‘Did Carrie call you recently? Do you mind me asking?’
‘I don’t know no Carrie. Never. This is the woman who died?’
‘Yes.’
‘The woman Jason’s supposed to have done in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Never. Why would she call me? Why would she bother?’
‘Because your son might have wanted her to. Don’t ask me why.’
‘No. Never happened. I don’t know no Carrie. I told you.’
‘And Jason himself? Have you heard from him?’
‘You mean my Jason? That boy of mine?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, love. He’s another fucking stranger in my life.’ I can hear cigarettes in her bark of mirthless laughter.
At this point, I play my Malo card. It’s a shameless thing to do but I very badly want to meet this woman.
‘I’ve got a son,’ I tell her. ‘And I know all about strangers. You bring them up. You think you’ve got the measure of them. You spoil them rotten. You think they might even have time for you. And then one day they leave, just like that, pack a bag, steal your money, and go.’
‘That happened to you?’
‘It did. His name’s Malo. And he went to live with his dad who happened to be Swedish. I didn’t see him for what felt like forever. It’s better now but, believe me, I know how it feels.’
There’s a longish silence and I try and picture this woman at the other end of the line. Is she sitting down? Might she be smoking? Is she alone?
‘Won’t ever be better with Jason,’ she says at last. ‘That boy’s a head case, poor fucking lamb.’
Poor fucking lamb. There’s a rough poignancy in this phrase that makes me physically shiver. Could he really have stepped into that bedroom? Done something so terrible?
‘We have to meet,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry, but we do. You’ll say no and I don’t blame you but believe me it’ll be for the best.’
‘Meet?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘To talk. To talk like this. Compare notes. If all else fails, we could get drunk.’
That laugh again, warmer this time. Then another long silence.
‘I live in Weston,’ she says. ‘You know Weston-super-Mare?’
‘No. But I’ll find it.’
‘A little place over a betting shop.’ She gives me an address. ‘When? When’s all this supposed to happen?’
‘You mean us meeting?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Tomorrow,’ I say. ‘I’ll be with you by ten.’
‘Tomorrow?’ This time the laughter is unfeigned. ‘Fuck me.’
TWENTY-SIX
Next morning, I’m on the M5 by half past seven. It’s Easter Monday but the traffic is surprisingly light. In my head I’ve anticipated a couple of hours to get to Weston, but I’m parked up on the seafront by nine o’clock. A big wheel throws a long shadow over the promenade and the pier, a glorious confection in rusting Victorian iron, seems to stretch for ever. In a couple of hours, I’m guessing that this beach will be packed but for now all I can see are clouds of gulls and three solitary figures, all of them walking dogs.
One of the dogs is delinquent. It bounds away over the wet sand, chasing anything that moves, ignoring its owner’s attempts to bring it to heel. The owner happens to be a man. He’s oldish, a bit stooped, unsteady on his feet, and watching him shake his head, plunge his hands in the pockets of his beige anorak and turn away, I think I know exactly how he feels. Life is ungovernable, beyond control. In the end, it probably wears you down, but just now – thanks to making last night’s phone call – I have an opportunity to steal a brief advantage. Carpe diem, I tell myself. Seize the moment.
The betting shop is a street or two inland from the seafront. The premises next door, once a hardware store, are boarded up. On the other side is a charity shop for something called the Mare & Foal Sanctuary. The pub across the road, offering a breakfast for £3.40, is doing brisk business. A drift of takeout boxes from the Turkish eatery down the road fills the gutter.
The betting shop has yet to open. A door beside the bannered window – Put a Smile on Your Face! – is marked 17a. This is Karen’s address. The plastic doorbell has been untidily taped to the brickwork. I give it a press and step back.
I can’t hear footsteps descending the stairs inside. I’m about to ring again, when suddenly the door opens. Last night’s voice on the phone has led me to expect someone bigger, broader, and possibly a little younger. Instead, I’m looking at a thin woman marooned in her fifties. She’s wearing a nylon housecoat and fluffy slippers. I can see patches of white scalp through her greying hair and she sports a small tattoo on the side of her neck, the way an item might be marked down in a sale. Love, it says. Just that.
‘You the lady on the phone?’ I nod, and extend a hand, which she ignores. ‘Upstairs,’ she says. ‘First on the right.’
I wait for her to double-lock the front door, then climb the stairs. The place smells of cheap air freshener. I should have brought flowers, I think. Anything to brighten this place up.
The first door on the right opens into a room at the front of the property. It’s not a small space but it’s wildly over-furnished and it takes me a moment or two to disentangle the various elements: a two-seat sofa, faux G Plan, badly stained, an armchair with sagging upholstery, evidently home for Karen’s cat, a two-leaf table, piled high with saucepans, mugs, plates, an electric kettle, plus a cleared space for the kind of portable TV you never see any more. A chunky kitchen dresser, built on a grander scale, occupies half an entire wall, and at the back of the room, approached by a path through years of accumulated debris, is a single bed.
‘Cosy,’ I say.
‘Yeah? You like it? I go halves on the bathroom with the old guy next door. He never washes so it’s mine, really.’
‘And cooking?’ I’m looking at the saucepans.
‘There’s a place out the back next to the bathroom. The landlord calls it a kitchenette, which has to be a joke. Cheap, though. No one in this town would complain at the rent.’
I nod. I can’t help remembering Deko ripping the guts out of the nursing home. Twenty-two versions of a room like this, I think. Barely a fingerhold on what we used to call life.
I’m standing at the window. I can feel a draught where the sash doesn’t fit properly, and there are crusts of white bread on the sill.
‘You feed the birds?’
‘Try to. The bloody gulls take most of it. None of the little ones stand a chance.’
I nod. I’m watching an elderly couple emerge from the pub across the road. Their arms are linked together. They look poor but they’ve made an effort with the way they’ve turned themselves out, and I’m still wondering how long they’ve been saving up for this bank holiday breakfast when Karen offers me a cup of coffee. I’m about to say no but it’s too late. She’s already pouring hot water on to the granules of Kenco.
‘Mind if I sit here?’ I’m looking at the cat.
‘Help yourself.’ She shoos it away. I take a sip of the coffee, and then put it carefully on the carpet by the chair leg.
‘You’ve been here long?’
‘Seven years. Best part of. It grows on you after a while and you know why? I’m the only person on earth who knows where everything is. Someone like you, you maybe wouldn’t think that matters. But it does. Because it’s mine.’
I nod. The room is warm and airless, and Karen has taken off her housecoat. I’ve deliberately dressed down for this occasion but I can’t compete with charity shop jeans, way too big, and a scarlet football top someone probably left on a park bench. Like mother, like son, I think.
I ask about Jason. When did she last see him?
‘Christmas.’ She doesn’t seem to mind the directness of my question. ‘He’s still got friends here, places he can doss down. He paid a visit on Christmas Day, brought me a bar of chocolate.’
‘How was he?’
�
�Pissed. Those mates of his thieve from Bargain Basement. You ever want cheap vodka, I’ll give you their address.’
‘Was it good to see him?’
‘It’s always good to see him. His dad used to say that everyone needed something to do in life. What I do is forgive. He’s always led me a dance, Jason, but in the end I’m the only mum he’s got. That’s why I said yes to you coming. That boy of yours? Whatever his name is?’
‘Malo?’
‘Yeah, him. Kids are a handful, especially these days. Being a mum to him, being kind to him, is all I can afford and of course he knows that, the little tyke.’
I’m looking at a photo taped to the top edge of the TV screen. The colours have faded badly but I think I recognize the pier behind the bloated, sun-reddened face. The man looks even older than Karen, but the warmth of the smile explains everything. No wonder she prefers it to watching TV.
‘That’s my Bradley.’ She’s noticed my interest. ‘In happier days.’
‘Jason’s dad?’ The weak chin, I think. And the natural curls in the receding hair.
‘Yeah. We was never married, never got round to it, but he was a good man. Know what I mean? Watches out for you? Does his best for you? That was Brad. I loved that man.’ Her fingers, heavily tobacco-stained, find the tattoo beneath her ear.
I want to know more. Again, she seems to be almost expecting this torrent of questions. Maybe it’s come as a relief, a total stranger stepping briefly into your life and appearing to take an interest. I doubt she gets many visitors.
‘He was in the army, Brad, in the Paras. That’s where I first met him. I was on a night out in Bristol and he was there with his mates. It was the end of the Nineties. We was all young, stupid. He was a good-looking bloke then, especially for his age. He had a mouth on him, but that never mattered, not then, and not afterwards.’
‘So how old was he? When you met?’
‘Thirty-five. Never looked it. Married, of course. Kids.’
‘And?’
‘We got it on. He used to come down here, to Weston. I had a proper flat then, ground floor in a lovely old house. He’d stay over, push off in the morning.’
‘He was still in the army?’
‘No. He told me he was working in security and I believed him. Turned out it wasn’t true. He wasn’t working in anything and that wife of his, cow that she was, threw him out in the end.’
‘Because of you?’
‘Dunno. Don’t care. Because of any fucking thing. You love someone, you don’t ask too many questions. Brad says he wants to live with me down here in that little flat of mine? No problem. Jason loved him too. Right from the start.’
‘Jason was his son?’ I’m getting lost.
‘Yeah, big time. Bingo, that first night. Treble twenty. Brad was mad for the darts.’
‘You’re telling me you fell pregnant? The night you met?’
‘Yeah. Four in the morning in the back of a minicab. Brad paid the driver extra to take a walk so we could shag. We were in a right old state. Happiest night of my life.’
She’s smiling at the memory, staring at the photo. I’m less pushy now, knowing that I’ve breached the dam, knowing that the rest of the story will trickle out, and it does. How she found out that Brad had never managed to hold down a job after leaving the army. How he’d been getting by on the whack of money they gave him after a medical discharge. And how that money, in the end, had all gone.
‘Medical discharge?’
‘Hurt bad. Up here.’ She taps her head. ‘Brad was at Goose Green. And he was still fighting the fucking Argies twenty years later.’
‘But you still supported him?’
‘Of course I did. That was one of the reasons why I supported him. He was my man, my Brad. He always told me them Paras was the making of him but he was wrong, poor lamb. The army was the breaking of him. He’d seen stuff no one should ever see. And believe me, that never goes away.’ Another tap on the head.
At the time, she said, she was working for a cable TV company, selling subscriptions house to house. She had all the right skills. She made a point of working the estates and on the doorstep, she says, people trusted her. She was ordinary, no airs, no graces. And she made them laugh.
‘Decent commission in them days. Some weeks, especially in the summer, I’d be taking home four, five hundred quid. It’s funny, hot weather. People lighten up. They’ll take a risk or two, see no point not to. Sign on the bottom line and you’ve probably got them for life, but they never seemed bothered.’
‘And Jason?’
‘He was at school. He was always slow, never the full shilling, but he was a lovely, lovely boy. He worshipped Brad, as he should, and the truth is we had a good life, all of us, yeah …’ She nods, turning away. ‘Until we didn’t.’
‘So, what happened?’
She looks down at her hands, shaking her head, and for a moment I think I’ve lost her, but then she’s back with me. Set out on a story like this, I think, and there’s no way you’re not going to finish it.
‘I used to give Brad a load of money for the housekeeping every week, the food, all the bills, council tax, everything. He was mum really, or maybe mum and dad together, looking after Jason, doing the laundry, tidying up, keeping things together, making life sweet for us. That was another reason I loved the man. He was so fucking good at everything. Stuff round the flat, anything going wrong, he’d just sort it. The army probably taught him that …’ She frowns, picking at the yellowing remains of what looks like a burn on her wrist. Then her head comes up again. ‘It was just before Christmas. We started getting demands, shitty letters about unpaid bills, I couldn’t understand it. Then suddenly Brad isn’t going to Sainsbury’s any more and we’re all sitting round the table eating this crap old bird he’s got from somewhere and that’s when I had it out with him.’
‘On Christmas Day?’
‘Yeah. I’d found more of the bills. They went way back. He’d been hiding them. So, there we are, and Jason wants us to pull the crackers and tell the jokes and put on the funny hats, but I wasn’t having it. I wanted the truth. I was still making good money, still giving him a fortune every week, but all we had to show for it were all these bloody debts.’
‘Was he drinking it?’
‘A bit of it. But that was OK. I never met a squaddie who didn’t like a drink. No, that wasn’t it.’
‘So, where did it go?’
She holds my gaze for a long moment and then nods at the floor. At first, I can make no sense of the gesture. Then I remember the premises downstairs, and the banner in the window. Put a Smile on Your Face! As if.
‘He was betting?’
‘Every day. At first, he said it was the horses. Then it was anything, anything that might change his luck, bring him that big win that would magic everything. Problem is it never really happened, and even when he won, he’d never put it in his pocket, he’d just put another bet on, and then another, and another. Then, like he needed it, they brought in these fixed-odds betting machines. You want to lose four hundred quid in half an hour? My entire week’s commission? No problem. Easy. Piece of piss.’
‘And all this at Christmas? Around the table?’
‘Yeah. I’d sent Jason to his bedroom to play with his toys. I was really, really angry. Not just about the money. That was bad enough, but Brad had lied to us, and not just to me but to Jason, too. No money for school trips. No money for anything, not even a pair of shoes. Brad was pathetic, just admitted it all. That night I threatened to throw him out, and you know something? I meant it. I’d have done it. And he knew that.’
Next morning, she says, she went off to work as usual. You’d never miss a Boxing Day. People were in a good mood. They’d sign up to anything.
‘And Bradley?’
‘He was quiet. There was a bit of an atmosphere before I left but at least I’d got it off my chest. Next thing I know it’s afternoon and I’m coming out of a place on one of the Nailsea estates and a po
licewoman is walking towards me. She asks my name and takes me to one side and it’s one of those moments when you know something terrible has happened. At first, I thought it was Jason, but I was wrong.’
‘Bradley?’
‘Yeah. They were both at home. Jason had been watching TV and when he went to find his dad he wasn’t there. He looked in all the rooms, in the bit of garden we had round the back, but he couldn’t find him.’
‘So, where was he?’
‘We had a shared entrance in that house, like a kind of hall. All the meters and everything were in the cupboard under the stairs. It was a big cupboard, tall, lots of space, nothing in it except the meters. The door was open, and Jason took a look.’
I’m staring at her. I’ve lived in a world of stories all my life and I think I know what’s coming next.
‘Bradley?’ I murmur.
‘Yes.’ She nods. ‘He’d hung himself. I saw the shots they took, the police shots. His tongue was out, and his head was at a funny angle. He’d used the cord from my dressing gown. And Jason was the one who found him.’
‘Christ.’ I shake my head. ‘So how old was Jason?’
‘Nine.’ Karen is picking at her wrist again. ‘Just.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
I don’t leave Weston until early afternoon. After everything Karen has told me, I know I owe her a story of my own and I’m determined to share it with her. I tell her about the worst times with Malo, nights when he’d hide away in our apartment when fights with Berndt got out of hand, whole weeks when he’d disappear into the badlands of west London without a trace, just fifteen years old, turning his back on everything – school, home, us, the lot. And then I describe the morning when he walked out of the apartment a final time, a year older, and used his father’s credit card to buy himself a ticket to Stockholm. There, I tell Karen, he began a new life with his dad, and his dad’s latest bimbo. That was the morning my life hit the buffers. Failed mother. Hopeless wife. Totally useless.
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