Someone Else's Son (42 page)

What the hell was she going to do?

 

Fiona felt his agony. It gnawed and ate and upset her insides, her life, as if it were her own. She was watching someone she loved get hurt through a glass window so thick they couldn’t hear her banging, couldn’t see her lips crying out, wanting to help. Not when they were blind, anyway; not when they didn’t know you loved them in the first place. She felt so desperately helpless; so very sorry for Brody.

Her flat was neat and tidy. In the near decade that she’d been working with the professor, he’d only been to her home once, years ago, and anyway, it wouldn’t have affected Fiona’s image of serenity, calm and organisation if everything had been flung from the cupboards and the place hadn’t been cleaned in a month. Brody wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. They’d been on their way to the airport, way back. Fiona had picked him up from his ghastly flat and they’d headed out towards Heathrow. She always liked to leave error time for traffic and breakdowns and other emergencies, not that there had ever been any. Except that day.

‘Stop!’ Brody yelled, banging his fist on the dashboard. If they’d been on a regular road, Fiona would have slammed on the brakes in a driving-test-style stop. The M25 allowed her only to switch lanes and slow to a speed which sent other motorists close to the car’s rear before overtaking and hooting.

‘What on earth’s wrong?’ she asked. Two years working for him and she thought she knew the maths professor pretty well. He’d never behaved like this before.

‘I can’t go to Boston,’ he said.

‘Why on earth not?’ Fiona decided to pull over on to the hard shoulder. There was a junction coming up and if this was a real emergency, they’d need to get off the motorway fast.

‘Because Max has a school concert.’

‘What?’ Fiona rolled her eyes and put the car into gear again. He was being ridiculous. A fast and steady stream of traffic prevented her pulling out. She rolled forward, waiting for a large enough gap to filter back on to the motorway.

‘I want you to turn round and take me home. No, better still, take me to your place. It’s nearer and I want to phone the school. We can sort out the other logistics there.’

‘But you’re the keynote speaker. Most of the delegates are only attending because of your speech. And you’re the guest of honour at the banquet on Saturday.’ Fiona was utterly disappointed. Five days in a hotel with Brody would surely have led to something. Did he think so little of her that he wouldn’t have at least placed his hand on hers over dinner or kissed her cheek last thing at night, even if it was only to say he appreciated her? Something as small as that would have kept her going. She wasn’t expecting anything more.

‘I made a mistake. Max comes first.’ Brody was calm, Fiona thought, for a man who was risking his reputation.

‘Why don’t you just call the school and ask when the next concert is? You could go to that instead.’

‘Take me to your flat, Fiona. If you won’t do that, then please drive me home.’ He was acting perfectly rationally, as if he’d just decided not to go shopping.

Fiona couldn’t argue with him. He was her boss. She was paid to do what he asked and if that involved turning the car round and damaging his career then so be it. That it gave her no opportunity now to talk a little more intimately on the long flight to the States than she’d ever dared before, or perhaps linger in his hotel room and help him unpack, maybe share a drink from the mini-bar, sat heavily in her chest. Tears welled in her eyes. Without saying anything, Fiona wove back into the traffic and exited the motorway at the next junction. She swung round the island and rejoined the M25 in the opposite direction. They would be at her place in less than half an hour.

It was as she guided Brody to the little desk under her window – the desk that had a telephone, her computer, some files from the university, a picture in a silver frame – that she realised there was something –
someone
– stuck right in the middle of any opportunity she might have with Brody. She almost wished he’d never been born.

‘I’m calling about my son, Max Quinell,’ he said into the phone. ‘Yes, yes, that’s right. He’s performing in the concert. Can you tell him that his father will be there to watch him? Thank you. And wish him luck.’

Luck
, Fiona thought, placing the photograph of Brody face down on the desk. She was going to need more than luck to get him to notice her.

Now, years later, as Fiona sat by the phone willing Brody to call, aching deep inside, she wondered what had actually changed now that Max was dead. Wasn’t he, in all this mess, still coming between her and Brody?

Dayna flushed the loo and picked up the blue and white box, the contents of which were strewn on the floor. She rubbed her eyes with toilet paper, knowing there’d be black crescents of mascara on her cheeks. Her eyes stung from crying. She blew her nose and breathed out deeply. It was a start, or an end, she thought, stuffing the instructions back inside the box. She hid it under her cardigan and emerged on to the tiny landing.

In her bedroom, she hurled herself on to her unmade bed. She lay for a while, staring at the ceiling, tracking the cracks in the plaster with her eyes and wondering if each one matched up with a mess in her life. Some people get born lucky, she thought to herself. Some don’t.

She rolled sideways and opened her bedside cupboard. She reached out and hid the small box behind all the junk that had accumulated in there over the years. Broken Pez dispensers, an empty tissue packet, a few books, free CDs swiped from the cereal packets before anyone else could nab them. Old earphones all tangled up, a plastic bag of trading cards, a collection of plastic animals from when they were all the rage and swapped ferociously in the primary school playground, plus a few bits of old make-up in ridiculous shades of pink and turquoise that she’d never dream of wearing now – all these things incongruously shielding the most grown-up and un-childlike thing that had ever happened to her.

As an afterthought and glancing at her bedroom door to make sure it was firmly shut, Dayna slipped the plastic wand from the box before closing the bedside cupboard. She pulled off the white plastic cap and stared at the pen-like object. There was no doubt that she’d done it right. She wasn’t stupid. She’d read the instructions.

Hold the absorbent tip in your urine stream for five to eight seconds
.

The hardest part was waiting three minutes for the result to resolve in the two windows. Her hands had been shaking, her vision blurry from all the crying and all the fear that the little wand contained. Eventually, the control window changed and showed a single blue line. Her heart thumped. That meant she’d done things right – for the first time ever, she added in her head.

Moments later, as the wetness crept further along whatever magic the plastic stick contained, the second line began to appear. A further single blue line would show she wasn’t pregnant. A cross – symbolic? she pondered as the next minute time-slipped into a thousand years – would mean that she was.

Dayna stared at the result as it appeared before her eyes. She blinked a thousand times in the hope she would register what it all meant. Not pregnant or pregnant? she’d asked herself over and over before even buying the test at the chemist. She had no idea. Some women could tell, she’d heard, even from the moment of conception. At fifteen, she didn’t understand her body enough to decide if there was another one growing inside. Her periods were irregular and puberty had come late compared to the other girls in the same year – yet another reason for them to jibe and make fun of her.

‘Max. Good news. I’m pregnant,’ she tried out quietly. Then, ‘Max. Good news. I’m not pregnant.’

She imagined his face when she told him the result. Happiness, regret, fear, shock? He’d been so weird recently, she wasn’t sure she even knew him well enough to second-guess his reaction.

‘But where should I tell him?’ she whispered to her old bear. Battered and smelly, the threadbare toy had sat on her bed for the last fifteen years – the only thing her real dad had ever given her.

As if delaying the reality of it – would Max be disappointed whatever the result? – Dayna considered breaking the news down the alley behind the sports hall, on the roundabout at the park, in the school canteen. ‘There’s always the shed,’ she said to the bear. The creature stared blankly at her with one eye glued back into its socket. The stitches of his lopsided mouth were coming away, giving him a permanent leer. Dayna knew exactly how he felt. ‘I’ll tell him at the shed.’

Not wanting to wait any longer, Dayna tucked the teddy under her duvet and texted Max. She spent ten minutes fixing her face. She didn’t want him seeing her like this. A text came back a couple of minutes later.

Why?
he asked in response to her request to meet. No kiss, no fond smiley face.

Why indeed, Dayna wondered in return, had everything gone so horrid?

 

It took half a dozen more text messages, but eventually Max capitulated and agreed to meet Dayna at the shed. In truth, he hadn’t been there in a while. He’d got some recent prizes to take down – an electric toothbrush, a picnic set, a wind-up torch – but going there hadn’t seemed right since he’d stopped hanging out with Dayna. Not since the phone calls; not since those vile messages.

Will u meet me @ shed?
she’d put. No kisses at the end. He read it again as he waited. Perhaps she wouldn’t even come. Perhaps it was all a joke – like, he now realised, they had been. He’d been conning himself that she loved him.

After everything that had happened, he’d just wanted it all to go away, to forget, to move on. But now she’d gone and texted him, set his mind alight with possibilities and, anyway, what else was he to do? He had no other friends. His parents were always working and never interested in him. If he died, would anyone even notice?

So here he was, peering out of the window of the hut with sullen eyes, lurking in the cobwebby shadows because the last thing he wanted was for Dayna to think he was watching out for her. Adrenalin surged through him as a figure crowned the embankment. But it was just a man walking his dog. Max relaxed again and lit a cigarette to calm his nerves. He sat down on the old car seat and brushed ash off the space next to him. He didn’t want Dayna to get it on her clothes.

‘There you go again,’ he said to himself. Smoke curled and spread as the wind kicked up under the ill-fitting door. ‘Kidding yourself that you care about her.’

He pondered what caring about someone actually meant or, more specifically, what caring about
Dayna
had meant. What had it done to him? What would he be like now if he’d never got involved with her? Did his caring stretch as far as wanting to patch things up with her – if that’s what she was coming to discuss – or was it only the kind of caring that meant he could brag about having got off with her in the boiler room?

He sat and thought and smoked. He had no idea.

‘Fucking bitch,’ Max said between tight lips. He snorted and coughed as he inhaled too deeply. How
could
she? How could she just go off and tell everyone? The looks came first – quick glances from a couple of girls in their year. Hands cupped to ears; giggles sprayed across the canteen. Then nothing for a day or two. Just that same warm feeling in his belly; the one he hoped she also had.

By the end of January the phone calls started. He was used to getting them anyway, but these were serious kicks in the gut compared to the others. The words were mean and harsh, mocking and cruel. Every syllable cut through his flesh and led directly to his heart.

He thought he heard footsteps outside the hut. His fists clenched with anger. There were so many things he wanted to say to her, yet saying nothing at all had been the easiest option these last few weeks. They’d kept out of each other’s way – avoided seeing one another in the corridors, turned their backs in class. A few words had been spoken early on, but since those calls, Max hadn’t been able to face her. It made it all too real, what she’d done. Over the years, he’d learnt how to fold inwards, how to dissociate. Never before had the skill been so useful. As far as he was concerned, nothing had ever happened between them. He’d already decided he was going to leave school as soon as he turned sixteen. After that, he had no idea what he would do.

Someone was banging on the hut door. Max drew on his cigarette and closed his eyes and it was all still there, haunting him, crippling him.

The first phone message was about screwing losers, that
he
was the loser. He was used to getting them, but these were different. They’d begun with
her
. They hurt more. The second was insulting about his body – stuff that only Dayna could have known. The next was about his performance, or the lack of, and the revolting voice spat it all out with sickening, degrading detail. Had she told them
everything
? The final message was about—

‘Max, fucking let me in. I know you’re in there.’ She hammered hard, bashing her way into his mind again. He stood up. His hand reached out for the bolt. He slid it back and she was in. Right there in his heart again when he saw her small, pale face. He knew exactly why he’d loved her.

He closed the door. Thing is, he thought, watching Dayna pace nervously round the small space in the hut, he’d expected it to last for ever, not just a moment in time.

‘Max,’ she said. Her voice was deep and shaky, as if she’d only just mustered enough courage. He saw a flash of pain in her eyes. He wanted to take her, hold her, make it all better.

He just stared at her. Said nothing.What could he say that would fix everything?

‘I’m pregnant.’

Dennis unwrapped a sausage roll. Flakes of pastry snowed on his dark trousers. He brushed them off with his free hand. The traffic wasn’t going anywhere. ‘I just don’t know, Jess,’ he said, biting into the unappetising breakfast he’d picked up at the corner shop. Jess had declined to eat.