Lazy Bones (39 page)

Mrs Noble walked across and picked up a picture. 'Mark and Sarah aren't here,' she said. 'I couldn't bear looking at them and not knowing. I put them away once I felt sure they weren't coming back. Put them away and bloody wel forgot where.' She must have seen concern pass across Hol and's face, and reached out a hand to touch his arm. 'Don't worry, you haven't had a wasted journey. I final y found pictures of them tucked away inside our old wedding album...'

Hol and nodded his understanding. She turned the photo she was holding, so that he could see the picture. 'David's a stockbroker, doing real y wel .' She put the frame back and began pointing to others. 'Susan, s a nurse up at the Royal Free, Gary went into the army and now he's

training to become a printer, Claire's about to have her third baby...' 'There's a lot of them,' Hol and said.

'We fostered long-term mostly, which was the way I wanted it. I couldn't stand to see them go, you know, just when they were starting to belong. Stil , we had more than twenty kids, before and after Mark and Sarah. I know what most of them are doing...'

She smiled, sadly, not needing to say any more. Hol and smiled back, thinking of those twenty other kids, and the man who was once their foster father, and wondering...

'I didn't know whether you'd have eaten,' she said. 'So after you

phoned I took a lasagne out of the freezer. It won't be five minutes...' 'Oh, right...'

'I presume you can have a drink?'

In spite of what he'd previously thought of her, Hol and was suddenly

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fil ed with something like affection for this woman. He thought about al the children she'd lost in one way or another, and her simple belief in a man whose heart was too ful of darkness to go on beating any longer. He' felt comfortable...

'Let's both have a drink,' he said. 'I've got a nice bottle of wine in the car.'

'You have to let me pay you for the mattress,' Thorne said. 'It's fine, real y. You can get dinner...' 'How much was it?'

'It's a late birthday present,' Eve said. 'To replace the first one.' She smiled. 'I don't remember seeing the plant anywhere at the flat, so I presume you've managed to kil it.'

'Oh, right. I was going to tel you about that,' Thorne said.

A waiter brought over their wine, and at the same time the manager came across to the table and laid down a platter of poppadoms. 'On the house,' he said. He put a hand on Thorne's shoulder and winked at Eve. 'One of my very best 'customers,' he said. 'But tonight is the first time he has been here with a young lady...'

When the manager had moved away, Eve poured herself and Thorne a large glass of wine each. 'I'm not sure how to take that,' she said. 'Does he mean that you normal y come here with young men?'

Thorne nodded, guiltily. 'That was another thing I was going to tel you...

She laughed. 'So you come in here on your own a lot then?'

'Not a lot.' He nodded towards the manager. 'He's talking about the number of takeaways...'

'I've got this image of you now, sitting in here on your own like Bil y No-Mates, eating chicken tikka massala...'

'Hang on.' Thorne tried to look hurt. 'I do have one or two friends.' Eve chopped the pile of poppadoms into pieces. She picked up a big bit, ladled onions and chutney on to it. 'Tel me about them. What do they do?'

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Thorne shrugged. 'They're al connected to work in one way or another, I suppose.' He reached for a piece of poppadom, took a bite. 'Phil's a pathologist...'

She nodded, like it meant something.

'What?' Thorne said.

'You never real y switch off, do you?'

'Actual y, me and Phil talk about footbal most of the time...' 'Seriously.'

Thorne took a gulp of wine, feeling it swil the bits from the surface of his teeth, thinking about what Eve was saying. 'I don't believe that anybody ever leaves what they do behind completely,' he said. 'We al talk shop, don't we? Everyone gets.., reminded of things.' She stared back at him, rubbing the rim of her wineglass across her chin. 'Come on, if you're out somewhere and you see some amazing display of flowers...' 'Flowers aren't bodies, are they?'

Thorne was disturbed to feel himself growing slightly irritated. He fought to keep it out of his voice as he picked up the bottle and topped up both their glasses. 'Wel , some people might say that they're dyiag from the moment they're picked.'

Eve nodded slowly. 'Everything's dying,' she said. 'What's the bloody point of anything at al ? We may as wel just ask the waiter to put ground glass in the biryani.'

Thorne looked at her, saw her eyes widen and the corners of her mouth begin to twitch. They began to laugh at almost the same moment.

'I never know when you're winding me up,' he said.

She slid her hand across the table, took hold of his. 'Can you leave it behind just for a while, Tom?' she said. 'Tonight, I want you to switch off...'

'Kids are a bloody handful,' Irene Noble said. 'They claange things beyond al recognition.' She stared across at Hol and. 'But you'l stil be glad you did it...'

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Hol and had supposed that if they talked at al , they might wel talk about kids. He never imagined that they might end up talking about his.

' just feel so guilty,' he said. 'For resenting what might happen to me. For even thinking about walking away from it.'

'You'l feel stuff that's a whole lot stranger and more painful than that. You'l feel like you would die for them and the next minute you'd happily murder them. You'l worry about where they are and then you'l wish you could have a second to yourself. Every emotion is unconditional...'

'You're talking about afterwards, when the baby's there. What about feeling like this now?'

'It's normal. It's not just the woman's emotions that get messed around with. Mind you, you can't use hormones as an excuse...'

Hol and laughed, the two glasses of wine he'd put away helping him to feel relaxed. An hour or so earlier, he'd felt far less sure of himself. He'd thought, when they'd started to eat and he'd suddenly begun pouring it al out, that there'might be more waterworks on the way, but Irene had helped him stay calm, cor/vinced him that everything would work out for the best...

'I'l take these out.' She stood up, lifting the tray from the empty seat on the sofa next to her.

Hol and passed over his empty plate. 'Thanks, that was great.' He was talking about more than just a lasagne that had been cold in the middle.

He sat back down and listened as she pottered around in the kitchen. He could hear her talking softly to the dog, loading the dishes into the washing machine.

It had been a conversation that Hol and would never have had with his mother. Irene Noble, give or take a year or two, was the same age as his mother - a woman who'd been buying baby clothes for the last six months. A woman who refused to admit that anything could go wrong ever, and remained blissful y unaware that things 334

were less than hunky-dory between her eldest son and his pregnant girlfriend.

Irene came back in brandishing choc-ices. 'I always keep a stock of these in the freezer. Bloody marvel ous in this weather...'

For a minute they said nothing. They sat and ate their ice creams, and listened to the noise of the dog's claws skittering across the lino as she scrabbled about in the kitchen.

As Irene Noble started to speak, pul ing her feet up on to the sofa like a teenager, Hol and watched her face shift and settle, until every one of her years was clearly visible on it.

'Whatever problems you have, I hope you work them out together, al three of you. But they won't be in the same league as some of the things that kids have brought with them through my front door. You pass them on, you know. Hand them down, like baldness or diabetes or the colour of your eyes...'

'You're talking about Mark and Sarah...'

'The other day I was very harsh about the two sets of caters who had the children before we did. About their inability to cope. The truth is that we weren't real y coping any better than they had.' 'You adopted them.'

'I think it was our last effort at making them feel part of something bigger. Two parents and two children. We wanted them to come out of themselves, to engage with the rest of the world a bit more.'

'It's understandable though,' Hol and said. 'That they'd be tight knit. That the two of them would be very close, after what happened.' He looked away from her, down to the floor, thinking, And what was stil happening...

'They were too close,' she said. 'That was the problem. When they disappeared, Sarah was pregnant, and the baby she was carrying was Mark's.'

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TWENTY-NINE

They walked slowly back down Kentish Town Road towards Thorne's flat. At not much after nine o'clock, it was just starting to darken but was stil warm enough to walk without a jacket.

The road was as busy and noisy as ever. Cars moved pist them constantly, those which could had their tops down, most had sidelights on.

Despite what Eve had said earlier, they had both tucked a fair amount of food away, though Thorne put the feeling in his stomach down to something else entirely. Before they'd left the flat, Eve had helped him make the bed, laying a clean white sheet across the new mattress she'd brought with her. Thorne knew very wel that when they got back there, she was going to help him unmake it again.

There were some things in his life which he counted as certainties: there was always another body, somewhere; you could never get rid of blood completely; people who kil ed without motive tended to do it again. But this was the sort of promise that Thorne hadn't been on for a very long time...

Eve grabbed his hand suddenly, and raised it up, bringing their

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bare forearms together. 'You'd look a lot better with a decent tan,' she said.

'Is that an invitation?'

'When was the last time you had a proper holiday?'

Even after thinking about it for a minute, Thorne couldn't provide anything as specific as a year. Lack of time was not so much the problem as lack of inclination and anybody to go away with. 'It's been a while,' he said.

'Are you a lying-on-the-beach kind of guy, or do you prefer to do stuff?.'

'Both, real y. Or neither. I think lying on the beach gets a bit boring,

but probably-not quite as boring as walking round a museum...' 'Not easily pleased, are you?' 'Sorry...'

'Al right, where would you like to go, if you could go anywhere?' 'I've always fancied Nashvil e.'

She nodded. 'Right. The country-and-western thing...' 'Another one of my dark secrets...' 'I quite liked it.' 'Real y?'

'You're not going to get kinky later on though, are you? Dress up in leather chaps? Bring out the bul whip and spurs...?'

They turned right on to Prince of Wales Road, the sound of live jazz coming from the Pizza Express on the corner. Thorne wondered if a pizza might not have been a better idea. The combination of curry and humidity meant that beads of perspiration were popping al over him.

Stil hand in hand, Thorne could feel the moisture between their palms. He wasn't sure whether it was her sweat or his own.

The bike weaved effortlessly through the traffic. Occasional y, where it got real y heavy, or the road narrowed, he would have to sit and wait.

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Idling, in line among the despatch riders and trainee cabbies on mopeds. Soon enough, there would be a gap and he would be away, the rucksack bouncing against his back as he drove across sleeping policemen and holes in the road...

He pul ed up at traffic lights and checked his watch. He was probably going to get there a bit early, but it wouldn't matter. He would park up, strol off somewhere and wait. Keeping out of sight, until it was time.

Next to him, a big Kawasaki revved up, ready for the off. A girl in cut-off jeans rode pil ion, squeezing her boyfriend tighter with each growl he twisted from the engine. On amber, the Jap bike was gone, and he watched it go, easing his own machine slowly away from the lights.

Picking up no more speed than was necessary...

He had plenty of time, and the last thing he wanted was to be pul ed over.

It wasn't so much a question of the ticket, or the points on his licence. He was so excited, ;o ful of what he was about to do, that were some copper to pul him over and risk where he was going, he might just have to tel him.

Hol and looked at his watch and was gobsmacked to see that he'd been there for an hour and a half.

'I need to be getting back,' he said. 'Could I have those photographs?'

Irene Noble climbed a little wearily from the sofa, slipped her shoes back on. Tl go and fetch them...'

While he was waiting, Hol and sat, going over their conversation and marvel ing at the capacity PeoPle had for self-deception. Irene Noble was far from being a stupid woman. He found it hard to understand why, even though she claimed that they, and previous carers, had caught the children in bed together, she had so readily presumed that 338

Sarah Foley had been made pregnant by her brother. Had no other explanation occurred to her?

He heard her coming down the stairs, shouting to him. 'It doesn't seem five minutes since these were taken.'

Probably no other explanation she could live with...

She walked into the room holding out a smal bundle of photos, half a dozen Polaroids and a couple of slightly bigger standard prints. Hol and took them from her. She stepped back and perched on the arm of the sofa, pointing to the pictures as he began to look through them.

'Those are the two I had in frames on the sideboard. They're the ones that were taken at school the year before they disappeared. The others are from a birthday party we had for Sarah.

Her eleventh, it would have been. Roger had just bought this instant camera...'

From the moment he'd looked down at the first photograph, Hol and had stopped hearing anything but the sound of his own breathing. A girl in a blue-patterned dress, her hair tied back, smiling as though at something only she found funny. Hol and lifted tl},e picture of Sarah up, revealing its companion, the portrait of he brother. "