by TL Dyer
Already I’ve forgotten what those plans were.
Looking up at the place now, the brickwork is dull and in need of a fresh lick of paint. Moss clings to the roof tiles, and nettles spill through the black railings framing the once neat front garden. The house seems smaller than it used to, less majestic. Though maybe it’s just because the day is grim. And I’m older now.
There’s a car in the driveway this time. A grey BMW only two years old. Always a BMW. Leather seats that creaked beneath you, stuck to your skin in warm weather. Walnut dash. Smell of newness and luxury. Smell of money.
With another glance up at the window with the closed curtains, I get out of the car, my own modest Ford Focus still newer and more expensive than anything my parents ever owned when they were my age. After pulling my raincoat from the back seat, I put it on and throw the hood up over my hair. The spitting rain hits my face and cools my cheeks as I cross the road towards the house. Or perhaps it’s the blood draining from my head down, so that by the time I’m treading up the front steps, my legs are like jelly and my body’s shivering. Someone’s just walked over your grave, Mam would say.
At the door, I ball one hand into a fist in my pocket and the other raises ready to knock, my heart drumming in my chest hard enough to get my attention.
Jake, I remind myself, at the point of chickening out and returning to the car. This is not about me, this is for Jake.
My fingers curl around the door knocker and I pull it back to knock sharply three times. Then I retreat a step, pushing my hand down into my pocket and half hoping the BMW in the drive is just a ruse. There’s no one home after all; he’s out walking, or maybe still in bed.
To the right of the door is a row of ceramic pots of different sizes. Some are empty, others half-filled with soil, and with weeds turned brown and limp and long since past reviving. I remember them when they were overflowing with colour. The twins’ mother, Eliza, tended the garden meticulously, her hair swept from her face by a beautiful gold silk headscarf, her eyes hidden by large sunglasses trimmed with sparkling stones. She didn’t ever say much, and I never once heard her shout, not like other mothers would – like my mother could. But when she did speak, it was with a soft lilt to her tone and a smooth Irish accent I used to think was exotic. There was a mysterious charm about her that was compelling. To me, as a young teenager, she was like no one else I knew.
On the other side of the door, a key rattles in the lock. I flinch, bring my attention back to why I’m here and what I mean to say. As the door peels away from its frame, I push the hood so it falls around my shoulders. It’s been a while, perhaps they won’t even recognise me. We don’t always see for ourselves how much we change on the outside. Except, as a face peers out, wondering who the heck is visiting at this time on a Sunday morning, there’s only a moment of irritable confusion before it’s wiped away by a flash of surprise.
‘Hello, Darren,’ I say.
Darren Isaacs, Craig and Lauren’s dad, says nothing for a few moments. Nor does he remember or care, as the door opens wider, that it’s Sunday morning, which means he’s still in his lounge wear. A pair of tartan pyjama bottoms and a rumpled maroon t-shirt seem to age him. But that’s not all that does. A thin, patchy black and white beard and moustache takes the place of the neat stubble he used to have. Grey tints his hair which, even though he’s in his fifties now, is no thinner than it used to be. Deep lines mark his eyes, and even deeper shadows too. Though maybe that’s got more to do with the early hour and the fact I’m the last person he expects to see standing on his doorstep.
‘Are you looking for Lauren?’ he asks, when he finds his voice. ‘Only she doesn’t live here any more.’
‘No. I mean, I know she left some time ago.’
‘Yes. Well…’ He brushes his knuckle across the end of his nose. ‘She moves about. I don’t have her current address, I’m afraid.’
‘That’s fine. That’s not what I’m here for.’ My words stumble under his gaze, which is as direct as it ever was, but more so now that the stone-blue eyes are evaluating me with an uneasy caution. ‘Could I come in, please? If that’s okay.’
He looks behind him into the house as if to check. Then back to me, he says, ‘Is it official? Only I heard you’re uniform now.’
‘Oh. No. Of course not.’ I flap my hands inside my coat pockets, look down at myself and what I’m wearing as if to prove my point. ‘Nothing like that,’ I add, and try to smile. But if it comes off, he doesn’t reflect the same.
What he does though, despite his hesitancy, is ease the door wider and move aside for me to enter. I thank him as I step into the hallway.
‘I have to be at work this afternoon,’ he says, looking from the front door to the kitchen, dithering between the two, before bringing his glare back my way.
‘I won’t stop long.’
Darren nods, satisfied with this. He turns and heads barefoot down the hall without saying more, or offering me anything. I glance up the stairs. It’s dim at the top. There’s little light coming through the landing window on a day like today, and something about that is disappointing. So too is the hard-wearing beige stair carpet, the plainness of the bare walls. Disappointing how, I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s the sense that something is missing. Or that it doesn’t invite the flood of warm memories I had expected.
The house is silent, the air within it cool, as I follow the sounds to the kitchen. On the wall that separates the hallway from the lounge are two framed photographs hung apart from each other. Small pictures in simple mahogany frames. The first is of Lauren. Not a new one. She must be about fifteen. It looks like it was taken on one of their holidays abroad. France or Spain. One of the many villas they rented. Her hands are pushed down into the pockets of a pair of brightly coloured shorts, over which a cropped top exposes the belly button stud she said Darren hit the roof over. Her head is tilted to one side, her blonde wavy hair – the same colour as her mother’s but much thicker and more difficult to tame – hangs down over one shoulder. She doesn’t smile, just glares at the photo-taker like this is another chore she could do without.
‘Believe it or not, that’s the best one I have of her,’ Darren says from the kitchen.
I softly laugh. Because nothing says Lauren more than this pose. Spoilt little princess, some called her. Maybe she was. In those early days of our friendship I would have called her edgy, a rebel, someone who wouldn’t lie down and accept things the way they were. In my naivety, I probably thought of her as some kind of radical. And to a girl from the valleys, that was right up there with breaking out of this shithole and taking on the world. Weren’t we all going to do that? But if I’d had to predict back then which one of us actually would, I’d have chosen her.
I mean to move past the next photograph because I know who’ll be in it. But unbearable curiosity draws my attention its way. And after that first glance, I have to stop. Look at it properly. Catch my breath.
Craig Isaacs. The fair-haired, blue-eyed boy. Nothing like his sister. Nothing like any of the other boys we knew at that time.
In the photo, he’s perched on the steps out front. Another reluctant subject, his back is to the camera, but his head peers over his shoulder as though he’s been called. As if his mother, in the midst of tending to her flowers, has said his name and he’s turned. Hard to place his age from that angle. Mid to late teens maybe. The sun is out, but he wears a leather jacket and jeans. His eyes are as wary as his smile, but there’s something in both that makes my heart jump. And it’s not just that I’ve missed his gentle nature, or his addictive chuckle and easy presence. It’s that I see Jake. In the curl of his lip, the line of his cheekbone, the slimness of his nose. I see a likeness to Jake that I never expected.
‘He thought a lot of you.’
I jerk my head right, to where Darren sits at the kitchen table watching me watch his son.
‘There weren’t many he struck up a genuine friendship with, but you were different. He listened to yo
u.’
Now that I’ve torn my eyes from the photograph, I move into the kitchen, the tap of my low-heeled shoes loud against the stone tiles in the large, open-plan kitchen-diner. This room feels more familiar. The oak-topped worktops and deep green of the double oven, the checked curtains on either side of the window and a hotch-potch of ornaments across its sill, things the twins made in school, albeit long since faded of their colour. All the same, the air in here is cold too, and I remember that this room always was, being at the back of the house and never getting the sunshine.
Craig’s dad doesn’t invite me to sit, but I do anyway in the chair across the oak table from him. It’s a table built for six. With only the two of us, it feels enormous. I fold my hands in my lap, the skin on my fingers as cool as the expectancy in the air, and the equally cool gaze fixed my way from the man who’s waiting for me to get to the point so I’ll leave. He speaks first, perhaps to hurry me along.
‘Still in Cwmcarn, I take it.’
His voice is brusque, and he frames it as a statement rather than a question. I’d forgotten that this is what he’s like. Or at least, I’d forgotten how intimidating it can feel, even if intimidation is not his intention.
‘Marne Street,’ I say with a thin smile, and he nods as if this is nothing more than he’s expected. ‘It’s practical,’ I add.
‘Right,’ he says, though doesn’t ask why practicality was the primary reason for buying a house no further than a bat’s wing from my father’s. But he’s an intelligent man, perhaps he’s already figured that one out. A single parent with a full-time job – a contradiction in terms if ever there was one. No one could manage both alone.
‘I’m sorry about Craig,’ I say, blurting the words to get them out of the way. They’re enough to break his glare, and his eyes flick to where his hands clasp loosely on the table, the pain of his loss barely twelve months old. I notice the absence of the ring from his left hand. Maybe that’s why the house feels so chill and empty. Eliza spread warmth and colour through it even when she was saying or doing nothing.
‘Perhaps I should have…’ I start, but hesitate; should have what? ‘Done something. Helped somehow.’
Darren flips his bottom lip out and shakes his head. To the table he says, ‘He was on a trajectory of self-destruction no one could have stopped.’
The shadows under his eyes are darker and deeper than they were a moment ago, but when he looks at me again it’s with the same directness as before. ‘Much like Sue. When something’s got you like that…’
I balk at my mother’s name, which I haven’t expected him to say. And at the words too, that he would equate my mother’s cancer to Craig’s drug addiction. The two are incomparable. I return his gaze, wondering how he can even draw that conclusion. But setting my own grief aside, and considering it instead with my work mentality, it would be possible he has a point. Not one I care to think about just now, but enough to stop me from saying something I shouldn’t. Enough to remind me that Darren Isaacs doesn’t operate under thin disguises of sentimentality or false sympathy – if you want that, go elsewhere. But if you want the truth pared down and brutal, he’s your man. In that sense he’s similar to Shaun. And in this age of fake news and even faker lives, there’s something to be said for that. Something refreshing.
‘Like I said, I’ve got to be at work shortly,’ he reminds me, flipping his wrist to check his watch.
‘Right. Yes, of course. Sorry,’ I stutter, shuffling upright in the seat and gripping my one hand tight in the other.
‘I still haven’t sorted through all of his things yet,’ he adds, perhaps thinking my apology for his son’s death was the purpose for my visit. ‘But when I do, I can save you something. If you’d like.’
The switch in his tone is enough to put a lump in my throat that I force down to thank him. That’s the other thing I remember about Darren Isaacs. On the rare occasions when he shows empathy or affection, it’s so keenly heartfelt it’s overwhelming.
‘I’ll box things up,’ he says, ‘and you can take what you want. I’ll do it soon. I’ve been waiting for his sister, but wait for her much longer and they’ll be clearing out my belongings at the same time. Perhaps if you call by in another month or two.’
Settled on that plan, he gets up from the table as if that’s sorted. And if I don’t speak now, I might never say it.
‘It’s Jake, actually,’ I throw out as forcefully as I can, taking my cue from him and meeting his eye with more resolve than I feel.
‘Jake?
‘My son.’
He lowers himself back into the chair, eyeing me with the same caution he opened the front door with only minutes before. ‘Yes, of course.’ His mouth moves as if he means to say more, but this time all clarity eludes him and so he says nothing at all. Just waits.
And in the odd stare caught somewhere between curiosity and suspicion that drills right through me, I wonder if he’s already ahead of me again. I run my tongue between dry lips, pull in a breath, and say the words that have been repeating in my head since long before I got here.
‘He’s yours, Darren.’
Chapter 7
It’s difficult to say what emotions cross Darren’s face as we sit at the kitchen table with my words echoing around us. Words that are out there now and can’t be taken back. But the most prevailing of those emotions, if I had to guess, is fury. His hard, blue-grey stare doesn’t break or falter, but I will myself not to be cowed. To see this through. It takes all my training not to fumble an addendum to my bombshell, but to wait for him instead. His first reaction will signal how the rest of this conversation will go.
He pulls a soft breath in through his nose which he releases slowly. Then without so much of a flinch, he says, ‘You’re lying.’
I shake my head no. So he tries a different tack. And this one, I’m expecting.
‘I saw you,’ he says, voice low and words measured. ‘That day in the park when he was barely a few months old.’
‘I remember,’ I say. Meaning, I remember everything about that conversation. But he clarifies it anyway.
‘I asked you outright. And do you recall what you said?’
‘Of course.’
‘You said no. No hesitation. No, he wasn’t mine. It was that idiot who dumped you. That’s what you said. You looked me right in the eye, like you’re doing now, and those were the words you said.’ He points a finger at me, that fury bubbling close enough to the surface to spill over. Though what that might look like, I’ve no idea. I’ve never seen him lose his cool, not once. I used to think Lauren was just being dramatic when she said he could.
‘I know what I said, Darren. And you’re right. You’re exactly right.’
‘So now what? You’re saying you were lying?’
Another point with the finger, eyes blazing with colour. And for some reason I’m unable to fathom, sat here at his kitchen table with his barely concealed rage threatening to bring everything I meant to say and do crashing down around me, I realise I never once considered as I pictured this scenario playing out that it might end with him refusing to have anything to do with Jake. Colouring all my thoughts had been whether bringing Jake’s dad into his life was a good idea or not. As if I held the ultimate control over that.
‘I was young,’ I try to explain, even while my mind makes it hard for me to find the right words to describe how it was back then. ‘Afraid—’
‘How can you be sure?’ he asks, and clenches his jaw, chest rising and falling with his deep, heavy breaths.
‘I know. One hundred percent.’
‘How old’s the boy?’
‘Five. Almost six.’
‘Birth date?’
‘Twenty-sixth of May 2013. But you know this.’
‘What’s his blood type?’
‘What?’
‘What’s his blood type?’ he repeats, emphasising the importance of his question with a nod of the head, as if my answer will give him all the clarification he
needs.
‘I don’t know. Not off the top of my head.’
‘Right,’ he says, dropping back in his seat, his foot off the pedal but mind rerouting elsewhere. ‘You still haven’t answered my question. That day in the park, were you lying to me? Or are you lying to me now?’ He huffs a dry, humourless laugh. ‘For reasons I find very suspicious, I must say.’
Fearing we can run in circles with this, and that I won’t have the resiliency to hold on to my patience if we do, I reach inside my coat to retrieve my phone and flip through photographs until I find one with a good likeness. Laying the phone on the table, I slide it across to him.
It takes him a moment, his eyes still fixated on mine, getting the measure of me, but when I gesture towards the phone, he eventually drags his gaze to look at it. I watch as he takes in the boy in the picture. He pulls it closer and taps at the screen to stop it from timing out. Then he picks it up. As before, I can’t read a lot in his expression – he’s the most closed book of a personality I’ve ever known. But I sense a shift in the air around him.
‘I’ve never thought of it before,’ I say, my voice quiet in the cavernous kitchen that’s far too big for the two of us, let alone one. ‘He has a lot of Craig in him. The mouth. Nose.’
Darren’s throat moves with a swallow. His eyes are still on the picture, but they’re losing focus, as though seeing beyond it to something else.
‘His personality, too,’ I add softly. ‘He’s gentle. Fun-loving.’
Across the table, he clears his throat as he leans forward to put the phone down in front of me. ‘So you slept with my son.’
I laugh, a quick involuntary burst. But he’s far from amused. He’s still sizing me up, as if I’m an imposter in his home rather than the mother of his child.