The Witness

by Jane Bidder

  “Please go,” whispered Mum. “I’m sorry. It’s you or him. He gave me the choice. And I’ve got to look after meself, haven’t I?”

  “But I don’t want to go into care,” she whispered.

  No answer.

  Only the sound of a man’s raised voice and her mum, trying to calm it down. After a while, she saw them going on to the sofa. Ron was unbuttoning Mum’s blouse.

  Disgusted, Kayleigh turned away. There should be a rule about older people having it off like that. Her mind went back to that lovely day in the park when Frankie had told her he loved her.

  He still did. She knew it. Kayleigh looked down at the bag of clothes. She’d go to the public toilets, have a bit of a wash, and then go looking for Frankie.

  It was when she went past school that Kayleigh got her idea. Term might have finished but there was Mr Brown’s car in the car park with its Baby On Board sticker in the rear window. She’d go in and explain about the book on the Romantic Poets which she couldn’t give back. Tell him too about why she’d had to miss the end of term.

  It was weird going into school when no one else was there. The door to some of the classrooms was open and Kayleigh peered in enviously. Marlene always took the piss out of her for loving school but it was great. The only place where she could get away from Ron or whatever boyfriend Mum had around at the time.

  There was a noise coming from the English room. Kayleigh felt excitement running through her. Mr Brown was in then! “You can tell me anything, Kayleigh,” he had said once, after she’d stayed behind to borrow a book. “Anything.”

  Maybe she’d tell him about not having anywhere to live. The wonderful thought occurred to her that perhaps he and his wife might invite her to stay. She and Mr Brown could read books all evening and of course she’d help out too. Maybe babysit the kids.

  Fucking hell.

  Kayleigh took in the girl on the desk, her skirt by her ankles and her legs round Mr Brown’s waist. Dimly she recognised her as one of the sixth formers.

  Mr Brown looked horrified. But there was a slow smile on the girl’s face.

  “Kayleigh. It’s not what you think.”

  Not what she thought? Did he think she’d imagined it?

  Her hand over her mouth in a mixture of horror and sickness, Kayleigh tore out of the gate. Not knowing where to go, Kayleigh found herself in the shopping centre again. There was a bloke by the door, sitting on the ground with a dog wearing a red and white spotted handkerchief. He was playing a Britney Spears CD and holding out an empty carton of fries for people to put money in. There was a walking stick next to him too, propped up in the corner.

  “Sorry,” said Kayleigh. “I would give you something but I’m homeless myself.”

  Even as she said the words, they didn’t feel real.

  A girl strutted past. “Wotcha, Jason.” She waved some notes in the air. “Got a couple of tenners, I did. You’d think people would watch their stuff more carefully wouldn’t you?”

  It was Posy!

  “You took my money,” said Kayleigh furiously. “Then you accused me of nicking it. You’ve got me into a lot of trouble, you have?”

  Posy’s eyes narrowed. “What are you on? Fuck off, will you and leave us alone.”

  The girl dragged the boy to his feet. He could walk perfectly well, Kayleigh saw. So the walking stick was to make people feel sorry for him! How awful.

  “One of those, is she?” muttered the man. “Makes things up to get others in trouble.”

  “Yeah.” Posy was holding his arm tight as though scared he might run off. “They say she shopped her boyfriend …”

  Then she saw him! Frankie. Walking straight towards her, through the centre doors. Striding purposefully as though the world belonged to him. His eyes steadily on hers. Everything would be all right now. She just knew it.

  “Frankie,” she called running towards him, her arms outstretched. “Thank you. Thank you for coming to find me!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Alice had seen emergency numbers before, flashed on the television, during an earthquake or a tornado or a tsunami happening in a far-flung part of the world. Even though she had never been to any of these places (Daniel was a ‘Let’s holiday in Scotland’ kind of man) Alice’s heart had always gone out to those families interviewed on the news, hysterical for news of their missing loved one.

  And now she was one of them. Except that, to her surprise, Alice wasn’t being hysterical. That was Daniel, shouting down the phone now – after waiting quite some time to get through because so many others were probably trying to do same – and demanding to know why no one knew if his son was safe.

  Alice felt surreally calm, as though this was happening to someone else – another part of herself that was here but not here. Gently but firmly, she had taken the receiver from her husband and spoken to the woman at the other end.

  They were doing what they could, the compassionate but prefect-like voice assured her. Strenuous efforts were being made to locate British citizens out there. Victims (the voice took on a slightly apologetic note here) were being identified but it was a slow process.

  Alice had a vague picture of a film she had seen once where a mother had had to identify a son in a far-flung African morgue. Even though Garth had been barely old enough to go to the shops on his own at the time, let alone take two gap years, she had wept buckets. Maybe, deep down, she had done so in the need to prepare for what was happening right now.

  Was this, she wondered, what other parents did? Or was it her cursed imagination again?

  “We have your details,” added the woman crisply. “We will be in touch as soon as we know anything.”

  Daniel was making extravagant gestures with his hands. It was, she thought with a pang, a bit like the plane movements she used to make when trying to make a small Garth eat up his food. “Ask if they are making arrangements for relatives to go out,” he was hissing.

  The kind woman at the other end was clear on that one. It was not to be advised. Everything was very confused and also unsafe. Trust her. The authorities were doing everything they could. However, they might like to keep a watch on the Foreign Office website. Did Mr and Mrs Honeybun have access to the internet?

  Daniel began to weep. Silently, Alice put down the phone and went towards him. Forcing herself, she wrapped her arms around him. Instantly, she saw Uncle Phil in her head; clasping his heavy sweaty arms around her on the sofa. Repulsed she drew back. Even in his time of need, she couldn’t help him. How awful was that?

  “You’re so calm,” said Daniel, looking at her. His eyes were wild and red and his fists, she saw, were clenched at his side.

  Was she? Alice looked across at the cluster of silver-framed photographs of Garth on the early Georgian side table next to one of two sage-green sofas. A toddler Garth, smiling gappily. A five-year-old Garth on the first day of his smart prep school in a natty little blue jacket with matching red trim. A nine-year-old Garth leaping the high jump. A thirteen-year-old Garth with a slight hint of rebellion about his features. A sixteen-year-old Garth with adolescent spots creeping over his previously smooth complexion. And after that, no more photographs because all that was, apparently, “total crap, Mum”.

  If she was calm, it was a dry-mouthed sleepwalking calm. The type where you pleaded with strangers on the phone: your only link to your son in a far-flung place. But at the same time, your insides were churning as if trapped inside a liquidiser. Maybe, she told herself, she was one of those people who were calm in a crisis but fussed over smaller things.

  For a minute, she thought back to Garth at Departures, setting off for the second gap year. She’d been upset over his hair, which he’d had shaved down one side and dyed orange. There’d been a tattoo on his left leg, which she hadn’t seen before.

  “Stop fussing, Mum,” he’d said. “Yes, it’s clean. My friend sterilised the needle in a flame first. Anyway, it’s my body.”

  No, she’d wanted to say. Your body
came from me. I gave birth to it. But then he had gone, still cross over the fuss she’d made about the tattoo and the hair. Only now did she realise Garth had been right. There were more important things in life to get upset about.

  Like missing sons.

  Instinctively, Alice’s mind turned to the girl on the shopping centre steps. Where was she now? Hopefully back home. But what if she wasn’t? Was her mother scouring the streets of Plymouth for her? Was she ringing round her friends to see where she was, which was what Alice used to do when a sixteen-year-old Garth hadn’t come back by the agreed time.

  Or didn’t Kayleigh’s mother care? When she’d given her statement, Paul Black had suggested the girl came from a home where the girl was left to fend for herself. Perhaps that explained the tender, vulnerable air about Kayleigh that had made Alice feel so protective.

  Meanwhile, Daniel had switched on the television. Alice stared at the screen. Horrified, she took in the Sky News presenter standing in front of a crumpled house. Behind the earnest woman with her clipped voice and hound’s-toothed jacket, Alice could see several men scrabbling through the bricks in an attempt, as the clipped voice presenter said, to find survivors.

  “British citizens,” she added meaningfully, as though this was the important bit, “are known to be amongst the casualties.”

  Alice heard a gasp escape from her mouth. At the same time, Daniel began to sob. How could she have even thought about that girl in the park? It was their son who was important. The only person she could bear to hug. The glue in her marriage to Daniel.

  “Turn it off,” she heard herself say. “Please Daniel. Turn it off right now. It’s not helping.”

  He shot her a disbelieving glare. “But I need to know what’s happening.”

  Alice glanced back at the screen, wincing at the sight of a woman, maybe her age, who was weeping into another woman’s shoulder. Their grief might be hers. But she didn’t want it. Not yet. Not until she knew for certain. It was the waiting that was the worst.

  “Where are you going?” Her husband sounded like Garth as a small boy.

  “Where are you going, Mummy? Why are you leaving me at school?” And then, before she knew it, it had been “Piss off, Mum” and “Leave me alone”.

  “I’m going upstairs to work,” she said now in reply to Daniel’s question.

  “Work? At a time like this?”

  She thought with longing of the vase that needed repairing. The piece she could put back, with a certain amount of care and, dare she say, skill. Something that she could have control over, not like the harrowing scenes on the screen.

  “It helps,” she said simply.

  He gave her a look that suggested she was crazy and turned back to the screen. As she went upstairs, her mobile firmly grasped in her hand (she’d given the emergency helpline woman both her number and Daniel’s just in case), Alice felt her blood boil.

  Phil Wright, she told herself furiously, was the reason for all this. If he hadn’t hurt her, she might have married a different man from Daniel and had a different son from Garth. One who had taken one gap year instead of two. One who didn’t tell her to fuck off or hide rolled-up joints in his bedroom. One who wasn’t missing in an earthquake.

  No. What was she thinking of? She loved her son. Would do anything for him. And she loved Daniel too, in her own way. Even so, that didn’t take away the consequences of Phil Wright’s evil actions.

  “If you weren’t already dying,” Alice muttered, “I’d kill you myself.”

  Over the next few hours, the phone didn’t stop ringing. Janice. Other friends. All wanting to know if Garth was all right. Wasn’t he in that area? (Yes.) She must be out of her mind with worry. (Was that really meant to help?) What can we do? (Nothing.)

  Mum, unable to cope with a situation over which she had no control, rang on the hour. Whatever kind of mother she’d been, one couldn’t fault her as a grandmother. She’d always been close to Garth.

  That night, Alice and Daniel lay on opposite sides of the bed, their bodies rigid. The air was heavy with unspoken thoughts that should have been diluted through sharing. Tragedies, Alice told herself, either brought couples closer or widened the cracks that were already there.

  In the morning, she picked up The Telegraph from the floor where the boy had pushed it through and placed it calmly in the recycling bin.

  “Where’s the paper?” asked Daniel.

  She shrugged, without actually telling a lie. The thought of her husband poring over the pictures and reports was too much. The radio was bad enough with more reports of casualties rolling in.

  Meanwhile, the emergency line was busy.

  “If there was any news,” she said, “they’d have told us.”

  Daniel said nothing. Had he, she wondered, remembered he was meant to be running a summer school that week at the university? If so, he showed no signs of going in and she wasn’t going to remind him. For a start, he was in no fit state to drive.

  Together, they sat at the kitchen table, nursing sweet mugs of tea, neither able to face anything more substantial. “I feel so bloody helpless,” said Daniel.

  His eyes – red raw – stirred something inside her. Instinctively, she got up and went over to him, cradling his head in her arms. “It will be all right,” she said.

  He broke away. “No it won’t. He’s dead. I know it.”

  “And I know he’s not,” she replied calmly. Hadn’t she given birth to him? She would know, surely, if his life had been snatched away. There would be some chasm inside her. An emptiness.

  Meanwhile, Daniel had turned on the little kitchen portable television. There was a picture of a baby and the line ‘Pulled alive from the wreckage’ underneath. Then he added bitterly. “Miracles like that only happen to other people.”

  She reached out for him again, across the table. “Do you think that helps?”

  He glared at her, furiously. “Do you really think that just because after all this time, you’re showing me some affection, it’s going to bring our son back?”

  Stung, she turned away. “That’s not fair. You haven’t even asked me what it was like when I saw …” she stopped, unable to say the name Uncle Phil. “When I saw him.”

  “That’s because it’s not important.” Daniel was pointing to the television again. “Not compared with this. Don’t you see that? Or are you too frigid to have any emotions at all?”

  There was a shocked silence. Never, ever, had he used that word out in the open. Only silently in his eyes. Crushed and deeply hurt, she scraped back her chair.

  “Where are you going?” Daniel’s voice was scared. Mungo, whom she suddenly realised, hadn’t had a morning walk, began whining. Silently, Alice grabbed her bag and car keys before slamming the door behind her. Anywhere, she told herself. Anywhere.

  This particular client lived in a mock-Georgian estate at the far end of town. It was very different from their own Edwardian home but there was a certain charm about it which she might have appreciated at another time.

  Luckily, Alice had had the parcel already wrapped in the back of her car, waiting to be delivered. Now was as good a time as ever – she needed space from Daniel just as he needed time to cool off.

  But there were balloons outside the house. A party perhaps? Perhaps she should have rung first. “Your vase,” she said awkwardly as a pretty, plumpish woman opened the door. “I’ve finished it.”

  “Oh. Right. Thanks.” There was the sound of something being moved in another room. It sounded like a piece of furniture. The woman’s face beamed. “I’m really grateful. My sister will want to know where that it is when she comes over. We’re just getting a disco ready for tonight. My daughter. She’s twenty-one.” Then she laughed happily. “I can’t think where the time has gone.”

  Alice felt a pang. Over the years, she and Daniel had often discussed how they would celebrate Garth’s twenty-first when it came. Maybe a party in a marquee on the lawn. Or a private dinner for their friends. Now,
despite her words earlier about knowing he was alive, she began to feel less sure in the face of the other mother’s optimism. Would Garth live to his twenty-first? The possibility that he might not, brought tears to her eyes.

  “Have a nice time,” she said, turning away.

  “I’ll put a cheque in the post,” the woman called out. “Is that all right?”

  Afterwards, Alice still didn’t feel like going home. The other family’s happiness had unsettled her. She had to do something about Garth. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, just wait here until there was news.

  Before she knew it, Alice found herself parking near the shopping centre in the city. No point in buying a parking ticket. That was for normal people. People whose sons weren’t missing.

  She’d go to a travel agency. That’s what she’d do. Go home with a receipt for two flights to Rio that she could then slam on the table and say “Look what I’ve been doing while you’ve been sitting moping at home. Now we can go out. Search amongst the rubble for ourselves.”

  Whoops! Alice gasped as she almost fell over something. Just in time, she put her hands out to steady herself. “That’s dangerous,” she began to say to the girl on the steps whose bare outstretched legs had caused her to nearly trip. And then she stopped. Was this her wretched imagination once more? Or was it possible that this was the girl from the park again. Yet she looked different.

  “Hello,” she said uncertainly.

  The girl scrambled to her feet, shooting her a scared look. Yes. She was right. She recognised her now even though her auburn curls were matted and she had a bruise on her right cheek. There was a bowed look to her too which hadn’t been there before.

  “It’s Kayleigh, isn’t it? Please don’t go.” Alice glanced at her watch. Just five minutes until closing time. “There’s something I need to do inside but I’ll be back. Promise.”

  Dashing in, she tore down the left-hand side of the mall, throwing herself in through the travel agency door. “I need to get to South America,” she gasped.

  The girl – surely just out of school – gave her an odd glance. “Flights are restricted at the moment, due to the earthquake.”