Don't Say a Word

by A. L. Bird

  The poor kid really did need the loo. I wait, back turned at his request, listening to the heavy flow of urine. Then it’s my turn. I realize I haven’t been since Dan and I had sex. The thought of it makes me want to cry. Poor Dan, if he isn’t involved in all this. Maybe he’s innocent? Maybe I should check my phone?

  No.

  Stay strong.

  Stay tough.

  Chloe wouldn’t have cracked. Chloe had resolve. Chloe did all this for you, put Mick behind bars. Chloe, do you know how, even now, I feel so fondly about you? How I long to be with you again? Even though you’d obliterate me? The least I can do is not turn on my fucking phone, give the whole game away. Funny how to run away from it all, I have to run towards it.

  So I just finish using the loo, then Josh and I go and wash our hands.

  As we come out of the ladies’ I’m all prepared to sneak out as we’d come in.

  But Josh has stopped and is looking wistfully at the food place.

  ‘Can I get something to eat, Mum?’

  ‘You already had supper,’ I tell him.

  I know it doesn’t make a difference, though. It’s nearing two o’clock. The worst time. The most hopeless time. The time when, if there’s an offer of food or drink, however obtained, you take it.

  ‘Can I have some hot chocolate, then?’ he asks me.

  And it’s not an unreasonable request. Oh, poor Josh. This is all crazy.

  I put my arm round him.

  ‘Come on then, kiddo. But remember, don’t answer questions, don’t draw attention to yourself. OK?’

  Josh nods, but looks pretty glum. I bet I do too.

  I buy him a hot chocolate with extra cream, plus a donut. I get myself a hot black coffee. To go, of course. And bought with cash.

  We traipse back to the car. I consider driving off before we’ve finished our drinks, but I expect that would meet with protest. So we sit in our dark corner, and we drink our drinks, and I don’t check my phone.

  The sugar seems to help Josh. And the caffeine makes me more alert. I don’t know which of us first spots the police car, but we both shout at the same time.

  ‘Police!’

  It’s not necessarily there for us. I haven’t necessarily committed a crime – I might just be borrowing Dan’s car, and it might be perfectly fine for me to run off with my son when we’re being investigated by social services.

  But I’m not taking the chance. So I fling my pretty-much-almost-finished coffee into the footwell of the passenger seat, tell Josh to do up his seat belt, go into reverse, and we’re off.

  I check the mirror. No sirens behind us. Good.

  ‘We’re proper runaways now, aren’t we?’ I tell to Josh, keeping my tone light.

  ‘How much trouble are we in?’ Josh asks.

  ‘Only a little bit,’ I tell him. ‘Nothing for you to worry about.’

  And it’s true. Once we’ve got to Doncaster, once I’ve found Mum, said our hellos, had some sleep, I’ll phone up the witness protection people, and I’ll come clean. I’ll tell them it was an emergency, that I had nowhere else to go. Explain all about the law firm that they placed me in, the flat with Dan they said it was OK for me to stay in, and the made-up case that created a mockery of everything they’d done.

  ‘Mum, can we have the radio on?’ Josh asks.

  God knows what will be on at this time of morning/night, but I press the button anyway. There must be a CD in the drive, because that kicks in rather than the radio. It’s a warm jazzy blues – saxophone and clarinet or something. Dan’s choice.

  ‘Mum, are you crying?’ Josh asks.

  I shake my head. ‘Absolutely not,’ I say. I let the tears flow down my cheeks, so I don’t confirm Josh’s fears by letting him see me brushing them away. I wonder if I can turn the car round now, and go back. I flick from Dan’s CD to the local radio. They announce a song by local boy Louis Tomlinson, ‘Just Hold On.’ He begins singing about having a time machine, about being who I once was. I turn the radio off; I’m trying to tell myself that’s not what this journey is about.

  ‘What are we going to do when we get to Doncaster?’ Josh asks me.

  I focus on keeping my breath level. ‘We’re going to meet your grandmother.’

  ‘Cool,’ Josh says.

  Because that’s the plan. There comes a point, doesn’t there, when you just want your mum? When the only way to keep safe – to keep your child safe – is to go back to where you started.

  And so, yes, we take our junction. I drive round the roundabout a couple of times before I can convince myself to turn off. Josh notices so I have to pretend it’s a game, like I’ve joined the 2 a.m. boy racers. And then we’re in. The Balby approach.

  ‘I grew up here,’ I tell Josh.

  He waits expectantly. But I have nothing else to say. Because each street corner is where I ran to when my parents were fighting; the newsagent is where I’d go and pilfer some crisps when Mum was wearing the supper she’d worked hard to cook because Dad couldn’t (wouldn’t) control his temper; and if I pointed the car further towards town I’d find plenty of doorways, bus shelters, and benches with their own nocturnal stories to tell. And, of course, the house where it all happened. Mick’s house. So close to Mum and Dad’s but so very far away.

  As the terraces start getting narrower, I start slowing down. What am I doing bringing my son back?

  But it’s too late for that. Because there it is. Home.

  ‘We’re here,’ I tell Josh. I find a gap and clumsily park the car.

  Josh is undoing his seat belt, but I haven’t even taken my key out of the ignition.

  ‘What time is she expecting us?’ Josh asks me.

  That would have been the obvious thing to do, of course – phone ahead. Could have tipped her off. But who else would I have tipped off in the process?

  No. Far better to turn up nineteen years later, unannounced.

  Josh is opening the car door and clambering out onto the pavement.

  ‘Wait!’ I tell him.

  ‘What for?’ he asks.

  I don’t know, so I have to climb out of the car too.

  It’s 2 a.m. What am I thinking? We should have stayed in the Holiday Inn on the motorway, if I’d planned and got enough cash. We could have turned up in daylight.

  We walk up to the door. Do you ring or knock at this time, in these circumstances?

  I opt for a gentle tapping, followed by a butterfly-light press of the bell.

  A few moments pass.

  ‘We’ll have to sleep in the car,’ I tell Josh.

  He looks at the car, then back at me, wide-eyed.

  But then a light goes on inside the house. There’s a sound of locks being turned, a chain going on.

  The door opens slowly, to the extent of the chain.

  There she is.

  ‘Hello, Mum,’ I say. ‘I’m home.’

  ‘Chloe!’ she says.

  Because, after all, that’s my name.

  Chapter 38

  We stand looking at each other on the doorstep.

  Nineteen years changes a lot.

  It also changes nothing.

  She still has the premature stoop (due, I’m sure, to ducking Dad’s blows), the frizzy hair, the guarded eyes. And she’s still my mum.

  She sees … what? I’ve been Jen, and now I’m Chloe again. I have a son. We’re mothers together.

  ‘Can we come in?’ I ask her.

  There’s a pause.

  ‘You spend nineteen years away and you turn up at two in the morning and want to come in?’

  I clench my fists at my sides. ‘You turned me out those nineteen years ago because you couldn’t stand up to Dad! Don’t blame me!’

  ‘But what about the other years? What about when he died? Where were you at the funeral? Where were you to look after me?’

  ‘Mum, I couldn’t see you. Let us in. I’ll explain.’

  ‘O
h, I know what happened. You got Mick Hardy locked up and then you couldn’t come back. Couldn’t even phone your mother.’

  ‘No. I couldn’t. I had to protect Josh.’

  ‘You were protecting yourself.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Mum, can we come in or not?’

  She stands back from the door. ‘Of course you can come in.’

  Because, as I said, she’s still my mum.

  I give Josh a bit of a nudge to get him going, and together we walk over the threshold.

  God, nineteen years. Dad always told me to ‘Get back here’, and now here I am. Back here. Standing at the bottom of the staircase I saw Mum roll down. There’s the bit of wallpaper we had to rip off and replace in case the blood being there made him angry and he hit her again. And there’s the radiator I’d sit hunched against in the vague hope it would emit some warmth. Dad said it was a political protest not to pay the bills – if the energy wasn’t coming from his mines, he wasn’t paying for it. You’d think he was a bloody hewer, not a freelance engineer.

  Mum leads us into the living room. Photos of Dad everywhere.

  ‘You should have burnt them with him,’ I tell her. ‘Put them nearer to his darling coal.’

  There’s a sharp slap against my face. Josh calls out.

  I raise my hand to strike back but then I see that Mum is crying. She is shaking and sobbing, her whole frame quivering. I draw her into a hug and she collapses into me.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I tell her. ‘I’m home. It’s all OK.’

  ‘You’ve no idea!’ she says. ‘You’ve no idea what it was like! I’ve missed you so much. I’ve missed you every day since the day I let those horrible, horrible people take you away from me. I should never have let them do it. I should have stopped them. But he would have killed you, or me, do you understand? I had to protect you. I had to live it out, I had to put up with him, and then when he was dead, I knew you’d finally come back. But you didn’t. You didn’t. I tried to find you, but the trail just dried up, after that case – I knew you were involved, but I couldn’t get to you. I kept calling you on the only number I had – I left message after message. I’ve never given up.’

  ‘I know,’ I tell her. All the messages, from her, on the bad mobile, that I used to keep under my bed. All her cries of ‘Chloe! Chloe! Chloe!’ that made my heart ache. The desperate texts of a mother who kept trying, just in case she got through. ‘I read and listened to all of them,’ I say. Although perhaps I haven’t, because goodness knows how many more she sent since I left the phone at the hostel. Maybe that’s why I came back to see her. My one connection with her, gone, when I left the phone at the refuge.

  ‘You heard the messages, and you didn’t reply?’ There’s an agony in her voice.

  ‘It wasn’t safe,’ I tell her, but the words sound empty. What I mean is, it wasn’t safe, for me. I wasn’t ready.

  ‘Do you know what it’s like?’ Mum carries on. ‘I’ve just had to wait. Left you those messages to stop myself going mad, to give myself a little tiny bit of hope, to listen to your old voicemail, from when you were a kid. Tried searching for you, too, but any lead petered out. So I’ve been forced just to wait. I’ve spent all these years waiting and waiting, but you never ever came!’

  ‘You were looking for the wrong person,’ I tell her. ‘But I’m here now. OK?’

  Josh is clutching at me, and I bring him into the hug.

  ‘I’m here now, and I’ve got your grandson, Josh. All right?’

  She nods. The sobs are calming down now – fewer little shivers, fewer gulps. Just regular tears.

  ‘Go and make some tea, hey?’ I tell her. ‘We’ll explain ourselves.’

  Mum tears herself away and nods. She wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan. ‘OK.’

  She potters out into the corridor and Josh and I stand around in the living room.

  ‘Do we need to go and sleep in the car?’ Josh asks.

  I hug him. ‘No, of course we don’t. There’s just some big stuff, OK? You know how you felt when you found out your dad wasn’t dead, but that he was a bad person locked up in prison?’

  Josh nods. His lower lip quivers. I press on quickly.

  ‘Well, it’s like that, now, for my mum. OK?’

  I hope he won’t ask why I keep having that effect on people.

  He nods, though and says, ‘OK.’

  I sit down on the sofa. He sits next to me.

  ‘Why did she call you Chloe?’ he asks me.

  ‘That was my name,’ I say. ‘But when we ran away from your dad, I got a whole new identity, thanks to the government. Chloe became Jen.’

  ‘That must have been weird,’ Josh observes. Yes – a decade of dreaming about myself as two people, as a split identity trying to re-form. A decade of wondering whether, in trying to keep myself safe, I lost who I really am. Perhaps every woman has a crazy younger version of herself she is trying to escape, yet would desperately love to be again. That she feels guilt about leaving behind.

  ‘Mum?’ Josh prompts.

  ‘Yes, it was a bit weird,’ I tell him.

  ‘Was I called something else?’

  I shake my head. ‘No. You’ve always been Josh. Even when you were teeny tiny inside me, I knew you’d be Josh. I didn’t tell anyone – it was my secret.’

  ‘What if I’d been a girl?’

  ‘Joshlina.’

  ‘What? Mum, don’t be stupid!’

  I nudge him playfully. ‘OK, I’m being silly. You’d be Ruth.’

  He tries it out. ‘Ruth. I like Ruth.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to stick with Josh. We can’t both have dual identities.’

  Mum comes back in with the tray. It’s shaking a bit, so I take it from her. She’s got a mobile phone on it, which she snatches up, and puts in the pocket of her cardigan. Reminds me – I should probably turn mine on too.

  ‘So why now?’ she asks me, as I pour out the tea for everyone (Christ, this old teapot! Maybe the only one that didn’t get smashed).

  ‘We’re in a bit of a fix,’ I tell her. ‘Work got a bit complicated. Someone found out who we –’

  ‘You work?’ she interrupts. ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a legal executive,’ I tell her. I try to keep the pride out of my voice, but I guess it’s there all the same.

  ‘A lawyer?’ she asks.

  ‘Sort of,’ I say.

  ‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘I worked bloody hard,’ I tell her. Because I did. ‘Bloody hard to get from the shit non-education I had in those homes you put me in, then –’

  ‘I’m not saying I think you’re stupid,’ Mum says quietly. ‘You were always a bright little girl. Too bright to get stuck like I did. I just meant, with all the running – how did you manage it?’

  I shrug. ‘The witness protection officer suggested I enrolled in college. “You’ve got to do something.” It was either that or waitressing. So I fetched Josh along with me. He sat building Lego towers behind the desks. I did my A-levels, then when he started school, I got my diploma.’

  I don’t tell her that the dogged determination was due to her insistence, in those early years, of how important a good education was. How she’d tell me that spending long jobless afternoons at home bored yet scared was among the worst fate to befall a woman. Her point was valid, her imagination for wider horror limited.

  Mum doesn’t take the credit, so I carry on. ‘Anyway, there’s a bit of a shit at work. Mick’s cousin. Set up a whole fake case to get me to confess.’

  ‘Confess to what?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I tell her. I take a convenient sip of my tea. She stares at me, hard.

  ‘They set up a case to get you to confess to nothing?’ she asks me.

  ‘They’re a bit confused,’ I tell them. ‘They think I got my facts wrong when I testified against Mick.’

  ‘Did you?’ That long hard stare again.


  ‘’Course not,’ I tell her. Because you don’t tell your mum the bad stuff you’ve done, do you? And with her, I can’t blame Chloe. Whatever I’ve said to myself over the years, I can’t just say: ‘It was Chloe. We’re different people. I’m not her any more; I’m Jen. Nice legal executive Jen.’ Because here, I’m both. Jen’s still here. I’m not letting Chloe get me back entirely. But for Mum there’s no difference. I’m just who she sees before her. The one she gave birth to. The one who never came back.

  The phone in her cardigan pocket vibrates. She doesn’t look at it.

  ‘I’d better check my phone,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve had it off for hours. My boyfriend will have been trying to reach me.’

  ‘You’ve a boyfriend? Why isn’t he sorting out your mess?’

  ‘I think he might be one of the ones who made it.’

  She snorts. ‘They always do, these men. Make a mess. Sorry, Josh – I’m sure you’re an exception.’

  Josh shrugs nervously while I get my phone out of my pocket. I stand to leave the room, leaving Mum to ask Josh about school, friends, football, all the things a nice kind grandmother should ask her grandson about. I feel my eyes well up at the thought of the life we could have had, without Dad, without Mick. But then, I wouldn’t exist without Dad, and Josh wouldn’t exist without Mick. Does that mean I have to be grateful?

  I turn my phone on. Nothing at first then – five new texts. Before I have time to read them, I get a call from voicemail.

  I have seven new messages.

  I take a deep breath. Here goes.

  First new message. Left today at 1.01 a.m.

  ‘Jen, what the hell is going on? You can’t just tell me you love me then up and leave in the middle of the night. Call me!’

  Dan sounding angry. I press delete. I am so over male rage.

  Second new message – 1.15 a.m.

  ‘Jen, listen, is something wrong? I can help you, OK? Is this about all that stuff about Rhea Stevens? I don’t know what you think is going on, but just call me, OK? We can sort this out.’

  Less rage. Good. He took ten minutes to cool down. More genuine concern now. Although is it genuine? Or did he spend ten minutes on the phone with Tim, crafting the perfect caring boyfriend message? Delete that one too.