Someone Else's Son (44 page)

Max’s bedroom was large enough for him to pace around at speed. He ducked into his private bathroom and doused his head with cold water. That was not enough to take away how he felt so he stood under a scalding shower fully clothed. Dripping wet, he returned to the dark sanctuary of his bedroom and lay on the floor. Remembering it was there, he reached under the ebony chest of drawers and retrieved a virtually full bottle of vodka.

He drank.

He thought and thought what to do. Thought about consequences. There were so many. He focused on that one impulsive moment in the basement and how it had led to all this shit. If he could take time back, would he do it again?

No. Yes. No. Yes . . . no . . . I
dunno
.

He swigged from the bottle. The alcohol curdled the milk already in his stomach.

Dayna was pregnant. What if it wasn’t his?

. . .
catch anything from the emo bitch? She puts it around
. . .

He remembered those particular words on his voicemail. He knew – he thought he knew – that they weren’t true.

. . .
I shafted her before you got to her, man
. . .

Again, he was used to the comments. He’d grown up with them, become immune. Had Dayna been a virgin? He wouldn’t know how to tell.

As the alcohol bled through him, he allowed some of the messages he’d received a few weeks ago to percolate his mind. Should he believe them? She must have said it to them, all that stuff about being together in the basement, how he’d been so unsure what to do, his size, or lack of, they’d said so cruelly, and how it had ended virtually before it began.

Max lay on his back. His hands swept up and down the plush carpet as if he was making a snow angel. He needed an angel now, he thought, willing himself to see one. A guardian angel to take a message to Dayna. Tell her that he did love her. Does. Did. Does.

He sat up.

He would be a man. She would have to get rid of it.

Couldn’t have a baby messing up his life. Not at fifteen.

What had he been thinking? Leaving Denningham.

He drank the vodka.

His mother would help him.

Get him back on the straight and narrow.

Try another school. Get away from all this shit.

Forget it.

For now, the vodka would help.

 

Dayna opened her phone. One new text message. From Max.

She squinted as she read it.

Get an abortion
.

That was all.

Of course, since that little blue cross appeared as if by magic on the test kit, she’d thought about it. But that would be murder, wouldn’t it?

Killing my baby
. . .

She went into the kitchen. She needed to be near someone. Her mother was cooking chips. Nothing seemed real, not even when she lifted the basket from the fryer and pinched a scalding stick of half-cooked potato. She held it between her teeth. Closed her lips around it. She felt nothing.

‘Get yer hands off,’ her mother said.

How she wanted to hug her. How she wanted to push her face against her shoulder and sob and tell her everything and ask her what to do. How she wanted to be a little girl again, have another chance, have another family, another life. She would take Lorrell with her, scoop her up in love and keep her safe. What she needed was a guardian angel; someone to watch over her, tell her what to do, because she had absolutely no clue.

Get an abortion.

As if you could just pop out somewhere, come home without any mistakes. A clean slate.

What about if they had it? Got a place to live? She stared at her mother. She was tipping baked beans into a saucepan. What about if she told her?

Dayna ran out of the kitchen. She charged up the stairs and burst into Lorrell’s tiny room. It was virtually a cupboard with a bed that converted from a cot. Lorrell’s legs stuck out the end when she slept. She was sitting on the floor playing with some Lego that had been bought from a car boot sale. It was dirty. Dayna sat down next to her.

‘Put your hand here,’ she whispered. She took her little sister’s warm hand and placed it low down on her belly.

‘What?’ Lorrell scowled as half her tower fell off.

‘There’s a baby in there,’ Dayna whispered. She had to tell someone; hoped it would help. ‘Sshh,’ she said, putting a finger to her lips. ‘Our secret, right?’

Lorrell’s eyes became round in wonder. ‘A real baby?’ she asked.

Dayna nodded.

‘Wheredit come from?’

‘It was a present from Max,’ she said, unable to help the grin. She knew it was a little boy.

‘Why?’ she said, turning back to her Lego. She scowled in concentration as she forced the bricks together.

‘Because we love each other,’ she replied, feeling so much better as she replied to Max’s text with the words:
I’m going to
.

There was nothing more to be said.

 

Max’s phone buzzed but he didn’t look. He wouldn’t be able to see it anyway, not with what the vodka had done to him. His head throbbed and he knew he was going to be sick. He would just do it on the carpet.

He thought he slept; not sure though; not sure how much time had passed. He lifted the bottle beside him. Nearly empty. Fuck.

He rolled on to his side and vomited. He shuffled his way out of the mess and hauled himself up on to his bed. That noise again; the same high-pitched tone that had cursed his unconsciousness. He plucked his phone off the floor. His eyes swam in and out of focus as he read the text.

I’m going to
.

He chucked up again. Good, he thought. This crazy drunk unreal state was the way to be, he reckoned. Everything seemed much better; less biting, less cruel, less normal. Sense pervaded at last.

Max lay on his bed and drifted in and out of sleep for the remainder of the day, convinced that life was finally coming together. He didn’t wake until the middle of the night, until it was dark, until the pain in his head had receded to a minor twinge when he stood up. He went into the kitchen and flicked on the light. Everything gleamed – so different to real life. He thought of Dayna. She was a tidal wave in his mind as he pulled open the vast refrigerator door. Nothing to eat.

Nothing to do except slide to the floor and weep. She was going to kill their baby.

On the one hand, Brody couldn’t believe she was doing it but, similarly, if working out the world’s entire unsolved mathematical problems would have got justice for Max, then he reckoned he’d have given it a go, too. So after he’d replaced the handset and returned to the warm, dented patch on the old sofa, he was able to understand, to a certain degree at least, why Carrie was acting this way. She was coping; doing what she could. He just couldn’t grasp
how
she could physically do it. It hadn’t even been a week. The difference between them, he assumed.

It was DCI Masters who had told him when he called for an update. ‘Tomorrow?’ Brody said. ‘You sure?’ Why hadn’t Carrie mentioned the show? That was easy. She was worried he’d put up a fight.

‘At first, the girl refused to cooperate,’ Masters told him. ‘But DI Britton worked her charm . . .’ There was a noise in the background that Brody’s heightened hearing told him was female and indignant. ‘She’s agreed to make the appeal. That’s how it was spun to her. An appeal to the public for information. What I’m hoping is that it’ll prompt a memory, get her to talk. I know it’s a lot to ask of a young girl, but it’s worked on young people before. If nothing else, it’ll raise awareness of gang-related crime.’

Can’t do any harm, were Masters’ closing words. Brody half-heartedly agreed but still thought it was too soon for everyone concerned. But then he couldn’t fathom when it wouldn’t feel that way or when his ex-wife appealing on television about their dead son would seem right. There was no bringing back Max.

For the first time in a week, Brody opened his laptop. He checked his emails. His computer told him that he had three hundred and thirty-seven unread messages and five times that many in the junk folder. He listened to the most recent, organising the messages according to sender. He played the important ones first. There was nothing that couldn’t wait. The one from his genius protégé, Ricky McBride, he played half a dozen times before he could take it in. The monotonous computer-generated voice recited the message impassionately.

Prof, I’m dropping out. I know you’ll hate me for it but I can’t do this any more. So what if I can do crazy things with numbers? It don’t pay the bills. Fed up of being the odd one out. Sorry. Ricky
.

Brody shut the lid of his laptop. He sat and thought, hearing nothing but the dripping tap in the kitchen. The estate was oddly quiet this afternoon, as if respecting his need for peace. The week had bombarded him with every emotion of which a human was capable. And he was tired, so very, very tired. He felt ill from fatigue, as if his immune system had packed up.

‘Ricky’s leaving,’ he said. He nodded. He’d half expected it, to be honest. The kid had made quite a name for himself with his exceptional talent. If he truly wanted his bills paying then he was making the biggest mistake of his life by quitting university. Organisations worldwide would be lining up for him with their chequebooks when he graduated. ‘Ricky’s leaving,’ he said again. ‘He doesn’t want to be the odd one out, so he’s leaving.’ Brody’s words were measured and careful. There was nothing left over for chosen emotions, only the ones that crushed him involuntarily in the middle of the night.

‘He’s leaving because he has a choice. He doesn’t want to be different.’ Brody nodded. It was fair in a world where not much else was. Ricky had probably been different all his life, Brody thought. ‘Just like Max,’ he said. ‘Not so different any more, son, are you?’ he said, turning his face to the ceiling.

For the first time in a week, Carrie slept for more than two hours. In fact, by her reckoning she must have soaked up at least four hours’ continuous rest. Despite her insistence to the contrary, she had sent Leah home. Martha was ensconced in the staff flat, rushing around doting on Carrie as if she was terminally ill. Carrie thought she may well be, that her life had been cut short, yet cruelly she was still alive to experience the aftermath. It would be easier to be dead myself, she’d thought a thousand times a day during the last week. Whenever she had slept, she’d willed herself not to wake up.

‘You’re a gem, Martha.’ It was nice, for the briefest of moments, to notice the good things.

‘It’s what you always have on a Friday, pet.’

Carrie sat down at the table and looked at the beautifully presented scrambled eggs nestled alongside several slivers of Scottish smoked salmon. A bowl of fresh fruit sat beside a pot of coffee and a pitcher of juice. Carrie didn’t think Fridays would ever be the same again.

She ate a little and drank the coffee, allowing the warmth of it to seep through her frozen veins. It was still early and the sense of panic that she would normally have if it was six thirty on a Friday and she’d done no preparation whatsoever for the show would have had her barking down the phone at Leah and yelling at the researchers to find out what the hell was going on. Today, however, completely unprepared for what would occur when they went to air, Carrie sat calmly sipping her coffee and staring through the plate-glass window at a sparrow hopping about in her Spartan garden. It looked disappointed, she thought, with her slate and granite and marble edifices and pathways. It didn’t much care either for the bamboo and specimen Japanese plants that her landscaper had convinced her were the only way to furnish an outdoor city space.

‘Are there any crusts, Martha?’ Carrie was beside the counter, scanning the worktop.

Martha turned from the sink. ‘Crusts? Are you still peckish, pet?’

There was a smile. It still hurt. ‘No. But the bird is.’

Martha said nothing but opened a white ceramic pot and pulled out a loaf of wholemeal granary bread. She cut a slice. ‘Enough, pet?’

Carrie nodded and slid open the glass door as silently as she could. There were two sparrows now. One flew away the instant the door moved, but the other stood frozen, staring straight ahead but still able to see everything she was doing. She broke the bread into small pieces and tossed a couple outside. The bird didn’t move. How can it be so still yet alive? she wondered. She envied it that. If she was able, she would freeze herself from the inside out and never move again.

The bird hopped closer to a piece of bread. Carrie broke up and threw out the rest of the slice. At her movement, the sparrow became rigid again. Carrie took a step outside. The bird hopped back several feet then flapped up on to an alabaster ball. Carrie and the bird stared at each other. It wanted the food; Carrie wanted it to eat. Why, then, were they both locked in this stand-off?

‘It’s OK, sparrow,’ she whispered. The bird twitched its tail. ‘I won’t hurt you, even though you can’t possibly know that.’ Carrie skirted round the bread and leant against the side of the house. She tried to shrink into the bricks in the hope that the bird would take what it so desperately wanted.

Come to me
, she pleaded in her head.

When nothing happened, when the sparrow flew up higher still on to the wall, Carrie scooped up the bread and tossed it further down the garden. ‘I don’t care if you don’t want the bread, you stupid bird.’ She kicked at the remaining crumbs, scuffing them into the damp paving. ‘It was there for you and you didn’t take it. Go hungry for all I care!’

She went back inside and hurled the glass door closed. Back at the table, calm again, she sipped her coffee and thought about the show. She prayed Dayna would keep her word and turn up at the studio. She prayed, too, that the girl would speak on air. Carrie refused to have much of a game plan. She wanted to allow the situation to unfold, making it all the more real for those watching. In reality, she hadn’t had the mental energy to prepare. She would explain the unusual situation to her viewers, keep the emotions as flat as she could manage, and get the girl to paint a moment by moment picture of what had happened. Someone would know something. Someone would call the police hotline. They always did. It was usually the most insignificant comments from viewers that led the police to arrest.