CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Early the next morning I waited anxiously for Deb to arrive, to tell her about Gorek, to ask her what I should do. She was running unusually late, so I paced the house putting things in piles and then moving them again rather pointlessly until Shirl finally appeared, half-dressed and yawning. She was all nervy about her meeting later with a big new gym in town.
‘I’ve gotta look smart, and you know me, babe. I don’t really do smart.’ She dangled a white shirt from one hand rather pathetically; it looked like the archetypal dishrag.
‘Give it here. I’ll find the iron.’ Glad to have something to do, I ironed while she squatted on the floor, sorting out her massage oils. Catching our reflection in Mickey’s huge designer mirror, I nearly managed a wry smile behind the ironing board.
‘What?’ Shirl looked up from arranging the small bottles.
‘Nothing. I was just thinking—this wasn’t quite how I saw things when we were seventeen.’
‘What—you in a big posh house ironing my shirt?’
‘Me in a big posh house perhaps.’ I thought about it for a minute. ‘No, neither of those things.’
‘Or me going out to work and you being a stay-at-home—’ Too late, she stopped herself.
‘Mum,’ I finished for her, quietly.
She shrugged. ‘I guess I always saw you as the one that’d get away.’
I had a sudden vision of Shirl and me behind the art room, both with school skirts barely past our bums. Shirl smoking, me with my Walkman that my Nana bought me when my dad died, sharing a pair of headphones, listening to Shirl’s tapes of Marvin, laughing at Viz. Of us lying on the scorched grass outside the canteen the year we did our GCSEs; me sketching Shirl in the back of my maths book (never enough money for the fancy sketchbooks that I craved); Shirl’s everlasting legs eliciting admiring glances from every boy that passed. Glances from Robbie’s gang—when Robbie put in a rare appearance at school. No one looking at me, not really, not so that I ever noticed. Shirl telling Robbie he was thick for running with that crowd. Me poring over the glossy travel brochures that I’d pinch from Thomas Cook in the precinct in my lunch-break. Dreaming of being anywhere but on our estate. Leigh in the sixth form, all blonde and perfect in her uniform, poker-straight hair and pale pink lipstick, the other girls in my year so admiring of my sophisticated older sister. Leigh leaving to do a typing course on Oxford Street, very grown-up in her stilettos, engaged to Gary on her nineteenth birthday. Me determined not to go down that path. Planning my getaway. Always planning. Planning to go to art school; my art teacher giving me extra time in the evenings because she said I had talent. Imagining myself in long woolly jumpers and black berets, drinking cheap red wine and absinthe till four in the morning with intense and glowering male artists, with girls who used cigarette-holders and spoke like Audrey Hepburn and said ‘darling’ a lot. Messing up my exams because I got involved too fast with a boy who broke my heart as I searched for some kind of substitute for my dad. Something, anything, to fill the gaping hole in my heart. Dealing with the nightmare that took place at seventeen, when the police came knocking again, even though my dad was long gone. Not going to art school because of my mum. Because she couldn’t cope with life any more on her own—not after the police raked it all up again. Because I had to get a job; had to earn some money to stop her going under; because Leigh and Robbie were gone. Ending up behind the counter in Thomas Cook in the precinct, the place I’d imagined booking my great travels in, not other people’s cruises or caravans or their two weeks in Benidorm. Wearing a horrid nylon uniform and not a stripy arty jumper at all, nor a natty beret. Hardly what I’d planned. Not what I’d planned at all.
‘Damn it.’
A bottle slipped from Shirl’s hand, the oil spilling across the floor in a greasy little pool. A smell of oranges pervaded the room; it made me think of Christmas. I stared up at Louis on the wall just for a moment; we hadn’t even had a Christmas together yet. I checked the clock for the umpteenth time this morning. Come on, Deb. I turned Shirl’s shirt over very carefully.
‘I didn’t think I’d have kids by now. Not before thirty, you know. Not ever, necessarily. Not after my mum and dad.’ I tried not to dwell on the fact that it hadn’t been part of the plan in any way; at the initial anger I’d felt at being trapped by my own stupidity.
‘No, well, I didn’t think you’d know what an iron was either, but you do. God, I think my flipping lavender is off.’
Silently I thanked her for not reminding me of my early maternal failings; of the sobbing wreck I momentarily became. ‘I didn’t really until Mickey.’
‘That figures.’
‘Though Jean does most of the ironing these days.’ I caught myself. This time Shirl smiled.
‘Listen to you, lady of the manor.’
I blushed. ‘I sound like a wanker, don’t I?’
‘You sound like you, babe. Never the latter.’ She slotted her oils very carefully back into their compartments. ‘Only sometimes you do sound a bit like—’
I finished the second cuff without looking up. ‘Like?’
‘Like him’
‘Well, that’s natural, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’
‘I mean, he’s a strong character.’
‘I’ll say.’
The tip of the iron caught my inner wrist, burning the thin skin there. ‘Ow. Bloody hell that’s hot. Oh God, where’s Deb?’ I handed the finished shirt to Shirl. ‘Do you know what gets me the most? Apart from feeling crap when I think of all the times I wanted to go out dancing instead of sitting in with Louis every night.’
‘All new mums feel like that sometimes.’
‘Do they?’
‘Of course they do. They’d be lying if they said they didn’t. And actually,’ Shirl put the shirt on, ‘actually some of them just go and do it. Some of them never stay home with their kids.’ She didn’t say it but I knew she was thinking about my mum.
‘The worst thing is all this waiting all the time. It’s this constant feeling that I’m absolutely bloody helpless. That it’s all out of my hands.’ I leant down to unplug the iron, the rant building in my chest. ‘That I could hunt and hunt and hunt for Louis, that he could be right nearby somewhere, but that unless that person who’s got him slips up, you know, like, lets someone see him by mistake, or actually changes their mind, I won’t have a hope in hell of knowing.’
Shirl hung her bag over the back of the armchair and hugged me. ‘You’re doing the best you can, babe. Don’t beat yourself up about it.’
‘I’m trying not to, but it’s bloody, bloody hard, Shirl, you know. I keep thinking of what I could have done to stop this happening.’
‘It’s not your fault, Jess. None of this is your fault. Know that, girl. Okay?’ She kissed my forehead, catching sight of the clock as she did so. ‘Shit, is that the time? I’d better get a wiggle on.’
As Shirl left ten minutes later, banging the front door behind her, the photocopies I’d made of Louis’s picture, which had sat waiting on the hall table, fluttered in the breeze. One floated slowly to the floor; I pinned it beneath my bare foot. I looked down at Louis’s little face; I seized the phone and rang Deb again but she didn’t answer. In the kitchen I found sellotape and scissors in the drawer, grabbed my bag and left Deb a message saying I’d be back soon.
I tramped across the baking heath, attaching a picture to every lamppost and road-sign that I came to, fighting the feeling I was wasting my time entirely, ignoring curious stares from passing strangers. One man slowed and wound down his window, gazing at my still-swollen boobs. I felt a lewd remark brewing so I gave him my death-stare until he shot off in a blast of diesel fumes. And every house I passed I wondered whether Louis was inside. I worked my way down the hill into Greenwich, ending up outside the library on the High Road with my last photocopy. I stuck it to the bus-stop outside the entrance of the next-door language school. My poster looked utterly pathetic, already curling in the
heat, Louis’s little face staring out all blurry, my big bold pleading letters all wonky beneath—‘MISSING FOR NEARLY SIX DAYS’. Did I honestly believe that anyone would ever respond?
I was so hot by now that my hair was damp and my chest was tight. I’d forgotten my inhaler again and I couldn’t face the walk back in the rising heat, so I slumped on the little plastic seat in the bus-shelter and waited for a bus to take me home. Near me a group of foreign students chattered excitedly, drinking lemonade from green and shiny cans and jostling each other dangerously next to the busy road. On the group’s periphery a dark young woman wearing a headscarf and an awful lot of layers for this temperature was hovering, a small baby in her arms. She held it rather gingerly, I thought, my stomach swooping the way it did every time I saw a tiny child who might, just might, be mine. I craned for a look—it was a girl with a big birthmark on her face, gold studs in her shell-like ears. Then a red car pulled up just past the bus-stop, music thumping from the open windows, and the woman raised an uncertain hand at the driver. He jumped out, swaggered to the pavement, wearing some kind of uniform. I realised with a jolt that it was Gorek. Of course, it was Maxine’s school that I was outside. I leant back into the bus-shelter. I didn’t want him to know I was there.
Some of the group greeted him half-heartedly; they seemed polite rather than affectionate, I noticed. But he ignored them anyway; headed straight to the woman, taking the baby from her with absolute authority, tickling her so she began to giggle in that bubbling infectious way only babies can. He held the baby up high above his head then and the mother began to panic, stretching her arms out for her daughter, saying something to Gorek I didn’t understand, her mouth turned down, all grim. For a moment he held the child up higher still, out of the woman’s reach, taunting her deliberately. I stood—then sat again, sat on my hands instead. I resisted the temptation to intervene.
Eventually Gorek passed the baby back, pinching her cheeks hard as he did so—too hard, so the baby’s lip began to curl and tremble. Gorek was gabbling fast in his own tongue, just like last night, the woman nodding in reluctant agreement as he got out his wallet and handed her a wad of notes, pinching her cheek this time, so hard his fingerprints remained behind. And just as Gorek ran down the stairs into the school beneath the library, my bus finally pulled up.
All the way home I felt uneasy. Was the baby Gorek’s? Did Maxine know about that woman? But when I got back to my house, Deb was there and my mother was on the phone and it pushed all thoughts of Gorek from my mind.
My mum wasn’t coming. She’d finally found the bottle to tell me; she definitely wasn’t coming. I couldn’t say I was surprised, but I was shocked at how sad I felt. She suddenly sounded old on the phone, and I was trying to comfort her, though deep inside I was shouting How could you let me down right now?
‘Jessie, you understand, don’t you, love?’ she implored, and I sniffed and raised my chin like I had when I was ten, and replied, of course I did. Her heart was bad again, she told me, the doctor said she really shouldn’t fly. I swallowed the temptation to say that we all knew there was little wrong with her silly heart apart from all her nerves, but it was obvious that would be the end of her today, so I pushed it down and tried to smile instead.
‘Perhaps, when the baby’s back,’ she said, and there was a little tremor in her voice, ‘perhaps you’ll bring him out to see us?’
‘Of course I will, Mum.’ This was how it always was. Why should it be different now? Poor fragile Mum, sunk under the weight of my feckless father, destroyed by the very love of her life. Held together by her children, who couldn’t bear to let the whole thing dissipate, trying for some semblance of normal family life. My baby was missing, presumed kidnapped, and my mother was planning holidays with him in the sun.
There was a pause. I could feel her working up to something. There was a jangle in the background, and I saw her gold-looped arm as she raised her gin and tonic to her mouth, drinking to find the courage.
‘Robbie rang,’ she said. A pause, and then a gush she just couldn’t hold back. ‘My little boy. Thank God, I said to George. Just when you least expect it. All this time, and then—well, I thought he was really…really gone this time.’ Perhaps she finally sensed the insensitivity of this sentence because she stopped for a moment; then spoke again very fast.
‘I think he needs some money, Jess. I don’t want to ask you to sort it out, especially now you’re looking for the baby—’ she said it like I’d put him down and absent-mindedly forgotten where ‘—but Robbie says he hasn’t got a bank account right now. I think—I imagine cos he’s been abroad, would you think?’ She sipped again, then rattled on. ‘Georgie said we can lend him some. I must say, I was so relieved when he agreed.’
Lend! To Robbie? My patience was wearing thin. I thought of him on that estate in Elephant the other day, his dignity all gone.
‘Give him some, Mum, you mean,’ I said, with a small sigh.
‘What?’
‘Give him money. Not lend. You know perfectly well you’ll never get it back.’
‘Oh, Jessica. Don’t be like that. He’s—he’s your little brother.’
‘Yes, Mum, and I’d do anything for him, you know that. I’m only stating fact. It’s just, Mum, I’ve been wondering—’ I stopped.
‘What, love?’
‘Well, don’t you think it’s a bit odd—that he’s just turned up like this? Out of the blue? Just when everything’s so terrible?’ I had voiced the thing that had been niggling me all this time. The thing I didn’t want to say to Leigh, because I knew she’d already jumped to worse conclusions than I ever could.
‘He said he saw you on the telly, Jessie love. He said you looked so sad he had to come. You know how soft he is deep down.’
I almost fell for it; I really wanted to. But still I struggled with the jealousy of years gone by. However much I loved Robbie, it was hard to accept my mum loved him more than anything. Much more than me.
‘Well, I’ve been sad for years that he just disappeared, and he never came back then. We’ve all been sad, haven’t we, Mum?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘I have been very sad. But’, she brightened, ‘he’s back now, come to help you find the little baby.’
‘Is that what he told you?’ There was a long pause. ‘Mum?’
‘Something like that, yes.’
‘Mum, what’s he said? Has he said anything else about Louis?’
I waited as she lit a cigarette. I thought she’d given up.
‘Mum!’
‘What?’
I heard the clink of ice down the receiver, then a sip. A very long sip.
‘You’re not being straight with me, Mum, I know you’re not. You need to tell me what Robbie said. You can’t always cover up for him.’
‘Don’t be silly. Of course I wouldn’t. All your brother told me is that he wants to get Louis back.’
‘But why is he so desperate to? He’s never even seen the baby.’
‘How can you ask that, Jessica? Louis is his blood too.’ Sometimes I thought my mum was stuck in Sixties’ gangster London; that she thought life was like the Krays’ had been. ‘He loves that baby like you do. Blood’s thicker than water, you know.’
I resisted the urge to scream very loudly; was about to tell her about her son’s fall from grace, but she rambled on regardless. ‘And actually,’ I steeled myself for some great imparting of wisdom, ‘actually, I want to send Robbie some money straight away, you know, tide him over while he gets a job. While he helps you.’
I raised my eyes to heaven.
‘Mum, you didn’t even tell me you knew Robbie was okay.’
‘When?’
‘He said he spoke to you last year sometime. He knew that I got married.’
‘Did he? I don’t remember.’ She was lying, and we both knew it. ‘Anyway, look, you talk to Georgie. You can sort out the money thing together.’ As usual she abdicated all responsibility.
‘Mum—’
‘And try not to worry too much, lovey. I’m sure everything will be just fine. Hang on in there, okay?’ I could practically hear the relief wash through her voice as she handed the phone over. For some reason, she wasn’t going to admit she’d talked to Robbie last year.
‘Jessica!’ George’s jolly tones crackled down the line. I loved George. He was like the big silly bear from that kids’ programme Rainbow; just what my poor damaged mother needed after the disaster that was my dad. And George took care of her, which meant finally Leigh and I didn’t have to worry so much any more. But still, he wasn’t my dad.
When I got off the phone, Deb was waiting to take me to the police station. She looked very hassled and hot, and I wanted to ask her where she’d been this morning, but I got the feeling this wasn’t the time. Every day until Louis was found I would have to do the police press conference; Silver said they were imperative in order to stay in the public’s consciousness. Today he met me before I went up on that stage, to discuss the woman at the Tate. I hadn’t seen Silver since our drink, and I felt suddenly quite shy. He was rather abrupt, the police artist in tow.
‘Why didn’t you remember before, Jessica?’
‘It didn’t seem important.’
‘I keep telling you, everything’s important.’
‘I just forgot.’ I stared down at my feet, a slow flush creeping across my face, feeling like I was in the headmaster’s office. He looked quizzically at me.
‘What do you mean, you forgot?’
‘I didn’t really think much of it at the time. I mean, she gave me the creeps, this woman, but she was quite, you know, normal. Well, I thought she was.’ The internet reports from last night began to clatter around my head. ‘Normal’ women so unhappy they did something mad.
‘Go on.’ He was trying to keep the impatience from his tone. ‘Define “the creeps”, can you?’
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