Heartland (17 page)

They sat quietly for a while.

Have yer heared from Stacey at all, about Andre?

Her texted this morning to say he's bin discharged. He's back at um with her now.

I tried her this morning but the school's got the wrong numbers. I was gonna go rahnd there but I wanted to check fust.

What they said at school today?

Nothing. The Head said summat in the staff briefing abaht if anybody heard anything. They ay said nothing to the kids. Iss all they'm talking abaht, though.

I thought they might have done an assembly or summat.

This new Head. I mean it day tek place on school grounds or nuthin, did it. I doh think her's that bothered.

For a second, Jim squeezed the mug handle and thought please, please, please don't let this Head be a disaster as well. He'd really pushed at the interview that she was the one for the job.

Maybe thass the right thing, he said, doh mek a big deal of it, keep it low profile.

Push it under the carpet, Rob said.

Iss where some things am best left, son.

The pictures of the missing were already fading,
disintegrating with the weather, like it was already too late. They bloomed at intersections and on hospital railings like shrines she'd seen travelling in India or on back roads in Sicily, the faces merging together to form strange gods or saints. When she added his face to the collage, when she stood on street corners handing out the information leaflet she'd made, she felt fraudulent. The voices of sympathetic people
that stopped for her – as much for themselves as her – told her their own story of that morning, those days; others with people missing or who had known someone who died. Jasmine wanted to say, But I'm not really sure, not really part of this at all, I think he might just have run away.

She skirted the site, sometimes heading up into Mid-town, sometimes close to the cordon. Trucks rumbling back and forth waved in and out by police and fire officers.

The city had a gift for naming things: New York's finest, New York's bravest. There at the heart of it all, Ground Zero. A perfect name because that was what it represented: nothingness, oblivion. She wandered the streets with thoughts like this mumbling through her head. Nothing comes from nothing; a huge zero in the middle of the city. What was it he'd said to her about belief? That when it came down to it, it was all just zeros and ones; that was all we were. Then she'd catch herself, the further from the site that she got, when looking up and seeing the sun sparkle on the Chrysler Building, glancing at a skirt in the window of Banana Republic, at a woman and little girl holding hands on Broadway, thinking that everything had changed for ever, maybe like the city itself, and then realizing that there was a lot of life that would just go on, whatever happened.

The next day Jasmine stayed in Brooklyn, exhausted by everything; she walked up to Brooklyn Heights and wandered around cafés and bookshops, deciding that there was as much chance of bumping into him as someone recognizing his face from one of the leaflets. She sat for ages over a coffee, fantasizing about what she'd do if he just strolled in there, had indeed just walked out of one life into another. Here she was, sitting at one end of Gatsby's island, after all. Paul Auster lived around here. She thought of Fanshawe in the
New York Trilogy
, walking away from his life. That book had been on her mind. She toyed with the idea of
tracing the strange routes she'd taken while handing out leaflets, to see if they spelled out any meaning.

Matt loved that book. He'd lent it to her when they first started seeing each other. She decided she'd go to one of the bookshops she'd passed and buy a copy. Her old copy was at Matt's flat. She'd been thinking about Matt as much as she had about Adnan.

Later that afternoon she wandered further still, down towards Red Hook, thought about her classes at home, teaching
A View From the Bridge.
She thought she'd be returning to Riverway then. Even if it would be awkward, to say the least, with Matt. A breakdown was practically a badge of honour at that school. It was a difficult place. She'd be welcomed back. She took some pictures of the docks, of the cranes, imagined showing them on the board in her classroom. One of the reasons for teaching the play was the similarity of location, the similarity of situation, a clash of cultures, the bridge between a new life and an old one. What was it Alfieri said in the prologue? About settling for half, about liking that better now. She sat and looked at the bridge and across to the skyscrapers and the smudge above the tip of the island that might have been cloud or smoke or ash. She'd never really understood that line until then.

Simeone walked in front of Beckham.

Bastard, Rob muttered under his breath. There were shouts across the room. Beckham didn't look at Simeone. His face was blank, concentrated. This was taking ages. Rob tried to empty his head, the way Beckham must've been doing. Think of nothing, just put the ball down, get up to it, stick it in the corner. Nothing else, don't think about it. The trick at this point was to let go, to not want it too much. To relax. Rob thought about whether to look or not, could see that Lee had half-turned his chair round
and was looking at the doors. Rob concentrated on Lee's tattoo of Stevie Bull on the inside of his forearm. That pre-season at Wolves, he got shoved upfront with Bully for twenty minutes in a friendly at Chasetown. He thought they'd seen enough, decided he was in. He'd flicked a cross on and Bully hit the post. He hadn't had much of a clue upfront apart from doing that. It had been the hottest day of the year. He could barely run. Bully told him he'd done well at the end, said he'd worked hard, thanked him.

Glenn was standing up. His Uncle Jim had his hands over his face. His dad sat motionless. Rob tried to empty his mind, tried not to want it too much.

Zubair was careful about what he said about London or where he thought Adnan had gone.
He was selective about everything he said, was tentative around the pain of the whole thing like someone cleaning a wound. He told his dad about the London
A–Z
Adnan had been reading, that it was the only thing they had to go on. His parents looked at him blank-faced and questioning, as if they expected him to know the answers, to know more than he could give them. He'd come in through the door and their faces would be expectant, hoping for a scrap of news and he'd shake his head.

But why would he want to leave?

I don't know, Mom. What more can I say.

He could've started to try an answer, something about how Adnan must've felt hemmed in or had somehow hemmed himself in. That it was bound to be difficult for someone like him, like the child he'd been, to not have things going the right way. That he must have felt frustrated. None of it would make much sense. His mom and dad shook their heads, shattered, stunned. He was surprised that he was angrier with Adnan than he thought they were. He was selfish. He'd run away. They considered the
possibilities of him just coming back. He saw it in his mother, the myth of return, whenever the door went.

He moved in with Katie a few weeks later, into a grim flat above the shops on Cinderheath Lane until they could get something better. His dad was diagnosed with lung cancer late in October, already a long way gone. That winter was one of driving his mother back and forth to the hospital, holding her hand when they got back in, holding his dad's as he got weaker and weaker. He made it through to spring, died on an unseasonably warm day in April, the sort of day people aren't meant to die on, crying out for his own mother and his missing son, thinking he was in the village he'd had to leave, that was drowned in the waters of the dam project, said he could see mountains at the end. There was so much now that Zubair knew he hadn't asked him. He married Katie in the June at Dudley Register Office.

Weeks and months went by. Nothing happened. His mother didn't mention Adnan. She didn't mention much any more, with one thing and another. Zubair talked about him occasionally to Rob. He and Rob had slipped into the habit of meeting for a couple of pints once a week. The anger – at his brother, at the stupid boys and their parents that he defended, at his dad's death, at the way the London sun might slant through a café window, at himself – leaked slowly out of him, like from an unchanged battery.

She didn't seem that interested at first.
It had taken Rob ages to decide to go over there, sitting watching the clouds move over the estate, biting his nails, then suddenly getting up, like when the referee's bell would sound in the dressing room and there was no more time to waste.

He knocked on the door, even though it was propped open with a fire extinguisher to dilute the paint fumes. The room looked totally different from when she'd started. White-painted walls, dry now, posters up around the room.
The desks had been sanded down and the smell of the wood mixed with the paint to make the smell of something new, something hopeful. It was the smell of the entrance hall of the flat Rob and Karen had bought. There was even a bunch of flowers on a side table, a couple of computer terminals being put together.

The bell had just gone. She'd let the two Year 7 girls who she'd been working with go and was putting their work into folders.

Hi Jasmine, he said. It looks great in here now.

Oh, thanks. She touched her hair as she turned to speak to him.

It's about that reading scheme, he said, motioning with the papers he'd printed out.

Oh, yes.

He started to tell her about it but he thought she wasn't listening, was distracted; he'd pretty much dried up when she interrupted him.

Rob, that sounds great but there's a lot of planning to do, so I can't commit to anything.

Here we go, he thought, a polite but firm knock-back, for the reading scheme, for any ideas he might have had.

Have you got any time later this week we could talk about it properly? she asked.

Sorry, what?

Have you got any time later in the week we could talk about it properly?

Erm, yeah. Thursday, after school?

I'm not in on Thursday. Doing my part-time bit still, remember?

Oh.

Oh, hang on, I'm going shopping with my mum on Thursday. I'm meeting her at Merry Hill. I don't suppose …

We could meet there?

Yeah, before I meet my mum, obviously. Unless you
want to come shopping? She looked at him and smiled. It would mean we could get it done and maybe we can concentrate more away from here.

Yeah, of course. He tried not to sound too delighted.

He ran out to tidy up the PE stores after that, collected a couple of footballs from out on the Astro, couldn't resist flicking one of the balls up and volleying it towards the goal, smashing it into the top corner.

Now it was just Beckham standing there, waiting for the whistle.
Rob looked up at the screen, down at his shoes, back at the screen, trying to empty his mind like Beckham had to, thoughts creeping in, the sending-off, the free-kick against Greece, We're letting you go, Robert; hopes and fears.

The realization that it came down to this. He'd either score or he wouldn't. There was something artificial about a penalty. If he scores this we'll win the whole thing, Rob told himself, looking, not looking. If he scores this there's a happy ending. You either scored or you missed, zero or one, nil or one: that belied the game's complexities, that was outside all the subtleties of movement and decision and action that really formed the game.

It came down to this. He remembered hearing about a team that used to refuse to take penalties, would miss them on purpose, saw them as alien to the spirit of the game.

Who killed Yusuf Khan?

Lads appeared from nowhere. Friends of the Woodies and others, older ones, some of the gang that used to hang around the canal tunnel with glue bags. Rob didn't know where they came from, they hadn't been with them before. The taxi was rocking. Someone was shouting and laughing, Turn it over, turn it over, come on! Rob scrambled to get out, scared of getting hurt and feeling sick all of a sudden,
the beer up in his throat, the car rocking. It had just been a bit of a laugh. They couldn't believe it when the taxi pulled over. They weren't meant to do that. They'd all been out that afternoon, drinking cans round at Glenn's and then down by the tunnel with a bigger group, couldn't take their beer, really, just out of school. They'd put their arms out, trying to get the taxi to stop, just for a laugh. Next thing it had pulled over and they were all piling in, seeing how many of them they could get in there. The driver looked terrified, realized he'd made a mistake but was stuck now, stuttering his few words of English.

Rob got his shoulder out and across Glenn's legs. Glenn was trying to get out as well but now Rob was on top of him, swearing and shouting, scared. The door slammed against Rob's shoulder and bounced back open, bodies up against it as he forced his head through. Nobody was laughing now, there was this other sound, lower-pitched, like animal noises. Rob crawled his way out. He remembered the way the gravel stuck to his hands, somebody sitting or sliding across his back, it might've been Glenn, and his face going right down on to the floor and thinking all at once about his contract at the Villa, realizing he should've thought of that earlier, and not wanting to get hurt, and whether his face would be scratched from the gravel so people would see he'd been here. He knew it was bad, already, deep down. All this must've just been a few seconds. The smell of the rough ground like after rain, although it hadn't rained for weeks. And just before pushing himself up from the floor, thinking that he could just lie there and go to sleep, drunk and really tired. They were all at the front of the car now.

But he did push himself up and as he was getting up something hit him hard. Grazed his ear and caught him full, high up on the arm. He didn't know if it was a kick or a punch or somebody throwing a half-ender but he turned
to have a go back and right at that moment they'd got the driver through the window, his legs were coming through the window, his foot catching on the glass, and leaving him snagged there, and then he was out and they were holding him, three foot off the ground, three or four of them on either side.