The Heights

by Louise Candlish

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean anything, Mum.’

  Maybe that was the problem, I thought. Maybe it was better to mean something by your misdemeanours. I dropped a kiss on the top of my daughter’s head and watched as she smoothed her hair flat, wiping off my touch.

  * * *

  The school phoned at nine thirty to question Lucas’s absence. I’d forgotten to send an email before the 9am cut-off.

  ‘I’m afraid yesterday’s absence was unauthorized, as well,’ Tracey from the school office told me. ‘The message needs to come from the parent’s email address, not the pupil’s.’

  Then why didn’t you investigate this yesterday? ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘He’ll be back in after lunch. I’m sure he’ll be able to explain himself.’

  ‘I’ll book in ten minutes for him with his head of year, Mrs Shipton, shall I? Three thirty, if you could tell him.’

  ‘Of course. Will that be with Kieran or on his own?’

  ‘Kieran?’

  ‘Yes, Kieran Watts?’

  There was the sound of tapping on a keyboard. ‘You’re right, Kieran was off yesterday, but fully authorized. He won’t need to see Mrs Shipton.’

  ‘I see.’

  As I waited for them to return, I texted Sheridan.

  Did you know anything about the kids bunking off to go to Calais yesterday?

  No, thought they were in the Wye Valley. Who?

  Not Jade. Just Lucas and Kieran.

  There was a longer pause before her next message:

  Kieran. Say no more.

  Lucas thinks the sun shines out of his arse.

  Yep. Jade too.

  I gathered from this that she shared my distaste. I suppose, by then, I was keeping a mental note of allies.

  Justin and Lucas got home just after one. Despite having obviously showered – urged by my mother, no doubt – Lucas was wearing yesterday’s clothes and looked grubby and gritty-eyed. Justin had to leave immediately for the office and so I confronted our young offender alone.

  ‘It’s okay to say no to Kieran, you know. Let him find someone else to be his partner in crime occasionally.’

  Lucas’s face twisted in annoyance. ‘Why do you always want to blame him? Maybe it was my idea.’

  ‘Was it?’ I demanded. ‘Was it your idea to steal Prisca’s car and drive seventy miles to Dover, when neither of you have the correct licence or insurance? Was it your idea to get on a ferry to France without saying a word about it to your parents or teachers? To send lying texts to cover up where you really were? Was it your idea to buy and use illegal substances?’

  ‘It was just a bit of weed! You’re making it out to be some big crime.’

  ‘You’ll need to sound a lot sorrier than that when you explain yourself to Mrs Shipton this afternoon,’ I snapped.

  ‘What?’ Lucas was outraged. ‘I’m not going into school.’

  ‘You damn well are. I’ve said you’ll be in after lunch and you’re booked in to see her at three thirty. On your own, as well. Your great mate Kieran got Prisca to phone him in sick. His slate is clean.’

  It was impossible to tell whether he already knew this or not. I suspected not. He assumed his footloose, spontaneous friend was making life up as he went along, not plotting to cover his tracks. As his eyes welled with childish tears, I softened my stance.

  ‘Look, they know nothing about your alternative field trip or your brush with the police, so I suggest you keep it that way if you don’t want to be suspended. Just say you were ill, but your parents forgot to send the email.’

  Great. Now I was urging him to lie. No one was coming out of this well.

  ‘I’ve made you a sandwich. Eat that, then go and get your stuff, I’ll drop you in the car.’

  Lucas threw me a furious look before stomping to the kitchen to eat. When I heard him on the phone – I guessed to Kieran – it was all I could do to stop myself from going in and dashing the phone from his hand.

  After I’d run him to school, I rang Mum to thank her for her overnight services.

  ‘There’s something not right about that other boy,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The way he looks at you, it’s cold. Emotionless. I knew straight away he must be the one you told us about.’

  I’d forgotten I’d complained to her about Kieran on the phone once or twice – I hoped Freya had not been within earshot.

  ‘I think you’re right to keep Lucas away from him,’ she added.

  I sighed. ‘Apparently without much success.’

  ‘Can you speak to the school about separating them?’

  ‘They’re the ones who pushed them together in the first place. Anyway, it doesn’t work at this age. Forbidden fruit and all that.’

  ‘What does Vic say?’

  ‘I need to call him next,’ I said, slightly ashamed that I needed reminding.

  In the event, Vic was fully supportive of my stance, including both the cover-up I’d briefed and the punishment I planned to dole out. ‘No nights out, no parties, no nothing, for a month. And I suggest we make it clear Kieran is no longer welcome in either of our homes.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ he agreed, with only the subtlest note of ‘Good luck with that’ detectable.

  Lucas, returning from school with a printout of the school’s policy on reporting absences, listened in sullen silence as I outlined the new rules. His only response was a muttered ‘You’re ridiculous’ and I decided I could live with that.

  As for Justin, once the inconvenience of the rescue mission had been forgotten, he was typically pacific about the whole thing.

  ‘This is the kind of thing parents laugh about years later.’ He adopted an exaggerated elderly croak: ‘ “Remember the time young Lucas got the ferry to France and was caught smoking grass on the deck? Met off the boat by the police, he was!” We won’t be able to remember Kieran’s name then, you wait. “Who was that kid we thought was such a terrible influence? Kevin, was it?” ’

  Perhaps if it had been Jade with whom Lucas had absconded, I might have been able to share in the smiles. She’d have been shamefaced, at least, and I’d have reasoned that a police caution nipped any wayward instincts in the bud, just in time to knuckle down to the serious study required if they were both to go to good universities.

  But Kieran, no. I couldn’t get on board with Justin’s comic projection.

  Nor did I believe we’d ever forget his name.

  And I was right about that.

  Chapter 7

  I’m already back in Beckenham, halfway between train station and home, by the time Vic phones me back.

  ‘I got your message,’ he says, and there is a familiar agony in the silence that follows as we hear the words that would for so many years have naturally come next. Lucas all right? or Lucas on his way? Or, in the age of Kieran, I need to talk to you about Lucas. Our son was always the reason for the call – the link that made us a chain.

  Still is.

  ‘What’s up?’ he says. ‘You sounded a bit upset.’

  ‘It’s Kieran Watts. He’s back.’ Only as I speak does it occur to me that I had a second option this morning when I left Vic that message: I could have kept this information to myself. Spared him the pain.

  But it’s more complicated than that, as he and I both know.

  ‘I mean, he’s alive,’ I add, lowering my voice as if at risk of being overheard. ‘I saw him, Vic. I saw him this morning.’

  There’s silence on the line. All I can hear is the slap and scuff of my boots on the pavement.

  ‘Well, it can’t have been him, can it?’ Vic says, finally, and where I had expected outrage, or at the very least bafflement, there is nothing but pity in his voice, pity at the distress my misapprehension has caused me. Not only that, but dragging and clinking sounds start up in the background, telling me he’s working as he talks. Loading or unloading boxes of Common or Gordon beers for his next farmers’ market or music event or sports meetin
g (the UK is your oyster when the product you’re selling contains alcohol). I’ve already lost his full attention and it is crucial that I use a measured, sane tone if I’m not to squander what’s left. ‘Obviously I can’t explain it, but the fact is it happened. I saw him.’

  Vic sighs. ‘Where?’

  ‘On the roof terrace of a building in Shad Thames. It’s called The Heights.’ I’ve already decided not to tell him that I tricked my way in and went up to Kieran’s flat. It sounds much too incautious. Recalling my lack of strategy, my empty-minded vigilance as I stood outside his door, and the way I bolted like an animal, I shudder.

  ‘Where were you?’ Vic asks.

  ‘In the building opposite, just across the water, about five floors down.’

  ‘Five floors? So not very close, then.’

  ‘Close enough to recognize someone you know well,’ I protest. ‘You know them by their mannerisms, their posture. Their gait.’

  ‘Their gait,’ he repeats and I know he’s thinking, That’s a new one. ‘Come on, Ellen,’ he says, gently. ‘It’s not like we haven’t been here before.’

  This is true. Several times, we’ve had discussions like this, each leaving us unnerved but ultimately accepting of the fact that it couldn’t possibly have been Kieran. Just an episode as real-seeming and fraudulent as déjà vu.

  He looked so exactly like him, I almost fainted, but when he stood up, he was way too tall…

  I could have sworn it was him, but then I realized he was too young. He looked like they did when they were seventeen…

  That terrible ‘they’ had silenced us, laid to rest that last misjudgement, almost a year ago. ‘I actually think we’re wired to see him,’ Justin told me on that occasion. ‘Especially you and Vic. It’ll probably go on for the rest of your lives. It’s the part of us that believes in miracles and magic. The soul, I suppose.’

  I found his theory very consoling.

  As I turn into Tanglewood Road and its fiesta of autumnal foliage – oh, how I miss it! – Vic’s kindly scepticism resumes in my ear: ‘Plus, well, Freya’s just started at uni, hasn’t she? So it’s only natural…’

  Natural that the emotions associated with Lucas’s first term at university have bubbled to the surface, he means, bringing with them flashbacks and hallucinations. Ghosts.

  ‘Things can seem the way we want them to,’ he adds and the abrupt crunching sound of his van doors shutting, followed by a call goodbye to a colleague, makes me lose my patience.

  ‘Why would I want to see Kieran? Wouldn’t I rather it was any one of the other seven billion people on the planet? More to the point, how have I seen him? Look, meet me after work and I’ll take you there. You’ll know it’s true the moment you see him.’

  ‘I can’t, Ellen.’ He sighs, mournful notes in his breath. He’s sure I’m wrong but that doesn’t mean he isn’t aching too.

  ‘Is India expecting you home?’ I guess. There’ve been numerous partners in the near two decades since we broke up, but I can tell India is different. She has real sway, this one.

  ‘No, but I’m heading up to Birmingham for a face-to-face with a new customer. I’m literally just loading up and about to hit the road.’

  ‘Okay, tomorrow then? In the morning?’

  ‘I can’t do tomorrow either. I’m staying the night and won’t be back till lunchtime. Sorry, but it’s crazy time for me. Trade events and markets almost every weekend. With a new business, I just can’t turn anything down. I’ll call you when I’m back, yeah?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say, over the sound of his van engine starting. ‘I’ll get you proof.’

  ‘Proof?’

  ‘Yes, a photo or something.’

  There is a sharp intake of breath, a warning coming. The engine is killed. ‘Ellen, promise me you won’t go back and confront him. This younger generation can be very sensitive. You don’t want this person reporting you for harassment.’

  ‘This person’ who is not who I say he is, he means. But he has a point about avoiding confrontation. ‘Dangerously impulsive’, that was what the judge called Kieran. Heedless of the welfare of others. It was hot-headed of me to approach his apartment without knowing if there was a single other soul in the building who might come to my aid if things turned violent. And that panic attack at the top window: what if I’d fainted and come round to find that monster bearing down on me?

  ‘Promise me,’ Vic repeats and I hang up with a bitter laugh.

  It’s like he doesn’t know me.

  * * *

  I don’t tell Justin. I can’t risk both of them doubting me. And while it feels impossible not to involve Vic, I can certainly protect Justin – for the time being. Of course, he notices I’m distracted within five minutes of arriving home from work. First, I don’t know if I want a drink or not, then I’m not sure how hungry I am. Our home, my pride and joy for so long, restful and comforting, feels like a stage set, designed to deceive.

  ‘You okay, El?’

  ‘Fine.’

  He cracks open a can of Common or Gordon pale ale (we are subscribers to Vic’s popular monthly plan) and pours me a glass of white, which I drink with obvious urgency. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes.’ I try to hide my alarm that the man opposite me, my husband, looks less familiar than he did this morning. I size him up: square face, with the smooth Saint jawline; once nut-brown hair now liberally salt-and-peppered; grey eyes faded with fatigue. In spite of his efforts to keep himself in shape – running, cycling, the usual MAMIL stuff – he looks older than his forty-nine years (mind you, we all look older than we are in this story – you can take that as read).

  No, it’s not he who has changed since this morning, it’s me. My senses have been hijacked.

  We eat sausages and mash for dinner. Since our resident pescatarian left for uni, we’ve reintroduced meat. Justin tells me about his day: an e-learning presentation that told him nothing he didn’t already know; a lunch he could have taken or left; something about apprenticeships that rescued his mood just in time for the commute home.

  ‘How was your meeting?’ he asks. ‘The one with the new client.’

  Justin is unflaggingly supportive of my business. I used to work for an events company, lighting jobs on a scale a hundred times bigger than anything I do now – sports events and conferences and weddings – but there came a time when I knew I could no longer manage. To master the epic, you have to be strong, complete, and I was broken.

  My business is small, but steady. Modest commissions, bite-sized achievements. The occasional location might trouble me, but the architects I work with know not to come to me with high-rise work, those off-plan developments where you have to go up in construction elevators to units with great windowless holes in the walls, open to the elements.

  ‘Fine,’ I say.

  ‘Where’s she based?’

  ‘Shad Thames. Right on the water, near Butler’s Wharf.’

  ‘It’s nice there. Pricey.’

  ‘Yes.’ Especially penthouse flats with outside space. I feel confusion rise and mingle with my frustration at Vic’s denial. How the hell can a loser like Kieran afford an apartment like that? The rent must be thousands a month. Has he latched on to some unsuspecting woman? Does she know about his past? The googling I indulged in this afternoon yielded no mention of him since the press reports of his disappearance in July 2017. Nothing to his name at all. Which is exactly what I would have expected and what Vic assumes is the case.

  Justin spears the sausage I’ve pushed to the edge of my plate in favour of more wine. ‘Did you see Frey’s picture today?’ he says.

  ‘Huh?’ We have a family WhatsApp group. You’re probably familiar with the dynamic: Mum keeps it going, day after day, striving to stay relevant in her newly flown chick’s life; child humours her with cute titbits; Dad throws in a line or two because he knows it’s important to contribute. It’s not like that for us. Instead, there’s constant easy banter between father and daughter, with the odd i
nterjection by me.

  He passes me his phone to show me a picture of Freya’s desk in her room at Warwick, where she’s in her first term of a history degree. There are piles of books, a scattering of devices, her toucan lamp, rewired just before she left.

  I feel a stab of love in the pit of me, followed by a strange hollowing. ‘I’m so glad it’s going well for her,’ I say. ‘Nothing for us to worry about.’

  Watching my husband smile with an ease that’s only recently returned, all I can think is that I neither want nor need this retrograde infusion of pain from Kieran Watts. It is like a drug administered against my will, alcohol force-fed in rehab by some perverse, sadistic doctor.

  Well, I will not allow it. I will not allow him to tear us apart a second time.

  Chapter 8

  I won’t trouble you with every individual example of Kieran’s toxic influence, the ones that sound negligible in isolation but cumulatively turned me grey. Suffice to say it was soon obvious that our response to the cross-channel jaunt had done nothing to curb the pair’s taste for partying – and only made Lucas more secretive.

  Once released from captivity, he simply took his antics off site. On weekend nights, he’d stay over at a friend’s house and return the next afternoon dead-eyed and smelly, dashing off an hour’s schoolwork before abandoning study for gaming. Kieran no longer came to play in person, of course, but I’d hear his voice through the speakers, trading war stories with Lucas about blackouts, whiteouts, blowouts – I really don’t know what they were called. ‘Wavey’, that was a word Kieran used a lot. I was so fucking wavey last night. He spoke in a patois Vic had identified as roadman. A roll-up was a blem, trainers were kreps (best served fresh), the prospect of a party left him gassed. Everything was peng and peak and safe and gully.

  ‘You don’t think he’s just a harmless idiot?’ Justin said, when I relayed this to him.

  ‘If he hadn’t singlehandedly turned our son into a doper, I might,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not sure about this ban on his coming to the house, Ellen. Maybe we should consider keeping our enemies closer?’