by Frances Pye
“Getting on? I’ll give you getting on. It’s not me who’s retiring next year, now is it?”
“Can’t wait. It’ll get me away from you at last.”
“Never. I’ve told May I’ll be round every day for my tea just to annoy you.”
“Aagh! Mother of God, what can I have done to deserve that?” Fred grinned at Terry. They’d been together off and on for almost fifteen years now and he both liked and admired her. Maybe to start with, he—along with many others—had had his doubts about a woman driver, but she’d long since won him over. Not only because she was good at her job but also because he genuinely enjoyed her company.
“Something good, of course. See you in a bit.” Terry rushed into the station, stopping only to grab a cup of coffee and a sandwich from Pret A Manger before she set out again.
When she’d first seen the ad for trainee drivers in the Standard, years ago, she’d been sure they wouldn’t want her. But she was alone with her baby son, Paul, and was desperate for a regular job with regular hours so that she could predict when she’d be home, when she could pick him up from the sitter’s, when she’d have to take him back. She’d fled her grim, unloving, disapproving family in Liverpool when she was seventeen and after that had skipped from job to job, never staying all that long anywhere. Her usual mainstays—barmaiding, waitressing—were no good anymore since they required being out at night. She didn’t want to work in a shop—the wages were low and she’d come home exhausted after all the hours on her feet. She had no real qualifications, so an office job was out of the question. Sitting in a nice warm bus, looking out at the sights of London, with good wages and even a pension plan, that sounded grand. But did they take women? And women as small as she was?
Terry had been amazed when she was given a trial run, and even more amazed when she’d discovered she had a real aptitude for the job. She hadn’t fully understood the explanation her first instructor had given her, but it was something to do with depth perception. An inch to someone else was a mile to her. She could turn the huge red double-decker around corners with no worries about hitting parked cars, could drive through the smallest spaces with no concern that she might have an accident. She knew instinctively and absolutely when the bus would fit and when it wouldn’t. So she had become one of London Transport’s very few female drivers. And she loved it.
She loved the joking with the other drivers and the rapport she had with Fred. She loved driving through the city. Even though she had been on the same route, passing the same bits of London over and over, for years now, there was always something different to see. Different people, different windows in stores, different billboards. Old, sad buildings torn down to be replaced gradually by glassy new ones.
More than anything else, she loved the fact that she had become a recognizable character on the number 73 route. From Victoria to Stoke Newington, people in shops, pedestrians, passengers would see her and remember. As she drove along busy Oxford Street, through fashionable Islington, and up into run-down Newington Green, they caught a glimpse of her diminutive figure behind the wheel, controlling the red monster of a bus, and it made them smile.
THREE HOURS later, her shift finished, Terry walked through the door of her two-bedroom flat that took up the whole of the first floor of a large Victorian house in Stoke Newington. She hadn’t known the area until she’d started driving to it every day, but she’d felt at home there immediately. Lots of big, old run-down houses split into apartments, a plain, unflowery park complete with lake and deer, a good mix of people, some truly great Indian restaurants, and, most important, London property she could afford.
A small bundle of tan-colored, high-octane energy came racing down the hallway and leaped into Terry’s arms, tail wagging furiously.
“Minnie, you’re mad, you are,” Terry said, her soft, nasal Liverpool accent still audible despite her years in London.
The dog, an unidentifiable mixture of God knew how many varieties, which Terry had found abandoned in an animal shelter, started enthusiastically licking her mistress’s face. “Okay, okay, that’s enough. Yes, I love you too.” Terry put Minnie down on the floor.
“Paul, I’m home,” Terry shouted as she shrugged out of her jacket. The uniform was the only bad thing about being a bus driver.
“Paul!” No answer. It was five o’clock. He should be home from school by now. He was probably holed up in his room.
Followed by Minnie, Terry walked along a narrow corridor lined with photographs of her son, from cute infancy to spotty adolescence, and opened a stripped pine door at the end. Her bedroom was small and almost completely filled by a king-size brass bed that doubled as a wardrobe. Brightly colored clothes, gleaming necklaces, glittering beads, printed scarves, feathers and hats and belts and bags were thrown over its two ends, woven between its curls and loops, hanging from its four posts. It looked as if it was made of clothes, with only the occasional glimpse of gleaming brass giving any hint of what lurked underneath all the cotton and wool and silk.
When Terry got home from work, she immediately changed into some combination of vintage clothing, all of which she’d bought for almost nothing at garage sales or in thrift shops. There seemed to be no method to what she wore; she paid no attention to any rules, ignored what colors should go together, loved things that were supposed to clash but on her somehow didn’t.
She was self-conscious about her weight, disliking her lack of height, her curvy frame, and her generous bosom, but few other people noticed. Her quirky, mix-and-match clothes were the perfect complement to her long, curly red hair, her pale skin and light hazel eyes, while her voluptuous build was masked by her narrow ankles and elegant calves. Terry looked like no one else.
Ten minutes later, she walked along the narrow corridor wearing an old blue dress, a mauve cardigan, and some multicolored beads, Minnie at her heels. She went up a set of five steps and stopped outside a door decorated with a skull and crossbones and the words “Death to Anyone Who Enters” painted on a piece of driftwood. “Paul?” she asked.
Silence. Terry knocked on the door. Nothing. She knocked again, louder. A groan.
“Teatime,” Terry called through the door. She knew better than to open it unasked. Still no reply. “Hey, it’s after five. You’ve got to be hungry. Come on.”
“Don’t want anything.” His words were muffled by the door but still audible.
“Paul. I bet you had no lunch, did you? And not much dinner last night—”
The door slammed open. Terry looked up at her fifteen-year-old son. Just a few months ago it seemed she had been able to meet him eye to eye. Now he was about a foot taller. Though he was thin and still coltish, his voice had broken and there were definite traces of the man he would become. As well as the acne of teenagehood.
“I don’t want anything, okay?” At the sound of Paul’s voice, Minnie backed away from the door, her teeth bared.
“You’re still growing. You need to keep up your strength.”
Paul’s sigh and slumping shoulders said everything, but Terry wouldn’t give up. He had to eat.
“Come on. I know, egg in the hole. Think I’ve got some eggs and some bread—”
“Egg in the hole? I’m not a kid. Are you nuts?”
Terry’s overly strict, deeply religious grandparents had blamed her for her mother’s running off with a man when Terry was only three, leaving them to care for her. They’d expected Terry to repeat this fall from grace and tried to pray the devil out of her morning and night and five times on Sundays, punishing her severely for every tiny infraction of their rigid rules. She could still hear the tirade and taste the week of bread and water she’d endured after she’d made the mistake of telling her grandmother she was nuts.
When Terry had first learned she was pregnant with Paul, she had vowed not to be like her grandmother in any way. In the early years, it had been easy, but recently it had become more of a struggle. Never had she been closer to breaking her vow than in the last
few months.
She took a deep breath and tried again. “We’ll call for pizza if you like.” A huge concession. Terry was yet again trying to lose some weight and pizza was a definite no-no.
“No food,” Paul shouted. A low growl came from Minnie.
“You crazy dog. It’s Paul.” Minnie was a separatist at heart. She hated men. Particularly men in uniform, but knife-thin creases and a load of brass buttons weren’t strictly necessary. She also loathed men in general. Any one she saw, if she got a chance, she gave him a nip. She’d been fine with Paul as he was growing up, but recently, when his voice had dropped, she’d become more suspicious of him.
“I’m going out.” Paul brushed past Terry and jumped down the stairs in one go.
Terry followed him to the front door. “Hey, love, don’t walk out. What’s wrong?” She reached out to touch his shoulder.
He jerked away from her hand and stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
Terry sighed and leaned back against the wall. It had been the reappearance of his father that had triggered this in Paul. Until then he’d been occasionally difficult, stubborn, quick to anger, but he was also always quick to apologize and make things right between them. They had been close friends as much as mother and son, but Finn’s arrival had changed all that.
Terry hadn’t seen Finn since Paul was born. Then, three months before, on a hot summer’s night, he’d arrived on her doorstep, leaning unsteadily against the wall outside, scarcely able to walk by himself. Terry’s first thought had been not to help him. How could he come to her like that? But then she’d heard the fear and the excitement and the hope in Paul’s voice as he came up behind her and asked if the man on the doorstep was his dad.
She’d known then that she couldn’t turn Finn away. So she and Paul had helped him up the stairs and got him undressed and into her bed. Hardly able to speak beyond a whispered hoarse, throaty “thanks,” he’d fallen asleep. And slept and slept and slept. Terry began to worry when it was more than twenty-four hours. Finally, when the sweetly cloying, old-sweat smell in her room overcame the open windows and the potpourri and the fresh flowers, she called an ambulance. Finn was rushed to hospital, where he lingered another forty-eight hours before dying of cirrhosis. Without ever waking up or saying a word to Paul.
From that moment, Terry’s son had been impossible. Unwilling to talk to his mother, to help her, or to let her help him, to do anything other than sulk and brood and lose his temper. It didn’t matter what she did. If she left him alone, he accused her of not caring. If she talked to him, he was angry. If she shouted at him, he was furious. Mind you, he was right. She must be nuts to offer him egg in the hole like that as if he were a baby.
three
The sharp, metallic sound of an electronic doorbell echoed through the half-furnished King’s Cross loft with its deep, industrial windows looking out onto Regent’s Canal, its dark, brick walls, wide wooden floorboards, and bolted iron pillars. The enormous space was virtually empty. Apart from two extra-large burgundy leather sofas, a vast glass-and-wood coffee table, and a tall dark-haired man pacing the floor. Sean Grainger.
He walked to the intercom and, without checking to see who it was, buzzed open the front door to the building. He stood right there, waiting for his guest and mentally crossing his fingers. Hoping that Ball, the latest in a long line of private detectives, would have something this time but fearing it would be more of the same. “You have to be patient, Mr. Grainger.” “The trail is very cold, Mr. Grainger.” “People are remarkably difficult to find if they want to stay lost, Mr. Grainger.” Joe Ball had come highly recommended and had given Sean no reason to doubt his hard work, but months had gone by and still the detective had found no sign of his boys.
A couple of minutes later, Ball was sitting on one of the sofas with Sean opposite him, a cold can of beer clutched in his hand. They were a mismatched pair. Ball was of medium height, balding, and overweight—hanging around watching other people’s lives didn’t leave a lot of opportunity for exercise—while Grainger was a tall powerful man, his shaggy dark hair unthinned by his forty-five years.
Sean leaned forward, “So? What’ve you got for me?”
“Not very much, I’m afraid, Mr. Grainger.”
“Then, there’s something?”
“No. Not really.”
“No trace at all?”
“Mr. Grainger, people are remarkably difficult to find—”
“Yes, I know, I know all that.” Sean couldn’t bear to hear Ball’s platitudes one more time. “It’s been eighteen months. There’s got to be something. The boys must be at school somewhere?”
Ball leaned forward, putting unwelcome strain on the lower buttons of his shirt. “We did discuss this before, if you remember, Mr. Grainger. There is no record of them attending any school in the UK.”
“But Canada? What about the detective we hired in Canada? Hasn’t he come up with anything?” Isobel, his ex-wife, had been brought up in Vancouver and still had family there. If she’d left the country with the boys, Sean was convinced that was where she would have gone.
“No trace of the boys at all. Or of their mother. I’m sorry.”
“What’s she doing? Is she teaching them herself, at home?”
“There would still be records. Home education is very strictly monitored.”
“Then where are they?”
“The world is a very large place, Mr. Grainger. They could be anywhere. Australia. New Zealand. Europe. South America. And without something to go on, some clue, well…”
“The man she ran away with? He’s got to be employed somewhere to support them all.”
“There are a lot of Steve Joneses, sir. And he could be working anywhere in the world. You’re in construction, you know how in demand plumbers are.”
“The tax people? No one can avoid paying taxes.”
“We’ve been over and over that. Confidential, I’m afraid. Perhaps if he’d committed a crime…”
“He did. He stole my sons.”
“Well, sir, not really. The police aren’t treating this as a kidnapping, as such.” Ball was polite but skeptical.
“I know. I know. Because Isobel took them. But I still don’t understand why. She didn’t even like being a parent much. Why did she do it?”
“People do things for the strangest reasons, sir. You say she was very keen on Steve Jones. Perhaps she wanted him to think of her as a good, loving mother.”
Sean nodded. Ball’s theory made sense. Isobel and her lover had been together only a few months when they’d disappeared. He was almost ten years younger than she was, and though Sean had seen them together only a few brief times, it had been obvious that she was bothered by the difference in age. She hadn’t been the cool, superior Isobel Sean remembered from their marriage but instead was all over the young, handsome, rather smug Jones, constantly touching him, checking to see that he was happy, as if she were expecting him to change his mind about her any minute and walk out the door. Sean had been surprised by her choice—Jones was rather rougher than Isobel’s normal taste—but she had seemed crazy about him. Ball could be right. Even though she hadn’t liked being a parent, Isobel hated people to think ill of her and certainly wouldn’t have wanted her lover to believe she was a bad mother who didn’t care about her children.
Sean couldn’t regret his marriage to Isobel—that would mean regretting having the boys—but looking back, he could see that when they had gotten together, he had been in no state to choose a wife. Between girlfriends and still missing his much-loved mother who had died a few months before, he was lonely and vulnerable and eager to find someone to help him blot out his grief. Easy game for Isobel, a failing actress desperate to find herself a successful husband who would keep her in style and allow her to retire gracefully before her sell-by date. His looks, his success, and his newfound financial clout made him attractive to her; her strength, her elegance, her apparent invulnerability made her irresistible to him. Ad
d all that to the natural sexual attraction between two good-looking people and there was only one result. The two were married, on the island of Antigua by a local judge, only three months after they had met.
To begin with, all was well. Sean loved Isobel’s style, her ability to charm clients for him, her apparent admiration of him. Isobel loved Sean’s kindness, his interest in her, his willingness to listen to her problems. And she adored playing the part of a happily married woman helping her husband with his career. Then, gradually, Sean began to notice that they had little in common. He loved Charlton; she thought football was for idiots. He was happy to spend his time with Ray and Babs; she thought they were dull and staid, and wanted him to cultivate people who could be of some use. He loved his work for itself; she cared only for the money it made. Still, when they couldn’t think of anything to say to each other, they could always go to bed. That continued to work despite the lack of sympathy elsewhere.
Then, two years into the marriage, Mark was born. Isobel had thought she wanted children, saw herself in the role of perfect, caring mother. It was only when she was face-to-face with the reality of parenthood, with the vomit on her lovingly chosen designer clothes, the nights spent feeding and comforting a screaming infant, that she realized she had been wrong. But it was too late. She was stuck.
Sean, on the other hand, took to fatherhood with ease. He loved Mark, loved the smell of him, the feel of him, just the fact that he existed, more deeply than he had ever loved anything. His attachment to Isobel, his enthusiasm for his work were nothing compared to his feelings for his son. He wanted another child as soon as possible, determined that Mark should not grow up alone. He had two sisters himself, but they were so much older than he was that he felt he knew what it was like to be an only child and didn’t want that for his beloved son.
Isobel was reluctant, but eventually, with promises of live-in nannies to help, Sean persuaded her. And Ben was born. She managed another three years of married life before deciding she’d had enough. Acting star-crossed lover for all she was worth, she dumped Sean for one of his competitors in the construction business, leaving the boys staying with their father.