Suffer the Children Read Free Page A

quick enough. She did her citizenship homework the minute she got in and has been changing in and out of outfits ever since. The ‘look’ is half fairy-tale princess: half street-corner slut. As soon as the doorbell rings, she scampers downstairs and out, linking arms with her best friend and calling back to her mother ‘Don’t worry’ as she is told not to be late, to be careful.
    ‘I love you, Tan,’ calls her mother and Tanya wants to call back that she loves her, too. But she doesn’t, just twiddles her fingers and blows a kiss. Her friend giggles.
    When they get to the corner of the road, Tanya folds the waistband of her skirt down, once, twice, meticulously. She applies her lipstick and starts texting, feeling the slow rush of love that’s in the air.

     
    Guy Montefiore tips 5 per cent. He always tips 5 per cent. It brings the fare to twelve eighty-five and he waits for the change to come back through, asks for a receipt. The cabbie huffs and puffs, saying he can’t find a pen.
    As he waits, Guy thinks about his daughter. Thomasina is fourteen going on nineteen and he worries about how she is getting on with her mother, picking up bad habits. He grimaces and exhales, blows the thought away.
    His mobile phone signals that it has received a text message and he begins to palpitate. ‘Forget the receipt,’ he says as he opens the door and climbs out. ‘You should carry a pen. It’s a tool of your trade.’ He slams the door, harder than necessary. But her words appear on the screen and his fury subsides. He begins to compose a response. A smile comes to his face.
    He wonders whether the summer will ever burn itself out. He prefers the shorter days of autumn and winter. The longer nights suit him – he doesn’t have to wait two, three hours after work before there’s the darkness to shield him. But the trouble with the long nights is that his loves are tucked up in bed, not out and about.
    Not any old love. It’s got to be perfect. The way it never is for most people.
    Guy knows her name and her movements, knows her favourite pop star and who her best friends are. He’s been watching so long now he can even guess what she’ll be wearing . Monday night, youth club night, dressing like a tart because that’s what her friends do. It’s not because she wants to be with a boy. She’s not like that. No, Tanya simply wants to belong, and soon she will. Soon, she will be loved and she will be able to love back. The first time.
    Guy lets himself in the back door of the church hall, turning sideways and shuffling along between the rows of junk waiting to be collected. There is a dull light from the reinforced glass pane above the fire door but he can do this in the dark.
    He passes the tiny kitchen and takes a deep breath, feels a swell in his loins. He presses the door to the stairs that go below and the sound of music comes up. The bass vibrates, buzzes up along his legs as he goes down into the dark, running his hand along the rough, unpainted bricks, feeling for the overalls. He takes them off the hook at the bottom of the stairs and undresses himself. He folds his clothes the best he can. They were, when all is said and done, made to touch him just so – at considerable expense.
    Guy laments that Tanya has never, knowingly, seen him at his best, but feels a surge at the thought that soon – so very, very soon – that will change.
    He makes his way towards the chinks of light that come through the gaps in the stage. As he goes, the music gets louder. He distills the sounds: a hundred teenagers dancing, giggling, scurrying, the deeper voice of a young alpha male as the song peters to an end, demanding what the next one should be. For a moment it is just the soft flesh of voices. Guy stops, mid-step, and holds his breath until the next song cranks up. He crouches down in the usual spot, stage left. It’s where the gap in the sections that make up the stage is greatest. It’s also where she stands. Thank