The Girl Who Stole the Apple

CHAPTER THREE

It was amazing how a good night’s sleep cleared the head. After the trauma of the explosion and the disturbed and very late night which followed it, not to mention being interviewed by the police, Maggie Rogers had slept like a log. It was unusual for her to be woken by the alarm. She was a lark, awake by six thirty or so most mornings and temperamentally incapable of lying in bed for longer. Once she was awake she had to get up, and it wasn’t just because of her bladder. She fumbled for her mobile and was surprised to see that it was seven twenty-six. The heavy languor of the previous day had disappeared. She showered and dressed with a metaphorical spring in her step and a medley of Abba songs on her lips. There was nothing like a good blast of Mamma Mia to get the day off to a good start. By seven forty-five she was sitting at her small circular table with a cup of strong tea, a coconut bar and a fully functioning brain. And now, as well as the host of questions whirling round inside her skull, she also had a few answers.

She hadn’t told DI Reid the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Of course she hadn’t. Who did when they were interviewed by the police? When he had asked her about Mrs Gupta, it wasn’t that she had lied exactly. It was more that there were things she had omitted to say. She had told him about the girl dressed as Snow White, but she hadn’t mentioned the tall skinny guy that Mrs Gupta had talked about. ‘He had this ridiculous tattoo all down the side of his neck,’ the poor woman had said, ‘and he had a boxer’s nose, like someone had punched him and broken it.’ It was the nose that had convinced her. That, surely, had to be Sam. Who else could it be? The tattoo had initially thrown her off course, but the more she thought about it the more Sam-like the guy seemed to be.

And the girl must be Beth, his daughter. Or rather, Ellie’s daughter, and maybe his. Ellie had always claimed Sam was the father, but Maggie had had her doubts at the time. Ellie had sometimes been a bit too free with her love in those days. But if the girl was Beth, where on earth was Ellie and why had Sam brought her to the shop? Even Sam wouldn’t have knowingly put his daughter in danger — unless of course he was off his head or, alternatively, he hadn’t been aware of the risk. Maggie took a slug of tea and bit into the coconut bar. Sam must have come to the shop because he was trying to get back in touch with her. And that could only be bad news. Because getting in touch was the one thing they had sworn they would never do.

She stood up and walked through to the living room. Outside, the sky was dark with cloud and a fine rain spattered against the window, but Maggie’s mind was elsewhere. Sam would try and contact her again, she was pretty damned sure. So she needed to have a plan in place. It was as simple as that.

Her own plan preoccupied her as she brushed her teeth and finalised her clothing, and it started to emerge more clearly as she made her way to Hairdelicious. For, as her smartphone had reminded her halfway through her meagre breakfast, she had a hair appointment booked for nine thirty. After that she had her usual shift at Nico’s Café, starting at eleven.

* * *

Beth was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the sofa. She was reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — ‘my favourite book ever.’ A few weeks previously Sam had read it to her, one chapter each night, from beginning to end, but now she was reading it for herself. She wished the hotel wardrobe was full of fur coats and that she could go into it like Lucy and escape into a magical world. But, of course, the wardrobe had been empty. Hotel wardrobes were always empty.

She looked up. Sam was watching her. He was sitting very still on his bed. Sam could sit or stand stiller than anyone she had ever known. Like a statue, except that every so often his eyes would blink. She was in the middle of a chapter. The faun, Mr Tumnus, had gone missing and she didn’t want to stop even for a moment, so she gave Sam a little wave, like the Queen does when she smiles at the crowds from her golden carriage. Then she started to read again. Only when she had got to the end of the chapter did she shut the book and look up again, but Sam was no longer watching her. He had moved over to the window. He was standing to one side and holding the curtain open very slightly while he looked out.

‘This is a nice hotel,’ Beth said.

‘Is it?’ Sam’s attention was still fixed on the view outside.

‘Yes,’ she said. She was beginning to get fed up with packing every morning and unpacking every night. She would have liked to stay in one place for a while. ‘Can we stay here for another night?’

‘We have to keep moving,’ Sam said.

‘Why?’

‘So they can’t find us.’

‘So who can’t find us?’

‘The people who are looking for us,’ he said. He let the curtain fall back, but walked over to the other side of the window, where he again stared down into the street below.

‘What will they do if they find us?’ She felt scared suddenly. They must be bad people. She wished Mummy wasn’t dead. She wished she was back home.

‘You need to get out of those clothes,’ Sam said, out of the corner of his mouth.

Beth shrugged and stood up. She twirled around. She was wearing her Snow White outfit, complete with black wig and red bow. Sam had told her that she could only wear her Snow White clothes in the hotel room. She would like to be Snow White all day, to go to a McDonalds and the cinema dressed as Snow White and see people look at her, but Sam said it wouldn’t be safe. He said that the people who were after them were looking for a girl dressed as Snow White. Beth wasn’t sure if this was Sam being a bit mad. No one would be looking for a girl with a torrent of orange hair, he said. Beth liked it when he called her hair a torrent. It sounded so exotic. Her mother had called it a torrent too. But at school she had been called carrot head, so she didn’t like her red hair that much. She would prefer to wear a nice black wig with a red bow. No one would tease her for that.

She picked up the remote and turned on the TV. She flicked through the channels, eventually coming across a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Not as good as Disney, but she liked the way Jerry was always outwitting Tom. For nearly ten minutes she watched intently. Then she realised that Sam was talking on his mobile. Or rather he was shouting into it. He saw her watching him and waved a hand in apology. He walked across the room past her and into the bathroom. He slammed the door. She could still hear him, but it didn’t worry her. It was what he did. Sometimes he pretended he was talking to someone on the phone and he’d get very loud and very rude. She didn’t worry. Mummy had never worried. ‘It just Sam talking to his voices,’ she used to say. Beth knew that eventually he would stop shouting and put his mobile away and then they’d have to leave the hotel. She sighed and pulled her black wig off. Sam was a bit weird, but she felt safe with him.

* * *

Maggie Rogers looked forward to her visits to the hairdresser. It was an hour of self-indulgence when she didn’t have to look after other people — customers in the shop or restaurant, or her father — and could give herself up to the ministrations of someone else. Ever since she had first moved to Oxford some four years previously, she had come to the same salon. This wasn’t because they were exceptionally good or cheap (though they scored pretty well on both those counts) or even convenient (Maggie had moved three times in those four years). She had struck up an almost immediate rapport with Zoe Fisher, the owner of the salon. The very first time had been the clincher. Once Maggie’s hair had been shampooed, Zoe had ushered her into her revolving chair, gently talked about possible styles and then got on with the resurrection process. Maggie had shut her eyes halfway through and when she opened them at the end she found she had been transformed. It wasn’t exactly an ugly duckling to swan scenario, but it was close enough, and when Maggie had walked out of the salon she really did feel like a new woman. And, to cap it all, Zoe had only charged her a tenner. ‘I always do an introductory offer to my new clients,’ Zoe had said, holding her coat for her. ‘I hope you’ll come back again,’ she added, while brushing some invisible hairs from the coat lapel.

Zoe was a lesbian. Maggie only found that out when they bumped into each other one Monday morning in Oxford’s Cornmarket and ended up having lunch together in the covered market. They chatted animatedly and at the end, as they parted, Zoe had kissed her on the cheek and asked if she had anyone special in her life. Maggie was flattered, but she was determinedly heterosexual and she told Zoe so.

‘Not to worry!’ Zoe had laughed it off. ‘But I hope we can still be friends.’

They had stayed friends, meeting intermittently for lunch or maybe to take in a film on a Monday afternoon, that being a day on which neither of them worked. And of course they had carried on meeting once every month or so when Maggie needed a haircut.

‘So what do you fancy today?’ Zoe had appeared at her shoulder as if my magic.

‘Just a couple of inches, please.’ Looking in the mirror, Maggie could see the mock disappointment in Zoe’s face. It had become something of a running joke that Maggie nev

er tried anything different.

Zoe leant down closer. ‘Fancy a change of colour, Maggs? I’ll do you a special deal if you like.’