Then You Were Gone (27 page)

Maria regarded Simone levelly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘This is an old story to me. I’ve told it so many times it’s almost like it happened to someone else. But you must be feeling… Jesus, how are you feeling?’

Simone shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully. ‘It’s going to take a bit of time I think before it sinks in.’ Suddenly, and humiliatingly, her eyes filled with sharp tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted. ‘I’m sorry for all that’s happened to you. I’m sorry my boyfriend’s such a dick.’

Maria laughed through tears of her own. ‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘It’s worked out OK for me. Jess is the best thing in my life, ever since the day I had her. She’s such a sweet girl and never been any trouble. And the thing is, I’ve had my family now, my baby’s grown up and I’m still only in my early thirties. I never wanted to be a paralegal, it’s boring as fuck, but next year I’m going to do an Art Foundation course at college, then hopefully go to university. My life starts now, just as I’m old enough and sensible enough to actually enjoy it.’

Simone forced a smile and wiped away the tears. She could love this woman, she decided. ‘Does Jess know? That he’s her dad?’

Maria hesitated a moment. ‘No. She still thinks he’s just an old friend. I’m going to have to tell her when I get home. Do you know what?’ She stood up. ‘I think I will have that pint after all.’

Chapter Twenty-Six

Petra and Rory had come home last night, about which Jazzy was of course delighted. It did mean, however, that once again he had got no sleep.

When he got into work he had half-wondered if Mack would be there, but there was no sign of him. Jazzy did not know if Mack intended on coming in that day, or indeed ever again. After Simone had left Maria’s house yesterday and Maria had done a ludicrously transparent job of trying to pretend she was not going after her, Ayanna had given Mack a thorough, breathless run-down of everything that had happened to them in the time Mack had been gone. Mack had looked physically pained when she described being threatened at college, and the strange man who had turned up at Rory’s nursery and on Simone’s train. Ayanna had described both men, trying to get the point across to Mack that it was definitely two different men. Jazzy felt certain he had seen a flash of anger pass across Mack’s face as Ayanna précised Jazzy’s second-hand description of the man who Simone had described as ‘sausage-eared’ but he had said nothing in response other than ‘Sorry,’ and an awkward silence soon descended on the four of them.

Jazzy and Ayanna had made their excuses and left pretty swiftly. He had had no opportunity to ask Mack any questions about what obscure loyalty his friend felt towards this woman and her pregnant daughter; a woman, Jazzy kept reminding himself, whom he had never once heard Mack mention in all the time he had known him. Jazzy had spent most of the previous wakeful night trying to imagine what conversation had taken place between Mack and Jessica after Jazzy and Ayanna left, but he found himself utterly unable to visualise such a dialogue.

Now that he understood what had brought the threats and the undercurrent of violence to his, Simone’s and Ayanna’s doors (literally in his own case), he perversely felt more relaxed. Regardless of whether these people who wanted to intimidate Jessica were genuinely appeased by this murderer pleading guilty, Jazzy presumed that their reasons for seeking himself out were in order to obtain information leading to Jessica. Now Jessica was back where they would easily be able to find her, should they wish to continue their campaign of terrorising a pregnant teenager, and Jazzy was no longer of any use to them, which was why he had deemed it safe to bring Petra and Rory back home; that and the fact that he was missing them like mad. Nevertheless he still jumped when he heard the office door open.

It was Mack. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said, ‘I had to go and see Keith.’

Jazzy frowned in incomprehension. He was in no position to chastise Mack for lateness even if he had wanted to; the two of them were of equal status in the company. Moreover, Jazzy could not understand why Mack’s first priority on his first morning back would be to traipse all the way to Keith’s house and back. Had he seen Simone yet, Jazzy wondered? Or was visiting Keith more important than even that? Jazzy shook his head, as though to indicate that Mack had no need to apologise, although really it was more due to the fact that he would never understand what this pull was that drew Mack to Keith at the expense of all else that was valuable in his life.

Mack sat down opposite Jazzy at Jazzy’s desk, as though he was being interviewed. ‘Jazz, I’m so sorry,’ he began. ‘I’m so sorry for everything that I’ve put you all through. I want to explain to you, if you’ll let me?’

Jazzy shrugged. He was so tired and so incredibly sick of thinking about Mack, wondering about Mack, caring about Mack and where Mack was and why. He honestly wondered if his friend could say anything to him now that could make him care.

‘I’ve known Maria since we were fifteen,’ Mack began, and without stopping for breath he told Jazzy everything; teenage infatuation followed by teenage pregnancy, his escape, instigated and funded by Keith, his mum coming to visit him at boarding school and telling him he had a daughter. She had asked him if he had wanted his name to go on the birth certificate and he had said – Mack winced with a pain that appeared almost physical as he told Jazzy this – he had said, ‘Perhaps better not, eh?’ and then bid a perfunctory farewell to his mum and gone back up to his dorm to smoke a joint with his new best friend Charles.

Jazzy thought of Rory’s face and chubby little hands, of the toy rabbit he carried everywhere with him, he thought of the ache he had felt of missing him even over these last few days. He stared at Mack for a long time, unable to think what to say. ‘Shit, man,’ he said in the end. ‘So that means you’re going to be…’

‘A granddad,’ Mack put in flatly. ‘I know. The first time I ever meet my own daughter she’s weeks away from having a child of her own. Believe me, the idea is taking some getting used to.’

‘Not just for you though, is it?’ Jazzy could not keep the harshness out of his tone. ‘How did she react to being whisked away by her long-lost father and cooped up with him for days on end?’

Mack sighed and closed his eyes. ‘She doesn’t know. I never told her.’

‘Jesus Christ, so…’

Mack shook his head. ‘She’ll know by now, I can guarantee it. Maria will have told her as soon as she got home last night.’

The two of them were silent for a moment, contemplating how that conversation must have played out.

‘So why,’ Jazzy asked coldly, ‘did you decide, this morning of all mornings that top of your to-do list should be to schlepp down to Chislehurst and have a cup of tea with Keith?’
Rather than go and see your daughter, who has just found out you’re her father? Rather than go and see your supposed girlfriend and tell her what you’ve just told me? Why?
was what Jazzy really wanted to say, but he kept it brief.

Mack said, ‘As soon as Ayanna described that guy on Simone’s train and at Rory’s nursery I knew who it must be. It was the thing about the ears. I’ve only ever met one guy who was such a meathead even his ears were solid muscle. He’s one of Keith’s guys. A bloke called Robbo.’

‘What? Keith did this to us? Keith tried to kidnap my son? Keith got Ayanna imprisoned in her classroom terrified out of her wits? Keith? But why?’

Mack shook his head. ‘Keith didn’t do all of it. He told me everything this morning. You see, it was him that Maria contacted first when she decided that they needed to get Jess out of London and somewhere she wouldn’t be traced. She wrote him a letter because his address was the only way she had of getting in touch. But he never showed it to me. I found it by accident one day when I was looking through a drawer for some invoices for a batch of wedding dresses. Of course I went ape-shit at him for not showing me it, but he wasn’t bothered. Said he’d not spent all that money preventing me from ruining my life on some slag – meaning Maria – so that I could put myself in danger for her all these years later. Said he was
forbidding
me,’ he gave a hollow laugh, ‘from helping Maria, that he wouldn’t allow it.’

‘But you did it anyway?’ Jazzy was surprised, he had to admit. He had never known Mack to go against what Keith said.

‘I had to,’ Mack said quietly. ‘All these years I’d felt like only half a person, knowing that I had a child out there somewhere. And the worst thing about it was that I was so ashamed of myself for running away that I could never tell anyone about it. My mum and Keith are the only people still in my life who know about it, and neither of them ever mention it. It was as though I’d killed someone and I had to walk around with that knowledge every day of my life.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘No wonder I’m such a fuck-up. But this gave me the chance to at least try and put a little bit of it right, to do one good thing for Maria and Jess. I knew it could never begin to make up for what I’d done, but it was a start. So I went to Maria’s house one afternoon – Jess was at college…’

‘Was she pleased to see you?’ Jazzy asked sarcastically.

Mack smiled and raised an eyebrow. ‘No,’ he said, ‘of course not. But she was so scared and desperate that she was willing to accept help from anyone. We agreed that I’d come back that night and take Jessica away somewhere, so I went and found Ayanna and got some fake papers for Jessica from Ayanna’s brother. I didn’t really think she was going to need them, but it was my way of making the grand gesture I suppose.’

Typical Mack,
Jazzy thought,
always flashing the cash in the hope that that will solve everything
. ‘Where did you take her?’

‘Up to Kielder,’ Mack said, ‘a place I used to go all the time with Dan when we were at uni in Glasgow. Thought nobody would ever think to look for us there.’

‘Simone did,’ Jazzy said. ‘Sounds like she came close to finding you too. That was where she was coming back from when sausage ears got to her.’

Mack winced. ‘Keith told me this morning that as soon as he realised you were looking for me he sent Robbo to keep an eye on you and, if possible, scare you into giving up. That was what all that stuff at the nursery was about – they never really had any intention of taking Rory, they just wanted you to think they did. And same for Simone on the train – Robbo would never really have hurt her.’

‘Are you trying to defend Keith?’ Jazzy sputtered in disbelief.

‘No, no, not at all. Believe me, mate, I’m angrier with Keith than you could ever be. And as for your front door, he’s agreed to pay for that…’

‘My front door? That was him? He broke into my house! But it’s all OK because he’s going to pay for a new door. Too fucking right he is!’

‘Jazz, Jazz, calm down. I’m sorry, but…’

‘And terrifying Ayanna like that, in her college where she ought to feel safe? Who are these people?’

‘That wasn’t him,’ Mack said quietly.

‘What?’

‘That wasn’t Robbo. Even he draws the line somewhere. I think it must have been that guy Liam. He must have found Ayanna through her brother.’

‘Shit,’ Jazzy put his head in his hands. ‘What a fucking mess.’ He looked up. ‘What about Simone? Does she know any of this?’

Mack sighed. ‘That will be why Maria went after her yesterday. She will have told her, I know she will. She’ll have been worried that I wasn’t going to tell her.’ He gave a humourless bark of laughter, ‘Can’t blame her really, can you, for not trusting me to do the decent thing? So, yeah, I reckon Simone knows. I’m going to go and see her now. That’s why I came here first.’

‘Why? What do you mean?’

Mack smiled fondly at Jazzy. ‘Look, I think this is going to mean curtains for me and Simone. How could it not? And I know that she’s going to be heartbroken. And she’s going to need you.’

Jazzy flushed, unable to meet Mack’s eye.

‘And,’ Mack continued, ‘I didn’t want her to have to tell you all this herself. I wanted you to be fully briefed so that she can come to you straight away – or whenever she wants to – and you can comfort her and look after her like she deserves. Because she’s going to need you,’ he said again.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It was true, Simone often reflected, what Mack had said to Jazzy after that awful day when they all, including Jessica, had made the discovery that Mack was Jessica’s father. She had needed Jazzy, needed him desperately, but not in the way she or Mack had probably envisaged.

It was two months ago now since that day when Mack had come back to her, only to be lost to her in a whole other way. The phone call had come at six this morning. Jessica’s baby had been born, eight days early. It was a healthy, eight-pound boy, and she and Marcus wanted to name him Joseph, or at least that was what she thought Mack had told her on the phone; it had been hard to make out the words he was so choked with emotion.

Simone had agreed to meet Mack at the hospital so they could visit the baby together, but their arranged meeting time had already been and gone and still she was not ready to leave the flat. She was not blind to the truth that her still not being properly dressed or equipped was merely an outward reflection of the fact that she was far from ready emotionally to face this latest in the long line of ludicrously awkward and unbelievably unlikely situations that meeting Mack had put her in. The only new mother she had visited a matter of hours post-partum was Louise, and that time Simone herself had been so overwhelmed and tearful at the impact of meeting her new nephew for the first time that she had made Louise look like a perfectly poised and pulled-together example of womanhood.

She had texted Jazzy to ask him to meet them at the hospital too, but she had not yet received a reply. He was no doubt thinking how wildly inappropriate it would be for him to be there, more so even than Simone turning up, but he would also know why Simone had asked him to be there. Ever since the thunderbolt of Jessica’s paternity, Simone had consistently been using Jazzy as a buffer and a go-between, and she was fairly sure he was getting pretty sick of it.

After her trip to Wetherspoons with Maria, Simone had gone home and spent an interminable night of sick wakefulness trying to digest the news. She had always known that Mack had a secret; some dark pain in his earlier life was etched deep behind those ice blue eyes, and she would be lying if she said that had not been partly what drew her to him in the first place. The shadow cast across the rest of her life by the cruel treatment of her young self by Jed was something that never left her, and she understood now, after everything that had happened, that it would be impossible for her truly to love or be loved by someone who did not have ghosts of their own. But truly she had never expected that Mack’s ghost would be this; a living, breathing, stunningly beautiful young woman, about to produce a child of her own. She had never suspected that Mack could be someone who had treated a young girl, like Simone herself had once been, like a dispensable accessory who could be cast aside once she was no longer convenient and be left to manage the consequences of their joint actions for the rest of her youth.