by Fiona Perrin
‘Would have been fucking great if you had,’ his sister said dismissively.
‘We’re just all so glad you’re back,’ was all I could manage.
*
The police came and took a statement from Wilf later that evening. By then, he and Ralph had spent a bit of time alone and decided they were going to put off going to Cape Town until Wilf had completed his GCSEs.
‘Petra won’t like it.’ Ralph looked terrified at the conversation he knew was coming.
No, she wouldn’t. But I was so relieved and tired that I couldn’t care less.
After she’d taken down Wilf’s version of events, PC Warren took Ralph and I to one side. ‘Turned out all right, then, really glad,’ she said. ‘This Pete is no real harm, I don’t think. Just got himself into a situation which got really out of hand. He’s looking at a trial for kidnapping a minor maybe, but we’re also referring him for mental health checks.’
‘I want to kill him,’ Ralph said under his breath.
‘Me too,’ I agreed.
‘We’ve got no record of him – so he’s got no previous. The company behind Seymour House are checking out his employment references and stuff now, but even they said he was just a bit strange…’ She opened her notebook. ‘“Suspiciously cheerful” is how one of the managers he worked with put it.’
‘Yes, awful,’ I said. ‘And an unfortunate aroma of fish.’
The PC looked a little startled but carried on. ‘Fish? No one’s mentioned that. Anyway, he keeps going on about stuff from Karl Marx.’
‘Kidnap. Coercive control,’ Ralph said. ‘Brainwashing a child.’
‘I’m just so glad he’s back,’ I said, all anger gone for the moment and exhaustion flooding through me.
‘I’ll update you as soon as I know more,’ the PC said.
Ralph kissed his son goodbye and went off to face Petra.
I stood over Wilf as he smiled up at me and drifted off into a deep sleep.
He looked just like he had when he was six.
28
I’d always liked the bit at the end of true-life films when all the visual action had stopped, and people were filing out of the cinema. Then, if you hung back for a bit, there’d be white text on a black background, explaining what happened to the people in the movie.
Gertrude lived to be 102 and was still famous for her gin in rural Suffolk. She never married.
Or:
Randy became a fireman in Detroit rising to station manager. He and Ruby were married for forty-seven years and had three children, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild at his death. Ruby died shortly afterwards, it was said of a broken-heart.
You know the sort of thing.
Well, sorry, but what came next didn’t provide a neat wrap-up for everyone, including me. It seemed that the true life of my family didn’t conform to the cinematic ideal.
*
‘OMG, don’t apologise,’ Marv said, when I called to update him. ‘It’s like being in a suburban soap opera.’ He said this as if it was one of his goals, and it probably was. ‘How’s Wilf?’
The best description of Wilf was tired. There were the inevitable police interviews in the days that followed, and these drained him even further. He had to be checked physically by police doctors – luckily there were no effects: he’d been well fed and had slept on Pete’s couch the first night, stunned by anger and lulled into sleep by the older man. The second night, he said he’d rolled around, worried about all of us and what we must be thinking. Pete had made no sexual advances towards him – this question made him blush and mumble: ‘No. He wasn’t like that.’ It seemed, from everything that the police were telling us, that Pete’s motivation was simply to freak out a family that seemed, on the surface, to offer the things that he hadn’t had. This, said PC Moshulu, when he came to update me, ‘was all mixed up with stuff that made him angry with the world’.
Peter Robert Spencer had grown up in a small town in Hampshire with a divorced mother, with a successful career leading an international business. The father was some sort of hotshot in utilities. He’d been sent away to school pretty early, following the death of a grandmother who’d looked after him when his parents were at work. ‘So, deprived in some way or other, but hardly abandoned by junkies,’ PC Moshulu gave his opinion. ‘No violins playing yet.’ He’d been sent to all sorts of courses and programmes in the holidays and, according to his headmaster, had little contact with his parents, but was very much a smiling boy who liked to please others.
‘You don’t need to be Freud to work that one out,’ went on the PC. ‘Privileged but neglected, that’s what he’ll claim in court.’ He sounded as if he wasn’t going to waste what sympathy he had on someone like that. ‘Anyway, best we can find out, he goes to college, then drops out, no one seems to care less where he is for a few years, he says some sort of commune, but we think more of a squat in Lewisham.’
‘But how did Seymour House and all the police checks not pick that up?’ I was outraged. ‘That’s basic HR.’
‘Yeah, and she knows,’ Ralph said from his side of the kitchen table.
‘He has no record so police checks all good. And then, he turns up in Seymour Hill and goes to the college for sound engineering. Life back on track. Lives in a shared flat in town and then applies for the job at Seymour House. Put it this way, the company behind that place are looking long and hard at their processes.’
‘Petra says we should sue them,’ Ralph said, but wearily.
‘Bit early for that, still got a lot of investigating to do.’ The PC shut his notebook with a satisfying click and got up.
‘All I can think is that he’s OK.’ I shuddered.
‘Yeah, could have been much worse,’ he agreed. ‘But we don’t want to think about that, now, do we?’
*
No, we didn’t. What we wanted to think about was him being back, safe and relatively unharmed. My kitchen was full of people checking in on us. Mum and Dad just came back and sat in their old chairs as if the brief interlude at Seymour House had never happened.
‘I feel so terrible about it all,’ Mum mumbled, her hearing aid on and all the fight seemingly sucked out of her.
‘It was my idea to go there,’ Dad said, holding her hand.
‘But I like it in our house really.’
‘Yeah, and you can always come and hang out here.’ Wilf nodded earnestly.
And of course, they should. And be fed regularly without me moaning about it. That was the deal really, and I should be glad to have it.
The GCSEs continued apace: Daisy came out of the French written exam beaming, which made me feel better. Lily managed exam after exam, her confidence building as the days progressed. She had no further panic attacks but that didn’t stop me worrying about them.
*
Daisy told us she was dumping the GenZ centre, one evening as we ate spaghetti carbonara. ‘I mean, it’s just another institution designed to turn us into snowflakes,’ she said dismissively, trying to get more than her fair share of the sauce.
‘That’s got bacon in it.’
‘Yeah, I need meat right now for mind protein, but I’m going to become vegan after the exams.’ She nodded and spooned another load into her mouth. ‘And you know what, I’m going to be a lot more careful about who I listen to. I mean, Sunil turned out to be a right…’ she started on the first sound of making an ‘n’ and, thinking she was going to say ‘knob’, I immediately shouted ‘Daisy!’, at which point she smiled sweetly and said ‘… narcissist. He turned out to be a right narcissist.’
Smart-arse kid.
‘Yeah, so maybe I’ll become a Liberal Democrat now…’ she went on. And as Dad turned to her to debate the merits of being a third party and Mum, now much quieter about politics, said very little, I let the hubbub of the dinner table go on round me and felt glad they were all there, eating spaghetti I’d cooked, and chatting away.
*
Sunil, narcissist or otherwise �
�� and he probably was, as well as being a very good seducer of middle-aged women who were a bit down on their luck - came by to say goodbye. He was leaving Seymour Hill, he said, as the opportunities to further his cause (by which I think he meant his career) were limited.
‘I wanted to apologise to you, though, Callie,’ he said, his beautiful, noble eyes pleading with mine, ‘for potentially causing disruption in your life. I wanted you to know that I think you’re really amazing.’
He nodded very seriously when he said this. But not as amazing as what you think you are yourself. It seemed almost impossible to me that I’d been so head-turned by someone this young and self-obsessed.
Marvin enjoyed debating this point. Over a bottle of a very good New Zealand Marlborough in his kitchen with the AAs, he psychoanalysed me.
‘The trouble was that you were so starved of male attention, that when he cast you in his light, you flew into his sun like Icarus,’ he said dramatically.
‘Icarus was the dude who melted, yeah?’ Ajay said from the other side of the table. He was eating more cheese straws, but, this time, Marvin had made a double batch.
‘Where were you when the rest of us were getting an education?’ Abby asked him.
‘Anyway, Callie was in what, in later years, we will call her “Invisible Phase”,’ Marv went on. ‘And she’d forgotten that, actually, she’s pretty hot when she bothers. So, when Sunil came along and showed a bit of interest, she fell head over heels in lust, not recognising that he was a bit of an arsehole.’
It was true, but it was also a bit close to the bone.
‘What about that other bloke, though?’ Ajay said. ‘The one with the food?’
‘He was cute,’ Abby confirmed. ‘And quite useful.’ This was high praise indeed from her. ‘Why didn’t she do the whole Icarus meltdown with him?’
‘I am here, you know,’ I pointed out. ‘No longer invisible, people.’
‘Not after your TV appearance,’ Marvin said proudly. He’d been even more approving when I’d got a call from the TV station to appear on another programme.
‘You were so authentic,’ said the producer of the show. ‘We’d just love it if you could show some of that emotion again, but this time in a pre-recorded studio session.’
I declined. I’d had enough of that kind of visibility.
Marv returned to focus on my love life – or lack of it. ‘The problem was, Patrick doesn’t have the obvious appeal of a man like Sunil.’
‘Not ugly though,’ Abby mused. ‘Quite attractive in his way.’
‘None of that young passion and flair,’ Marv went on.
‘But, still pretty passionate about what he does. Just doesn’t go on about it,’ I said.
Marv raised an eyebrow at me, but then carried on talking to the others as if I were an exhibit in a zoo.
‘What I’m saying is that he was just too there. So in front of her face that she didn’t see him.’
‘It was him who didn’t see me to start with,’ I said. ‘Remember?’
‘And Callie was in her invisible phase, remember? At first, not to be a snob but, anyway, she thought he was a forty-year-old bloke who drove a bike for a living. Then she had all that stuff going on with Wilf and no time to think about a man and that’s what she told him. Quite emphatically, if I remember.’
‘She wasn’t thinking, really, was she?’ Ajay slurped from his glass.
‘No, Callie wasn’t thinking,’ Marv continued with wonderful, patronising judgement. ‘She wasn’t thinking at all.’ He turned, mock TV-presenter style, and peered into an imaginary camera. ‘Viewers, she certainly wasn’t thinking when she, in emotional distress, turned to Patrick, the food-delivery guy, and kissed him in her garden. Is it too late now, do you think, for the revival of this love affair? Watch this space.’
‘Of course, it’s too late,’ I said, more emphatically than I’d anticipated. ‘I told him I didn’t want to go out with any men at all, and then I KISSED HIM and only then he found out I’d been to bed with Sunil.’ Even as I said it, I cringed, mortified about what Patrick must have thought of me.
‘We’re still impressed about that, by the way.’ Ajay patted my hand.
‘But it was the night before,’ Marv threw in.
‘It was a crazy time when Wilf was missing, and emotions were all over the place.’ Abby tried to be the voice of reason.
‘But I haven’t seen him for weeks,’ I said. It was about three weeks, actually, but it felt like much longer. All I wanted him to do was come out of his house a few doors down and look as if it was an accident that he’d bumped into me. Patrick was definitely at home – his car was there and sometimes his bike. But there was no sign of him.
Although he hadn’t been part of our street and our lives – my life – for very long, he seemed to be missing from it very quickly. Even the kids had remarked on not seeing him. I walked past his door with Bodger very slowly, half hoping that he’d come out so that I could just explain, but his blue door stayed resolutely shut.
I minded much more than I’d thought.
‘He turned out to be great,’ I went on, finally talking about it with the benefit of a Marv-sized glass of wine. ‘But you’re right. First of all, he was just there when all the bad stuff was going on. And I liked him, but I didn’t have time to think about it. And not immediately like that. And then Sunil came along, and I couldn’t believe someone like that fancied me, so I acted like a complete twat. And then I kissed Patrick – the next day. Even more of a twat and then he found out. I mean, he must just think I’m awful.’
My skin crawled every time I thought about it. And while I went to work and came home on the train and cooked food for my extended family and went to sleep, I thought about it quite a lot.
‘Not so awful,’ Abby said. ‘You’re just out of practice with men.’
‘What with only just having come out of your Invisible Phase.’ Marv smiled.
‘But saying one thing and then doing something else behind his back,’ I went on. ‘And then kissing him anyway.’
‘It’s not that bad…’
‘Yeah, you should see how Abby treats the blokes who fancy her.’
‘So, what do you think I should do?’ I asked more desperately now. We brainstormed the options over another bottle.
‘Book Deliveroo every night until it turns out to be him.’
‘He’s given that up since he knocked her down.’
‘Send one of the kids round with some sort of excuse?’
‘Bit pathetic, isn’t it? Like sending your mate in the playground over, to ask someone out in primary school.’
‘Callie could take up running and just run up and down the street in front of his house until he has to come outside.’
‘Also, a bit desperate.’
‘And she wouldn’t look that good with a red face from running.’
‘Sweaty, yuck.’
‘He’s hiding from me,’ I said. ‘And how’s he to know I’m not still going out with Sunil?’
‘Good point. The only option is to ring his doorbell and ask him to have a conversation with you, where you explain everything.’
‘I couldn’t,’ I said, wanting the floor to open up and swallow me. ‘I think he’d just tell me to forget it.’ I wasn’t sure I would cope with that humiliation.
‘Well, you won’t know unless you try, will you?’
But I’d seen the look on his face when he’d found out I hadn’t just kissed Sunil, I’d been naked and in bed with him, and I didn’t think he would ever look at me the same way again.
29
Spring morphed into summer but while the world heated up and seemed more benign, there was still a chill in the air in Patchett Road.
Some of it was caused by what happened between Petra and Ralph, which upset Wilf. It seemed that Pet didn’t like being told ‘no’ when her only true answer was the one she’d chosen. And the idea that, once the Rehabilitation of Ralph was complete, he might have some
views of his own obviously hadn’t occurred to her. So, when he plucked up the courage to tell her that he and Wilf wanted to wait a while before they moved to South Africa with her, you could probably hear windows shattering from her screams all the way down her executive cul-de-sac.
What we had talked about, though, was a tentative movement towards Wilf making a proper home with his dad. I knew really, after what had happened, that I’d been on borrowed time – or at least borrowing him from Ralph while he recovered – and the right thing to do was restore father and son to under the same roof. Then Ralph would accept that his mistakes were in the past and Wilf would know that he had a home with his father as well as with us.
So, Wilf said, for example, that he’d like to stay at Ralph’s for a few days each week to check it out. But all of this was dependent on Petra either sticking in the UK and with her marriage or them letting her go.
In the end she chose her job, which didn’t surprise me. There would always be another project for Petra – and Ralph hadn’t turned out to be content with being endlessly fixed. From what Wilf said, Ralph offered to have a long-distance relationship with her in the southern hemisphere until Wilf was older, but she wasn’t having it. Petra was one of those people that once crossed couldn’t see a straight line again.
We all worried that Ralph would revert to the disastrous version of a couple of years back, but in the end he was much more pragmatic. He also didn’t seem that broken-hearted, but who was I to judge? He said he was going to get his business properly going again and rented a small flat, but with room for Wilf, in the town centre. It was a bit grotty and not at all executive-home-like, but he seemed happy and Wilf started to crash out there sometimes. Ralph got a bit scruffier too, which made us all like him a lot more again.
*
The other chill was more obviously in our street itself. It was between number 36 and number 42 and it felt like a frost that would never lift. Short of sitting like a stalker in my front window at all hours of day and night, waiting to see if Patrick would emerge from his door, there was little I could do about this. I’d sent a couple of ‘thank you’ texts, and, when they’d got no reply, even one more where I said I’d love to see him and explain, but there was no return bubble on my iPhone screen, even though the messages said they were ‘delivered’.