by Fiona Perrin
‘Not lately. You and Wilf seemed to be getting on really well in the last few months.’
‘But it was you who looked after him when I was incapable of even being a parent.’ He looked as if he wanted to rip out his soul, throw it on the floor and stamp on it. ‘And I expect I never really told you how grateful I am about that. You’re an amazing woman, Cal.’
I nodded. He’d made a couple of half-arsed attempts to thank me in the past for being there for Wilf, but this was heartfelt. ‘Thank you.’
‘And I was shit to you too,’ he said. ‘The funny thing is that I would have said that to various counsellors and so on when I was getting better, but I probably never said sorry directly to you.’
I hadn’t really wanted him to apologise to me for me, but I had wanted him to recover for his son. I’d known for a long time that Ralph and I were done, our story complete.
‘And Petra, you know, she came along—’
‘She came along at a time when you needed someone like her to lean on,’ I interrupted. He put the fag in his mouth and lit it. I leaned against the wall next to him. ‘Come on, she’s a nightmare, but she has turned you into a sober, solvent adult. And she gets off on that.’
‘I thought Cape Town would be a new start for me, for Wilf, without all the memories…’
‘The memories of Sylvia, you mean?’
He nodded slowly and tried in his bumbling way to say something about all the memories we’d created too, but both of us knew that it was what had come before us that was most powerful.
The truth was that Sylvia and Wilf had been Ralph’s real family. Both his parents were dead by the time he’d finished uni; he’d met Sylvia there and they’d been together until she’d died. Over the years it had become clear that Sylvia had mothered Ralph in the same way as I’d ended up doing, but his heart had always belonged with her.
I remembered exactly when he’d told me about what had happened to her. It was right at the start of us getting to know each other, at a barbecue at the school to raise money for a new playground. All the children were racing around, high on Haribo, and we were eating the sort of burgers that made you think immediately of salmonella.
‘You know Wilf’s mum died of a brain tumour, right?’ Ralph said in a straightforward way that made me look straight into his eyes. I must have looked a bit surprised at his frank tone as he blushed. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got this thing where it’s easier to just come out and say it to people rather than watch them dancing around the subject or having to answer lots of questions about being a single dad.’
‘We’re not that great talking about death, are we?’ I said. ‘Just “I’m sorry for your loss” and “let me know if there is anything I can do”.’
‘And casseroles,’ Ralph said. ‘I got a lot of casseroles.’
He took a bite of his burger and I smiled at his attempt to lighten the conversation.
‘How’s Wilf settling in?’
He gestured in the direction of Wilf, who was at the top of the slide with a queue of small boys behind him. ‘He’s mostly fine, much better since we moved. But it still hits him hard sometimes and he loves talking about her – I try really hard to keep her memory alive. He was only two and a half when she died so I think he only has a hazy picture of her now.’
He said it in a way that suggested he was betraying her by not keeping her memory crystal clear and sharp for Wilf. I felt very sorry for him, but he seemed stoic, if sad; making the best of the situation, while accepting the shit life had thrown at him.
It was only much later – when he had what could loosely be called his breakdown but was really a gradual descent into alcoholism – that I understood. In those early years right after Sylvia died, when Wilf was a tiny child with so many needs – all of which needed to be provided by his dad – Ralph had no choice but to function. He changed his job to a freelance role to give him more flexibility; moved his son from the north London flat he’d shared with Sylvia to our smaller town in the countryside; delivered him to and collected him from his new school every day and then played with his son, fed, bathed and read to him. Then when Wilf was asleep, he’d do a bit more work and eventually allow himself to open the black box that held all his memories of his dead wife. He told me once that he always cried quietly then, so as not to wake Wilf, and I imagined him, a can of beer in his hand on his old couch, his shoulders shaking from his loss, no sound escaping.
Once he and I had been together for a few years – the good, early years – and Wilf was safe, the black box opened up without invitation, coaxing him in. There was a time at the beginning of his downward trajectory when he seemed haunted, as if there were a shadow following him around; eventually the shadow was evident in his face, and, after that, we had the terrible times when he seemed to give up on everything and all of us.
So, when Ralph said now, ‘I’m sorry, really sorry. I wanted a new start where Wilf wouldn’t think of me as some useless drunk,’ I nodded slowly.
‘He hates thinking of you like that,’ I said. ‘Never discusses it, won’t talk about it.’
‘Exactly. So, I thought if we moved with Petra, then he’d never have to think about it again. When she wanted to go back to South Africa, it was me who insisted we took him with us – I couldn’t leave him, you know that. I honestly don’t think it occurred to her until then. But after that, she kicked into action and wasn’t going to let anything stand in her way.’
‘I just wish she didn’t see it as a competition with me.’ I sighed. ‘Like in order to be a good mother she’s got to prove I’m a bad one.’
‘And lately, it’s like she wanted to be there between us all the time – managing how I got on with my own son.’
‘Yeah, Wilf said it was a bit… overwhelming. Look, I’m really sorry that he caught me… you know…’
‘He wasn’t supposed to be there,’ Ralph said. ‘Cal, you want to go to bed with someone you should be able to, without thinking of whether my kid is going to walk through the door.’
It still sounded so crass and bald somehow – ‘go to bed with someone’. I blushed while Ralph carried on. ‘And you deserve some fun. It’s time you started putting yourself first.’ He stubbed out his rollie on the pavement and kicked it towards a drain. ‘I’ve been a shit dad.’
‘You’re still his dad.’
‘And you’re the closest thing he’s ever had to a mum.’
God, what a mess modern families could be. It went much deeper than DNA. But if Ralph had been my family – and, maybe in a small way, still was – then this conversation, deep in our shared worry, was a bit like having the old him back again for a while.
‘Cape Town will still be there in a couple of years when Wilf’s grown up a bit and finished school.’ Ralph shook his head as if he was practising the arguments he would use on Petra. I still didn’t believe that he’d have the strength of character to stand up to her. ‘Right, come on, let’s get to this rally and see if your mate—’ he had the grace to wink at me ‘—is going to be any help getting Wilf back.’
*
Sunil had a small crowd gathered round him outside the youth centre. Daisy and Lily – her hand tucked into Aiden’s bulging arm – were there; Marv and the AAs stood back a little. There were a few of Wilf’s friends and their parents. Petra was bouncing up and down at the front, tiny and glossy. Her blonde hair fell over her shoulders as she raced towards Ralph and threw her arms round his neck, shouting, ‘Babe! Oh, babe.’ He cautiously patted her on the back in return.
I stepped aside and looked round for Patrick, but there was no sign of him.
As we approached Sunil waved impatiently at us. There were two enormous banners – certainly not the much smaller ones that Abby had made overnight on my kitchen table – erected across the front of the GenZ centre. One read: ‘Our young are our future’, the other: ‘The government needs to protect our children’.
They were definitely the future and the government certainly had
a role in protecting them, but this didn’t seem that relevant to me, when what we were supposed to be doing was drawing attention to the fact that Wilf was missing.
I looked in a questioning way at Sunil, but he was busy welcoming a reporter and a cameraman from the local TV station, who pulled up at that moment. They clambered out of a small van, clapping Sunil on the back in a way that implied they knew him well, and the cameraman quickly slung a camera on his shoulder.
Sunil climbed onto a chair and indicated that Ralph and I should come and stand on either side of him, like courtiers at each side of the king. Petra pushed herself right in front of him so that she was definitely part of the shot.
‘What’s with the banners? Where’s Abby’s banner with Wilf’s picture on it?’ I shouted up at Sunil over the noise of the crowd, but he was busy holding up a megaphone.
‘Ready when you are, Sunil,’ shouted the reporter.
And he was off. ‘People, we are gathered here today because of the great tragedy of what is happening to our young people…’
Were we? This didn’t sound specific to Wilf at all. ‘Wilf!’ I shouted up at him.
‘And because a valued member of our local community, a young man named Wilfred Colesdown…’
‘His name is Wilf, not Wilfred,’ called Jowan, who was leaning against a lamp post with his bike. I looked over approvingly at him, but Sunil carried on as if he hadn’t been heckled.
‘… has seen fit to disappear… DISAPPEAR… in the face of the continued neglect shown by the government to our young people, the DISINTEREST that the Tory government has spearheaded, so that we raise a generation of children who have NO ACCESS to VITAL RESOURCES…’
‘What the hell has this got to do with Wilf?’
The voice came in my ear and I turned, doused with relief, to find the solid shape of Patrick behind me. I wanted to hurl myself into his arms there and then, but I knew I couldn’t. So instead I said, ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’
‘About time someone put an end to this bullshit,’ he said, pushing me aside.
Sunil was still ranting into the megaphone to the confused crowd. ‘Wilfred had NO ACCESS to VITAL SERVICES, which help our young develop RESILIENCE…’
By now Patrick was in front of the chair on which Sunil was standing, and the cameraman from the local news was gesticulating at him furiously to get out of the way. ‘Aren’t we supposed to be talking about Wilf?’
Sunil stumbled for a while and looked confused, but quickly pressed on. ‘So today we are calling for the government of this country to BACK OUR YOUNG…’
‘Hear, hear,’ shouted Petra.
‘NO!’ and Patrick reached up and grabbed the megaphone from Sunil’s hands, in a way that made him wobble on the chair.
‘Hey!’ Sunil cried.
‘Sorry, mate.’ Patrick turned round and tried to pass the megaphone to me instead. Sunil clambered off the chair and there was an unsightly tussle while he tried to get it back from Patrick, who moved and dodged him.
‘Give that man back his property,’ screamed Petra. By her side, Ralph flapped – his natural inclination in this kind of scenario was to run, fast. The cameraman looked confused but kept rolling while the two men wrangled over the megaphone.
‘This is supposed to be about getting Wilf back,’ Patrick shouted, and the small crowd started to cheer.
‘I was coming to that,’ Sunil snarled. ‘Back me up here, Callie!’
‘Just let her talk instead,’ shouted Marv.
‘We need to get on with it,’ Lily joined in. ‘My brother has been missing now for thirty-six hours and we really, really want him home.’ She burst into tears and Aiden wrapped her thin body in his over-exercised arms.
I went to her side. ‘What she said.’
‘But I know what I’m doing,’ Sunil went on, direct to me. ‘You need to have faith in my approach, Callie.’
‘No, she doesn’t,’ Patrick said, sizing up to him, Deliveroo rider to buff activist, but somehow seeming bigger in every way.
‘Let’s get our grandson back,’ shouted a new voice – Mum, arriving round the corner with Dad, ahead of a small pack of very slow-moving older people, accompanied by a couple of the youth members of Seymour House, including Pete, dressed as usual like a reject from a particularly naff circus.
‘What she said!’ the crowd roared, as if in unison.
The reporter was jumping around with excitement. ‘Keep rolling,’ he told the cameraman.
Marvin and the AAs came rushing forward and formed a small human wall between the chair and Sunil. He continued to dodge and dance on the spot.
Patrick thrust the megaphone into my hand and, holding my other arm, urged me onto the chair. I wobbled for a while but put the metal cone in front of my face.
‘Right,’ I said, staring out across the small crowd of friends and family, and trying to ignore the camera, which was now pointed straight into my face.
‘We’re here, not for any political reasons, but because our boy…’ I glanced down at Ralph, who nodded in agreement ‘… Wilf…’ my voice caught for a while ‘… is missing and someone must know where he is.’ My voice gathered strength as I spoke and suddenly I was transported, my words coming with no effort from me, as if they were being pulled from my heart. ‘And we love him so much, all of us—’ I indicated towards Ralph and Petra, then Mum and Dad, Daisy and Lily and to the whole crowd ‘—and please, please, Wilf, come home to us. We are so desperate to know you are OK.
‘And I’m sorry your family isn’t perfect and that we’ve got things wrong.’ Daisy and Lily glared at Sunil. ‘But you know what? We are your family and you belong with us.’
Marv wiped a tear dramatically. Mum and Dad cried in unison, ‘Come home, Wilf!’
I pressed on, needing to tell him, as directly as I could, that he didn’t have to run away from home because he was confused about what that home was any more. ‘Your dad says that we all need to sit down and talk about things, Wilf.’
Petra looked furious. But Ralph nodded agreement to what I was saying. ‘Home is where YOU choose it to be, Wilf. We’ll always be here for you and your dad will always be where you are.’
Petra understood what it could mean. She turned on her heel and glared at Ralph, her mouth open but no words coming out.
I started to cry then – great big sobs of grief and a torrent of tears that shook my body and came out as a series of painful groans into the megaphone. Patrick leapt up and, putting his hands under my arms, picked me up and dropped me to the ground next to him. There was a collective ‘aaah’ from the crowd.
Holding me to one side, he took the megaphone from me. ‘Right, we’re all here to help find Wilf. So, I suggest we split up into smaller groups and go to the major centres in the town…’
‘Leaflets here.’ Abby bounced into view, holding a bundle of A5 printouts with Wilf’s photo on the front. ‘Banners, anyone? Come on, let’s get organised.’ I’d give her the role in the zombie apocalypse too, frankly. Lily and Daisy came in to hug me, Lily crying alongside me. Patrick and Abby quickly shuffled people into three groups and agreed where they would head.
‘That was amazing, great for the lunchtime news,’ the reporter said. ‘That really came from the heart.’
Sunil started remonstrating with him. ’Come on, you must have some footage you can use of my speech… We need to get the big issues in.’
‘I think the story is about the missing kid, don’t you?’ The cameraman turned to focus on a group, including my parents, that was shuffling back up the street.
Petra, having been shaken off by Ralph, chased after the camera and joined the back of that group. ‘I’m the boy’s stepmother,’ she said.
Daisy was unusually quiet. Then she said in my ear, ‘Sunil was a bit of a twat then, wasn’t he?’
I put my arm round her too, so that we stood, the three of us, in a line and started to move forward. ‘Yup,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s see if we can find Wilf.’
*
Patrick didn’t leave my side all that long morning, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes and stood at least a foot away from me. We banged on the doors of the houses in the streets near where we lived and handed over a leaflet each time, pleading with whoever answered the door to keep their eyes peeled. Our numbers grew as more and more people joined the search, but by 1 p.m., when my friends and family decided to go into my house to go to the loo and drink some water, there was still no sign of him.
I didn’t know whether we were doing any good, but at least it was action.
‘I’ll have a check online while we’re here,’ Daisy said. She hadn’t said any more about Sunil, but ‘twat’ was pretty accurate from where I was standing. I felt only shame at how in thrall I’d been to someone who obviously always put himself first.
Patrick clicked on the kettle and said, ‘Good idea,’ to Daisy. She sat down at the table and he turned his attention to Lily. ‘You OK over there?’
‘I will be when Wilf’s back,’ she said vehemently and sat down next to her sister.
‘Goals,’ said Aiden and shuffled off into the back garden. Bodger followed him enquiringly.
Mum and Dad came in slowly, followed by Marv and the AAs, and everyone sat, exhausted and a little deflated that we still hadn’t found him.
‘Shall we turn on the telly?’ Marv asked. ‘It was going to be on the lunchtime news.’ He clicked the set into life and there, filling up most of the screen, was an image of me, shouting into a megaphone.
‘Wow,’ said Marv.
Everyone else shouted, ‘Shhhhhhh.’
‘Woman’s emotional plea for the return of missing teenage boy’ ran the headline at the bottom of the screen.
The reporter from earlier appeared then. ‘Today, a local woman sent a heartfelt appeal for the child she considers her son, having raised him from the age of six, who has been missing since late Friday evening. Wilf Colesdown is fourteen and has lived in the town most of his life. Calypso Brown was standing beside Wilf’s father, Ralph Colesdown, when she said, “Our family may not be perfect, but we are your family and you belong with us.”’