The Marriage by K.L. Slater (any book recommendations TXT) 📕

She did a quick calculation in her head. They’d both be eighteen years old now. That made her feel ancient, although she was only sixty-five.

As they’d grown older, Jesse remained the wild one and the frequent subject of gossip in the town. Often in trouble, and when he wasn’t, it would never be very long until trouble found him. Poor Bridget certainly had her hands full with that one, Mavis reflected, especially given that she was a single mother.

Tom, on the other hand, had grown into a bright, sporty type. He came from a good family. Back in his schooldays, Jill and Robert Billinghurst were always first in line at the school’s annual parents’ evening. Over the years, Tom had developed into the sort of boy who excelled at whatever he turned his attention to. That was currently boxing, if Mavis remembered correctly. There had been a small report of a recent win in the local newspaper a few weeks earlier.

She was about to step forward to say hello to the boys when the two of them, clearly the worse for wear, suddenly squared up to each other. Mavis was accustomed to dealing with this kind of thing in the school playground. It was surprising how much grown men had in common with warring five-year-olds. But here in this quiet, dim street with just the faintest glow of orange sodium light, there was no trace of the two mischievous but likeable boys she’d once known so well, and an icy prickle crept around the back of her neck.

She opened her mouth, anxious to intervene before things got really nasty, but she hesitated as voices were raised, the harsh tones amplified. Then the pushing and shoving started. The look in their eyes, and such terrible accusations flying around. Things Mavis wished she wasn’t around to hear.

But she couldn’t just stand by. This had to stop right now.

As she moved out of the shadows, the altercation escalated. Their movements quickened, raw fury burning in their eyes and vicious words still spilling from between bared teeth.

Mavis gasped at a flash of something sharp and metallic. Holding a shivering Harry close, she tucked herself behind a large green recycling bin at the back of the greengrocer’s, watching with dread from amid the stench of rotten vegetables. What she saw and heard next caused the breath to catch in her throat. Her grip tightened around Harry’s soft, warm girth as she backed away into the safety of the shadows behind, her soft-soled shoes scattering loose gravel underfoot.

The boys turned for a split second, as if they’d seen or heard her, but the interruption was forgotten as one lurched towards the other.

Mavis scurried through a concealed alleyway that served as a shortcut to the back of a short row of shops, before emerging on the next street, where she put the dachshund down again and caught her breath. She fished in her pocket for her pay-as-you-go mobile phone and rang for an ambulance, covering the mouthpiece with her hand to muffle her voice.

‘There’s some kind of incident at the rear entrance of Movers nightclub in Mansfield,’ she said breathlessly. ‘It looks pretty nasty. There are two men fighting and I think someone might be about to get hurt.’

She ended the call amid a flurry of questions from the emergency operator.

When she reached the top of the hill, she stopped, tipped her head and listened, her heart quickening as the urgent drone of emergency sirens fractured the silence of the usually peaceful early hours. She turned and looked back down the hill over the town and saw several vehicles with blue flashing lights turn into the high street below.

Her heart squeezed, and for a moment she considered turning around and going back to see if everything was all right. She wondered if she’d imagined the flash of metal – her eyesight wasn’t what it used to be. Her hearing was temperamental too, and their words had seemed slurred; perhaps she’d misheard the terrible things they’d said, the awful accusations. Just the thought of dealing with the police, enduring the curiosity of the locals and, as a worst-case scenario, ending up as a witness in court … well, she couldn’t cope with that. Not after her heart operation. The doctor had told her she must avoid stress at all costs.

Harry pulled on his lead, eager to get home out of the chilly November air.

‘Perhaps there’s been a traffic accident, Harry,’ she wondered aloud, as if acting a part. It was good practice, because that was what she intended telling the police if they came knocking at her door. That she didn’t see what had happened because she’d almost been back home when she’d heard the sirens.

Sometimes the truth was hard to bear but even harder to speak, and although as a God-fearing woman she struggled with this approach, Mavis had always recognised the value of keeping silent and letting other people resolve their own troubles.

She knew both boys, she knew their families. Getting in the middle of those two sides – both of which contained rather volatile personalities, if she remembered correctly –wouldn’t end well.

Mavis had spent thirty years helping the young charges in her care to recognise the difference between right and wrong. She was a big believer in doing the right thing when one was able, but sometimes the truth was so shocking it was kinder and wiser to say nothing at all.

Hopefully it would prove to be only a scuffle, an alcohol-induced disagreement between two friends.

In Mavis’s experience, these nasty little incidents usually blew over in no time at all.

Two

The Mansfield Guardian

15 October 2009

Man dies after one-punch assault in town centre

An eighteen-year-old man has died after being taken to hospital in the early hours of this morning in a critical condition following an assault outside a nightclub that led to a bleed on the brain.

The incident happened just after 2 a.m. outside Movers nightclub and late bar on