The Stopping Place Read online

  The Stopping Place

  Helen Slavin

  About the Author

  Helen Slavin was born in Heywood in Lancashire in 1966. She was raised by eccentric parents on a diet of Laurel and Hardy, William Shakespeare and the Blackpool Illuminations. Educated at her local comp her favourite subjects at school were English and Going Home.

  After The University of Warwick she worked in many jobs including, plant and access hire, a local government Education department typing pool, and a vasectomy clinic. A job as a television scriptwriter gave her the opportunity to spend all day drinking tea, living in a made-up fantasy world and getting paid for it (sometimes).

  Helen has been a professional writer for fifteen years. Her first novel The Extra Large Medium was chosen as the winner in the Long Barn Books competition run by Susan Hill.

  A paragliding Welsh husband and two children distract her and give her ample opportunity to spend all day drinking tea, nagging about homework and washing pants for England. In the wee small hours she still keeps a bijou flat in that fantasy world of writing. When not working with animals and striving for world peace, Helen enjoys the music of Elbow and baking bread. Her favourite colour is purple and if she had to be stranded on a desert island with someone it would be Ray Mears (alright, George Clooney is very good looking but can he make fire with a stick? No. See?)

  She now lives, with her family, in Trowbridge, Wiltshire where, when she’s not writing, she’s asleep. Or in Tesco.

  If you’d like to hear more from Helen, follow her on Twitter, @HelenSlavinBook, or visit her website, www.helenslavin.com

  Also By Helen Slavin

  The Extra Large Medium

  The Stopping Place

  Cross My Heart

  From a Distance

  Little Lies

  After the Andertons

  To the Lake

  Will You Know Me?

  The Witch Ways Series

  The Ice King

  Crooked Daylight

  This edition published in 2017 by Ipso Books

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Pocket Books

  Ipso Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd

  Drury House, 34-43 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HA

  Copyright © Helen Slavin, 2008

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  To Mr Bryan Edwards

  * * *

  Just to prove those Wednesday mornings at Heywood Library weren’t wasted after all

  Part One

  On the boulevard of broken teeth

  Last night I dreamed that all my teeth were broken. Not just crumbling or broken like bottles, but oddly chipped and some with angular holes cut through. If you looked in, and I could because this was a dream and I was in two places, me looking up at me, it was like looking out from a cave. You could see sky, some sort of rocky outcrop with seapink growing on it. The wind was blowing in there, nothing too gale-like, not yet extending a light flag or anything. Just enough to blow the cobwebs from you, refresh you. But of course the cracks in my teeth were too small to crawl through, and then I woke up.

  Toshokan wa doko desu ka?

  Where is the library?

  No, there’s no extra charge. Usually we only hire out the language tapes for six weeks, but Swedish is impossible and so Mrs Atkinson is running an initiative scheme. If you can come back in not six but eight weeks and speak Swedish, she’ll let you hire out your choice of CDs (spoken word or music) or any DVD free of charge for a year.

  If you really wanted to don the full bearskin of Scandinavia and take on the challenge of Idiomatic Icelandic (accompanying CD and pocket-sized course book), you’d have to put a reserve on it. One of the book club ladies, Ellen Freethy, has it and appears reluctant to give it back. Each time she renews it she twists her mouth around the words, ‘Takka fyrir, eg er ath laera Islensku,’ and then, in English, ‘It does seem to be taking a while.’

  It’s been quite a long while actually; she’s been at it since February last year. Clearly Icelandic is beyond impossible. Svolitid.

  Swedish isn’t impossible. You just have to work at it. I did it in four weeks. Rent out some films. Root out the Hem Ljuva Hem homes and gardens magazines from the newsagents in the city, the one down the little side street by the theatre. It all helps.

  Of course I haven’t claimed the prize, because apart from anything I don’t think Mrs Atkinson is letting library staff in on the scheme. Let’s face it, Mrs Atkinson doesn’t appear to let the library staff in on any scheme. The Grand Scheme of Things, and we are all in absentia. She lurks in the archive with those white gloves on, rubbing shoulders with the university bods we get in here, disapproving of Martha’s affairs. Well, just one affair: Mackenzie Tierney of Tripp Tierney Associates, the architecture practice that has been given carte blanche to remodel the sagging bits of town. There have been other affairs that Mrs Atkinson didn’t object to, although it is plain that it matters not one whit to Martha whether Mrs Atkinson approves or not.

  I’ve had the teeth dream repeatedly these last few weeks. The twinned senses of unease and relief on waking are hard to reconcile, so I don’t bother. During library hours there are a hundred and one ways to combat it. Out of hours is a different proposition. I am only signed up for the Thursday session of Intermediate Japanese but since the teeth dream began I have found myself at the foot of the stairs in the technical college on Wednesday and Friday evenings too.

  The first Wednesday it was raining. I had missed my bus. There was the prospect of the long evening ahead. I missed the bus again on the Friday. Since then, I’ve just convinced myself it is intensive learning.

  That was the same Wednesday evening that they advertised the Archivist course which I’ve also had on my mind. I should probably ask Mrs Atkinson for careers advice but I can’t find the courage—clearly I should also sign up for Assertiveness Training. Martha is the one being groomed for greatness, and even if I did take the course it isn’t likely there’ll be a vacancy come up here. Mrs Atkinson has her archive all sewn up. There’s only one pair of white gloves.

  The other staff members all have much busier lives full of children and divorces and, in Mrs Milligan’s case, divorcing children. She weeps into her tea at least three days a week and I want to go over and hug her, the urge scorches me, but I don’t know. It isn’t my business and she would be the first to scorn me for it.

  On Tuesday I was sitting by the window so that I could see out into the war memorial gardens beyond us; she sat on the sofa with the wooden arms. It’s G-plan; Harvey says he could get a bomb for it on eBay. It is Mrs Milligan’s island refuge, her bouclé-covered life raft. Harvey was chatting about his online fundraising, telling us all about the last-minute bidding rush for the complete set of Harold Robbins first editions, when Mrs Milligan started to weep. Tears dripped silently into her tea. She struggled with her face, it trembled, the edges started to go. Every nerve in it must have been quivering. I wasn’t looking, I wouldn’t do that. I could see her reflection in the window. No one did anything except talk louder, Martha suddenly very interested in Harvey’s online auction.

  Martha has responsibility for the book club and the author visits, and she dresses like a gypsy. That’s not a criticism, by the way. She puts tones and shades together that make you feel you’ve been se
eing the world in black and white all your life. In winter she’s velvet and raw silk and wool. Have you ever seen raw silk? Just the sight of her coming through the door each day makes you want to jump up and wave your arms. I’d love to dress like that.

  I don’t know what’s happening with Mrs Milligan’s son other than her heart is breaking on his behalf. She’s not bemoaning the grandchildren she hasn’t been given. She’s not going to burn the ex as a witch or vilify her for the betrayal. She’s not apportioning blame, she’s just destroyed because she can’t stop it happening to him. She can’t kiss it better or make it go away, and what she is thinking about, the thing her heart beats for, is him.

  I suppose it must be odd to have children. Babies, who then morph into children and god-forbid teenagers. I suppose she thinks of his first day at school, the time she had to give him the Heimlich manoeuvre to get a Lego brick out of his throat, that first Goth girlfriend. When he careened off his bike in the park she could catch him before he skinned his knee. Now there isn’t anything to be done.

  But of course, there is. I have to reshelve.

  Martha just leaves the trolleys sitting there. If stacking the returned volumes were left to Martha the shelves would be almost bare. The borrowers would have to rummage behind the counter.

  Martha likes to sit at the desk and play libraries. She’s recently acquired a pair of spectacles which I think are more of a fashion accessory than an aid to sight. They are sleek rectangles in tortoiseshell plastic the exact same shade as her eyes, and when she dons them there’s a sudden hazel–green–chocolate intensity of eyes, lashes, brows and frowsy hair. The light from the cupola above catches in the chocolates and bronzes of her auburn hair. Even the odd grey strand looks lustrously silver. There are other days when she looks like the Gorgon Medusa. Hair snaking, eyes turning you to stone. The days after the Affairs—the Affairs who have been and done and seen how much blood can be squeezed from Martha’s heart. Martha’s heart, gnashed at, chewed over, and she still persists in scooping it up off the floor, picking the bits off it and cramming it back in her ribcage. If scars make things tougher then surely Martha’s heart must be as weather beaten and leathery as a medicine ball.

  Martha likes to tappity-tap at the computer keyboard as if she’s realigning NASA satellites. In fact, when the system crashed last week it took her an hour to work out Mrs Milligan had tripped over the cable and pulled out the plug. But despite that, Martha looks the part. When the borrowers come through the revolving doors into the lobby they are greeted by Queen Victoria, perched on a plinth in all her stony majesty. Then it’s a few steps past the double doors to the media library, cross the stairs to the archives, through the chickenwired fire doors towards the desk—and there’s Martha, looking like an intellectual. Colourful and bohemian.

  And this afternoon the French teenagers are in. The council’s Twin Town Spring Exchange Programme has begun. Somewhere in the library at Soissy-sur-Seine a renegade band of English teenagers are trampling the carpets and monopolising the terminals. There is also a young French man, a university student in his twenties on a different university exchange programme, who is a conversation assistant at the secondary school. He’s from Bordeaux and he is Sequoia Forest Man, you just have to keep looking upwards until at last he looks down and his tousled sandy blond fringe falls forward like a landslide.

  We are all supposed to be made the same I know, ten fingers, ten toes, two eyeballs. But we are different. He is called Joaquim and he is simply and utterly different. His hair, that sandy blond colour that you don’t find on English heads. It has this texture that’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The colour is so golden, I suppose because it is sunny in Bordeaux. But there are tinges of red in there, the flare of orange when he runs his hand through it to push his overgrown fringe back. He does that a lot when he’s writing emails home.

  His hands too, they’re like farmers’ hands. Big and square, and the back of them is surfaced like a contour map of some Pyreneean commune. The mountain range of his knuckles, the valleys between. And then the gnarled plain of skin, forested with vaguely gingery hair, the rivers of his veins. His nails are very clean and clipped. The very crisp bright blue of his eyes. His lips have a purse to them, where the French comes out.

  Ouh. Huit. Oui.

  No. It’s not what you think, it’s just that he’s in here a lot and what else is there to do? Am I supposed to ignore him? Look away and not smile?

  The French students are, conversely, not foreign. Teenagers are the same ill-mannered arrogants all over the world. I imagine there are teenagers in far-flung and desperate places, places where we send the Christmas charity shoeboxes, and they’ll be just as bolshy and arrogant and complaining. I can see them opening the lid and finding the toothbrushes and soap and gloves, and wishing it was an Xbox instead of a shoebox.

  They barge you in the library’s revolving doors. They spin you. They trap you. They all think they are so clever. What a shock they will all get when life kicks in. They think they hate school and that they know so much and I for one will not warn them. Let it be a surprise. A big, fat, nasty one.

  Only the nasty surprise is saved for Mrs Milligan, trying to tidy away the reference volumes they’ve left on the desks. As fast as she is shelving the Encyclopaedia Britannica so the tall, thickset one with bleached-blond hair is taking them off the shelf. The local schoolgirls have christened him Face because they all think he’s gorgeous. The girls are standing spectating, taking this childishness for entertainment. They giggle and gasp as if he is swinging from a trapeze. My legs are shaking as I stand at the desk because I can hear the situation beginning to fray at the edges. I’d like to shock them all into submission, bark out, ‘Damare! Yame!’ which is Japanese for ‘Shut up! Quit it!’ but I can’t. The words choke down into my throat like small stones.

  The other boys are restless now, and the short dark one who competes with Face starts to peel books from the other shelves. The volume lifts, the words spit and spatter. Face shoves the short one into the table, which totters, and just before the riot begins, here is Mrs Atkinson to the rescue in her magician’s gloves.

  ‘If you don’t mind, this is a library. The rule is quiet. If you wish to chat then I suggest you take yourselves down the street to the Boolean Engine Internet Café.’

  Mrs Atkinson does not have children, but is getting divorced. She doesn’t talk about her life outside the library; what we have found out about her husband and the circumstances, we’ve learned through idle gossip and hearsay. Of course, when you hear the idle gossip it isn’t any wonder she doesn’t talk. It seems sometimes as if the gossip is about another Mrs Atkinson, because at work nothing gets by her.

  However we understand that Mr Atkinson is in information services, and is on a fast track to foreign parts when the divorce comes through. He is going to set up library systems and information services in portakabins across Belize with the help of Carmen, his International Information Systems Administrative Assistant. She’s leggy with fake fire-red hair and until recently she was a lapdancer at a club called Movers and Shakers at the far end of town.

  I wonder what Mrs Atkinson is like in real life, when she takes off the white gloves and goes home. I imagine her in the supermarket, alphabetising the tins. Anyway the magic gloves aren’t working at this moment because the teenagers haven’t vanished. It is nothing overtly sinister, just that unruly way they have of not coming to heel, of not doing as they’re told. Mrs Atkinson looks as if she is directing traffic, waving her hands in sweeping, ineffectual gestures. I concentrate on the computer screen but it’s no use, I can see her and them on the periphery of my vision. I can hear her and them. Face begins to mimic her. Almost catches Mrs Milligan on the cheek with his flamboyant gesture. That does it.

  ‘Cessez-donc! Allez-vous-en. Toute de suite. Allez-vous-en,’ snaps Mrs Atkinson.

  The short dark combatant says with deep, low, scorn, ‘Baisse-toi grandmere.’

  And she stoo
ps. Eagle-like. ‘J’EN AI SOUPÉ. C’EST TOUT. ALLEZ-VOUS-EN.’ She’s speaking in a booming voice. She has this trick of somehow making it an octave lower when she’s shouting. It’s wonderful to hear, deep and sonorous. Operatic, almost.

  Her voice expands outwards and there is suddenly silence. In the space where no one knows quite what to do, Mrs Atkinson points a white-gloved finger at the exit. The teenagers file past meekly. As the last one spins through the door and a tearful Mrs Milligan scuttles to the toilets, the whole library is looking at Mrs Atkinson.

  This is why she’s chair of the twin town committee.

  After half an hour I am still at the desk, blind to the screen in front of me, imagining that Mrs Milligan might have drowned herself in the U-bend or escaped through the tiny window into the freedom of the Memorial Gardens. Then she slides into the seat at the computer. Her face looks washed and brushed up, her eyes pink instead of red. And I look away.

  * * *

  We’re open until eight now, Monday through Thursday, and Martha is pushing the boundaries of that with her author events. Tonight a local horror-story writer called Devlin Kennedy is coming in for a cheese-and-wine book reading that doesn’t even start until eight. This is the library as speakeasy. It is supposed to be closed up, dark; but no, you and a small group of others are allowed in for illicit cheddar and zinfandel. Although ‘small group’ is an understatement. There are always far more people in the library at night, and all the events Martha has organised have been full.

  In the summer, of course, I can leave and it is still light. There is still time to get a baguette from the Miss Muffet Bakery and have an impromptu picnic by the war memorial.