Both of You

by Adele Parks

  Oli shrugs. ‘We don’t have any.’

  ‘He says we don’t have any,’ his father repeats into the phone, he sounds exhausted. He nods and then looks up at Oli. ‘She says she bought some yesterday, it’s near the bowl on the table where I put my car keys.’ Oli isn’t going to use it. But it is sort of cool of Fiona to look out for him. At least she is keeping her shit together, so he goes into the kitchen, finds the sanitiser and puts it in his pocket. His fingers graze the card the policewoman left him, the corner accidently scrapes underneath his nail. He flinches like he does when he is woken by an alarm. She gave it to him in case he ever wanted to talk to her. ‘If you think of anything, anything at all that might be relevant. Anything that might give us an insight into your mum’s state of mind.’

  He hasn’t called, even though the cop had said ‘anything’ three times. Probably because of that. That desperate urgency she was trying to convey felt like a lot.

  He has been wearing the same cargo pants for days now. No one nags him to put clothes in the wash basket. Leigh made a big deal about that. Pretty chill most of the time, washing was the thing that she could go a bit obsessive about. Nothing would be washed unless it was in the basket. She would basically conduct a stand-off until he complied, she’d watch him go around the room picking up T-shirts and stuff, like some sort of washing Nazi. Fiona cooked an awesome burger and chips supper the other night so it’s not as though he’s being neglected, he’s just not nagged. Fiona says she likes to keep busy and to have something to do. She put a wash on. He noticed because not only did she pick up his clothes from off the floor, but she changed his sheets too. Bit weird that, TBH. Leigh left him to strip his own bed because it’s a privacy thing, sheets and stuff. But Fiona means well. Probably Leigh just didn’t care so much and what looked like consideration at the time was in fact disinterest. Right?

  He doesn’t know, it’s possible.

  He doesn’t know Leigh. None of them do.

  His head aches with thinking about it. He has to get out the house.

  He walks out of the front door, letting it slam loudly behind him. He doesn’t want to turn around or glance up as he expects his brother’s face will be stuck to his bedroom window, like it has been since Thursday morning. Eyes alert, scanning the street – left, right, as though he’s watching a pro-level tennis match – looking for his mother. Sad. Hopeless. His brother is taking this pretty badly. The front door slams again, which makes Oli turn around. Seb is not in his room, he is standing awkwardly on the step.

  ‘You’re not coming with me,’ Oli says automatically.

  ‘I didn’t ask to.’

  ‘No, but you were going to.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’

  ‘What have you got in your backpack?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Clearly you have something.’ Seb is wearing his school backpack. It looks almost as bulky as when he is going to school and it’s full of a day’s textbooks.

  ‘I’m going to my friend’s for a sleepover.’

  ‘Which friend?’

  Seb hesitates. He is not used to lying to his older brother. He is quite a straightforward kid but he clearly is about to lie because he has a tell, he juts out his chin when he’s being dishonest. Leigh identified it years ago, when he wasn’t much more than a baby. Everyone in the family knows when Seb is lying. ‘I’m going to Theo’s.’ He sounds like he’s trying the name out. Asking Oli a question. Sort of, ‘Might I be going to my friend Theo’s house? Does it sound feasible?’ Oli wonders if he’s running away. Off to try to find Leigh. It’s the kind of thing Oli himself might have thought about doing if he was twelve and none the wiser.

  ‘Does Dad know?’

  ‘Yes.’ Seb turns pink. Pretty clear evidence that not only is he lying but he is ashamed to be doing so. Oli sometimes wonders how his brother survives at school.

  ‘Don’t let me stop you.’

  Seb sets off down the street, Oli watches him get smaller. He stops at the corner where their road joins the busier high street. He hangs about the lamppost for a while. Oli can’t see what he’s doing. Might he be waiting for Theo after all? When Seb eventually turns right, Oli sets off after him. He has a lot going on, but he can’t just let his little brother wander off into London on his own. As he approaches the lamppost on the corner where Seb was hanging about, Oli spots it immediately. A poster, one of several. A plea. Oli’s heart contracts and swells. He can actually feel it beating.

  HAVE YOU SEEN MY MUM?

  The question is, he has to admit, bold and arresting, it will probably get more attention than a simple MISSING. But it is exposing, horrifying, for Seb and somehow for Leigh too. Oli acknowledges that Seb’s computer skills are pretty good. There is a picture of Leigh, a good one. She looks happy and sparkling. Not the sort of woman who would want to go missing at all. Seb took the photo eight days ago just before they all went out for a family meal. It’s the same one the police have. The next line spells it out, in case a passer-by didn’t understand.

  SHE IS MISSING.

  Oli almost laughs at the innocence, the naivety, but the laugh catches in his throat, and sounds suspiciously like a sob.

  REWARD FOR RELIABLE INFORMATION

  What reward? Seb has about £24 to his name, and it’s only as much as that because he’s saving for the latest FIFA to drop. Seb had also put his own mobile number on the poster. Stupid kid. He’ll have endless weirdos ringing him.

  The posters are not laminated. They will tear or the ink will run once it rains, Seb obviously hasn’t thought about the fact that they will become illegible pretty soon. They are attached with zip ties. Oli recognises them as his own zip ties that he keeps under his bed. Zip ties are useful things to have, you can make keyrings or fix binder files with them. Seb has probably rooted about and found them. Oli got them out of his dad’s shed in the first place so he can’t complain that Seb nicked them. Besides, Seb saved a couple of quid by doing so and he needs all his cash for his reward. Oli is being sarcastic because that is how he behaves with his brother, as a matter of routine. Teasing, sort of scrapping, but they are always on the same team really. Even though they are three years apart, they’ve always been close. The posters are killing him. He can’t believe Seb has made these alone and that he feels he needed to lie about what he was up to. But then, everyone has their secrets it seems. Presumably, Seb is not planning on going to Theo’s at all but instead trailing the streets of London putting up these miserable, desperate posters. He could get lost, he could get into trouble. He can’t go about plastering his phone number everywhere. Oli tears at the poster, crumples it up.

  Oli follows his brother’s Hansel and Gretel trail from lamppost to lamppost, ripping down the posters, faster than his brother can pin them up. He has to hang back, lurk in shop doorways so as not to be spotted. He watches his brother carefully, laboriously tie the posters to the lampposts. Other people are watching his brother too. Some give him a sympathetic smile; others give him a wide berth. Oli tears the posters into small bits and throws them in rubbish bins. Their work carries on for a couple of hours. It becomes apparent that Seb has run out of posters when he allows himself a rest. He goes into a newsagent’s, comes out with a Coke and a Snickers bar.

  Oli is waiting for him.

  ‘Oh.’ Seb jumps, blushes. Oli feels bad for him. He’s not the one who should feel guilty. He’s just trying to do a nice thing. He’s just trying to find his mum.

  ‘I thought you were going to Theo’s,’ says Oli.

  Seb juts out his chin. ‘Oh, he sent a text to say his mum said no.’

  Oli thinks it’s a weird thing listening to someone lie to you but pretending you believe it. It makes you feel powerful but also sad. ‘I was just thinking of going over to Aunty Paula’s,’ he says. His Aunty Paula. Their mum’s sister could be a bit intense, clearly she never got used to the idea of losing her sister, but he sort of gets that. He’s not sure he got over it either and he barely remembers h
er. Is it possible to get over such a thing? Still, despite her intensity, Oli likes Paula, he knows she always has his back. Neither he nor Seb can do any wrong in her eyes. They practically have papal status. She has called a couple of times since Leigh went missing, but she’s only spoken to his dad. Leigh always denied that there was any beef between her and Aunty Paula, and maybe that was true. But there wasn’t any love between them either. He really needs to see Paula. ‘Do you want to come? You know she always has like a mountain of treats. We could maybe stay over at hers.’

  Seb’s face lights up. ‘For real? Yeah.’

  They head towards the tube together, Oli stuffs his hands deep into his low pockets, hunches to glue his eyes to the pavement. It hurts to look at his brother, who is overly grateful for the offer of company. He hasn’t been a very good brother since Leigh went missing. He should try harder. Seb is clearly a mess. He needs this to be over. He needs some answers. Everyone does.

  Oli’s fingers move around the cop’s card and the hand sanitiser. Is it time to make a call? Surely it isn’t necessary. Everyone now knows about Daan Janssen and where he lives, so Oli admitting he’d known about her other life before isn’t going to help, it is most likely only going to get him into trouble. The cop said call if there was anything that might give them an idea about Leigh’s state of mind. And him knowing about her thing for months doesn’t really reveal anything about her state of mind, does it? Although, maybe it reveals something about his. He shivers. That is the last thing he wants to do. But he does want them to look closely at this Daan Janssen. The cops must be doing that, right?

  31

  Kylie

  Saturday 21st March

  I need food and drink. Especially drink, a body can survive weeks without food but only a matter of days without drink. Light is sliding under the board on the window, another day. Saturday? Time has dictated everything I’ve ever done, for so long I’ve lived with strict timetables, appointments and commitments; not having it as a frame pushes me closer into freefall. I have to fight against that feeling. I have almost become used to the stench of the bucket. Proof of my filth and frailty. It frightens me, what I’m able to become used to.

  I wish everything could have stayed as it was, in the weird false state of suspension that I had created. I know I was living in a place on Earth that did not follow the laws of the land but after all, laws are simply things written by someone or other – often a very long time ago – and handed down, demanding obedience. Who is to say a woman can only love one man at a time?

  A man, probably.

  Sometimes it felt as though I was defying not only the law of the land but also laws of physics too. My life somehow defied gravity. I was floating. I refused to acknowledge that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. But there is. For every moment of bliss I’ve had, I have to pay. I paw helplessly over the discarded food tray, the plastic bottle has some water left in the bottom, there is half a browned banana remaining. As I pick it up, I unsettle a fly. It buzzes away and I vaguely wonder how it got into the room. I don’t care that I once read that almost every fly that lands on food vomits on it too. I’m too hungry to care about anything. I eat it slowly, carefully chewing each mouthful. I listen for the sound of footsteps or the typewriter. Nothing.

  The day crawls. He doesn’t bring any more food or water. My mouth is so dry, my lips are cracking. The typewriter stays inactive. I find myself longing for it to start up again. I am reminded of all the times I swapped illicit WhatsApp messages with whichever husband I was not with. If I was with Daan and saw Mark was ‘typing…’ my stomach would squeeze with love and anxiety. I always anticipated a message detailing some sort of problem: a sick child, lost homework, a fracas with a teacher. When I was with Mark and saw that Daan was ‘typing…’ my stomach would slosh and slide with love and a delicious anticipation. I long for the typewriter to clatter. Like a lab rat I’ve been trained to respond to the sound of its keys and I find I want to be challenged. I want to be held to account. It would almost be a relief.

  Frustrated, I kick the wall opposite the door. It’s a hell of a kick. The pain of it shoots up my leg, into my hip and I instantly regret it. The last thing I need right now is more pain and further injury. But then I notice it, a dent in the wall. I have made a dent in the wall! I stare at it in surprise. After days of being so weak and powerless I feel a surge of invigoration carouse through my body. I made a dent in the plasterboard. I made a difference! I kick the wall again and again, with my toe and then I turn and kick with my heel. Then I lie on my back and stamp both my feet into the wall, because that seems more powerful still. After half a dozen blows, I hear the plaster crack. The wall starts to sort of crumble and cave in front of me. I laugh, surprised at how lightweight and fragile plasterboard is. I start to claw and grab at the pieces, tearing the wall away. There’s a cavity and then more plasterboard. I punch through that relatively easily and I find I can get my hands through to a new space. I start to pull at the board, bringing bigger pieces down until I have made a hole in the wall that is big enough so that I can easily see into the next room.

  It’s a larger room than the one I’m in. I’d guess its original purpose is another bedroom. But, like the room I’m being kept in, whilst the walls are plastered and painted, the floor is concrete, and there is no furniture. A work in progress. Still, it is space, it is air that is less putrid than that which I’ve been breathing. I move as close to the new room as the chain will allow and breathe deeply. I sob with relief and delight, but I’m too dehydrated for there to be any actual tears. My chest lurches up and down, dry heaving. I am so relieved to have this progress. I can’t go anywhere, even if I make the hole bigger, I am still chained so can’t crawl through it, but it feels like I’ve done something, changed something. I feel some control and maybe even hope.

  That feeling increases as I see past the hole I have made there is a small window and it is wide open. I stare at it amazed. I take a moment, a beat. Compute everything this means. I stand up, move about as much as I can. I see that I am high up.

  Oh God.

  I can see a river, houses, some blocks of flats. It’s dark in both the room I’m in and the one I’m looking through and I’m at a distance from the window but even so, I think I know where I am. I recognise the view. I may not be as high up, but I think I am in my own apartment building. I am almost certain.

  Daan.

  My head is fuzzy now. Memories, thoughts, reasons are loose, scattered. I’m losing my grip.

  I freeze for a moment. Not sure if I am devastated or relieved. There couldn’t have been good news. Whichever one I discovered was responsible for this would have broken my heart. At least this way the boys are safe; their father is not a madman. Daan, of course. I understand. More than anyone probably.

  I needed something of my own. I wanted someone to love me more than anyone else. It’s not an excuse, but it is my explanation. My mother loved my father most. When he left, she seemed to step out of the world. Or at least step away from me. My father loved his new wife and new sons more than he loved me. He didn’t even love me enough to disguise the fact. Mark loves his children most. My children love their dead mother. That is the hardest, dead people are easy to love and impossible to compete with.

  Having a favourite child is frowned upon. Poor parenting. The goal is to love them equally, even if it is differently.

  I love Seb because when I am around him, I can soften, I can be still, peaceful, complete. He makes me laugh out loud. I’m always throwing my hand over my mouth and erupting into the sort of laughter that ultimately makes my ribs ache. He’s funny, irreverent, fast.

  I love Oli because he is a challenge. He doesn’t care whether he makes me laugh or not, but I care whether I can draw a smile from his handsome full lips, whether I can ease out a grunt of approval. If I can lessen his seemingly endless mistrust of the world, his pain.

  I love both my boys equally but otherwise. No favourites. Any
right-thinking parent would rather die than admit to having a favourite.

  And my men? My husbands? It is the same with them.

  Thoughts whirl in and out of my head as my eyes rest on the chaos and rubble at my feet.

  I wanted to be loved exclusively. Daan loves me more than he loves anyone else. Daan loves me so much but what did I offer him? Not the same singularity, not exclusivity. Of course, it is Daan who brought me to this, Daan is not a man who would accept sharing.

  Nor is he a man who will forgive.

  My instinct is to yell for help, but I doubt I’ll be heard on the street even through an open window, not from this height. I’m more likely to be heard by Daan, who is presumably close by. I pick up a piece of plasterboard and throw it towards the window. My aim is off, it hits the wall. I bend, pick up another piece and try again, this time it falls short. However, the third piece of debris sails out of the window. The relief is enormous. It isn’t a big piece, but I imagine it falling to the ground, maybe even landing on or near a passer-by. They’ll look up and wonder where it has come from. Excited, I reach for another piece of plasterboard. I throw that, it flies. The next doesn’t and I’m bitten by a sense of panic. I know I have to stay calm and focus. Systematically I hurl the pieces of debris out of the window. Eight, nine, ten scraps hit the mark and find freedom. I continue to break pieces of plaster from the wall and hurl them out the window. I imagine the debris collecting in a pile on the pavement below. Surely someone will notice that. Alfonso the concierge won’t like a mess around the building, he’ll want to investigate. The hole in the wall is now sizeable – I’ve snapped off every part I can reach. I’m getting tired and more of the debris is missing the target of the window and just coming to rest somewhere in the other room. My hands are cut, scratched, bleeding.

  I need water.

  I slump down against the radiator again and wait.