by Keane Jessie
‘There are a few more questions I have to ask,’ said the woman on the phone. ‘I’ve just taken over from Mrs Mulville, she’s left the agency now, so I’m familiarizing myself with her casework at present.’
‘Anything,’ said Nula, knowing that this whole thing was giving Charlie a bad case of the shits, but he was doing it for them both, and she was touched by that.
‘Well, Mrs Stone, Harlan’s a delightful boy. Quiet, pleasant. I’ll bring him for a visit, if we could finalize a time next week . . . ?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ said Nula. She’d been feeling so down, so deep in depression that the doc had given her some stronger pills, but this cheered her. Charlie would be home soon, she couldn’t wait to tell him. She put the phone down and went to fetch her journal, to write up the good news.
‘She buy it?’ asked Charlie as Candice put the phone down.
‘Yeah,’ said Candice, whose boyfriend was one of Landon’s one-kilo boys. She was rough as arseholes but she could put on this very nice Home Counties telephone voice, so Charlie had selected her to play agency lady on the phone to Nula, and Nula had swallowed it whole.
‘Good,’ said Charlie, and bunged her a twenty. ‘No one ever hears about this, though, OK?’
‘Of course not, Mr Stone,’ said Candice, grabbing the cash and dreaming of her next hit. She looked at the boy, sitting quietly at the table in her kitchen. ‘He’ll need cleaning up. He’s fucking filthy.’
‘You can see to that, right?’ Charlie peeled off more notes. ‘I’ll get some paperwork done, make it look good and official, you’ll clean him up, get him some new togs, and then next week you’ll visit with the kid, Nula will fall in love with him, and we’re sorted. Bit more chat on the blower, couple more forms to fill in, then couple of weeks after that, the kid arrives at the house – with you – and he stays for good. Yeah?’
Candice looked dubious for a moment, so Charlie peeled off yet more notes. Personally, Candice thought the kid was a bit, well, odd, but this was Charlie Stone, and he was paying, and whatever Charlie Stone wanted, he got. You didn’t question it. If you did, you’d be sorry.
‘Yeah, that’ll work,’ agreed Candice, looking at the money.
‘It better.’ Charlie’s button-bright brown eyes went from friendly to threatening in an instant. ‘This will work. And you’ll keep shtum.’
‘Yeah, Mr Stone. I will.’
‘Or I could get angry.’
‘I won’t breathe a word.’
35
The boy Nula and Charlie adopted was a handsome seven-year-old with honey-coloured hair, a long pale face, an unsmiling mouth and serious light grey eyes. Charlie was delighted with him. Little Milly was affronted; her dad was suddenly lavishing nearly all his attention on this interloper. But Milly had a consolation prize: of a similar age and living in such close proximity to Belle Barton, the two girls had become firm friends, so Milly wasn’t too badly put out about Harlan’s arrival in the Stone household.
Talk about the odd couple, Nula thought whenever she saw Milly and Belle playing in the grounds together. Milly, plain as a pikestaff, always shy and too eager to please, and pretty little Belle who could afford to be cool. Nula knew it was unkind to think that way, but she’d had her own struggles with her looks and she could see that poor Milly was going the same way. Belle wouldn’t, though. She noticed that although Harlan might ignore his new ‘sister’ most of the time, little Belle fascinated him. Nula remembered him coming into the house for the first time, looking around, taking it all in, absorbing it almost greedily. Then picking out a tiny room to be his alone. Private. Keep out. He had that same faintly obsessive attitude around Belle. Whenever she was near, Harlan watched her with total attention, like a cat might watch a bird. If she spoke to anyone else, to Milly, or little Nige Pope from school, with his shock of red hair, who clearly adored her, Harlan always elbowed his way into the conversation. He was sort of possessive about her.
Nula felt bitter about Belle. Trust bloody Jill to have such a little charmer. Already Belle was showing signs of easy sociability. She had a wide circle of friends. She spent hours down the riding stables, hacking out on the ponies, helping with mucking out. Although Belle always encouraged Milly to join in, Milly preferred to sit at home, reading books; she was scared of horses. And she hated meeting new people. She was scared of every bloody thing, it seemed to Nula. In that, Nula realized – painfully – Milly was very much her mother’s daughter.
‘We ought to have a party for the kids,’ said Charlie.
They’d settled Harlan into the nearest school, the same one Belle and Milly went to, and he seemed to be doing OK. He wasn’t chatty, or popular, but he was doing fine.
Nula thought about it. Charlie was cock-a-hoop over his new son. He’d set up what he laughingly called a ‘petting’ zoo down on the far side of the orchard and was busy stocking it with reptiles, frogs, all the stuff that he and Harlan took a keen interest in, all the stuff that turned Nula’s stomach. What the fuck was the point of having a ‘petting zoo’ full of things you were scared to pet? All through the summer there was hammering, cranes in the garden, men in hard hats working on the newly erected building, men digging in cables to connect the house phone to the cubbyhole in the feed room down there so that Charlie never missed a call. Then – at last – it was finished.
‘We’ve got the zoo up and running now, we can get Harlan to cut the ribbon on the day, the kids’ll love it,’ said Charlie.
So it was arranged. Overwhelmed by the idea of organizing it herself, Nula hired in a party planner and caterers. They made a cake in the shape of a yellow-and-green boa constrictor, laid on sandwiches, jellies, all the crap kids love.
Then it was everyone down to the zoo for Harlan to declare it open. Cheers and applause from all the mums and dads, then the children filed inside with their parents yelling and screaming at each exhibit: a Mexican rose-toed tarantula. Electric-blue poisonous frogs, safely tucked away behind glass. A chameleon, its eyes swivelling to look at them all. The boa constrictor, already five foot of tensile strength, lying still in its big heated tank. Then the caimans, in the pièce de résistance – the huge central pool.
‘They’re not that big yet,’ said Charlie to the assembly. ‘But they’ll grow.’
After that there were games and goody bags back at the house. Nula felt a flash of irritation when she found Milly sitting on the back stairs reading a book instead of joining in the fun like Belle was. She hustled her daughter into the sitting room where the others were running riot. ‘Son of My Father’ by Chicory Tip was crashing out of the sound system, all the kids singing along. Belle was there in the thick of it, with an adoring crowd around her – Gillian and Amanda, who she’d met at the stables, and friends from school too, among them Boris Paddick, Angie Cruise, Nigel ‘Einstein’ Pope, who was off-the-scale intelligent and destined, like his brainy parents, for great things.
Everyone was about to go home when Nula realized that Harlan and one of the other boys – Nipper Warren, one of the rough poor boys from the nearby village – had gone missing and Charlie was getting annoyed.
‘That boy should be here to say goodbye to his guests,’ he grumbled.
Nula went off and searched the house for the two of them. Not finding them upstairs, she came back down to where the parents and kids were waiting in the hall and she heard one of the mums say: ‘Yeah, but he’s a queer little thing, ain’t he? Weird as ninepence. He don’t say anything, just stares at you with those spooky pale eyes and you wonder what the fuck he’s—’
The woman saw Nula approaching and stopped speaking.
They’re talking about Harlan, she thought.
‘I expect they’re outside,’ she said to Nipper’s dad, who was thick-looking, just like his mountainous lump of a son.
Nula went out to the garages and there they were, down the side of the building.
‘Har—’ she started, then she saw a flash of white, heard the screech of the cat a
s it wriggled out of Nipper’s grip. A match flared. As the cat raced past her, she smelled scorched fur.
Both boys turned to her. Harlan dropped the match and it fizzled out on the ground.
‘What the fuck?’ burst out Nula. She glared at them, Harlan so slim and elegant, Nipper huge, straw-blond and muddy-eyed.
They’d been torturing the damned thing.
She felt shaken. ‘Get inside, the pair of you,’ she snapped.
Harlan stared back at her, not moving.
Nipper fidgeted, eyes downcast.
‘Go!’ shouted Nula, and finally they went.
36
For a while, everything was fine in the Stone world. Charlie was making big bucks, Nula started to feel easier about what had happened on the day of the zoo party. It was just boys being boys. Cruel little fuckers, sometimes. It was all forgotten, and that was for the best. Belle continued to be a source of fascination for Harlan while big oafish Nipper followed Harlan everywhere, hanging on his every word. They were always huddling in corners, whispering, laughing, shoving each other. Life was OK. She kept up her journals, kept taking the pills. Some days, life was almost sweet.
Then suddenly, Nula got sick. She’d wake up and rush to the loo and vomit. Her body felt puffy. She had vile headaches when she wasn’t even hung-over.
‘Maybe it’s one of those thyroid things. Underactive or something? You ought to get checked out,’ suggested one of her old girlfriends from the Smoke.
God, Nula hated doctors. She’d been reading something about bad breast implants, maybe it was something like that, the things were leaking and poisoning her system? She’d always craved big tits but not at the cost of her life. No way. Now she was frightened. She might be really, seriously ill. She might have something fatal. She couldn’t check out yet – she had this fabulous lifestyle, she had Milly, and now she had the boy as well, Harlan. He might creep her out sometimes, but Charlie was so pleased with him, so delighted to have a son at last, eager to get him started in the business. She couldn’t die of anything. Not yet.
Finally, Charlie nagging at her had the desired effect and she went to the doctors and broke down in tears that she had been suppressing for weeks. She’d been so anxious, so scared. She’d never been seriously ill before. And she thought now this was going to be it. The end. And it was too soon.
Oh Christ . . .
Charlie was no help. He was away again. He was often away. It was Turkey this time, where heroin production was kept in line by the Turkish Maffya. From there he was off to Peru where, he’d told her, a thousand pounds’ worth of coca leaves from a Peruvian hill farmer would convert to cocaine and fetch a million pounds on the London streets.
Like she cared. They had their high-end life. There was everything here. The house overlooked one of the most exclusive golf clubs in the country. There were ten bedrooms, all en suite. Three drawing rooms. Massive staircases, a downstairs hallway you could hold a dance in. A gym. An indoor and an outdoor heated pool. Outside, the house was skirted by a huge terrace, then a massive lawned garden with an integral sprinkler system. There was a deep pond full of koi carp, a boating lake, a tennis court, a walled vegetable garden and orchard, tended by four gardeners. There was now also the ‘petting’ zoo, which Charlie added to on a regular basis with the creepy reptiles and crocodile-type things he seemed to like so much. It was a bit of a hike down there, so he kept a buggy parked up in the workshop beside the garages.
On this trip Charlie had taken Terry with him, and feeling so ill, so low, Nula was glad about that. Charlie had left a couple of his other men on the door of their house.
Nula often wondered if one of these days her bumptious risk-taker of a husband was going to be returned home to her in a box. Maybe they could have a joint funeral, the pair of them. Leave it all to little Milly, and to their adopted son Harlan.
So she had to endure her ill health on her own and although she was scared shitless, she was glad of Charlie’s absence. He’d be fidgeting, shouting, thumping the table, demanding answers. She just wanted to be told, quietly and calmly, what the fuck was wrong with her. That was all.
The doctors ran a raft of tests. They prodded her, poked her, weighed her, and a week later the consultant called her back in. By this point she was screaming inside, scribbling wildly in her journals, wondering if taking up drink would be a good idea. Or cigarettes. Fuck it, if she was dying anyway, what would it matter?
Then it was off to see the consultant, all on her own. She sat there in his office, waiting for the axe to fall. He came in, smiled and sat down.
‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘You’re pregnant.’
37
Reeling, Nula went home. Gary on the door told her that Jill Barton was in the living room, wanting to see her.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ said Nula.
Her brain literally spun. Pregnant? A visit from sickly-sweet Jill was the last thing she wanted right now. When she’d had Milly, that consultant had told her she could have no more kids, it was too risky. This one said, with the proper care, there should be no problem.
Now she had Jill pitching up at the door. It would be to do some committee thing for the parish council. Jill was always doing some daft cake-baking thing, or ferrying oldies to hospital, trying to get in tight with the locals. Christ, didn’t she know what they were, what they all were, Charlie’s mob? Of course none of the locals had the faintest clue about it, but it was drug money that gave Charlie Stone and his entourage this swish country lifestyle. How would the vicar and his coven of WI harpies react if they knew that?
Sighing, Nula went into the sitting room. Jill was there, standing by the window, sunlight streaming in on her silky blonde hair. It made Nula sick to think how she had to work at looking good, while this cow threw on a baggy old jumper and jeans, dragged a comb through her hair, and somehow always managed to look stunning.
‘What can I do for you, Jill?’ asked Nula, tossing her bag onto the couch. ‘Only I’m pretty busy.’
‘Busy doing what? Filing your nails? Having your hair done? You cow! I know about you trying it on with my Terry!’
Oh Christ.
That knocked Nula back. So Terry had told her! And what if he told Charlie? Oh, he’d been OK with the parties back in the day, with her doing it with all and sundry. But this was Terry, his mate since the cradle, his best pal. Nula knew damned well that Charlie would kill her if he heard about this.
She felt her heartbeat quicken. Shit! She was going to have to front this out, there was nothing else she could do. She swallowed. Her mouth was dry, a pulse beating hard in her temples.
‘Oh, he told you,’ she said, as casually as she could.
Jill crossed the room fast. She came and stood right in front of Nula, glaring into her eyes.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Jill in a low angry voice. ‘Haven’t you got enough, Nula? Here you are, sitting on top of the pile with Charlie bloody Stone, and you’re still not satisfied! You want my husband too?’
Nula felt a lurch of sickness but she forced a mocking smile onto her face.
‘Only on loan, dearie,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want him for keeps.’
Jill’s hand connected with Nula’s face in a resounding slap. Crack!
Nula raised a hand to her throbbing cheek as Jill bore down on her, wagging a finger right in her face.
‘You cow,’ spat Jill. ‘You keep your thieving hands to yourself. Terry’s mine. You got that? Mine.’
‘Look,’ said Nula, holding up her hands in a ‘peace’ gesture. ‘It’s old news, I promise you. I was a bit drunk at the time and it clashed with my medication. There was nothing to it. Nothing at all.’
Jill stepped back. Her eyes were still flinty with rage. ‘What, both times? You think I’m stupid? You fucking Stones! You want it all, don’t you? You want everything.’
‘Meaning?’ asked Nula, getting sick of this.
‘You got the morals of alley cats, the pair of you,’ sa
id Jill.
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Nula was turning away.
Jill grabbed her arm, turned her back to face her. ‘There’s something you ought to know about. Then maybe you wouldn’t be Lady Muck any more, so up yourself. Maybe you’d remember what you’re married to. What he is.’
‘Really? So what is he then?’
‘He’s a fucking rapist.’
38
Nula’s world was crumbling into dust. Distantly, she heard the front door close behind Jill after she’d dropped her bombshell. Christ, had Gary on the door heard any of that? She hoped not. But someone was moving about out there. She went into the hall. Harlan was fiddling with one of his games down by the skirting board right outside the door. Had the kid heard?
No, Nula decided. Harlan was always in a world of his own. Harlan loved gadgets and was obsessive about them, collecting them and playing with them for hours. Once absorbed, he was totally unaware of anything going on around him. And the boy was scrupulously neat, always putting his toys away every day in their allotted box in his bedroom when he had finished with them.
Nula went back into the sitting room and closed the door. That bitch Jill. She’d be sorry, she was going to be very sorry indeed, making up stories about Charlie, lying through her teeth like that. He wouldn’t do that – would he? Rape someone? Nula’s face still stung from that slap. She was thinking of the few times she’d seen Charlie with Jill, through the gatehouse window. Just talking, he’d said. Not according to Jill, though. Jill said Charlie had forced her into sex, that he was an animal and that him and Nula deserved each other.
She felt the nausea rise again and clamped both hands to her belly. She was pregnant. The consultant at the hospital had smiled and said it was strange how these things happened; you relaxed because you thought your child-bearing days were over and then bam! You got up the duff the natural way, no problem at all. The human body was an amazing thing, he’d said. Nula was remembering the agony she’d been in when she gave birth to Milly. Afterwards, the consultant had told her it would be too dangerous for her to go through it all again. Maybe fatal. He’d also said it was extremely unlikely that she would ever conceive again. So she’d trusted his professional judgement. She hadn’t bothered with contraception.