Next of Kin

by TL Dyer

  A smile curves at the corners of his mouth, enough that my suspicious side wonders if this is his way of challenging me. Or that he sees it as getting his own back, turning up at my house to drop a bombshell in the same way I did at his.

  ‘You didn’t want to be involved,’ I say through gritted teeth.

  ‘No, that’s not right.’ Confusion rankles his eyebrows even though the smile’s still there. ‘I didn’t say that. Think back, Sacha, that’s not what I said at all. I questioned if you were lying, and I asked what you wanted from me.’

  ‘You’re right, you did. I apologise. And in the same vein, I never said I wanted you involved.’

  Darren laughs, light and natural, flicking an eyebrow as he nods his approval. ‘I imagine you make an excellent police officer. Though, maybe not such a good liar.’

  ‘I think perhaps you should go.’

  He glances down the street to where he’s parked the BMW, and when he looks back a moment later his expression is softer. ‘I didn’t mean that in the way it sounded. What I meant was, there was a reason you came to me and I don’t think it was just to check on our family history.’

  He waits, giving me the chance to say what I had wanted to say at his house. But that was then, and this is not the right time.

  ‘You can’t turn up like this. I need to prepare.’

  ‘Alright. Go ahead. I’ll wait.’ He takes a step back and grips the bag handles with both hands.

  ‘No, I mean I need to prepare… him.’ Jake, is on the tip of my tongue, but somehow I can’t say it. ‘Look, I’ll give you a ring, alright? We’ll do this properly. Just not today, not now. I have a houseful.’

  The message gets through this time. I see it as it passes over his features, something that could be disappointment. ‘That’s a shame. With it being his birthday and everything, I thought it would be a surprise.’

  ‘It would be more than that,’ I say, the words tripping out before I can stop them.

  Disappointment turns to irritation. ‘Then why did you come to me?’

  Piercing eyes wait again for my answer, for the same honesty he’s showing me. And that shame that’s bothered me for days, but for the last couple of hours this afternoon I’d forgotten about, returns to twist once more in my gut. In all the time I knew him, Darren never did wrong by me, never treated me as anything other than a friend of his children – at least, not until I made him see me as something else. And while unexpected and at first unwanted, I got Jake out of that night and I’ve never regretted him in the years since. But what did Darren get? A lifetime of guilt? A broken marriage and estranged family? Was that me, did I do that to Craig and Lauren and Eliza? Did I do that to him?

  I fold my arms over my chest as the breeze sends a shiver along my spine. ‘Look, not while everyone’s here, okay? But I promise I’ll ring you.’

  The door opens behind me and I jump and turn, heart dropping into my stomach for a second time as my brother peers out at the two of us.

  ‘Everything alright?’ he asks, and flicks a nod to our unexpected guest. ‘A’right, Darren?’

  ‘Shaun. Long time no see.’

  ‘Certainly is.’ Shaun looks pointedly to me, but getting nothing there, stares at Darren again. ‘So what you doing here then?’

  ‘Shaun, I’ll be there in a second,’ I say. And when he doesn’t leave: ‘Shaun. Check on the boys. Please.’

  He glares at me for a moment. Then, not satisfied but thankfully not pushing it further, he does as I ask and goes inside, leaving the door open. I wait until I hear his voice rounding up the kids before I turn back.

  Darren holds up the gift bag. ‘I don’t know what he likes, but…’

  I mutter a thanks as I take it from him. Except a birthday present isn’t all he’s brought. He reaches into his pocket for a box the size of a packet of paracetamol, which he passes to me.

  ‘To be sure,’ he says, when I look up from the DNA testing kit.

  ‘I am sure.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  He rubs his finger down the edge of his mouth. He looks uncomfortable. And for a man who doesn’t do discomfort, it feels awkward and out of place. ‘You can’t blame me for being thorough. You turn up out of the blue and drop this in my lap. If he’s mine—’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘If he is, I’ll bear the responsibility. I can promise you that.’

  ‘You make him sound like a mortgage payment,’ I say, then suck in a breath, remind myself that I’m the one who started all this. ‘Alright. Fair enough.’

  He points to the box. ‘Just do the test. Please. My swab is already inside, you just need to get his. Let me know when you have the results. It should only take a couple of days, but I’d like to see the proof. You can have them sent to my house, or phone me, whatever you prefer. I’ve written my number on the back.’

  I stare at the test with the growing knowledge that what I set in motion last Sunday can’t be stopped. From Darren’s point of view, the result may mean he still has a living son. But from mine, it’ll mean there’s no going back from this now.

  Chapter 12

  Back inside, I glance into the living room as I cross the hall. Shaun’s waiting and catches my eye, but I hurry up the stairs before anyone else notices I’ve reappeared. Closing the bedroom door behind me, I go first to the window and peer down to where the BMW is pulling away from its parking spot and out of the street. Then at the wardrobe I drop the gift bag inside and slide the DNA test on the shelf under layers of clothes. Now is not the time to consider what I’ll do with either of them.

  I look at myself in the wardrobe mirror. I had no right to snap at Darren like that. He came here in good faith. Okay, so perhaps he didn’t think through the timing all that well, but maybe he assumed I had all this covered, that I’d already told Jake about his dad and their whole other family.

  Heavy footsteps thud up the stairs and across the landing. Not Jared’s. Not Dad’s. ‘Shit,’ I mumble to my reflection.

  ‘Sacha? You in there?’

  I blow out a silent breath, then go to the door to face the music. When I open it, Shaun barges past me into the room.

  ‘What the fuck did he want?’

  ‘Bloody hell, Shaun,’ I hiss at him, closing the door. ‘Keep your voice down.’

  ‘Well?’ he asks, doing what I did and going to the window to check the street.

  ‘He just wanted to know if I’d been in touch with Lauren, that’s all. If I knew where she was.’

  ‘Why? What’s the slag done this time?’

  ‘God, do you have to?’

  He turns from the window and folds his arms across his chest. ‘That’s what they called her.’

  Sometimes I wish he’d stop talking. Or at least not tell me the things I’d rather not know.

  ‘They didn’t call her that.’

  ‘Oh yes, they bloody did. Down the snooker club they did.’

  ‘Yeah, well. A bunch of degenerates, that lot.’

  ‘Not me. It wasn’t me. I was the only one wouldn’t go near her. Mind, she had a bloody good try, though.’

  ‘Please don’t tell me anymore.’ I close my eyes and sit on the edge of the mattress just as a squeal of excitement comes from downstairs, followed by a cheer. For a second I imagine the kids running riot, maybe breaking all the rules to tear open the Pass the Parcel presents while no one’s around. But then I hear Jared’s voice, louder than all the others, as he instructs them to get ready for the next round. Poor Jared. This isn’t what he came here for. He didn’t come to mind a bunch of children he doesn’t know from Adam. Nor even to make up the numbers. He came for me. Like I knew he would.

  ‘I should get downstairs,’ I say, just before the mattress bounces under Shaun’s weight as he drops on top of it.

  ‘Raleigh Six-Speed,’ he says, lying on his stomach, chin resting on his folded hands, eyes glinting with devilment. ‘That’s what else they called her.’

  I tut and cast my mind back to when s
he might have earned that reputation. I don’t remember her throwing herself around. Boyfriends, yes, and a tremendous flirt when she wanted to be, but I never thought she was taking it further than that. Though there was always something troubled about Lauren that I never properly got to the bottom of. Even her own twin brother couldn’t align himself with her combative nature and often unbearable self-absorption. It would put them at loggerheads for most of the time, and make my friendship with both of them trickier the older we got. Lauren wanted all of my attention or none of it. Craig just wanted someone to talk to. I wonder if she wishes, like I’ve done in the months since he’s gone, that she had only listened a little more.

  ‘Poor Lauren,’ I mutter, wondering if what had been happening to Craig – the people he hung round with, the distance he put between them – had more of an effect on her than she let on, and maybe that’s why she had been seeking the wrong kind of attention.

  ‘Pfft, poor Lauren! She knew what she was doing. Pissing off her waster of an old man, that’s what.’

  I shuffle on the bed to face him. ‘What do you mean, waster? Why do you call him that?’

  ‘Are you serious? Why do you think Lauren and her brother fucked off as soon as they could?’

  I shake my head and shrug a shoulder, hurrying him to give me the answer.

  ‘To get away from him, that’s why. Come on, you must have known that.’

  ‘Are we talking about the same man?’

  ‘Darren fucking Isaacs, yeah. The one on your doorstep just now. With his smarmy smile and his fucking brand new Beamer every other year.’

  ‘That doesn’t make him a bad person, Shaun, just because he has money.’

  ‘No, if he had money. But he doesn’t. Think about it, Sach,’ he says, sitting upright. ‘He’s a supermarket manager. Do you know how much they make?’

  ‘Not really, and I don’t care to know.’

  ‘Peanuts, that’s what. And his missus never worked, did she? So it’s all a front. With people like that, it usually is. Probably in debt up to his fucking eyeballs.’

  I consider how I’ve never even thought that through. The clothes, the holidays, all the school trips Lauren and Craig went on that I never could, the clubs they joined, equipment and uniforms and fees paid for. There was never any doubt they were loaded.

  ‘Alright, so even if they splashed about what they didn’t have, they weren’t hurting anyone else, were they?’

  Shaun shrugs, raising his hands, giving it the whole bit like he knows a lot more. But it only annoys me. He’s been living round here too long, the gossip-mongers working their way under his skin. They’ll do that, if you’re not careful; fill your head with nonsense. I’d have thought my brother of all people would have more sense. He knows what it’s like to be on the wrong end of it.

  ‘I’d better get downstairs,’ I say, putting an end to this conversation before I learn anything else I don’t wish to know. ‘Rescue Jared before I ruin our friendship altogether.’

  ‘Yeah, about that, Chuckles. Just friendship, is it?’ Shaun gets to his feet, wearing the same idiotic grin as when he was describing my old friend’s reputation.

  ‘I was waiting for one of you to say that.’ I pull open the door. ‘Should have known it’d be you. Remind me again who turns six today?’

  I usher him out of the room and with each step down the stairs try to push the Isaacs from my mind, even if only for the next few hours until the party’s over. Because after that I’ll need to give Jake the kind of birthday present he really hasn’t been expecting.

  Chapter 13

  Two months before the night in the car with Darren, Shaun was released on parole from HMP Cardiff on good behaviour and under the promise not to violate his probation conditions for the following six months. One of those conditions was that he was to have no contact with Lee Cavendish, who as a nineteen-year-old had been led up to a copse of trees beyond the children’s play area at Feeder Row, just streets from the snooker club in Cwmcarn, by a gang of lads intending to silence him over a string of local car thefts he kept mouthing off about. Despite the smashed face, dislocated jaw, ruptured testicles and bruised ribs, Cavendish went ahead and mouthed off anyway, giving the officer at his hospital bedside the names and addresses of all those who – in his own words – ‘would be sorry they ever laid a hand on him’.

  For the four other lads convicted of assault with intent to harm, it was either not their first conviction or wouldn’t be their last – the trip to the station, then the court, then HMP Cardiff was all part of life’s minor problems. But for my brother, and our family, it was devastating. Not only because we’d never been entangled with the law before, but because he didn’t do it.

  It didn’t matter that Shaun tearfully swore to his solicitor that he wasn’t there when the assault happened, that he left the snooker club at the same time as the others but that he came home while they went with Cavendish up the hill to Feeder Row park. Because with CCTV footage outside the club putting him with the group, plus Cavendish’s testimony and the other boys’ refusal to comment, it would be Shaun’s word against the victim’s. And never mind that Cavendish was a nasty, spiteful piece of work, it was unlikely to swing in Shaun’s favour. As far as the solicitor was concerned, the best he could do was plead guilty at once, co-operate, show remorse, and hope to bag himself as small a sentence as possible.

  Terrified and alone, and having never been in trouble before, my nineteen-year-old brother did as he was told. He was sentenced to two years. Mam and Dad visited regularly at the beginning, until after six months Mam couldn’t do it anymore. She longed to see him, but leaving him there each time was too much for her. After that it was Dad who kept up the visits, telling an eager Mam on his return not to worry, he’s fine, but then heading straight out to his workshop where he wouldn’t come out again for hours. I didn’t visit him at all. He had enough to cope with just being in there, I didn’t want him to see how my fury with everyone – Cavendish, his so-called friends, that solicitor, even him – was written all over my face. In my mind, innocent was innocent, and you protected that with everything you had. You didn’t just give up on it because the odds weren’t in your favour. You fought for it. And he hadn’t. The one time when telling the truth was so vital to him – that one thing he did to the nth degree on all other occasions until he drove us crazy with it – was the one time he told a lie. And only because he was scared, backed into a corner, and too trusting of others.

  He wasn’t scared when he came out. He wasn’t my brother either, not the one I knew. By then my anger had cooled, but not the sense of injustice. That never went away. It only escalated after we welcomed back this hollow version of the Shaun we were used to, ironically his innocence gone in return for a distanced, hardened wariness that for a long time didn’t suit him. He would shut himself in his room, sometimes for days on end, only coming out to use the bathroom or the kitchen, but never engaging with us during his brief appearances. And then there was Mam. Much as she tried to hide the real bones of what she was going through as her cancer progressed, it wasn’t always possible. Every chemotherapy session left deep scars she tried and failed to disguise. But what hurt her more was that she couldn’t care for Shaun, or protect him from others or himself the way she wanted to.

  Finding out I was pregnant in the middle of all that was just another disaster we could do without. Curled up under the covers on my bed, I thought about abortion, thought about taking off somewhere where no one would know me. I even thought about ways I could bring all this to an end so that I wouldn’t have to deal with it at all. In the end I did the best I could have done for all of us. I told Mam. And with all that was going on, what would once have been a family trauma became the very thing that helped us recover.

  When Jake came along, he put a smile on Mam’s face, strength in her body to fight, and brought Dad out from his shed and Shaun from his self-imposed cell. In my son’s tiny, innocent, wondrous features we regained some of ou
r own wonder, and if not for him I don’t know how things would have gone, how long we’d have had Mam, maybe much fewer than the three years she held out for, or how Shaun would have coped with her passing if he hadn’t been pulled from the black hole consuming him in time.

  So while I can say that I regret sleeping with Darren Isaacs, a shame I can never escape, I can’t regret what it gave me, us, our family. I can’t regret Jake, when he was just what we needed, at exactly the right time.

  Chapter 14

  There was no right time to speak to Jake about his dad last night. After the party he was cranky and tired, and his uncle had hung back after everyone had gone on the promise of free drinks. Once the birthday boy had fallen exhausted into bed, we’d sat out on the patio in our jackets in the dark and between us got through the twelve bottles of Bud and a pack of ten Lambert & Butler in under two hours. It had been that sort of day.

  Shaun didn’t mention Darren’s visit again, and it meant that I could forget about the task ahead for a little while longer. But as Jake and I sit down to breakfast the next morning, there’s no getting away from it. I promised Darren. More than that, I promised myself. I promised to always do right by my son no matter what, to instil in him the same sense of justice that I carried myself. And though I didn’t see it back then when he was born, when I was young and afraid, caught in the headlights the same way Shaun had been, I know now that this is the right thing to do. Primarily for Jake, who deserves to know his dad. But also for Darren, who I’ve kept the truth from for long enough.

  ‘So you enjoyed your day then, buster?’ I ask, as he scoops chocolate hoops into his mouth, milk running down his chin.

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ he replies, with a nod, eyes fixed on the cereal bowl.

  ‘I think your friends had a good time.’

  ‘Mm.’ His tongue shoots out to catch the milk.

  Sensing I’m going nowhere fast with this conversation, I get up to retrieve the Spiderman gift bag from the kitchen cupboard where I left it last night after checking the card. ‘Have a great day Birthday Boy,’ was all that was written. Not, ‘Happy birthday, son,’ or ‘Lots of love, Dad,’ or any of the things that had been running through my head as I’d stared at the envelope. Cursing myself for my caution, I’d tucked the envelope back in on itself and replaced it in the bag.