Who shot BA..?
5 April 2002
by Little Dot
Alice
Aldridge lay on her bed listening to the argument rage downstairs. They'd
been fighting for three days, on and off. Her mother alternating between
silent, miserable weeping and bouts of rage: screaming and shouting at
her father; him trying to placate her and then giving up and going out,
god only knew where, coming home in the early hours, long after her mother
had sobbed herself to sleep. Debbie and Simon hadn't visited for ages.
Even Gran was avoiding coming over.
Alice wished her parents would
just sort out what they were going to do: that her father would just leave,
if that's what he wanted. They seemed to have forgotten that she lived
here too. She just slipped out quietly every morning, and vanished up
to her room as soon as she'd seen to Chandler in the evening.
And school. Alice didn't know
what to do about school. She'd never been massively popular: day girls
were almost always excluded from the boarders' clique, and Alice was no
exception, but for some reason Amelia Horsley-Wright had taken a particular
dislike to Alice recently, and what Amelia said was law in year nine.
It hadn't really been proper bullying, just tripping her in the corridor
so that she dropped her books, or snide comments when they were changing
for gym, nothing she could tell anyone about without sounding pathetic
- well, that was how it felt.
Alice knew she didn't fit in.
Amelia and her set were much more interested in giggling over more magazine
than they were in horses or the Chalet School, and they all looked like
teenage posh spice clones - next to them Alice felt fat and frumpy. Maybe,
Alice thought, if I dressed like them, was as thin as them they'd accept
me. That was why she'd started cycling to school, and why she'd been studiously
avoiding her mother's home cooked stodge - that'd got easier over the
past few days. She didn't even feel particularly hungry anymore.
It was Friday night. No school
tomorrow, that was a good thing, but Alice didn't really fancy being stuck
in the house with her feuding parents for an entire two days. She turned
her music up a bit and stuffed her pillow over her head as her mother's
incredulous tones drifted up the stairs.
Alice
woke early on Saturday morning. She couldn't hear any other noises in
the house, so she dressed as quietly as she could and crept out to the
stables. Chandler nuzzled her pocket, hoping she'd brought something nice
for his breakfast. She fed him the apple she'd taken from the kitchen.
The saddle, when she lifted it down, felt heavier than usual. She put
it on Chandler's back and fastened it with practiced skill, then led him
out of the yard and mounted in the lane.
It was a beautiful day. The clouds
were high and whispy and the April sunshine was comforting on her back.
She walked Chandler down the lane, bluetits and sparrows flying startled
from the hawthorn hedges as she approached. Coaxing him to a trot, she
steered Chandler towards the bridleway that led away from the farm and
the village.
Alice usually loved to ride,
but today she found it too quiet; she had too much time to think. At least
at home she could take her mind off things by reading a book, or watching
tv, or even with prep. Out here she couldn't help dwelling on things,
wondering what to do, running through scenarios in her mind. She wasn't
melodramatic by nature, but she began to wonder what would happen if she
didn't go home. Except that that wasn't really an option. You couldn't
run away from home with a pony, and she wasn't leaving Chandler here.
Perhaps there was only one way out. She turned Chandler and rode back
towards the farm.
The farmhouse was deserted. Alice
went through to her father's office and rooted around in the desk drawer
for the spare keys to the lockup near Greg's cottage where he kept his
shotgun. She took the least visible route to Greg's, and slipped, unobserved
into the little stone outhouse. The gun cupboard was behind the door.
Alice turned the key in the well oiled lock, opened the cabinet and lifted
down the nearest gun in her gloved hands. She loaded the side-by-side
with two cartridges, there was no point in filling her pockets with more
ammunition than she needed, and prepared to leave. It was then that she
heard a footstep outside.
"Greg," her father's voice called,
Alice froze. "Greg, I thought you were down at the pheasant enclosure
today, what're you doing in there?" He stepped into the outhouse, swung
the door half closed, and Alice found herself face to face with him, the
gun between them. She wasn't aware of having had her finger on the trigger.
She didn't remember pulling it, but she heard the explosion, felt the
recoil, saw her father jerk back as the impact hit him, watched as he
fell backwards, sliding down the wall, and slumped, half lying, half sitting
on the dusty floor.
She didn't scream, she just dropped
the gun and stepped back. It landed against Brian's shoulder and his arm
fell forward across it. Alice knew she had to get out of there, she threw
the door open, and ran straight into George Barford. "Alice?" he said.
"What's 'appened? I 'eard a shot? Oh my... Mr Aldridge... 'E's shot 'is-self!"
The
police were very gentle with her. It was a terrible thing for a thirteen
year-old to have witnessed, and the case was very simple: Brian had been
wracked with guilt over his affair, devastated at having ruined his marriage;
and it turned out he'd been hiding some pretty dodgy dealing in his business
life too. No one argued.
"It's just you and me now, darling,"
Jennifer said after the funeral. "I'm afraid you're going to have to leave
St Margaret's though. Your father's left the farm in a terrible state
financially. I hope you're not too upset."
Alice shook her head. There had
been one way out, she thought, but this one was better.
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