‘She’s a friend and she’s a girl, if that’s what you mean.’ Joe tried to mop the ketchup off with a handful of napkins as Hugo pushed him away absent-mindedly.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ Hugo asked through his half-chewed mouthful. ‘Why’s she in hospital?’
‘She had a little operation.’
‘What sort of operation?’
‘To remove some growths.’
‘From where?’
‘From her chest. You ask a lot of questions.’
‘That’s what Mum says.’ Hugo refilled his still brimming mouth.
‘Well you should do,’ Joe said, having another go with the napkins. ‘It’s good to want to know about things. Don’t let grown-ups put you off.’
‘I won’t,’ he said, sucking the last piece of moisture from his milkshake to try to help the food down.
‘How are things going at school, then?’ Joe asked casually as they strolled across the park behind the zoo, with the wolves pacing along beside them in their enclosure.
‘Okay,’ Hugo said, his eyes flicking from one passer-by to another, giving each one a friendly smile and a greeting.
‘No one being horrible?’
‘A few people.’
Joe felt his heart sink. ‘A few people are being unkind?’
‘Yeah.’ Hugo seemed keen to move on from a subject which promised to be painful. But Joe wasn’t ready to move on.
‘What sort of horrible?’
‘Names. Stuff like that.’
‘They don’t hit you or anything?’
‘Sometimes.’ Hugo laughed as he watched two dogs rolling on the grass in a mock battle.
‘What sort of names do you get called?’ Joe persisted as the dogs raced off and Hugo grinned appreciatively at their owner.
‘They say I’m a boff.’
‘A boff?’
‘Boffin.’
‘And that’s bad?’
‘I don’t like it. They mean it to be horrible. And they say I’m gay.’
‘What do they mean by that?’
‘Sad.’
‘Oh.’ Joe thought for a few minutes as his son watched some children flying kites. Hugo made some friendly comments to them but they ignored him.
‘You’ve got friends, though, haven’t you?’ Joe persisted as they moved on.
‘Not really.’
Tears threatened to come to Joe’s eyes. He blinked them back. ‘What about Ben?’
‘He’s okay. But everyone hates him. He really is a boff.’
‘You never say that to him, do you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘So are you happy at the school, overall?’
‘Not really.’
‘Would you like me to talk to Mummy about looking for somewhere better?’
The boy fell silent for a moment and Joe wasn’t sure if he had heard him. ‘I think,’ Hugo said eventually, ‘that I would probably have the same trouble anywhere. I think, perhaps I’m not really a school sort of a person.’
Having dwelt long enough on such a painful subject, Hugo ran off to watch a game of football going on ahead of them. Joe didn’t rush to catch up. He was lost in thought.
Coming out of the park, Hugo seemed to have forgotten the subject and was prattling happily once more, firing off questions and hardly ever stopping long enough for his father to give any answers. Joe bought a bunch of flowers to make himself feel more like an authentic hospital visitor.
‘Can I have one of those?’ Hugo asked as they passed a small newsagents.
‘One of what?’ Joe asked.
‘These.’ He pointed to a London street map.
‘It’s only a map,’ Joe said. ‘Wouldn’t you rather have a comic or a magazine?’
‘I like maps,’ Hugo said. ‘They’re interesting. I could plot our route.’
‘Okay.’
They bought the A to Z and Hugo proceeded to direct them to Wimpole Street, via several interesting short-cuts.
‘I wish Cordelia had come back to the flat after she met her friends,’ Hugo said as they made their way back up a cul-de-sac which he had accidentally directed them into. ‘Then she could have come to the zoo with us. She’s so cool.’
‘Yes, she is,’ Joe agreed and they both fell into silent contemplation for a while.
‘Where do you think she went with them?’ Hugo asked as they came into Wimpole Street.
‘With who?’
‘Her friends from the airport.’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Joe said. ‘Here we are.’
‘This is a hospital?’ Hugo looked up at the grubby brick townhouse. ‘It doesn’t look like one. Where are all the ambulances?’
‘Well, it’s more like a sort of nursing home, really, where they do operations as well.’ He rang the bell and one of the nurses opened the door. ‘We’ve come to visit Miss Brown.’
‘Miss Brown has checked out,’ the girl said, with a charming smile.
‘Are you sure?’ Joe was shocked. Doris had looked a long way from being well enough to get out of bed when he had seen her two days before.
‘Quite sure. She left yesterday.’
‘Okay. Thank you.’
As Joe walked back down the street, lost in thought, Hugo danced around his legs. ‘What are you going to do with them?’ he said, pointing to the flowers.
‘I don’t know,’ Joe said. ‘Why?’
‘Can I give them to Cordelia?’
‘Yes, I guess so. If she’s there.’
‘Come on,’ Hugo said, pulling out his book of maps. ‘I’ll lead you somewhere.’
CHAPTER TEN
‘I’ve had a flicker of interest in the Doris book from Helen at Piper,’ Adele said. ‘She’d like to talk to you about it. She would also like to talk to Doris.’
‘I told you,’ Joe said. ‘I haven’t exactly got a Doris at the moment.’
‘I know,’ Adele said. ‘But I didn’t think I could exactly explain that. It would be better coming from you, face to face.’
‘All right. When shall I meet her?’
‘She says she could fit you in this afternoon if you would like to go to the office and make a pitch.’
‘That quick? She must be interested.’
‘Yeah, I think she is. She knows your work. She knows you’re reliable. But I don’t think she’ll be offering the same sort of money as you’re getting from Satellite.’
‘Okay. I think I might not tell her I haven’t got a Doris. I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to find one eventually. I thought I’d got one already, but she’s disappeared again.’
‘Whatever you think is the best approach.’
‘What time should I be there?’
He was pleased to be given a meeting to go to. He had been working at the computer all morning, trying desperately to distract himself from the picture in his mind of his little son being swallowed up in a crowd of other boys, and swept through the great dark doors of his school. Joe had hardly been able to sleep at all for the whole night after taking Hugo back.
He had been wrestling with the idea of ringing Fliss and asking her if she didn’t think Hugo would be happier at a day school in London somewhere. But the thought of talking to Fliss about anything was very depressing. He knew she would take it as a personal criticism, and in a way she would be right. He was also pretty sure she would have a lot of good educational reasons why Hugo should stay at a boarding school, reasons which he wouldn’t be equipped to argue with. All he knew was that it didn’t feel right to be sending a small boy off to somewhere that was making him unhappy.
Helen, an editor at Piper, had bought a couple of books from him before. He liked her and looked forward to the meeting. The Doris story was one he felt confident he could sell, although the absence of a flesh-and-blood Doris was going to be a problem. When he arrived at Helen’s office he was surprised to find several other people waiting for him. There was a woman from marketing, another from publicity and a man from sales. Helen,
who looked at least seven months pregnant, was as pretty as he remembered her, and as incisive.
‘So, when can we meet her?’ she asked once the introductions had been made and the refreshments dispensed.
‘Doris?’ Joe said. He had been thinking over his strategy on the way there and was ready to play his cards a little closer to his chest than usual. ‘She’s very nervous about meeting anyone at the moment.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ the woman from marketing said. ‘After all she’s been through. Your synopsis made it all sound very traumatic.’
‘Good,’ Joe said. ‘I mean, thank you.’
‘We would ideally want her to be able to promote the book herself,’ the woman from publicity joined in. ‘What do you think the chances are that she would be up to that?’
‘I think once she has actually been through the whole story with me, and once she knows that it really is going to be a genuine book from a serious publisher,’ Joe paused to let his compliment take effect, ‘then I think she’ll be happy to do whatever promotion is necessary. At the moment she only knows she has been betrayed by everyone she trusted. She was betrayed by her parents who sold her, by the people she was sold to, by the people who were supposed to be looking after her, doctors and employers. Everyone has used and abused her and she’s still very nervous. Girls she has known have ended up dead because they talked to the wrong people.’
‘It’s a good story,’ Helen said, glancing through Joe’s synopsis, which was lying on the desk in front of her. ‘It really needs to be told.’
‘How on earth have you managed to win her confidence?’ the woman from marketing asked.
‘Joe can be very persuasive,’ Helen said, smiling enigmatically. ‘All sorts of people you would never imagine would talk to anyone end up telling him their most intimate secrets.’
‘What I need to know is whether Doris would be able to tell her story to the media,’ the man from sales said. ‘It may be a great story but people will only buy into it if it can be personalised.’
‘It will be very personal,’ Joe assured him.
‘We really want to make an offer on this, Joe,’ Helen said. ‘But it’s hard for us to be able to evaluate it without meeting her, or at least seeing some pictures.’
‘You see, if she is good on the television and radio, then we’ll do much better than if she’s tongue-tied and hiding away somewhere,’ the publicity woman added.
‘How much are you hoping for?’ Helen asked.
‘You’d need to talk to Adele about that,’ Joe said. ‘Doris needs money to live and I need money so I can get out to the Philippines and see where she comes from, trace her journey through Manila to England. I need to be able to see what she saw in order to write about it clearly, in her own voice.’
By the end of the meeting he knew they were going to be making an offer to Adele, and he also knew he was going to have to find himself a Doris who would be willing to claim the book as her own story.
Helen must have put a call straight through to the agency because Adele was on the phone to him an hour later.
‘She’s willing to offer fifteen thousand. I could probably get more if I shopped around, but it’s difficult until you actually have a girl to attach the story to. It needs to be a publisher who already knows you and trusts you.’
‘I think we should take the offer. If I can get it right it’s a book that will earn some royalties. I just need enough money to get started on the research. It’s an important story. These girls need someone to speak up for them.’
‘I agree. How do we split the money if we don’t know who the girl is going to be?’ Adele asked.
‘Just send me my half and hold the other half back until I’ve got the right girl.’
There was no sign of life in Ditchling Avenue as he parked his car the following morning. He walked briskly to the café, ordered a coffee and Danish pastry, and sat down in the window to watch the silent house opposite. Two coffees later, still nothing had happened. When there were no other customers in the café to overhear, he pulled out his phone and dialled the number. A woman’s voice answered.
‘Can I speak to Doris?’ he enquired.
‘Hang on.’ The woman must have covered the mouthpiece, although not completely. Joe could hear a mumbled conversation.
‘Someone wants to speak to Doris.’
‘Who is it?’
‘The same guy, I guess.’
‘Tell him she’s not here. Let Max handle it.’
Joe was staring intently at the house as he listened, trying to imagine which curtained window they might be behind. Could it be that this Doris was dead now, too? Another mutilated torso in a skip somewhere?
The table holding Joe’s empty coffee cup and plate suddenly flew into the air, knocking the phone from his hand and throwing his chair backwards. His head hit the wall with a painful crack, disorientating him. A powerful hand gripped him round the throat and another clamped him between the legs and he was lifted, agonisingly, into an upright position.
‘Come on now, take this outside,’ the café owner was saying in the background, unable to believe what was happening before his eyes, in broad daylight.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Max hissed at him, and the man shrank back behind his counter.
Letting go of Joe’s crotch, Max picked up a wine bottle which had been standing on another table with a flower in it. He smashed the bottle down against the edge of the table, freeing a stream of stale water which drenched Joe’s trouser leg. He pressed the jagged end into Joe’s Adam’s apple, making him gag and drawing blood.
‘You stay away from my girl,’ Max snarled, showing Joe his filed, yellow fangs. ‘Otherwise I’m going to cut you into the tiniest fucking pieces imaginable. Do you understand?’
Joe was unable to move or speak. He was having trouble breathing, hardly daring to take a breath for fear of forcing his throat further onto the razor edge of the broken glass.
‘Do you understand?’ Max screamed, his sour-smelling spittle spraying over Joe’s face.
‘Yes,’ Joe managed to squeak.
Max let go. ‘That’s a good boy. Don’t let me see you around here again.’ He tossed the broken bottle into a corner and sauntered towards the door. It was something about the arrogance of his gait which pushed Joe over the edge. Max obviously thought he had frightened his opponent so thoroughly there was no danger in turning his back. Joe grabbed the chair which had been knocked over in the fight and, with every ounce of strength he could muster, brought the metal leg down onto the bald, patterned head in front of him. Max did not utter a sound. He merely slid to the ground as the blood began to flow and merge with the spilled water.
‘If I were you, mate,’ the man behind the counter said. ‘I would make myself scarce. I know this guy. You wouldn’t want to be here when he wakes up.’
Joe nodded and scooped up his phone. ‘Thanks. Can you give me five minutes before you ring for an ambulance?’
‘Sure.’
Joe ran out across the street. A car came to a squealing halt a few feet away from him and the driver hit the horn angrily. Joe kept going. He bounded up the steps to number forty-two, rang the bell and banged on the door. One of the women he had seen in the kitchen on a previous visit opened it.
‘Where’s Doris?’ Joe asked, in a voice which gave her no option but to reply.
The woman shook her head as if trying to clear it. She glanced over Joe’s shoulder, as if to check there wasn’t anyone coming. ‘Max locked her in her room, and then ran out of the house when he spotted you.’ She seemed quite happy to help Joe, as if she too had been waiting for someone to free her from Max’s tyrannical rule.
Joe went up the stairs two at a time, driven by adrenaline. The red door was secured by a large bolt. It looked as if it had been newly screwed on, by someone who was not worried about the niceties of interior decoration. Joe pulled it back and threw open the door. The room was just as he had seen it before. There was no sign of D
oris.
The little skylight was open and a light breeze wafted in, making the air fresher than in the rest of the house. Climbing on the bed Joe pushed his head through the window. There were roofs in all directions, but no sign of Doris. She could have been anywhere by then, there was no point in going out onto the roof after her.
Joe was keen to get away before the police arrived at the café. He ran back down through the house. All the other inmates had disappeared.
Coming out into the street he could see the café owner was on the phone. He ran to his car and climbed in. The Fiat took three attempts to start and then it lurched out into the traffic. Joe didn’t mind which direction he went in, as long as it was away from Ditchling Avenue.
‘Hi, American Joe,’ Doris said, sitting up on the back seat.
Joe screamed, nearly running straight into an oncoming car. ‘Jesus Christ! How did you get there?’
‘You forgot to lock car door.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Very careless. Many cars stolen every day in Brighton.’
‘How did you know it was my car?’
‘Saw you arrive on camera. Max very angry.’
‘How did he recognise me?’
‘One of girls saw and said you were the man who had come to house to see me. He guessed you were who I rang on the phone. He was very angry. He locked me in my room. So I climb out over the roof.’
‘How did you get off the roof?’
‘Very difficult. Had to get into tree from gutter. Nearly fell down. Had to drop my things.’ She held up her battered little bag of possessions.
‘Where are you going to go now?’ Joe asked.
‘I come and live with you? I’ll be your servant. I don’t think American Joe will beat me like Max.’
‘I don’t really need a servant, Doris. Even if I wanted one.’ Her face fell at his words. ‘Do you have no one else you can go and stay with?’
‘Don’t know anyone else in England.’
‘Okay. We’ll go back to my flat and work out what to do.’
On the main road out of Brighton they both realised they were hungry. Joe drew off the dual carriageway at a sign for services and they spotted a pub. As they drew into the car park they realised it had a Chinese restaurant behind it.
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