Why Don't You Come for Me?

by Diane Janes

  Then there had been Robbie, little thin Robbie, who chewed the sleeve of his jumper and scarcely said a word. She had tried to be kind to Robbie and make a friend of Jake, even though it had been shaming to become part of such a household of flotsam and jetsam – a place to which ‘problem’ children were consigned, in the hope that Ma and Pa Allisson could sort them out. She attempted to convince the kids at her temporary school that she was staying with relatives, but everyone in the neighbourhood knew the Allissons fostered.

  It marked you out as different. When people laughed at Robbie, he just dipped his head and started chewing the neck of his jumper, or the collar of his shirt. No one laughed at Jake – not unless they wanted to be duffed up in the playground after school. Jo herself had tried not to attract undue attention. She learned not to say too much in class – to appear neither overly smart or stupid – and she never wet herself like Robbie, so there wasn’t much laughing and outright pointing. But she was careful, always on her guard, always pretending. She never let anyone see how much she minded, ignoring the occasional whispering and pointing. Even the mothers did it. She saw one of them once, pointing her out after school. Too much pointing and too much attention – it had been the story of her life. It was the supreme irony that she and Marcus ended up buying a house called The Hideaway.

  She thought it would be easier when they let her go back home and return to her old school, but when she got back it seemed that everyone knew about Mum. Whereas before they had merely glanced sideways at Mum’s tatty trainers, the outsize home-made jogging bottoms, or the flower she sometimes wore in her hair, now there was a new recognition in their eyes. It tainted Jo much in the way that being part of a foster-family had done. People felt sorry for her. Obvious acts of kindness stung as much as overt expressions of pity.

  And they watched her, too. Where once they had merely thought her unfortunate to have a mother who was ‘a bit odd’, now they kept an eye on her, ready to rescue their own children from an unsuitable friendship at the first manifestation of any unusual behaviour. At the same time they tried to be nice, making a point of including her in other people’s parties, never guessing how much Jo dreaded the arrival of such invitations. Party attendance meant buying a present, which was bad news if Mum happened to be in a funny mood. The present-buying for Jane Hill’s party had gone OK. There had been no repetition of the episode with the cream crackers wrapped in newspaper. Mum had managed a box of chocolates, coupled with an appropriate card and wrapping paper with clowns on it. There hadn’t been any trouble about ironing Jo’s party frock, and Mum had walked her as far as the Hills’ front gate.

  Everything had been fine until they turned on the music for Pass the Parcel, and that hideous song ‘The Laughing Policeman’ had begun. By the first chorus Jo had begun to shake, and the longer the forced laughter echoed around the room, the more she had sobbed, until one of the mothers stopped the music and another of them conducted her into the kitchen. She might have been OK after that, but as soon as she had been taken out of the room the game resumed and with it the song, so that the maniacal laughter filled her head again and it was all she could do not to scream.

  She still hated that song. Mercifully it was seldom played these days, but back then it had been a regular request on Junior Choice. Children were supposed to find it funny, although she had never been able to understand why anyone would think an exhibition of demented laughter was amusing.

  The radio had always been on at home when she was a little girl. Mum often joined in with the songs – which could be a good or a bad thing, depending on her mood. Sometimes she danced while she sang, holding out her hands for Jo to join in. They would career around the room together, weaving between the armchairs or circling the coffee table – those had been the good times.

  Mum had only once joined in with ‘The Laughing Policeman’ – just the laughing, not the lyrics – a high, unnatural laugh, which she carried on with, even after the song was finished. Jo had been frightened then. She had known something was going to happen. Mum had gone on laughing and laughing, drowning out the voice of the disc jockey, forcing the laughter out of her throat, growing hoarse with the effort, on and on across the opening of the next record, ‘Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,’ wrenching open the cutlery drawer, clattering among the knives, bringing one of them down again and again on to the wooden draining board, until it finally stuck there; at which point Mum had stopped laughing, collapsed on to her knees and started to cry, slapping her hands ineffectually against the cupboard doors.

  Jo had watched from the doorway, too scared to approach, her mouth silently forming the words, ‘Stop. Please stop it.’ She had been in middle infants then – Miss Simms’s class – it had been around the time Mum had first failed to pick her up from school.

  The episode had stayed with her all that time, from middle infants to top juniors and beyond. She could never bear to listen to that song. If she heard it announced, she would snap off the radio before it began. Mum didn’t like her messing with the radio, but an unspoken understanding appeared to exist between them when it came to ‘The Laughing Policeman’.

  ‘I don’t like that one,’ Jo would say, and her mother would just nod or say, ‘Oh, all right then.’

  People said afterwards that something should have been done. Why had no one helped them? Why hadn’t her mother been given treatment, supervision, proper support? People were always clever after the event. The doctor had prescribed tablets, but Mum didn’t like taking them. She was supposed to go to a clinic, but she hardly ever turned up.

  ‘They think I’m barmy,’ she said. ‘Well, I’m not.’

  Jo had lived with a sense of her mother’s difference for as long as she could remember. She knew her mum was not the same as the other mums. She didn’t look the same. She always stayed on the periphery, mostly walking to and from school on her own, not pairing up to talk to the other mothers – although she sometimes talked to herself – not joining in the chat with the woman in the corner shop. But Jane Hill’s party had been the first time anyone had openly suggested that Jo herself might be different.

  ‘Not normal,’ one of the other mums had said, watching from a vantage point beyond the kitchen door, from where she assumed Jo could not hear her. ‘Like mother, like daughter,’ whispered another.

  It was a suggestion which had haunted her ever since.

  When Lauren disappeared, the press never made the connection. Different name, different place. A long time had passed, and her mother’s case had never been high-profile; just a brief flurry of local headlines and no subsequent trial to resurrect interest, the defendant being unfit to plead.

  Local people did not easily forget, but Jo had moved right away as soon as she was old enough to do so. Even when she married Dominic, his family had not known any details. The official line was that her parents were dead and she didn’t like to talk about it. Dom knew, of course. She told him when they were first going out. He said it was tragic. It just made him love her all the more, he said. But all the same, he had decided not to tell his mother. She could be very old-fashioned about things like mental illness.

  Those first years with Dom had been a new beginning. They had been the best years – even if admitting that to herself was disloyal to Marcus – because there had been no shadows then. She had escaped the past, forgotten … well, perhaps not forgotten, but been able not to remember. They had been like any other young couple, setting up home, getting married, having a baby. It had been joyful. It had been normal.

  No one had pointed her out any more, as the girl whose mother had murdered her father.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  They used the Linthwaite for their Arthur Ransome tours because the food, service and views of Windermere never failed to impress the pickiest of clients. Although the hotel was within a few miles of home, there was no question of Jo slipping away for a night with Marcus: being on hand to mix with clients was very much part of the service. Instead, she u
ndertook a minimal amount of unpacking, then rushed her shower in order to be first down to the lounge, so that any solo member of the party who came down early would be greeted by a familiar face.

  When she got downstairs, however, she found the three adjoining rooms which made up the lounge at the Linthwaite were all empty, with only the crackle of the open fires for company. She normally stuck to slimline tonic before dinner, but when the waiter approached, temptation overcame her and she asked for a glass of red. He brought her a large one, which she cradled in both hands, watching the undulating reflection of the fire in the copper-coloured coal scuttle which sat on the nearest hearth, and wishing that she had risked a quick phone call to Marcus after all. It would have been good to exchange a few words, and in the process reassure him that everything was going well.

  With no one to engage her attention, her mind began to wander. Shelley and Brian usually drank red. Wine was one of those things Brian knew about. She remembered Shelley saying, half in jest, that Brian was a wine snob. It had been on New Year’s Day, when Fred and Maisie Perry invited all the neighbours round for lunchtime drinks. Jo had been standing next to Shelley when Brian wrinkled his nose at the glass of cheap Chilean plonk he had been given.

  She was worried about Shelley, but did not know what she ought to do. Two days after her visit to return the first lot of Shelley’s books, she had been on her way out to do some drawing when she caught sight of Brian emerging from Ingledene. He had his head down, and didn’t notice her until he was out of the garden gate and coming towards her along the lane. She had opened her mouth to greet him as normal, but instead of acknowledging her, he had turned abruptly aside on to the track which led to High Gilpin. It wasn’t a public footpath, and the Phantom Jogger’s tenancy had come to an end a fortnight before, so she couldn’t imagine why Brian would be going up there. Had he avoided her on purpose, guessing she was suspicious?

  She had waited for Marcus to get home before explaining about Shelley, but when she sought his advice he had been no help at all, merely ridiculing her concerns. ‘People have rows and walk out all the time,’ he said. Actually he had reacted rather strangely, almost as if he was angry with her; although a few minutes later he had added in a much kinder voice, ‘It’s understandable that you always think the worst.’

  Lately, Marcus was often irritable with her. That seemingly boundless tolerance and patience which he had always exhibited in the past turned out to have limits after all. It worried her, this change in him. He had always been so gentle and supportive, willing to listen, endlessly kind. Was it just the stress of his mother’s illness? Or maybe having Sean around? Or had he fallen out of love with her? She had been watching him closely at the itinerary planning meeting. He was always so nice to Melissa, laughing at her jokes, agreeing with her ideas. Of course, Marcus was like that with most people. That was his way of charming them into doing what he wanted – a softening-up process, which began by his appearing to agree with them. Maybe it was no more than that with Melissa.

  She brought the glass to her lips and drank deeply, scarcely aware of what she was doing. She could not bear it if Marcus deserted her. If she was absolutely honest with herself, she had never really loved him in the way she had loved Dominic, but that did not mean she did not love him enough – and moreover, she needed him. Melissa did not need Marcus. Melissa would just make a plaything of him, until she was ready to move on to the next man; whereas she, Jo, would always be faithful. Faithful unto death. No – that had been the set of promises she had made to Dom, when they were married in church. What had she and Marcus said to one another on their wedding day? It had been a secular event in a small hotel, with just a few close friends and relatives. Nerys had read an Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnet, and for music they had John Dowland’s ‘Come away, come sweet love’, but she was alarmed to discover that she could no longer remember exactly what form of words she and Marcus had said to one another. It was only five years ago, but it had already gone, washed down the sink along with so many other memories, some good, some bad.

  It’s understandable that you always think the worst.

  Well, yes, why wouldn’t she? Dom had once said something along similar lines, on a day which had been much longer ago than that second wedding ceremony, but his words, and the expression on his face as he spoke them – that particular memory had clung on, evaded the tide of red wine and tears, so that she could still see the look in his eyes, desperate, almost fearful. How much bad luck can you have in a single life?

  He didn’t really mean bad luck. Bad luck is when your number doesn’t come up in the raffle, or you’ve just missed the bus. He meant horrible things; the kind of hideous events which don’t intrude into most people’s lives at all. That was why it was possible to believe that Brian had killed Shelley in a fit of temper and then pretended she had gone away – because lightning did strike twice. It struck the same people again and again and again, and although everybody hopes for a happy ending, not all of us get one.

  Jo’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of voices from the hall, but when she looked up she found that the women entering the lounge were not members of her own party, but two young women, one fair and one dark, who made a faint nod of acknowledgement in Jo’s direction before seating themselves on a striped sofa at the window end of the room. They had already equipped themselves with glasses of wine from the bar, and continued the conversation they had begun there without pause. Jo had spent enough time in hotel lounges to become adept at guessing the reason behind visitors’ stays: the lone businessman or woman, the couple on a romantic break, the fag ends of a wedding party, scrutinizing the prices in the bar and wishing their friends’ nuptials had been booked at a more affordable venue. She guessed that these two were girlfriends, taking a break from families or careers. She did not set out to overhear them, but the room was too quiet not to do so.

  ‘I’d forgotten how tiny they are,’ the brunette was saying. ‘Her little feet were lost up the legs of her babygrow.’

  ‘They grow so fast,’ said the blonde. ‘The first-size clothes only fit them for a week or two.’

  ‘Those tiny little fingers … and all that hair when she was born.’

  ‘Brandon looked as bald as his grandpa, but he wasn’t really. His head was covered in hair, but it was so fine and pale you couldn’t see it.’

  ‘And they have a lovely smell,’ the brunette eulogized. ‘You know, I’d have laughed if anyone had said that to me before I had Cassie. But I used to press my face against her hair and just smell her.’

  They all smell unique, Jo wanted to say. I read it somewhere. Someone somewhere did experiments with mothers and their new babies. They found out that mothers could pick out the garments their own babies had been wearing, just by the smell.

  ‘I’d forgotten the smell,’ said the blonde. ‘You know, before I had Brandon, I used to think all babies looked alike – at least, they did to me …’

  And to me, Jo added, silently. I know what you’re going to say next – and it was the same with me, just the same.

  ‘… but once I’d got him, I would have been able to pick him out from a thousand other babies.’

  ‘Your own baby looks completely different to anyone else’s,’ her friend agreed. ‘There must be some sort of primitive mechanism going on. You know, some sort of instinct.’

  And surely you must go on knowing them. Even if you haven’t seen them for years, you would still recognize your own child. There would be something about them – there would have to be something … The tight band of pain around her chest took her by surprise. A constriction of grief so fierce and unexpected that for a moment she feared some actual physical illness had overtaken her. She put her empty wine glass on the low table beside the chair, before getting to her feet. The two women on the striped sofa were facing out towards the view and paid her no heed, but Mrs Tanner and Mrs Cohen from the tour glanced at her as she passed them in the hall. She forced herself to nod in
their direction and, rather than run the risk of meeting other members of her group on the main stairs, she fled into the ladies’ cloakroom. It smelled of perfumed handwash and pot pourri, refreshed daily. There were stacks of individually folded white towels, daintily sized for single use. A huge vase of fresh flowers stood on the marble counter, neatly placed between the inset oval basins. The flowers were reflected again and again in the mirrors all around the room, so that there appeared to be dozens of vases in front of her, behind her, all around her. It reminded her of a game she and her mother had sometimes played when she was very little, in which they angled the moveable side mirrors of her mother’s dressing table until they reflected dozens of faces which seemed to people the whole bedroom, all of them looking like herself and her mother, all of them pulling the same faces, mocking them.

  She grabbed the edge of the counter as if to steady herself. She must not cry. If her make-up got smudged, there would be no chance of escaping upstairs to repair it without being seen. She ran cold water into one of the basins, splashing some on to her wrists, then cupping some to her mouth. Using one of the pristine towels to dry herself, she watched the last of the water gurgle down the plughole. More memories gone. She would have forgotten this in a few days’ time. The women talking on the sofa, the heady sensation of too much wine. She had been a fool to gulp down a whole glass on an empty stomach.

  Now that the water had stopped running, she was aware of a faint hum; the electric lights, perhaps, or a discreet fan. She smoothed her hair and checked herself in the mirrors, front, side and rear views. It was like being in a dressing room backstage. She had that same sense of being about to participate in something which was not quite real; getting herself into character, moulding herself into the part she was to play. In a moment or two she would emerge as Jo Handley, a director of M. H. Tours (in association with Flights of Fantasy) Ltd. Calm, clear-headed, professional to her fingertips: someone who would sit down to a dinner she did not want, delivering lines about Arthur Ransome in response to appropriate cues.