by TL Dyer
Darren stands in front of the window with his arms crossed, waiting for me to talk. In the interest of not having him turn up at my workplace again, I had messaged him two days after his visit to ask if he was free this weekend. His reply had been immediate and we’d arranged a time for this Sunday morning. But now that I’m here, it’s clear he wasn’t expecting me to come alone.
‘Do you mind if I sit?’ I ask, and he extends his hand for me to go ahead. Unlike the first Sunday I came and he answered the door in his pyjamas, this time he wears a navy cotton jumper with a white shirt collar at the neck. In one sense it ages him, but in another it’s the same casual smartness that always made him so appealing.
He remains standing when I sit. I don’t believe he means to intimidate, it’s just his demeanour. But either way he’d have to work a lot harder than that to rattle me. Three years as a PC is more than enough to develop a thick skin. Besides, this time I’ve come better prepared.
‘My dad and his partner are going to the farmhouse in Scotland in the summer holidays, and we’ve agreed not to tell Jake about the permanent move until after that. Subsequently, I intend to speak to him about you when I know he’s comfortable with his grandfather’s move. I think that’s the best way to do this.’
‘Do you mean the school summer holidays?’
‘Yes.’
‘Two months from now.’
‘School ends next month, but yes it’ll be August before Dad returns home.’
‘So when he’s already trying to come to terms with one change, you’re going to bring up another.’
‘We’re hoping if we frame Scotland as an exciting adventure for his granddad, coming to terms with it won’t be an issue.’
‘And what if he doesn’t perceive it as that? What if that thing you fear most, Jake’s unhappiness, becomes reality? What then? Do I wait longer? Does the deceit go on?’
My reply isn’t immediate. Not because of his reaction, but because my mind rewinds to at what point I might have said I feared Jake’s unhappiness above anything else. I’m pretty sure I didn’t, and wouldn’t, not to him. But then it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination, that’s what all parents fear. And he would know all about that.
‘I understand you’re angry, Darren, as you have every right to be. I’ve explained my reasons for the choices I made back then, and if you want my apology, then you have it. I’m sorry, I genuinely am, if you feel those choices were wrong or misguided. But please understand I did so with everyone’s best interests at heart. Including yours.’
I turn to the bare mantelpiece, picturing an inebriated Lauren twirling across the room after we’d polished off three-quarters of a bottle of scotch. Her arms outstretched, hand catching the porcelain boy with the sunflower in his mouth so that it fell and caught the corner of the record player, breaking in two, a clean split through his chest. There were tears in her eyes that took me by surprise, as Craig, barely able to see straight himself, glued it back together, telling her it’d be fine, urging her not to worry. It was a rare moment of affection between the pair of them. But only a few years later the scene would look very different. I wonder what difference it would have made to their lives if I had spoken the truth about Jake in the beginning? Craig had already gone, Lauren too was about to leave the family home. Would it have made a difference? Or just accelerated the family’s divide, the one I never would have predicted?
The sofa creaks under Darren’s weight as he sits on the edge of the cushion, his hands clasped, jaw clenching as he considers what I’m saying. And while his gaze is diverted, I go on with what I came to say, in the way I’d practiced in my mind over the last few days, calling on the negotiation skills picked up in the job.
‘More than anything, I’m sure you’ll agree the most important person here is Jake.’
‘And my relationship with him, yes. Yours is already established.’
‘So it’s up to us – or me, if you like – to get it right.’
‘To right the wrong.’
‘And as I’m the one who knows him best, please understand that I’ll know when to do that.’
Darren brings his clasped hands to tent at his mouth. ‘You want me to trust you.’
‘It’s a lot to ask. I understand. But we have ground to make up now. If we’re both to be parents to Jake, we need to find a way to work together. Get along. Establish a mutual understanding that works for both of us.’
‘If we’re both to be parents to Jake? We already are, Sacha.’ He taps his fingers against his lips as if he’s thinking about what he’ll say next. But then he gets to his feet. ‘Let me show you something.’
With a nod of the head, he gestures for me to follow. Clutching the strap of my bag across my body, I watch as Darren goes up the stairs and turns down the landing.
‘It’s important,’ he calls back, when I’m slow to go after him.
I reach out to trail my fingers up the banister as I climb each step, thinking of all the times I walked up it, and the one time we slid down it on metal trays, acting like kids though we were far too old for that kind of thing by then. Eliza had laughed at our idiotic games but warned us never to do it when the twins’ dad was home. I remember thinking how I’d die with embarrassment if he walked in through the door and caught us.
‘Up here,’ Darren calls again. And as I reach the landing, I already know where he is. I can tell from the direction the light comes from. I pause between the two rooms. Lauren’s on the right, Craig’s on the left. How long has it been since I was last here? In Lauren’s room, seven years at least. Craig’s, more than that. I step to the left and push at the door so it swings all the way open.
Darren is moving pots of paint on pieces of newspaper to one side. The room is bright, much brighter than it used to be. Craig had painted it dark red; now the walls are pale blue. There’s a bed alongside the wall to my left. Craig’s had been in the centre of the room, the headboard beneath the window, his desk on one side, a cupboard on the other with his record player and all his LPs stacked alphabetically on top. Posters had covered the walls, and hanging in the air had been an ever present smell of well-washed bed linen, deodorant, and body spray. Now the only scent is fresh emulsion. There’s nothing of Craig here. It’s as if he never existed. Or those memories of back then were something I imagined.
I force myself to move into the room when Darren prompts me. Movement itself is more preferable to the hole in my stomach I feel just standing there, an emptiness threatening to crush me from the inside out.
‘What do you think?’ he says, admiring his own handiwork. ‘It’s Jake’s.’
‘Jake’s?’
‘For when he comes to stay.’
He draws his gaze from the painted walls to look at me and smiles. It’s the first genuine smile I’ve seen from him in years. I’d forgotten how it could make the grey-blue of his eyes so clear and intense. He’s proud of this thing he’s done for his son. He’s excited. I should feel the same, that he cares so much to go to these lengths. But I’m not sure how I feel, other than the room and everything about this is peculiar to me.
‘It’s only right he should have his brother’s,’ Darren goes on, running his finger across the windowsill. ‘I’ll put a new rail up, buy some curtains he likes. Oh, that’s what I meant to ask. What’s he into?’
‘Into?’
‘Should I get something with trains, or a cartoon character, or Star Wars? God, Craig used to love Star Wars, do you remember? No, maybe that was before you knew him. Anyway, we can run through all this, there’s lots I’ll need to learn about him. We can start today. Oh, and here…’
He crosses the room to where Craig’s grey single wardrobe had once stood. In its place now are several lidded cardboard boxes.
‘I finally got around to sorting all this out. I don’t know that Lauren will ever come for anything. I’ve tried, but…’ He looks up at me, something wistful fleeting across his eyes, as though he wishes it was her standing here an
d not me, or that he could reach her through me. But as quickly as his guard drops, he gathers it again. ‘You go ahead and take whatever you want. All of it, even. You might as well. He’d want you to have it as much as anyone. Do you drink coffee?’
‘Uh, yes. Yes,’ I stammer, struggling to keep up with him, with this, none of which I was expecting when I came here.
‘I’ll be downstairs.’
He leaves, pulling the door closed behind him, and a moment later I hear his footsteps on the stairs. I sag as I release a breath and back up to the bed to take the weight off my legs. I had come fully prepared. I had known what he would throw at me and how I would react, how I should work with him, not against him, match his self-assurance with my own. Yet, still, somehow, once again he’s floored me.
Looking around the room, I try to envisage Jake in here, sleeping here, playing here, getting to know his dad here. But the concept is all so alien my mind struggles to conjure it. It feels wrong. It’s not wrong, but it feels it. And that’s maybe because Jake is my son, and my instinct to defend and protect him is switching into overdrive. Or perhaps it’s because this feels like Darren is lining up Jake to become a replacement Craig. Wipe away all traces of his one son and bring in another. And if he does that, will Jake be jinxed to go the same route as his misguided, misunderstood, and unfortunate brother? Will he one day self-destruct too?
In ways that I haven’t perceived until now, I recognise that bringing Jake’s dad back into his life is going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But there’s something that worries me much more than that. That it’ll prove to be my biggest mistake.
Chapter 20
‘It was me. I done it. Arrest me, Officer. Please. Please arrest me.’
The man sitting on the floor of his living room beside an upturned coffee table, holding his wrists up, tears staining his cheeks, is Patrick Bridges. AKA Paddy to anyone within a five-mile radius. I peer sideways at my partner, PC Julian ‘Jaffa’ Collins whose curious expression reflects my own. This is a first for both of us. I’ve visited the Bridges on many occasions – the last was with Fuller just a few months ago – always for minor domestic disturbances that have never gone further than a friendly word of advice or a calm voice. But it seems whatever went on tonight, the bar may have been raised.
‘Where is she, Paddy?’ I ask, noting the half bottle of Captain Morgan on the sideboard. ‘Where’s Cath? Upstairs?’
Paddy drops his hands as though they’re made of lead, and looks at the floor with a pitiful nod, his thick brown hair tousled across his scalp, the tips of his ears burning red.
‘Right. I’ll check on her while you explain to PC Collins what happened. Understood, Paddy?’
‘Yes,’ he says, his voice shredded by guilt and remorse. ‘She’s hiding from me in the bathroom. She’s locked the door.’ His head comes up and his heavily lined face and dark eyes are a picture of torment. ‘I was wild, Officer. I was wild.’
He cries again, and Jaffa gestures for me to go on upstairs while he takes out his PDA and sits on the edge of the sofa. As he does, the couple’s foul-mouthed budgie in its cage in the corner of the room, who’s been suspiciously quiet until now, gets in his version of events first.
Dirty wanker. Great big dirty wanker.
Paddy nods in solemn agreement. Jaffa fights a laugh. And I leave the three of them to work it out amongst themselves.
As I climb the carpeted staircase, I consider what I might find when I get to the bathroom. In her mid-sixties, Cath Bridges is twenty-five years older than her toy boy husband, which means even for a short man with not an ounce of fat on his bones, he at least has youth on his side. The couple have learning difficulties, but that doesn’t mean they’re immune to the same stresses, strains and pitfalls of life as the rest of us. Paddy’s always been a drinker, and Cath has always been a possessive partner. Their relationship can be described as rocky at best, turbulent at worst, but it’s never gone this far before. Anger has never turned to violence.
‘Cath, it’s me, it’s Sacha,’ I say, tapping on the closed bathroom door. ‘Are you alright? Will you come out and talk to me?’
I hear snuffling on the other side, but don’t catch what she says.
‘You’re perfectly safe, Cath. PC Collins is downstairs with Paddy. It’s just you and me here.’
The latch snaps across and I retreat a step as she pulls the door open. Like her husband downstairs, Cath’s face is wet with tears. She clutches her pink satin dressing gown to her large frame, flame-red hair pasted to her damp cheeks. And as she peers up at me like a frightened lamb, I can just make out that the blotches on her left cheek and beside her eye are pronounced, and from more than just the crying.
‘Sweetheart,’ I say, as she leans forward for me to put my arms around her. She sobs into my utility vest while I stroke her back. ‘You’re okay now. You’re safe, Cath, perfectly safe.’
She trembles under my hands as I guide her into the bedroom and sit her on the bed. I close the door on my colleague’s low but steady tone as he coaxes Paddy to calm down enough to talk. But when I return to Cath, the first thing she asks is, ‘Is he alright?’
The tissue clutched in her right hand is torn and tattered, so I take a fresh one from the pocket of my cargoes and give it to her.
‘Right now I’m more concerned about you,’ I say, sitting beside her on the mattress. ‘Will you tell me what happened?’
It’s a bit stop-start, and she tells it out of order and with some confusion over times, but the picture that emerges is of an inebriated Paddy losing his temper, first over Man United’s loss to Chelsea this afternoon, and then at Cath’s refusal to let him go to the club. It’s their wedding anniversary, and she’d wanted to cook him a meal; she already had the ingredients and didn’t want to spend half the night waiting for him to come home. He promised he’d only be an hour but she didn’t believe him. I tell her I’m not sure I’d believe him either. Because when it comes to the club, Paddy’s understanding of time is muddier than Cath’s currently is.
‘I pushed him too far,’ she says, dissolving into tears again as she describes how the argument had culminated in Paddy taking a swing at her and catching her eye. ‘I should have just let him go. But I wanted him here with me. I had the recipe and everything.’
‘Cath, listen to me.’ I take hold of her hand and shuffle on the bed to face her, making sure she’s looking at me. ‘This is not your fault. Did you hit Paddy first?’
‘Oh god, no, I wouldn’t. Not ever. I don’t know how to.’
‘So it wasn’t your fault. Did he hit you more than once?’
She shakes her head. ‘I think he was frightened of himself,’ she says, then her eyes come up to mine as she thinks of something else. ‘Or he might have hurt himself. Is he hurt?’
Cath’s naivety is sweet at times, other times annoying. And perhaps it’s just because it’s been a long shift, but I’m finding it harder than normal to keep myself from losing patience.
‘I bloody well hope so,’ I snap, but then the look on her terrified round face has me backing down. ‘You’re right. He frightened himself more than anything. But I still have to ask you, Cath – has he done this before?’
She vehemently denies it, swears by it.
‘Do you want to press charges against him?’
‘Press charges? What’s that?’
‘We can arrest him. He’ll come with us to the station to make a formal statement, and if charged he’ll have to appear in court.’
Cath leaps up as if I’ve poked her in the side. ‘Oh no. No, no, no. No, I can’t have that. No, please don’t…’ Her face screws up as the tears come again. ‘Please don’t do that. Don’t take my Paddy away.’
I get up from the bed, holding up my hands to calm her, and explain that under the circumstances we won’t do anything she doesn’t want us to. But I also tell her I’m concerned for the welfare of both of them, and ask if they still belong to any support groups. She tells me
the Come Together organisation, through which they met eight years before, stopped meeting months ago due to lack of funding and low numbers. Other than that, she has a contact in Social Services, a lady who helps them manage administrative things from time to time, such as form-filling or accessing services or benefits they might be entitled to. I ask for the contact’s number and she says it’s downstairs by the phone. Before we leave the bedroom, I explain I’m going to make sure she and Paddy get some help. When I’m certain she believes me, and she’s happy to be in the same room with her husband, we step out onto the landing and go down the stairs, Cath trailing behind me.
In the living room Jaffa’s done taking Paddy’s statement and the conversation has turned to football. It comes to an abrupt stop when I walk in, but Paddy looks far less agitated than he did when we arrived. He’s sitting in the armchair now, the coffee table the right way up. He jumps to his feet when Cath comes in behind me.
‘Alright, Paddy,’ I say, ‘sit yourself down. Cath has explained what happened, and she doesn’t wish to press charges.’
Cath shadows me over to the settee, where she sits between me and Jaffa. Her head is dipped and she flicks glances to her husband, who lowers himself to the chair without taking his eyes off her. My instinct tells me she’s not afraid of him. Just making him stew.
‘So here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll contact your social worker in the morning and explain the situation, see if she can get you both some help. Okay? Because this can’t happen again. Do you understand that, Paddy?’
‘Yeah. Yes. No, absolutely. I promise. I really promise.’
‘Well, that’s a good start, but sometimes these things are hard to control. And that’s the part you might need help with. You need to be sure that when you feel that angry again, you have the right coping mechanisms to deal with it. Are you following?’
A sheen of tears crosses Cath’s husband’s eyes, and I wonder if it really is possible to do something like this just once. Whether for some men overstepping the mark on one occasion is already one too many. Perhaps Paddy’s brain is already rewiring itself, so that his memory of tonight will always be enough to short circuit his anger before it goes too far.
