by L. V. Hay
‘As you can see, Denny seems happy enough now,’ Sally said.
‘But that’s kids – they bury stuff. They don’t know what they’re bothered about, deep down.’ I knew I was teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, but I didn’t care whether Sally was bothered or not. I had to know what was troubling my boy enough to wet the bed. He’d been dry through the night since he was two. It had to be all the change, or at least the upset and stress with Maxwell.
But Sally just indicated Denny: his posture was no longer rigid, nor was his attitude spiky. His back to us and unaware of our observation, Denny chatted to Anna, his tone light and happy. You wouldn’t realise he was the same child. His behaviour was in stark contrast to half an hour earlier.
But rather than being pleased, I felt despair sink through me. This was obviously deeper than I thought.
Now what?
Twenty-seven
‘Child endangerment?’ Triss said, agog.
I shifted on the grass and rolled over onto my side to get a better view of my best friend. It was finally the start of the school holidays, the last week of July. Triss had turned up that morning with a picnic, demanding we go out with her. Being the head teacher, Sebastian still wasn’t able to tear himself away and had already left for school, but I was only too happy to oblige. We were now in Webb’s Folly, one of the most popular recreational areas for families on Epsom Common. My friend lay on an old blanket, her leggings rolled up, her red hair piled on top of her head.
She shook her head in dismay. ‘Oh, God. Kelly was right. This is all my fault!’
‘It is not,’ I countered. ‘You thought Denny had gone back to Kelly. Besides, Sebastian told Social Services that Denny was never on the common. If they could prove otherwise, they would have said. It’s not likely we will hear from them again; they were just ticking a box. No harm done.’
Triss narrowed her eyes. ‘There’s something else you’re not telling me…’ She knew me too well.
‘Look, we can’t prove it,’ I said, ‘but we think it was Maxwell. He’s been baiting us for weeks. Practically since the wedding reception.’
‘Where did Denny say he was when he went missing?’
I shrugged. ‘He said he was in the toilet.’
‘Little bugger. He was not!’ Triss leaned forwards, fervour in her eyes. ‘I checked in there, like, a billion times. Are we supposed to believe Denny was trotting around the school, just ahead or behind everyone who was looking for him?’
‘Exactly.’ I sighed. ‘Denny worships Maxwell, too. I can’t get him to admit it. I think he’s still angry with me for taking him to the bloody play therapist.’
There was a pause as we both contemplated this impasse. Triss grabbed a can of spray-on sunscreen from her bag; it was already time for her to reapply. She rubbed the green lotion into her pale calves. ‘This is all a bit weird though. Why would he steal his own kid, then bring him back in secret? What the hell is he playing at?’
I adjusted the rim of my hat. ‘Maxwell likes to play the long game. This is all adding up to something, somehow. I’m just not sure what yet.’
I could almost taste the coconut smell of the sunscreen. It was all over my hands. Denny had begrudgingly allowed me to put some on his face and neck before running off across the common with a little friend he’d spied from school. That boy’s mother sat to our left, her nose in her Kindle, underneath a parasol. Next to me, Denny’s clothes were neatly folded, his phone tucked into one of his trainers. I hadn’t wanted to bring it, but he’d insisted.
Nearby, I could see Denny and the other boy in their shorts, little stick legs. They poked at something in the long grass with a branch. I recognised the boy, if not his mother: Owen Keller, from year two; he was always at after-school club. There were other kids too, marking out goalposts with T-shirts, or running around in circles, arms punching the air. Mums and dads chased toddlers across the still-lush grass.
I decided to change the subject. ‘Six whole weeks off school…’ I stretched with forced delight.
But Triss rolled her eyes as she lay back down, her arm over her eyes to block out the sun. ‘Holiday’s only just started and I’m already on a countdown to going back.’
I laughed. Triss had always been a glass-half-empty type. ‘Get a new job!’
Triss scoffed. ‘Yeah, right. Doing what?’
I tutted. We’d been through this so many times. ‘I dunno. A shop. Start your own business? You’re a maths teacher, for God’s sake, you have transferable skills.’
Triss chuckled. I knew what was coming next: a joke. ‘Hey, I got one for you. What does a mathematician do about constipation?’
I braced myself. ‘I dunno. What?’
‘He works it out with a pencil!’ Triss cackled.
I groaned and grabbed a handful of mown grass, throwing it at her. Triss laughed even harder, then chucked some back at me. Returning to reality and parental duty, I checked on Denny again. I was panicked when I couldn’t make him out among the other bodies wandering about on the common … for about three seconds. Then I spotted him again, now near the Greater Stew pond off to our right near the trees. He was chucking pebbles in the water.
‘Oi, Dennis Stevens!’ I adopted ‘teacher voice’ and boomed at him from afar. Startled, he turned in my direction, arms raised in mock innocence.
But I was not fooled for an instant. ‘Don’t come it with me, I saw you. No throwing stones!’
Denny and his friend legged it towards a small copse of trees.
‘And stay where I can see you!’ I yelled after them.
They stopped dead, making their way back towards the play park instead.
‘Scary Mummy…’ Triss winked at me.
This rankled me, and I wasn’t sure why. ‘I’m not scary.’
Triss sat up again, hugging her red knees. ‘Pfft. If you were my mum, I’d shit myself.’
I smirked. ‘You try having a kid, show me how easy it is.’
Triss’s mouth dropped open, in a perfect ‘o’ of horror. ‘Me, have a snot-nosed brat? No, thank you.’
‘You just work with them instead.’
‘At least I can give ’em back.’
I’d ribbed her enough times about this. It was all good-natured fun. Two old pals. It was good to do absolutely nothing for once, just stop the hectic roundabout of life and get off. Just be.
‘So, where’s Sebastian? You never said.’ Triss stretched her long legs up in the air, a parody of a yoga pose.
‘He had a few things to do at school.’
‘God, does he ever take any time off?’
I shrugged. I’d been annoyed too when Sebastian had announced at breakfast that he was going to tie up some loose ends. We had weeks for that. But I’d let the irritation pass. Maybe he simply thought it best to get it over with, then we could concentrate on enjoying ourselves for the rest of the holiday. Besides, it was good to spend some time with Triss outside school after the nightmare of the last few months; the dynamic would have been different if Sebastian had come too – not that I’d ever confess that to him.
‘How’s he doing, anyway?’ Triss nodded at Denny, who was now running at the head of a pack of other children, chasing a lightweight, neon-pink football. ‘He seems okay … No more wet sheets in the cupboard?’
I frowned. I’d told Triss about the bed-wetting, of course, but I didn’t recall telling her how Denny had tried to hide them from me. I dismissed the thought; it didn’t matter.
‘He’s much better.’
My boy laughed as a small girl nipped ahead of him and dribbled the ball through his legs. There’d been no wetting the bed over the last ten days – at mine or at Maxwell’s, apparently. Nor had he bitten me again. We had a second visit to the psychotherapist coming up over the holidays, but now I wondered if it was necessary. Maybe Denny’s resentment was greater at what he saw as my interference?
Always the teacher, I noticed Owen was no longer playing with Denny. My line of sight wan
dered towards his mother, to check the little boy had made his way back to her. There he was, but he was crying, as she packed up their things and struggled with the parasol. He didn’t want to go, poor lad.
Denny’s friend was making such a racket, I didn’t even hear the first shout. It was only when the children started running towards the copse of trees again that my attention was grabbed.
I clambered to my feet and called for Denny. Triss did the same. But the kids didn’t even look back. They moved like a shoal of fish, slipping out of our reach.
‘What the bloody hell are they all doing?’
They were rocketing towards something beyond the long grass, on the peak of the common. My heart leaped up into my mouth. Triss stood up too. Foreboding gripped my chest.
I burst forwards, leaving my shoes, my book, even my wallet and Denny’s phone. I didn’t think or care about any of our stuff. Triss fell into step with me. As we neared the children, I realised they were standing in a circle, their eyes on something.
Someone.
I could make out an adult body on the ground, now being helped up by a crouching form.
‘Who is it?’ Triss said.
I pushed my way through the small crowd, my brain taking a second to catch up – to realise it was Fran.
She looked pale and drawn. And, after a moment, I saw why: unusually, she was not wearing any make-up. I didn’t think I’d seen her without her scarlet lips before. But more than that, her hair looked tousled, unbrushed. She did not seem herself at all. An earnest, serious-looking young man had one arm around her shoulders, the other holding her elbow. I’d never seen him before. The older woman smiled at the sight of us and attempted to stand, but then lurched forwards, as if she might faint again.
‘She just collapsed,’ the serious man said.
‘Really, I’m fine. I’m just a little light-headed. I was going for a walk,’ Fran said in that clipped, assured way.
But the serious man was not taking ‘no’ for an answer. ‘Easy, easy…’
He guided my mother-in-law back to the bench, forcing me to follow.
‘Oh, I can’t abide such fuss,’ Fran mumbled, her eyes shiny. Despite her bravado, it was clear it was all she could do to contain her emotions. I could empathise; she was roughly the age my own mother would have been, had she lived. Women of their generation were so proud. This had to be mortifying for Fran.
I turned and moved the crowd back, teacher voice coming out again. ‘Give her some air, please, everyone!’
Triss took my lead and cranked into action, moving the kids away. Other adults had joined the throng now, looking for their children. Kids safe, the adults started to drift away from the spectacle, a couple of them watching from a safe distance. Triss and Denny hovered nearby, though Triss distracted my boy as best she could.
‘Are you okay now?’ I leaned down over Fran.
She blinked. Even sitting, it was clear she was not at all well: she swayed, side-to-side, with wooziness. ‘I do feel a bit faint.’
‘It’s so hot. It’ll be dehydration,’ the serious young man said, in an authoritative tone.
Despite my shock at seeing my frail mother-in-law like this, there was a horrible inevitability to it. The image of her struggling down the stairs at the maisonette came back to me. Unsatisfied with the serious young man’s diagnosis, I grabbed my phone from my back pocket. ‘We need to take you to hospital, Fran.’
‘No, no…’ Fran objected; the idea appeared to horrify her.
‘You have to get checked out,’ the serious young man insisted.
Fran seemed more willing to accept it from him. ‘Oh … well if you’re sure,’ she said.
‘I’ll call 999.’ I took out my phone.
‘Take her to the Cromwell,’ Triss said, appearing beside me. ‘You’d prefer it there, wouldn’t you, Fran?’
Fran smiled weakly at Triss.
I thought A&E at the General was better, but I made the call to the Cromwell. Then I rang Sebastian. It went straight to voicemail. I told him to call me urgently.
Triss took Denny for me along with my doorkeys, saying she’d wait for us back at the maisonette. By now, nearly everyone else was gone or packing up their stuff. The late-afternoon sun was starting to slip behind the trees. A cooler evening was on its way.
As we waited by the bench, I proffered a quick smile to the serious guy, who still stood next to us. ‘Thanks for helping.’
The young fellow shook his head. ‘Don’t mention it.’
‘I’ll take it from here, okay?’ I took Fran’s hand in mine; she let me. Her palm felt cold, papery. The skin on the back of her hand was translucent.
Looking a bit miffed, the man wandered off, though only after he’d given me his number, insisting I update him. I smiled as I took it.
Fran gave me a weak smile, and then said in a small voice: ‘I want to see Sebastian.’
My automatic smile did not reach my eyes. ‘He’ll be here soon.’
But where was he?
Twenty-eight
Sebastian had woken that morning stiff-limbed and aching from yet another interrupted night. Lying to Lily about the tussle with Maxwell was well and truly behind him, but Denny’s disappearance and then the Social Services visit were adding to his deep discomfort. He couldn’t shake the unease. As he had patrolled through Avonwood’s deserted corridors, even the sight of the children’s colourful artwork failed to cheer him. Without children, a school was a building devoid of purpose. The forgotten desks and chairs looked forlorn, even with sunlight streaming through the window.
Sebastian returned to his office, powered up the computer and opened up some of the spreadsheets he had to get through. But his heart was not in it. He drifted towards social media instead, updating the school’s Facebook page and Twitter feed. He noted a couple of the photographs from the fête were tagged with parents’ profiles, so he allowed himself to scroll through those. Jackson, Lily’s cousin Maya’s husband, had been caught in a couple of them. In the first, he raised a tattooed arm in a strong-man pose as he prepared to pack up a stall. In the second, he was running across the muddy sports field, his daughters under each arm, like footballs. All three of them were laughing, their joy at playing together evident on their faces.
A weird feeling stabbed Sebastian in the chest, almost like a physical pain. He’d felt such things looking at the pictures of ex-girlfriends in the past, but never a man with his children. Yet there was no question in Sebastian’s mind; he sat back in his chair and knew that he was jealous.
Sebastian had never known his father; he’d been barely three months old when he’d died. Exhausted from a long shift and home late from the hospital, Jasper Adair had been calling for roadside assistance from an emergency phone when another car had come off the road and hit him. The bastard had then driven off, leaving him to die; a hit-and-run. Sebastian could recite all this, by heart; his mother had told him the story again and again when he was just a kid. What a waste. His father had been barely older than he was now.
Fran had tried hard to fill Sebastian in on what his father was like; there was a whole wall of photographs of him in her living room. There were pictures of him in every conceivable pose; Fran must have always had a camera in her hand in her youth. Formal portraits were contrasted with more informal ones, of picnics, Christmas dinners and walks along country lanes. Sebastian’s favourite was a picture of his father on a beach, bare-chested and holding the infant Sebastian’s tiny toes in the water as the tide came in.
His parents had met when Jasper had newly qualified as a doctor and was beginning his journey to become one of the most renowned surgeons in the area. Fran told Sebastian they’d met at a family friend’s christening. Aged twenty, Fran had not wanted to go, complaining to her mother she wanted to see a film that afternoon instead. Her mother had insisted – and thank goodness she had.
‘I know we only had a short while together, but at least I still have you,’ Fran would say, misty-eyed as
she reminisced.
Sebastian wondered what his father would think of him. By Fran’s accounts, Jasper had been a high-flyer at work and a great provider for his family. He’d been excited his child was a son, Fran said; he’d had big plans for them both. So, was Sebastian successful enough? He’d settled into the role of class clown at school because he’d never been the sporty type, or into the sciences, as Jasper must have been to become such an accomplished surgeon. Sebastian was a hard worker: organised, dependable, ambitious. But despite his hard-won status and position, he wasn’t exceptional. Would Sebastian be a disappointment to his father? A hollow feeling spread throughout his body.
Sebastian grabbed his phone, wanting to hear Lily’s voice. But it seemed Lily had already called him: he had a voicemail notification. And there was a text notification too, Lily’s name beside it. He opened this first.
It said, simply: Your mum’s ill. Hospital.
Sebastian went into autopilot. He grabbed his keys from his desk and ran out towards the car park, only just remembering to lock the school doors after him. In what seemed like a flash he was in his car and driving, guilt and fear roiling in his stomach. He tried to calm himself; stop his thoughts from spiralling. Fran was at the Cromwell, not the local NHS hospital, so she had to be conscious at least, as the Cromwell didn’t have an Accident & Emergency department.
He parked his car haphazardly outside the Cromwell’s main building and crashed through the double doors into reception. To his relief, Lily was standing beside a vending machine, paper cup in hand. Sebastian ran straight over to her.
‘Sorry … sorry! I missed your call. What happened?’
Seated in the soft reception chair into which Lily had pushed him, Sebastian listened, grimly, as she calmly repeated what had taken place at the common. He hadn’t been able to take it all in the first time around. But now his heartbeat was finally beginning to subside, the adrenaline washing from his veins.