Which brings me to early December, just before Lucas was due home for the Christmas break. That was when I ran into Prisca in W. H. Smith on the high street, having not seen her for months, certainly not since the boys left school. I’d heard she’d landed a part-time admin job at a local health clinic and I congratulated her on the move.
‘Didn’t Lucas do well in his exams?’ she said. ‘You must be very proud of him.’
‘Yes, he got there in the end,’ I said, with exaggerated relief. We were clearly each as reluctant as the other to bring up that last brief row we’d had on the phone.
‘Jade, as well, such a brainy girl. And so lovely, always helping Kieran with his geography, she was. Not that he needed any help with his computer science,’ Prisca added. ‘Got himself an A star in that. Knew more than the teachers, if you ask me.’
The pride in her face acted as a stopper to the sudden rush of thoughts I had concerning her charge. ‘He’s been up to visit Lucas, I hear?’
‘That’s right, but it’s not the same as hanging out whenever you feel like it, is it?’
No, thank God. I remembered Justin’s remark about Kieran being an independent adult and wondered if this were actually the case. ‘Is he still living with you, Prisca?’
‘No, but he’s just around the corner. He’s got a room in a flat on Portland Road.’
I assumed that was set up for him, perhaps even subsidized by social services. ‘But you’re still in touch?’ I said, warmly.
‘ ’Course I am. He’s my boy.’
She looked offended and I hastened to make amends. ‘Well, I hope he doesn’t miss Lucas too much. Maybe it’s a good thing they’re separated for a little while. They were a bit too committed to their nights out sometimes, weren’t they?’
Prisca smiled. ‘I didn’t like to say, but yeah, maybe it’s for the best. Your Lucas will be happy up at Leeds. That’s a big party uni, isn’t it?’
It was only after we’d parted that I saw that what she’d meant was it was good for Kieran that Lucas had left town. It’s for the best. I admit I was rocked by the thought that someone could misconstrue a situation so badly. It took willpower not to offload onto Justin that night, but I knew he liked Prisca and would put a positive spin on it. We are all the heroes of our own narratives, he’d say, and Kieran’s had taken him from the depths of the care system to A-star exam success. Undeniable, Ellen, right?
Instead, I texted Vic:
Prisca thinks Lucas was the bad guy, can you believe it?
Who cares? he replied. Let her. Water under the bridge.
But that night, I woke up in the early hours poleaxed with remorse. It was as if a stranger had taken possession of my mind, dictating thoughts sympathetic only to Kieran. However wrongly Kieran had influenced the Foxwell gang, Lucas had emerged from it just fine, hadn’t he?
Lying there, Justin breathing gently next to me, I felt an unfathomable but very powerful instinct that Kieran was awake too. Just a few miles away in some featureless box room, right on the road, the traffic coughing below. Had Prisca told him she’d seen me? Had they talked about my attitude towards him in the past? (‘Don’t let her bother you, Kieran, she’s just one of those mums.’)
Oh, God. Was it possible that these last two years had been a needless exercise in overreaction? In obsession?
I reached for my phone and found Vic’s message.
You’re right, I texted back. It’s nothing to do with us anymore.
Chapter 14
‘A flat white, please,’ I tell the girl on the counter at Bean Box.
‘Can I take a name?’
‘Prisca,’ I say, because I’ve just been thinking of her, wondering if she knows he’s here. Her missing boy, alive and reconfigured. Elevated – in both senses of the word.
‘Can you spell that?’ the girl says, predictably.
I’m back in the shadow of The Heights. Of course I am – you must see by now how dogged I am. I know better than to try his flat again, not after leaving in a panic twice in a row, but have come straight to the café. He was a big coffee drinker, Kieran, I remember that now. In the early days, when he was still welcome at the house, he’d always have a giant takeout coffee from McDonalds or Starbucks in his hand. Later, he’d be slurping as he waited in the car for Lucas to come out. I remember watching him from the bedroom window once and seeing the careless way he tossed the empty cup through his window and into the road, cackling as Lucas slid into the passenger seat beside him.
The passenger seat. I feel a sharp puncture of grief and squeeze my eyes shut.
When I open them again, I focus on my immediate surroundings, as therapy has taught me to do. The café has the same aesthetic of sandblasted brick and black-painted ironwork as the warehouse flats that surround it. On the walls there are old Illustrated London News engravings of pedestrians in the Tower Subway that once ran below the river here.
‘Do you know a man called Harding?’ I ask the girl at the counter as I wait for my order. ‘He lives in the building over the road.’
‘That’s his first name?’
‘No, surname.’ I cannot yet supply a Christian name – or any information to do with Harding’s work or status. I’ve unearthed plenty of information about the flat, however, and from my discreet corner seat, with one eye on the door and the other on my secret new phone, I scroll through the pages I bookmarked last night. The building went up in 1991 and the land this side of the inlet is known as Jacob’s Island (in case you’re interested, the dock has a recorded maximum rise and fall of four metres). There is just one unit per floor, the living room overlooking the water and two bedrooms facing the street side. Pictures of Flat 10 show a stunning atrium-style variation on the standard, with a cool plywood spiral staircase leading up to the roof terrace. The flat last changed hands in 2016 for £1.7 million and was advertised for rental a year ago for £3,500 a month. If I’m right and Kieran is the tenant, that’s a steep rent for someone in his early twenties.
Lost down the rabbit holes of my research, I’ve almost forgotten where I am when the hairs on my arms suddenly prickle. A man with a low-toned, estuary-accented voice is greeting the counter staff just a few feet from where I sit – and it’s the same voice that plagues my vilest night terrors.
‘White Americano,’ he tells the girl at the till. ‘No sugar, thanks.’
Kieran always used to say thanks instead of please. Can I get you a cup of tea, Kieran? Yeah, thanks.
Ignoring my breathlessness, the horrible commotion of my pulse, I swivel silently and check him out. He’s much leaner than when we knew him, his silhouette triangular, with oversized shoulders and upper arms and a narrow lower body. I remind myself he’d already slimmed down when I last saw him, in Beckenham, almost two and half years ago. He’d been working out, got himself in shape, and plainly, this has been maintained.
But whatever the transformation, it’s him. No doubt about it. And now I need to get the proof I came for. Though I’m able to watch him in the mirrored panel on the wall behind the bar, it is instantly clear that in order to take a photo of him I’ll have to angle my phone in such a way that will draw attention to me. Instead, hands shaking, I discreetly press ‘record’.
‘Can I interest you in a vegan brownie?’ the girl says. ‘It’s a fresh batch.’
‘Nah, I don’t think so, thanks,’ Kieran says. ‘To be fair, the coffee’s made with cow’s milk, so it’d be a bit hypocritical.’
To be fair, another innocuous tic that strikes a hammer blow to my ribs.
To be fair, Lukey, no one thinks their own sister is hot…
To be fair, no one gives a shit about A-levels once you’re in work…
The A-levels that drove us to distraction, that I thought were so life-and-death. I’d trade every chivvy, every complaint, every tear of frustration for a second shot at my advice to Lucas the night I changed my mind and said go.
Go let off steam. Go do whatever that crazy friend of yours suggests.
Refocusing, I hear the barista calling out, ‘Large white Americano for Sam!’ and Kieran steps forward.
Sam. Sam Harding. So he is the tenant at the top of The Heights. He has changed his name. And seeing him again, tasting the bile that rises in my throat, I no longer view it as possible that he borrowed the name from me, but certain. It’s some perverse tribute to our enmity, I’m sure of it.
He turns from the counter, coffee in fist. Is he heading back up to his flat or off to an office? Is my audio clip going to be enough to persuade Vic or should I try for a photo, after all? As Kieran pulls open the door, I spring up, staggering slightly in my haste and drawing the eye of a young woman at a table nearby. ‘Don’t forget your coat!’ she says, and when I reach for it, she smiles at me the way young folk do, kindly, because I am her mum’s age. I think, fleetingly, of Freya, safe from harm. From him.
When I finally emerge into the street, I’m sure he must have gone. But when I survey left and right, I get a horrific fright: he is right there, standing on the pavement, a cornered animal with its hackles up, breath held.
I take a step towards him, my heart stabbing at my ribs. ‘Kieran?’
He stares me right in the eye, but there are no signs of recognition: no intake of breath, no heat to his complexion. His face is subtly different, more than the effect of that weight loss, but by cosmetic alteration. There is something different about his mouth, it’s raised, misshapen – fillers, maybe – and his freckles have been either removed or concealed, his skin smooth and creamy. He feels as ephemeral as a hallucination, as if I’ve conjured him into being, my own, masochistic Sixth Sense. But he is here, in front of me, waiting for me to speak.
My instinct is to demand, How are you here? How are you still breathing? But I can’t do that, of course, and I settle for a more direct opening: ‘Who was that man in your flat yesterday? Does he know who you really are?’
‘Why should I tell you?’ he answers. ‘Who are you?’
I snort. ‘You know who I am. You were in, weren’t you, two days ago? I was outside your door and you were there. I know you were. And you knew I was there. We can smell each other, can’t we, Kieran?’
An arriving customer walks between us, reaching for the door, and breaks the force field. As if released from a spell, Kieran growls, ‘You’re fucked up. Keep away from me.’ And before I can respond he’s pacing towards the entrance to The Heights, keying in the code, slipping through the door.
I rush after him. ‘Why are you using my maiden name? That’s fucked up!’ The doors shut in my face and I press my phone to the glass and take a series of photos as he waits for the lift. When I check, the images are next to useless, much of his face obscured by reflected light, but the audio is decent quality and I tuck the phone into my bag. Only now does my nervous system fully react: I double over and violently throw up, splashing my shoes with coffee-laced vomit. In the café window, the girl at the laptop looks thoroughly disgusted, turns her face away. And I feel like calling out, What the hell do you expect?
That man killed my son.
Chapter 15
When Lucas came back for Christmas, it was not quite the idyllic homecoming I had envisaged as I raced to finish the concepts I was drawing up for a new client in order to clear my schedule. As I sourced snowfall projector lights for the sitting room and decorated a twelve-foot tree with lights shaped as pinecones. Deep-cleaned his bedroom, bought a new bottle of the black pepper shower gel he liked, stocked the fridge with his favourite boyhood snacks.
Because, in the age-old tradition of freshmen navigating legacy sixth-form romances, he’d been dumped – Jade had done the deed over the phone just the night before. It was obvious from the moment he walked through the door that he’d been crying and my heart grieved for him.
‘Oh, darling. I’m so sorry. Has she met someone at Durham?’
But he didn’t want to talk about it, not with me or Justin, and it was a relief when I heard him on the phone to Vic, evidently freer with his confidences. ‘Pretty much. She wouldn’t tell me, no. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I just… I don’t know, I just want to see her. No, she’s staying up there till next weekend… Yeah, you’re right.’
Clearly, Vic was saying all the right things: best not to know who the new guy was or if there even was one; hard for any relationship to survive university; sensible to give her some space and make a virtue of having time with mutual friends while she was still out of town.
For most of the first week, Lucas remained glum, declining all offers to join the rest of the family for any festive activities and going out alone for walks, I guessed as much to smoke as to exercise or clear his head. Then, on the Friday – Friday 19 December – he told me Kieran had invited him over to his new place on Portland Road for a gaming session and I didn’t hesitate to encourage him to accept.
‘If you get tired of gaming, go into town, maybe,’ I said, passing him a fold of twenties. ‘Try and have some fun. Kieran’s your man for that, isn’t he?’
Was I influenced by that nocturnal crisis I’d suffered just weeks earlier after talking to Prisca? That sense of reckoning? Or was I simply leaping on anything that might stop my beloved boy from feeling unloved? Recasting Kieran’s role for my own purposes? I can’t say for sure, but what I do clearly recall is Lucas’s pleasure in my approval. Everything that had been said about his friend over the last two years, everything that had not, seemed to pass across his face as we said our goodbyes, resetting him somehow.
‘I’ll text if I’m staying out,’ he promised.
‘Great. Bye, darling.’
A grin, a hand half-raised in farewell, and then the door closed and he was on the other side of the stained glass, a silhouette of many colours. As I listened to his footsteps receding on the path, I reflected on my new tolerance towards Kieran. It was a profound moment, I thought; a small step for me but a giant leap for parent-kind.
God, I thought I was so enlightened.
* * *
Justin, Freya and I ate together, as usual. Vegetable lasagne, with spinach and toasted pine nuts. Since Lucas had left for college, we’d got into the habit of a new seating arrangement, with Justin and Freya on one side of the table and me on the other, facing them. They looked alike, those symmetrical faces and noses so straight they might have been drawn with a ruler. The only difference was Freya’s full face of make-up, which was becoming both a daily ritual and a passion. (‘Don’t hide your lovely face behind a mask,’ I’d advised her recently, from behind my own.)
‘I know you’ve hardly seen Lucas since he’s been back, but we’ll have a really special Christmas together,’ I said. The school term had just finished that afternoon and she’d obviously been hoping to see her brother. ‘It will be a proper celebration.’ And, as if to back up this claim, there came the sound of fireworks exploding in a neighbour’s garden, causing all three of us to chuckle.
* * *
By midnight, Lucas still hadn’t texted me, so I sent him a line checking he had his keys. Peering at the screen half an hour later, I saw my message had been delivered but not read.
‘Should we be worried?’ I asked Justin, putting on the polka-dot pyjamas that Lucas and Freya had given me the previous Christmas and had become my favourites. ‘I mean, I know he’s all grown up now, but he did say he’d text his ETA.’
‘I wouldn’t worry. A week ago, when he was in Leeds, we wouldn’t have known what time he was coming home,’ Justin reasoned. ‘He could have been sleeping on a park bench the whole term for all we know.’
‘You’re not helping,’ I said, with a smile.
‘Have you tried an old-fashioned phone call?’
This I now did, but the call went to voicemail. ‘Lucas, nothing urgent, just let me know if you’re coming back tonight. Hope you’re having a good time.’ Though my tone was breezy, I felt ill at ease. Perhaps it was the rain, which had started suddenly, a violent sideways assault on the window panes. Wet winter nights always made me
want to know my loved ones were safe indoors.
‘No luck?’ Justin said, yawning. ‘He’ll still be at Kieran’s gaming. In the zone. I bet they haven’t even left the flat.’
Though this made perfect sense, I couldn’t settle. In the dark, after Justin had dropped off, I texted Vic in case he’d heard from Lucas, but got no reply. Scanning my contacts, I saw I still had Prisca’s number and my thumbs hovered over the keys before I abandoned the idea. Kieran lived independently now and she’d be unlikely to appreciate being alerted in the dead of night to an emergency that didn’t exist. I had no number for Kieran himself; it had been, over the years, a firm policy of mine not to allow him in. Not to acknowledge him.
The unsettled feeling persisted and at 2am I began another round of efforts – Lucas, Vic, and then this time Prisca, after all – but each appeal went to voicemail. I slipped out of the bedroom and crossed the landing. The Christmas lights wound around the spindles of the balustrade were still on – we’d forgotten to hit the switch when we went to bed – but the house was otherwise in darkness. I opened Lucas’s bedroom door, I suppose hoping he might have crept back in without my hearing, but, no, his bed hadn’t been slept in. There was the usual scattering of clothes and books and devices across the carpet, and on his desk chair a towel from yesterday’s shower, twisted and damp.
I went back to bed, but could do little more than snooze for the rest of the night. Then, at about 6.30am, three noises sounded in close succession: the creaking of the radiators coming to life, the groan of an early plane, and the sound of a car pulling up.
The Heights Page 8