However, anyone who knew him could see signs of mounting tension in his clenched fists and increasingly glazed eyes as he lurched around during Musical Bumps. And when Daniel Metcalfe began to tease Tom over the birthday tea with a typically cruel playground chant: Tom Costello is a smello, and Maddie, o traitorous one, hooted with laughter, then Tom really lost it. He knocked over Daniel’s Cola, yelled at everyone to go home now, dissolved into tears and ran off to his room.
Intense negotiations finally resulted in his return after he’d been promised that he could work the music for Pass the Parcel. The admiration that greeted Sheila’s Tyrannosaurus cake helped as well.
‘I’m shagged.’ Ray staggered into the kitchen having parcelled off the last small guest with a party bag. ‘How many more years of this do we have to go through?’
‘Five or six,’ muttered Sheila with feeling born from experience. ‘It gets worse -. seven and eight are the pits.’ She scraped jelly into the bin. ‘Once they hit ten it’s a few friends to the pictures or ice-skating.’
‘No more party bags,’ I said, ‘it was a nightmare finding things that were cheap enough and wouldn’t break before they got them home.’
‘In my day,’ Sheila said, ‘it was a piece of cake and a balloon. And only one of you got a prize in Pass the Parcel. None of this prize in every layer and stop the music to make sure everyone gets one,’ she laughed. ‘Awful really, all the bitter disappointment when you didn’t win.’
After snacking on cheese and pineapple kebabs, veggie sausages on sticks and jelly, I didn’t feel hungry enough to cook a big meal and neither did the others. It was dry and warm even if it was overcast, so we decided to have a picnic in the garden. Sheila had some hummus and cheese, I made a salad, Ray boiled some eggs and heated up some pitta bread, I opened a bottle of chilled white wine.
Maddie and Tom were busy playing with his new acquisitions and ate on the hoof.
It was rare to share a meal with Sheila, who as our lodger led a fairly independent life. She was in her first year of a geology degree and enjoying it immensely. Term was practically over and she was planning a summer travelling round – a mixture of study and socialising.
‘I’ll start up in Scotland, at Dominic’s,’ she referred to her younger son. ‘He’s kept his flat on and St Andrews will be a great base for touring. I’ll do a few of the cities then head off to the highlands.’
I groaned with envy, ‘I need a holiday.’
‘Thought you were going camping,’ said Ray.
‘Maddie, get off that trellis.’ I waited till she obeyed me. ‘Yes, I need to sort something out, borrow a tent, see if Bev and Harry can lend me theirs.’
My old friends and their three boys lived a couple of miles away in Levenshulme. We’d all squashed into that tent on shared holidays when Maddie and Sam and David had been tiny.
‘It’s mine!’ Tom’s shriek rent the air. He clung to his new scooter, Maddie stood astride it.
‘You’ve got to share, Tom.’ Maddie cast a guilty glance our way.
‘C’mon, Maddie, it’s his birthday present. Get your own bike out.’
‘I hate my bike, it’s horrible.’ She let go of the scooter which fell, but not on Tom, and wandered off to sit on the swing at the other end of the garden. Tom lifted his scooter up and stood uncertain what to do with it now he’d won sole possession. He could not yet scoot. Once he judged Maddie far enough away to pose no immediate threat, he ran to join her.
The phone broke into the conversation. I looked at Ray. ‘It won’t be for me,’ he insisted.
‘Hello?’
‘I want Sal Kilkenny.’
‘Speaking.’
‘That boy that was killed, Ahktar Khan, you’ve been asking questions about it.’ A woman’s voice, my age or younger.
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, that witness, Sonia Siddiq, she wasn’t there. She’s lying – she never saw anything, she can’t have done.’
Mancunian accent but with a tinge to the words that made me think she was Asian.
‘Who is this?’ I asked. No reply. ‘How do you know she wasn’t there? Do you know where Mrs Siddiq was, that night?’
‘She wasn’t at the club. She’s been told to say it – it’s not right, she’s lying.’ The phone went dead.
