Wronged Sons, The (7 page)

“Take it.”

“I don’t want it.”

“She bought it for you, correct?”

“No, I got it myself.” I assumed that meant he’d stolen it.

“And she took it, without you knowing, to give to me.”

His head fell and he looked away. I realised I’d been wrong to presume.

“You wanted her to give it to me?” I asked. He remained inert. “But you disliked me… you wanted her to abort me.”

“I didn’t wanna kid because I didn’t wanna turn them into someone like me. I ain't got anything to show for my life but you. You’re the only thing I’ve ever done that was any good.”

I allowed him to embrace that illusion briefly before I spoke again.

“You’re wrong, Kenneth.”

Then I leant across the table to whisper something in his ear that the prison guard in the corner of the room couldn’t hear. I sat back on my chair while he scowled at me, confused and dismayed.

“So now you know the only good thing you ever did isn’t just a little like his father,” I added. “He’s worse.”

“You fucking monster,” he muttered.

“Like father like son.”

I slid the watch across the table until it landed in his lap.

“Take it. And I hope they bury you with it sooner rather than later.”

Then I turned my back on my father and left the room.

***

Northampton, Twenty-Five Years Earlier

June 6, 8.45am

I unscrewed the lid from a bottle of wine and poured it into a dirty mug lying in the kitchen sink, along with the rest of the unwashed dishes. I opened the kitchen drawer, took three aspirin from a bottle, and swallowed them in the hope they’d get rid of the pounding headache brought on by a second sleepless night. The bottle rattled when I shook it. It sounded nearly full and for a moment, I wondered how many pills it might take to kill a person.

I glanced wearily around the room and sighed at the mess it had so quickly become. It was in good company. The rest of the house was a mess; the last three days were a mess and I was a mess.

I tried so hard to be positive in front of everyone else, but when I was alone, the doubts set in. I couldn’t tell anyone how sick I felt each time I thought about what might have happened to Simon, that I jumped with every ring of the phone or footstep on the path; or how I was surviving on adrenaline and caffeine, my brain fighting against a body begging it to go back to bed.

The only part of me to keep sane was the part that put the children’s needs before mine. Everyone knew Simon was missing except for his own flesh and blood and it was my job to keep it that way. But it was hard because many of their friends’ parents had taken the time off work to join the second day of the search. It was only a matter of time before the kids found out. Then what would I tell them? Parents are supposed to be the ones with all the answers but I had none.

According to Roger, the first seventy-two hours searching for a missing person are the most important as that’s the time frame in which most turn up. Any longer than that and hope begins to fade. Simon’s clock was ticking.

So I clenched my fists and prayed it would be the day they found him. I swear PC Williams stifled a smile when she warned me that if they’d not turned up anything by nightfall, they’d have to call the search off. I wondered how many loved ones I’d have to lose in my lifetime before God gave me a break.

Suddenly I was aware I still had hold of the aspirin bottle, so I threw it back in the drawer, ashamed of something I’d never do. I finished the rest of my wine, put the mug back in the sink and headed upstairs to shower.

As I stood under the warm jet, I crumbled. I cried and cried until I couldn’t tell whether my body was wet with water or tears.

3.35pm

It may have been inevitable but it still caught me off-guard.

“Amelia Jones says Daddy’s lost,” cried James as he ran to meet me at the school gates. “Is he?”
His green eyes were wide and troubled. Robbie too looked as anxious as I’d ever seen him. I knew they deserved my honesty.

“When we get home, let’s get your fishing nets from the garage and we’ll go to the stream,” I replied calmly. “And then we’ll have a chat.”

4.20pm

The mid-afternoon sun hid behind a large dragon-shaped cloud as the four of us and Oscar walked in single file towards a wooden bridge over the water.

I chose a place they associated with their daddy, as if it might soften the blow a little. It was somewhere he’d taken them many times to pretend to fish. They’d catch imaginary sprats and crayfish, throw them inside pretend buckets and bring them home to me, where I’d play along and pretend to be amazed by their haul.

We sat down, cast our imaginary lines and skimmed the surface with nets while I gently explained we might not see him for a while.

“Where has he gone?” asked James, his brow narrowing like his father’s did when he couldn’t make sense of something.

“I don’t know.”

“When will be back?”

“I can’t tell you, honey.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t. All I know is that he’s gone away for a bit and hopefully he’ll come home soon.”

“Why don’t you know?” pushed James.

“I just don’t, I’m sorry. We don’t know how to find him. But I know he’s thinking about us all.”

“But when we don’t tell you where we’re going, you tell us off,” reasoned Robbie. I nodded. “So are you going to tell Daddy off?”

“Yes,” I lied because I wouldn’t have told him off, instead I’d have wrapped myself around him and held on for dear life.

“Has he gone to see Billy?” asked Robbie, his face beginning to crumple. I swallowed hard.

“No, he hasn’t.”
I knew he hadn’t. I prayed he hadn’t.

“But how do you know?” scowled James.

I looked into the distance where the stream melted into the fields and said nothing. The fishing continued in silence and they caught nothing while their little brains digested what I’d had to say, as best they could. None of us wanted to imagine a life without him.

8.10pm

I sat on a patio chair, wrapped myself in your navy blue chunky Aran sweater and waited for the day to merge into dusk. The cordless phone I’d asked Caroline to buy for me was never more than a foot away. But it was as silent as the world around me. Only the moths clamouring around a candle’s flame in the Moroccan lantern kept me company. Directionless and unsteady, we had a lot in common.

I poured the last trickle from a bottle of red wine into my glass and waited. That’s all I’d done for three days - wait.

When I was inside our house I was homesick for a place I’d never left. But it had become claustrophobic without Simon and I dreaded the nights. Because without the interruptions of friends stopping by or me trying to put a smile on the glum faces of the confused kids, I had even more time to think about him. I missed him, yet inside I raged at him too for leaving me like this.

I didn’t care what WPC Williams had said; I knew Simon too well to ever consider he’d walked out on us. The strength and support he’d shown me throughout an ugly year proved he was a fantastic husband and dad and I desperately needed to believe that he was still alive. Six months had passed since we’d last been united in grief and there I was again, but this time I was on my own and grieving for a man whose fate was unknown.

***

Today, 8.30am

He knew his fingers would tear through the soft, felt brim of his Fedora if he clutched it any tighter. But he wasn’t ready to let go just yet.

He watched as she turned her back to close the door and noted how she averted his gaze when she walked towards the centre of the lounge. Time hadn’t eroded her natural grace, he thought. The crow’s feet around the cool quartz of her eyes were new to him and the narrow lines across her forehead stretched further than he remembered. But they did nothing to quell how attractive she’d remained.

Her grey hairs were like perfectly placed brush strokes in an oil painting, all the better for not being disguised by artificial colouring. Her bloom had far from faded and that made him feel awkward and dusty in comparison.

She had so much to say, but nowhere to begin. So she remained silent and knotted her fingers together tightly so he couldn’t see them shake. Try as she might, she did not want to look at him, but it was a struggle. Eventually she allowed her eyes to cautiously run over him.

His tanned face had filled out leaving his cheeks jowlier. His once natural washboard stomach had expanded, but was kept under restraint by his leather belt. His feet looked larger, which she realised was a peculiar thing to focus on.

Then her eyes became glued to him; fearing if they became unstuck, he would vanish. If he was to disappear again, she wanted to be there to see it. It had been years since she’d last glimpsed his appearance in any of the few remaining photographs left hidden in the attic. She’d forgotten how handsome he was, even now, then immediately chastised herself for thinking that.

He stood awkwardly and surveyed the lounge, trying to recall what was where when he was last inside it. The layout appeared familiar, albeit with fresh wallpaper, carpets and furnishings. But it felt so small in comparison to where he now called home.

“Do you mind if I sit?” he asked.

She didn’t reply, so he did so anyway.

There were pictures of people in frames scattered across the sideboard but without his reading glasses, their faces were blurs. It was the same when he’d tried to remember what his children looked like; clouds always masked the finer details. Well, all apart from James. He knew the man James had become and he’d never forget that.

The silence between them lasted longer than either noticed. As the uninvited visitor, he felt the need to begin.

“How are you? You look well.”

She gave him a look of distain, but it failed to unsettle him. He was prepared for that.

“I like what you’ve done with the cottage,” he continued.

Again, nothing.

He scanned the sandstone chimneybreast and the wood-burning furnace they’d had a devil of a time installing soon after they’d moved in. He smiled.

“Is that old thing still working? Do you remember when we almost set the chimney alight because we hadn’t cleaned it out before…”

“Don’t.” Her curt response prevented him from reaching the end of memory lane.

“Sorry, it’s just being in this room after so long brought it back…”

“I said don’t. You do not turn up at my house after twenty-five years and begin speaking to me like we’re old friends.”

“I’m sorry.” An uneasy, foggy quiet filled the room.

“What do you want?” she asked, directly.

“What do I want?” he repeated.

“That’s what I asked. What do you want from me?”

“I don’t want anything from you, Kitty.” It was a partial truth.

“Don’t call me that. You lost any right to call me that a long time ago.”

He nodded. His voice sounded a little raspier and deeper than back then, and contained traces of an accent she couldn’t place.

“And spare me your apologies,” she continued. “They’re a little late in the day and unwelcome.”

He’d played out that opening scenario dozens of times in his imagination before Luca had booked his flights over the Internet. Would she remain in shock or slap him; embrace him; yell at him; cry or just refuse to let him in? There were countless reactions she could have had, but he didn’t know how to respond to cold hostility.

“Where did you go?” she asked. “While I was out searching for your dead body, where the hell were you?”

CHAPTER FOUR

Calais, France, Twenty-Five Years Ago

June 10, 10.25am

I’d not made acquaintance with motion sickness before that night, locked in the back of the lorry. I’d lost track of how long I’d been vomiting for, as my stomach had become nothing more than a hollow trunk.

The driver had warned me the crossing would take about an hour and a half, but the festering storm outside soon put pay to his estimate. An uncaring English channel picked up our ferry and tossed it around like a rag doll. So I strapped my left hand with a plastic fastener on to a hook hanging from a sturdy packing crate to prevent me from being thrown back and forth.

I’d buried my history with my mother’s bones, but to truly shed my skin, an unfettered, unspoiled me could only thrive far away from the past.

France’s geographical location made for an obvious starting point. Reaching it without a passport or money was, however, an obstacle. But a haggard lorry driver with nicotine stained moustache and distain for authority offered me a solution.

Earlier in the day, he’d picked me up near Maidstone and we’d enjoyed a rapport over the state of British football and the Thatcher government’s penchant for privatising anything and everything. At no point did he inquire as to my hidden motives when I explained where I was headed and how my lack of means might hamper me. However he’d come to his own conclusions.

“I did a bit of bird back in the day,” he began, rolling a cigarette as he steered. “As long as you ain't murdered or raped no one, I’ll get you over there.”

Minutes before he’d driven through Customs’ checkpoint, he’d locked the trailer doors behind me, leaving me hidden behind wooden boxes with a torch, a can of supermarket beer and his homemade cheese and chutney sandwich. But neither the food nor the drink remained inside me once the storm exploded into life.

The conditions outside were clearly too chancy for us to dock, so we remained mid-Channel until the white squall played out. With each dip, my stomach touched my toes until finally the ferry finally ported.

“Look at the state of you!” the driver laughed when he set me free in the car park of a French hypermarket.

He helped my unsteady feet back onto land and I threw my vomit-stained clothes into a bin. I climbed into his cab and changed into new ones I’d taken from someone else’s bag at a homeless shelter I’d stayed at in London.