Lelic, Simon - The Child Who

by The Child Who (mobi)

  ‘Meg.’

  ‘Also, there’s a frozen pizza. Ham and pineapple. And there’s a pork chop in the fridge. You need to eat it by—’

  ‘Meg. Please.’

  Megan raised a hand to her brow. ‘We’ve been over this, Leo.’ ‘We have.’ They had. ‘But . . .’ But what?

  ‘I need a break. From the house as much as anything. And it’s clear you need to focus. If you really feel you need to do this, it would be better, for your sake, if you did it without any more . . . distractions.’

  Leo nodded – not conceding the point, just bobbing past it. ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘I was looking at some recent cases. At the coverage in the press once things actually got under way. And what happens is, when a trial begins, there’s actually less attention in a way be-cause of all the restric . . .’

  Leo stopped himself. From the look on Megan’s face, the coverage was not the point. ‘I’ll be in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘Let me know when you’re ready.’

  ‘Meg. Megan!’

  He checked the kitchen. She was not in the kitchen. He checked the living room. ‘Megan!’

  Jesus Christ. Jesus H Christ.

  ‘Megan! Meg! M—’

  ‘Leo.’ Megan emerged from the kitchen. ‘What’s wrong? I was just in the . . .’ She hitched a thumb towards her shoulder but Leo crossed the hall and grabbed her arm.

  ‘Leo!’

  ‘Where are the car keys? Have you got the car keys?’ ‘For heaven’s sake, Leo, what’s got—’

  ‘The car keys! Where are they!’

  ‘On the hook! The same place they always are!’ Leo dragged his wife towards the rack by the door. Halfway there he checked himself,

  pulled up short.

  ‘We should ring. Have you got the number?’ He released his wife and reached the tele-phone table in three long strides. He picked up the receiver. ‘The number. For the school. What’s the number?’

  ‘The school?’ Megan’s eyes broadened. ‘Why? What’s happened? Did they call? I didn’t hear the—’

  ‘They haven’t called! We need to call them! What’s the number!’ Again Megan pointed towards the kitchen. ‘It’s in my address book. In my bag. Shall

  I—’

  ‘Never mind.’ Leo made to replace the receiver but missed the cradle. He let it lie. ‘We’ll just go. Let’s just go.’

  ‘Leo! Will you please tell me what’s going on!’ Leo had hold of Megan’s wrist again but this time she planted her feet. ‘What are you doing! Let’s go!’ He pulled but Megan sidled. ‘Not until you tell me what’s going on!’

  ‘I will.’ Leo dragged a finger along the key rack and plucked the fob with the Volkswa-gen logo. ‘In the car. I promise. I’ll explain when we get into the car.’

  ‘What about my suitcase? And Ellie’s? I need shoes at least, Leo!’ ‘Here!’ Leo grabbed a pair from the jumble on the mat. ‘Now come on!’

  Megan was in the passenger seat beside him, her finger at her heel and her cheek pressed against the dashboard. She was cringing, muttering, struggling to squeeze her feet into her daughter’s trainers.

  ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Are you going to explain?’

  But Leo was focused on the traffic. Even on a weekday, in the middle of the afternoon, the dual carriageway was a procession.

  ‘Leo!’

  He thrust at the brakes and Megan caught her weight on her outstretched hands. ‘Slow down, will you!’

  Leo cursed. He flashed his lights. The driver of the bus in front responded with a gesture from his side window and seemed, deliberately, to slow. Once again Leo swore. He craned to see. There was nothing up ahead, no reason for the bus to be plodding at . Jesus Christ. Twenty miles an hour, when the speed limit here was, what? Sixty? They passed a sign. Forty, then. Leo made to undertake but there was a camper van mirror to mirror, with a kid driving who must have been drunk or stoned or something because he was beating the steering wheel as though it were a kettledrum.

  ‘Leo! Please! Whatever you’re rushing for, this isn’t going to get us there any quicker!’ The bus, finally, gathered speed. The needle on Leo’s dial nudged forty, forty-five. They

  were making ground now but less quickly than they needed to. An ambulance passed the opposite way – on a clear carriageway, naturally – and Leo thought of sirens, of the po-lice, of how maybe he should have called the police. But the police would have asked him whether he had spoken to the school, told him to ring the school and then ring back, and by the time he did, by the time he explained – to the police, to the school, to the police again – they could have driven to the school themselves. If it weren’t for the traffic, that is.

  ‘Leo. Please. You’re scaring me.’

  A Range Rover drew alongside and Leo twitched the steering wheel as though to veer in-to it. The 4x4 fell back. Leo swerved into the gap and accelerated towards the roundabout.

  ‘Where are we meeting her?’

  ‘What? Leo!’ Megan clutched at her seat.

  ‘Ellie! Where are we meeting her!’

  ‘At the gates! Just . . . The usual place.’

  Leo slowed, slightly, yet took the roundabout in third. There were speed bumps blistering the side street and Leo surged over them, scraping the Passat along the tarmac on each downward lunge. The sound was like the world tearing and Megan, each time, gave another yell. She pressed one palm to the ceiling and clung with the other to the handle on the door. She was crying, Leo realised.

  There were cars corked up ahead and children breaking from the school gates. Leo wrenched the handbrake. He opened the door and lunged with a foot but his seat belt was attached and it hauled him back. He fumbled, found the catch, and lurched once more into the street.

  ‘Ellie!’

  Leo heard his name in the wake of his daughter’s, his wife’s voice echoing his. Whatever she said afterwards, though, was muffled by the shrillness of the schoolyard.

  ‘Ellie!’ he called again.

  There was a hatchback moving off the way Leo had arrived and he caught its bonnet with his open hands just as it slammed to a stop. Someone shouted, swore, but Leo spun away and on, through the gaps between the double-parked cars. He collided with a coat, rebounded into an open door, and somehow found himself on the pavement.

  ‘Ellie!’ He paused, raised himself on tiptoes. People were stopping now, turning to look, but when they angled their bodies towards him they only made it harder for him to see. He shoved his way through a chorus of protests and emerged into a vacuum beside the gates.

  ‘Where is she?’ He whirled, spotted Megan approaching, but not close enough yet to answer his question. He grabbed the shoulder of someone passing. ‘Have you seen Ellie? Ellie Curtice?’ The boy made a face and shrugged Leo off.

  ‘Excuse me. Hey.’ Leo seized someone else, a girl this time, Ellie’s age, but the girl seemed unable, in her fright, to respond at all.

  ‘Leo! What are you doing!’

  ‘Meg. Where is she? You said here, didn’t you? You said to meet here?’ ‘Yes but . .’ Megan checked her watch. She frowned, as though it was later than she had

  realised. ‘Maybe she . . .’ She cast about, letting the sentence dwindle. ‘Ellie?’ she said. ‘Ellie!’

  The crowd around them was drifting to a halt. It was thinning anyway beneath the red-dening sky but the pupils and parents who were yet to leave had ceased chattering and were turning to stare. Leo spotted a teacher inside the gates, watching Leo with a look of alarm. He saw her collar a pupil, then propel the girl towards the main building. Leo searched the faces searching his. He yelled his daughter ’s name.

  ‘Mr Curtice?’

  A girl’s voice; one Leo recognised. He checked about him for its source. ‘Sophie!’ Leo stooped and clasped his daughter’s friend by the shoulders. ‘Have you seen Ellie? She should be here. Have you seen her?’

  Sophie was already shaking her head. ‘No, she—’ ‘Sophie!’ Megan, crouching beside him. ‘Have you seen Ellie?’ ‘No. I was
just saying. I saw her in lessons this morning but after lunch she was gone.’ No. Please God no.

  ‘Gone?’ Megan said. ‘Gone where?’

  ‘I dunno. She—’ Sophie grimaced. ‘Ow. Mr Curtice, you’re hurting me.’ ‘Let go of her, Leo, for pity’s sake!’ Megan tugged Leo’s arm and shoved at his shoulder.

  He released his hold at the same time and stumbled backwards, colliding with the gate be-hind him. He slid until he found himself sitting.

  ‘Gone where, Sophie? Where did Ellie go?’ Megan was gripping the girl’s shoulders her-self now, locking Sophie’s eyes with her own.

  ‘I dunno. She wasn’t at the shop at lunchtime so I figured she’d gone to the park. I mean, just lately we . we haven’t been . .’ The girl looked towards the ground. ‘When I didn’t see her this afternoon, I just assumed she must’ve gone home. That maybe someone had said something or something. To upset her, I mean.’

  Leo could only watch. He could only listen. He wanted to lift a hand from the floor but sensed, if he let go, that he would not be able to stop himself falling.

  Megan, in front of him, was standing, scanning the street. Coatless, she shivered, but made no move to wrap herself in her arms. She started to speak, to nod, and Leo was aware, vaguely, of a voice drawing closer from across the playground. Ms Bridgwater. The head teacher. Stamping her authority on a situation that was already beyond her control. And Megan again, raising her voice now, hurling gestures towards the school, along the street, back to the school and then —

  And then she stopped. She fell silent. She looked at Leo and angled her head. She said something, a question, and Leo looked up at his wife but could not answer. Because he was right. Now that he had let go it seemed like he was tumbling, like the world all of a sudden had given way. In its place there was just a void, an encroaching blackness, and the words on the page he had drawn from his pocket and was somehow holding out towards his wife –

  YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED

  YOU DONT DESERVE A DAUGHTER

  – scrawled in blood and underlined with Ellie’s hair. She is early herself but he is already seated. It is not like him, she thinks. But then who is she, these days, to be able to judge?

  She slides from her coat but no one offers to take it from her. When no one comes to direct her to the table either, she drapes the coat over her arm and makes her own way across the restaurant floor. It is busy for brunch-time and she has to weave and hoist her coat and apo-logise, more than once, for knocking other patrons’ chairs. Feeling hot, and damp from the rain, and conscious that her hair, probably, is a frizzy mess, she arrives. Leo stands to greet her.

  This, ridiculously, given what she has come here to say, is the moment she has been dread-ing. Not the act of coming face to face after such a long time but the decision, once they are within range, about how she should greet her husband. A kiss, she thought, on the cheek but Leo is caught between the table and the leather bench and Megan, to reach him, would have to lunge. An embrace – a hand on the shoulder, a brief coming together – is her backup but this, in the circumstances, would prove awkward too. A handshake is out of the question so in the end Megan flounders. She says hi, then hi again, then smiles, sort of, and just sits.

  He is staring. Megan does her best, with a surreptitious palm, to smooth her hair. But, ‘You look well,’ Leo says. ‘You really do.’ In spite of her relief, she could take offence – what did he expect? – but his manner is

  earnest and his expression uncertain and she thinks that today she should endeavour to be kind. Compliments, she knows, are not her husband’s vernacular. He utters them, when he utters them, with the same failed fluidity that defines his French.

  ‘You look well yourself,’ she says. And this is indeed being kind because Leo looks any-thing but. He has shaved and is neatly turned out – a shirt collar beneath a V-neck jumper and the colours even vaguely coincide – but there is no dressing up a dishevelment that runs deeper. His skin is wan, sunless. He has lost weight. He had some to spare but it has slipped most noticeably from his cheeks. As for his hair: when she last saw him it was already deserting him and he has pre-empted the sedition of the rest by clipping it tight. The result, a stranger might say, was making the best of a bad lot – better than a combover, certainly. But it is not Leo.

  She decides. If she was not sure before, she is sure now. ‘Would you like a drink?’ Leo already has a coffee but is directing a finger at a passing

  waiter. The waiter – a boy, practically, and east European, Megan predicts – has stopped mid stride. He does not have long, the bustle and his bearing convey. Quickly now, please: what will it be?

  ‘A cappuccino?’ says Leo. ‘Right?’

  The waiter nods and is about to dart on but Megan reaches. ‘A Bloody Mary,’ she says. ‘Lots of spice.’ Again the waiter nods. Megan fails to look at Leo as she turns. She needs the drink. She is under no obligation to explain why. And now, she realises, she might un-decide. Such is her see-saw antagonism, her decision might tip on the weight of what Leo says next.

  ‘So,’ Leo says.

  Megan lifts her head. Her husband is staring at his coffee. ‘So.’

  ‘You heard, then. The news.’

  ‘I did.’ She has an urge to reach across. ‘Leo, I’m . . .’ Don’t say it. You’re not, so don’t say it. ‘What happened? Do you know?’

  Her husband has a gesture. It is not for strangers because it would be construed as rude. But for friends, family, Leo has a gesture – a flick of a finger, a turn of the head, a tighten-ing across the lips – that says, I don’t want to talk about it. He will, Megan is convinced, use it now.

  Instead he sighs. He picks up his teaspoon. He does not seem to know what to do with it so he puts it down again. ‘The short version?’ he says. ‘Or the long?’

  Megan’s Bloody Mary arrives. It is a bouquet of celery in a blood-red vase. She would laugh, ordinarily. ‘I don’t have anywhere I need to be,’ she says instead. It is not true but she says it anyway.

  Leo regards her, as though uncertain whether she means what she says. But he seems, in the end, to be convinced. He sighs again.

  He is grieving, Megan realises. After all these years and after everything that has happened, he is suffering. For this child, this boy – this man, in the end: Leo is aching from the loss.

  Megan shivers. She cannot help it and she cannot hide it. Her husband, though, does not notice. He is searching for his voice in his coffee cup.

  ‘It was the guards,’ he says. ‘Two of them. Allegedly, of course. They haven’t admitted anything and from what I hear each one’s covering for the other, blaming some mysterious inmate. But the guards. Can you believe it?’ Leo smiles and shakes his head.

  Megan looks at her hands.

  ‘He was up for parole,’ Leo said. ‘Or he would have been. Maybe that was why. Huh. I didn’t think of that. Maybe just the thought of them letting him out . .’ Leo shakes his head again. ‘Such rage,’ he says, as much to himself. ‘So much rage.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you can’t understand it, Leo. Not now. Not after everything that . . . that we . . .’ Megan’s anger, from nowhere, overwhelms itself.

  ‘What? No. Meg, please. I didn’t mean . . .’

  She turns her cheek. She presses her lips. Leo, she can tell, is searching for the words that might appease her but she could save him the effort because there are none, not in that moment. Her husband, however, seems to have reached the same conclusion because the silence stretches.

  When Megan turns back he avoids her eye.

  ‘It was the guards,’ Megan says. Her voice is taut but composed. ‘You were saying: it was the prison guards.’

  Now Leo looks: a child peeking from beneath the covers. He nods, tentatively. ‘That’s right.’ He clears his throat. ‘That’s what people seem to think.’ He sits straight.

  ‘What did they . . .’ Megan, too, adjusts herself in her seat. ‘The guards. How did they . . .’

  Leo does n
ot answer right away. He is staring again. He wants to ask, she can tell: do you really want to know? Probably she does not but she can hardly confess to that now.

  ‘They stabbed him,’ Leo says and that, Megan thinks, is that – at least now they can move on. Leo, though, is not finished. ‘They stabbed him,’ he says again, ‘and punctured his lung. They locked him in the shower block and they watched through the glass as he drowned in his own blood. Allegedly,’ Leo adds. His smile, on anyone else, would seem dangerous.

  Megan shuts her eyes. She makes a motion with her hand, as though Leo had not already stopped talking.

  When she recovers herself, he is watching her. There is something in his look that was not there before.

  ‘He’s dead, Megan. Daniel Blake. He’s dead.’

  She shakes her head. What is that supposed to— ‘That’s why you’re here. Right? That’s why you wanted to see me. He’s dead, I promise

  you. They’ve had their blood.’

  And so, his expression seems to say, has she.

  ‘Leo. Really. Is that what you . . . Surely you can’t think that I . . .’ He waits.

  ‘. . . that I wanted – ’ she lowers her voice ‘ – this .’ She is shaking her head and Leo seems suddenly uncertain.

  Until: ‘The divorce,’ he says and his shoulders wilt. ‘Right? Closure, finally. That’s what this is about?’

  Still Megan shakes her head. ‘No. Leo, no.’ She almost laughs. How has she behaved? How has she treated him that he holds her intentions in such base regard?

  Leo is searching the tablecloth for direction. He looks at Megan and his eyes draw nar-row. Well? he does not say. What, then?

  ‘The house.’

  Coward.

  ‘The house? What about the house?’

  Nothing. Forget the house. This has nothing to do with the house. ‘I’m planning . . . I’m planning to sell it.’

  Leo takes a moment to react. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘That’s up to you.’ ‘I saw an agent. You wouldn’t believe how much he said it was worth. I mean, we’d split