‘We’re just asking, as parents, for anyone who knows what might have happened to come forward. He can’t work out the trains, and he’s not that good with buses. If he’s gone wandering, someone must have given him a lift. He’s chatty,’ the man smiled, ‘never shuts up.’ His voice broke and his wife touched his arm gently. He wiped a finger behind his glasses and drew himself up to his full height. ‘He’d stick out in the memory, if you took the time to think about it. He had a bit of money on him. Could have took a taxi. Maybe asked you for directions home.’ He shook his head, unable to continue. His wife spoke next, and her voice was clear and hard and cold.
‘We don’t care what anyone says he’s done, or not done,’ she said, ‘he’s our son. He’d never hurt or frighten anyone. Never. We want him to come home.’
She stopped and swallowed. The camera zoomed in on her until her face and hands filled the screen. She shook out a handkerchief and dabbed at her dry eyelids.
I wanted to speak then – tell Donald it was all wrong, before I either lost my nerve, or threw up. It was me, I wanted to say. Me. My fault. I did it. I wanted to be honest. I believed what people say: that telling the truth lifts a weight off your mind.
I told him to go and test the ice, and he fell through and drowned.
The words were right there, and Donald was the safest person to tell – the best person to test the theory of getting it off your chest, because he’d forget, and even if he didn’t and told someone else, they wouldn’t believe him.
But they might. And then it would be me on the television. I stiffened, trying to imagine what that would feel like. How weird would it be to see yourself on the telly? How much trouble would I really be in?
I remembered the conversation I’d had with Carl. The last time I’d seen Chloe. I was on my own – there was no way they were going to stick up for me, and tell anyone who asked that I only spoke to Wilson, that I didn’t mean it.
‘I’d make you glow in the dark, if I could,’ Donald said thoughtfully, and changed the channel.
‘What?’
He squeezed my hand, let go of it and stood up. Stared at me, smiling – although less at me than the wallpaper over my head.
‘Or the bushes in the park where you and that Chloe go,’ he said.
‘We don’t go in the bushes, Dad,’ I said.
‘You’ve not been out for a while,’ he said. ‘Is it the weather? Too cold for you?’
I shook my head.
‘Shall I get your mother to get you some new gloves?’
‘Chloe’s not been out.’
‘She’s recovered though, from her time in hospital?’
‘She’s out. It was nothing, really.’
‘You’ve been missing her, then?’ Donald said. ‘In your room after school. Sulking?’ he smiled, ‘trouble in paradise? Or is it a young man? Something else on your mind?’
I looked at him while I gathered up the cards and slotted them into the packet, making sure all the backs were facing the right way. I was surprised by how much he had noticed.
‘Chloe’s going to be hanging out with Emma from now on.’
‘And there’s no room for one more?’
I shook my head. ‘It goes like that sometimes, at our school. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Nothing your old dad can sort out for you?’
‘I doubt it,’ I said, imagining him turning up at Chloe’s house and sitting in the kitchen with Nathan and Amanda, using the reasonable voice Barbara put on when she was speaking to the water board or the doctor’s surgery.
‘Oh dear,’ he said. Without noticing, I’d dropped the cards and they’d scattered over the carpet. My hands were shaking. ‘What’s up? You hungry?’
My throat closed. I wanted to tell him, but it seemed easy and impossible at the same time, so I hovered and said nothing.
‘Things like this blow over,’ he said, ‘and before you know it, you’ll be back out gallivanting with your Chloe. And this Emma too. She can’t be that bad, can she, if Chloe likes her so much?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘But when you do go out, stay away from the park. Do your dad a favour, eh? Put his mind at rest and tell him you’ll stay away from the park, all dark places, until this,’ he gestured at the television, ‘is all cleared up.’
‘I thought he’d stopped?’
‘For the time being. But where there’s one, there’s another. Creeping about. There’s all sorts out there.’ Donald touched his mouth, swallowed as if it hurt him. He closed his eyes and put his finger in the air – his signal for me to be quiet. Then he laughed.
‘Remember your Uncle Ronald? True love, or whatever stands in for it, knows no bounds.’
‘You all right, Dad?’
‘Make them glow in the dark first,’ he said, and opened his eyes. He was wearing brown trousers and a brown and green shirt with a pattern on it – repeating diamonds between narrow stripes. It was his favourite shirt and it was threadbare to the point of transparency at his elbows.
‘Dad?’
‘You could do something to their genes,’ Donald said. ‘It wouldn’t hurt them – it would,’ he was pacing, ‘prevent such a lot of—’ he caught himself and cut it short, as if he was about to say a dirty word. ‘Lola,’ he said, leaned over, grabbed my shoulders and smiled into my face, ‘it would keep you safe.’
I smelled fags then, powerfully, and Barbara was in the room, her hand on Donald’s elbow.
‘Put her down,’ she said briskly. His grip tightened and then relaxed. His smile faded. He rolled his eyes. We’ll humour her, he was saying, and didn’t need to speak the words out loud.
‘Donald? Donald? When did you last eat?’ she spoke loudly, as if he had trouble with his hearing, which he never did. ‘Come on, both of you. The plates have been on the table for five minutes now.’
She bustled him into the kitchen. I clung onto the edge of the couch as if the floor was moving, and trembled.
Chapter 19
Chloe was back at school that same week. Paler, a little bluer around the temples, perhaps, but as she assured everyone ‘basically all right’.
Except she didn’t assure me of anything at all. I arrived at the art room to find Emma sitting in my spot. I should have anticipated it – I should have got myself ready and planned how I wanted to react when I saw the pair of them talking ‘confidentially’ about Chloe’s experiences in hospital; loud enough for everybody to hear.
When she saw me, Chloe blinked, touched Emma’s arm very gently with her first finger, and said, ‘There she is.’
Emma looked at me slowly. A lazy, only half-interested sneer. She was wearing a gold chain with a heart on it over the front of her school blouse. I recognised it as Chloe’s. She looked different too. Where Chloe was pale, the open pores on her nose showing, Emma had colour in her cheeks and her hair was sleeker and glossier than I’d ever seen it before. Her shoulders slumped less and she was smiling more. She was still buck-toothed, but somehow it didn’t look quite as bad as it had done a few weeks ago.
‘So she is,’ she said, and turned her head quickly. ‘Anyway.’
I actually went and sat with them. I pretended I didn’t know what was going on. Where else would I have sat? I pulled out the stool and felt a strange mixture of things. Cold stones in my stomach and the first real grief I’d ever experienced.
‘What’s she doing?’ Emma asked Chloe. She jerked her head and paused with an open homework diary resting on her palm. I wanted to tear out the pages and screw them into balls and shove them in her mouth. Her fringe shook every time she exhaled.