Someone Else's Son, page 32
‘Oh, don’t be so stupid. You were driving this time last week. I just don’t know how . . .’ Carrie trailed off as someone else came into the waiting room and sat opposite. Brody was, of course, grateful that his wife had instructed her secretary to call the most renowned ophthalmologist in London, but all he wanted was to be assessed by the local hospital, be told that his sight would return in a few more days, that it was all a terrible mistake, that of course he’d see his son grow up and of course he’d see the look on his wife’s face again when they made love. Things like this didn’t happen to him.
Brody sighed and confessed. She hadn’t been around much to notice if his car was in the drive or not. ‘I’ve been taking taxis and the bus when it’s been really bad. It just happened, right? Let’s wait and see what the doctor says.’ Brody scuffed his feet on what he guessed were shiny tiles. There was no vague outline of his shoes today, no silhouette against the floor, no fading impression of the world around him that he’d grown used to over the last few months. He’d thought nothing of it at first – just an annoying feeling that the night was closing in early, that a curtain was being eased shut in the centre of each of his eyes. Add to that a smear of grease – everyone at his age needs glasses, don’t they? – and that was what Brody saw. ‘If this guy doesn’t cut it, I’m going straight to the local hospital.’
‘That’s all very well, Brody, but—’
‘Professor Quinell, please,’ the nurse announced softly.
Brody stood and wobbled. He felt Carrie’s arm on his and he was grateful. She led him across the waiting room faster than he would have liked – it wasn’t easy trusting someone so implicitly, even if they were your wife – and he heard her chatting brightly to the nurse about the clear skies and the snow that was forecast. He wondered if, when it did snow, the world would seem that little bit brighter.
It was two hours later when Mr Cleveland offered a diagnosis following an uncomfortable and lengthy electroretinography test on Brody. Carrie had sat in reception then gone for a coffee along Marylebone High Street. Several fans had asked her for her autograph. She sent them away with a swish of her hand.
‘It’s not good news, I’m afraid,’ Mr Cleveland said, scanning over the results at his desk. ‘We need to run some blood tests, to ascertain the genetic factors involved, but initially the signs are that you have a condition called choroideremia, Professor.’
‘How’s it treated?’ Carrie immediately asked. ‘Drops? Pills? What?’ It was an inconvenience. Until he could see again, they’d need to hire help, have things adapted at home. She had precious little time to be attending to such needs and briefly cursed Brody in her head for letting the condition come this far.
‘There is no treatment, I’m afraid. It’s a progressive disease, which, if I’m right with my diagnosis, will have been hard-wired into you since birth by your mother genetically.’
‘There,’ Carrie continued. ‘If you’d spoken up earlier, then you could have got something done about it.’
‘No. No, you’re wrong about that.’ Mr Cleveland was patient but vehement. ‘I’m afraid it’s never curable. The sufferers, almost always men, are usually registered blind during their early to middle adulthoods. The faulty chromosome is carried by the mothers and passed down the male line.’
Carrie immediately thought of Max.
‘But fathers never pass on the X chromosome to their sons. Your little boy will be fine. Had you had a daughter, or if you decide to add to your family, then genetic counselling will be in order.’
Carrie’s mind whirred. She hadn’t thought about having more children in a long while. Reality Check had only been running a few months but she was already becoming famous. She wanted to build up the show, branch out, travel – it all meant long days and nights away. The show was already in consultation for an indefinite run. Having more children was out of the question.
‘We won’t be having a daughter,’ she said.
Brody’s head whipped round to her. ‘That’s final, is it?’ he asked coldly.
‘Professor Quinell, you are going to have to make some big changes to your life from now on. I don’t, in all honesty, comprehend how you’ve managed this far without needing assistance. There must have been a marked degeneration in your sight recently.’
Brody nodded slowly in agreement. Carrie reached out for his hand. She felt so desperately sorry for him, and for herself. This couldn’t have come at a worse time.
‘It’s not unusual for sufferers of choroideremia to initially be in denial. Knowing that it’s untreatable is particularly hard to take, as well as being aware of the final outcome. Blindness.’
‘So are you telling me he can’t see anything? Nothing at all?’ Carrie glanced between the ophthalmologist and her husband. She blinked.
‘From what I can determine, there’s a minimal amount of peripheral vision remaining in the left eye and virtually nothing in the right. Would you concur with that, Professor Quinell?’
But Brody had left his seat and was walking tentatively across the room, arms outstretched, head bent to one side in a way that Carrie had noticed him doing recently – to use the minuscule amount of sight he had remaining, she now knew. He knocked into a plant stand, grabbed for it but missed. Soil spread over the pale carpet. ‘I can see just fine,’ he boomed. Then his voice gave way a little. ‘It’s the rest of the world that’s got the problem.’
WEDNESDAY, 29 APRIL 2009
Clive flew Carrie and Brody back to London City Airport the next morning. Showing the utmost respect for his employer and choosing to wear a black tie rather than the usual green and gold one with the Reality Check embroidered logo, he made little chat during the hour-long flight. Rather he concentrated on flying them safely through the storm that followed them to the capital. Once landed and the engine cut, Clive produced two umbrellas for his passengers.
‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do,’ he said solemnly once inside the terminal building.
‘Thank you, Clive,’ Carrie replied gratefully. It was a comfort to know she had reliable staff during such hard times. She instructed her driver to take them directly to the police station where she knew she would find Dennis and his team.
‘I still can’t believe you didn’t ask details when Dennis called last night,’ she said to Brody.
‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ he replied flatly.
But it was those details that kept Carrie going from one minute to the next. How could her life have changed so drastically in such a short space of time? Details weren’t something she was used to being caught up in or bothered with. She delegated and shifted the weight of them – to her stylist, her secretary, her producer, her housekeeper – all those people who were present in her life to remove annoying details.
But now, these last few days, she had become obsessed with the minutiae of life and there was no one who could help her process the snippets of information that her brain churned over and over like wet washing.
Brody, too, had absorbed details during his overnight stay at Charlbury, picking up snippets of her life that he knew nothing about. Ironic, Carrie thought as she’d attempted to force sleep upon herself with pills and alcohol, that after all these years he finds me like this – lost, bereft, empty. Ironic again, she thought at 3.30 a.m., that they’d never, since they’d first met, been so similar in every way.
‘Professor, Carrie,’ Dennis said, nodding and guiding them immediately into his small office. It was hot and stuffy and Carrie gasped for air. It smelt of coffee and vaguely of sweat, she thought, imagining the detective up all night working on the case. ‘Please have a seat.’ He shifted a second chair into place the other side of his desk.
As she sat, Carrie was reminded of the last time Dennis had stayed over at her house. Perhaps it was the masculine scent pervading the office that brought the event to mind, or perhaps, too, the sombre, unreal aspect of the situation. Just as she didn’t want to be here now, she hadn’t wanted Dennis in her house either, not really, although she’d readily taken the comfort of his body to fulfil a need.
It was summer, an intolerably humid evening and Dennis had called her on the pretence of needing to talk about a woman she was having on the show that Friday. They’d already been over the details a thousand times and she knew the legal implications of getting it wrong, but still Dennis insisted they meet. Carrie recalled the flutter in her chest when she opened the door to him – seeing the way his pale shirt stuck to his back as he walked through to the kitchen, how his forehead was damp from the day’s heat or, as Carrie imagined it, as if they’d already had sex. She remembered making martinis and knocking over the jar of olives, how Dennis grabbed her wrists and roughly pulled her towards him.
In the morning came the guilt of sneaking him out of the house, her pulse rate soaring as she tried to distract Max long enough for Dennis to escape unnoticed. It far outweighed the pleasure they’d shared in bed. Plus the potential scandal of being involved with the detective who had, on occasion, appeared on the show alongside her, was not something she relished. It was another detail. Another nuisance.
‘We found his prints on the knife.’ Dennis picked up a folder, half opened it, then dropped it back down on his desk. ‘Details aside, they matched a boy called Warren Lane. He’s a known offender and he clearly fits the description you gave us, Professor. I’m in no doubt he was one of the youths you spotted at the café.’ Dennis’s tone was measured and considered.
Carrie forced her mind to work. ‘If Brody gave you a description . . .’ She trailed off. She turned to Brody. She couldn’t understand how it had taken so long to get to this point. ‘You were actually watching Max’s killer.’ A noise came from her throat that she didn’t immediately recognise as hers. It was a mix of incredulous laugh and a wail. ‘You were watching,’ she reiterated, realising the irony. ‘Couldn’t you have done something to stop him?’
‘If I’d gone steaming in, Max would never have forgiven me. I was trying to make things more bearable for him. What parent wouldn’t? I had no idea things would end like this.’
‘But there’s bad news, I’m afraid.’ Dennis’s voice cut through accusations and defence. Both Carrie and Brody turned simultaneously.
Bad news? Carrie thought. No. There was no more bad news left in the world. Anything he told them, as far as she was now concerned, could only be good.
‘The Crown Prosecution Service decided not to charge half an hour before you arrived. Warren Lane is to be released from custody.’
‘What?’ Brody slammed his hands on the desk. Carrie reeled and caught one of them between her palms. She was shaking.
‘I’m sorry,’ was Dennis’s reply. ‘It was out of my control. The evidence we produced was not strong enough in the view of the Crown Prosecution lawyer.’
‘It sounds bloody conclusive to me.’ It was Carrie’s last burst of conscious speech. She broke down in sobs and fits of anger and rage.
‘It was the quality of the fingerprints on the knife. They weren’t a good enough match and, without a positive witness identification of Lane, it just wasn’t enough.’ Dennis paused, letting them take it in. ‘Of course, I’ve already requested further analysis of the knife, to see if they can come up with something better. It’s a travesty and I’m sorry.’
Dayna vomited. Hardly anything came up as she hadn’t eaten properly in ages. Her stomach tightened and squeezed and fought to wring out her insides. It was horrible. She hoisted herself up from the floor, her hands flat on the cold loo seat, and stood feeling dizzy and weak. Her head swam as if her brain was floating through the universe with nothing but the rest of time around it. Her skin tingled and her mouth was dry one minute and salivating the next. She bobbed down and chucked up again.
‘Bleedin’ hurry up, girl,’ came the voice through the door. It was Kev. He always went to the Working Men’s Club on Wednesdays and usually soaped up his chin and shaved before he left. Dayna had no idea why he went there. He’d hardly ever worked in his life.
She flushed the loo and emerged on to the tiny landing. Her tongue was burning and the muscles in her belly ached. Kev scowled, pushed straight past her and slammed the bathroom door. In her room, Dayna lay on the bed. She had a weep. Max was dead. No more meetings at the shed. No more shared cigarettes. No more competitions. The thought of all that emptiness made her feel sick all over again.
She heard the knock on the front door. Then she heard an unfamiliar woman’s voice. There were footsteps stamping up the stairs and then her door caved inwards. Her mother stood there. ‘Some cop or other to see you. Get up.’
Dayna followed her mother downstairs. ‘Who is it, Mum?’ she asked quietly.
Her mother turned on the stairs. ‘How the fuck do I know?’ She shook her head and slammed back into the kitchen. On the front doorstep was a woman. Recognition set something alight in Dayna’s recent memory.
‘Yeah?’ Dayna said. As much as she’d wanted to sound confrontational, she didn’t. There was none of that left inside her.
‘Dayna, my name’s Leah Roffe. Do you remember? I work with Carrie. I’d like to talk to you. It’s really important.’
She didn’t tell her mother she was leaving. No one would notice she’d gone, anyway. Not until it came time to look after Lorrell, and even then her little sister would just be left in front of the telly with a bag of crisps.
‘You know that Carrie has a television show, don’t you?’ Leah said with her eyes fixed on the road. She drove slowly, as if she didn’t know where she was going, as if getting Dayna in the car and moving forward was simply a way of taking her captive.
‘Yeah, of course,’ Dayna replied.
‘She’s absolutely distraught about what has happened to her son. As is everyone,’ she added. ‘You must have seen how Carrie fights for justice on her shows. She’s passionate about the rights of people just like you and tries to help the police and victims by giving airtime to cases.’ Leah indicated left out of the estate. She slowed for a woman on a bike.
Dayna didn’t say anything as she recalled Carrie Kent in action. Was that justice? she wondered. Was all that strutting about and poking into the lives of people worse off than her doing any good at all, or did it just make for good telly? Dayna wasn’t convinced that the woman fought for anything other than fame and higher ratings. It was all about money in her world.
‘So? What’s that got to do with me?’
‘Carrie has sent me personally to ask you if you would come on her show to help the police catch Max’s killer. If you tell your story, people will phone in. I’m sure it would be the hardest thing you’ve ever—’
‘No.’
The car swerved and Dayna grabbed the door handle.
‘You need to think about this before you answer, love.You knew Max well and . . .’ But her words were lost on Dayna as panic and more nausea swept over her. Dayna heard the studio audience baying at her, felt the heat of their wrath on her cheeks. She imagined Carrie Kent up close, her unwavering face only inches from hers, picking and picking away at the truth until she was left with no alternative but to stand up and confess the truth.
There was an arrest . . . she heard Leah say. The words blew through her head. They let him go . . .
‘If Max could speak for himself, he’d want you to do it for him, love. We’ll run a special crime line number at the same time. Carrie will be on your side. She’ll ask you questions. You just have to go over what happened, how it felt for you, what you did to help Max. I’m in no doubt that the calls will flood in. Someone will know something that might just provide the piece of infor—’
‘Stop!’ Dayna cried. She fell forward as much as her seatbelt would allow and buried her face in her hands.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you, Dayna.’ Leah pulled over into a bus stop. The engine ticked over.
Dayna prised her face from her hands and wished desperately that she could sob and sob until what she needed to say dissolved in all the snot and tears. ‘I don’t know anything, OK? I don’t know who killed Max and I don’t know what to say on the telly. Don’t make me do it.’
Leah’s hand was on her shoulder. ‘Take this, Dayna. It’s my card. Call me if you change your mind. The show is the day after tomorrow. I know this is a lot to take in but...’
Dayna couldn’t hear anything more than fuzzy words echoing through a place she didn’t want to be. When she glanced out of the window, she realised that they’d virtually come full circle and were only a street away from her house. Against her better judgement, she grabbed the woman’s card and leapt out of the car. She ran and ran, away from the estate, away from the school, down to the stream and headed the back way through the industrial yard to Max’s shed. When she got there, she leant against the rotting wood, panting, flinching when two trains went past overhead, one after the other. She was half crying and half hysterical.
What the hell was she going to do?
Fiona felt his agony. It gnawed and ate and upset her insides, her life, as if it were her own. She was watching someone she loved get hurt through a glass window so thick they couldn’t hear her banging, couldn’t see her lips crying out, wanting to help. Not when they were blind, anyway; not when they didn’t know you loved them in the first place. She felt so desperately helpless; so very sorry for Brody.
Her flat was neat and tidy. In the near decade that she’d been working with the professor, he’d only been to her home once, years ago, and anyway, it wouldn’t have affected Fiona’s image of serenity, calm and organisation if everything had been flung from the cupboards and the place hadn’t been cleaned in a month. Brody wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. They’d been on their way to the airport, way back. Fiona had picked him up from his ghastly flat and they’d headed out towards Heathrow. She always liked to leave error time for traffic and breakdowns and other emergencies, not that there had ever been any. Except that day.
