The Ice Child (24 page)

He pulled a face and slumped back to a lying position on his side.

“Come on, Sam,” she said. She held out her arms. “Come on, jump up.”

He turned his face away from her, shoving the end of the Lego into his mouth.

She pulled on his T-shirt.

And stopped. “Hey,” she murmured, “what’s this?”

The bruise at the base of his spine was large, and odd looking.

“What did you do?” she asked him. She lifted the T-shirt and inspected him quickly, running her hand down his chest and over his legs.

“Fix,” Sam mumbled.

She couldn’t make out if he meant the toy or the bruise.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

He wriggled away.

Still frowning a little, she managed to grab and lift him, taking his well-padded weight against her as she stood up. She pressed her lips to his neck and blew a raspberry. Squealing with delight, he threw his head back and looked at her. Doug’s smile. Doug’s eyes.

“Hungry?” she asked him.

“Yea,” he told her.

She grinned, hoisting him onto one hip. “Nothing much wrong with you, is there?” she said.

By eleven o’clock she was standing in the kitchen, which was completely cluttered with pans, dishes, and mixing bowls. When the doorbell rang, she ran along the hall, licking chocolate mixture from her fingers.

Catherine was on the doorstep.

“You came,” Jo said, hugging her. “Oh, thank you.”

Catherine stepped in, closing the door behind her. “Crisis?”

“Just two dozen jellies that won’t set.” Jo grinned.

“Perfect,” Catherine commented. “Sloppy jelly is more messy to throw. No other kind for kids’ birthdays.”

As Catherine took off her coat, Jo poured her a coffee from the stove.

“Where’s Sam?” Catherine asked.

“Asleep,” Jo told her. “He just slumped on the couch a quarter of an hour ago.” She sat down opposite Catherine, and smiled at her over the rim of her cup.

After Doug had died, Jo hadn’t seen John’s girlfriend for over six months. The first two, Jo had spent with Gina in London. She had been afraid to go home, afraid to go back to the Lincoln Street house after the funeral. She had spent precisely two days alone, before packing a bag and turning up at Gina’s London house, trembling with panic on Gina’s doorstep.

Jo had thrown herself into work with a feverishness that had really worried her friend, who constantly pleaded with her to relax. Gina knew very well that Jo barely slept, and so it had been hardly any surprise when she had woken up one morning—about a month after Doug’s death—to find Jo crouched on the floor of her room, weeping helplessly. Having tried to run herself into the ground to avoid her grief, she had finally given in to it.

There had followed a week of utter despair. Gina, taking a week off work, had nursed her through it. Jo barely ate, but she slept hour after hour—ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day. And at the end of the ten days she had emerged looking like a battle survivor—pale, fragile, and painfully thin. But with a cold clarity back in her face.

It had been sometime then—early in the spring—that Jo had tried to contact both John and Catherine.

She met a dead end in both cases. John—so a stranger’s voice told her over the phone—had moved from his flat, leaving no forwarding address. Catherine, too, had moved from the student hall of residence. Frustrated, Jo had finally written to John care of Franklin House. She wanted to start to repair the gulf between them. She was haunted by the thought that she had pushed him away, as Doug had admitted to doing. But her letter had been returned to her.

It was February, the real dead heart of the year—short days, long nights—when Jo went back to Cambridge.

And it was May before she saw Catherine Takkiruq again.

Jo had spent the morning researching a political piece. She was due to travel to Manchester the next day, and she had been thinking of that as she climbed the stairs of a bookshop in the city center. Reaching the coffee shop, she had turned gratefully toward an area of overstuffed chairs and country-house couches, coffee cup in hand.

Catherine was sitting there.

Jo was transfixed for a second. Her first thought was that Catherine was as lovely as ever, her thick black hair pulled upward in an untidy pleat, loose strands escaping it. She had a book open in her lap, and a pile of others stacked by her feet. Then, as Catherine glanced up and recognized her, Jo saw something different in Catherine’s face, and the breath caught suddenly in Jo’s throat. There was a trace of grief on Catherine’s expression. Not dramatic enough, perhaps, to be immediately noticeable. Except to someone who knew that feeling only too well.

“Hello,” Jo said.

“Hello,” Catherine responded.

The two women stared at each other. For a moment Jo thought that Catherine was going to look away, back to her book. Then, the girl’s eyes strayed to Jo’s stomach. “Do you need a hand?” Catherine asked.

“No. Thanks. I’m fine,” Jo told her. “Am I disturbing you?”

Catherine shook her head. She cleared the pile of books out of Jo’s way.

“You’re taking your finals,” Jo said, once she had got herself seated.

“Yes,” Catherine replied. “I come here to get out of the way. For some peace.”

Jo had stirred her coffee embarrassedly. She didn’t quite know what to say. “I tried to contact you,” she said, finally. “They told me you had moved.”

“I got a cheaper room, with a girlfriend,” Catherine said. “I tried to phone you. Someone said you’d gone to London.”

“I did,” Jo told her. “For a while.”

They gazed at each other, over the wreckage of those grieving months. All the time Jo wondered how to frame the question in her mind.

“Do you know where John is?” she asked.

At once it seemed that she had hit the nail on the head. Catherine’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.

“Oh,” Jo said. “I’m so sorry. If only you knew how sorry I am. I’ve tried to reach him.”

Catherine waved her hand, a gesture to stop the flow of words. She closed her eyes a moment; then, opening them, “It’s not your fault.”

“Where is he?” Jo repeated. “Is he at home? Alicia returned my letter.”

“He’s not there,” Catherine told her.

Jo’s eyes ranged over her face. “Not with Alicia?”

“He’s not in Cambridge,” Catherine said. “He disappeared.”

Jo stared at her aghast. She simply couldn’t speak.

“He stayed with his mother after the funeral,” Catherine said. “But in the new year, he left.”

Jo leaned back in her seat. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I’ve done this. I’ve done this with what I said to him. I had no idea.”

Catherine leaned forward, reaching for Jo’s hand. “No,” she said adamantly. “I really don’t think that, Jo. Alicia …” She stopped herself.

Jo gazed at her. “Alicia thinks it,” she murmured. “She blames me.”

“Alicia is very bitter,” Catherine said. “It’s no use pretending otherwise. She is the kind of person … you know? She looks for someone to blame.”

“And she’s found me,” Jo said. “Not just for John. But for Doug’s death, because he was with me. Marrying me.” Catherine reddened slightly. Jo squeezed her hand. “I can imagine,” she said. “It’s okay.”

Catherine bit her lip. “John wouldn’t talk to us,” she continued slowly. “Of course, Alicia, when I saw her, she would be the opposite. She would never
stop
talking.” She shook her head. “I sometimes think she drove John away,” she murmured. “Then I think, it’s not just Alicia … it’s not just what you said.…”

Jo frowned. “Then what?” she asked.

Catherine shook her head. “He is just lost,” she said. “Lost.”

“But he’s written to you?” Jo prompted.

“No,” Catherine said. “I’ve heard nothing at all.”

They sat together side by side for some time.

“I’m so sorry,” Jo said.

At last Catherine raised her head.

“I thought you must still be in London. Maybe with Gina?”

“Yes, I was,” Jo told her. “But I always intended to come back. I wanted Doug’s child to be born here, in the place he had chosen. To be brought up here, as he wanted.”

Catherine nodded, understanding. “There is some happiness to come for you, Jo.”

Jo looked down at herself, biting her lip. “I don’t know what kind of mother I’ll make,” she admitted, voicing a small but persistent fear. “Sometimes I feel it’ll be okay. Then … well, I don’t know much about babies.”

She looked up to see Catherine gazing back at her with what she would come to know, ever afterward, as her smile of infinite patience. Of a truly sweet nature.

“I don’t know much about babies either,” Catherine replied. “But I can help you, Jo. If you would like.”

“I couldn’t ask that,” Jo said. “You’ll have a job to go to.…”

Catherine had shaken her head. “I have a research post,” she said. “Two years, here in Cambridge.”

“Well,” Jo wondered, not liking to impose on her. “Maybe, baby-sitting sometimes …?”

Catherine placed her hand, very gently and fleetingly, on Jo’s stomach. “I mean
help
,” she said, seriously. “For Doug.”

Their alliance was forged in that moment.

The party began at three; but long before that Gina arrived.

She held out her arms to Jo at the door and hugged her.

“You’re looking fantastic,” Jo said.

“And you’re looking thin,” Gina said. “What’s the matter, child? They don’t feed you here?”

“Sam steals my sausages,” Jo told her.

Gina stepped inside and turned. Her husband, Mike, was standing on the pavement.

The sight of Mike always made Jo want to laugh. It was just because of his size. At six foot six and 240 pounds, and most of that muscle, Mike was your archetypal rugby player still, even though he had given up the game four years ago, and was now
The Courier
sports correspondent. Which was how he and Gina had met. In fact, Gina, with an eye to her own future, had almost wrestled the managing editor to the ground to get him to hire Mike before anyone else.

“I just saw his picture and I thought, yes,” Gina had explained to Jo a year ago.

“Just, ‘yes’?” Jo had asked.

Gina had laughed. “Just Yessssss!”

However, it had been months before Gina had actually told Jo what was going on. Gina had driven up to Cambridge one Sunday afternoon—almost to the day, now, it had been Sam’s first birthday—and confessed.

“What are you looking like that for?” Jo had demanded.

“Like what?” Gina had said.

“Like you’re ashamed of him.”

“I’m not ashamed,” Gina had replied. Then paused. “It’s just … well …”

“Doug,” Jo had murmured.

“Yes, Doug.”

Jo had sat down with her friend and taken her hand in hers. “Look, Gina,” she’d said. “Do you think that means you aren’t allowed a life?”

“No …”

“You just don’t want me involved in it.”

“That’s not true!”

“You’ve known this man—whoever he is—for six months and never said a word.”

“I didn’t know what to say,” Gina had confessed.

“Do you think I begrudge you being happy?” Jo had demanded. “For God’s sake, Gina!”

“It’s not that,” Gina had said. “It’s just that I can’t bear seeing you
un
happy.”

Jo had shaken her head. “Tell me his name.”

“Mike Shorecroft.”

“Not the rugby player?”

“Yes.”

“He played for England!”

“You know him?”

Jo had raised her eyes to heaven. “I do have
some
red blood left in my veins. Mike Shorecroft!”

Gina had actually blushed.

“You’re in love,” Jo said.

“We’re getting married in September,” Gina had told her.

And so it had been. A wonderful, joyful celebration, where the bride smiled fit to burst through the whole ceremony, and the groom stumbled over his words, and shed several tears, and, at the reception, Jo found herself mobbed by what seemed like dozens of Gina’s relations, who all seemed intent on hugging and kissing anything that moved. Or, indeed, anything that didn’t move. When Jo had come home that night, she found that a little of Gina’s bliss had rubbed off on her; she went to bed smiling, remembering only with pleasure what love could be like.

She watched Mike now as he stepped over the threshold. He almost filled the narrow hallway. He kissed Jo’s cheek enthusiastically. “How are you?” he asked.

“I’m good.” She stopped. “What in heaven’s name is
that?
”

He was pulling a parcel behind him, an enormous odd triangle shape, wrapped up in bright yellow paper. Before he could reply, Sam appeared at the back door. “Sam!” Gina called. “Come and rip something up!”

She swept Sam up in her arms and kissed him, releasing him and putting him on the floor as he pulled a disgusted face.

“Take it in the garden,” Jo suggested.

Mike and Sam went out together. Catherine and Jo had spent most of the morning blowing up balloons and hanging them from the fence and trees. Jo’s arms were aching from the effort.

“Jesus,” Gina said, accepting the glass of wine that Jo offered. “Tell me there aren’t three thousand balloons out there.”

“There aren’t. There are precisely two hundred and twenty-six,” Jo said.

“Only two hundred and twenty-six? What happened? Lungs collapse?”

“Balloon pump broke. Have a Rice Krispie cake.”

Gina devoured it in one go. “My next party, everyone’s coming in school uniform and we’re playing musical chairs,” she said. “I decided. It’s more fun.”

They went out onto the lawn. Sam had torn the paper from the present. It was a trailer for his beloved tractor, with a giant pivoting arm.

“You can hook stuff up and it’s a kind of crane as well,” Mike said.

“Mike, it’s great.”

Sam was concentrating on piling his toy cars into the back.

“It’s maybe a bit technical right now,” Mike wondered.

“He’ll get the drift,” Jo said. “Thanks so much.”

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” Catherine said.

The garden filled as the other guests arrived. Jo had invited the mothers who had been in hospital at the same time as she, and who had been with her on prenatal classes. Even Sam’s visiting nurse, Eve, was there, who had seen Jo through the last stages of her pregnancy, and helped bring Sam home. Soon the grass was packed with little bodies, strewn toys, and mothers gratefully sitting in the shade, devouring whatever chocolate cake the kids had left in their wake.