Behind the house, he looked at his moped and thought better of it. He’d rather walk than leave it up at the flats. Along the road, a group of teenagers was hanging around the front gate of one of the gardens. Sean wasn’t a fighter, never had been. As a kid, he’d learnt to dodge rolled up newspapers, swinging belts, fists and feet, and he’d learnt to run. As a police officer, running away wasn’t an option any more, so he’d joined a gym to build muscles he hoped he wouldn’t have to use. Sean clenched his fists and felt his biceps harden but the teenagers didn’t even look round as he passed.
At Eagle Mount One Jack opened his front door cautiously.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Me. I thought I’d have a go at a bit of cleaning,’ Sean held up the carrier bag.
‘Come on in.’
Sean looked round the kitchen. He wished he’d bought some rubber gloves. Yesterday’s mugs and soup bowl had been added to a sink that was full of thick grey water, where the edges of crockery stuck up like the tips of icebergs. He held his breath and plunged his hand into the chilly slime to find the plug. A memory of his mother came to him. He must have been very little, standing on tiptoes to get his hands over the edge of the sink. She was wearing pink Marigolds. Her fingers looked long and elegant, as if they were dressed up for a party. She let him put the gloves on and he danced round the room. It made her laugh.
He ran the tap and waited for some hot water, but none came. He filled the kettle and put it on to boil. Jack was lingering in the doorway watching him.
‘How are you feeling today?’ Sean said.
‘Like shit.’
‘Sorry to hear it.’
Jack sighed. ‘I’ve been a bugger. I know it.’
‘Leave it, Dad.’
‘I should have been there for you, after your mam died.’
Sean rubbed at the murky window with his thumb. The view from this side of the block was away from town. Cars streamed by on the ring road, and beyond was the dark outline of the woods. He could see himself, a boy of ten or eleven, sitting against a tree, head back, mesmerised by the leaves of the upper branches waving against a blue sky, the rush of the wind drowning out the sounds of the road and the estate beyond it. He sometimes fell asleep and woke up shivering, dry-mouthed, with the light beginning to fade. He always went home in the end, not because he was afraid of the woods, but because he feared what his father would do if he stayed out any later.
‘I should have taken you to football and that,’ Jack said.
‘I don’t think so.’
There’d been occasions when Jack was in a good mood, the right side of drunk for a joke and a laugh, but Sean never really understood what the jokes were about and just laughed along to keep things sweet. Then there were the times he’d had to help his father home, paralytic and covered in vomit.
‘We should do something together, father and son, while …’
The cough caught his words and Sean was left to finish the sentence in his own head. He didn’t want to turn round and be reminded that Jack was only a man, not a monster. The kettle rattled to the boil and he poured a splash of boiling water onto a cloth and scrubbed away at the sink.
‘You said you might come to the meeting, what’s-their-name? They’ve got this thing, this group,’ Jack said.
Sean put the plates and cups back into the sink, squeezed in the washing up liquid and poured the rest of the kettle water on top.
‘Clean Up Chasebridge?’
‘Aye, that’s what they call it. They’ve got a bit of fire in their bellies, these lads. Haven’t seen much of that since Arthur Scargill.’
Sean rubbed away at a stubborn deposit of greenish-white mould at the bottom of a mug.
‘CUC. Clean Up Chasebridge. Good name, in’t it?’ Jack said. ‘Brings all the issues together.’
‘Right.’ The bottom of the mug was gradually turning white again and Jack was staring into space.
‘Aye.’ It was like a motor starting up. Jack nodded, blinked and licked a bit of spittle from the corner of his mouth. ‘Good lads, getting this place in order. Chasing out the undesirables. Chasing them out of Chasebridge! D’you get it? I should write the bloody slogans, me!’
He laughed and coughed his way into the next room where he collapsed back on the settee and lit up a cigarette, hands trembling. Sean stood in the doorway of the living room and watched him struggling to catch his breath. When Sean turned back to the kitchen, he half expected to see it how it was before, when his mum was alive, and the floor tiles were still bright green. Through the window he watched a blue light flashing down the dual carriageway. It looked like an ambulance. If it was an RTA, who’d be attending? Maybe it was an attack. Every case started somewhere. Suddenly, a wave of relief flooded over him. The Saleem Asaf business was over, as quickly as that, and tomorrow night he’d back in uniform with Gavin telling his rubbish jokes in the battered squad car. Fuck it, he thought, it wouldn’t hurt to spend one evening with Jack.
‘When’s the meeting, Dad?’
CHAPTER SIX
York
Chloe follows Taheera’s instructions: right out of the hostel, down a street of terraced houses, punctuated by the dark eye sockets of bin alleys. The mid-morning streets are quiet and she tells herself that nobody’s watching her, but still she feels exposed out there on her own. She could have taken the bus but she needs to save her money. When she turns onto the main road, she can see she’s going in the right direction. The tower of York Minster is ahead of her, its sandy-grey bulk against a dark purple sky, long windows like the eyes of a bloodhound. There’s a flicker and she blinks. She’s seen it again: a human shape, from this distance no bigger than a feather, falling through the air.
She picks up speed, the blood pulsing in her temples and tries to concentrate on something else, to wipe the image from her mind. There’s a row of shops ahead. As she gets closer, she sees that there are two charity shops and a dry-cleaners. In the window of the first charity shop there’s a set of crockery: white with a pattern of blue irises around the rim of each plate and cup. She won’t be at Meredith House forever. Taheera keeps reminding her they’ll be moving her on to a place of her own in a few weeks. Then she’ll come back and buy these plates and cups. She’ll invite Taheera round for tea to show her how well she’s settling in. She’ll invite Emma too, but not the others. Only people she can trust will see her new home.
She needs to hurry now, walking is taking longer than she thought. The sky’s threatening rain and she wishes it would get on with it. Her skin is sticky with sweat. She pulls the appointment letter out of her pocket. Mrs Hildred, 11.45 a.m. She’s going to have to run to get there in time.
She arrives out of breath and waits on a hard chair by a reception desk. A fan turns slowly on its stand, like the head of a sunflower, turning towards her and away, towards and away. She’s so mesmerised she doesn’t hear her name being called. A woman with a badge announcing ‘Specialist Advisor’ is standing in the doorway, her wide hips filling its frame.
‘Pleased to meet you, call me Sally.’
She’s not sure she’ll be able to do that. There’s something about her that reminds Chloe of a teacher she had in primary school, soft-edged and cardigan-clad. She definitely looks more like a Mrs than a Sally. They go through to a small room in the back of the building where faded prints of flowers hang on magnolia walls. The armchairs are meant to be comfortable, but Sally Hildred has some difficulty lowering herself into one. She picks up a pen in chapped fingers and smoothes the paper of the notebook on her knee. She’s an eczema sufferer. It’s on the back of her hands and disappears inside her sleeves. Chloe looks at her pen poised above the clean sheet of paper. Her heart sinks at the thought of another test. There will be right and wrong answers and she will have to guess which is which.