Never Say Goodbye (20 page)

‘Would you like me to make the call for you?’

Loving him for thinking of it, she said, ‘Maybe. I’ll let you know, thanks. So now, are the children coming to me this weekend?’

‘It would be wonderful if they could. We’re off to London again, just for Saturday, back in time for lunch on Sunday, if that works for you?’

‘No problem. Just let me know what time you’ll be bringing them, or I can pick them up if you prefer. What are you doing in London?’

‘Um, you know, I’ve forgotten. Some conference, I think, and a party after. Kristina has the details.’

Was he really sounding cagey, or was it her imagination? ‘OK, well I guess I’d better let you go,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you at the weekend, if not before.’

After ringing off she wandered to the window and stood staring into the darkening estuary. Though the unwelcome reminder of her father was dominating her mind, she wouldn’t, couldn’t, revisit her memories of him. She would only go so far as to regret with all her heart that he was still alive while her mother and Talia had gone.

‘
OH RYAN, WHAT’S
happened to your eye?’ Josie cried, as he came to sit with her and Lily in the cavernous visitors’ room. Other families were gathering to spend an hour with their own offenders, and as usual the noise was deafening, echoing around the steel pipes in the ceiling, and punching off the brutal stone walls, while the smell of old cooking and sweat curdled the air.

Glancing anxiously around to make sure no one had heard, Ryan muttered, ‘Keep it down, Mum. Don’t make a fuss.’

‘But it’s all bruised,’ she protested, the mere sight of it causing flurries of horror inside her. ‘Did someone attack you?’

‘No!’ he said through his teeth. ‘I knew you’d think that, but it was an accident, all right?’

Josie and Lily exchanged glances, neither of them believing it for a minute.

‘I swear,’ he insisted, his pale complexion flushing with colour.

He looked so thin, Josie was thinking as she regarded him with her careful mother’s eye, and so vulnerable with his tufty ginger hair and baby-smooth cheeks, marred only by the bruise, which was so livid it made her wince all over again. She wanted to sweep him into her arms and hug him like she used to when he was small. He was her little guinea pig, she used to tell him, on account of his wayward, wiry hair.

‘So what happened?’ Lily wanted to know, her lovely face seeming to glow with health in comparison to her brother’s.

‘Nothing, it doesn’t matter,’ he mumbled.

‘Someone did that to you,’ Josie insisted. ‘You have to report them, Ryan . . .’

‘Don’t be stupid, Mum. This isn’t a school, it’s a nick where stuff happens. Anyway, no one did it. I dropped one of the weights when I was working out in the gym.’

‘On to your eye?’ If only she hadn’t watched that flipping documentary. Ever since, she’d found it impossible not to think of all those terrible things being inflicted on him.

‘Can we just leave it now?’ he retorted. ‘Tell me what you’ve been up to.’

Letting Lily answer first, Josie watched him absorbing every one of his sister’s words as though it was something magic to take away with him for later. Different as they were they’d always been close, usually with Lily looking out for her little brother, since he’d never been all that good at taking care of himself. He was too kind-hearted for one thing, and downright gullible for another. Ever since Josie could remember he’d given away his sweets before having any himself, or he’d let someone have the first ride on his new bike, anything to make people like him, and no one ever really did. He’d been better off indoors with her and Jeff watching the old cowboy films he loved, or helping his dad in the garden, or putting model forts together. Of course, he’d been a blinking handful at times, especially as he’d grown older, cheeking her back when she got on to him about tidying his room, or coming home with his best clothes covered in mud when she’d told him not to go over the park in them.

Of course she knew he’d probably been pushed in the stream, or deliberately splashed in puddles; it wasn’t easy being a boy with ginger hair, and living on their kind of estate made it harder still. There were so many ruffians about, older, bigger lads, yobs, who got a real kick out of picking on someone younger and smaller than them. It could break her heart to think of how hard he’d tried to be friends with them.

And now here he was, serving time for a crime they’d committed when all he’d actually done was provide a key for the real offenders to break into a house and rob it. That repulsive bunch of lowlife ought to be looking out for him while he was in here, not punching him in the face, or knocking weights out of his hands. And if they weren’t responsible for his injury they should be sorting out those who were; after all, they owed him big time for taking the rap for them. Most of them were going to be out in less than a year, but not Ryan. Or Shane Prince, come to that, who’d been facing at least a fifteen-year stretch if he’d been found guilty of that dreadful assault – the assault that
he’d
committed. As it was, with it being his second time in front of a judge for robbery with aggravating factors he’d got seven years, two more than Ryan.

‘What are you doing, Mum?’ Ryan whispered angrily.

Confused, she said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘Why are you looking around at everyone?’

‘I was just wondering . . . Is Shane Prince still in here, or have they moved him?’

‘No, he’s here,’ Ryan answered miserably.

Josie glanced around the hall again, but there was no sign of the cocky little scumbag whose neck she’d like to wring. ‘Doesn’t he get any visitors?’ she asked.

Ryan shook his head. ‘Not very often.’

‘Half his family’s in clink,’ Lily reminded them.

‘Ssh,’ Ryan seethed.

‘Well they are.’

‘Yeah, but you don’t have to shout it.’

Quickly changing the subject, Josie said, ‘We brought you some chocolate and a malt loaf and a couple of football magazines.’

‘What about cigarettes?’ he asked.

Knowing they were a vital form of currency in this place, she said, ‘There’s only one packet, I’m afraid, and a fiver in cash. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t spare any more this week. Dad’s still not getting much work, and now I’ve lost my cleaning job . . .’

‘I thought you were going to get another,’ Lily cut in.

‘I’m looking,’ Josie assured her, ‘but they go so fast these days.’

‘I’ll check online for you. I bet I’ll come up with something a bit better than cleaning.’

Josie’s eyebrows rose. ‘I hope you’re not looking down your nose at me.’

‘As if,’ Lily soothed. ‘I just want you to earn more so you can treat yourself now and again. When was the last time you bought any new clothes? And you never go out anywhere, apart from the karaoke bar about once a month. I know you love the cinema, and you used to be really good at tap. Remember the class we went to in town? Oh God, do you remember that, Ry? We used to tease her something rotten, but she had the last laugh when she only
won an award
.’

Breaking into a grin, Ryan said, ‘Yeah, and she got really tipsy after so Dad had to practically carry her to the car.’

‘Actually, it was Nan who got tipsy,’ Josie protested.

‘Blotto, more like,’ he corrected. ‘Oh my God, then she went over the park when we got back and only chucked up on the kiddies’ roundabout after whizzing round on it too fast. Do you remember that?’

Josie grimaced as Lily laughed. ‘I’d rather not,’ Josie replied. ‘At least I’m not quite such an embarrassment for you two.’

‘No, you’re just lovely,’ Lily said, putting an arm around her. ‘And we love you to bits, don’t we Ry?’

Glancing at the inmates either side of him to check if any were listening, he said, ‘Definitely. Best mum in the world.’

‘Best boy,’ Josie whispered. ‘And best girl,’ she added, taking Lily’s hand.

‘Best tapper,’ Lily smiled. ‘Oh God,’ she suddenly exclaimed, charging back down memory lane, ‘do you remember that barbecue when Dad set fire to the hedge and we had the council round on the Monday trying to find out who’d done it? That was hilarious. Dad hid in the shed while they were there, leaving Mum to do all the talking.’

‘And I was the lookout to tell him when the coast was clear,’ Ryan added.

‘And Dawnie nearly gave the game away when she turned up in a fireman’s hat to make us all laugh,’ Lily giggled.

And if I’d known about him and Dawnie then, I’d have shopped him
, Josie was thinking, but she hadn’t found out until the following week, which effectively made that little episode with Dawnie the last of their happy memories with her.

As the hour ticked on and they tripped even further back in time to when they’d never seemed short of money and she’d always been sure of Jeff, Josie could only feel glad that they hadn’t known then what the future held. It would have spoiled things if they had, which just went to show that living in the present was the very best way to carry on, or they’d never enjoy a bit of happiness again.

‘Who are you looking at?’ she asked, glancing over her shoulder to follow the direction of Ryan’s straying attention.

‘No one,’ Ryan replied, a crimson flush spreading up from his collar.

‘It’s that bloke over by the window,’ Lily whispered in Josie’s ear. ‘The one in the blue polo neck.’

Catching the young man’s eye, Josie found herself being treated to a sunny smile. ‘Who is he?’ she asked, turning back to Ryan.

‘His name’s Paul,’ he replied. ‘He’s the chaplain here.’

Josie’s eyes widened.

‘He’s a good bloke,’ Ryan stated. ‘I mean, not just in a God sort of way, he’s like really easy-going and into all sorts of stuff.’

Pleased to think he was relating to someone with good moral fibre, Josie was about to tell him so when Ryan said quickly, ‘He’s coming over. Be nice to him, won’t you?’

‘Like as if we wouldn’t,’ Lily protested.

‘Hello Ryan,’ the young man said warmly. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting?’

‘No, not at all,’ Josie assured him, guessing he must be in his late twenties, possibly thirty – and she really liked the clean-cut, educated sort of look to him. ‘Ryan was just telling us you’re the chaplain here,’ she smiled.

‘For my sins,’ he replied with an ironic laugh. ‘Ryan’s told me a lot about you. It’s good that he has such a close and supportive family.’

Wondering what Ryan might have confided about Jeff, Josie said, ‘Well, we do our best, because we love him very much and we . . .’

‘
Muu-uum!
’ Ryan muttered through his teeth.

‘. . . do worry about him in here, don’t we Lily?’

‘All the time,’ Lily confirmed. ‘I’m Lily, Ryan’s sister,’ she explained, holding out a hand to shake the chaplain’s. ‘He shouldn’t be here really, because he didn’t clobber that bloke. He only said he did because . . .’

‘He knows,’ Ryan broke in harshly. ‘And you can’t talk about that stuff here. You don’t know who’s listening.’

‘I don’t care who’s listening . . .’

‘Leave it,’ Josie said to Lily. ‘We don’t want to make things even harder for him than they already are. So how often are you here?’ she asked the chaplain.

‘Three or four times a week,’ he replied, his gaze moving from her to Ryan. ‘I try to get the lads interested in various projects, and I have to say Ryan is very receptive to new ideas and he’s doing extremely well with his reading.’

Baffled, Josie said, ‘Well, it’s not like he couldn’t read before he came in here.’

Paul smiled. ‘I was meaning in his choice of literature. He seems to have quite a fondness for Robert Louis Stevenson, who happens to be a big favourite of mine.’

Realising Ryan was probably trying to impress again, Josie was about to announce that she’d read
Kidnapped
at school when a child let rip with a piercing scream. The next instant a fight had broken out between two women in the play area.

‘Scrap, scrap, scrap,’
a bunch of inmates chanted as three officers rushed in to pull the women apart.

Josie turned back, and seeing the way Paul’s hand was resting protectively on Ryan’s shoulder she felt a surge of relief rise from the knotted angst inside her. He had a friend, someone who was looking out for him, and though they’d never really been a church family, she couldn’t have wished for someone more worthy, or more sensitive, to help her boy through this time.

‘I’ll be back in a fortnight,’ she told Ryan when she had to hug him cheerio. ‘You take care of yourself in the meantime, and don’t forget to write. I love reading your letters.’

‘Don’t you forget either,’ he said, his voice choked with tears. ‘Love you, Mum, more than anything.’

‘Love you too,’ she whispered, smoothing his face.

‘Keep your chin up,’ Lily told him, as he turned to embrace her. ‘You’re the best.’

‘So are you. Say hi to Jasper for me.’

‘Will do. He says hi too. See you in a fortnight.’

As they reached the door Josie and Lily turned back to find Ryan still watching them, clearly struggling to hold on to his tears. The chaplain was next to him, lending comfort and friendship. They looked like brothers, Josie thought as she gave them a wave, both redheads, both slight, though Paul was taller and a little larger in build.

‘Do you reckon he’s gay?’ Lily asked as soon as they were free of the crowd.

Startled, Josie glanced at her as she raised her umbrella. ‘You mean the chaplain? What makes you say that?’ she said, the thought never having crossed her mind.

Lily shrugged and tucked an arm through her mother’s to huddle under the brolly. ‘He just struck me that way, that’s all,’ she replied. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with it. In fact, it could be a good thing if he is.’

‘Why?’ Josie asked, bewildered.

‘Well, for one thing it’ll make him a lot more human than those gorillas Ry’s locked up with, and for another, I’ve often wondered if Ry’s not more that way himself.’

Shocked into silence, Josie could only blink.

‘Haven’t you?’ Lily prompted.

‘No, never.’

‘Oh come on, Mum. It’s got to have crossed your mind. He’s really feminine in his ways, and he’s always preferred hanging out with girls than with boys.’