave one of his trademark shrugs. ‘I wanted to confuse them.’
Maggie swore. Maggie lifted her hand and touched her face under the left eye, where she’d had a couple of stitches. ‘You also did this, you moron. A piece of glass. One inch higher and I could have lost an eye.’
Sam’s face twitched momentarily. ‘But you didn’t, did you?’ He turned away, lost again in Bob Dylan. ‘I guess that will have confused them all the more. They’ll be wondering who the hell did plant the bomb.’
* * *
Beth wasn’t sure that three pounds was going to buy her that many sweets, not after she had got a bar of milk chocolate for Sam and something for Maggie too. Because Maggie — or Mother as she really must try to think of her — was actually quite nice and she really would have to buy her something or it wouldn’t be fair. Mum had always insisted on things being fair. She had no idea what Mother would like. Maybe mints or chewy fruits or maybe she was a chocolate person, like Sam. Anyway there was a chocolate bar on special offer for ninety-nine pence, so she got that, and after she had examined several bags priced at ninety-nine pence she settled on wine gums for Mother and jelly babies for herself. That all seemed very fair indeed. She put them in her basket and wandered back along the aisle. The man behind the counter was watching her. He smiled and called out, ‘Found what you want, young man?’
She didn’t reply. This was partly because she had forgotten that she was dressed to look like a boy and partly because something had caught her eye on the shelves in front of her. This was where the newspapers and magazines were laid out. And in the middle of the display were several comics. Not that she was that interested in them normally. But the one on which her eyes were fixed was no ordinary comic. She picked it up, stared at the cover for several seconds and then began to leaf through it.
‘You like Disney, do you?’ It was the man behind the counter again. ‘There’s more than one there.’
Beth acknowledged him with a brief smile and closed the comic. She looked at the rack again. The man was right. The Disney magazine behind the one she was holding had a different cover. She picked it up and then leafed through the ones behind it. She pulled out another. Three different ones! For several seconds she battled with herself before putting th
