Twice Shy

'In advance?' she said rigidly, and I agreed again. I gave her two of the notes I'd got from the bank a day earlier and asked if it was enough. She said yes, looking flushed, and bundled the three children out of the room, out of the caravan, and down towards the road. Ted, hopelessly awkward and embarrassed, stuttered a wheezy apology.

'We've had a bad month… they've put the land rent up here… and I had to pay for new tyres, and for the car licence. I must have the car and it's falling to bits – and I'm overdrawn…'

'Do stop, Ted,' I said. 'I know all about being broke. Not starving broke. Just penniless.'

He smiled weakly. 'I suppose we've never had the bailiffs… but this week we've been living on bread mostly. Are you sure you don't mind?'

'Positive.'

So I stayed with the Pitts. Watched television, built bright brick towers for the children, ate the egg supper my money had bought, took Ted for a pint.

The talking couldn't have done his throat much good, but between the froth and the dregs I learned a good deal about the Pitts. He'd met Jane one summer in a youth hostel in the Lake District, and they'd married while he was still at college because the oldest of the little girls was imminent. They were happy, he said, but they'd never been able to save a deposit for a house. Lucky to have a mobile home. Hire purchase, of course. During the holidays, he looked after the children while Jane took temporary secretarial jobs. Better for the family income. Better for Jane. He still went hiking on his own, though, one week every year. Backpacking. Sleeping in a tent, in hilly country; Scotland or Wales. He gave me a shy look through the black-framed glasses. 'It sorts me out. Keeps me sane.' It wasn't everyone, I thought, who was his own psychotherapist.

When we got back, the caravan was tidy and the children asleep. One had to be quiet, Ted said, going in: they woke easily. The girls all slept, it appeared, in the larger of the two bedrooms, with their parents in the smaller. There was a pillow, a car travelling rug and a clean sheet awaiting me, and although the sofa was a bit short for comfort it was envelopingly soft.

It was only on the point of sleep, far too late to bother, that I remembered that I hadn't called back to talk to Irestone. Oh well, I thought, yawning, tomorrow would do.

In the morning I did call from a telephone box near the public park where Ted and I took the children to play on the swings and seesaw.

Irestone, as usual, wasn't in. Wasn't he ever in, I asked. A repressive voice told me the Chief Superintendent was off-duty at present, and would I please leave a message. I perversely said that no, I wouldn't, I wanted to speak to the Chief Superintendent personally. If I would leave a number, they said, he would in due course call me. Impasse, I thought: Ted Pitts had no telephone.

'If I call you at nine tomorrow morning,' I said, 'will Chief Superintendent Irestone be there? If I call at ten? At eleven? At midday?'

I was told to wait and could hear vague conversations going on in the background, and going on for so long that I had to feed more coins into the box, which scarcely improved my patience. Finally, however, the stolid voice returned. 'Detective Chief Superintendent Irestone will be in the Incident Room tomorrow morning from ten o'clock onwards. You may call him at the following number.'

'Wait a minute.' I unclipped my pen and dug out the scrap of paper which held Ted's address. 'OK.'

He gave me the number, and I thanked him fairly coolly, and that was that.

Ted was pushing his tiniest girl carefully round on a sort of turntable, holding her close to him and laughing with her. I wished quite surprisingly fiercely that I could have had a child like that, that I could have taken her to a sunny park on Sunday mornings, and hugged her little body and watched her grow. Sarah, I thought. Sarah- this is the way you've ached, perhaps; and for the baby to cuddle, and the young woman to see married. This is the loss. This, that Ted Pitts has. I watched his delight in the child and I envied him with all my heart.

We sat on a bench a bit later while the girls played in a sandpit, and for something to say I asked him why he'd lost his first intense interest in the racing form-books.

He shrugged, looking at his children, and said in the husky voice which was slowly returning to normal, 'You can see how it is. I can't risk the money. I can't afford to buy the form books. I couldn't even afford to buy a set of tapes for myself this week, to copy the programs onto. I bought some for you with the money you gave me, but I just didn't have enough… I told you, we've been down to counting pennies for food, and although next month's pay will be in the bank tomorrow I still haven't paid the electricity.'

'It's the Derby soon,' I said.