Crash, page 22
‘I’ve been so worried about you,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe everything that’s happened. Thank goodness Tom has been found.’
I rested my cheek against his chest. ‘He ought to be with me, not Oliver. I can’t understand why he involved him. He knows that Oliver’s motives aren’t sound. Why did he do it?’
The range clock gave out a low, continuous buzz. Dan’s chin scratched against my scalp as he moved his head. ‘Once all this is over,’ he whispered, ‘what if you both live with me? I could try to be a father to him, although I’m sure I’d be hopeless.’
He stopped talking and looked across at Honey, settled in her basket. ‘And she can come too.’
I took his hand and moved us both over to sit at the table. ‘That’s what I want too,’ I said. ‘Very much.’
Dan kept his head down, his eyes averted. ‘The thing is, I can’t promise when it will happen, and I feel ashamed that I can’t. You’ve been manipulated by that bastard Oliver Thompson, you’re ill, your husband is dying… what’s going to happen next? Until I’m free, I’m powerless to help you.’
Dan’s eyes were rimmed with pink. ‘My marriage is over,’ he continued. ‘I want to be with you for the rest of my life but first I must make sure that Sarah and the girls are okay. You have to trust me.’
I leaned forward and touched his arm, smelling his familiar scent of soap and tobacco. ‘Knowing that you want me, that we’ll be together, is everything I could have hoped for. I’ve told Carl about us and he doesn’t care. I can’t promise that Oliver won’t try to exert some revenge on you through Sarah, but I think it’s unlikely. He’s not interested in you beyond trying to manipulate me. Right now, he’ll be busy explaining to the police his role in assisting a minor to run away.’
‘But I have to leave you… leave you to get through the next few days on your own.’
‘I’m not alone. I have my daughters, my mother-in-law, my friend Madeleine, and most of all I have you. Perhaps I’ll have Tom back too, if he’ll forgive me.’
Dan stood to leave and we kissed again. His eyes were framed by deep lines and shadows and I thought he moved more stiffly than before. I waited on the steps to watch him drive away and it was only when the gates closed behind him, I realised that I didn’t know for sure when I would see him again.
A second call came from the police at midday, as I waited at the station for Beatrice. ‘Mrs Williams?’ I recognised the voice. ‘I’m afraid there’s disappointing news. Tom was staying at the Thompsons’, but he’s gone and quite a few expensive items have been taken from their house. We’ll keep looking for him but he’s not just a runaway, Mr and Mrs Thompson are pressing charges.’
‘But haven’t they done something wrong here?’ I argued.
‘Mr Thompson says that Tom phoned him and asked to be picked up from the airport. He’s also told us a bit more about Tom trying to sell drugs and the availability of Class A substances in your home. You haven’t been completely honest with us. Our child protection team will have to pursue this. Don’t remove or hide anything until we visit later today. Leave everything undisturbed.’
Beatrice appeared, struggling with a large box. I ended the call and dropped my mobile into my bag.
‘What on earth have you got there?’ I asked, although I had already guessed, hearing scrabbling from inside.
Beatrice was ready for an argument. ‘Cats… couldn’t leave them, could I?’
‘That’s okay, we’ll manage,’ I said, pushing the box onto the back seat, wondering how on earth Honey would cope with two cats.
‘Tom has run away again, from Oliver Thompson’s house,’ I said, closing the boot. ‘That’s the man who picked him up from the airport, Carl’s business partner. Tom wasn’t there when they went to interview him, and he’s taken things. Oliver’s told the police about Carl’s drugs and they’re involving a child protection officer.’
‘Slow down, woman, slow down, one thing at a time,’ Beatrice said. ‘Tell me everything in the car. I’m worn out.’
After lunch, Beatrice went for a rest and in her absence, I tried to keep her frantic cats penned in the boot room. On no account were they to be let out, I had been warned, after I had stopped Beatrice from smearing their paws with butter scooped with her fingers from a tub left on the table. Madeleine promised to send her compliant husband with cat food and a litter tray.
The telephone rang again at three. ‘Mrs Williams, we’ve found Tom. His father traced him…’
‘Carl traced him…’ I repeated.
‘That’s correct. He’s on his way home, should be with you in an hour. He’s accompanied by a social worker.’
A girl who looked younger even than Fran stood behind Tom, as I pulled the front door ajar.
Tom pushed past me and threw his backpack, carefully packed only the day before for his flight, onto the bottom stair.
He climbed two steps, then turned to face me. ‘I hate you. You’re a rubbish mother and I hate my fucking weirdo of a father too. I don’t care if he dies. You can all die. There’s no one left I can trust.’
‘I tried to do what I thought was best.’ I reached up to touch him, but he climbed further up, glaring down at me.
‘You mean you wanted rid of me,’ he sneered.
‘I get things wrong,’ I pleaded, ‘but you can still trust me. I thought you would be happy in Australia. You’re a very wealthy young man, sometimes that brings out the worst in other people. They befriend you because they want something from you.’
I saw Tom tremble and he reached for the banister. ‘You mean Oliver? I’ve already worked that one out for myself. I’m old enough to live on my own, so don’t try and keep me here.’
‘Beatrice is staying with us and she’s brought her cats,’ I said, but Tom gave a bark of forced laughter at this ridiculous bribe. I heard his footsteps pound on the stairs and the slam of his bedroom door.
The young woman standing silently at my side, turned to look at me with a sympathetic grimace. She introduced herself as Mia, Tom’s social worker. ‘Best leave him alone, he’s really angry with you,’ she said. ‘He asked to come home, else I wouldn’t have brought him, but he will need time.’
I sat on the bottom step, my arms wrapped around my knees, and she sat down next to me.
‘You look so young.’ I peered at her over the crook of my arm.
‘I am fully qualified,’ she reassured me. ‘Everyone asks how old I am, which I’m sure I’ll love when I’m older but it’s a pain right now.’
Mia told me the story, as much as she knew. ‘The police found him in a hotel near Euston Station, after contact from his father.’
‘But how did Carl know where he was? And what about the stuff he took from the Thompsons?’
‘Everything was there. It’ll all be returned. I don’t think he wanted any of it. He was making a point.’
‘And you’re here to…’
‘Check out the house for drugs, make sure you’re fit to care for him, that sort of thing. Can we sit in the kitchen?’ she suggested. ‘I could murder a cup of tea.’
I had forgotten the cats, who had broken out of the boot room. Released from the kitchen, they scrambled between our legs, took a sharp right into the library, then raced upstairs, as if they were being chased by hounds. All the pots on the windowsill had been knocked over. Some lay on their sides, spilling their dark loam and others had toppled onto the worktop. Hundreds of cat pellets lay scattered across the floor. Honey slept on, protected from the mayhem by her deafness.
‘Come on, ignore it,’ Mia said, and we made tea, our feet crunching through a mulch of dried cat food. We carried mugs through to the sitting room where Mia sat with her back to the door and I sat opposite her where I could see the hall. If Tom tried to run, I would catch him. She ate her way steadily through a plate of biscuits, making notes as I spoke and looking up at me with sloping brown eyes, her intense frown encouraging me to continue.
Beatrice appeared, her hair tousled at the back like a nest. I introduced Mia as Tom’s social worker.
‘One of those, eh?’ She snorted. ‘We don’t need your sort of help and anyway, what sort of life experience can you possibly have had, at your age.’
‘Beatrice, you’re the last person to judge,’ I remonstrated. ‘My mother-in-law was a teenage parent and raised Carl alone,’ I explained to Mia.
‘Thank you for sharing that.’ Beatrice slumped onto the sofa.
‘See if you can find your cats. I’m afraid they’ve escaped and there’s a dreadful mess in the kitchen.’
We left Beatrice in the sitting room and together climbed up to the attic to check Carl’s room for drugs. We decided to leave Tom alone, Mia trusting me there was nothing to find because I said I’d searched it thoroughly. Downstairs, we turned out the bag he had thrown aside but found nothing suspicious. Mia said she still had to visit the hospital to talk to Carl’s doctors but would report to her manager that Tom was safe at home, as long as his father wasn’t living with us. She gave me details of a substance abuse programme for teenagers and advised that, once I was recovered, I must ask our doctor to refer Tom for some trauma counselling. This very young woman, pencil thin in ripped jeans and white T-shirt, appeared to find my extraordinary life almost routine. We seemed to have a plan.
Once Mia left, I crept up to Tom’s room and listened outside the door. I heard him laugh as Beatrice said, ‘I wouldn’t have called him Tom if I’d known about you, would I?’
An hour passed, where I waited for Tom and Beatrice, the early evening news babbling unheard on the television. At last, Tom came downstairs and curled into the opposite corner of the sofa. We watched football, avoiding each other’s eyes by staring ahead at the screen. I heard Beatrice moving around in the kitchen and hoped she was cleaning up the mess.
Background roars and cheers from the match and the rhythm of the commentary meant that for now, nothing needed to be said. Finally, we spoke about the teams, whether they were well matched, who might win. Beatrice heated frozen pizza and we sat in a row in front of the television, dropping cheese and tomato sauce onto the cream, embroidered covers of the suite. The cats joined us, staring into the empty grate and occasionally startling each other with episodes of ferocious licking. Honey ambled through from the kitchen, in search of food and her ears cocked in surprise when she finally realised we had been invaded by cats. She growled, but with little enthusiasm, her nose discerning her most desirable resting place, Beatrice’s lap.
I leaned over and wove my arms tightly around Tom. To my surprise, he did not pull away. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t understand,’ I said. ‘You’re not going anywhere, you’re staying here with me.’
‘Okay, Mum.’ He extracted himself, trying not to miss a penalty. ‘Don’t go on about it.’
‘Would you like to come with me to see Dad? He wanted you to know that he’s fine about you breaking into his cabinet.’
Beatrice grunted. ‘Well, I’m not sure if I’m fine about it.’
Tom stood up and yawned, scratching his head with both hands so that his unwashed hair stood on end. ‘Okay then,’ he said. ‘Let’s get moving.’
‘Are you coming, Beatrice?’ I asked.
‘No, I’ll stay here and settle these cats. That dog needs fed and I’ll take her for a walk around the garden, since no one else has thought about her.’
Carl sat on a wicker chair beneath the window of a different room. His knees were pulled up to his chest and he seemed tiny and fragile, dressed in an outsized tracksuit I didn’t recognise. The sun shone directly onto his face, which he kept turned away from me, and I saw that the stubble on his chin was now grey. Through the window, I could see sloping roofs covered in lumps of moss, a small bird pecking amongst them. The room was in shadow and furnished in heavy Victorian pieces that might have belonged to the original asylum. Tom opted to stay downstairs in the visitor’s lounge, playing Connect Four with a patient.
‘Carl,’ I spoke just loud enough to let him know I was there. ‘You traced Tom. Thank you.’
He turned his head to look at me, his eyes milky and unfocused. ‘The police have been here too. They told me they’d found him.’
‘You were brilliant. How did you do it?’
Carl shrugged and turned back to gaze out of the window. He watched the clouds as if they were the first he had seen, his eyes tracking their path as they scudded across the sky.
‘It’s like the story of Babes in the Wood, the one where the children leave a trail of breadcrumbs so that their father can find them. I simply followed Tom’s electronic crumbs. Some time ago I had a device fitted into his mobile which means I can read his texts, if I can be bothered, and I always know where he is. He sent thirty texts while he was on the run and made ten phone calls. He used Oliver’s credit card to pay for a room at the Euston Hilton and by the way, he telephoned your sister to let her know he wasn’t coming.’
I smiled. ‘That’s something. At least he hasn’t forgotten his manners. We can’t have completely failed him.’
‘I wasn’t any good at it, being a father, but I was proud of them. I used to watch from my attic. I know you thought of it as a den but to me it was an eyrie, where I could soar above you all and hear your laughter.’
‘Did you fit one of those devices into my phone?’
‘Of course not. Without access to the phone itself, it can’t be done but you never leave your hidden one lying around. You’re too clever for me.’ Carl followed this speech with an awkward whinny of laughter.
‘Oliver couldn’t have fitted one either?’ I persisted.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, he always seems to know where I am and what I’m doing.’
‘That’s because I gave him access to the email account of that professor you work for. I couldn’t be bothered monitoring your emails myself but I wanted to know what was happening… just in case.’
‘Just in case… what?’
‘In case I needed to use the information. I never encouraged Oliver to threaten you.’
‘No, that was your speciality.’
Carl sighed. ‘It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t about you. I dislike everyone, especially myself. I always have. I would have been cruel to anyone who was foolish enough to stay with me. It was your choice to stay.’
‘So it’s my fault. I was a fool?’
Carl stared, his pupils wide and dark. ‘Let’s not quarrel, Alice. Very soon, you will have the life you wanted… a life without me. There will be no money but I’m sure you don’t care about that. Tom is back safely, and that’s all that matters.’
‘I’ve asked your mother to stay with us for a while. You’ll be able to come home, after my surgery. Perhaps we can try to live together as a family, for as long as we can.’
Carl snorted, and I was reminded of Beatrice. ‘You’re a dreamer, always chasing what can’t be. You can’t fashion me into a husband and father… it was never possible. Let’s face it, you married the wrong man. I shouldn’t have married at all.’
We sat in silence and I listened to the distant sounds of the hospital. Somewhere a person screamed, and a door slammed.
I spoke quietly. ‘Euan didn’t want to be a husband either, or a father but I thought we were a team. I thought it would work.’
Carl groaned. ‘It was a fantasy and one that belonged only to you. I’m finished, it’s over… I don’t want to pick over the past. To keep all of you out of danger, I’m told I have to stay on this medication, but I can’t think, I can’t work, I don’t know who I am. Alice, I used to have ideas, I created things.’
Rage gripped my throat at his self-pitying words.
I spoke softly but made sure my words were clear and fierce. ‘You’ve wrecked our son’s future with drugs. You made a virtual prisoner of me for years and you have terrified your daughters and your mother, yet all you think about is that you can’t work!’
Carl steepled his fingers and rubbed them across his chin. I heard the rasp, back and forth. The sun crept behind a cloud and the room darkened.
‘And you’re right,’ I carried on, reckless now. ‘Family life was never possible for us, with Euan or without him. As you so kindly pointed out, I married the wrong man, but now I’ve met the right one. Unlike you, we have a future… together.’
Carl closed his eyes and flapped a hand at me in a gesture of dismissal. From the open door, I glanced back at him and called out, ‘Carl, I did love you once and Euan loved you too. You have been loved.’
I have no idea whether he heard me.
THIRTY-ONE
THURSDAY, 2ND OCTOBER
I woke early, trapped inside echoes of an anxious dream. I had been trying to reach someone, just around a corner. If I hurried, I could touch a shoulder and they might turn around. I ran and called out, pushing through crowds, but I was going the wrong way. Everyone seemed angry. Then I remembered I’d left a child at home, alone. A voice said, go back, stop searching.
I closed my eyes and listened to the birds, answered by the grating bellow of a cow heavy with milk. I pulled the sheets up close to my chin and drifted back towards the dream, uncertain whether it was fantasy or a real memory. The details began to fade but an urgent fear stayed with me. Tom was at home and asleep in the next room. I had no idea who I had been chasing except that they were male, and I needed to tell them something. What was it? Slowly, the certainty that it was about Carl arose from my confusion. Then I remembered it was Thursday and my operation was tomorrow.
This was my last day. I didn’t expect to die, although there was always that risk, but these were my last few hours before I joined the world of the sick. I chided myself for this stupid idea, since I was already sick, but it was like the difference between having a provisional licence and being a fully-fledged driver. There was a Rubicon of sorts to cross and it would happen tomorrow. I had to see Carl again.
After my shower I looked at myself in the mirror, remembering Dan standing behind me, his chin resting on my head. I ran my hands down my hips, noticing that I had lost weight and wondered whether I should have eaten more. Women having treatment for cancer often become thin, so perhaps I should have tried to gain weight. It was too late now. I packed and dressed at the same time, remembering a few more things I needed. I would go out shopping with Tom and Beatrice, perhaps into Leicester, and I would buy some delicious food for dinner. Today felt like the end of something rotten; Dan wanted to be with me, Tom had returned and despite everything my girls chose to be with me.
