The boy Nula and Charlie adopted was a handsome seven-year-old with honey-coloured hair, a long pale face, an unsmiling mouth and serious light grey eyes. Charlie was delighted with him. Little Milly was affronted; her dad was suddenly lavishing nearly all his attention on this interloper. But Milly had a consolation prize: of a similar age and living in such close proximity to Belle Barton, the two girls had become firm friends, so Milly wasn’t too badly put out about Harlan’s arrival in the Stone household.
Talk about the odd couple, Nula thought whenever she saw Milly and Belle playing in the grounds together. Milly, plain as a pikestaff, always shy and too eager to please, and pretty little Belle who could afford to be cool. Nula knew it was unkind to think that way, but she’d had her own struggles with her looks and she could see that poor Milly was going the same way. Belle wouldn’t, though. She noticed that although Harlan might ignore his new ‘sister’ most of the time, little Belle fascinated him. Nula remembered him coming into the house for the first time, looking around, taking it all in, absorbing it almost greedily. Then picking out a tiny room to be his alone. Private. Keep out. He had that same faintly obsessive attitude around Belle. Whenever she was near, Harlan watched her with total attention, like a cat might watch a bird. If she spoke to anyone else, to Milly, or little Nige Pope from school, with his shock of red hair, who clearly adored her, Harlan always elbowed his way into the conversation. He was sort of possessive about her.
Nula felt bitter about Belle. Trust bloody Jill to have such a little charmer. Already Belle was showing signs of easy sociability. She had a wide circle of friends. She spent hours down the riding stables, hacking out on the ponies, helping with mucking out. Although Belle always encouraged Milly to join in, Milly preferred to sit at home, reading books; she was scared of horses. And she hated meeting new people. She was scared of every bloody thing, it seemed to Nula. In that, Nula realized – painfully – Milly was very much her mother’s daughter.
‘We ought to have a party for the kids,’ said Charlie.
They’d settled Harlan into the nearest school, the same one Belle and Milly went to, and he seemed to be doing OK. He wasn’t chatty, or popular, but he was doing fine.
Nula thought about it. Charlie was cock-a-hoop over his new son. He’d set up what he laughingly called a ‘petting’ zoo down on the far side of the orchard and was busy stocking it with reptiles, frogs, all the stuff that he and Harlan took a keen interest in, all the stuff that turned Nula’s stomach. What the fuck was the point of having a ‘petting zoo’ full of things you were scared to pet? All through the summer there was hammering, cranes in the garden, men in hard hats working on the newly erected building, men digging in cables to connect the house phone to the cubbyhole in the feed room down there so that Charlie never missed a call. Then – at last – it was finished.
‘We’ve got the zoo up and running now, we can get Harlan to cut the ribbon on the day, the kids’ll love it,’ said Charlie.
So it was arranged. Overwhelmed by the idea of organizing it herself, Nula hired in a party planner and caterers. They made a cake in the shape of a yellow-and-green boa constrictor, laid on sandwiches, jellies, all the crap kids love.
Then it was everyone down to the zoo for Harlan to declare it open. Cheers and applause from all the mums and dads, then the children filed inside with their parents yelling and screaming at each exhibit: a Mexican rose-toed tarantula. Electric-blue poisonous frogs, safely tucked away behind glass. A chameleon, its eyes swivelling to look at them all. The boa constrictor, already five foot of tensile strength, lying still in its big heated tank. Then the caimans, in the pièce de résistance – the huge central pool.
‘They’re not that big yet,’ said Charlie to the assembly. ‘But they’ll grow.’
After that there were games and goody bags back at the house. Nula felt a flash of irritation when she found Milly sitting on the back stairs reading a book instead of joining in the fun like Belle was. She hustled her daughter into the sitting room where the others were running riot. ‘Son of My Father’ by Chicory Tip was crashing out of the sound system, all the kids singing along. Belle was there in the thick of it, with an adoring crowd around her – Gillian and Amanda, who she’d met at the stables, and friends from school too, among them Boris Paddick, Angie Cruise, Nigel ‘Einstein’ Pope, who was off-the-scale intelligent and destined, like his brainy parents, for great things.
Everyone was about to go home when Nula realized that Harlan and one of the other boys – Nipper Warren, one of the rough poor boys from the nearby village – had gone missing and Charlie was getting annoyed.
‘That boy should be here to say goodbye to his guests,’ he grumbled.
Nula went off and searched the house for the two of them. Not finding them upstairs, she came back down to where the parents and kids were waiting in the hall and she heard one of the mums say: ‘Yeah, but he’s a queer little thing, ain’t he? Weird as ninepence. He don’t say anything, just stares at you with those spooky pale eyes and you wonder what the fuck he’s—’
The woman saw Nula approaching and stopped speaking.
They’re talking about Harlan, she thought.
‘I expect they’re outside,’ she said to Nipper’s dad, who was thick-looking, just like his mountainous lump of a son.
Nula went out to the garages and there they were, down the side of the building.
‘Har—’ she started, then she saw a flash of white, heard the screech of the cat as it wriggled out of Nipper’s grip. A match flared. As the cat raced past her, she smelled scorched fur.
Both boys turned to her. Harlan dropped the match and it fizzled out on the ground.
‘What the fuck?’ burst out Nula. She glared at them, Harlan so slim and elegant, Nipper huge, straw-blond and muddy-eyed.
They’d been torturing the damned thing.
She felt shaken. ‘Get inside, the pair of you,’ she snapped.
Harlan stared back at her, not moving.
Nipper fidgeted, eyes downcast.
‘Go!’ shouted Nula, and finally they went.