Guilty

by Jane Bidder

  All his original intentions now flew out of his head. Christ, it was all he could do not to stroke her skin and smell it to make sure she really wasn’t Claire.

  ‘Got it bad, haven’t you?’ cackled Joanna. ‘ Pity that Rory insists on sitting next to you. Still, I suppose you can’t choose your bedfellows in a place like this.’

  It was as though the man was following him. Wherever he went now, whether it was the dining room or the post room, Rory wasn’t far behind. Now as they sat round the table in the art room, the man was sitting so close that, every now and then, his knees bumped into Simon’s. How repulsive.

  ‘The Listeners’ Hut still not open then?’

  Simon shook his head, trying to concentrate on the green hues in front of him.

  ‘That other geezer still in hospital?’

  Simon nodded.

  For a few minutes, Rory fell silent although he kept sucking in his breath as he drew and then expelling it as though in concentration.

  ‘Blue is a great healer,’ said Caroline-Jane to the class in general. ‘Not everyone realises that colours don’t just give us inspiration but also make us feel better. If we have a sore throat, for instance, we should imagine a blue band of colour around our necks or, even better, put on a blue scarf.’

  ‘Kinky,’ someone said and there was a wave of giggles.

  ‘Wow.’ She’d stopped next to him and for a moment Simon thought she was referring to his rainbow. Then he realised she was talking about Rory’s. He glanced across. The man was meant to be doing his life portrait but instead there was a small boy standing next to an apple tree.

  ‘Is that you as a child?’ asked Caroline-Jane softly.

  Rory nodded. Then, suddenly, he picked up a stick of charcoal and drew a black patch behind the tree.

  ‘Is that someone waiting for you?’ asked Caroline-Jane even more softly.

  Another nod. Then he picked up the paper and ripped it from top to bottom before flinging it on the floor. The rest of the class fell silent.

  ‘Did that man hurt you?’ Simon’s voice rang out.

  Rory nodded. Then he grabbed Simon’s own sheet of paper, turned it over and began sketching furiously. A small girl stood in front of the tree this time. The shadow behind the tree came seconds later.

  ‘You hurt a child because you’d been hurt yourself,’ said Caroline-Jane.

  The class shifted awkwardly.

  Rory nodded.

  ‘I tried to tell him,’ he said jerking his hand towards Simon. ‘But he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s no excuse, is it?’ said a kid at the end of the table who had blue and red tattooed flames down his neck. ‘What you did was disgusting.’

  ‘I’ve changed now.’ Rory was painting madly again. ‘I’ve learned stuff and when I get out, it’s going to be different.’

  The rainbow was growing before Simon’s eyes.

  ‘No one believes me.’ He looked round the class. The look in his eyes might have been resigned or might have been desperate. ‘But you’ll see. You all will.’

  ‘There was no need to put shit all over my cell,’ said Simon. Caroline-Jane looked shocked but it had to be said.

  ‘That wasn’t me, mate.’

  Simon was about to say he didn’t believe him but then the door swung open. An officer stood there, scanning their faces.

  ‘Mills,’ he barked. ‘To the centre. If you don’t mind.’

  ‘What you done, mate?’ cackled someone further down the table. Simon felt himself flushing. It would be the kiss. He’d be punished now by maybe having to do extra jobs round camp or having a visit cancelled. But it had been worth it.

  Following the officer, he ignored the curious looks. Shit. They were going to one of the governor’s offices.

  ‘Mr Mills.’ The woman at the desk spoke quietly. ‘I’m afraid we have some news to give you. Would you like to sit down?’

  Ben had disappeared. Run away. He was meant to have been staying at Charlie’s for the night but had slipped off for band practice with his new town friends and then got caught by the police for drinking. For some reason, he’d given them Simon’s surname and they had recognised it. Ben had then rushed out of the beach hut they’d broken into and disappeared.

  That was Saturday night. Today was Monday. Claire would be frantic.

  They’d allowed him to ring her.

  ‘Are you all right?

  Her voice was tight with hysteria. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Where’s he gone?’

  ‘How am I meant to know?’ She was screaming at him now or was that the wind and the seagulls? ‘I’m scared he might have drowned himself.’

  There was a man’s voice in the background, soothing her. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Charlie. He’s as frantic as I am.’

  Charlie and Claire, looking for their son. An equation which had nothing to do with him.

  ‘You can’t get it right all of the time.’ Joanna’s voice sounded sorry for him. ‘ Have they got Slasher with them?’

  Of course. The dog! ‘Get him! Send him running along the beach.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Slasher. Maybe Ben will come out from wherever he’s hiding if he sees Slasher.’

  He could hear Claire repeating his suggestion to Charlie. ‘Daft idea,’ he heard the man say.

  ‘I have to go. Keep searching.’ She was weeping. ‘I’ll call the prison if there’s any news.’

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  When they got to the beach huts, all they found were two whisky bottles and a couple of empty cigarette packets.

  Charlie sniffed the air. ‘No cannabis,’ he said. ‘At least that’s something.’

  He and Claire had then driven around, frantically looking for a black hooded teenager. By morning, any remaining energy had been sucked out of her eye sockets.

  That had been two days ago. Two days of combing the beach and local towns while the police told her they were doing all that they could. Then came Simon’s phone call. ‘Slasher,’ he had suggested. ‘Get Slasher out there looking for him.’

  It was a crazy idea! Years earlier, when she’d been a child, they’d lost a cat and her father had suggested walking the dog round the neighbourhood to find him. They never had.

  Yet Mrs Johnson seemed to think it was worth it. When Claire had suggested the idea, she had slipped into her navy anorak, grabbed a torch, and disappeared into the foggy night.

  ‘I think we ought to go back to the old house,’ said Charlie again.

  ‘Really?’ It was odd the way they’d become a team again. ‘You could be right; although I’d have thought he would have avoided it after the bricks.’

  Charlie took her arm gently. ‘I don’t mean your old house. I mean “ours”.’

  The ours sent a bolt of excitement and fear through her. ‘It’s worth a try,’ she said slowly.

  Together they drove through the city and out on to the other side towards the Dorset boundary. Some women, she knew, would have put up with an unfaithful husband for the sake of the beautiful house they used to own, but at the time she had never wanted to see Charlie again.

  Pulling up outside the white gates, they looked wistfully at the wisteria creeping up the honey stone face. ‘I’ll knock at the door and explain.’

  Claire nodded. ‘OK.’

  It was almost as though they had gone back together in time, she thought, watching him go up to the door and pounding the heavy old door-knocker. Was that the same one, she wondered, that they’d found in an antique shop near Stroud all those years ago?

  Someone appeared: a man about Charlie’s age. She saw them talking urgently and then Charlie returned, marching down the drive past the lavender bed that she had once planted, disappointed determination written all over his face.

  ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘But at least he knows, just in case Ben turns up.’

  The tears which she had kept back for so long flooded out now. ‘It’s been so difficult
for him. The divorce. Me marrying again. You having all those girlfriends. Hiding out in rented rooms. It’s more than many adults could put up with, let alone a teenage boy.’

  Charlie squeezed her arm gently. ‘But he’s strong. He’s got my genes and yours. You’ve coped with all this too, Claire, in a way I hadn’t expected and I admire you for it.’

  She sat, straight ahead, as he drove on, not trusting herself to speak. ‘I made a mistake,’ Charlie was saying. ‘I admit it. But I’ve learned my lesson. God help me, I’ve learned.’

  Still she couldn’t talk.

  ‘Simon.’ He paused as though saying the name was an effort for him. ‘Simon is a lucky man. But from what I gather, he doesn’t understand Ben.’

  She found her voice. ‘It’s difficult for him. He doesn’t have children. But he’s not unkind to him if that’s what you’re implying. He’s just a bit strict.’

  ‘Strict enough to make him run away?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Her voice came out as a cry. ‘You can’t jump to conclusions, Charlie.’

  He had always tried, she remembered now, to twist the facts around so that his views seemed saner and more plausible than anyone else’s. But Simon was no better; often shutting her out because he’d been used to doing things alone. Did she really want to live the rest of her life like that? Her split from Charlie had made her stronger; capable of moving on, instead of putting up with something that clearly wasn’t right.

  ‘Let’s just try and find him, shall we?ʼ she said, ‘before we try to analyse why he went.’

  It was cold on the beach and Ben had had enough. Why did all these people come down year after year to sit on pebbles and shiver behind windbreakers? If he ever got big with his music, he’d buy somewhere in Florida where it was warm and he’d never have to see anyone here ever again.

  He’d miss Mum, though. And Slasher. A longing seeped into his bones. He should have brought him with him; they could have cuddled up together and kept warm.

  Ben shivered as he crawled up against the back of the small dinghy. If he hadn’t found the boat, on its side like a long-forgotten shell, a rip through its wooden middle, he didn’t know what he would have done. Thank goodness for the old blue tarpaulin which someone had left inside the boat. It was damp yet it had given him just enough shelter to stick it out along with the cheese sandwich in his pocket and the half-eaten bar of chocolate that he and Poppy had shared the other week.

  Poppy. He’d miss her too if he went to Florida.

  His stomach rumbled. At first, he’d been so hungry after the cheese sandwich and the chocolate that he didn’t know what to do but then it was as though the rumbles in his stomach belonged to someone else and he could observe them rather than feel anxious. He was beginning to feel quite lightheaded too. Maybe it was because he hadn’t drunk enough. He’d found a bottle of water on the beach which someone had thrown away. At least, he hoped it was water. It tasted all right.

  Ben’s eyes began to close and the lifeboat around him seemed to shrink with the rest of the world. This would be his second night. Part of him had expected to be found by now and then the decision would be taken out of his hands. He’d tell Mum he was sorry and he’d give him a bit of a telling-off and then she’d go back to work because there wasn’t any money and he’d have to return to school where everyone would look at him because he was the kid who had run away.

  The alternative was to never go back and become one of those kids you saw in the streets in Bristol who slept in doorways with dogs that had spotted scarves round their necks. He didn’t want that either.

  ‘Ben,’ called the wind. ‘Ben!’

  He couldn’t feel his fingers now and his bones felt like the sticks that Mum used to put into those plastic ice lolly containers when he was little.

  ‘Ben! Ben!’

  This part of the beach was the quiet part. The bit where no one came because you had to climb down through a steep footpath that ordinary tourists didn’t know about. That’s why he and the band had liked it. They could smoke and drink without anyone knowing.

  ‘Ben!

  The wind’s voice was getting louder and the mist was licking his face, making funny little moaning noises.

  ‘Ben! Thank God. You’re here.’

  Now he was dreaming about Mrs Johnson. Ben felt an overwhelming longing for her warm kitchen and her soft Victoria sponges which had been like the ones Mum had made before Dad had gone.

  ‘Put this around you, pet.’

  Something warm was being draped around his shoulders and he could feel water on his lips as though someone was trying to give him a bottle.

  ‘It’s water, love. You’re dehydrated. That’s right, Slasher, give him a cuddle.’

  Slasher? Ben sank his face into the dog’s fur. It felt comforting and he breathed in and out, feeling his own breath coming back at him.

  ‘My Derek used to come down here, you know.’

  Mrs Johnson was sitting next to him now inside the upturned lifeboat. ‘He said it was the only place he could get some peace.’ Her voice dropped slightly. ‘Of course, I knew he was really having a smoke and a drink with his friends.’

  This wasn’t right. Mrs Johnson’s son had been a goody-goody.

  ‘It was that that killed him, you know.’

  ‘The car,’ he managed to say. ‘Knocked over by a car when he was twelve.’

  ‘No, love.’ Mrs Johnson’s arm tightened around him. ‘That’s just a story I put out for people who don’t know me. My boy took an overdose just after his fourteenth birthday. Not far from here as a matter of fact. He might have been all right if it hadn’t been for the tide coming in.’

  He could sense the waves now, getting closer and closer. Suddenly he wanted to get up and run back to Mum but his legs wouldn’t move. ‘Blame myself, I do.’ Her arm was getting tighter as though she was keeping him there. They’d both drown together, he realised suddenly in a fit of lucidity. Mum had always said there wasn’t something quite right about her.

  ‘I changed his room back to what it looked like when he was younger and none of this nasty stuff had happened. It made it easier to pretend it hadn’t happened.’

  Ben could understand that.

  ‘We used to argue, you see.’ Mrs Johnson’s voice was making him feel sleepy now. ‘Only teenage arguments but his dad didn’t understand that. He was too strict.’

  ‘So’s my stepdad,’ he heard himself mumble.

  ‘Really, dear?’ She was giving him some more water now. Gratefully, he gulped it down. ‘Maybe if he and your mum make up, he’ll come back and you can sort it out.’

  ‘He can’t. Not for ages. He’s in prison for killing someone in a car accident.’

  There was a strange noise – the kind his mother used to make when they watched television together and she thought she knew who had done it. ‘I see. That must be difficult for all of you.’

  Her grip tightened again and he could feel the sea roaring towards them.

  ‘Not long, now, dear. Not long.’

  ‘No.’ He staggered to his feet. ‘I don’t want to die!’

  ‘Die?’ She was standing up next to him, holding him tightly so he couldn’t run off. He hadn’t realised old people had such strength. ‘You’re not going to die, dear. Mum’s on her way right now to get us. Didn’t you hear me call her on my mobile?’

  ‘Ben! Ben!’

  Was that Mum or the wind?

  And then she was there, holding him to her, rocking back and forth, her arms folded round him; smelling of roses from the old garden and the stuff that came from the white and gold bottle on her dressing table.

  He was vaguely aware of his father standing just behind but it wasn’t him, he wanted. ‘Mum,’ he cried, holding tight. ‘Mum!’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Simon had run away once at Ben’s age; thinking himself to be violently in love with a girl from home. There’d been one hell of a fuss. Her parents had called his parents and his father ha
d marched him back to school where he’d been caned.

  Only now did he realise that his father’s fury had probably been relief. But it was worse in prison where you felt so bloody useless.

  ‘Not knowing is the worst bit, man,’ said Spencer sympathetically as he watched Simon pace up and down his side of the pad. It was lock-up time although, judging from the level of music from the other side of the cell, no one was going to be able to sleep for a while. ‘Felt like that myself when my kid was being born.’

  Simon stopped. ‘You’ve got a child?’ It seemed impossible. Spencer was no more than a boy himself. ‘You never mentioned it before.’

  His cell-mate made a wry expression. ‘Yeah, well to be honest, my baby’s mother wouldn’t let me see it when I got out. Now they’ve moved somewhere and I don’t know where. Didn’t even want my money, she said, ʼcos she didn’t know where it came from.’

  There was something in that, thought Simon as he started pacing again; thoughts whirling round his head. Supposing Ben had gone and got himself drowned?

  ‘He could be anywhere.’ Spencer was sitting on the edge of his bed, looking out of the window hopefully.

  ‘I know,’ muttered Simon grimly.

  ‘Every time I get out, I look at kids on the street to see if one of them looks like me.’

  To think he had thought Spencer was worrying about him. The boy was so self-centred. Maybe that’s what prison did for you.

  Spencer was still staring outwards. ‘Funny thing is that I know I’d be a good dad, know what I mean? I’d take it to football matches like and I’d teach it to defend itself without breaking the law.’

  Simon had never particularly wanted children but, if they had happened, he liked to think he would have got married first. Most men here had a series of ‘baby mothers’ whom they’d impregnated before moving on.

  He took a deep breath. ‘You know, I thought twice about marrying my wife because she had a son.’

  ‘Don’t blame you, mate.’