by Skuse, C. J.
“I think she’s trying to make you better,” I say, scratching my head at quite how he’s going to take it. Cree goes over to him with the instruments. I’m on my guard as I always am when she goes up to strangers, especially if that stranger is a detoxing drug addict. He even breathes on her wrong and I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe, I know I will. But it’s OK. She puts her little hand on his greasy forehead and he just looks at her.
“Is he hot?” I ask her. She looks up at me and nods. “Does he need medicine?”
“Yeah. My got medicine,” she says and bends down to take the toy medicine spoon and puts it up to Jackson’s closed lips. He looks at me, then looks at Cree and opens his mouth. She presses a button on the end of the spoon and the medicine disappears.
“There you go,” she says, picking up her plastic wipe-clean doctor pad and scribbling down what in her mind is a note for antibiotics.
A tear falls down from his right eye, and then from his left, and his head dips onto his knees.
“Cree,” I say and she comes back to me and takes my hand. Jackson’s sobbing, really sobbing fat wet tears onto Grandad’s never-worn track pants. I bend down beside him. “You made a real mess downstairs.” He nods again. “You smashed all my mum’s china ornaments.” He nods again. “My mum’s ugly china ornaments.” He looks at me. “Thank you.”
He looks so tired. “You do believe me, about the woman who was here?”
“Yeah,” I say, wavering. I don’t really know that I believe him but I daren’t tell him that.
“I was wide-awake. And I saw her. I went in to use the toilet and she was ringing the doorbell for a long time. I went back outside and locked myself in the garage but she came into the yard. I could hear her through the cat flap. She was calling out her name, saying she was from a newspaper.” He rubs away a trail of water from his nose. “Please believe me.”
“All right, OK. I believe you.” I lean in toward him and envelop him in my arms as much as I can, like I’m trying to gather up a big pile of wood shavings, but he falls apart in my arms. He doesn’t hug me back — Jackson still doesn’t do hugs, whether he’s terrified or not.
“Please, get me away from here. I don’t care how you do it. I need to go somewhere where nobody knows me.”
“Where’s that?”
“I don’t know!” he shouts.
“OK, OK. I’ll figure it out, don’t worry.”
OK, let’s assume for a second that Jackson’s not lying, not hallucinating or dreaming. Who is this yellow-coated woman, why was she calling out his name, and what was she doing in my yard? What if he had been in the yard? She could have spoken to him. He could have run off again or, at worst, she could have blown this whole thing wide open and Jackson would have to be Jackson again, not plain old Man.
• • •
I’m in the kitchen making grilled cheese and Cree’s drawing on the kitchen tiles with the chalk from Mum’s shopping board. And I’m thinking things over. Thinking about Jackson and how hard he pleaded with me to get him away. I don’t care how you do it, he said. He’ll take anything. He’s desperate. So that makes me desperate. And already the cogs are turning.
Bang. Clatter. The front door slams. I look at the clock. Oh shit. It’s four already. Halley’s home. I hear the tin mugs on her rucksack clanging against the wall in the hallway.
I turn off the grill and get the cheese sandwich out and leave it on the side. I bend down to Cree’s height. “Shall we go and get my tin?” I ask her. She nods and reaches her arms up for me to pick her up. I have an old cookie tin filled with Hello Kitty trinkets and cutesy little knickknacks and novelty pencil tops and smelly erasers that I’ve collected over the years. Cree thinks it’s the most magical thing in the world. It’s guaranteed to keep her busy for a little while.
I hear a gasp in the living room as we reach the hall. I grab the cookie tin from under the stairs and hand it to Cree, who runs into the kitchen and sits down on the floor with it. In the living room, the bits of broken ornament lie untouched, Halley stands looking at it all in her tracksuit, her face as pale as the hideous china bell that lies smashed at her feet. She jumps as she sees me.
“Oh my God, Jody. We’ve been burgled!” she cries.
“No we haven’t,” I say, turning and going back into the kitchen to get the dustpan and brush from the cupboard under the sink.
She’s still crying when I return to the living room. “Look at it,” she sobs. “All Mum’s ornaments. And . . . my hockey stick.”
“I did it,” I say, kneeling down carefully on the carpet and picking up the larger shards of china. I take yesterday’s paper from the magazine rack and start wrapping it all up.
“What?”
“I did it. I broke them all. And your hockey stick. I was angry about Mum getting rid of Grandad’s stuff and I was angry with you for just standing by and letting Mum do it and I just broke them all.” I turn around and look at her. “So go on, call Mum. Tell her what I’ve done. Then you can get another gold medal for snitching, can’t you?”
I go back to picking up the china bits, and a moment later, I hear her knees creak and she kneels down next to me and begins to help. “I won’t tell her,” she sniffs.
“You so will. You’ll have to tell her something, you won’t be able to resist.”
“We’ll make something up,” she says. I catch her eye, offering her some newspaper to lay the broken pieces on. “I didn’t want her to get rid of his stuff, either, but you know what she’s like. I wanted to keep that little rock he used to have. The one he said fell from the moon. I went to get it out of the bags the night before the collection but I couldn’t find it. Every time I asked Mum about it, she just snapped at me. She can’t even go in his bedroom. It’s like she just wants him gone from everywhere, even though this was his house.”
I say nothing. She’ll be hunting the moon rock down if she knows I’ve got it.
“I mean, most of his stuff was pretty rank, wasn’t it . . . but . . .”
“It wasn’t rank,” I snap.
“I didn’t mean rank, I just meant, like, well, stuff you wouldn’t want to hang on to. Like his bongs and his smelly old books and his weird clothes.”
I huff. “Whatever.”
“You must be so angry with Mum, Jody, to do all this. I didn’t realize.”
“Yeah. Well, now you do.”
“You’ve always been the favorite, for Mum and Grandad. Even Dad. You’re the Golden Child.”
“What? How am I the Golden Child?” I cry. “You were there when I opened my crap GCSE results. I’ve just walked out of a dead-end job. I’ve got a criminal record for disorderly conduct. And as for Dad, don’t you think he’d have been in touch in the last year if I was his favorite?”
She swallows. I think in some sadistic way, this has made her feel better. Her face relaxes, though the tears still rain from her eyes.
“It’s not because I’m some kind of favorite, Halley. It’s because I’m a walking disaster. I’m always something to be concerned about. Mum doesn’t have to worry about you with all your Duke of Edinburgh achievements and trophies. You’re the Golden Child for her.”
“What about Liam-slash-Sid, the truck driver?” she says.
“Oh, yeah. I forgot about Sid.” We both sort of smile.
Halley frowns, her head dipping. She shuffles up the carpet on her knees and takes the dustpan. She starts brushing away at the smashed china. “She made you a veggie burger both nights when you went to the pub, just in case you came back. And she cried in her sleep.”
We catch each other’s eye. Halley and I couldn’t reach an understanding if it was an inch away, that’s how I thought it would always be. But this little moment is good. I have a feeling a little fire has been put out.
“I’ll buy you a new hockey stick,” I say. “That Nike one you’ve had your eye on.”
She smiles. “You don’t have to. Get me a ticket for the next Regulators concert or somethi
ng. We could go together.”
“Oh, yeah. Don’t know when that’s likely to be, though.”
“No, I suppose they’ll have to find him first, won’t they?” she chuckles, wiping her cheek.
I pause for a second, the weirdness of what she’s just said ringing in my head. She helps me finish clearing up the broken bits and even insists on devising a plan to get me off the hook with Mum. She takes the sample pots of peach paint off the mantelpiece and hands one to me. She then proceeds to paint over the bare wall. I follow her lead, filling in the gaps until we’ve painted the whole section. She goes to the window and opens it on both sides.
“And then a gust of wind came and . . . whoops! Sorry Mum,” she shrugs.
I laugh. “If I tell her that, there’s no way she’ll believe me.”
“She’ll believe me. I’ve got a clean record . . .”
“. . . apart from Sid.”
“Yeah, apart from Sid. But she won’t have a go at me nearly as much as she would you.”
Who’d have thought it? My own little cow bag of a sister, bailing me out. I have spent years thinking one of us was adopted because we don’t look or behave alike, and suddenly we’re like the two talking peas in the pod on that frozen vegetable commercial.
• • •
At 6:31 P.M. precisely, while we’re enjoying our roast beef dinner for Halley’s homecoming, the doorbell bing-bongs. Mac has already come to get Cree, I think nervously, so it can’t be him. And there’s that plunge of dread again.
I pray that the kitchen TV is on loud enough so that Halley and Mum haven’t heard it. But they have. Halley has.
“I’ll get it,” she says, still in baby-girl-hasn’t-seen-Mummy-for-a-week mode.
“No, I will,” I say. “It’ll be Mac. He said he was coming over later.” Halley stops in her tracks and sulkily gets back up on her stool. Mum has a mouthful of cabbage.
I see the shadow through the glass in the door the second I step into the hall. She’s on our welcome mat. I can see the yellow of her coat. I close the kitchen door behind me and make my way slowly down the hall to face the object of Jackson’s terror. I open the front door.
“Hello,” she smiles, showing a mouthful of pure white teeth like a piano lid opening. “Could I speak to Jody please? I’ve got the right house, haven’t I?”
She seems nice enough and very pretty. She’s got all the hallmarks of every guy’s dream woman — perfect curves in her casual yellow-jacket-and-blue-jean combo. Her face is pieced together as perfectly as a new peach. Full red lips, petite nose, long eyelashes, blue eyes, and the whitest blonde hair. Behind her is a bright pink Volkswagen Beetle, like a giant bubble-gum balloon.
“Uh, who are you?” I say as politely as possible, smiling as best I can.
“Oh, I’m Sally Dinkley,” she giggles, her voice squeaky and children’s TV host–ish. I don’t know why she’s giggling. “Did you get my card? I put it through the mail slot this morning.” She laughs again, flashing her glittering teeth. Am I supposed to laugh? I look around behind me on the floor. A little white card is poking out underneath the doormat. I bend to pick it up.
SALOME JANE DINKLEY
WEST COUNTRY CHRONICLE
REPORTER
Her contact details are on the back. Mobile phone. E-mail. Skype address. She continues. “I am talking to Jody, aren’t I? You e-mailed some pictures of Jackson Gatlin to the National Sunday Press from your Hotmail account? Well, the paper I work for, the Chronicle, has picked them up. I called by this morning but no one was in.”
The security light decides to come on above my head. Bit late, seeing as the squeaky-voiced intruder and I are already mid-conversation. “Yeah, yeah, I was at work. Sorry.”
She laughs, again. It’s not even funny. I guess it’s a nervous thing. “Silly me, silly Sally. Doink!” She shoves the heel of her hand against her forehead in a “stupid me” gesture. “Well, I thought it might be a good time to call around and have a word with you. Is now OK?”
Her face stays smiling like a waxwork dummy, even when she’s stopped talking. It’s terrifying. It unnerves me so much I’m stuttering. “Uh, we-we’re in the middle of dinner. It’s not really convenient.”
“Oh. Right. Well, I’m staying in Nuffing, so perhaps I could stop by tomorrow morning?”
“I’ve got to work. Why do you want to talk to me about it?” This is a whole different story now, it isn’t an e-mail to a faceless, nameless journalist miles away in London. This is a real-assed journalist on my doorstep and I’m hiding a celebrity about fifty feet away.
“Well, basically,” she says, eyes alive like she’s telling a story about a magical elf in an enchanted wood, “we were very excited at the Chronicle when we saw those pictures and I wanted to have a chat with you about them. I grew up near here, actually.”
“Oh, really?” I say weakly, though I don’t intend it to sound quite so sarcastic.
“Yeah,” she says merrily, like we’re old friends or something, “in Randle-on-the-Wold. Anyway, I saw your pictures in our pressroom when I was hanging around our news editor’s desk. Everyone was going crazy of course, but, well, I was a bit confused.”
“Oh, why’s that?” I say, praying she can’t hear my heart tub-thumping its way up my throat.
“Well,” she giggles, “it’s very odd, I know, but the pictures don’t seem quite right to me. And I wondered if you could shed any more light on that.” Her face freezes, and it becomes clear that she’s not going to say anything else until I have.
I frown. “In what way? I mean, I saw him myself. He was just sitting there, at this table, eating, reading a paper. . . .”
“In Italy?”
“Yeah.” I remember Halley’s bags are still lined up in the hallway behind me, so I open the door a bit wider for Dinkley to see. “I’ve just come back.”
“Oh. Right. Well, it’s so bizarre, I mean, I can’t even believe I’m saying it, but . . . are you sure you took the pictures in Italy?” She laughs and it’s echoey, like a cave laugh. I’m not laughing.
“Yeah. I think I would remember where it was taken.”
“Of course, of course. How was the weather?”
“Oh, OK.”
“Didn’t go outside much?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Well, you’re not very tanned.” She smiles and chuckles.
“I don’t tan easily,” I say. “It’s my freckles.”
“Right, right. Well, in that case I must ask have the pictures been Photoshopped in any way?” She says it as a throwaway comment, thinking she shouldn’t really be asking but is obviously desperate to. “Was this all a joke is what I want to know.” Her smile drops like wet rags.
“No. I don’t even know how to Photoshop stuff. Look, me and my friend were walking through this market one day in Venice and Jackson was just sitting there, reading this paper. My friend got his phone out, took some pictures, and then he went off. Jackson, I mean.”
“Just walked off? Just like that?”
“Yeah.”
“Who is this friend that went with you?”
“Mac . . . I don’t want to drag him into it, OK?”
“Oh sure, sure. Look I’m not trying to pry, I’m just trying to get to the truth. You must want to know the truth about what’s happened to Jackson Gatlin, don’t you? Everybody else in the world does. This is a very big deal, Jody.”
“It’s not that big a deal, is it?”
She gawps at me. “Uh, yeah it is. Jackson Gatlin’s disappearance is big news. He’s a big star, ever since he slept with that what’s-her-name from that film with whatsit DiCaprio.”
“That was a lie.”
“How do you know?”
“I d-don’t,” I stammer. “I just don’t believe everything I read in the papers.” I gulp. What have I said? I’mitching to step back inside. The breeze along our path is whipping up now that the sun’s gone down and I’m hungry. I think about the half-eaten roast going cold o
n my plate.
“Everyone’s very worried about his well-being, too. His fans, his friends, his bandmates, his manager. I mean, he just vanished. No explanation. Gone. Poof. No note. Nothing.”
Or rather Nuffing, I think to myself. “Yeah,” I say. “It’s been on the news.”
“How did he seem to you when you saw him? You said he was eating something?”
“Uh yeah, a pizza.”
“Flavor?”
“Pepperoni, I think.”
“Are you sure it was pepperoni? Jackson is a vegetarian, you know. Maybe the sausage was vegetarian sausage, do you think?”
I do some speedio thinking. “There were little pieces of pepperoni on his plate. He’d taken them off the pizza. It must have been a pepperoni pizza.” Dinkley nods. Phew. But . . .
“Why would he order a pepperoni pizza if he then took the pepperoni off?”
My teeth clamp down. “I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t speak Italian very well.”
“So why would he be reading an Italian paper?”
“Look, I was just there. We just happened to be walking through. We saw him, we took some pictures, and we left. That’s it.”
“OK.” She pulls her jacket in around her as the breeze whips up a little more. “Any chance I could just come in for a sec —”
“No,” I say, more harshly than I mean to. “Sorry, I’ve really got to go.”
“Fine, fine,” she says, taking out a small black pebble thing that looks like Mac’s iPod and rubbing the screen like she’s dusting off flies. She taps it. Lines appear on the screen. She’s writing notes. “I’m not saying you know any more than me,” she smiles, “it would just be good to get your slant on it, being such a big fan and everything. Don’t you think?”
“Why do you want my slant on it?”
She does that doink thing again. “So sorry, Jody, did I not say? I’m doing a follow-up article about where I think Jackson is. See, I don’t think he’s gone to Italy at all. I think he’s somewhere round these parts. Somewhere in the West Country. I mean, just for argument’s sake, let’s say you got your pictures muddled up when you got back from Italy. You went to the Italian Market on Saturday in Nuffing town center and saw Jackson Gatlin there. You uploaded your photos on the computer and, for some reason, you thought you’d seen him in Italy, but in fact you’d seen him in the Italian Market here instead. Quite likely, isn’t it?”