I got dressed. I pulled on the gleaming white underwear that young policewoman had brought; I cleaned my teeth and splashed my face and thought that if the hollows under my eyes got any darker they’d start to look indelible. The grazes on my forehead made my face look kind of dirty, and I wondered why I’d even think that any man would ever want to kiss me again.
Silver was waiting in the foyer, pacing in front of the yawning receptionist, tapping his phone against his leg. He was tie-less, and his shirt was undone. For the first time since we’d met he was unshaven, dishevelled even. I felt quite shy.
‘Breakfast?’ the receptionist asked politely, trying to stifle her yawn. ‘I’m sure we can rustle something up.’ She indicated the dining room, but there was no time. Silver shoved a paper cup of coffee into my hand, a packet of biscuits from his room’s tea-tray. He propelled me out into the car park without actually touching me. Something like hostility emanated from him. I tried to smile, but he looked grim.
‘Just for the record, Jessica,’ he plucked open the car door without looking at me, ‘I’d never try it on with anyone I worked with. Never.’ He slammed the door before I could speak. When he slid in the other side, he studied me, just for a second, almost sorrowfully it seemed. Then he said, ‘I just want the best for you. The best result.’
I tried to formulate my thoughts, to think past my son, past being a ‘result’, and after a while I began to talk, but he didn’t want to hear now.
‘Just leave it, will you?’ he said curtly. He turned the radio up, opening the window very wide so I shivered in my thin summer dress, and had to hold my hair back with my hand. It was best if I was quiet anyway. I didn’t want to admit the feelings that had pulsed through me last night.
The sun was coming up over the sea, and I watched a little white yacht smooth over the horizon, and thought, This might be it—perhaps I will see Louis now, please God, and a new kind of longing penetrated my bones.
The red and white lighthouse was on a small promontory, cut off by the tide for hours each day. Pretty as a storybook illustration, it glimmered tantalisingly out in the water as we slid down the sloping stony beach. The sun was still low, clouds dribbling gently over the horizon; no one around yet apart from a random dog-walker.
It was quite obvious who we were there to meet. The small cluster of men waiting at the water’s edge looked as conspicuous as donkeys on Derby Day, uncomfortably suited and booted in the early-morning heat. The eldest man detached himself from the huddle to greet us, his incongruous shiny brogues blemished by the treacherous chalk pebbles, bespectacled and grim-faced. He nodded perfunctorily at me despite my hopeful smile, addressing Silver directly over my head.
‘The boat’ll be here any sec, Joe.’ On cue, a small police-craft chugged round the headland towards the beach. ‘The lady staying here, is she? Williams can wait with her.’
‘I’d like to go too, please,’ I said, as calmly as I could. Glasses cocked an eyebrow at Silver. Women, hey, pal? his sympathetic look read.
‘It’s not really procedure, madam,’ was what he actually said.
‘I couldn’t care less about procedure, frankly. I just need to find my son,’ I replied carefully. ‘I’m sure there’s room for me on the boat if we all squeeze up.’ I didn’t wait to see if Silver exchanged his look.
In the end we went on foot because the tide had finally turned, slipping out far enough to let us walk. I stumbled and slid across the seaweedy rocks in my old sandals, frustrated by the time this precarious hike was taking, stoutly refusing hands whenever one was offered. Especially Silver’s suntanned one.
‘My dad told me the seaweed was the mermaid’s hair,’ I said to no one in particular. I imagined my bow-legged father there on the beach behind me, shrimping-net in hand, willing me on. Was he watching out for his grandson, somewhere near, grinning the ubiquitous grin he’d had for his little girl?
‘Sounds like a bit of a dreamer, your dad.’ At last, Silver smiled at me.
I returned it weakly, my father still flitting through my mind. ‘You could say that.’ We were silent for the rest of the walk, speeding up as we neared our goal; concentrating on our individual hope, we were, I guess.
At the foot of the lighthouse, I looked up at the hundreds of stairs, trying not to feel daunted, then took a great breath and climbed as fast as I could manage. I followed Silver’s giant strides, driven by a rising, frantic beat that echoed in my chest. I thought I heard a baby—and I nearly cried out with joy. Then I realised it was just the mewling of a solitary gull; I bit down painfully on my lip. I hoped beyond all hope that this would be the end now; I saw my Louis chuckling at the top, happy and unharmed, eyes wide with wonder at it all—and I climbed a little faster. By the time I reached the final level, my breath was ragged and I needed my inhaler. I couldn’t deny the sinister silence above me-but still I burst into the room at the top with a final stab of sickening hope.
It was painfully obvious that no one was here. The place was deserted. My devastation was so complete now, I wanted to rail at Silver for letting me get my hopes up again, but I bit my tongue, and sat down heavily, sat before I crumpled where I stood. I struggled to retain my composure; I couldn’t look at anyone. Silver smacked the window in frustration.
‘Local kids, I’d say.’ Glasses hadn’t even broken a sweat. He kicked a pile of rubbish in the corner, and lit a smelly cheroot. It was apparent even to an uneducated eye that someone had been doing drugs here. On the old wooden table that rattled every time someone passed was strewn the works—old foil, matches, a bent teaspoon. In the corner, a syringe rolled spent beneath Glasses’ foot, along with fag-butts and a discarded packet of Golden Virginia tobacco. There was a flagstone floor very like the one I remembered from the video, and a small pyramid of chalky stones stacked on the windowsill. But there was no sign of a baby having ever been here. No sign of my little baby.
The forensic team—the SOCOs as Glasses called them—arrived in their crackly paper jumpsuits, and I trudged behind Silver back down the stairs, across the sand that shone like plate-glass in the morning light; hobbled back over the smooth stones on the beach, up the wooden steps. Following Silver back to the car, I felt limp with a new, unprecedented despair.
On the way back through the twisting lanes, a light rain began to fall. Wistfully I remembered the fairy grottos my dad had whispered of as we’d driven so hopefully through the night, packed into the old Cortina for that one last summer holiday. Before my family fell finally and irrevocably apart.
Silver put something suitably tragic on the stereo, some aching blues, and he still wouldn’t really talk to me, apart from a murmured ‘Sorry’. I did try rather feebly to engage him once or twice, but eventually I gave up. I drifted into a light and flicky sleep as Silver drove, and my dreams were filled with giant syringes, and images of my brother, who suddenly looked just like my son. When I woke with a start, we were almost home and I’d been dribbling. I checked to see if Silver had noticed but his eyes were fixed on the clogged-up road in front. And I couldn’t push Robbie from my mind, my baby brother and his glazed look, his empty eyes narrowed to nothing but a pinprick in General’s flat the other night.
But something else was worrying me. I kept thinking about the empty Golden Virginia packet in the lighthouse this morning. I’d seen a packet of tobacco somewhere else recently, other than in Robbie’s hand. It was driving me quite mad now that I couldn’t recall where.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
There was something different about the front of my house as we pulled up outside, but I wasn’t quite sure what. It took me a moment to realise that my car wasn’t there. For the first time since Louis’s disappearance it had gone; someone else had parked haphazardly in its place. For a weird moment I thought Mickey must be back. Then I thought that maybe Louis had been brought home in that strange car, and I stumbled wildly towards the door.
Kelly and Deb came out onto the path together like some odd welcoming committee. Somet
hing was most definitely up.
‘Is Louis here?’ I shouted hopefully, but Egg-belly looked all mournful.
‘Sorry, no,’ he said. For once, he wasn’t eating.
‘Did you give Maxine some time off?’ Deb asked me, rather anxiously, and I shook my head. ‘Why?’
‘She’s done a bunk, and we rather think—we think she may have company.’
Silver stuck new gum in his mouth. ‘What kind of company?’ he snapped, and Deb looked a little flustered and said, like an apologetic mother, ‘We think she may have gone off with Robbie.’ She couldn’t quite meet my eye.
Silver swore under his breath. ‘I told you to pick him up again last night, didn’t I?’ He looked at Kelly, but he was as mild as ever, entirely unruffled by his boss’s anger.
‘We were intending to, Guv, and we will—once we find him.’
My brain felt slow, full of mush. I turned to Deb. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said stupidly. ‘Maxine and Robbie? Together? Why?’
She gave a little shrug, flicking a nervous look at her boss. ‘I’m not sure yet, Jessica.’
Silver glanced at me, then jerked his head at Kelly. ‘We need to get on,’ he said, and he got back in his car without a word, drumming his fingers impatiently on the wheel. I looked at him; he couldn’t see me from where he sat now, and I thought, I’m doubly sad now—sadder even than when I left here yesterday. Then I shook myself like a dog coming out of cold water.
‘I need to see Mickey, Deb,’ I said quickly, because it seemed like a sensible, married sort of thing to say. It covered my doubts, papering across the cracks a bit. I grabbed my things from Silver’s back seat and fled into the house without a second look. I heard him berating Kelly as I went.
‘Why the fuck wasn’t I told of this?’ were the last snarled words I caught. Silver was finally losing some of that cool.
Now what?
Two things, that was what. Leigh had caught Maxine and Robbie together in my bedroom last night, and had called Deb up in panic. Deb wanted me to ring my sister now; she thought she should be the one to explain.
Within twenty minutes Leigh turned up, wearing a horribly lurid pink tracksuit—presumably to match her truly foul mood. She’d been at home spring-cleaning, a true sign of her stress. Her hair was lank and swept back, and tension pulsed through her slim frame.
Deb made us tea—eternal tea lady that she was, poor woman—while Leigh stood by the back door and chain-smoked. She was really rattled. Apparently, she’d turned up unannounced last night to see if I was all right, and had seen the lights on in my bedroom. Getting no answer at the door, she let herself in with the key I’d given her and went upstairs, thinking I’d fallen asleep. Instead she found Robbie attempting to shag the au pair in the middle of my bed, without much success, it seemed. To Leigh’s horror, Maxine had been tied to the bedposts with various things, mainly Mickey’s belts and ties apparently, while Robbie snorted something off her back as he straddled her from behind. Both of them had been completely wasted; whisky and worse—blood—spilt across the sticky silk bedspread, fag-butts on the floor, in wine glasses; foil and spent matches in the en-suite sink, an open jar of pills strewn across the floor. My pills.
‘The mess,’ Leigh kept bemoaning now, as if that was what upset her most. ‘I was going to take your bedspread to the cleaners today,’ she said almost apologetically, lighting one fag from the other, neatly standing the last butt on the windowsill to fizzle out, ‘but Deb said I should leave everything alone.’
Leigh had screamed at the pair in horror, and then rung Gary who’d come screeching round, and Deb, who wasn’t far behind. By the time they’d both arrived, though, Robbie had disappeared and Maxine was unconscious on my bed. When they’d ascertained that she was actually still breathing, had just overdone the booze, they’d untied her and carried her to bed, deciding that Deb had better stay the night—just in case.
When Deb woke this morning, to her lasting embarrassment, there was no sign of Maxine in the house. On further inspection, most of Maxine’s clothes were gone, along with the stereo, and my car (later I realised my jewellery box and Mickey’s redundant Rolex were missing too). As Maxine had never been known to drive, the suggestion was that someone else had whisked them both away in my motor. That left—Robbie.
‘The worst thing about it,’ said Leigh very quietly, and she looked out into the garden as if she might find solace there, ‘the really worst thing was that I don’t think he even knew me, Jess.’ She turned to me and her fists were clenched. ‘Robbie didn’t even know who I was last night when I walked into that room. He was so fucked, so off his bloody stupid little head, he—he just looked straight through me, like, it was weird-like we’d never even met.’
With some alarm, I saw her eyes flood with tears. Leigh never cried.
‘I can’t bear it, Jess. What the hell went wrong with him? He was such a gorgeous little boy.’ She sniffed hard, wiped her nose on the back of her hand, where the fake tan was beginning to streak worryingly ‘I mean, we didn’t turn out so bad, did we?’ She looked at me for some reassurance.
The problem was she’d never dealt with the true Robbie, not really, not once he reached his teens. He was so lost, but she’d always just shut him out, written him off, valiantly fought my mum’s battles for her, no matter how soft my mum had been on him. Leigh had fought all her battles, in fact; and she hadn’t made space in her head to accept the real Robbie like I had. And even when we three had dealt with the last crisis, the one we never spoke of now, the three of us facing my father’s final ignominy in death, squaring up to the police, trying to hide it from the neighbours, holding my mum together—just about together, even then-it didn’t bring my siblings any closer.
And eventually, inevitably for us all, there was no escape from Robbie’s truth; a truth that even I was only realising now. I could see how much it hurt Leigh as the sadness of his situation finally smacked her in the face.
I stood and put my arms around her tough little body. ‘No, Leigh. I’d say we’ve done all right. And you never know, Robbie might come through this okay.’
We looked across the overgrown garden, at the last blowsy white roses fading on the bushes. In silence we listened to the little clinks of domesticity that filtered through the dozy afternoon. Someone was watching cricket, applauding merrily. The smell of sausages lingered in the air; a child laughed nearby, ready for his dinner, and the joyful noise sliced me like some kind of paper-cut. Tiny, but painfully deep. I tried to find some comfort in the familiar household noises that told a hundred unknown stories. I stood there with my sister, outside my silent house, my house that had stopped clinking altogether. We both knew that my hope for Robbie was unlikely to come true.
My chest was really tight, and my bedroom still an utter tip as I hunted for an inhaler. I was running low; I must remember to refill my prescription soon. I was less bothered by the mess than Leigh; after that flat in Elephant and my night at General’s, nothing much would surprise me about Robbie any more. But I was confused. Robbie and Maxine together seemed very odd. I remembered the tattoo that read ‘Jimmy’ on his hand, remembered the pretty black boy and his voluptuous look.
Was someone else pulling Robbie’s strings? General’s nasty leer passed through my mind; at least he was still locked up—as far as I knew. Silver had said that if I pressed assault charges it would hopefully keep the bastard out of harm’s way, for now at least.
I was about to change my clothes when the phone rang downstairs. As usual, hope was as ever swiftly followed by stomach-clenching fear. Wrapped in just a towel, I peered anxiously over the banisters. I could just see the top of Deb’s curly head. Come on, I willed silently—and then she looked up at me and smiled. A smile big enough to show she thought it was good news, though not big enough to mean Louis.
‘The hospital,’ she covered the receiver, ‘pick up the phone.’ And there was Sister Kwame’s gentle lilt saying what she thought I longed to hear—that my husband
would soon be ready to come home. Mickey was finally on the mend again. With a sort of weary relief, I slumped on a chair by the phone.
I felt more than a little odd, shivering despite the heat and sort of flushed with panic, which I pushed down resolutely. I shunted the thought of Silver to a corner of my mind. I smiled with Deb; I tried, I really did. I mean, I was glad that the aloneness would soon come to an end; that together Mickey and I could hunt for Louis. I was incredibly relieved that my husband was finally okay.
We could get back on track now. I tried to forget the way my stomach had plunged initially at the thought of his brooding presence back home again. And then I thought, feeling like some kind of traitor, I thought that if I had to choose between Mickey or Louis coming home—well, there would be no choice to make. The crisis hadn’t brought us closer in any way; if anything, it was driving me away. We had bridges to build when Mickey came home. We needed to start straight away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The next day, everything around me started to speed up, until I felt like I was on a merry-go-round of hope and horror. The fact that Robbie and Maxine had done a bunk was seen as some admission of guilt; descriptions were put out along with an all-ports call, and my car numberplate. Leigh was convinced that our brother had taken Louis; she hardened up again. My mum called from Spain, crying pitifully, waiting to be consoled. I dug deep and found some soothing words. But, deep down, I wasn’t so sure about my brother; I didn’t know what to think. Much as I prayed for the riddle to be solved, why would Robbie have taken my son? There’d still been no ransom demand—what was his motive if it wasn’t money? And oddly it was Maxine I felt more betrayed by. I’d taken her in; I’d been nice to her, at times against my better judgement—and look how she’d repaid me.
Mickey was conscious and recovering fast, but frustratingly he still had little memory of the day that Louis went. I wanted to talk to Annalise about my doubts, about my fears that my marriage was under too much strain to bear, but I was frightened to admit it, to say these things out loud, so I took a pill instead. Then I despised myself. I pored over photos of Louis, but still every time I walked past his bedroom I had to avert my eyes. The door had been shut tight since the night he went, the door with the little wooden letters, the multicoloured leopards and oranges and sunshines that spelt my son’s name out. Silver stayed away. He was busy, I supposed.
Lullaby Page 25