Page 6 of A Very Happy Halloween

“Yeah, I imagine you’re the type of woman who would.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? ‘Type of woman’?”

“You sound a little uptight.”

“Uptight? I’m not— Okay, fine. I’m uptight. But so would you be if one of your children was in the hospital and the other was busy vandalising private property. I’m not saying he did,” I added hastily. “Just that it’s a possibility.”

“What’s wrong with your other kid?”

“He broke his arm. His wrist. The doctor called it a buckle fracture.”

“Relax—he’ll be right as rain in a couple of weeks.”

“How do you know?” Curiosity got the better of me. “Did you ever break your wrist?”

“Twice that I know of, plus I had a buckle fracture in my tibia from jumping off my grandma’s balcony. Superhero movies have a lot to answer for.”

“Well, Alfie wasn’t watching superhero movies. A boy in his class pushed him over in the playground, which is another problem because he’s never been one for confrontation, and—” Wait. Why was I talking to a complete stranger about my problems? Although was he a complete stranger? There was a niggling familiarity about his voice, and I thought I might have bumped into him around the village at some point. “Can you just send me the bloody video?”

He gave an irritating chuckle. “Sure, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart? I wasn’t his freaking sweetheart. Beads of sweat popped out on the back of my neck as I waited. Was the door salvageable? If not, how much did a new one cost? I was about to google when my phone buzzed.

Show time.

The video was every bit as awful as I’d feared. Worse, even. The doorbell camera had recorded Harry struggling up the steps wearing a pair of mittens and his Spider-Man Halloween mask, lugging what had to be a five-litre can of paint. There was a pause as he used a screwdriver to lever the lid open, and then he tossed the contents at the front door, took a picture of his handiwork, and hotfooted it down the drive. But he couldn’t have tucked his phone very far into his pocket because it bounced onto the lawn as he ran, and in the last seconds of the clip, I spotted a boy wearing a royal-blue sweatshirt duck out of the bushes and follow him. Shawn? Maybe it wasn’t only Steven who was a bad influence.

A sigh escaped. I’d been so relieved when Harry started making friends at the new school that I hadn’t stopped to wonder whether they were the right kind of friends.

I called the stranger back, on his own phone this time.

“Fine, how much is a door?”

“Oh, I don’t want you to fix it.”

“You don’t?”

“Nah, your kid is going to fix it himself.”

“What?”

“You can supervise.”

Was he joking? Harry was eleven years old. He didn’t know the first thing about doors.

“A professional would do a much better job.”

“And all your kid would learn is that when he fucks up, his mum will bail him out. You need to teach him a different lesson—that he has to be responsible for his own mistakes. How do you think he’d do in a young offenders’ institution?”

I gasped. “Prison?”

“If you won’t teach him the consequences of his actions, someone else will have to.”

My guts churned at the thought. I didn’t want Harry to become that boy, the one everyone rolled their eyes when they spoke about. The one people went out of their way to avoid. And I definitely didn’t want things escalating enough that juvenile detention was a possibility.

“He’ll come and wash the door tomorrow morning.”

The boys had been looking forward to a day out—swimming followed by a trip to the cinema—but swimming was a no-go thanks to Alfie’s cast, and now we’d have to cancel the movie too. Harry would just have to apologise to Alfie as well as the man whose property he’d damaged. Righting wrongs took precedence. What if Harry hadn’t dropped his phone? What if the stranger had called the police instead? We’d all be in a whole world of trouble.

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