Life Begins (43 page)

‘I’ll go.’

‘Charlotte?’

She turned, remembering dimly – as if it were part of a previous existence – all that Eve had disclosed, shifting the mercurial landscape of the past. The story of her and Martin; they had loved, not loved. All that mattered now was that it had brought them to this moment, a moment of an anguish so shared that looking into the familiar face – kissed, distrusted, missed, not missed – was like staring into a mirror.

‘If anything… to Sam…’ he blurted ‘… I won’t…’

‘Stop, there’s no need,’ she whispered, mustering again the strength to be stern. ‘I’ll call you in ten minutes.’ She sprinted down the path that led round the edge of the compound towards the river. Narrow and pitted with sets of iron bars to force cyclists off their saddles, Charlotte grew increasingly certain that Martin’s first assumption had been right. Sam would consider it too much like hard work, too much bother, particularly given his recent detached, fiercely nonchalant frame of mind. But when she reached the stretch of Tarmac running along the Thames itself, Charlotte’s certainty gave way to a bolt of pure terror. Left or right? And the river was so black, so menacing, so able to swallow a giant, let alone a child. Left or right? Time was so precious. She mustn’t waste a second.

She turned left, along the backs of the houses, then changed her mind. Indecisive, hopeless… No, not hopeless, she scolded herself. The ledge, the toddler and that other one, several years ago – the boy in the drain – or had that been a drama on the telly? She phoned Martin after twenty minutes instead of ten, saying there was nothing to report, that she was going to take the next turning back towards the main road.

‘The police – they’ve just found a silver bike,’ said Martin, in a thick voice. ‘They want me to look…’

‘Where?’ The word came out as a screech, breaking through the self-control. ‘Where did they find the bike?’ she repeated more steadily, reining the terror back in. ‘And are they looking for him? The police, are they looking, Martin?’

‘They say so.’

‘Where have they found it?’ Charlotte asked again, inwardly cursing the wasted time on the riverside path and trying to block out a vivid rush of new, more sinister scenarios. Sam loved his bicycle. Only under extreme circumstances would he have abandoned it.

‘Outside a newsagent in Warren Road. I’m on my way there now. It’s just off that street before the roundabout, the one we use for the short-cut through to the Old Kent Road.’

She could hear Martin running as he talked, the slap of his soles on Tarmac, the gasps of his breath. Charlotte began to run as well, not jogging this time, but as fast as she had ever run in her life. For Sam, she was running for Sam, and so was Martin and that, surely, was a force of good, a force to be reckoned with – two people who had failed each other but loved their child.

Ten minutes later, sweating but cold, she tore into the street that marked the beginning of the short-cut, only to
see Martin coming towards her, shaking his head. Not his. Too big. Different make.’

Charlotte bent over her knees, catching her breath. The running had helped the panic. They would keep looking for ever, if necessary. For ever. It was that simple. As she straightened, her phone rang.

‘That’s probably Cindy – I’ve been talking to the police station.’

But it wasn’t Cindy, it was Dominic Porter, ringing to say he had Sam in quite a state on his doorstep and he thought she’d better come round.

It was only then that Charlotte started to cry, falling against Martin, who – having gathered that it was good news rather than bad – also began to sob. Still weeping, clinging to each other like two drunks, they staggered back to tell the policeman hovering next to the newsagent.

‘I’ll kill him,’ croaked Martin, grinning, wiping his eyes, as they turned for home. ‘I’ll bloody kill him.’

‘Me too,’ Charlotte gasped, squeezing Martin’s fingers when they sought hers, aware of a bond of joy more intense than any they had ever shared as lovers or parents, not even during the wonderment in the delivery room thirteen years before. ‘And I want you to know I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry?’ He was still half laughing, wiping the tears off his face.

‘For us. How wrong we went. I know it was as much me as you.’

‘Okay. Thanks. Me too.’ He let go of her fingers, seeming uncertain.

‘I just needed to say that,’ Charlotte explained quickly, before switching the conversation back to Sam and keeping it there while they hurried back to the house.

Cindy, on the phone to her sister when they returned,
screamed and dived at them, simultaneously shrieking the news into the mouthpiece. Seconds later they were in their cars, heading for Wandsworth. Martin drove behind Charlotte, struggling to keep up as she broke speed limits, shot lights and soared over road humps like the woman she was – on a mission, learning to fly.

In spite of its early appearance in the school calendar, the Wednesday of the St Leonard’s sports day dawned with Caribbean blue skies and a flaming sun suggestive of high summer. Jean, winding down the window of Bill’s air-conditioned Audi as they cruised for a parking space, was momentarily transported back to her first step off the plane in Ceylon sixty years before, when the hot air had filled her mouth and whirled under the hem of her dress, fanning the dampness behind her knees.

‘It must be here.’ Bill craned his neck, trying to see over the hedge, which then conveniently became a fence, revealing a set of playing-fields swarming with children, small, brightly coloured cones and onlookers. ‘Can you see if it’s them?’

Jean squinted, putting up a hand to shield her eyes. ‘I can’t actually see
them
, but it looks right, doesn’t it? Sam said it was by a church and there’s a church.’ She rummaged in her bag with her good hand for her glasses, finding only lipsticks, her purse and the mobile Bill had encouraged her to buy, then helped her to use, but of which she was still mostly very afraid, and the envelope with the cheque in it. Heavens, yes, she mustn’t forget that… not again. Rediscovering a positive attitude to life had proved a lot easier than sharpening her memory.

‘Perhaps I should take a look at that text, should I, Mrs B?’

‘Oh, here’s a man,’ Jean cried, not ready yet for more
palaver with the mobile. ‘Let’s pull over and ask him. Excuse me… I say, excuse me,’ she trilled, sticking her head as far out of the window as she could. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know if that’s St Leonard’s School sports day going on in there, would you?’

Tim Croft, too hot in his pinstripes, dabbing at his forehead with his handkerchief, smiled warmly. Grandparents, he decided, the old biddy riding in the back because she felt safer, the pair of them bewildered, no doubt, by London traffic, one-way systems and the heat.
Yes
, I believe it is. There’s no parking here, though, I’m afraid. You’ll have to try your luck in the next street over for that.’

Duty done, he turned back to the fence, tracking Charlotte as she moved through the crowd. Between viewings in neighbouring streets, it was pure coincidence that he had caught sight of her, arriving a few minutes earlier on a very old bicycle, with a basket on the front handlebars and a rusted rack fixed over the back wheel. Seeing the breeze press her lilac cotton skirt round her fabulous legs as she pedalled, the little dog trotting alongside, Tim had felt a sufficiently violent flare of the old desire to watch closely as she parked and tied the lead to the handlebars, asking himself what would have happened if she had been on her doorstep that evening instead of Eve, whether they could have made a go of things after all. Peering at her now, among the jolly throng of children and adults, he let the reverie continue, trying to imagine what it would be like at her side with the kid in tow, going to school events, playing a part in such a different world.

Eve’s bolting had been a horrible shock. The so-and-so had made him wait until the next morning before getting in touch, calling from the concourse of Heathrow airport, surrounded by the hubbub of announcements, conversation
and rumbling trolley-wheels. England pissed her off, she had said, as if that explained everything. It had been good to see Charlotte, and to meet him, of course, but she liked to act on impulse. And he could visit Boston whenever he wanted – an open invitation. An email had arrived two days later, reiterating the invitation with such flirtatious invention that Tim, forgiving her, had responded in kind. The correspondence, continuing heatedly ever since, was fun, as was the prospect of visiting America. In the meantime he had bumped into an old flame in the supermarket (far prettier than he remembered) and there was a new woman at the gym too, giving him signals – ash blonde, early forties, but fit as a cat… Like buses, Tim reflected happily. Nothing for ages, then several at the same time.

Far better to be a rolling stone, he decided, moving away from the fence and crossing the road: America in August, the old flame next week, the gym that night. Charlotte had been a mistake, a post-marital glitch, holding him back.

Hearing a rustle in his pocket, he pulled out the brown envelope that had arrived that morning. It contained the now dog-eared tickets for what he had misguidedly intended as Charlotte’s birthday treat, with a curt note of referral to the small print describing the company policy not to offer refunds. Tim tapped the envelope against his palm, weighing the temptation to use the tickets to woo one of his new prospects against a dim notion that they might in some way be jinxed.

In the end the superstitious feeling got the better of him. And he had, after all, made the booking in Charlotte’s name, he reasoned, pulling out a pen to overwrite his address with hers and scribble a hasty explanation on the flap of the envelope. And maybe – just maybe – a gesture of such obvious generosity would help dispel any lingering memories
she might have of the horribly unsatisfactory encounter on his sofa. It didn’t matter, of course, not now, but a man had his pride, he told himself, experiencing a small buzz of satisfaction as he dropped the packet into a postbox.

Charlotte had to force herself not to stand too close, not to touch, not to ask, every minute, if he was all right, if the headache had really gone, if he was sure that running four hundred metres might not cause the gash in his leg to split open and spill some more of his precious, precious blood. Dear God, she would have wrapped him in steel if she could, every delicate little inch of him, not just as protection against evil youths with knives but against future suffering of every kind.

But then again she wouldn’t, Charlotte thought, moving further away, losing herself instead to the enjoyable sight of Sam among his peers, holding his own; the yellowing bruise, the plaster on his leg were the last things on his mind. It might have taken thirteen years but she was beginning to understand that a mother’s desire to protect her offspring had at times to be controlled so as not to throw everything else off balance. The world, like the school playground, could be bullying and brutal, but no amount of mother-love or armoured plating would ever help anyone get through unscathed – not her, not Martin, not Eve, not Sam, no matter how much she wished it so. The best one could hope for was what, in fact, had happened: that presented with a crisis involving thugs and violence, her son had been instilled with enough sense, confidence, instinct, to try to pedal away from it – even after the fastest of his attackers had sliced through his calf with a flick-knife, even after he had fallen off taking the road-bend too quickly and been forced to complete his escape at a hobbling run, leaning on his bike
for support. Charlotte was glad she hadn’t seen any of what he had been through, that she had only Sam’s spare, reluctant descriptions of the tall white boy with the blade who had run at such speed, and the railings where he had hit his head falling off, and the long spell of being so totally lost, before the main road and the big sign saying ‘Clapham’, which he knew was near Wandsworth.

For Charlotte, the vivid images started with her and Martin’s arrival in Dominic’s sitting room and the sight of Sam on the sofa, sheet-white apart from a bulbous blue bruise above his right eye, one leg of his jeans rolled up to reveal a long, ridged lump of caked blood. Dominic, in grey tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt, pale and rumpled from sleep, had stood out of their way, murmuring that he had thought it better to wait for them before doing anything, that at the mention of an ambulance Sam had got upset. Glassy-eyed, breathless, they had knelt next to the sofa to listen to the first garbled version of the ordeal, before broaching the subject of getting him to a doctor themselves. ‘And the police, mate,’ Martin had added gently. ‘You’re going to have to tell them everything you can remember.’

‘But I don’t want stitches,’ Sam had sobbed, clinging to creases in the sofa cover.

‘It won’t hurt any more than it does already, darling,’ Charlotte assured him, trying to stroke his head and pulling back in dismay as he flinched. ‘We’ll take you there right now – get it over with. And they must look at that bump on your poor head too.’

‘We could call George’s dad, if you like,’ Martin had suggested brightly, as Sam continued to cry, ‘I know it’s late, but Henry would be only too glad – I know he would – to give you a once-over, explain what’s likely to happen at the hospital.’

But Sam, from having been upset, became hysterical. No – not him, Dad, no, please! I want – the hospital.’

‘Okay, mate, okay. Steady on.’

‘We’ll go to St George’s,’ said Charlotte swiftly, seeing the cruelty of further delay, both for Sam, who was too shocked to be coherent, and Dominic, whose pained expression suggested that he was beginning to feel more than a little inconvenienced.

‘Thank you
so
much.’

‘He just turned up. I did nothing.’ Dominic looked at the carpet, shuffling his feet, which were in beaten-up suede slippers, and then over her shoulder where Martin was gathering Sam into his arms for carrying to the car. ‘Look, forgive this,’ he lowered his voice, speaking in a rush, ‘but I feel you should know – that business just then about George’s father. Sam’s reaction – it’s because… I’m sorry, Charlotte, this is difficult – but it’s because he
knows.
About you and the doctor father – after Suffolk he told Rose. Sam
knows.
’