A Godawful Small Affair

by J. B. Morrison

  “Come on, Nathan,” his dad said, ignoring the woman.

  They walked home. Nathan had to jog to keep up with his dad. All the way back he was on the phone to different people at the council. Every new person he spoke to gave him the number of somebody else to call. They were like kidnappers leading his dad to where he should leave the ransom. Outside the cinema his dad was put on hold. He took the phone away from his ear because the classical music was so loud.

  When they got home, Nathan was relieved that Maureen was there. She’d know what to do.

  “Can you believe it, Mo?” Nathan’s dad said, holding Nathan’s phone away from his ear, hold music spilling into the hall. “Why would anyone think that was acceptable?”

  Maureen followed her brother into the living room.

  “What’s happened, Steve?”

  He switched the mobile to speakerphone and put it on the arm of the sofa. He picked up the house phone and dialled the number he’d written on his palm on the way home.

  “Why would they do it, Mo?”

  “Who, Steve? Who’s done what?”

  A thin woman wearing a green tabard stepped out of the kitchen. She lived a few doors along, and Nathan’s dad used to hate her because she was such a gossip. But he’d quickly learned how important gossips could be when your teenage daughter was missing.

  Maureen turned to Nathan. “What on Earth has happened, Nathan?”

  “They’ve painted Zoe’s wall.”

  “Zoe’s wall? What. Seriously? Who has?”

  “The council,” Nathan’s dad said. He had two different phones connected and ringing now, Nathan’s yellow mobile playing the same bit of looped Mozart over and over.

  “I mean, I presume it’s the council,” Nathan’s dad said. “Why the fuck would anyone else do it?”

  The woman in the green tabard winced at Nathan’s dad’s swearing.

  “Is it just Zoe’s message?” Maureen said.

  “What do you mean just Zoe’s message?”

  “Have they just painted over Zoe’s message? Or all of them? Oh, not the lovely painting too?”

  “Hello,” his dad said into the house phone.

  “It’s just what’s written on the wall,” Nathan told his aunt.

  The woman in the green tabard poked her head through the door and whispered, “I’ll leave you all to it.”

  Maureen walked her to the front door. Nathan heard it close. He wondered how long it would take this latest gossip to spread.

  His dad hung up his mobile and walked over to the window. His whole body was shaking. Maureen put a hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you sit down for a bit, Steve? Ring them when you’ve at least calmed down.”

  “Hello,” his dad said into the house phone. “I was given this number to speak to someone who’s in charge of painting walls.” He listened to whoever was on the other end of the line. “I don’t know. Whoever paints over things written on a wall. No. No. It’s not graffiti. Yes. Yes, it was written on the wall, but no, it’s not graffiti. Yes, I’ll hold.”

  Maureen took Nathan out to the kitchen. She closed the door but he caught the louder bits of his dad’s phone call. “Well, can I speak to whoever is in charge of desecrating public monuments? No. Desecrating. D.E.S.C.R…. I don’t know if it’s council property. Did I take a photo? I’ve got loads, mate. That’s all I have got photos of. That and the sky. Yes, the sky. Unless you’ve painted over that, too. It wouldn’t fucking surprise me. No, you’re not listening to me. I think you’re missing the point. It’s not the writing on the wall that’s the vandalism. It’s the painting over it. The vandals are probably in your building somewhere right now. You better hide any works of art you’ve got. Before they paint over them. If it was a Banksy you’d be protecting it, wouldn’t you? What if they’re my daughter’s last words? And that message was evidence, you realise. You’ve destroyed police evidence. You know that, don’t you? I’m not shouting. Ok, maybe I am shouting. That’s because I’m fucking angry. Yes. Yes. I know. I’m sorry. I know it’s not your fault. Can you put me through to whoever’s fault it is? Yes, I’ll hold.”

  Nathan’s dad swore at a number of people on both phones and threatened to go to the Town Hall and speak personally to whoever was responsible. Nathan stayed in the kitchen with his aunt, listening to his dad shouting and the sound of glass breaking and what sounded like furniture being tipped over. Nathan tried to remember if there was anything breakable of his in the living room.

  And then everything went quiet. Maureen suggested they wait a while before returning to the living room. She made Nathan’s dad sound like a lit firework that hadn’t gone off. Maureen made a cup of coffee and put three sugars in it for some reason. His dad didn’t take sugar in his coffee. Maureen opened a box of Jaffa cakes and put everything on a tray. It was Nathan’s job to take it into the living room to his dad, which hardly seemed fair.

  His dad was sitting at the table, taking deep and deliberate breaths. Nathan wondered if he should get a paper bag. The house phone was off the hook on the sofa and Nathan’s brand-new mobile was on the floor in front of the television in two pieces. A vase was broken, and flowers lay in a puddle of water and glass on the carpet under the television. Nathan stood in the doorway of the living room with the tray, scared to go all the way in. Maureen appeared behind him with a dustpan and brush. She looked at the mess.

  Nathan’s dad said, “I’ll do it in a bit, Mo. Please.”

  Later, after Maureen had taken the bus home to West Norwood, Nathan’s dad fixed the mobile phone and wrapped the flowers in newspaper with the larger pieces of broken glass. Nathan stood on the sofa directing his dad to any bits of glass he’d missed. His dad swept the carpet with a dustpan and brush and then he vacuumed. He told Nathan not to walk around without his shoes on for a while.

  33

  Nathan soon realised it wasn’t just the vase that was broken. He’d seen his dad go through all kinds of emotions since Zoe had been missing. He’d seen him angry and resentful, bitter and short-tempered. His dad had scared him when he was stealing candles from the mural and Nathan had worried about him sometimes because he looked so sad. But not at any time had his dad been any less determined to stick to his cause. Even after feeling humiliated on television or when he spent almost a whole day being questioned by the police like a criminal. Nathan’s dad had never looked like he was giving up. Until now. It was like the council had painted over Nathan’s dad as well.

  For the next two nights he slept in his own bed. He didn’t stay up until three a.m. refreshing the internet or waiting for rolling news to change. He did still check Facebook and Twitter when he got up in the morning, but it wasn’t with his usual frantic urgency. And he wasn’t constantly online. Even when the FLOs returned his laptop and he could stop using the cheap tablet that took such a long time to load.

  Yesterday, the house phone rang four times before Nathan’s dad answered it, and at the end of the call he didn’t put the phone back in the cradle. Nathan had to do it. The posters hadn’t been updated and there were no leaflets left. In spite of everything Nathan’s dad had said about the importance of not giving up, it was exactly what he appeared to be doing.

  Zoe had been missing for eighteen days now. Nathan had finished Moonmen (and Women). It was the biggest book that he, or possibly anyone, had ever read. He’d skipped a few of the longer parts but he was still proud of himself. He had a lot of new knowledge to show off to Zoe. The last things he learned were that a rocket would need so much fuel to get from Earth to Mars that it would be too heavy to take off, the building where NASA assemble their rockets is so big there are clouds inside, and if he was ever going to be an astronaut, Nathan would first have to learn how to fly a jet plane, speak Russian, get a university degree in science or maths and be quite a lot taller.

  There’d been no visitors at the house since yesterday morning. Maureen was working extra hours at Greggs to catch up on all the time she’d taken off looking after Nathan an
d his dad. The FLOs hadn’t been round with any updates. Even Craig hadn’t been to the house with grapes or Kinder eggs or inappropriate jokes.

  After a dinner of beans on toast, which they ate on their laps, Nathan and his dad shared a three-litre bottle of Coke and split a grab bag of cheese and onion crisps. Two days ago, Nathan’s dad might have considered anything other than Ready Salted crisps too decadent. Flavour was a guilty pleasure he couldn’t allow himself while his daughter was still missing. They went through the television channels, looking for something to watch but couldn’t find anything. They browsed Netflix, iPlayer and Amazon Prime but nothing seemed to fit the mood they were both in.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit of a rubbish dad lately,” Nathan’s dad said. “And I’m sorry if I scared you the other day. I’m just so terrified of losing her. And I know it’s just a bit of writing on a wall. But I suppose I can’t bear losing anything of hers either. She’s left so little behind, Nathan.”

  Nathan told him he wasn’t a rubbish dad. He was actually still the best dad.

  “I’ll have to get a new mug,” his dad said, managing a smile.

  Nathan scraped the final crumbs from the inside of the crisp bag. He sucked his fingers clean one at a time.

  “Did you know, Dad, that the footprints of the first astronauts to walk on the Moon are still there?”

  “Is that so?”

  “It’s because there’s no wind on the Moon. There’s loads of other stuff left on the Moon as well.”

  “Is that in that book you’re always reading? Moonmen, is it?”

  “And Women,” Nathan said. He went and got the book and showed the cover to his dad.

  “Did Zoe write that?”

  Nathan nodded. If his dad wanted to peel off the sticker for his museum collection, he’d let him.

  “I’ve just remembered something else,” Nathan said.

  He went over to the mantelpiece and picked up the pink piggy bank. He brought it over and pulled the rubber plug out of the belly. He held the pig over the sofa and slapped it as hard as he could until the folded up Post-it notes fell out.

  “What are they?” his dad said.

  Nathan unfolded the pieces of white paper and told his dad about the game he’d played with Zoe the night she disappeared. He arranged the pieces of white paper into two separate piles.

  “These ones are Zoe’s,” Nathan said, pointing to the left-hand pile. “And I thought of all these names for her to guess.”

  His dad read all the names, smiling and looking sad at the same time. He picked up a Post-it note up from the pile on the right that Nathan had written DAD on.

  “How long did she take to guess me?” his dad asked.

  “Ages.”

  “I don’t know if I should be flattered by that or not,” his dad stuck the Post-it to his forehead. “In case I forget,” he yawned and sat back on the sofa with his hands behind his head. “So, what did the astronauts leave on the Moon apart from their footprints then?”

  “They left twenty-eight different things,” Nathan said, sitting closer to his dad. “Space probes and golf balls, nail clippers—”

  “Nail clippers?”

  Nathan nodded. “And hammers and rakes and trousers and toothbrushes and toothpaste and bags of their sick and poo and used wet wipes. It weighed one hundred and eighty thousand kilograms altogether.”

  “How heavy’s that in old money?”

  Nathan shrugged. “I don’t know. You should, though. You have to weigh vegetables all the time.”

  “Maybe that’s why we’re going out of business. Because of my lack of maths skills.”

  “I thought you said it was because of gentrification.”

  “I did, didn’t I?”

  “And Disneyfication.”

  “Have you been taking minutes?”

  “How can you take minutes?”

  “Different kind of minutes,” his dad said. “I wonder what people from other planets think of humans when they see all the mess we’ve left behind up there.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in people from other planets.”

  “I’m not too sure I even believe in humans, to be honest.”

  “Zoe says humans are terrible.”

  His dad smiled.

  “What is it?” Nathan asked.

  “I’m glad you still use the present tense.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You always say Zoe says and not Zoe said.”

  “Because she’s coming back, you mean?”

  His dad put his arm around his shoulder. “We haven’t given up, have we, mate?”

  “Never, Dad.”

  “Because other people will, you know,” his dad yawned again, stretching his arms wide apart and releasing Nathan. “They’ll stop coming round with flowers and T-shirts, and they won’t offer us money anymore or invite us onto their TV programmes. We’re going to have to work a bit harder to take up their slack. Me and you.” He adjusted the cushion behind his head and closed his eyes. “Tell me what else us terrible humans left on the Moon. You can check the book if you want.”

  “I don’t need to.” Nathan pushed the book away with his foot.

  He named everything he could remember. The twelve cameras, the six flags, three lunar roving vehicles, two pairs of flight suit trousers, one pair of gloves, two golf balls, twelve pairs of space boots, one hundred bags of toilet waste, a watch strap, a falcon’s feather, electrical cables, blankets and towels and so on. When he reached the last two objects – the gold olive branch and an eight-and-a-half-centimetre aluminium sculpture of an astronaut – Nathan realised his dad was asleep.

  34

  Nathan’s dad still had his name stuck to his forehead when the police arrived. Both FLOs were there but no PC Torres, just PC Kari. He had his cap under his arm again. Nathan felt sick. He was sure his dad wouldn’t be coming back if they took him away again. The FLOs followed his dad into the living room.

  “Hello, Nathan.” Janet sounded different. More serious. More like a normal police officer than a FLO. Nathan thought she was Anne Marie at first because she was standing on the wrong side.

  “There’ve been a couple of developments,” Anne Marie said to Nathan’s dad. She looked at the space on the sofa next to Nathan. “You might want to sit down, Mister Love.”

  Nathan thought that calling his dad Mister Love instead of Steve was an even worse sign than PC Kari holding his cap. And Anne Marie’s suggestion to sit down was like hypnosis to Nathan’s dad, as he seemed to lose the feeling in his legs and he suddenly had to sit down.

  “What’s happened?” he said.

  “A witness has come forward,” Anne Marie said. “It appears this gentleman saw a girl—”

  “Zoe?”

  “We don’t know that yet. But the gentleman in question saw a young girl. It was dark, so he couldn’t give an accurate description.”

  “But it was Zoe, wasn’t it?” Nathan’s dad said. “That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

  “All we can say right now is the gentleman believed the girl was,” she hesitated. “She was about Zoe’s age.”

  “Who is he?” Nathan’s dad said. “The witness.”

  “I’m afraid we have a slight problem with drug users in the park at the moment,” Anne Marie said. She sounded so apologetic, as though the slight drug problem in the park was all her fault. “It’s the reason the gentleman didn’t come forward sooner. He thought he’d get himself into trouble, and also…Well, I suppose there’s a sort of criminals’ code, isn’t there? And it’s not the done thing to talk to the police.” Nathan thought of Arthur. Tell the feds nothing. Snitches get stitches. “But it seems that after seeing you both on television…” she looked at Nathan. “Apparently, the gentleman has a young lad himself. After he saw you on television, he decided to speak to us.”

  “When was this?” Nathan’s dad said. “When did he see…the girl in the park? Was it definitely the other night? What time
? Was Nathan with her?”

  “No,” Anne Marie said. “The gentlemen is certain of that. He says the girl was definitely alone. It was the night Zoe went missing, but this would have been a number of hours later. More like two or three in the morning. The gentleman…” she made it sound like she was talking about James Bond or the Three Musketeers rather than a problematic drug user. “The gentleman thinks the girl in the park was collecting firewood.”

  “Those were our directions!” Nathan said. “I told you. Dad, I told you, didn’t I?” Nathan was almost shouting. “It’s my fault, isn’t it? Because I made her leave directions in the park so the aliens could find her. She even put glitter on them to make them easier to see because of me. It’s my fault Zoe hasn’t come back, isn’t it, Dad?”

  Nathan couldn’t catch his breath. He was crying. His dad hugged him and rubbed his back like he had trapped wind, telling him it was okay. But it wasn’t okay. It obviously wasn’t anything close to okay.

  “Perhaps Nathan would like to go out to the kitchen with Joe,” Anne Marie said to Nathan’s dad, “so that we can have a chat in private.”

  Nathan’s dad didn’t seem to hear her. He rocked Nathan in his arms.

  “Steve,” Anne Marie said. She placed her hand on his shoulder. He turned his head and relaxed his hold on Nathan. His dad must have realised – as Nathan would much later – that Anne Marie had said there were a couple of developments.

  “Probably best if we speak alone,” Anne Marie said. She looked down at Nathan and smiled. “PC Kari was telling me how you went to the National Space Museum—”

  “Space Centre,” Nathan corrected her. He wiped the snot from his face with the back of his hand and sniffed.

  PC Kari smiled at Nathan like they were great friends. “I thought you could tell me some more about it.” He moved an inch to one side to show the open doorway.

  Nathan looked at his dad. “Dad?”

  “It’s all right, mate.”