Are You My Mother? (42 page)

Getting out of the car, I glimpsed a sudden, unnaturally fast movement on the opposite side of the road. A sort of ducking-down-behind a car movement. I stood stock-still for a moment, hackles prickling, and waited. My first thought was that it must be Gavin, acting shiftily as per usual, for reasons best known to himself. Then, as I walked towards my flat, lugging my overnight bag, the crown of a dark head and two mean eyes appeared momentarily, peeping through both side windows of a parked BMW. The eyes glanced towards our front path, and then slid back to me. Oh Jesus, no. I was sure it was Charlie.

Whipping out my mobile, I rang Stella. ‘Stell, where are you?’

‘
Hi, Em, I’m at college, of course. So how did it go?’

‘
Fine, it went fine. She’s not the right Ann, but it went fine’.

‘
Is everything all right? You sound distracted.’

‘
Yeah. No. I was just checking…. What time are you finished today?’

‘
Five-ish. Why?’

‘
Are you coming straight home?’

‘
Yes. Are you sure everything’s all right?.’

‘
Yes, honestly. I’ll see you then, OK?’

The dark head had disappeared beneath the bodywork of the BMW, and I hadn’t seen anyone scuttle out from either side of the car, so I knew he must still be there. I was about to charge across the road and confront him, when I was momentarily distracted by a beep-beep, signifying an instant message, on the telephone I still held in my hand.

Even though I had no intention of reading the message until I’d sorted Charlie out – for I was, by now, pretty sure it was him – I couldn’t help glancing down at the screen of my phone, to see the tantalising envelope icon seducing me with its square promises of mystery. Knowing my luck, it was probably some boring message from BT Cellnet advising me of fantastic consumer offers I’d be mad to refuse.

By the time I looked up again, I caught sight of a tall, heavy-thighed figure loping furtively away. It was almost definitely Charlie, but I hadn’t seen his face.

‘
Damn!’ I kicked the nearest lamppost out of frustration. What could I do? Stella would freak out if she knew Charlie was sniffing around again. I thought about calling the police, but knew there was nothing they could do; not unless Charlie was actually trespassing, or threatening Stella. He’d be long gone by the time they got here.

Once the flash of anxiety had subsided enough for me to re-focus my driving-weary eyes, I looked down at the display on my phone:
nothing exciting, after all, just a notification of a new voicemail message. I walked up the path, lugging my overnight bag in one hand and cradling the phone between ear and shoulder as I unlocked the front door, even though I hadn’t yet dialled in for the message.

Two men were clumping down the stairs in dusty boots and overalls, carrying bulging bin liners, and I had to flatten myself against the hall wall to let them pass. They nodded at me.

‘
Excuse me,’ I said, just in case they were burglars and the bags were full of Stella’s and my worldly possessions. ‘I live in this building. Do you mind me asking what you’re doing here?’ My finger was surreptitiously poised over the 9 digit of the phone, ready to press three times if they attacked.

‘
In-vironmentaw ‘elf,’ said the taller one. He had such a ludicrously bushy moustache dominating his narrow, lugubrious face that I considered making a complaint to his boss about it, on the grounds that it was surely a health hazard itself.

‘
Oh, right. You’re clearing out Percy’s flat.’ I peered up the staircase and could see Percy’s door was indeed open.

‘
Yup, if Percy is Mr. Weston,’ said the smaller one cheerfully. ‘’Orrible state, it is. ‘E had ‘undreds and ‘undreds of - ‘

‘
Plates,’ I finished. ‘Yes, I know. So is it going on the market, then?’

‘
Yup. It’ll be a probate sale – flog it off cheap and the poor bugger wot buys it will ‘ave to redecorate, an’ that.’

‘
Right,’ I said, heading up the stairs, not knowing what else to say. I felt a sudden pang of sadness for poor old lonely Percy, with his plates and his serried rows of geraniums in the back garden. Still, it might be nice to get new neighbours…

I dialled my message retrieval service – disappointingly, it was only a message from a secretary, who had rung to fix an appointment for her boss with me. I rang her back and booked him in for a day the following week, with only the faintest raising of spirits at the thought of a new client. Then I rang Gavin, but his mobile was switched off, and there was no answer from his flat. I hadn’t been expecting the red carpet treatment, but I’d have thought he could at least have phoned to see how I got on.

I felt miserable again. Too much had happened in the past few days, good and bad. Gavin, Nottingham Ann, Ruth and the baby, Robert, and now Charlie. My head felt overloaded, and once more back in that slightly unhinged reality, where even the task of peeling a sticker off an apple seemed so onerous that it threatened to make me cry. I still had to tell Mack that the mission had failed, and give Stella a post-mortem of the trip’s events whilst not letting on that I’d seen Charlie outside. I felt that I simply didn’t have the energy for any of it.

I went into my bedroom and climbed into bed, fully clad, relishing the sensation of lying down flat after hours of sitting tense in the driver’s seat. I just wanted to shut it all out, to forget about everything.

I fell asleep immediately, plunging into a dream where I was still driving on the M1 and singing, as lamp-posts whizzed past me. The yellow baby bird was huddled in a cage on the back seat of my car, reproachfully asking me over and over again where its mother was; but I turned up my Robbie Williams CD and drowned him out. ‘Why do I bloody well have to do everything for you?’ I demanded crossly of it. ‘Find your own sodding mother; I’ve got enough problems of my own.’

Next time I turned around, the cage was empty.

I was woken by the sound of someone crashing into the flat, and the door slamming. I sat up, wide-eyed with befuddlement and momentary fear.

‘
Emma, are you there? It’s me.’ Stella stomped into the bedroom. ‘God, the day I’ve had. I just could not get this bloody crushed organza to do what I wanted – my collection is going to be a disaster. So, how are you? Are you disappointed that you didn’t find your mother?’

I rubbed my eyes, reached for my glasses on the bedside table, and slid them on so I could see Stella better. She looked pale and cross and I wondered, if she too had seen Charlie hanging around outside the flat, would she tell me? Was I going to tell her that I had? Something was on her mind.

‘
Well, yes and no, I suppose.’ I yawned, switching on the bedside lamp, feeling the strange fuzzy dislocation of waking from daylight sleep. ‘It was a really great trip; you know, like an adventure. You wouldn’t believe what happened when I went to the aqua class – I got talking to this really nice woman called Ruth who was pregnant, and she went into labour in the middle of the class! I went to hospital with her because she didn’t have anybody else. It was all so dramatic that it kind of put looking for Ann into the shade somewhat. And then – ‘

I was about to tell her about meeting Robert when she reached out her hand and squeezed my wrist; hard enough that the links of my silver bracelet, underneath her grasp, left angry red indentations on my skin. Her face was so pale that even her freckles seemed to have disappeared.

‘
Ow. What’s the matter?’

‘
I need to tell you something,’ she said.

My heart jumped. ‘Oh God, not about Charlie – what’s he done? What’s happened?’

‘
No. Nothing. Well, actually, not nothing. But that wasn’t what I was going to say.’

‘
Not nothing? What do you mean? Tell me that first, then the other thing.’

‘
Well…..OK.’ She bit her lip and looked away, as if she’d had a brief stay of execution. ‘The lab results came back. I got a call this morning.’

I sat up, fast. ‘
Well
?’

‘
They found his DNA in my mouth.’

I couldn’t understand why she looked so miserable. ‘But Stella, that’s great! We’ve got him now – that proves he was lying! When’s the trial going to be set for?’

She twirled her tongue stud for a moment before answering. ‘It’s not.’

‘
What do you mean?’

‘
I’ve dropped the charges.’

I gaped at her. ‘You WHAT?’

She stood up, marched over to my full-length mirror and examined herself, posing defensively, pulling at the hem of her skirt, flicking a tiny dot of eyeliner out of the corner of her eye.

‘
I don’t want to hear it, Emma, OK? So just don’t say it. It’s my decision. I don’t need my private life, or my dirty knickers, on display for an entire courtroom to see, and that’s the end of it. Yes, I know he shouldn’t be allowed to get away it, blah blah; but I don’t see why I should suffer any more for what he did, by having to rake it all up again. If it had been an actual….rape, then yes of course I’d do it. But we were both drunk and stoned, and I’m not for a second condoning what he did - but what if the jury believed him and not me? It’s not a risk I’m willing to take. I just want to get on with my college work, and my life. That’s it. It’s over. The DNA results prove him a liar, and that’s good enough for me.’

I sank back into my pillows, exhausted as an invalid. ‘What did the police say when you told them?’

‘
They weren’t happy. In fact that PC McClement was pretty cross with me. But I don’t care.’ She sounded like a sullen child.

‘
And does Charlie know that he’s off the hook?’

I had a momentary and very appealing mental picture of Charlie hanging helplessly from a large meat hook, but it was swiftly followed by the more realistic, and less attractive, memory of him hiding behind the car outside.

‘
Probably not yet. I only just got off the phone with the police.’

An idea came to me, on delicate little trotters. Perhaps I could ring him, tell him that the charges were dropped, but if he even showed his face round here again, Stella wouldn’t hesitate to haul his ass into court? But no. It probably didn’t work like that, did it – once you dropped the charges, there was no going back. I thought of charges like eggs on a stone floor; fragile things which you could drop but never pick up again. Stella’s butterfingered fears meant that Charlie had got away with it.

I tried to look on the bright side. At least there would be no reason for Charlie to lurk around here anymore – surely the only reason he had been was to try and persuade Stella not to go to court? I decided not to tell her I’d seen him that day, and prayed that this would be the end of it.

I looked at her, still posing miserably in front of the mirror, sweeping up her hair with her hands and pouting. Her own reflection was her biggest comfort in times of stress, I thought, uncharitably.

‘
Well. I can’t say that I think you’ve done the right thing – but I do understand why you don’t want to go through with it.’

‘
And you won’t give me a hard time about it?’

I sighed. ‘No. I won’t. Like you said, it’s your life. So – what was the other thing you were going to tell me?’

Stella gazed even harder at herself, and I thought I could see the reflected panic in her eyes. What now, I wondered.

‘
Gavin tried it on with me.’

A pigeon chose that moment to bump awkwardly onto the windowsill in a flap of wings and a crunching headbutt into the glass.

My first reaction was confusion. Part of me, in a bad sit-com kind of way, wanted to say, ‘Sorry Stella, I must have misheard. I thought you said Gavin
tried it on
with you.’

‘
Well, say something, then.’ She had finally stopped looking at herself, and was staring at the pigeon so intently that I knew I hadn’t misunderstood her.

‘
When?’

Stella wiggled her tongue stud around until it poked out of her mouth. I felt so enraged that I wanted to grab it, to yank it out myself. My voice was shaking with the effort of keeping it low, and I felt furious with her that I was in bed when she told me. I snatched my arm away from her, swung my legs over the side of the bed, and stood up. Stella blinked at the sight of me emerging, fully dressed and crumpled.

‘
That day when you saw him leave the flat.’

I slapped the flat of my hand, hard, against the window frame, and the poor pigeon fell off the sill. I saw the brief panic in its eyes before it righted itself and flew away, and then I turned to face Stella, coming closer and closer to her. She shrank away slightly, but I advanced on her and hissed furiously in her ear, as if we were two soap-opera characters in the same shot. My palm smarted from the sting of the glossy window frame.

‘
I knew it! I
knew
something had gone on. I waited for you to say something – naturally I didn’t expect Gavin to – but no, God forbid that you should be honest for once! You let me go through all that at Suzanne’s at Christmas, plucking up the courage to tell you about Ann Paramor, and all the while you omitted to tell me your own little secret? And now, right at the moment when things are starting to come right for me – Gavin and I are back together, I’m getting out and about a bit more, looking for my mother –
now
you tell me? Are you
trying
to ruin my life?’