by TL Dyer
Darren nods, a twisted smirk clinging to his lips. ‘Still singing that tune, is he? And you believing him. That’s loyalty right there. Well, on your part anyway. So I take it Craig never told you, then?’
It takes everything I have not to swallow the bait, to take a second to choose my words and temper my voice. ‘You need to go home now, Darren. I won’t play these games with you. It won’t help Jake if we start off this way.’
Another bitter laugh. ‘No offence, Sacha, but you’re lecturing the wrong person here. Okay, look, let’s both be honest for once. I couldn’t give a stuff about your brother. Whatever he’s told you about what happened back then, that’s nothing to do with me. But he can’t talk his way out of this one. So here’s the thing. You know what could happen to your precious Shaun if I report this. And now that you’re in possession of the evidence, you know what it could mean for you if you don’t report it.
‘But there’s no need to look so worried, because I’m not a malicious person, Sacha. I don’t want to hurt you, you’re the mother of my son. But I’m not waiting for you any more either. It’s only right and fair that, as of now, I’m a part of Jake’s life. Meaning that you tell him. Tomorrow. And you get my name on his birth certificate. I’ll be checking to make sure it’s done.’
He pushes the chair back and gets up, dropping the USB on the table.
‘I’d say that’s more than reasonable of me. I don’t know anyone else who would be so understanding after such a vicious attack. But just one last thing before I leave you to go back to the comfort of your bed. Tell that brother of yours that the next time he comes round my house like that again, I won’t hesitate to call the police. And he’ll be back inside faster than he can put a cold compress on his knuckles.’
He doesn’t wait for a response but staggers down the hallway, pausing once by the banister and glancing up the stairs. My breath catches in my throat and I leap up from the chair. But he’s already moving on, going out of the door, which slams and latches itself behind him. Dropping my shoulder against the kitchen door frame, the phone slick with sweat where I’ve been gripping it and every part of me trembling, I contemplate that whatever Shaun thought he was doing tonight, he’s just made things a hundred times worse.
Chapter 26
I’m going through the motions. It’s the best I can do on only a few hours’ sleep and with the footage of my own brother punching and kicking a defenceless man playing on repeat in my head. Darren might have gone down like a footballer milking it for all it was worth, but it was still three against one – there’s no getting away from that. Two of my colleagues have already asked if I’m okay, but I do what we all do and tell them I’m fine, just ready for the couple of days off I’ve got coming after this shift. I’m lucky to even have those. With Smithy out of the equation now too, we’re struggling to get a full crew.
Dalston’s a fair sergeant and mindful of his officers’ wellbeing, meaning he’s done more hours than any of us this last week. He looks exhausted, though maybe that’s more to do with the strain over Smithy’s charge. I don’t think he’s had this happen to one of his team before and I sense he’s conflicted over how to feel. He puts on a brave face and cracks poor jokes to keep up morale, but we can all see through it; he’s as shattered by this as the rest of us, maybe more so. Thanks to Darren Isaacs, though, my worries are elsewhere. Which means I can’t help the sarge by working on my off days because Darren’s given me no choice – I have to talk to Jake. And Dad too.
It’s a long day and I spend the time in between calls contemplating whether to speak to Dad first, and how best to frame it. But I’m no clearer by the time the shift ends and I change out of the uniform and drive to the school to pick up Jake from after-school soccer club. There is no easy way to do it. The conversations with both parties will be different. Jake will be all questions. Dad will be all emotions.
‘Shit,’ I mutter, getting stuck in the early evening build-up to rush-hour traffic on the M4. I’m not used to finishing on time and usually the way is clear by the time I get here. If I’d been thinking straight, I’d have avoided the motorway altogether.
I tap my fingers on the steering wheel as the cars inch forward, then as soon as I’m able I take the next slip road and get on the convoluted route via the B roads through High Cross, then onto the towns of Rogerstone, Risca and Crosskeys, avoiding the worst of the hot spots. By the time I’m pulling up outside the school, I’m only fifteen minutes late, which isn’t too bad, considering.
Except when I get into the yard, no one’s waiting and the door is closed. I ring the buzzer twice and wait for someone to answer. Peering in through the windows, I’m wondering if Jake’s already at home with Dad when Miss Fisher, the head teacher, emerges from her office and comes down the hall to open the door.
‘Sorry about that, Miss Sanderson, I was stuck on a call. Did Jake forget something?’
She’s young for a head teacher and soft-spoken, but with a sharpness to her eye I imagine means she can lay down the law when she really wants to.
‘I’ve got the wrong day, haven’t I? He’s not here then?’
‘He left twenty minutes ago. His dad picked him up.’
‘You mean my dad? Jake’s granddad?’
Miss Fisher holds the smile as she tucks her fingers into the front pockets of her blazer, but it only sets me on edge. It seems like a defensive gesture. Or that she’s bracing herself.
‘No, not Gerald. I mean Jake’s real dad. It was lovely to meet him.’
‘His real dad?’ I repeat, as if I didn’t hear her the first time. I’m hoping I didn’t.
‘Mr Isaacs? He said he had permission from you to collect him. He was very clear about that.’
And very bloody charming too, I imagine.
‘No,’ I say, ice permeating every vein and artery in my body and attaching itself to my voice. ‘He doesn’t have my permission.’
Fisher turns white. The smile evaporates. Which is just as well or else I might have got rid of it myself. I hear her intake of breath, her hardy resolve cracking, but I’m not hanging around long enough for the fallout. After taking the steps two at a time, I sprint to the car with Fisher bleating from the yard behind me. ‘Should I phone the police, Miss Sanderson?’
‘I am the fucking police,’ I mutter, slamming the driver’s door. I start the engine while scrolling through my phone clipped to the dashboard. When I get to Darren’s name, I hit connect and pull the car away from the school before Fisher comes at me with some other vain attempt to regain control of the situation and I’m forced to take her head off.
The ringing ends and voicemail kicks in, Darren’s formal request to leave a message. The tip of my tongue is loaded with things to say, but none of them filtered or that would help Jake if he needs me. I punch disconnect and get on the bypass that will take me to Newbridge. In my mind, I see Darren showing Jake his new room. I see Jake, still in his football kit, utterly bewildered, maybe afraid of this man and what he’s saying. He had thought Darren was just his mother’s friend – how can he be his dad too?
My hands shake on the wheel and tears cloud my eyes. Anger burns somewhere beneath – at the school, at Darren himself – but right now it’s all I can do to stave off the panic. I hit redial on the keypad. But still nothing. Just the ringing signal that ends with a machine. I end the call before I have to hear Darren’s voice again.
The first thing I notice when I pull up outside Ty Bryn is there’s no BMW in the driveway. I get out of the car anyway and run up the steps to the front door, hold my finger on the doorbell, beat hell out of the knocker, then look in through the windows on both sides of the house. The lounge and sitting room are empty. I knock once more, but it’s fruitless and based on nothing other than blind hope. No one’s home.
Back in the car, my hands shaking, I take the phone from the dashboard. I’m about to call Dad, then realise that would be a bad idea. He’d hear the panic in my voice even if I lied to him. I send him a
text instead, saying I’m leaving work and will collect Jake from practice. He’s already expecting me to pick him up, but telling him I’m on my way isn’t unusual and it’ll allow me to gauge if he knows any different. While I wait for his response, I stare out of the windscreen, praying to see the BMW pull into the street.
Alright, love, comes Dad’s reply. Bring him over tonight if you want to catch up on some sleep.
‘Shit, shit, shit.’ My breath catches and gut tightens as if someone has me gripped in an iron fist and is wringing the life from me. Jake really is with Darren. But I don’t know where. What if he doesn’t come back here? What if he’s taking him somewhere? What if he’s right now driving over the Severn Bridge out of Wales to who knows where and I’ll never hear from him again?
‘Fuck.’ My fingers tremble on the phone. Fisher said Darren had picked Jake up twenty minutes ago. That would be more like thirty-five to forty minutes by now. He couldn’t have gone far in that time. I try Darren’s number once again, and when the voicemail kicks in, leave just three words. ‘Where are you?’ Then immediately I dial Control and speak before the dispatcher can reach the end of his sentence.
‘I need to trace a vehicle ASAP. My son’s been taken.’
Chapter 27
I’m about to give the dispatcher my name and officer number when my phone vibrates with a new text notification.
‘Just a second,’ I say.
The message is from Darren. When I click it open, it’s a picture of him and Jake, and I gasp, my heart leaping into my throat. I put the phone back to my ear.
‘It’s okay. I’m sorry to have bothered you.’
‘Are you sure?’ the dispatcher asks. ‘If you need us—’
‘No. I’ve found him. But thank you.’
I hang up and stare at the photo. It’s a selfie of the two of them standing outside the front gate of our house. Jake holds a football under his arm and he’s smiling, cheeks pink and hair sticking up where he’s run a sweaty hand through it. He doesn’t look afraid. Or unhappy. Behind him, his school bag lies propped against the door. The text attached to the photo reads: Are you on your way? Jake needs the bathroom.
I reply with yes and start the car. If Darren has his phone, he’ll have received my voice message. But his response is ignorant of that. He doesn’t say, ‘Don’t worry, everything’s fine.’ He doesn’t say, ‘We’re waiting at your house.’ He doesn’t say anything to suggest he knows what terror he might have incited by taking Jake like that.
It seems that what Shaun did to him last night was the final straw. Now he’s not telling me what I have to do. He’s going ahead and doing it himself.
*
‘Jake, upstairs to wash and change,’ I say, turning the key in the lock and going inside. Needing little encouragement, my son bolts up the stairs and into the bathroom, slamming the door shut in his desperation to relieve his bladder.
‘Poor kid was busting,’ Darren says behind me with a chuckle, as I walk down the hall. ‘Must have been the water they handed out after the game.’
‘You were there?’ I say, rounding on him as soon as we’re both in the kitchen. He flinches back as if I’ve surprised him. The swelling around his left eye has come down but there’s a purple bruise in its place. It’s in marked contrast to the sharp blue-steel of his eyes and makes them seem more piercing than normal.
‘He’s very good for his age. He reads the game well. He’d be a contender for the Newbridge under-10s if I put his name forward.’
On the short drive from Ty Bryn to here, I had tried to calm myself. Darren had crossed the line in ways I had every right to lose my cool over. But if I hadn’t already put myself at a disadvantage lying to him six years ago, Shaun’s antics last night certainly made my position a lot more tenuous. If this really is a game he’s playing, then I’ll have to step carefully. They say there’s nothing like a woman scorned, but in my experience a man scorned can be equally dangerous. Many will use violence to get their perceived justice, but for the intelligent few, their armoury of tools runs much deeper than that and are a lot more sinister. Even if Darren was a violent man, he would know that there’s something far more damaging to me than anything he could ever do with his fists. That thought terrifies me. But like all fears, I can’t let it get the better of me. If it does, then I become a pawn for him to move as he wishes. Instead I need to play the same game. Only smarter.
Closing the kitchen door, I will my heart to stop racing and voice not to give me away. ‘Do you realise I was just seconds from having the whole of South East Wales Police and beyond on alert for your car? They’d have pulled you over before you’d gone more than a couple of miles down the road, you’d have been flagged on every camera in the area.’
‘What?’ he says with a laugh. ‘Bit overboard, don’t you think?’
‘No, I don’t think. You don’t have permission to take him from the school, Darren.’
‘Permission from whom? I’m his father.’
I recoil at the word father and wish he’d keep his voice down. ‘But they don’t know you. You could have been anyone.’
‘Except I’m not anyone. And now they do know me, so there’s no problem. In fact they were very gracious. And let’s face it, Sacha, I did you a favour. Poor Jake, he did not look at all happy to be the last one to be picked up. We hung around for you, but seeing as I was already there it seemed ridiculous that he should stand there waiting.’
‘And you didn’t think it reasonable to let me know?’ I say, trying to match his casual tone, though with less success.
‘I did let you know. You got my message, didn’t you? The poor kid, he looked so forlorn, he just wanted to get home. The school day’s long enough. So what happened? Work again, was it? Jake says you’re often late when it’s your turn to collect him.’
I bite the inside of my lip, and look at him wondering what it was I ever saw in him. And not just that night in his car – that was a one-off, a boiler pot of emotions all culminating in a bad decision – but the rest of the time, the man who I thought had it all and was someone to look up to. Is that why Mam was less charmed than I was? Did she see something that maybe in my youthful innocence I didn’t? Because this person standing in my kitchen, filling up the small space with his stature and his aftershave and his sharp words, couldn’t be further from my ideal of what makes someone admirable now.
‘Alright, look,’ he says, holding up his hands and dropping his voice. ‘You’re angry. I can see that. But… Here, sit with me, Sacha.’
He pulls out two chairs from the table and offers one to me as though I wasn’t the one who bought and paid for them. Sitting on the other, he pats the empty chair when I’m reluctant to join him. But for Jake’s sake, and only his, I give in and sit, though without taking my eyes off him. I don’t trust him now. I want him to know that. And I’m watching him. I want him to know that too.
‘I apologise about last night. Coming in here like that was uncalled for. But you’ll understand that I was angry. And upset. I’m far too long in the tooth for sensitive egos and childish scrapping. And besides, this has nothing to do with your brother, it’s about my son and me. Course, had I known he was mine, it might have been about the three of us. That night we shared, Sacha, could have meant something if you’d only just told me back then.’
I take a moment to catch up to what he’s saying, the words spoken so ordinarily but dropped like a silent bomb, his gaze unflinching.
Confused, I answer, ‘It meant nothing.’ Because that’s what I believe. It wasn’t even him I was thinking of that night.
‘Yes, of course it meant nothing,’ he reiterates. ‘But what I’m saying is it could have been different if not for the wrong choices you took it upon yourself to make. Although…’ He leans forward and whispers, ‘Don’t ever say it meant nothing to our son, Sacha. That would be a brutal thing for him to hear. Or to learn from someone else.’
This close, his eyes bore holes right through me. And just
for a second they look so utterly devoid of compassion that I jump up from the chair. ‘I want you to leave.’
A soft sigh eases through his nose, the hardness in his eyes dissolving into mild amusement. ‘Not even a coffee this time? Well, alright. You’re furious and need some space to cool off.’ He steps over to where I stand beside the counter. ‘I’ll meet you halfway. Just because that’s the kind of man I am.’ He clears his throat, a smirk pulling on his lips. ‘So, Sacha, when do you think I could see him next?’
You can’t, is right there in my head, on my tongue. I made a big mistake. I never should have come to you. I never should have brought you into my son’s life.
‘And, of course, see you,’ he adds, with a thin sliver of amusement that’s closer to a cruel joke than anything approaching flirtation. If he thinks I find him attractive, he’ll use that against me too.
No issue there. All I feel is repulsed.
‘Have you been drinking?’ I say, as it occurs to me. Either that or he hasn’t sobered up from last night. And he’s driven here from the school. With my son in his car.
He holds his hands up. ‘A lager shandy at lunch, Officer, to celebrate a co-worker’s promotion. Just the half, though. Breath test me if you don’t believe me. Then you can have me arrested if I’m over the limit.’
He knows I won’t. He knows I can’t. Not now Shaun’s handed him a golden bargaining chip.
Taking another step nearer, he closes the gap between us. ‘So when shall I come round again? Hm? Sacha?’
He’s close enough that he only needs to whisper the words. But here in my own kitchen, I hold my ground, my senses on full alert. When his hand comes up, his fingers barely brush my cheek before my forearm bats it away and I grip his wrist to twist behind his back. My forearm across his shoulders pushes him down to the kitchen counter, and everything I’ve tried to hold together bursts out of me in that one action so that I overpower him with ease despite our height difference. Or perhaps it’s that he didn’t expect it.
