Alain shrugged, dashed away a tear with the back of his hand. For a moment he seemed to shrink within himself, then he took a breath. ‘Is it okay — I mean, if you don’t mean it?’
Jenny felt a tingle of mingled dread and anticipation. ‘If you don’t mean to hurt someone?’ she asked.
Alain nodded, but seemed unable to meet her gaze. The skin over his right eyebrow puckered.
‘Alain . . .’
‘Just TELL me!’ He leapt up from the sofa and stood over her, his fists bunched.
Jenny started violently, and her eye was drawn to the cricket bat, lying on the coffee table behind Alain. She forced herself to relax, leaning back in her chair and looking up at him. His face, red with rage, was twisted into a grotesque mask.
‘TELL ME!’
‘There is no simple answer, Alain,’ Jenny said. ‘It depends on lots of things.’
He was breathing hard, and his fists were still clenched, but at least he was listening. ‘What things?’ he asked.
‘What you did. What you were trying to do. And, of course, what actually happened.’
She realized that the same criteria could be applied to her own situation.
What I did, she thought. I persuaded Fraser to accept fostering when he didn’t want it. What I was trying to do. I was trying to build a family, instead of us just being two people who cared for each other. Should that have been enough? What actually happened. I succeeded in making Fraser so unhappy that he had an affair.
Alain seemed to be twitching slightly. He swayed, and his eyes began to roll up into the sockets.
‘Alain?’ Jenny reached out and took one small fist in her hand. He snapped out of his near-faint and stared at Jenny.
‘Jenny . . .’ He began to cry afresh. ‘Please, Jenny . . . I didn’t mean it.’
Chapter 27
Fraser parked outside the house, trying to summon the courage to turn in to the driveway and roll up to the front door. Finally, summoning his courage, he swung in to the broad, gravelled drive and stopped outside the house.
Vi Harvey was instantly recognizable, even after eight years. She had the same glossy, glowing look, the same showy confidence, as when he had met her all that time ago.
‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’
‘An explanation.’
She looked over his shoulder and Fraser saw a twinkle of malicious humour in her eyes. ‘Think you deserve one, do you?’
They regarded each other for a few moments. Perhaps she did look a little older — weathered, rather than worn — too much sun and nicotine, Fraser reflected.
‘Aren’t you going to tell me I haven’t changed a bit?’ she asked. That malicious gleam appeared again, and Fraser thought She’s flirting with me — she just can’t switch it off.
‘Can I come in?’
She seemed to think about it and then, as if she had lost interest, turned and walked down the hall. ‘Shut the door after you,’ she said. He followed her into the kitchen where she was preparing a salad.
‘He’s mine, isn’t he?’ Fraser said.
Vi widened her eyes. ‘Who?’
‘Don’t piss me about, Vi. Your husband called me — of course he called himself by another name — but it was him all right.’
She frowned, slicing a tomato with elaborate care. ‘How did you find us?’
‘I didn’t know where to look, at first. I tried the phone book, but—’
‘We’re ex-directory.’
‘I got the company name from Yellow Pages,’ he said. ‘After that — well, you should never underestimate the libraries service — if they can’t help, they usually know a man who can. They put me on to the Companies House Register, and Companies House faxed me the managing director’s name and address.’
‘Obliging of them,’ she said. Then, ‘He isn’t here . . .’ She hesitated, seeming suddenly unsure of herself. ‘I don’t know where he is.’
‘It’s you I wanted to see.’
‘How nice. After all these years.’
‘You told me you’d had an abortion.’
For a moment, she was disconcerted. She turned to the sink and rinsed her hands, taking time to recover her composure before answering with her back turned to him. ‘Who’s to say I didn’t?’
‘Your husband for one. Otherwise, why contact me?’
‘You’ll have to ask him that. Are you sure it’s me you wanted to see?’
‘I want to see my son.’
The smile returned, but the malicious edge had sharpened. ‘Go home,’ Vi said. ‘Go back to your wife.’ She began to turn away and he caught her just above the elbow.
‘Where is he?’
She looked up into his eyes, unafraid, angry. ‘You’re hurting my arm.’ Her grip tightened on the vegetable knife in her free hand.
Fraser let her go. ‘I told you I’d provide for the child.’
‘What?’ she said, flinging the knife into the sink. ‘On your teacher’s salary? Do you know what a house like this costs, Fraser? Have you any idea?’
Fraser blinked. ‘You bartered our child for this house?’
‘Oh, please. Spare me the Calvinist morality. You make it sound so sordid. The boy was the glue that bound our marriage together. People do it all the time.’
‘With another man’s child?’ He stared at her disgust. ‘Where is he?’ He ran from the kitchen, determined to search the house.
She followed him out, running down the hallway, grabbing the newel of the staircase for support, screaming up at him. ‘Don’t you watch the news, you stupid bastard?’
Fraser stopped and turned. She collapsed against the newel and slowly sank to the bottom step, sobbing. He returned down the stairs, one at a time, unsure if this was just another ploy. At the bottom of the stairs he crouched next to her and suddenly she hit out, punching hard. He raised his hand in a reflex action and her fist grazed his left eyebrow. Her momentum carried her forward, twisting as she fell, and she banged her face on the newel post.
She covered her mouth and sobbed, ‘You stupid, self-obsessed bastard!’
Fraser stood slowly, bewildered, wanting to help, to console her. He touched her shoulder lightly, but she slapped it away.
‘Don’t touch me!’ she screamed. ‘Get out of my house! GET OUT!’
* * *
Fraser slumped behind the wheel of the car, staring at his hands. They were shaking. He had got as far as backing out of the drive when he felt another bout of nausea overtake him and he had to pull over to the side of the road until it passed.
What the hell had made him come here? He had hurt Jenny so badly that he didn’t see how she could ever forgive him, and for what? He still hadn’t seen his son — didn’t even know if he was safe. What had Vi called him? Self-obsessed. Maybe so, but he couldn’t stop now. He couldn’t let go. He had to see this through to the end, no matter what the consequences.
Chapter 28
‘Dr Greenberg?’
‘Speaking. Who is this?’ Max sounded wary.
‘I’m sorry, phoning you at home, and on the weekend as well, but—’ She stopped, seemed to gather herself. ‘I’m Yvonne. I work on the switchboard at the hospital. I don’t know how to say this . . . She’ll probably kill me for talking to you . . .’
‘Whatever you tell me will remain strictly confidential,’ he reassured her.
‘I wasn’t going to bother. She’s not exactly my responsibility. But I couldn’t settle to anything. I kept worrying about her.’
She hesitated. Max waited.
‘It’s Shona,’ she said. ‘Shona Rhys. Didn’t you look after her when she had a — well, when she got sick?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t—’
‘No, I know that, but Shona told me you helped her before — last time — and I thought maybe you could . . .’
‘Why are you worried about her?’
‘She’s been all over the place this week. Turning up late for her shifts, going off without a word o
f explanation. Crying over nothing. Withdrawn. And she’s got these bruises on her hands. I—’ She lowered her voice. ‘I think she’s started hurting herself again.’
Max recalled Shona’s wild appearance at the entrance of the hospital on Friday morning. Yes, he should have been more direct, should have insisted she make an appointment to see him.
‘Dr Greenberg?’
‘I’ll talk to her,’ he said. ‘I’ll do my best.’
* * *
It was getting worse. Now she didn’t have to close her eyes to see his face, the eyes wide, insane and evil, laughing at her. The destruction of his books had only made him angry and now he was persecuting her so that she dared not sleep, because when she slept, he would hover over her bed, waiting for her to awake and inhale the sickness and putrefaction of his breath. His laughter followed her, cutting across phone calls, insinuating itself into the rhythm of the car’s engine, the whirr of her refrigerator, gurgling through the water pipes, hissing through the flames of the gas fire. He whispered to her from the static on the radio, and with the rush, rush, rush of blood in her ears, he urged her on, telling her there was no other way:
Suicide-suicide-suicide.
She telephoned Pam on her emergency number, but he wouldn’t let her say what she wanted to say. She had heard Pam trying to reach her over his angry screams:
‘How are we healed, Shona? Say it with me.’
‘By openness and shared experience, we achieve awareness,’ she intoned. ‘By the expression of legitimate rage . . .’ Here, Pam’s voice was drowned out by his furious demands for her to kill herself. ‘. . . confrontation of our persecutor brings release and the realization of our potential.’
Shona knew it by heart. It was pinned to her noticeboard in the kitchen, but he wouldn’t let her say it.
‘Confront your demons, Shona,’ Pam said. Then he disconnected them.
Shona reached for her address book, and as she put it on the table, it fell open at the page where she had written his number.
Fate. She would be calm.
Max Greenberg picked up the phone on the second ring. He listened for two or three minutes before speaking.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s time we talked.’
Chapter 29
Mike Delaney nodded towards the family group beyond the mirror. ‘Do they know it’s two-way?’
‘They’re not stupid, Mike.’
He and Max Greenberg sat side by side, their knees almost touching the screen between the tiny office and the interview room.
‘I’m not sure this is a good idea,’ Mike said in a whisper, unconvinced that the soundproofing really worked.
Max took a deep breath, then exhaled through his nose. ‘Jenny said the same thing about Alain. She’s not sure he’s ready for it.’
‘They were very upset.’
‘Mm.’
They watched the little group for a couple of minutes. Angeline, Alain’s mother, appeared to be trying to calm her mother. Her father sat, frowning, distracted, perhaps in shock.
‘All three of them insisted on identifying the body,’ Mike said.
Max winced.
‘Sorry, Max, but that’s what it is.’
‘I know, that’s not what’s bothering me. They’re Catholics, aren’t they?’
‘So?’
He shrugged. ‘It beats me why believers in a religion that makes such a big thing of faith — in believing what can’t possibly be proven — would insist such close scrutiny of a body before accepting death.’
Mike bridled, despite his long-standing lapse into a troubled agnosticism. ‘Haven’t they a right to see Jeanne-Louise one last time?’ he demanded, falling into the interrogative speech patterns of his mother and father, still devout in their beliefs. ‘After all, is it likely they’d have an open coffin with her injuries?’
Max’s eyebrows twitched. ‘I hadn’t expected such fellow feeling,’ he said. ‘But I’m not disputing their right to view the body,’ he explained. ‘I’m just noting that it hasn’t exactly put them in a sanguine frame of mind to meet Alain, has it?’
‘Sanguine,’ Mike said, prickly at being subjected to a lecture. ‘Is that what they call a Freudian slip?’
Max eyed him coolly. ‘I’ll go and tell Jenny we’re ready.’
Mike began to stand, but Max pressed gently on his shoulders. ‘Best you stay here. The boy is a little . . . volatile at present.’
‘Frightened?’
‘Most likely, but it’s being expressed as aggression. He cracked Fraser over the head with a cricket bat this morning.’
‘Is he okay?’
He saw a fleeting twinkle of mischief. ‘Fraser or the boy?’
‘Both.’
Max became serious, reflective. ‘Alain is calm. For the moment. Whether he’s okay is quite another matter, but he is here.’
‘Is he communicating?’
‘He’ll talk to Jenny. Only to her,’ Max said, fixing him with a look that said, He’s not ready to speak to you. ‘And then only under extreme conditions.’
Mike did a little mental backtracking. He recalled the day and Diane Seward, the photographer, had gone to take Alain’s picture. There was a strained, unwelcoming atmosphere in the house which was quite unlike Jenny and Fraser. He moved on to the morning that he had telephoned Jenny to tell her that the body they had found was not Alain’s mother but her sister. Jenny had mentioned a car parked outside their house — a car she had noticed when she had left the house to wander Sefton Drive in the early hours.
‘These phone calls Jenny and Fraser have been getting . . .’ he began.
‘I don’t know what they’re about, Mike,’ Max said, his tone making quite clear that he would consider it a discourtesy if Mike were to inquire further.
Mike responded with a slight lowering of the eyelids, a mental more than physical acquiescence. ‘How’s Fraser after the crack on the head?’
‘I don’t know. He buggered off with—’ Max stopped, and Mike’s ears pricked.
‘Off with . . .’ What? Or who?
He waited, interested to see how Max would resolve his obvious misstep. He was holding back. Who was he protecting — Jenny or Fraser?
‘Without a word,’ Max concluded abruptly.
Mike had been a policeman for too many years and had heard too many lies to let that go. He studied Max for some moments, then nodded again, once, slowly, thoughtfully.
‘Jenny thinks she’s being watched,’ he said, again waiting for Max’s reaction. He gave none, except for a slight lifting of his head. ‘And that’s on top of these weird phone calls.’
‘Can’t you put a trace on the line?’
‘We could,’ Mike said, ‘but it’d be a bit pointless if Fraser knows who’s making the calls.’
He was asking Max to help him out, and although he couldn’t read it in Max’s face, the psychiatrist’s hesitation said that he was having an inner debate.
‘Are you any nearer tracing Alain’s father?’ Max asked, after too long a silence.
Mike grimaced. ‘It’s proving more complicated than we expected. I’ve got a few questions for Mrs Fournier before she leaves, so ask her to hang about when she’s finished here, will you?’
‘Of course . . .’ Another awkward pause. ‘The men you were interviewing yesterday—’
‘What about them?’
Max smiled. ‘You’ve stolen my line.’
‘We let one go. We’re still interviewing the other.’
‘And?’
Mike gave a slow smile. ‘And nothing. We’re still talking, that’s all.’
It wasn’t quite all: they had charged Lobo with the attack on Randy Khan to add to the charges of assault and battery on Peter Merembe and criminal damage to Merembe’s car. It hadn’t been difficult to persuade his superintendent to grant an extension on Lee-Anne’s detention. She hadn’t said anything arrestable yet, but she would, he was sure of it.
‘I see,’ Max said, turning to
leave.
‘I don’t think you do, Dr Greenberg,’ Mike said quietly.
He saw surprise — perhaps even affront — in the psychiatrist’s expression as he turned back.
‘I think you know what’s going on with Jenny and Fraser,’ Mike said. ‘Now, I’m sure you have good reasons for withholding that information — respect of privacy, honouring a position of trust, whatever. But ask yourself this: if you say nothing, and that puts Jenny in danger, will you ever forgive yourself?’
For five seconds he thought Max was ready to tell him all. Then his face closed, and he left the room, closing the door firmly behind him.
* * *
Jenny guided Alain gently towards the interview room. Having told her that the family was ready, Max had retreated to watch the exchange from the observation room. The boy had enough to deal with, he had explained — an additional stranger in the room would only put more pressure on him.
Jenny had only managed to get Alain this far by providing him with a series of achievable goals. First, leaving the house. Next, getting into the taxi, promising him that she wouldn’t force him to see his mother, that he could leave whenever he wanted to.
The walk from the taxi to the hospital had proved the most difficult. At first, he had refused to get out of the taxi, then they sat outside for ten minutes on a bench in the sunshine, listening to the distant sound of traffic and the insistent chirrup of sparrows in the bushes nearby. But he had made it inside, taking a deep breath and bracing himself as if he were about to take a high dive into deep water.
Now, outside the interview room, Jenny could feel Alain trembling. His hand was deathly cold in hers. He was doing this for her, because she had asked him to, and she felt a little ashamed of herself. Didn’t she say she wouldn’t force him? And wasn’t this coercion a subtle way of doing just that? She told herself that he had to meet his mother, that the authorities needed to know what had happened to him, but looking down at the child now, seeing the curls on his forehead quiver with anxiety, she felt she was being cruel.
‘Mummy is inside,’ she explained. ‘And your grandparents.’ Alain made a low, guttural sound like a moan, and Jenny added, ‘I’ll stay with you, Alain. I’ll be with you the whole time.’
THE LOST BOY an unputdownable psychological thriller full of breathtaking twists Page 21