A Funeral for an Owl

by Jane Davis

  The mother said Jim doesn’t even smoke, suggested they do a drugs test.

  “Tell the truth, we’re not interested in the drugs. We’re more interested in condoms.”

  “For crying out loud! He’s only just turned twelve!”

  “Then he’s old enough. Mrs White found a pregnancy-testing kit in the waste. Do you want to know what the result was? Or do you already know?”

  Ayisha pictured the boy reeling in shock, looking from one face to another. “No!”

  “Because you used one of these?” Sensing doubt, one of the policemen sneered, pointing to something in the bag, something pale, balloon-like.

  “Now hang on!” His mother protested. “Jim! Don’t say another word.”

  “You’re making it up!” She heard the boy raise his voice. “Aimee wasn’t like that.”

  “Calm down, love.” The mother used a restraining hand. “We can clear this up. I expect there are tests you can run on those as well these days.”

  “We will, don’t you worry. It just looks better if the boy volunteers the information.”

  “Better?” The mother’s expression suggested disgust. “This is a missing girl we’re talking about! Rather than pulling young boys in for interview, shouldn’t you be out looking for her?”

  “It’s Jim here who insists we’re wasting our time. We’ve put our heads together and the question we keep coming back to is how can he be so sure?” They turned to look at him. “Well, Jim?”

  Why could no one see the obvious? “It was her owl, wasn’t it?”

  The mother stood, her head held high. “We’ve given you all the help we can. You think I don’t know my own son? I’ve lived with a husband and a son who were bad. You think I can’t tell the difference?” And she herded the boy out of the room.

  Ayisha released her grip on the mug, finding she needed to wipe away the tears that were streaming down her face. The kitchen table was the kitchen table once more. The silver S-and-P-shaped salt and pepper pots were there in the centre. No longer a uniform jacket, her blazer was just a navy blazer, hanging on the back of a chair.

  Jim was a very different man to the teacher she thought she knew. Or perhaps it was that she had led such a sheltered life. At twelve, Ayisha’s big rebellion was joining the Girl Guides, a Christian organisation. She was the girl Jim imagined Aimee to be: privileged, her only worries imagined. But, as Shamayal had already recognised, a little money doesn’t make you immune. It doesn’t make you happy.

  Maybe it was good that everything was out in the open. Usually, you gleaned little pieces of information dropped into conversation, as light as feathers: “I saw my little girl at the weekend.” “Cheers! Here’s to being a divorcée.” “Would you mind driving? My ban doesn’t expire until next month.”

  She understood why a boy would love a mother like this, why Jim cherished her memory. She thought of her own mother; of how little she appreciated her. But then she was so infuriating!

  Abandoning the kitchen table, thinking she should at least rest her eyes, Ayisha climbed back into bed. But the reel refused to stop rolling. Knowing that she wouldn’t be able to sleep, she rotated a pillow, plumped it into a shape intended to resemble Jim’s shoulder.

  “Go on,” she encouraged, nestling against it. “I’m listening.” And the reel began to roll again.

  CHAPTER 45: AUGUST 1992/ AUGUST 2000

  What Jim told Ayisha that he didn’t know - wouldn’t know for many years - was that, while he curled up on his bed feeling sorry for himself, his mother took his notebook and presented herself a second time at the Whites’ imposing front door. It wasn’t easy for her. A woman who had thrown her teenage son out onto the streets going to see a mother distraught because her daughter was missing.

  What she hadn’t told Jim, he explained, was that his sketches of Aimee had troubled her. So much so that she’d studied his notebook after he had gone to bed. In the early hours, sitting at the kitchen table, she had learned that Jim had drawn the sketches before he even spoke to Aimee; before she had told him her name. And when Aimee had arrived at the front door announcing that she’d come to see the owls, recognising her from Jim’s sketches, Jean had seen a child in need of poached eggs, the kind of comfort food you might cook for an invalid.

  The two mothers sat at the breakfast bar in the White’s pristine kitchen, Jim’s notebook lying in front of them. Jean knew that what she had to do was necessary, but it gave her no pleasure. It clearly pained Aimee’s mother to have a stranger show her the sketches, knowing someone else had seen what she had been too busy to. The words he had written couldn’t be ignored: curled in on herself like a wounded animal. Jean didn’t consider herself to be a perfect mother: she empathised with a woman who couldn’t keep watch all day, who’d had no option but to trust.

  When Mrs Stevens asked if Aimee had a boyfriend, her eyes still fixed on those words, Mrs White simply said, “I suppose she must have done,” not entirely believing her latest discovery about her daughter, the same daughter she’d described on national television as outgoing, but with a serious and studious side. “We thought she was too young for that sort of thing.”

  “But you knew she’d been interested,” Jean prompted.

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  She’d taken the poor woman’s arm. “Aimee told me. She said you’d changed your mind about which high school to send her to.” She didn’t go as far as spelling it out: they’d chosen an out-of-borough, all-girls private school.

  “That was my husband’s idea.”

  From this, Mrs Stevens understood that Mrs White really didn’t have much idea about what had been going on in her daughter’s life. She knew only too well it was possible to miss what was going on under your own roof!

  At the sound of the front door being opened there was that terrible fleeting hope that took the form of suspended breath - both of theirs - and then a deep voice called out, “It’s me.”

  Even then, something in Jean’s chest lifted and for the briefest of moments, she thought… she thought, Is it you? But then she saw the disappointment that Aimee’s mother so valiantly tried to hide. One more person, at least, was accounted for. Small mercy, that was something to be grateful for. How many times a day did the poor woman go through this? Jean wondered, exhaling. Every time a floorboard creaked? Every time the cat rattled the cat flap? Every time the phone rang? How many more times could she go through this?

  Mr White appeared in the doorway, and Jean shared in his obvious fluster to find her sitting with a cup of tea in front of her.

  “Mrs Stevens has been kind enough to bring her son’s sketches to show us before she takes them to the police.”

  His wife’s explanation didn’t appear to calm him. As he perched on the edge of a high stool next to her, Jean said, “I thought it was only fair.” It was as much as she could do not to move away. The man’s presence made her deeply uncomfortable.

  Visibly paling, he used one hand first as a blindfold, then moved it slowly down over the bags under his eyes and the dark stubble until it became a gag. Eventually he spoke: “Your son’s talented.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But I wonder if he’s -” Mr White replaced the gag.

  “You wonder if he’s what?” his wife coaxed.

  “Don’t you see?” Mr White said harshly. “Jim has superimposed his knowledge of wildlife on the drawings!”

  “I don’t think that’s in any doubt.” Mrs White reached for her husband’s arm, only to be shrugged aside.

  “You wait: the police will take this completely out of context!”

  “But if it helps them find Aimee…” Mrs White was left talking to herself: her husband had walked out onto the patio, his shoulders hunched as he lit a cigarette. “He’s under a great deal of stress.” She turned to Jean with a wan smile.

  It had been Mr White’s moment of realisation that it would all come out, all of it. And the newspapers had a field day:

  ‘Family of
Aimee White wasted crucial time after disappearance, say police.’

  ‘Mr White’s Shame.’

  ‘Father of missing teen swears: It was the first time I ever hit our daughter.’

  ‘Father of missing Aimee tells of “uncontrollable anger”.’

  Mrs Stevens could turn the news off but, knowing she wouldn’t be able to protect Jim once he left the house, she had sat him down and tried to explain. “The poor girl needed understanding, but what she got was violence.”

  But, although Jim shook, his voice had hardened: “She said she asked for it.”

  “What she was asking for was help!”

  ‘Aimee was found in Bed with Mystery Boy.’

  ‘Boy in Aimee White Scandal Identified.’

  ‘Aimee: Secret Affair with Cousin.’

  ‘Husband’s Agony: I Couldn’t Even Tell my Wife.’

  But they didn’t stop there: there were headlines everywhere Jim looked. Not only in the papers but on billboards; on the front page of the local Guardian that was shoved through the letterbox.

  ‘Missing Teen May Have Been Pregnant.’

  ‘My Pregnancy Scare Almost Drove me to Suicide, claims Soap Star.’

  ‘Parents of Missing Teen Separate.’

  ‘Exclusive: Cousin in Missing Aimee Tragedy Speaks Out.’

  From his hospital bed, Jim recounted for Ayisha how, when he was an adult, Jean had told him what had struck her the most was how Mr White hit out at Aimee rather than the boy. Of how he could understand the cousin’s behaviour better than he could his own daughter’s. She assumed he felt betrayed to find his little girl had grown up - without his even noticing - and so he had punished her. Jim told Ayisha that it had only been then that he understood: his mother had always trusted him.

  Ayisha’s eyes were full. “It’s no wonder Aimee enjoyed your company. You gave her something to take her mind off her troubles,” she said.

  “For a while!” Jim had been dismissive as, lying in the hospital bed, he recounted to Ayisha what his mother had told him.

  “Don’t you see?” Ayisha persevered. “It was only when Aimee was prevented from seeing you that she couldn’t cope at home anymore.”

  “I don’t know about that. Anyway,” he sighed. “The press had their villains and a new victim in Mrs White, while Aimee - well, she was virtually forgotten.”

  “And you went on believing she was dead?”

  He nodded slowly. “I still do. At least I could mourn. Mrs White held a press conference on the first anniversary of Aimee’s disappearance and the four that followed. ‘It’s the uncertainty,’ she said. ‘I can’t help thinking the worst, but I have to go on hoping. Somewhere, there’s a grandchild I would very much like to meet.’ How can you live like that?”

  “What about the cousin?” Ayisha asked.

  “Who knows? He wasn’t my focus. It’s possible that he may have really loved her.”

  Jim looked drained. It was clear that his efforts had exhausted him. But he also looked relieved. “I’m glad you trusted me enough to tell me.”

  In bed, nestling against the shoulder-shaped pillow, Ayisha’s thoughts turned to Shamayal. His plan for disappearing himself seemed so ideal that she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t taken the option earlier. The boy needed his mother. This was something she could agree to help with in good conscience. And she wanted to help.

  She thumbed through the dog-eared book of British birds, lingering at the section on owls. Jim wasn’t allowed personal possessions in H.D.U. and so he had entrusted them to her.

  “For Shamayal… tell him -”

  “I’ll tell him to make good use of them,” she’d forced herself to say, the thought that Jim was giving away the things that were most precious to him leaving her cold. Critical but stable, he was far from being out of danger. “Back to the beginning,” was what he had said.

  If there was one thing she could do for Jim, it was to play her part in delivering the boy to a place of safety. And to secure Shamayal’s safety - and Jim’s peace of mind - she was prepared to lie. The boy would insist on turning back if he knew Jim was in danger. This time there was no moral dilemma: Ayisha couldn’t tell him.

  CHAPTER 46: SHAMAYAL - AUGUST - 2010 - THE BOILER ROOM

  Shamayal had been sitting in the humid darkness for too long. Sweat trickled down the hollow of his spine in rivulets. He stripped off some of the layers Bins insisted he had worn but, without them, there was little protection against the roughness of the brick wall. The only sounds were the rumbling of his stomach and the purring of the boiler. Mickey Mouse, wearing red shorts and braces, was cheerfully pointing out higher and higher numbers with his yellow boxing gloves, some combinations requiring a greater degree of contortion, his legs cowboyed to fit the confined space.

  “What are you so happy about? You’re stuck, ain’t you? In the same predicament as me.”

  Mickey grinned back.

  “Yeah, yeah. Ain’t no one ever told you how annoyin’ you are? Listen to me! Am I for real? Talkin’ to a stupid watch!”

  He heard knocking, the sound of the padlock - shit! - and, pushing with his heels, scuffled back behind the boiler. The effort had used up all of his concentration: he had forgotten to drag the discarded waterproofs. Nuffin he could do about it now. His heart a drum kit, he applied childhood logic: if his eyes were clamped shut, he couldn’t be seen. The insides of his lids were orange. He willed himself not to breathe.

  “Kaw, kaw,” came a familiar voice.

  Shamayal’s ribs cracked as his chest deflated, his bad eye pained him as it unscrunched. “Thought you’d forgotten about me, Mr Crow.”

  “Is that you, Invisible Man?” The beam from Bins’s flashlight tunnelled through the dark.

  “Ain’t no one else stupid enough to hang out in here!” Shamayal held one hand up to shield his eyes. “I don’t suppose you got any food?”

  Bins put the torch in his mouth, reached in one pocket, extracted something, then rummaged in the other and pulled out a Mars Bar.

  “Proper genius!” Relieved to find its wrapper intact, Shamayal ripped through the paper with his teeth and spat it aside.

  “There’s more.”

  “Yeah?” The boy took a hungry bite, his mamma’s voice reminding him to chew.

  Bins opened the door and leaned out to speak to someone. Shamayal couldn’t hear the words but it sounded as if negotiations were taking place. Surely Bins wouldn’t have sold him out?

  The door opened wider. Accustomed to the dark by now, Shamayal could just make out the old man’s grinning face. “I got you transport for the first leg. This is Nick Stevens.”

  The owl killer! The caramel coating his mouth turned sickly.

  “Hello, Shamayal.” A crouching man deposited something heavy on the floor and extended a hand. His balding head loomed large. “I’m Jim’s big brother.”

  “What kinda shit is this?” Shamayal protested, agape.

  “It’s alright, Invisible Man,” Bins said. “Jim said it was A-OK.”

  “He won’t have nuffin to do with him! Why should I trust him?”

  “You’re low on options,” the man replied. “And no one else was available on short notice. Your stuff’s already in my van -”

  “You been in my flat?” Words flew at the thought of this violation. “You tol’ my dad where I am?”

  “He wasn’t at home. But I did leave a note.”

  “You wh-? Are you mental?” Before he thought what he was doing, Shamayal’s arms cut through the air and the pain was fresh agony. “Fuck! Man!”

  “Calm down -”

  “You want me to calm down? I’m up to my neck in ten kinds of shit and you go wadin’ in, makin’ it worse!” If Shamayal could have moved, he would have been right in the man’s face, pointing.

  “Do you want to hear what the note said?”

  “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  “The note said, ‘Your son is in trouble. He’s done nothing wrong. We
are taking him somewhere safe.’ Don’t you think he deserves that much?”

  “How d’you get into my flat, anyhow?” he demanded.

  “I’m a locksmith.”

  Shamayal remembered Jim telling him that his brother had always been an authority on locks. Now, it seemed, he had made a profession out of it. Sniffing, he felt as if he might actually break down. Control of the situation running away from him, he was reduced to basics. “You got my good kecks, right?”

  “I brought as much as would fit in a kitbag.”

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “Like I said, I’m a locksmith. People look right through me.”

  He sniffed again. “Right, right.”

  “All set?”

  “Don’t look like I got a fat lotta choice, does it?”

  “The van’s backed up to the door. There are blankets in the back. I’ll just finish up on the door here, then we’ll be off.”

  Nick ducked out, leaving the boy and the old man alone in the semi-dark. Shamayal wanted to be angry, but it wasn’t the old guy’s fault. Like the man said, his options were zilch. “I should get changed so I can give you your fishin’ gear back.”

  “Do you think there’ll be a river where you’re going?”

  “S’pose there might be.”

  “Keep it,” Bin offered.

  “Thanks, thanks.” Shamayal tried to sound appreciative, although fishing was low on his agenda. “Hey, you fink Nick’s OK?”

  “He’s an excellent driver.”

  “But is he cool, man? Would you go with him?”

  “No -”

  “See!” Shamayal’s arms were pinned to his sides. Panic set in before common sense. It had been a long time since anyone had hugged him.

  “I’m staying. I’ve got a business to run. Would I go with him if I were you? That’s the question you should have asked.”

  “And?” He let himself go limp in the old man’s arms, feeling his body heat.

  “Of course I would!”

  “Right, right.” Shamayal had to believe it. What else could he do? He closed his eyes and breathed. “Then I guess this is it for you and me.”