Ralph’s Children by Hilary Norman

at the screw’s house and at his next-door-neighbour’s, before Roger
(wearing a cropped wig and blue contacts) had rung the neighbour’s front door bell.
    I’m from the Dursley Residents’ Association,’ she began. ‘We’re getting up a petition because of this plan to buy up houses in your road for a drug rehab
centre.’
    ‘You’re joking,’ the other woman said.
    ‘I wish,’ Roger said.
    Which conversation kept them both occupied while Simon sat in her car outside, keeping watch and ready to act as getaway driver, and Jack entered the back of the house, removing a VCR, Play
Station and silver framed photograph, before departing again, leaving no trace of his entry or exit.
    Right after which he’d gone, smooth as silk, into the screw’s house and planted the stolen items in his upstairs spare room. Pig had reconnected the phones soon after, and next
morning Roger had made an anonymous call to the victim of the burglary to tip her off about her tea-leaf screw neighbour.
    Still simple.
    Still bloodless.

Laurie
    ‘I ’m going to bed,’ Laurie had told her parents an hour ago. She had reminded them that she would be leaving early, had wished them
luck with the clearing up, said she’d be back as soon as she could manage tomorrow evening and would help all she could then.
    ‘After the worst is over,’ her father had said.
    Her mother had said nothing at all.
    Laurie knew she probably wouldn’t sleep. Excitement did that to her every time, and the only reason it mattered was because she wanted to be feeling bright and energetic in order to give
her son the best possible day out.
    She lay on top of her bed, closed her eyes and pictured him.
    Some people thought that all children with Down’s syndrome looked alike. She supposed she might have thought that too, once upon a time, if, that was, she’d ever thought about it at
all.
    Sam Moon did not look like anyone else on earth.
    His photographs lay in a box in her locked wardrobe. One was brought out most nights before she went to sleep and put away again when she woke because that was one of the rules. In case Josie
– her mother’s cleaner – was to wonder who the boy in the picture might be.
    Heaven forbid.
    Laurie had long since given up pointing out that no one ever needed to come into her bedroom to clean, that she preferred doing it herself.
    ‘Even if you do,’ Shelly said, ‘it doesn’t mean they might not come in.’
    ‘I could lock my door,’ Laurie said.
    ‘That would look strange,’ her mother said.
    Rules of the Moon house.
    Sam was not photogenic. In photographs, he looked happy, but quite ordinary. In real life, however, he was spectacular, and Laurie didn’t really need photos to conjure him up, could just
shut her eyes anytime and whisk him up at will.
    She smiled now at the prospect of seeing him in the morning, then returned her thoughts again to that brief, foolish fantasy about Dave, wondering what exactly that had been about, before
pushing it away again.
    She plumped up her two pillows and lay back.
    Closed her eyes firmly.
    ‘See you soon, Sam Moon,’ she said.

The Game
    J ack’s contribution had taken the game back to the level of physical roughness that had been absent since their assault on Rose Miller. His
chosen Beast was a woman he had seen at Kennet Shopping Centre abusing her frail, elderly mother, swearing at her and dragging her along, almost pulling her off her feet.
    ‘This one really deserves a taste of her own,’ Jack had insisted to Ralph. ‘And I’ll tell you straight, if you don’t let us handle this the way I want, I’ll
take care of her on my own, and it’ll be a bloody sight worse.’
    They had all talked it over for a while, Simon wondering if this might have been a one-off event, if this woman really was a Beast.
    ‘We need to be certain,’ she had said.
    ‘I know an abusing bitch when I see one.’ Jack had been blunt. ‘But if you don’t want to take my word for it . .