Midland

by James Flint

  ‘Can everyone just be quiet for a minute? I need to concentrate!’

  The third time it worked, and the Windows desktop assembled itself on the screen. Once that had happened, finding and starting the tracker was straightforward enough. It was already keyed to Alex’s car, although it took a while for it to download a set of local maps from the server over the Wolds’ slow Wi-Fi connection.

  ‘Look, he’s halfway to our place,’ Sean said, peering at the ideogram of coloured lines and labels.

  ‘Do you think he’s stopped?’

  ‘Looks like it, but I’ve no idea what the latency is on this thing. It could be sending a signal every ten seconds or every ten minutes. Did Alex say?’

  ‘I don’t think he knows. He said he set it up when he got the car and never looked at it again.’

  ‘It isn’t far. Shall we go and see?’

  Emily nodded, and leaving instructions with Mia to watch the dot representing the Porsche and call her mobile if it started to move, she and Sean went back out to the Renault. They got in and as Emily started the engine he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. It was completely unexpected but very much desired, and she felt herself flush.

  ‘What was that for?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing in particular,’ Sean said. ‘Just for you being you.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, then leant across and planted a kiss on his lips. ‘And that’s for you being you.’

  They sat grinning at each other for a moment or two.

  ‘You’d better drive,’ Sean said, ‘before we go off one another.’

  ‘Well I wouldn’t want that to happen,’ Emily said. And she put the car into gear and pulled away.

  They were passing through Bearley when her phone rang. She pulled it out of the pocket of her jacket and passed it over to Sean to answer. It was Mia.

  ‘She says he’s on the move,’ he said, closing the handset. ‘Heading up the Birmingham Road towards Henley, apparently.’

  ‘That’s annoying. I was really hoping we were going to catch him while he was parked.’

  ‘Me too. Still, at least the tracker works. Now we know where he’s going we don’t have to be able to keep up with him.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  They came to the junction with the main road and had just turned right in the direction of The Golden Cross as Matthew had earlier when Emily’s phone rang again. Sean was still holding the handset and answered immediately.

  ‘She says he’s turned around and is heading back our way.’

  ‘That’s weird,’ said Emily. ‘Why would he do that? Unless of course the tracker’s just not very accurate.’

  ‘It could be that.’

  ‘Let’s see if we can spot him.’

  The tracker was accurate and Mia was right. Matthew was now driving south. Having used the entrance to the cemetery in which Tony had been buried the previous day to execute a three-point turn, he was now heading towards them at over a hundred miles an hour in order to be sure to trip the safety-enforcement cameras positioned just up from the pub. There was no other traffic and he didn’t intend to hold that speed for long, but as he came down the straight the stag he’d disturbed back by the plantation fence jumped the hedge that ran alongside the road and darted out onto the tarmac.

  Not only was Matthew stoned, he had no experience of driving performance cars. Instead of braking he swerved to avoid the creature, managing to miss it but in doing so veering straight into the path of the oncoming Renault 4. Blinded by its lights he spun the wheel in the opposite direction, whipping the car back across the road so sharply that it caught the kerb with its front right wheel and rolled. Transformed into a boulder of unstoppable metal it tumbled sideways down the carriageway until it slammed hard into the side of the brick railway bridge that had been built by the Victorians to carry the trains from Warwick into Bearley.

  ELEPHANT

  WHEN CAITLIN AND SEAN were called into the living room for a conversation with their parents they assumed at once that they were in the deepest kind of trouble. Discipline in the Nolan household was generally issued either as curt, belligerent edict by their father or as lengthy explanation by their mother. The two styles conflicted, and the conflict often caused rows between the two adults that far outmatched the original complaint against the offending child. To have their parents manage to coordinate their strategy like this, in such a deliberate and premeditated fashion, meant that something serious was brewing.

  They were asked to sit side by side on one of the sofas while Tony and Sheila sat across from them on the other. This too was out of character: Tony rarely sat down in anything other than his favourite armchair. Something was most definitely up.

  ‘Your father and I have some important news,’ Sheila began. It looked like she was going to be doing the talking, which was encouraging. ‘As you know, your father was married once before.’ This was hardly news; they both knew Auntie Margaret. ‘And, well, we’ve never told you this,’ their mother continued, with a glance over at her husband, who looked fit to burst, ‘but your father had another child at that time.’

  Silence.

  ‘You have a brother. A half-brother to be accurate.’

  So someone was after all in deep trouble, and it was their dad. Caitlin had never known him to sit quietly in admission of guilt like this. When he and her mother fought it was always Mum’s fault, never his. The thought that it might be different this time embarrassed her. She felt embarrassed for him. And she couldn’t bear that he might see that in her eyes.

  Then Sean spoke. ‘With Auntie Margaret?’

  ‘No Sean, not with Auntie Margaret.’ Sheila let that fact hang, presumably for Tony’s benefit. There were plainly complications here that went way past the limits of what she regarded as suitable for the children. ‘With another lady, a lady called Janice Blake.’

  Sean spoke again, this time addressing his father. ‘Were you married to her, too?’ There was an insubordination in his tone that in other circumstances would have been quickly admonished, but Tony only cleared his throat and levered himself upright in his chair.

  ‘No, Sean. Janice and I only had a short relationship. We did discuss marriage but, in the end, Janice felt she’d rather bring the boy up on her own. Which is what she did. I’ve helped out a bit with money and such, but we’ve not really seen each other since.’

  ‘And then we had a letter with some very sad news,’ Sheila said. ‘Janice has been very ill for some time, and two weeks ago she passed away.’

  ‘What was wrong with her?’ Caitlin asked with genuine concern.

  ‘She had a cancer, darling. It’s very sad. Jamie is a little older than both of you, but still not old enough to be living on his own. He’s staying with some friends right now, but we thought he should come here, to live with us. And we wanted to ask you two if that would be all right. Didn’t we, Tony?’

  Caitlin forced herself to look at her father. He had the air of a strong man, a boxer maybe, who’d just been repeatedly punched by someone even more powerful.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Would that be okay with both of you?’

  Caitlin couldn’t ever remember hearing her father ask her or Sean’s permission for anything. Of all the things she’d heard in the last few minutes, this was the one that unsettled her most.

  —————

  Two days later Caitlin came home from school to find her father in the house and Jamie Blake sitting with Sean at the kitchen table. They were eating toast. Sean had been taken out of school for the day, but Caitlin had not. Sean was older and a boy, Sheila had explained, and he and Jamie needed some time to get to know one another. Caitlin would get her chance later. There would be plenty of time for all that. Caitlin had been asked instead to make Jamie a ‘Welcome Jamie’ card, which she had done the previous weekend. And now she had come to give it to him.

  He got up from the table to be introduced.

  ‘Jamie, this is Caitlin. Caitlin – this is Jam
ie. Jamie, Caitlin’s made a card for you.’

  Caitlin didn’t feel the card was at all the right thing now. She’d made it for her brother, but Sean was her brother. This wasn’t her brother. He was older than her brother. And bigger. He had long blond hair that hung down nearly to his collar. He could have been in one of the bands whose posters she had pinned to her bedroom wall. He’d think her card was stupid. It was stupid.

  She held it out to him anyway. ‘Hello,’ she said.

  Jamie took the card and smiled. He had a big smile, a nice smile, just like her father used to have.

  ‘Did you make this for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I open it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He took it from its envelope and looked it over very carefully.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your mum,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, dropping his gaze to the floor. ‘But now I’ve got you.’ He raised his eyes and looked right into hers, and she felt like no one had ever truly looked at her before. ‘All of you,’ he said, glancing round at Tony, Sean and Sheila too. But Caitlin knew which of them he meant.

  —————

  Caitlin’s parents said that with the extra person in the house they needed more space, proper family space. So they were going to get an architect to design a big extension with a games room – and a pool! For the time being, however, Jamie was going to have the spare room at the end of the corridor. It was small, but Caitlin helped him paint it and make it nice. She helped him choose the colours and they did it together one Saturday. He taught her how to use a roller, the best way to hold a brush, how to lay masking tape to keep things neat, and how to use a razor blade to peel the tape away. He knew about things like that. He was hilarious and had her in stitches all the time. They flicked paint on each other and larked about, and he said he’d never wash the spots off his face but keep them there for ever.

  Jamie was attending a sixth-form college near Bromsgrove, which was a long way to go every day, but he got driving lessons for his birthday and soon he was able to drive himself there in a car that Tony bought him. Caitlin made him promise that once he’d finished college he’d run Sean and her to school, and he did. She loved that, loved him driving her places. Sometimes she got him to drive her out at the weekends, or to the cinema – she always wanted to do everything with him. It became a bit of a Nolan joke, that Caitlin always wanted to do everything with Jamie. It had turned out that she was the one who made best friends with him, not Sean, who was in the sixth form himself now and had his own friends in school and was always out anyway at some activity or other.

  ‘Goodness Caitlin,’ Sheila would say, ‘leave the poor boy be.’

  ‘But Mum, he likes it,’ Caitlin would protest, and Jamie would say: ‘She’s right Sheila, I do,’ and then they’d go and do what they had planned to do in any case.

  Sometimes Jamie even took Caitlin to Bromsgrove with him when he went to see his old friends over there. They were different to other people she knew at school or in the local villages. They were poorer, and tougher, and smoked, and mostly had jobs working in shops or garages, even though they were only sixteen or seventeen. Jamie smoked too, when he was with them. He didn’t want her to smoke but she pestered him until he let her try.

  ‘Don’t for God’s sake tell Tony,’ he said. Jamie called him ‘Tony’, not ‘Dad’. ‘If he finds out I’m introducing you to my bad habits, he’ll string me up.’

  ‘He wouldn’t mind. He loves you.’ The evidence: the car, the laughter, the new extension, which was by now well on its way to being finished.

  ‘Yeah, well. He doesn’t love all this,’ he said, gesturing at the run-down area of Birmingham they were driving through. ‘Doesn’t love this part of me. Thinks I might be a bad influence.’

  ‘On who?’ Caitlin asked.

  Jamie swerved and blared the horn at a van that had pulled out of a junction just ahead of him. ‘Are you blind?’ he shouted.

  ‘That was so dangerous!’ Caitlin said. ‘Even I could see that.’

  ‘Too right it was. That’s Bromsgrove for you.’

  They drove on a short way. Then Caitlin said: ‘Well, I’ll be a good influence on you.’

  Jamie smiled over at her. ‘I’m sure you will, Cait.’

  She didn’t look back at him, kept staring ahead through the front window, but she stretched her hand across and briefly rubbed his arm. ‘Mum says the builders will be finished in a couple of weeks. Then your new room will be ready. So I’ve got a surprise for you.’ She reached into the back seat for her bag and pulled out a small folder stuffed with magazine clippings and colour charts. ‘I’ve been collecting loads of design ideas. I thought we could decorate it together.’

  Jamie hesitated. ‘I’m not sure that’s such a great idea.’

  ‘What? Why not? We had loads of fun last time. And we did a really good job.’

  ‘Yeah, we did.’

  ‘Then why?’ Again he didn’t answer, though this time no van pulled out. ‘Come on, it’ll be fun!’

  ‘I’m going to be too busy Cait. Tony’s found me a job.’

  —————

  The job was at the golf club Tony Nolan had built in partnership with several other local businessmen outside of the nearby village of Aston Cantlow, professedly in order that he could ‘wear what I bloody well want to when I walk into the bar’. Jamie was given a slot in the pro shop selling clubs, accessories and other merchandise, but he didn’t know or care enough about the subtle differentiation of irons, fairways and drivers to be able to muster much enthusiasm for the role. The reports that went back to his father via the shop manager were carefully couched – no one wanted to be seen criticising the boss’s son. But Tony’s managers knew how to damn with faint praise, and before long Jamie was re-located to the bar where his father could more easily monitor his progress.

  Here Jamie seemed more in his element. He had an engaging manner and a sharp wit and could chat happily to almost anyone while pulling pints or uncorking wine. The customers liked him and he didn’t seem too bothered when Tony tried to get him riled up, which he generally did whenever the opportunity presented itself. But that was Tony’s way. ‘Tough love,’ he called it. He tested everyone, forever probing to see how deep he needed to jab to elicit a reaction. Jamie was determined not to fall for it. His instinct was not to get defensive but to jab right back. Which Tony liked. A smart response earned his respect. Act passive, and he’d steamroller you into the ground.

  Back in Shelfield the extension was ready and Jamie moved out of the old spare room and into his new room over the pool. Despite his protestations Caitlin insisted on decorating it for him, though she toned down some of her wilder ideas and gave up on wallpaper after hanging it had defeated her. But in any case the excitement of the new bedroom paled beside the impact of the cuboid of water that lay beneath it. Jamie, Caitlin and Sean were in this amazing space whenever the opportunity arose. Caitlin, by now studying for her GCSEs, even tried to do her revision on one of the loungers until Sheila put a stop to it. Her mother also had an issue with the minimal nature of the bikinis she’d started wearing, and regularly told her to cover herself up. But they were just bikinis, everybody wore them. And as if to prove it, when Caitlin finished her exams they held a pool party at which, yes, all of her school friends sported similarly microscopic swimwear.

  Sheila was not impressed. ‘If that’s how they all carry on,’ she told Caitlin afterwards, ‘it’s just as well that you’ll be starting at Wardle’s in September.’

  Jamie just said that he didn’t see what all of the fuss was about. But there was more fuss to come. The day after the party two bottles of eighteen-year-old single malt were found to be missing from the drinks cabinet in the dining room, and Tony hit the roof. He suspected Jamie’s friends from Bromsgrove, and said so. The row rapidly escalated into a full-scale screaming match that so
mehow became about Jamie’s general level of ingratitude.

  Jamie shut himself into his room for the evening and Tony made it abundantly clear that no one was to go up and talk to him. But later than night, when her parents were asleep, Caitlin crept down the main stairs, through the silent house and up the spiral staircase that led to her half-brother’s room.

  She found him in bed but awake, reading a football magazine.

  ‘Hello. What are you up to?’

  ‘I wanted to see if you were okay.’

  ‘He’ll kill you if he finds you here.’

  ‘No he won’t.’

  ‘Then he’ll kill me.’

  She slipped into his bed and put her arms round him. ‘So he’ll have to kill us both. Switch the light off. I’ll spoon you.’

  ‘Cait, I don’t …’

  ‘Shh. Switch off the light.’

  ‘Caitlin …’

  ‘Shhh. I want to. It’s my choice. Just let me.’

  —————

  As tensions between Tony and Jamie continued to simmer, Caitlin’s night-time visits continued. She and Jamie just held each other at first, but their encounters soon grew in intensity. A boundary had been crossed: the uncanny sense of mutual recognition they both had felt since meeting had now been acknowledged and left free to bloom. Borne along on a seething riptide of genes and hormones, neither of them felt in control of what was happening. Every touch, every meeting was vertiginous, joyful, suffocating. Being together was incredible, perfect, indescribable. And yet before the rest of the family they had to maintain the illusion that everything was just as before. Their fear of the force of their father’s wrath if he should get so much as a sniff of what was going on enforced a strict cap on their activities. Jamie already suspected that the reason the extension had been built in the first place was to put some space between him and Caitlin. Caitlin thought he was being paranoid, but she couldn’t argue with his caution – there was no question that what they were doing was wrong on pretty much every level. So although she wanted more and knew that Jamie did as well, she complied with his refusal to go any further than kisses and cuddles. In this way they found a kind of ideal love, illicit but uncorrupted, vivid but unconsummated: a shared reflection; a twinned existence – diffuse, unique, telepathic.