Rockoholic (34 page)

“My daddy cuggles,” she repeats.

“Yeah. Yeah, he will give you cuddles,” I say. I’m holding on to her really tight. Jackson remains absolutely silent, riding shotgun. Mac won’t even look at him.

We get back to my house and drop Jackson off at our back gate. He holds the door open and leans in. “Mac, I’m sorry,” he says. Mac says nothing. “I screwed up.”

Mac nods, his jaw clenching, still staring resolutely at the street beyond the windshield as the Saxo’s engine ticks over. “The sooner you leave, the better.”

Jackson doesn’t even argue, he just nods, closes the car door, and walks back over to the drum room, opens the door, and goes inside.

I don’t say anything, either. I don’t even look at Mac. He’s waiting for me to get out of the car. “I’ve got to take Cree home and tell Mum and Dad,” he says.

“You’re not taking the rap for this on your own. I’m coming with you.”

“Jody, get out,” he snaps.

“No. I’m not leaving her on her own in the back.” Cree starts whimpering again in my arms and before I know it Mac’s put his foot down on the pedal and we’re speeding up Chesil Lane, on our way to the Pack Horse. The second we park the Saxo, Mac leaps out, leans in the back, and snatches Cree off me, so he’s holding her as we enter through the back of the pub. Teddy’s behind the counter, counting up the lunchtime take. The second Cree spots him she starts full-on crying out for him.

“What’s happened? Why . . . why’s she . . .” Teddy’s all confused as to why Cree’s hair is damp and why she’s in utter despair for a cuddle and clinging to him with strength he never knew she had. Why Mac and I are wet and muddy and my hair is straggly and dirtier than usual. Teddy’s face grows whiter with shock as we tell him, leaving out all the bits about Jackson. Mac takes the full blame.

“Me and Jody were talking and . . . throwing the ball to her and she ran after it. We weren’t looking. She fell in the pond.”

“Bloody hell, Kenz, what were you bloody playing at, not watching her?! God, I think I’m going to be sick,” he says, sitting down on an upturned bottle crate and rubbing Cree’s back. She’s completely calmed down now, her face against his shoulder and sucking her thumb. Now that she’s got her dad, she’s relaxed. All her angst and crying has transferred to him. His face is sheet-white. “I should have been there,” he keeps saying. “Why wasn’t I there?”

“She’s OK, Dad,” says Mac.

Teddy’s shaking. He gives Mac a brief glance. “Jesus, she could’ve drowned! My poor little girl. Look at your hair, all dirty.” His whole hand shakes as he strokes over her damp ponytail. He’s deffo on the verge of blubbing.

Teddy’s right. If he’d been there, it wouldn’t have happened. She wouldn’t have got near that pond, let alone gone in. I bite my nails again, only there’s nothing there to bite anymore. All my nails are in fragments on the backseat of Mac’s car.

There’s footsteps along the corridor and Tish appears through the beaded curtain at the back of the bar. “I thought I heard voices, d’you have a nice . . .” she starts to say and then sees us, sees Cree, sees Teddy’s ashen face, and immediately the panic sets in and she takes Cree’s dazed face in her hands. “Oh my God, what’s happened?”

Mac and I tell her, almost word for word, what we’ve just told Teddy, again leaving out the missing-rock-star-that-came-with-us bits. It’s even harder telling her because she does cry. They both start shouting at us then, at which point Cree starts crying as well. It’s a total nightmare of crying and accusing and shouting, and most of the shouting and accusing is directed straight at Mac.

“Don’t take it out on him,” I interrupt. “I was there, too. It’s my fault as well.”

“Leave it, Jody,” says Mac.

“I tell you time and time again you’ve got to watch her cos she wanders, but do you listen?” Teddy cries. “She could have died because of you!”

At this point, Mac marches straight through the bar and upstairs. I hear a door slam in the distance. Moments later there are thumping footsteps down the stairs and the kitchen door opens and slams. He’s gone to his dress rehearsal about an hour early. I’m not aware of my heart beating a path out of my throat anymore, or my lungs ballooning in and out. I’m completely numb. I just feel dirty, like I want an endless hot shower. I think it must be shock, if not from what happened at Weston Park, then because of what they’ve just said to Mac.

I have to say something. “It’s not fair, telling him she could have died. She’s OK. It was an accident.”

“Go home, Jody,” says Tish, all quivery voice. “It’s all right, we’re not angry with you.”

“We bloody are!” says Teddy. “The pair of ’em should’ve been watching her better.” Tish rubs her temples. Her hands are shaking.

I turn to go, but I turn back. I don’t know what I’m going to say until I hear it coming out of my mouth. “When was the last time you took Cree out anywhere? For the day? We take her out all the time, me and Mac. All she wants is you two, but you’re always busy. You palm her off on Mac all the time. . . .”

“I beg your pardon,” says Teddy. “Don’t talk to my wife like that.”

“Your wife? Not your barmaid, then? Just cos Cree’s not old enough to stock bottles or clear glasses she’s probably not on your radar really, is she?” I can’t help myself. I can’t stop it coming.

“How dare you!” says Teddy. “Running a pub is a 24/7 job.”

“So is having kids! You can’t just have them and then let them get on with it. It’s the same at the day care. Kids cry all day for their parents, but they’re too worried about paying for the mortgage or remodeling the kitchen to be that bothered. You don’t realize how much she needs you. All she ever wants is her daddy and you’re never ever there!”

“How dare you!” Tish shouts. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, I do,” I say. There’s no stopping me now. “Mac told me you were the same with him as a kid, too. Always making excuses. Can’t go and see him in his Nativity play, got to be back for opening up. Can’t go and see him sing at the school concert, who’ll run the pub? You missed out on Mac’s whole childhood. And you’re missing out on Cree’s, too!”

“Get out, Jody. Go on, go home, you’ve crossed the line,” cries Tish. Teddy’s rocking Cree and just looks shell-shocked. And then Tish and Teddy start riffing between themselves.

“This is just like last time,” Tish says, sobbing. “We weren’t there then, either.”

Cree escaped from Bumblebees one day (one of the few days when I had genuinely been out sick). She had just learned to walk and she managed to undo the lock on the gate in the yard and wandered out into the street, which is right by the main road through Nuffing. It was sheer luck that one of the ladies from the sandwich shop was walking past.

Teddy just nods and strokes the head of his now-sleeping little girl.

Silence. “So what are you going to do about it?” I ask them. They both look at me. “Take her to the Easter egg hunt in the woods next weekend? Go and see Mac’s opening night tomorrow? I bet neither of you have ever been to one, have you?”

Silence again. Tish sniffs. Teddy sighs. “We always think about going,” Teddy mumbles.

“I think you should go home, Jody,” says Tish.

And without one more word, I do.

I take the long way back to my house, through the churchyard, and sit on one of the benches for a bit, looking at the graves. There’s a slug moving its way down one of them, the nearest one. I wish I was it. Comes to something when your life sucks so bad you want to trade places with a slug. I stare at the pub across the road. I shouted at Mac’s parents. They’re going to hate me now. They’ll never want me at the pub again. If we hadn’t gone to Weston Park, Cree wouldn’t have nearly drowned. If I hadn’t kidnapped Jackson in the first place, we wouldn’t have taken him there like he wanted to. It’s all because of me. I use the phone booth to try and call Mac but his phone just rings and rings. I call again and it goes straight to voice mail. I don’t know how long I’m sitting there, headstone-watching and churning over the day’s events in my head, but it’s getting dark by the time I leave. I go into the house via the backyard, hoping to look in on Jackson before dinner, but the kitchen light’s on and Mum’s in the window, running the tap into a saucepan. She sees me and smiles. I smile back. I look across to the garage and when Mum’s back is turned, I open the door and look inside. Jackson’s gone.

Oh my God.

The back door opens. Mum appears. Yet again, she greets me when I’m fresh from a dunking in dirty water, except this time the pondweed and dirt are pretty dried into my clothes.

And yet again, she doesn’t even ask.

“All right? How was Weston Park?”

“Mmm, yeah,” I tell her. And I explain, “Cree fell in the pond. I fished her out.”

She looks at me as I walk into the utility room and start stripping off my jeans and socks.
Where the hell has he gone? Has he left? Is he hiding? Has Mum caught him and forced him to shell broad beans for dinner? Where. The Hell. Is. He?

“
Blimey,” she says. “Is Cree OK?”

“Yeah, she’s fine. I’m going to take a shower, all right?”

“All right, dinner’ll be about forty minutes. Beef Wellington.”

“Lush.”

So I’m in the bathroom, showering away, but I’m thinking the whole time about my incredible vanishing hostage. I’m thinking about all the places I need to go and look for him. Back down by the river. The train station. I wonder if I could borrow Alfie again without Tish and Teddy noticing. I wonder if they’ll let me after I bawled them out. I wonder what excuses I’ll give Mum when I suddenly have to dash out after dinner. I step out of the bath, wrap a towel around me, and out of nowhere, there’s a
chink
on the window. And another
chink
. And another.

“What the —” I lift up the catch on the window above the sink and shove it open.

And my moon rock comes flying toward my face.

“Hey, it’s me,” comes a voice. An American voice. I climb up onto the sink, holding my towel in place to look down into the yard. There’s no one there, but it’s Jackson’s voice. The moon rock appears again, and I realize it’s suspended on a long string. A shoe lace. It’s dangling down. I pull on the string.

“Jackson?” I whisper.

“Come on up, the moon is fine,” he says.

I throw on a clean T-shirt and jeans and slip on my Converse and sprint back downstairs. Halley’s safely watching
Hollyoaks
in the living room and Mum’s emptying the dishwasher.

“Where are you off to now?” she asks as I leg it past her, my hair dripping all over the tiles.

“Just . . . to the pub. I have to give something to Mac. His iPod. I forgot to give it back to him. I won’t be long.”

“You’ve got twenty minutes.”

I shut the back door and walk directly to the center of the grass. I look up. Jackson is sitting on the lowest part of the highest roof peak, just above the flat bit where Grandad used to moon-bathe, and dangling his feet just above our bathroom window.

“What are you doing up there?” I whisper up at him.

“Just wanted to be up high,” he calls back.

“Ssh!” I say. “Someone’ll hear you.”

“No they won’t. There’s no one around. You can see everything from up here, it’s great. Come on up.”

“How?”

Jackson guides me up the garden wall, along the top of it, and I have to do a bit of shimmying up the rose trellis and onto the flat part of the roof. I tiptoe over to him and he dangles the moon rock down to me again. I take it. He’s tied it to both of his shoelaces. “How did you get this?” I say, taking it from him.

“It fell out of your pocket at Weston Park. I picked it up.”

“Oh. Why are you up here?”

“Everyone looks down,” he says. “No one can see me up here. Your sister came out to hang out the laundry. And later your mom came out to take it in again cos it started to rain. Neither of them looked up and saw me. It’s nice being up high. I can really breathe up here.”

“That’s nice, why don’t you come down off there now? It’s dark,” I say.

“Is Mac still angry with me?” he says, looking far out into the night.

“I don’t know. I tried calling him but he’s not answering.” Anxiety sits piano-heavy on my chest. I’m worrying about the helicopter I can hear somewhere in the sky that could be sweeping the county looking for him. I’m worrying that the kitchen roof is going to cave in under my weight. I’m worrying that Jackson’s going to fall. I’m worrying about the slates he’s spent God-knows-how-long dislodging and piling up around him like a throne. “Mac didn’t mean it,” I say. “What he said about never wanting to see you again. He’s just scared about what could have happened. He didn’t mean it.”

Jackson looks at me sideways. “Yeah he did. He’s got every right to hate me.”

“That’s not true. You’re great with Cree.”

“No, Cree’s great with
me
,” he says. “And I could’ve let her die today.”

“Listen to me!” I tell him. “We were all there. We should all have been looking after her. I’m a trained nursery nurse. Well, I work in a day care. And Mac’s her brother. Cree isn’t your responsibility, she’s
ours
. The only reason you’re here at all is because of me, so if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. Oh God, look can you come down now and go back in the garage, please? You’re giving me a heart attack being up here.”