by Claire Moss
‘But he did it anyway,’ Simone said quietly, trying to keep the accusation out of her tone. ‘He went with Jessica anyway.’ He chose the daughter of someone he has hardly seen for the last fifteen years over me, despite me supposedly being the love of his life, was what she wanted to say.
Maria nodded slowly and took a sip of her coffee. ‘He had to though, you see.’
Simone shook her head. She did not see.
Maria took a deep breath. ‘Look, Simone, please stop me if you’ve already worked this out, but in my experience it never hurts to spell things out so there’s no room for doubt.’
The woman was procrastinating, Simone realised, putting off the evil moment when she had to blow Simone’s world apart. ‘I haven’t already worked it out,’ Simone said truthfully.
‘Joe – Mack – he’s Jessica’s father.’
Simone absorbed the words as she might absorb a blow to the head. She was unsure at first whether she was physically rocking back and forth in her seat, or if she simply felt as though she was. Her mouth was full of cider and it was several moments before she was able to swallow it. For a brief, mad second she thought she was going to have to spit it out onto the table. Many fears, many possibilities had swung through her head since Maria had grabbed her on the doorstep and arranged this assignation. Was Mack really the father of Jessica’s baby after all? Was he somehow indebted to Maria, either financially or morally (had she perhaps once helped him pass an exam at school or something?). This – the truth – was better than the first option, although only marginally, and was far, far worse than the second option. How pathetic she was, Simone chided herself, how small-town and naïve to think that cheating an exam could be the worst thing you had done in your life, could be the thing that you needed to hide so badly it could lead you to this.
‘But,’ Simone stuttered once the cider was out of her mouth and she had regained sufficient breath to speak. ‘But he’s too…’
‘Too young?’ Maria interrupted with a wry smile. ‘I know. Tell me about it. I’m too fucking young too. Too young to be a mother to a teenager, certainly too bloody young to be a bloody grandma. I said to Jess when she told me she was pregnant, I said, “You do know I’m the same age as BRITNEY SPEARS? I can’t be a granny!” But,’ she took a sip of her coffee, ‘looks like I’m going to be.’
‘So… when did…’ Simone could find no words other than the merest basics, but Maria seemed to get the gist.
‘We were fifteen,’ she said, putting a hand on Simone’s arm. ‘Look, I’m going to tell you my side of it because that’s all I’ve got. Joe’ll have plenty of chance to give you his side of things, but I’m going to get in there first. He owes me that much.’ She gave a humourless laugh.
So Maria gave her side of the story, and to her credit she did try to give as unbiased an account of how Jessica came to be as possible, but even so Mack was not cast in a good light.
‘We were just kids,’ was how Maria began the story, and that was impossible to argue with. Mack and Maria had got together over the summer holidays between Year 10 and Year 11, and anyone who deals in academic years and summer holidays is still a kid. But, Maria said, they did not feel like kids. Nobody who is fifteen really feels like a kid; they feel like an adult trapped in someone else’s world, a world of petty rules and uniforms and curfews, a world where they are without money, freedom or status. Simone nodded her understanding, remembering the thrill of sitting in the front seat of Jed’s car, smoking a Marlboro Red he had given her, feeling like she’d finally escaped the narrow confines of her parents’ world.
‘We didn’t have a clue,’ Maria said, ‘and we weren’t the first. But it was that bloody Catholic school. They gave us so much half-information and non-advice that we sort of knew that having sex was wrong but somehow in our minds using contraception was even worse.’ Maria laughed drily. ‘Looking back on it now the only thing that should have surprised us was that it took three months for me to get pregnant. Well, that and how shocked we both were when we found out. For Christ’s sake, what had we bloody expected?’
Simone did not know what to say so she took another gulp of cider. Her glass was now nearly empty.
‘Joe cried when I told him,’ Maria went on. ‘I mean, I was crying too of course, cried my bloody eyes out, but it was when he started crying too that I thought, Oh God, what have I done? This guy can’t look after me.’
Simone swallowed. ‘And did he?’ she asked, although she knew the answer.
Maria sighed. ‘Look, I don’t want this to sound like I’m just trying to smear Joe and make him look like the bad guy. He was so young and so scared. We both were. And his mum did try. I mean, I presume you’ve met Sheila?’
Simone nodded.
‘Well, she’s a tough old bird, but she did try and get Joe to do the right thing. Said he had to leave school after his exams and get a job, try to support me. I think my mum and dad wanted us to get married – they’re Polish and pretty old-school – but I knew that was never going to happen. Me and Joe had already got sick of each other even before I found out I was pregnant. We were too similar, we’d have ended up killing each other, and I think Sheila could see that, but she still tried to get Joe to see that he had to take responsibility for us.’
‘So, how come…?’ Simone thought about Mack’s mum and wondered how much guts it must have taken to get on her wrong side.
Maria rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t know if Joe’s ever mentioned a bloke called Keith?’
Simone went cold. ‘Yeah, I know who you mean.’ She did not feel up to going into the details of how intertwined Keith still was in Mack’s life.
Maria shuddered. ‘Horrible, creepy old guy. Well, this is not my secret to tell, and I don’t know if even Joe knows, but Sheila came to see me once, just after Jess was born, and she told me that Keith is Mack’s dad. She and him had one drunken night together that she’s regretted ever since, apart from the fact that it resulted in Mack. But apparently Keith never got over it. Sheila told him nothing was ever going to happen between her and him, but that she’d let him be involved in their lives providing he never let on to Mack that he was actually his dad.’ Simone felt sick. Vile, creepy Keith with his gold fillings and leather slippers. He must be twenty years older than Sheila. The eyes, she realised with a jolt. That was where Mack’s cold, blue eyes came from, explained the difference between his eyes and Sheila’s greenish, murky pools.
‘Anyhow,’ Maria went on, and Simone remembered with a pang of nausea that Keith’s sex life was the least of the horrible things she was having to learn about today. ‘I rang Joe’s house one day not long after we first told our parents and his mum said, sorry he’s gone. And when I asked what the hell she was talking about, she told me that Keith had said he would pay the fees for Joe to go to this posh boarding school out in Essex and do his A-levels there.’
Simone remembered the mysterious exam certificates, the school with its own climbing wall where you could bring your own horse. ‘Keith sent him there? Rather than let him stay in London and look after you and Jessica?’
Maria nodded. ‘Yeah. See, I’ve had seventeen years to dwell on this and my theory is that it all comes down to Keith hating women. Which he definitely does.’
It was not a question, but Simone nodded her agreement nevertheless.
‘Joe was a real bright spark, loads of potential. He was the cleverest boy in our year, and the best-looking, and the most popular. He could have done anything he wanted, and Keith and everyone else knew that. In Keith’s world view I’d trapped him on purpose because I wanted to, I don’t know, have some clever, successful man to look after me or something. Keith was always banging on about Joe being this golden boy and how he was going to be a CEO of some big company or a city stockbroker or something. He wasn’t going to have a little Polish slag like me stop him.’
Simone was shocked at the venom in Maria’s tone, but not at the thought that Keith might have done something like this. ‘
So that was it?’
‘Yeah. The next time I saw him – the first time he met his daughter – was a few weeks ago when he came to take her away in the middle of the night because I was scared someone was going to murder her.’
‘Shit.’ Simone felt sick. Her glass was empty now and she desperately wanted another drink. ‘He really did abandon you? Just like that?’
Maria shrugged. ‘I’m being a bit harsh I suppose.’
‘You’re not,’ Simone muttered and Maria smiled.
‘What I mean is, Joe was under a lot of pressure from Keith – whether or not he knows Keith’s actually his dad, he’s certainly the closest thing Joe’s got. He was torn between pleasing him and pleasing me. And by that stage I don’t think he even really liked me. We all make mistakes when we’re young. It’s just that some of us are forced into circumstances where the mistakes are worse than others.’
Simone, thinking again of Jed, nodded.
‘I’m actually being unfair on Keith too, really. I still can’t stand the man, but every month since Jessica was born he’s sent me a cheque for a few hundred quid, plus something extra on her birthday. He knows it’s his fault that Joe left us and, Keith being Keith he’s tried to buy his conscience’s silence. That’s how I got in touch with Joe when I needed him to help Jess. I wrote to Keith and asked him to pass a message on. He took his time but he came through for us in the end.’
Maria regarded Simone levelly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘This is an old story to me. I’ve told it so many times it’s almost like it happened to someone else. But you must be feeling… Jesus, how are you feeling?’
Simone shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully. ‘It’s going to take a bit of time I think before it sinks in.’ Suddenly, and humiliatingly, her eyes filled with sharp tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted. ‘I’m sorry for all that’s happened to you. I’m sorry my boyfriend’s such a dick.’
Maria laughed through tears of her own. ‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘It’s worked out OK for me. Jess is the best thing in my life, ever since the day I had her. She’s such a sweet girl and never been any trouble. And the thing is, I’ve had my family now, my baby’s grown up and I’m still only in my early thirties. I never wanted to be a paralegal, it’s boring as fuck, but next year I’m going to do an Art Foundation course at college, then hopefully go to university. My life starts now, just as I’m old enough and sensible enough to actually enjoy it.’
Simone forced a smile and wiped away the tears. She could love this woman, she decided. ‘Does Jess know? That he’s her dad?’
Maria hesitated a moment. ‘No. She still thinks he’s just an old friend. I’m going to have to tell her when I get home. Do you know what?’ She stood up. ‘I think I will have that pint after all.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Petra and Rory had come home last night, about which Jazzy was of course delighted. It did mean, however, that once again he had got no sleep.
When he got into work he had half-wondered if Mack would be there, but there was no sign of him. Jazzy did not know if Mack intended on coming in that day, or indeed ever again. After Simone had left Maria’s house yesterday and Maria had done a ludicrously transparent job of trying to pretend she was not going after her, Ayanna had given Mack a thorough, breathless run-down of everything that had happened to them in the time Mack had been gone. Mack had looked physically pained when she described being threatened at college, and the strange man who had turned up at Rory’s nursery and on Simone’s train. Ayanna had described both men, trying to get the point across to Mack that it was definitely two different men. Jazzy felt certain he had seen a flash of anger pass across Mack’s face as Ayanna précised Jazzy’s second-hand description of the man who Simone had described as ‘sausage-eared’ but he had said nothing in response other than ‘Sorry,’ and an awkward silence soon descended on the four of them.
Jazzy and Ayanna had made their excuses and left pretty swiftly. He had had no opportunity to ask Mack any questions about what obscure loyalty his friend felt towards this woman and her pregnant daughter; a woman, Jazzy kept reminding himself, whom he had never once heard Mack mention in all the time he had known him. Jazzy had spent most of the previous wakeful night trying to imagine what conversation had taken place between Mack and Jessica after Jazzy and Ayanna left, but he found himself utterly unable to visualise such a dialogue.
Now that he understood what had brought the threats and the undercurrent of violence to his, Simone’s and Ayanna’s doors (literally in his own case), he perversely felt more relaxed. Regardless of whether these people who wanted to intimidate Jessica were genuinely appeased by this murderer pleading guilty, Jazzy presumed that their reasons for seeking himself out were in order to obtain information leading to Jessica. Now Jessica was back where they would easily be able to find her, should they wish to continue their campaign of terrorising a pregnant teenager, and Jazzy was no longer of any use to them, which was why he had deemed it safe to bring Petra and Rory back home; that and the fact that he was missing them like mad. Nevertheless he still jumped when he heard the office door open.
It was Mack. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said, ‘I had to go and see Keith.’
Jazzy frowned in incomprehension. He was in no position to chastise Mack for lateness even if he had wanted to; the two of them were of equal status in the company. Moreover, Jazzy could not understand why Mack’s first priority on his first morning back would be to traipse all the way to Keith’s house and back. Had he seen Simone yet, Jazzy wondered? Or was visiting Keith more important than even that? Jazzy shook his head, as though to indicate that Mack had no need to apologise, although really it was more due to the fact that he would never understand what this pull was that drew Mack to Keith at the expense of all else that was valuable in his life.
Mack sat down opposite Jazzy at Jazzy’s desk, as though he was being interviewed. ‘Jazz, I’m so sorry,’ he began. ‘I’m so sorry for everything that I’ve put you all through. I want to explain to you, if you’ll let me?’
Jazzy shrugged. He was so tired and so incredibly sick of thinking about Mack, wondering about Mack, caring about Mack and where Mack was and why. He honestly wondered if his friend could say anything to him now that could make him care.
‘I’ve known Maria since we were fifteen,’ Mack began, and without stopping for breath he told Jazzy everything; teenage infatuation followed by teenage pregnancy, his escape, instigated and funded by Keith, his mum coming to visit him at boarding school and telling him he had a daughter. She had asked him if he had wanted his name to go on the birth certificate and he had said – Mack winced with a pain that appeared almost physical as he told Jazzy this – he had said, ‘Perhaps better not, eh?’ and then bid a perfunctory farewell to his mum and gone back up to his dorm to smoke a joint with his new best friend Charles.
Jazzy thought of Rory’s face and chubby little hands, of the toy rabbit he carried everywhere with him, he thought of the ache he had felt of missing him even over these last few days. He stared at Mack for a long time, unable to think what to say. ‘Shit, man,’ he said in the end. ‘So that means you’re going to be…’
‘A granddad,’ Mack put in flatly. ‘I know. The first time I ever meet my own daughter she’s weeks away from having a child of her own. Believe me, the idea is taking some getting used to.’
‘Not just for you though, is it?’ Jazzy could not keep the harshness out of his tone. ‘How did she react to being whisked away by her long-lost father and cooped up with him for days on end?’
Mack sighed and closed his eyes. ‘She doesn’t know. I never told her.’
‘Jesus Christ, so…’
Mack shook his head. ‘She’ll know by now, I can guarantee it. Maria will have told her as soon as she got home last night.’
The two of them were silent for a moment, contemplating how that conversation must have played out.
‘So why,’ Jazzy asked coldly, ‘did you dec
ide, this morning of all mornings that top of your to-do list should be to schlepp down to Chislehurst and have a cup of tea with Keith?’ Rather than go and see your daughter, who has just found out you’re her father? Rather than go and see your supposed girlfriend and tell her what you’ve just told me? Why? was what Jazzy really wanted to say, but he kept it brief.
Mack said, ‘As soon as Ayanna described that guy on Simone’s train and at Rory’s nursery I knew who it must be. It was the thing about the ears. I’ve only ever met one guy who was such a meathead even his ears were solid muscle. He’s one of Keith’s guys. A bloke called Robbo.’
‘What? Keith did this to us? Keith tried to kidnap my son? Keith got Ayanna imprisoned in her classroom terrified out of her wits? Keith? But why?’
Mack shook his head. ‘Keith didn’t do all of it. He told me everything this morning. You see, it was him that Maria contacted first when she decided that they needed to get Jess out of London and somewhere she wouldn’t be traced. She wrote him a letter because his address was the only way she had of getting in touch. But he never showed it to me. I found it by accident one day when I was looking through a drawer for some invoices for a batch of wedding dresses. Of course I went ape-shit at him for not showing me it, but he wasn’t bothered. Said he’d not spent all that money preventing me from ruining my life on some slag – meaning Maria – so that I could put myself in danger for her all these years later. Said he was forbidding me,’ he gave a hollow laugh, ‘from helping Maria, that he wouldn’t allow it.’
‘But you did it anyway?’ Jazzy was surprised, he had to admit. He had never known Mack to go against what Keith said.
‘I had to,’ Mack said quietly. ‘All these years I’d felt like only half a person, knowing that I had a child out there somewhere. And the worst thing about it was that I was so ashamed of myself for running away that I could never tell anyone about it. My mum and Keith are the only people still in my life who know about it, and neither of them ever mention it. It was as though I’d killed someone and I had to walk around with that knowledge every day of my life.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘No wonder I’m such a fuck-up. But this gave me the chance to at least try and put a little bit of it right, to do one good thing for Maria and Jess. I knew it could never begin to make up for what I’d done, but it was a start. So I went to Maria’s house one afternoon – Jess was at college…’