by Tony Parsons
Whitestone indicated the crowd at the end of the street.
‘And who’s talking to them?’ she said.
The crowd was different now. When the sea of flowers was laid in memory of Alice Stone, those who came to Borodino Street seemed to come from every corner of society. Men from the City. East End pensioners. Young women with sunbed tans. Schoolchildren and their parents.
Now the crowd was predominately young and male and angry. At each fresh eruption of smoke and flames from the windows and front door of the house on Borodino Street, the firemen hunched and braced themselves for the worst before immediately returning to their work, while the crowd roared their approval. Most of them, I noticed, had their hair shaved completely bald at the sides and a short crop on top in the manner of George Halfpenny.
But not all of them.
Father Marvin Gane was standing to one side of the crowd, watching the fire from the end of the street. Joy Adams saw me staring at him.
‘Father Gane is offering a camp bed in St Anthony’s to anyone who needs it,’ she said.
I looked at her.
‘You know Father Gane?’
‘He buried my father,’ Adams said. ‘He married my sister. He christened me. He taught my brothers to box. I see him for most of his Sunday services, if I’m not working.’ Her face was impassive. ‘I know him, yes.’
‘You know Father Gane is the brother of one of our colleagues who died in the line of duty?’
‘His brother Curtis,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know Curtis.’ She smiled. ‘He wasn’t much of a church-goer. I knew Mrs Gane, their mother. She was friendly with my mum.’
‘Why does Father Gane keep coming here, Joy?’ I said. ‘He’s a long way from Brixton.’
She looked genuinely shocked.
‘He comes to pray for those who have been separated from God,’ she said.
Adams went off to help Edie.
And then Scarlet Bush was standing by my side.
Together we watched the fire.
‘Those Khan brothers certainly started something, didn’t they?’ she said.
I did not reply. I was watching the girl. Layla Khan was standing stiffly by her grandmother’s side and together they stared at the fire, trying to make sense of something that made no sense at all. A young woman from Sir Ludo Mount’s chambers stood to one side, speaking into two hand-held devices at once.
Scarlet Bush was still talking.
‘Don’t you wonder where it comes from, Max? The medieval violence that started all this hatred and violence? Don’t you wonder where this nihilism comes from? The poison that the Khan brothers took into the world? Someone pumped their brains full of all this toxic waste. It has to start from somewhere, doesn’t it? Some Internet chat room. Some raving Iman. I don’t buy the notion that it is just a cumulative effect. It has to come from somewhere, Max. Just as that fire had to be lit by someone. Who poisoned the Khan brothers? Somebody did.’
‘That’s your next story, Scarlet. Maybe it will save your paper. Maybe it will save your industry.’
I glanced at my watch. I had to be in a lawyer’s office in Chancery Lane in thirty minutes. I realised I was going to have to put the blues and twos on if I was going to make it.
‘It’s not my job to worry about where the mess comes from,’ I told her. You could smell the stink of the fire on Borodino Street. ‘It’s my job to clear it up.’
Scarlet nodded, unimpressed.
‘And how’s that working out?’ she said.
My lawyer looked far too young for the job. Sergeant John Caine of the Black Museum had recommended her – she had represented two of John’s grown-up children when their families fell apart – and that should have been good enough for me. John Caine never gave me anything but sound advice.
But my heart dipped as she showed me into her tiny, box-like office, indicating one of the two chairs that faced her jumbled desk.
Maria Maldini, Family Law LLB (Hons), looked as though she was not yet out of her twenties. Her name was Italian but everything about her calm, confident manner suggested one of those London private schools that cost £18,000 a year, where they guarantee you come out with iron-clad confidence. My dog Stan could get four good A Levels at a school like that. But she did not look old enough or experienced enough to keep my family together.
And then she began to speak. And made me think again.
‘I don’t think your ex-wife has a chance of custody,’ she said. ‘There are four hundred thousand single fathers in this country now. Yes, single fathers are still a minority – around 13 per cent in the UK the last time I looked. But there are one million children being raised by single fathers.’ She gave me the kind of smile you know has made some orthodontist a rich man. ‘And I was one of them,’ she said.
Her male PA appeared in the doorway.
‘Coffee?’ she said.
‘Espresso?’ I said.
‘Of course,’ she said.
‘Triple,’ I said.
She grinned. ‘Two triple espressos, Matthew,’ she said, leaning back in her chair.
And then Maria Maldini told me her story. ‘My father raised me after my mother left the family home when I was thirteen,’ she said. ‘And if you think that’s a cliché – the pre-menopausal mother having a mid-life crisis brought on by her pubescent daughter – then who do you think Mother ran away with?’
I had no idea.
‘Her tennis coach,’ she said, shaking her head, the contempt still raw after the best part of a couple of decades. The door opened and she paused while Matthew carefully placed our triple espressos before us.
I sipped mine.
Maria Maldini bolted hers down in one go, like a vodka shot.
‘I never saw much of my mother after that,’ she said. ‘Rather like your daughter – Scout.’
She did not need to look at my file to name my daughter.
‘My mother was too busy concentrating on improving her groundstrokes with her tennis coach to devote much time to me or my younger brother,’ she said. ‘It is the oldest and saddest story in the world. The absent parent who does not have enough time for children they leave behind. Usually it is men who behave with such …’
She searched for the phrase she was looking for.
‘Selfish cruelty,’ she said. ‘But not always. As you know.’
Now she glanced at my file.
‘You had your interview with Cafcass?
‘Some social worker came round …’
‘Don’t tell me. I can imagine. Some sour old battle-axe who thinks that all men are rapists. Don’t worry about her. I’m the product of a home where the father was the primary caregiver, Max. And we are not going to let any of them stand in the way of you bringing up your daughter. Now tell me your story.’
It felt like there wasn’t that much to tell.
‘My ex-wife fell in love with someone else. She started a new family with him. Scout and I were left to get on with it. And we did.’
‘No problems at school? No mental health issues? No wailing for her missing mother?’
I shook my head, almost laughing at the thought.
‘Scout’s a happy, intelligent, loving little girl.’ I shrugged. ‘She’s just a great kid.’
Then I hesitated. I could not pretend that Scout was untouched by divorce. We all like to pretend that children are unharmed by divorce. We all lie to the world and to ourselves because it hurts too much to admit the truth.
‘Go on,’ my lawyer said quietly.
‘There’s a seriousness about Scout,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how else to describe it. I feel that we – my ex-wife and I, because it is my fault too as I was part of that marriage – robbed her of something. She’s different from the little girl she would have been if my ex-wife and I had stayed together. It’s a hard thing to admit – that you have inflicted this lifetime wound on your child. But it’s true.’
‘And what does she say about what happened between you and your
ex-wife? What does Scout have to say about being brought up by her father? What does she say about the mother who has only had sporadic contact with her since she left?’
‘We don’t talk about it,’ I said. ‘We don’t talk about any of it.’
Maria Maldini was not remotely surprised. She nodded briskly.
‘Custody and residency proceedings were always meant to be in the best interests of the child. The reality is that for fifty years they were in the best interests of the mother. But that has finally begun to change.’
‘Look, I don’t want to get into a war about this,’ I said. ‘I want Scout to stay with me. But I don’t want to get into some ugly custody wrangle. I don’t want her hurt more than she has been already. I want to protect her.’
Maldini sighed.
‘It’s an adversarial game, Max. Because sharing doesn’t work. Sharing is a myth. There is no such thing as joint parenting. It doesn’t work for practical reasons – a child needs to go to school somewhere. And it doesn’t work for emotional reasons – most divorced couples would be very happy to never see each other again. But you have to put up a fight, Max. And most fathers don’t put up a fight. No doubt there are some men who are too busy with their new lives to fancy the school run every morning – but there are other fathers, good fathers, who feel they simply haven’t got a chance. So they don’t even put up a fight.’
She leaned forward.
‘Another triple espresso?’
‘I’m good.’
She nodded.
‘You deserve to be the primary carer. You’ve earned it. Your daughter is happy with you. It is in her best interest to stay with you – not be dragged off to some hideous house in the suburbs by – what does she call herself these days? – Mrs Anne Lewis.’
She made it sound like an alias. She made it sound as if my ex-wife did not have a hope in hell of taking Scout away from me.
‘Who knows if your ex-wife is even going to stay with her latest husband,’ my lawyer said.
‘They seem pretty settled,’ I said.
‘OK – maybe they’ll live happily ever after. But my mother’s tennis coach had a very short shelf life. After all that disruption in all those lives – and my brother has never really got over the divorce – the tennis coach soon found himself unseeded. And my guess is that your ex-wife – Anne – might find that real life intrudes on every happy ending. To your knowledge, is she working?’
‘I don’t think she’s worked since we were together. She has had a couple of kids with the new guy.’
Was I still allowed to call him the new guy?
I could in this room.
I could call him anything I liked in the chambers of Maria Maldini, Family Law LLB (Hons).
‘Anne was a model,’ I said.
My lawyer grinned at that. ‘And did she make a living as a model?’
I shrugged. ‘It was feast or famine.’
‘And her latest husband is some kind of banker in the city?’
Her latest husband! I had to smile. And she made banker sound like an insult.
‘Yes. He’s in the finance industry. A rich guy. Oliver.’
‘We’re going to bury them, Max. No wonder they’re fighting dirty.’
‘How are they fighting dirty?’
She carefully pulled a letter from the file.
‘They know how many times you were late picking up Scout. They keep bursting into tears because you raised your voice to Oliver.’ She looked at me levelly. ‘And they say you are not capable of being the primary care-giver, even though any reasonable judge would say that you have already proved yourself to be a responsible and loving father.’
She slowly stood up.
My time was nearly over.
‘But if they want to fight dirty, then we can fight dirty too,’ she said.
We stood up and shook hands.
‘I don’t mind fighting dirty,’ I said. ‘But I am not using my daughter as a weapon.’
Maria Maldini waited for more.
‘I don’t want Scout involved,’ I said. ‘I just want her to have a happy childhood. A stable childhood. A normal childhood.’
‘It’s too late for that,’ my lawyer said, glancing at her watch.
27
High summer on Hampstead Heath.
It is the time of year when the regulars – the dog walkers and the serious runners who are out on those 800 acres of forest, meadow and rolling hills whatever the season – share all that wild open space with the rest of the city.
Scout and I came out of the long shadows of the lime trees and into the dazzling sunshine of Parliament Hill, Stan padding ahead of us, his nose twitching at all the picnics that were being enjoyed across that steep green hill. He swerved at the scent of some sausage rolls and Scout called him back.
‘Stan,’ she said in her best stern voice. ‘They’re not for you.’
‘Sausage roll walks into a bar,’ I said.
‘Barman says – sorry, we don’t serve food,’ Scout said. ‘Oh my God, Daddy, everyone knows that one.’
We climbed Parliament Hill, our pace slowing, and even at the end of the long summer day, we were so high above the city that up here the air was alpine fresh.
We crested the summit and stopped, and all London was spread out below us, from the North Downs that mark the southern border of the City, to the Shard and Canary Wharf to the East, and to St Paul’s Cathedral, marking our home in Smithfield.
Usually we would turn right at the top and make our way down to the string of ponds that would lead us out of the Heath, but today I indicated the lone wooden bench that waits for the weary traveller on the summit of Parliament Hill.
‘Sit down for a moment, Scout.’
She gave me a questioning look but parked herself on the bench, Stan chewing the grass between her feet to aid his digestion or maybe just because he liked the taste.
We stared at our beautiful city bathed in the haze of a blazing summer and it looked like a sweet dream that would evaporate upon waking.
‘We never sit down on a walk,’ Scout pointed out, swinging her legs, and lifting her chin in the direction of the neighbourhood that waits beyond the Heath. ‘Not until we get to Hampstead High Street. That’s how we do it.’
‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘But I’ve been thinking, Scout.’
‘OK,’ she said, as if there was a first time for everything.
‘We don’t really talk about what happened, do we? With our family. With your mother.’ I looked away from the city spread out below us and I concentrated on my daughter. ‘We never talk about it, Scout.’
‘We mostly talk about Stan.’
I smiled at her. It was true.
We did not talk about her school. We did not talk about my work. We certainly did not talk about what had happened to our family. Almost all of our conversations revolved around our dog.
‘And there are a few good reasons for that, Scout.’
‘I’m still young,’ she said, swinging her legs.
‘There’s that, angel. You’re right. But there’s other reasons too. We don’t talk about it because we’re doing all right, you and me. And we don’t talk about it because I guess we don’t know where to begin. And most of all, I think, and this is the way I see it, Scout – we don’t talk about it because it still hurts. It’s painful for us, Scout. All of it. Our family being together and then coming apart. All that time when you never saw your mum.’
‘She was very busy.’
‘That’s right. But we do need to have a bit of a talk about it now, OK?’
She nodded.
‘Your mother didn’t leave you. She left me.’
‘But you’re nice.’
‘Thanks, Scout. I appreciate that. It’s really kind of you to say so. It means a lot to me. It means the world. But here’s the thing, Scout – I know you miss her.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Oh, no, no, no.’
I ploughed on. ‘And I know you miss having y
our mother around. And I think you deserve a chance to be loved by her. And I think that you might like to try but you don’t want to hurt my feelings.’
Scout thought about it for a while.
Stan sighed, lifted his head to sniff her trainers, and fell asleep.
‘I’m sort of forgetting her,’ Scout said. ‘My mum. I don’t remember – really remember – when we were all together. And sometimes I don’t know if I remember a time or if I just saw a photograph of it.’ She reached down to scratch the fur of the sleeping dog. ‘Or maybe I imagined it. You know what I mean?’
My heart ached for this beautiful child who did not want to betray me.
But the forces pulling her away from me seemed irresistible.
‘I know exactly what you mean, Scout. I think you miss your mum. I think you have missed her more than either of us – you and me, I mean – want to admit.’
We were silent.
I had to find the words.
And I knew the words.
The difficult part was saying them.
‘Your mum wants you to live with her,’ I said. ‘And she wants it very much.’
‘I know.’
‘You know?’
‘She told me. And she showed me where my bed would be and where I would keep my stuff and she told me that it wouldn’t be like before. She told me that I would still see you. And that I would have all of the summer holiday before I had to think about going to a new school. And that everything would work out fine.’
I choked down something hard and bitter.
‘I will be there for you forever,’ I said. ‘Whatever happens, Scout. With me. With your mum. When you are a kid. And after you are all grown up.’ I grinned at her and she smiled back. ‘I’m not going anywhere, kiddo,’ I said. ‘I’ll always be there for you. All my life. And after my life is over. If there’s anything else, some kind of heaven, then I will be there and I will be watching out for you. Because nothing is more important to me than you, Scout. But you know all of that already, right?’
‘Right.’ She chewed her lip and scratched her sleeping dog. ‘But what about you? What would happen to you if I go? And when will I see Mia? And what about Stan? And what about all my stuff?’