Chapter 11

It was the middle of January when Sandra told me that her parents had invited me to their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, which would be the coming Saturday. They wouldn’t be doing much, there was no visiting family or friends, so it would be just the four of them, plus me. It gave me an idea.

“We need to get people together when we are ready to be extracted,” I said to Mrs Clarke after maths on Thursday afternoon. It was afternoon break now so we had a few minutes to talk. “How about we have a birthday party, or a wedding anniversary, or something like that?”

She frowned for a moment. “An engagement party might be better. Birthdays and especially anniversaries are known well in advance, so just suddenly putting on a party, might be seen as a bit suspicious. Particularly with some of the noises being made by some of the more extreme politicians.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “But how are we going to find someone who’s just got engaged?”

She looked at me for a moment. “You are planning on asking her to marry you aren’t you?” she said pointedly.

I just looked at her, my mind completely awhirl.

“Close your mouth,” said with gentle amusement.

“Um. Um,” I said stupidly.

“Think about it.” She turned and left.

“Oh hell,” I muttered. I didn’t go and join the gang, I went and found a corner in the library instead, and had a think. I didn’t really get anywhere.

I was almost late for the last class of the day, technical drawing, which it has to be said I wasn’t that interested in. I was doing okay and had been told I was probably on for a C grade, or with only a little more effort a B. I got there just as the master was closing the door. The rule was that once the door was closed you were officially late and could be reported as such. Most teachers gave it four or five minutes before closing the door, this one usually gave it about seven, so really I was very late. Fortunately not too late as he let me in with a frown and a ‘tut tut’ but no formal warning.

I hung around in the classroom at the end, even after Mr Malcolm had left. For once I wanted to avoid Sandra, or indeed any of the gang. I needed to really think about what Mrs Clarke had said.

I picked out a pair of Mum’s knickers, one of my all-time favourites, but ones I also hadn’t worn since they had left. I lay on my parents’ bed, gently, almost absent mindedly, playing with myself while I thought about Sandra, about Mrs Clarke, and about what Mrs Clarke had suggested. I decided I liked the idea, but I also wanted to talk it over with Mrs Clarke and with both of Sandra’s parents first.

Mrs Clarke’s only comment was, “What are you waiting for?”

When I asked how we could get married, she just smiled. “Who said you had to actually get married?”

“Oh.” I frowned. “That wasn’t ... oh. Okay.”

Mrs Clarke gave me another much more brilliant smile and I felt my cock surge.

“A real wedding would be better, but they take time to organise, while an engagement party could be organised with no more than a few days notice.”

“How quickly could you organise a wedding?”

“In principle I suppose it could be done in as little as six weeks, but that does make rather a lot of assumptions. Three months might be a better minimum, and even then you might have to take pot-luck on some aspects.”

I nodded. “I’m not gonna ask her just yet, but yeah, I will.”

She gave me a pleased little smile. “Just let me know afterwards. Either we’ll arrange everything as soon as we can afterwards, or we’ll plan a wedding for mid June, say, and see if we can get a pick up then. How does that sound?”

I nodded, my heart suddenly beating very rapidly. “After my exams?”

She laughed. “After your exams.” She sobered quickly. “I’ll try and find out when the dates are; they should have been published already, at least in outline.”

I went out with Sandra again on Saturday, but it must have been obvious that I had something on my mind, because twice she stopped and asked me outright what the matter was. Each time I denied there was anything the matter, but she was obviously worried and I think even a little hurt.

She relaxed a little, but only a little when I told her I loved her, but I don’t think she totally believed me. At one point I actually stopped in front of a jewellers to see what, if anything she might look at, but she just urged me on. We were heading for a different art gallery at the time, and I think there might have been a time limit on entry or something.

The following day was the Walmsleys’ wedding anniversary. I asked Mrs Walmsley for her opinion. She gave a little screech and a huge hug.

“I haven’t asked her yet,” I said slightly bemused. “I haven’t got her a ring or anything like that.”

“Don’t you worry about that dear. She’d be happy with just a curtain ring. When are you going to ask? Will it be today? This afternoon? Do you know when the wedding will be? Who...”

I managed to get a word in. “NO! I’m not planning on asking today, nor do I know when. I don’t know when anything will be. All I wanted to ask you was did you think it would be a good idea?”

“A very good idea. But why aren’t you asking her today?”

“I need to get some stuff done first. It should only take a day or two. I hope. But in the meantime, please, whatever you do, don’t let on.”

She looked at me for a moment, then her face changed from the bright excited look it had had, to a calm but determined look. “All right dear. But make it soon.”

It was another twenty minutes before I could ask Mr Walmsley. I’d wanted to ask him first, but events had transpired otherwise.

“Yes son,” he said slowly. “I do think it’s a good idea. A very good idea indeed.”

“You do?”

“Yes son, I really do. Do you have a ring for her? Or anything else like vague ideas about dates?”

“No rings. Maybe mid or late June for a date. Not before then ‘cos we have our A-levels.”

He nodded. “Reasonable. Okay. You need to get an engagement ring. Give me two minutes and I’ll go and steal one of her rings so you can take it to the jewellers to have them measure it. It’ll only be approximate because it won’t be for the right finger. But if you tell them that, they may be able to exchange it for the correct size afterwards. And it’s likely to be only one or at most two sizes out I would think. As for a wedding ring, I can supply you with an old family heirloom. It was my grand-mothers and it was going to be for Georgina, but, well, I assume you know something of that?”

I nodded but said nothing.

He nodded as well. “So I think it going to Sandra would be perfectly suitable. I’ll check with Monica first to make sure she hadn’t had something similar planned, but I don’t remember her ever mentioning anything of the sort.”

“Thank you. Thank you very much.”

He smiled slightly. “Spend no more than about fifty quid. You won’t get diamonds for that, they’ll be something called zirconium, but they look close enough, and you cannot afford anything more expensive. Sandra has always been one for white gold rather than yellow gold. You’ll find she never wears gold or yellow or similar as it just doesn’t suit her. Silver does, or white gold; and it’s no more expensive.”

“Thank you,” I said again.

He paused and looked at me speculatively. “Would you like to get married before your exams, and have the honeymoon afterwards?”

“Er. I don’t know. Why? Is that a good idea? What would they say at school?”

“Don’t tell anyone. At least, don’t tell anyone that doesn’t absolutely need to know.”

I shook my head. “Not sure about that,” I said slowly.

“Fair enough. It’s just that I happen to know that a wedding slot at the registrar’s office for the first Saturday in April is available. Someone at work had booked the slot, but his fiancée walked out on him two weeks ago.”

“Oh,” I said, stunned. “I’m not sure. Can I think about it?”

“Of course son. Talk to your Mrs Clarke as well. She seems to have a very sensible head on her shoulders, and she’s acting as your guardian at the moment anyway.”

“I will,” I said. That had given me another idea, about how I got rid of all the jewellery I had collected. Some of it might be junk, but surely some of it would have some value.

The rest of the day went well, and shortly before Mrs Walmsley gave me a lift home, Mr Walmsley slipped me one of Sandra’s rings.

I gave Sandra a hug and a kiss after we got out of the car, as last time she had come with us to take me home. “I love you so much,” I whispered to her. She gave me one of her wonderful smiles, then got back in the car.

I took in a small selection of the jewellery to Mrs Clarke the following day. Only a small selection because I had games that day and didn’t want to lose too much if my bag got rifled or stolen.

She was shocked when I told her, I think quite badly shocked because she gave me a very strange look. I had to explain that all the owners had, in effect, given it. “Leave it with me,” she said coolly.

I nodded. “Thank you Miss.” I left, very upset with myself. I was sure I had just lost her as a concubine, and more importantly as a friend. I hadn’t mentioned what Mr Walmsley had said, I didn’t think that would have gone down any better,

I wasn’t sure she would turn up Wednesday evening, but she did. She did her normal inspection, but seemed a touch more distant than usual. At the end, she sat me down. “Now. Explain everything. In explicit detail.”

I still had all of the keys, and the one credit card that had a balance on it. I showed them to her and explained carefully, though I didn’t mention either the knickers, or the pornographic video in which I’d seen one of the twins telling me to raid their house. Instead I put it that one of the men had told me to do it, and that a few others had agreed.

“Why didn’t the rest agree?”

“They didn’t hear him suggest it, but at least some of the others must have been in on it as more sets of keys were labelled than just those guys.” I showed her the bunches of keys and explained how I’d taken that as implicit permission.

“What else did you take?”

“Food, and that’s about it. I did take a camera kit, and a couple of films that I hadn’t seen before.”

“Which ones?”

I pointed them out on the shelf. “These three.”

She looked at them and nodded.

“Nothing else?”

“No. Not that I remember anyway.” There was no way on earth I was going to mention all the knickers I had taken.

“Have you been back?”

“Only to one just up the road, and only to raid her freezer.”

She nodded slowly. “And you’re sure you’ve taken nothing else? Just food, jewellery and some camera kit?”

“Well, it’s not jewellery only. It’s any small trinket that looked like it might be valuable, but would be easy to carry and hopefully not break. Oh, I took any money I found, but there wasn’t much. There were telly’s and computers and stuff, but I couldn’t have carried them, nor easily sold them. The jewellery seemed the obvious choice.”

She nodded. “Fair enough. All right, get it for me and I’ll see what I can do.”

I got the small case that it was all in. I’d lined it with bubble wrap, and had wrapped a few of what I thought were more fragile things in bubble wrap as well. “Oh crumbs,” she whispered when she realised just how much was there.

She went through it slowly, separating out about ten items. “I’d like to keep these, for me. I collect these myself.” I nodded. I wasn’t going to argue. She handed me a bracelet. “Give that to Sandra as a present. Tell her ... tell her ... it was your mother’s. Or your sister’s.”

“Okay.”

She pushed out four rings. “I’ll take these to a local jewellers near me and have them appraised. I can say I was left them by an aunt, or something.” She shook her head. “There’s far too much here to just take into a jewellers and say ‘give me a price’ because they’ll think it’s stolen property. If you’re lucky they’ll just tell you to go away. If you’re unlucky they’ll report you to the police, and if you’re really unlucky they’ll report you to some local gangster for poaching on their patch.”

She sighed. “I wish you’d told me this before. Why now?”

I told her about what Mr Walmsley had said. I wanted to buy Sandra something a bit more special than a fifty-pound zirconium ring, so I needed money. I also mentioned what he’d said about a wedding date in April.

Mrs Clarke looked at me hard at that news. “I’ll contact him later. In the meantime, you and I are going to go out at lunchtime tomorrow to buy your intended the best ring we can. I’ll pay for it. You can give me the money back as we sell this stuff. There is junk ... Ask Sandra to marry you on Saturday and we’ll have a party somewhere next Thursday evening.”

“Not here,” I said.

“Not here. Maybe at the Walmsleys’, but somewhere bigger would be better. It’ll be as many people as I can get together at such short notice that have agreed to be part of my pre-pack.” She sighed. “I just hope that I can get Amber capped by then. She’s wavering but she still hasn’t agreed.”

“What happens if you can’t?”

“Then the party will have to be smaller and it’ll just be a talking shop to try and sort out some bits and bobs for the collection. I’ve got it mostly sorted now, just a few other bits and pieces to go through.” She frowned at me.

“Have you spoken to Neeka yet?”

“Oh. No. Sorry.”

“Do it tomorrow. Or Friday. No later. Megan, no, not Megan. I keep saying Megan but it’s ... Margot, you couldn’t take her and Neeka, and I think Neeka would actually be good for you. From what I can work out, Margot would not do well in the Confederacy.”

“Sandra says she and Margot don’t get on.”

“That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. But talk to Neeka.”

“All right.”

The first thing I did the following morning was to catch Sandra and ask her about Neeka.

“Neeka? Oh. Yes, if you want.” She shrugged.

“Mrs Clarke recommended her.”

“Fair enough. Not objecting.” She smiled. “I don’t really know her but from what I can find out I like her.”

I smiled. “I’m giving you a veto on anyone. Except those I’ve already got, so anyone else.”

“And don’t you forget it, buster,” she said with mock aggression, poking me in the ribs.

“As if I could,” I laughed.

I gave her the bracelet Mrs Clarke had suggested. “This was my Mum’s. It was one of her favourites. Would you like it?”

She smiled at me. “It’s pretty. I guess at least it’s not a cast off or an unwanted gift.”

I shook my head. “I think Mum would have liked you a lot.”

Mrs Clarke and I went into town at lunchtime. We had to be back in less than forty minutes, though as I was having maths with her immediately after lunch anyway, I was not going to be later than she was.

She went into one jewellers, but made me wait outside.

“I told him they needed appraising for insurance purposes,” she told me when she emerged. “This one’s worth a little under three-fifty, the other three about seventy or eighty quid each. If I sold all four together, I might just get five hundred. Four-fifty would be more likely, maybe a little less.” She looked at me. “You have a ring to buy, and I’m limiting you to two hundred pounds. That’s the value of these three. I’ll keep them and sell them. The fourth I’ll sell on your behalf.” She grinned at me. “With a five percent commission.”

“Okay.”

Her grin vanished and she nodded. “Come on then.”

We went into three good quality jewellers. Not the most expensive, but also not the dirt cheap ones either. We did find some rings, but neither of us was totally satisfied. Not in the price range she had set me.

“Oh bugger this,” she whispered. She went into a jewellers that we hadn’t planned on going into, and came out again a little later and gave me just four hundred quid. “That’s less my commission.”

“Um. Twenty quid?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Think about your percentages. Think about what that four hundred represents of the original. Try again.”

“Oh yes. Um. Four hundred is ninety-five percent of ... er ... I can’t do that in my head. About twenty-one pounds? It’s four hundred, divided by ninety-five, multiplied by one-hundred.”

She sighed. “Divide ninety-five by five?”

“Nineteen.”

She looked at me.

“Oh. Er, four hundred is nineteen twentieths of the total.”

“Yes.”

“Um. Except I still can’t do that in my head.”

She held out her hand in which was twenty-one pounds and a couple of coppers. “Four hundred and twenty-one pounds and five pence. I haggled him out of the extra one pound and five.” She grinned at me. “I suppose, technically, I owe you a quarter of a penny.”

I laughed. “I think I can live without that.” I did the sums on the calculator later. 421·05 ×0·95 = 399·9975. I frowned. I think, technically, I owed her a quarter of a penny.

She looked at her watch. “We’ve no time now. We’ll try again tomorrow lunchtime. Come on. We’re going to be late back at school.”

In fact we were only six minutes late, but Mrs Clarke made me go in ahead of her. She followed about thirty seconds later. That way she could pretend she didn’t know I had been late. I dropped into my seat next to Bondy. “Fuck,” I whispered. “I got backed up in the loo.”

He just laughed. He thought I was telling him I’d had a bit of constipation or similar.

“Sorry folks,” Mrs Clarke announced cheerfully as she came in a few moments later. “Everyone here?”

She left the door open for barely thirty seconds, then closed it carefully.

We picked up the perfect ring the following day. We were even lucky in that the jeweller had the right size in store. Point three of a caret of Brilliant Cut diamonds, in a solid silver ring. I had no idea exactly what ‘Brilliant Cut’ meant, but in the weak January sunshine they sparkled. It cost me a little over three hundred pounds. Was it daft? Of course it was. Was she worth it? Too bloody right she was.

“Should I go down on my knee when I ask?” I asked Mrs Clarke as we sped back to school.

She smiled wistfully. “My husband didn’t, but I ... maybe. See how it goes. Sometimes it’s romantic, sometimes it’s just silly. But do it at least in semi private. Doing it in a very public place just adds to her pressure. Particularly if other people can see what’s happening.” She gave me a soft and very beautiful smile. “Just be yourself, and be who she wants you to be.”

I nearly asked ‘who’s that?’, but just managed to keep my mouth closed. The rest of the day I was on tenterhooks. Once again I managed to avoid Sandra. It wasn’t easy but fortunately we shared no classes, and by running errands for Mrs Clarke during afternoon break, I managed to avoid her. I was convinced that if she saw me, she would somehow know. Somehow I would give the game away. Mrs Clarke was just amused, but said nothing.

“Sorry babe”, I texted her as I walked home after school. “got caught up with Mrs Clarke + lssns”.

“Ok cu 2moz?”

“Same place same time”

That just brought a smiley. We were meeting a bit earlier now, both because the days were shorter, and because her parents were happy with us being together.

“Need to see if Tee will come out next weekend,” Sandra said as I turned up at ‘our’ coffee shop just after ten. I hadn’t even had chance to say anything yet.

“Sure. What’s up?”

“She’s getting a bit stressed. Twice this week Amber nearly caught her father raping her. Tee is scared that once she finds out, he’ll just go for her anyway.”

“Oh, poor babe. Yes. Definitely. How easy would it be to organise a party and invite her?”

“What sort of party?”

I shrugged. I pretended to think about it while I slipped my hand in my pocket and retrieved the ring. I’d already seen that the shop was mostly empty: the weather wasn’t very nice, it was grey and windy and very heavily overcast. At the end of January it was still just close enough to the revelries of Christmas and the new year that most people still hadn’t recovered either their funds or their appetite for anything frivolous. The combination of the two meant there were even less people around.