‘Why are you even interested?’ I say. ‘Do you care where he is? Wouldn’t you rather he was in police custody?’
‘For goodness’ sake. No, I wouldn’t rather. What’s up with you, Holly?’
I sit down.
‘I saw Philippa,’ I tell him. ‘She refuses to defend him if, God forbid, it ever goes to court. I think she believes Saffie as well.’
‘Oh, Holly.’ Pete comes across and sits on a chair next to me. ‘Look. I’ve been thinking,’ he says. ‘Let me talk to Saul. As I suggested yesterday. Let me give him a listening ear, man to man. I’ll tell him I can find a counsellor for him if necessary.’
‘Because you think he’s a rapist . . .’
‘No, Holly. To support him. After all the bullying he went through, if he’s being unfairly targeted again, he’ll need help.’
‘He goes to use the darkroom on Monday after school,’ I say, grudgingly. I’m grateful to Pete for appearing, at least, to give Saul the benefit of the doubt. ‘I’ll text him. Tell him the food’s on the table.’
Pete levers the lid off a bottle of beer and I notice for the first time the bald spot that is appearing on the back of his head. It makes me want to pull him to me. Kiss him. It makes me want to cry. The vulnerability of it. He’s trying so hard and I wish I hadn’t been irritable with him. Then, I think, Archie was never old enough to go bald. A ridiculous thought but it’s these small, ridiculous thoughts that can still choke me up.
*
Even after the darkroom, Saul’s usually in by eight, so when by eight thirty he hasn’t answered my text, I ring, but his phone goes straight to voicemail. This isn’t unusual: Saul has a habit of keeping his phone in the bottom of his bag and failing to answer it. Nevertheless, I begin to worry, even as I send him another text instead. ‘Where are you? Supper’s been ready for ages. Mushroom risotto.’
‘Why isn’t he answering?’
‘He’ll come through the door in a moment and laugh if he sees you looking so anxious,’ Pete says. ‘Come here. Are we friends?’
‘I can’t concentrate on anything else, Pete. Not until I know where Saul is.’
At nine, I pick up my phone and check again. ‘Why hasn’t he replied to my text? Where is he?’
‘He must be on his way,’ Pete says. ‘Unless he’s gone to the fair with a friend maybe?’
‘Please, Pete,’ I say. ‘Don’t you know Saul at all?’
‘Do you mind if I go ahead and eat anyway? I’m starving. You should, too. It’s late.’ Pete piles his plate with risotto.
‘I can’t eat if I don’t know where he is,’ I snap.
As the minutes tick by, I try to behave normally, because I think if I behave normally, Saul will come in as usual. After nine thirty, I can no longer contain myself.
‘I’m afraid, Pete. I’m afraid something’s happened to him.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Pete says, taking his plate to the sink. ‘He’ll have gone out with mates and forgotten the time.’
‘I know a lot of boys would do that,’ I insist, ‘but Saul isn’t like that, as you know. He hasn’t got mates. He’s a loner. For him not to come home means there’s something wrong.’
Pete comes over and massages my shoulders.
I shake him off. ‘This is all to do with what you said. He was devastated to hear that you believed Saffie. It must have felt as if his last ally was turning on him. He loves you, Pete. He looks up to you. He thinks you’re so cool, with your interest in rock music and festivals and all that stuff. And now you’ve let him down.’
‘I’ll go and see if he’s at the fair.’
‘I’ll go. I can’t bear to wait here any longer.’
*
I cross the road to the green, weaving between trucks and trailers, stepping over wires and round generators to the heart of the fair. The faded pinks and greens of the morning’s stalls are lurid now in the neon lights. Music blares out, its heavy bass a thump in the stomach. The air resounds with screams of delight from teenagers on the dodgems and the waltzer. Groups of kids I recognize from the bus stop move about in packs, browsing the stalls, having a go at ‘Catch a Duck’. They munch on hot dogs or toffee apples and look at me with wary teenage eyes. There’s a strong smell of engine oil mixed with fried onions and hot spun sugar. Toys swing from hooks above stalls. A small child elongated out of proportion ripples in the Hall of Mirrors.
‘Have you seen my son?’ I ask the woman at the hoopla stall. She looks me up and down, her skin cherry-coloured under the bright bulbs. I feel pathetic and pale, begging for her help. ‘He hasn’t come home. He’s tall, long dark hair . . .’
‘Fair’s full of teenage boys,’ she says. She turns to serve a group of girls holding out handfuls of change. ‘Is he with them?’ She nods at a crowd of kids taking it in turns at the rifle range.
I open my mouth to say Saul isn’t a boy to go about in a group, that he would have been on his own, but she’s turned away. Another group of teenagers bumps into me as I make for the dodgems. The man operating them barely glances at me as I try to attract his attention. He leaps onto one of his cars and swivels his hips as he’s whirled round. A girl, not much older than Saffie, blushes the pink of the candyfloss she’s scooping into plastic bags when I ask if she’s seen my son. She shakes her head. The group she’s serving look at me and move off, leaning towards one another, giggling. I walk on, past the ghost train, with its skulls and ghoulish faces, past a clairvoyant’s tent. Behind me, there’s shouting, a fight breaking out. I remember Jules telling me this village used to have a three-day ‘feast’ in the summer, in which tents were erected as temporary brothels and the drinking and ribaldry and opium-taking would lead to drunken brawls and fights. I wonder suddenly if a place absorbs the atmosphere to which it’s always been exposed. And whether outsiders, like me and Saul, will ever fit in.
*
‘I’m going to have to phone Jules,’ I tell Pete, as I get home, shutting the door, kicking off my boots. ‘I’m going to find out if Saffie saw him on the bus this morning. I don’t know anyone else I can ask. And the school’ll be closed now.’
‘D’you want me to call her for you?’
‘It’s OK.’
My fingers tremble as I press in Jules’s number.
She picks up quickly.
‘Jules, it’s me. I need to ask whether Saul was at the bus stop this morning.’
She doesn’t reply.
‘He hasn’t come home,’ I say into her silence. ‘I wouldn’t have rung but I’m beside myself with worry. I tried to talk to him about . . . about what Saffie told us, and now he’s vanished. There’s no one else to ask.’
I curse how dependent I am on Jules. How long it’s taking me to establish a network here. If I was back in London, there would have been any number of friends to call on. I realize how completely alone I am here. And then I think, if I was still in London, this whole horrible situation would never have arisen to start with.
‘Please,’ I hear myself beg. ‘I’m afraid, Jules. I’m afraid he’s done something stupid. Could you just check with Saffie? Did she see him this morning?’
There’s another silence, muffled this time, as she covers the mouthpiece.
‘The answer’s no,’ she says eventually.
‘But there’s just the one bus to school, from the village?’
‘Yup.’
‘So he might not even have gone to school?’
‘I have no idea, Holly.’
‘Why wouldn’t he have told me?’ I’m almost expecting the old Jules to reassure me, so it takes me aback when she snaps, ‘Maybe because he’s sixteen? Maybe you need to ask yourself why Saul is looking for ways to shock you.’
I take a deep breath. ‘I didn’t know who else to call,’ I say. ‘I don’t know his classmates, or their parents . . .’
But she’s already put down the phone.
*
I scroll through the contacts on my mobile and remember, suddenly, Samantha
giving me her number at the pub, when she’d asked me about degree courses. (I wish I’d remembered that before calling Jules.) Samantha is Saul’s form tutor’s wife. He’ll know whether he was at school today. My hands tremble as I press in her number. She picks up and I explain I need to talk to her husband about Saul.
‘Of course. He’s right here,’ Samantha says. ‘I’ll hand you over.’
I apologize for calling Harry Bell out of hours on his wife’s personal phone.
‘Saul wasn’t at registration today,’ he says. ‘But it’s quite possible he came in later and signed in at reception. I’ll check his timetable and contact his relevant teachers. I’ll call you back.’
‘That’s kind.’
Pete comes in, raises his eyebrows in question. I shake my head. When my phone rings, I snatch it up.
‘I’ve checked with Saul’s history and art teachers. He didn’t go to either lesson,’ Harry Bell says. ‘I’m sorry. If he was younger, reception would have called you. In year eleven, we trust them to let us know themselves if they’re not going to be in. If they don’t, it gets recorded as an unexplained absence to be followed up. Please let me know the minute you hear anything, will you?’
When he’s gone, I turn to Pete. ‘He didn’t go to school. He’s done something stupid, I’m sure of it.’
‘Don’t think like that,’ Pete says. ‘Saul’s been going through a tricky phase. As I said, he needs time alone to work things through. To face up to what Saffie said about him.’
Pete’s got a sweet, eager, almost boyish face and he means so well, but all of a sudden, I miss Archie with an overwhelming, crushing ache. Pete is not Saul’s dad. He doesn’t feel for him or know him the way Archie did. He doesn’t share his DNA. He doesn’t put Saul before everything, the way his real father did and would still have done. He doesn’t understand that for him not to come home is utterly out of character. He would never, ever disappear without telling me where he was going. Not unless he was hurt to the quick by things that had been said about him. Not only that. Saul would never, ever use violence to make someone have sex with him.
I speak without forethought and without caring about the consequences of my words.
‘You don’t really understand Saul,’ I say to Pete. ‘You never have done. All you really care about are your daughters. We are on different sides of a great barrier, and we are never going to break it down.’
‘That’s unfair,’ he says quietly. ‘I love Saul like my own son.’
‘You say you love him, but you took your daughters away because you believed this accusation against him. It makes me question where you really stand towards me and Saul.’
‘I’ve already apologized for that,’ he says. ‘And Saul doesn’t know why I took them over to their mother’s. It could have been for any number of reasons.’
‘Saul’s not fucking stupid. He sees his stepsisters being whisked off to their mother’s the very day he hears he’s been accused of rape. Think what that’s done to his trust in us as his parents. But that’s not my point; my point is you believed her. You believed Saffie over Saul. You’ve shown me where your true loyalties lie and they are not with me and my son.’
He flinches, his hurt palpable.
‘Well, I think you underestimate me.’ There’s a look of indignation in his eyes. ‘You’re upset. Let’s talk about this when you’ve calmed down and when you begin to see things rationally.’
‘I am perfectly rational,’ I say. My voice is hoarse after my outburst. ‘I am all too rational. What’s terrible is, now I’m being rational, I’ve seen how things really are between us. And I’m not sure we have a future together.’
Just as when Jules came to visit me in my office, once the words are out, there’s no taking them back.
8
JULES
Rowan had taken it upon himself to cook the meal when Jules got home, later than usual, on Monday evening. Saffie had just got in too; she’d put an apron over her school uniform and Rowan was using her as his sous-chef. She was peeling potatoes. Saffie often helped with the cooking and was clearly making a valiant attempt to carry on as normal. But the rings round her eyes and her demeanour – a new look of hyper vigilance, twitching every time there was a loud noise, glancing about her – spoke volumes. Jules’s heart lurched.
‘How are you, Saff?’ she asked.
‘I’m fine,’ Saffie snapped.
Jules and Rowan exchanged a look.
‘Why do you have to keep asking how I am? I’m trying to forget what happened.’ She plucked at the sleeves of her school jersey. Another new mannerism she had acquired.
‘Saffie, you must understand . . .’
‘You can see I’m all right. I thought you’d be pleased I was helping with the cooking.’
‘I am pleased,’ Jules sighed.
‘We thought we’d surprise you,’ Rowan said. ‘Didn’t we, Saff? It’s a beef Wellington and mashed potatoes.’
‘Smells fab. Rather calorific, though.’
‘Mum. Don’t spoil it for Dad,’ Saffie said. ‘He thought you’d be tired. He was trying to help.’
Jules did indeed feel exhausted. Tension could cause fatigue, and she had felt tense all day. About Saffie’s pregnancy. About the conversation she’d had with Donna Browne that made her realize she couldn’t take control over her daughter’s body or her life or make decisions for her.
Saffie was slicing the potatoes with more force than was necessary and dropping them with a splash into a pan of water, working hard to divert attention away from what she was going through. Jules tried to spot any visible signs that she was pregnant – things Rowan might have noticed. Apart from the puppy fat she’d gained recently, it was impossible to say. And it was very early days, as Donna Browne had pointed out that morning. Nevertheless, Jules wished Saffie had agreed to go to a clinic, get the thing dealt with immediately.
‘Where did you get locally raised organic beef?’ Jules picked up the label lying on the work surface.
‘Ely Market,’ Rowan said.
‘Oh?’
‘I went up there after dropping Saffie at the bus stop this morning.’
Jules glanced at Rowan, but he had his face turned from her. She was about to ask what had prompted him to go to Ely Market when Saffie said, ‘Oh yes. There’s a fair on the green. Can I go up there after supper?’ She scooped up the heap of potato peelings.
‘I’ll take those peelings out,’ Rowan said. ‘You’ll get the wrong bin. And no, you can’t go to the fair.’
‘I was trying to help.’ Saffie was almost in tears again. Her emotions were so close to the surface, the tiniest thing tipping her over the edge. ‘But you do nothing for me. You want to ruin my life. You interfere all the time. And then, when I ask for one thing, you say no!’
‘It’s too late to go to the fair,’ Rowan said. ‘You’re not going up to the green with everything that’s happened and that’s that. The food will be ready in half an hour and you can spend the time until then revising your French.’
Saffie turned and stomped up the stairs, and at the top she slammed her bedroom door as hard as she could.
‘This is a nightmare,’ Jules said, turning to Rowan. ‘She doesn’t know how traumatized she really feels.’
‘I know,’ Rowan said. ‘I’ve told her she’s to leave it to us. That we’re considering the best course of action to take next.’ Rowan sounded uncannily calm after his reaction at the weekend. ‘Go and have a bath, Jules, and I’ll open some wine for you to have with dinner.’
Upstairs, Jules opened Saffie’s door and went into her room. Saffie lay face down on top of her duvet.
‘I know how upsetting this is for you,’ Jules said.
‘You don’t.’
‘Dad and I are doing everything we can to help.’
‘All I want is for things to be normal,’ Saffie said into her pillow. ‘I want to go to the fair with Gemma and the others. I want things to be back how they were. They would
have been back how they were if I’d never told you.’
Jules sighed. ‘After what you’ve gone through, you must understand we’re concerned about you being out there.’
‘Dad knowing has made everything worse. Everyone’s going to notice something’s wrong.’
‘You did the right thing, Saff. You had to tell us. We’re here for you, darling, and things will be better soon, I promise.’
‘How can they be better soon? When I’m pregnant?’
‘I saw Donna Browne and we’ve got an appointment for Friday. So that’s all taken care of.’
‘Things will never be how they used to be!’ Saffie began to cry, quietly. ‘It feels like this has ruined my life. It’s made everything that used to be good horrible.’
‘Oh, Saff.’
‘I used to like going to school. You used to let me meet up with my friends. Now that’s all spoiled.’
Jules lifted Saffie’s hand and squeezed it. ‘It probably feels like everything’s ruined. But you will come through this and we’ll move on.’
‘What has Holly said to Saul?’ Saffie asked at last, sitting up, rubbing her eyes.
‘She’s talking to him. You don’t have to worry. It’s going to be fine, Saff. It might not feel like it at the moment, but we’ll sort it out between us. He’ll get some treatment and he won’t come near you again. I promise. But until we’ve sorted it, we have to keep you safe. Please try to see that we’re only doing this to help.’
Saffie put her arms round Jules.
‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ Jules said again.
Saffie said something into Jules’s chest that Jules couldn’t hear.
‘What was that, Saff?’
‘I said, I don’t think it is. I don’t think anything’s going to be all right ever again.’
‘You’re upset. Which is completely to be expected. But this will pass. And things will be good again.’
And at last Saffie gave Jules a small, weak – and slightly unconvincing – smile.
*
Once Saffie had settled down again, Jules went to fill a bath as Rowan had suggested. As she climbed into its blissful warmth, she thought about Rowan’s change of heart this evening, how dramatically he had calmed down after his rage at the weekend. No one eavesdropping would imagine he had threatened to beat up Saul only a day ago. Perhaps it was because he’d had time to process the news. Or perhaps he was brushing it all under the carpet. Which was his other way of dealing with things he couldn’t handle. And almost certainly meant the issue would rear its ugly head again later, to sink its teeth into them all.
I Thought I Knew You Page 15