by Simon Lelic
The other thing is, she hasn’t even been to visit. Syd hasn’t. At first I was terrified it was because something had happened to her – something to do with her father – but I know she’s OK because Bart’s told me he’s spoken to her on the phone. (Unlike Syd, Bart’s been to see me. We patched things up, which I suppose is something, though the fact that he was so ready to forgive me only makes me feel worse about how I treated him in the first place.) And I know it’s only been four days, and that Syd and I didn’t exactly part on the best of terms, but if our positions were reversed I would have set up camp outside the gates on the very first night. I keep thinking about what I accused her of – of wanting me out of the way – and I can’t help but wonder whether I wasn’t right; whether she isn’t glad, on that level at least, about how things have turned out.
‘And what’s all this about your driver’s licence?’ my father asks me.
It takes me a moment to adjust to the switch of subjects. But when I do I experience that same lurch of despair I felt when I learned about the driver’s licence myself.
‘They found it at the scene,’ I say, suddenly uncomfortable in my seat. ‘In the alleyway. Near the …’ Body, I stop myself saying. ‘Near where it happened.’
Aside from what transpired at the Evening Star, that’s why the police were so interested in me from the beginning. It’s something I only found out about after I’d been arrested, however. It was DC Granger who led the interrogation when I was under caution, and in the middle of the session, that’s when he slapped it on the table like a trump card. It was in an evidence bag, the photo of me clearly visible beneath the splatters of what I was informed was Sean Payne’s blood. At first I didn’t know what to say. Apart from anything it set me wondering again about why, if they’d had such a damning piece of evidence all along, they hadn’t arrested me sooner. When I explained to DC Granger that Syd’s father must have left it in the alleyway for the police to find – that he must have swiped it one of the times he was in the house – the detective constable just started laughing. Even my solicitor – a man they’d brought in who’d been on call – struggled to mask his reaction. He’s been looking at me differently ever since.
‘Honestly, Jack. How could you have been so careless?’
‘I didn’t drop it, Mum! I wasn’t even there, remember?’
‘Yes, but to lose it in the first place. Haven’t we always taught you to look after your belongings?’
For several seconds I’m lost for words. ‘Syd’s father stole it from me, Mum. He broke into our house and he found my wallet and he took my driving licence from me. I didn’t lose anything.’
I catch my mother slip a glance towards my father.
‘You do know I’m innocent, right?’ I say, my eyes flitting between each of my parents and the desperation audible in my tone. ‘You do believe that, don’t you?’
This time my mother checks the room again, as though worried I’m about to make a scene. ‘Of course we do, Jack,’ she answers, the level of her voice an instruction to lower mine. ‘We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t. Would we?’
Once again I’m not sure how to respond. I think I should be reassured. On the other hand, wouldn’t most parents stand by their son or daughter irrespective of what crime they believed they’d committed?
‘It doesn’t matter what your mother and I think,’ my father declares, sidestepping that little conundrum nicely. ‘You’re where you are and the situation is what it is.’
My mother nods at this sage summation. She glances again at my father, whose silence at this point seems to be a cue.
‘Your father has a proposition for you,’ my mother announces. She glances again to check she’s got the timing right.
My father clears his throat. ‘We’ll help you,’ he announces.
With paying for a decent solicitor, I assume he means. Which obviously I’m grateful for, and relieved about. I’m also slightly alarmed, though, that the matter was evidently in doubt.
‘That’s great,’ I say, ‘thank you. The duty solicitor, I don’t think he –’
‘On one condition.’
I’m surprised I’m surprised. What, really, did I expect?
‘That girlfriend of yours,’ my father goes on.
‘Syd? What about her?’
‘She’s no good for you, Jack. She –’
My father cuts off my mother’s interruption with an upraised hand.
‘Dad? What about Syd?’
‘You need to grow up, Jack. You need to move on.’
‘Move on? What do you mean?’
‘I mean move on. Move past your silly infatuation.’
I glance at my mother. ‘I don’t understand,’ I say. Except I do. They’re both too cowardly to spell it out, but what they’re saying couldn’t be clearer. ‘You want me to split up with Syd, is that what you’re saying? That’s the condition of your offer of help?’
‘Voice, Jack,’ my mother hisses. ‘Please.’
My father just sits there saying nothing.
I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Sorry, but no. Syd and I, we’re …’ A couple, I mean to tell them. We’re happy. But like a whisper in my ear I hear the ish Syd attached to that description before.
And she hasn’t visited. Not once in four days has she come to visit.
I shake my head again.
‘Your father knows someone through Rotary,’ my mother says, attempting to sound appeasing. ‘A solicitor. Garrie …’ She looks to my father.
‘Garrie Dalton,’ my father proclaims, like a doorman announcing the guest of honour at some affair of state. Probably he has to restrain himself from adding the letters the esteemed Mr Dalton no doubt has trailing from his name.
‘He’s very good, Jack. Very expensive. Your father and I will have to forgo Provence next year, but it will be worth it, I promise you.’
A son cleared of murder; an ill-favoured prospective daughter-in-law scrubbed from the family portrait – all for the price of an Easter break in the south of France. Worth it? It’s a small price to pay, surely.
‘Forget it,’ I say. ‘There’s no way I’m leaving Syd. Not for you. Not for anyone.’
I feel brave, like a grown-up – until my father leans in again and speaks to me in the same tone of voice I remember him using when I was five.
‘For pity’s sake,’ he hisses at me. ‘For once in your life will you please start thinking of other people. This isn’t easy for us, you know. Coming here, seeing you here. It isn’t easy for your mother.’
My mother dutifully bows her head.
‘And I assure you it wasn’t easy for me to convince Mr Dalton to consider representing you,’ my father goes on. ‘Can you imagine what that was like for me? How demeaning to have to ask a friend of mine for help? The easiest thing, I assure you, would have been for me to refuse to get involved. Unfortunately, however, you’re my son. And unlike some people, I feel a certain sense of responsibility.’
That, right there: that’s the closest my father has ever come to telling me that he loves me.
‘So you have a choice, Jack. You either do as I ask or you deal with this on your own terms. With your own money. And personally I’d like to see how far that gets you.’
My father isn’t a big man. He’s slim for his age and only a few inches taller than my mother. I outgrew him when I reached seventeen, but I’ve never had a conversation with him where it didn’t still feel like he was looking down on me. Even now: I could climb up on to the table, instruct my father to sit cross-legged on the floor, and even then it would feel like he had the higher ground.
‘But Dad, I –’
‘Where is she?’ my father cuts in. ‘Will you tell me that? This girl you’re so madly in love with. Where is she now you’re stuck behind bars?’
‘She hasn’t visited you, Jack. We know she hasn’t. Henry, the governor, he –’
‘She doesn’t care about you,’ my father ploughs on, in no mood for one of my mo
ther’s digressions. ‘If she did she’d be sitting in one of these chairs. Wouldn’t she? And you said it yourself. She’s the reason you’re in this mess in the first place.’
This is the thing about my father. He has a talent for pinpointing my insecurities. It’s frustrating, and disconcerting, but it also makes me wonder whether he doesn’t know me better than I give him credit for. Whether he doesn’t know what’s better for me, too.
My parents are waiting for my response. When I fail to say anything my father rises from his chair.
‘Come on, Penelope. It looks to me as though he’s made his decision.’
And it’s that, I think – the act of them getting to their feet; the knowledge they’re about to turn their backs on me – that makes me panic. I just … I don’t think I can take it. Without them … without Syd … I don’t think I can face being entirely on my own.
‘Wait. Dad, please. Just … just wait a minute.’
My father has moved out from behind his chair. He turns, but not fully.
‘Couldn’t I … I mean, if I promised that –’
‘This isn’t a negotiation, Jack. Do you want our help or don’t you?’
‘I do. Of course I do. It’s just –’
‘Come on, Penelope,’ my father says, taking my mother by the elbow.
‘OK! Dad? Dad, please, wait! I said OK!’
‘I want your word, Jack. I want your word that if you accept our help you’ll put an end to this foolish association. That after this is all over, your mother and I won’t have to see or hear from Sydney Baker ever again.’
For a moment I manage to hold his eye. But it’s a blink, a final flash of wilful defiance, and eventually my head bobs as I let it drop.
Jack
I never imagined that in prison it would be so silent. Not so much during the day perhaps, but at night it’s even quieter here than it is at home. There’s no traffic noise, for one thing. No neighbours with their televisions blaring or teenagers playing music through the walls. And the biggest difference, I suppose, is that you’re alone. I am, I mean. And maybe actually that’s all it takes. Maybe the silence isn’t as complete as I’m imagining, and instead the thing I’m adjusting to is that I’m lying here trying to sleep without Syd.
Tomorrow I meet my new solicitor. It’s a good thing. I keep telling myself it’s a good thing. If anyone will be able to help me he will, because I don’t doubt he’s as competent as my parents say. Except … when we spoke on the phone he was already talking about my options. About the potential benefits, as he put it, of pleading guilty. That’s the phrase he used. The potential benefits. He wasn’t advocating it necessarily, he said. It was just something for us all to bear in mind.
The other thing he said to me was that I should have faith, and that’s the part, actually, that’s been bothering me most. Faith in what, I keep asking myself? Not God. I don’t think he meant God, and if he did that’s not much help to me at all. In my parents, then? In him? Maybe – but again it’s hard advice to follow given that this man my parents have imposed on me has already countenanced amending my plea. Plus, however good a solicitor Mr Garrie Dalton is, there’s no escaping the fact he’s part of the system. And if the system functioned as it’s supposed to, there’s no way I’d be sitting where I am.
Which just leaves Syd.
I’ve given up on expecting her to visit. What I’m still struggling to come to terms with, though, is how things between us have got to the point they have. It can’t simply be to do with what’s been happening. Or if it is, there’s something obvious I’m failing to understand. Or … I don’t know. Something I’m missing. Except the worst part is I don’t think there is. I’ve been going over and over everything that’s happened, and all I’m left with is this sense I’ve been betrayed. Syd didn’t want me by her side: I’m as sure of that as I’m sure of anything. She didn’t want me there and she doesn’t care that I’m here, that’s basically what it boils down to. And though there’s still a part of me that insists that can’t be true, all the evidence tells me that it is.
So faith in what? I keep coming back to the same question. And as much as I try, I can’t come up with an answer. All I can do is lie here in the silence, trying to work out how it all went so wrong.
Sydney
We’re six floors up. I can barely distinguish one figure down below us from any other but I scan them all nonetheless. Doctors and nurses smoking cigarettes, patients admitting themselves or being released. One or two people who only seem to loiter, and it’s these I study closest. My fingers are prising apart the blind slats and it feels like I’m opening up my suit of armour: presenting an opening to my enemy through which he might fire his arrow.
‘Syd? Is that you?’
I spin at the unexpected voice but when I see Elsie lying there with her eyes open that rush of fear ebbs rapidly away.
‘You’re awake,’ I say. ‘I can’t believe you’re really awake.’ I step from the window towards Elsie’s bed and try to take in the sight of her. ‘How are you feeling?’
She smiles at me thinly. ‘Pretty numb, I guess.’
I can’t tell if she means physically, mentally or both.
‘Do you want some water?’ I ask her. There’s a jug on her tray table. While she was sleeping I made sure it was fresh.
‘Uh-uh.’ She struggles to sit straighter but she can’t, shouldn’t.
‘Stay there, Elsie. I’ll get a nurse if you want to sit up.’
She shakes her head and sinks, defeated, into her pillow. ‘It doesn’t matter how I lie anyway. The only time I’m not uncomfortable is when I’m asleep.’
‘Rest then,’ I tell her. ‘You need to anyway. And I won’t go anywhere, I promise.’
She shakes her head again. She swallows and it looks from her expression like she’s swallowing glass.
‘Are you sure you don’t want some water?’
This time she allows me to hold the cup up to her lips. The gratitude in her expression afterwards makes me want to cry.
‘Where have you been?’ she asks me, her voice less fractured now when she talks. ‘I wasn’t sure you were ever going to come.’
It’s been three days since Elsie woke up and I can still hardly believe she has. The doctors had been saying she was improving but I didn’t allow myself to accept that it was true. Although I must have. Mustn’t I? At the very least I must have had hope.
There’s a visitor’s chair by the window and I drag it closer to Elsie’s bed. I sit down then stand up again, and adjust the chair so I can still see the door. We’re six floors up, I remind myself. With all the security doors and nurses’ stations that are between us and the hospital’s entrance, we’re as safe here as we would be practically anywhere.
‘I know, Elsie. I’m so sorry. I would have come sooner but this week it’s … it’s just been mad.’
As excuses go it’s worse than pitiful. What can I tell her, though? I couldn’t come and see you because I didn’t want to put you in danger. Because my father’s back and he wants to hurt me and if he sees how much I care about you, there’s a chance he’ll try to hurt you. Probably if Elsie knew the truth she wouldn’t want me visiting at all. And in fact that would have been safer. I should have stayed away, at least until this is all over. But I couldn’t. I tried but in the end I simply couldn’t. With Jack it’s been easier. Not easier – I miss him so badly the ache is a physical pain. But at least I’ve already told Jack everything he needs to know, even if he doesn’t understand it yet. With Elsie, there’s still so much I need to explain.
The problem is, now that I’m here I don’t think I can. Which makes it doubly foolish that I’ve come. Doubly reckless.
‘I’ve missed you,’ Elsie announces – and this time I do cry. I can’t help it. And actually? So fucking what. I think I’ve earned a few tears. Before I would have considered them an indulgence, a show of weakness. And maybe they are … but it’s not like I’ve got any vestiges of self-respect left.
‘I’ve missed you too,’ I tell Elsie and I take her hand. I try to smile and the effort of doing so makes me sob.
‘Syd?’ Elsie’s expression shifts from one of surprise to alarm. ‘Are you OK?’
This little girl who’s suffered so much she felt she had no option but to throw herself in front of a train: she’s lying in a hospital bed asking me if I’m OK. Now those tears do feel self-indulgent. As for self-respect, apparently it’s a bit like love. The opposite of it. With love there’s no upper limit, no brim past which you can’t fill. With self-respect it turns out there’s no bottom. You think you’re empty, then something happens and you leak just a little bit more.
I don’t say anything. For a moment I can’t. I just look at Elsie and try to bask in the change in her. Her injuries, I know, are beneath the bedcovers. The most serious deep beneath her skin. But she’s out of danger now and from the parts of her I can see you wouldn’t be able to tell she’d been hurt. In many ways she looks better than at any point since I first saw her, that day I trailed her through the breeze to Mr Hirani’s. She’s tired, no doubt, but she looks rested. The skin on her arms, her face, is free from bruises. She still looks fragile to me, small in her oversized bed, but I realize this is an illusion. If events have proved anything, it’s that whoever made her made this girl tough.
‘Nothing’s the matter, Elsie. Nothing you need to worry about.’
I smile again, manage it. I was starting to regret coming here but seeing Elsie the way she is now – maybe it was worth it. Maybe it was all worth it, I allow myself to think. But that just reminds me again of Jack, who’s probably more scared now than I’ve ever been.
Elsie is watching me closely.
‘They told me about my father,’ she says, her voice testing the silence.
I allow my head to nod. ‘I know.’ I spoke to the staff before I came in. ‘Elsie, I’m …’ Sorry, I want to say but somehow it doesn’t feel appropriate.
‘I’m glad,’ Elsie declares, and I see that steeliness in her I’ve come to recognize shining out from behind her eyes. But then that shine becomes a shimmer and I realize Elsie is about to cry too. ‘I am,’ she says again. ‘I am.’