by Erin Kinsley
‘What pressure?’
Dora pats her son’s hand.
‘I’m not a fool, Matty. I see what I see. For Evan’s sake, you should try and work things out. You’ve been through a lot together, and Evan needs you both.’
Matt sighs. A honey bee takes off from one red bloom and migrates to another, pure white.
‘I’m afraid that ship may already have sailed.’
‘You might be surprised. Things are different now he’s home.’
‘Not as different as they should be.’
‘So what about Evan? Do you think he might want to stay?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll ask him.’
‘You’d better ask Claire first, see how she feels about it.’
‘I’m sure she’ll say it’s whatever Evan wants.’
‘I think so too. And your father would be over the moon.’
TWENTY-TWO
14 August
Jack’s still keeping up old habits, up and about before dawn, even though he’s barely slept for worrying about Dora. She seems to be sleeping too well, dozing at every opportunity, falling into deep slumber as soon as she lies down at night, dispensing with her lifetime’s habit of reading a chapter of her library book. The books are piled up now on the ottoman at the end of the bed. They’re due for return in a couple of days, and Dora hasn’t read a single one. Jack tells himself it’s the drugs that are making her sleep so much, and there’s no doubt the opiates do induce drowsiness. In optimistic moments, he believes she’s sleeping herself a cure, shutting down non-essential functions so her body can focus on fighting the enemy within. In pessimistic moods – which he tries to keep at bay – he can’t help feeling that her body’s winding down, that his Dora is being pushed aside and undermined by the invading armies of her disease.
He’s made tea, but there’s no newspaper to go with it. There have been no papers in the house since his family made the headlines. He’s seen first-hand the price people pay to give them a story, and how a few words of newsprint don’t tell even the beginning of the narrative as it actually is. Misery, despair, grief, hope. Column inches touch none of those things, and they’re the only things which count.
As he’s drinking his first cup and thinking about going outside, he hears the latch on the kitchen door. He turns round from his view down the valley – all mist and promise for a perfect summer’s day – and sees Evan, dressed in his jeans and a hoody, his hair dishevelled from sleep.
Jack smiles.
‘Now then, youngster. You’re up early! Are you having a cup of tea?’
Evan shakes his head. He wanders to the fridge, finds a carton of orange juice and fills a glass. He drinks half, and goes to stand by his grandfather’s chair, so his view of the valley is the same as Jack’s. With Evan so close, Jack’s somehow afraid to startle him, as if the boy’s a nervous, wild thing which will take flight at the slightest movement.
‘Since you’re up, you can come and help me,’ he says. ‘We’ll go and let the poultry out, and have a look in on the sheep. What do you say? But you’ll have to put your wellies on. Your grandmother’ll have a fit if you bring more muck in on your shoes.’
Outside, in the apricot light, Jack leads the way across the yard. Millie’s lying outside her kennel, still half-asleep, but when Jack unfastens her from her chain, she’s all wagging tail and excitement, running at Jack, and then, to his obvious pleasure, to Evan, who strokes her head. In the barn, Jack lifts the lid of a corn-bin, and shovels out a couple of scoops into an empty sack as Millie darts back and forth along the barn’s back wall sniffing for rats.
Jack hands the sack to Evan, and they head for the home field, Millie running ahead as excited as if she’s never done this before, bounding over the wall while Jack unfastens the gate and leads Evan across the grass to the rickety shed where he keeps the chickens. Undoing the latch, he fastens back the door, and the birds come tumbling out, squawking and complaining.
Jack points to an empty feeder.
‘Corn in there,’ he says, and Evan tips it in, smiling as the chickens squabble to get to it. ‘You’d think they hadn’t been fed for a week. Your next job is to fetch them some water with that bucket by the sheep trough. That’s very important for them in this hot weather. Thirsty birds give no eggs. When that’s done, we’ll have a look how many they’ve laid. You see what’s in the coop, and then we’ll check the field. Every day’s an Easter egg hunt with these girls, but we’d better find a few, or there’ll be nothing much for breakfast.’
When they go back inside, Matt is in the kitchen, making a fresh pot of tea.
‘Here we are,’ says Jack. ‘Eight of the finest. Show your dad, Evan.’ Evan reaches into the front pocket of his hoody and one at a time, brings out the eggs they have found, ivory white and buff brown. ‘He’s got a nose for them. I only found three yesterday. If that’s fresh tea, I’ll have a cup, and I’ll take one up to your mother. She should be awake by now.’
Evan sits down at the table and begins to play with the eggs, lining them up by size, rolling them as if to understand their physics.
‘How shall we cook them?’ asks Jack. ‘The world’s our oyster. Scrambled, boiled, poached or fried?’ He’s on his way to the fridge to get milk for the tea, and without thinking, he reaches out and ruffles Evan’s hair.
But Evan doesn’t seem to mind.
Dora is still sleeping. Jack places a flowered cup with a single digestive biscuit in its saucer on the bedside table, and opens the curtains. The room floods with the brilliance of summer light, and Dora stirs. Jack crosses to the bed and bends down to kiss her forehead.
‘Rise and shine, sleeping beauty.’
Dora opens her eyes, but he doesn’t see the smile he usually gets when she wakes. Instead, she’s frowning, and under the blankets he can see her hand move to her stomach.
‘Are you all right, my darling?’
‘I’ve got a bit of a pain,’ she says. ‘Do you think you could pass my pills?’
Awkwardly, she sits up, leaning forward so Jack can put an extra pillow at her back. The blister-pack of medication is on the dressing table, and he presses out two, passing them to Dora with a glass of water.
‘It’s a beautiful day,’ he says. ‘Evan and I have been collecting eggs.’
‘That’s nice,’ she says, and swallows the tablets. ‘Any luck?’
‘We found eight. So it’s eggs for breakfast. Scrambled or boiled?’
Dora smiles.
‘I think I’ll stick to toast,’ she says. ‘How did he seem?’
‘He seems to be relaxing, but I didn’t get a peep out of him. Maybe he needs a little nudge.’
‘Oh, Jack, don’t be impatient. He’ll come round when he’s ready.’
‘Maybe. Shall I leave you to get dressed?’
‘You can leave me to drink my tea, and I’ll get up, by and by. But I feel like being lazy this morning. I might read for a little while.’
‘If you’re tired, my love, just stay where you are. Would you like marmalade on your toast?’
‘A dab of honey would be lovely. And Jack, don’t you be thinking about putting any pressure on that boy.’
‘Don’t worry,’ says Jack. ‘I won’t.’
TWENTY-THREE
15 August
On the journey south, Matt is thoughtful. Claire has agreed Evan should stay with Jack and Dora a few more days, but without him, the vacancy in the passenger seat feels pronounced, and there’s a part of Matt which aches with the loss of his son almost as if he were still missing, which in truth he is. It’s been weeks, and he feels all his attempts to reconnect with Evan have been useless. He isn’t so naive as to expect Evan ever again to be the sunny, happy boy who was taken away, but he’s dared to hope some of the old Evan might re-emerge, that there might be flashes of him, moments, minutes, hours of the son he
lost.
But there’s been little evidence of it so far, and Matt’s ashamed to admit even to himself that leaving Evan on the farm will be a few days of respite he didn’t even realise he needed.
He doesn’t rush to get home. He thinks he knows what he’ll find, and the prospect’s not one he relishes. He picks up dinner for himself from the Chinese takeaway three streets away: Singapore noodles, chilli beef, salt and pepper chicken wings. He doesn’t buy anything for Claire. Left to her own devices, she will have used the summer’s evening as an excuse to open the wine extra early: a glass in the garden in the sunshine, she’ll tell herself, and before very long the glass will have been a bottle, and she’ll be pretty much out cold.
As he pulls up in the driveway, the day is finally drawing to its close in a dusk where the city-bound traffic is no more than a background hum. After the farm, the air smells distinctly of suburbia: fresh cut grass on next door’s lawn, charring meat on a barbecue, warm tarmac. He turns off the engine, and for a few moments stays where he is, looking at the house which is supposed to be his home. He used to love this house, was proud of it, felt glad to be here at the end of the day. Now he doesn’t feel he belongs here, and he’s briefly overwhelmed at the unfairness of how their lives have turned out, of how much has been taken from them by the stealing of Evan.
Yet what choice does he have but to go inside to his miserable wife? How can he blame her for what she feels? But the weight of her grief drags him down. He’s tried to be strong for them both, but the burden is too heavy alone and she can’t or won’t help him carry it. In spite of himself, he resents that.
He climbs slowly from the car. Putting his key in the lock, he turns it and opens the door.
It’s not what he’s expecting. The house smells different, like the old, pre-loss days, and he tries to identify what’s fighting with the garlic and frying oil coming from his bag of takeaway. There’s floor cleaner, and Windolene, and the woollen smell of carpets after vacuuming. And on top of that there’s cooking, something with chicken and mushrooms.
From recent habit, he looks for Claire first in the lounge, thinking she’ll be lying on the sofa, the unwatched TV showing Emmerdale or Corrie. But the TV’s silent, and the sofa has the plumped-cushion look of not even having been sat on. On the windowsill, there’s a vase of fresh flowers.
Fresh flowers?
‘Hello!’ He finds her in the kitchen, stirring a pan on the hob and smiling. Things have been put away – the sink is empty of unwashed plates and mugs – and the worktops have been wiped down. A window is open on to the back garden, letting in the scents of the summer evening. What’s missing is a wine bottle, and an always-full glass.
In Claire’s tired eyes there’s a hint of sparkle, a trace of the woman he married.
He puts his Chinese food on the counter.
‘Hey.’ He gestures at the cleaned-up kitchen. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Elves,’ she says. ‘They came while I was sleeping.’
‘Looks good. What are you making?’
‘Some super-speedy Jamie Oliver thing. Speedy when he does it, anyway. But it looks like you brought your own.’
‘I’d rather have home cooking.’ Through his shirt, he squeezes a handful of the belly fat this unwanted Just Eat, chips-with-everything new life has forced on him.
She seems embarrassed, a little self-conscious.
‘You can ask me if you want.’
‘Ask you what?’
She gives him a look.
‘OK, I’ll ask. Where’s the wine?’
‘I thought I’d have a night off. Actually it’s my third night off. Since you and Evan went.’
He’s surprised. There hasn’t been a night Claire hasn’t been drinking since – he can’t remember when.
‘How come?’ He crosses to the stove, lifts the lid on a pan. ‘Couscous? You’re scaring me.’
‘I’ve had an epiphany,’ she says. ‘And I’m hungry. Let’s eat and I’ll tell you.’
She reaches into drawers and cupboards for plates and cutlery, actions that used to be routine but it hasn’t been this way for a long, long time. Pushed to say when they last ate together properly, Claire couldn’t begin to guess. Christmas, maybe, although even then she can’t remember that she ate much; most of her calories were in a glass. She spoons couscous and chicken on to two plates, and adds generous portions of green beans.
Matt’s peering over her shoulder, crunching on a prawn cracker.
‘Are those actual vegetables?’ he asks. ‘Fresh vegetables?’
‘Yes, they are. You’d better eat them up, or there’ll be no pudding.’
‘Is there pudding?’
‘Chocolate tart.’
‘You’ve been baking?’
‘I haven’t gone that far. Courtesy of Mr Sainsbury. Shall we eat at the table?’
Matt raises his eyebrows. These days, it’s all eating on knees, TV on. He’s been thinking of football or a Sky box set, but he’s intrigued to know what’s going on in Claire’s mind.
The food is good. Claire hasn’t lost her touch.
‘Very nice,’ he says.
‘Thank Jamie Oliver.’
He puts down his fork and touches her hand.
‘I’m not thanking him. I’m thanking you.’
Claire puts down her own fork.
‘Can I tell you something terrible?’ she says. ‘About me?’
He looks into her face and sees all the changes there, the new lines, the dark circles under her eyes, the dryness of her lips, the hollows where there was a healthy plumpness. The prettiness he fell in love with is all but gone, and his wife appears decades older than she did before Evan’s abduction. Whatever happens between them now, whether this marriage sinks or swims, in this moment he feels her pain and aches for her, for them both.
‘What could be terrible about you?’ he asks.
‘I need to tell you something, even though you might hate me for it.’
‘I promise I won’t hate you.’
‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep.’
‘Try me.’
He picks up his fork and spears a piece of chicken, chewing as she gathers her thoughts.
‘When Evan was taken, I thought I’d die of misery.’ She’s not looking at him any more but out of the window on to the summer garden, as if she can see there the past she’s remembering. ‘Every day was torture. The only reason I didn’t kill myself was the faint hope that he’d come back, even though I’d begun to accept he wouldn’t, towards the end. I didn’t have any hope left and then, miraculously, there he was. Our boy. My son, back from the presumed dead.’
Matt nods.
‘It was a massive shock,’ he says.
‘A good shock,’ she says. ‘The very best you could hope for, in the beginning. And I wasn’t stupid enough to think things would ever be like they were. I never expected that. Even though I hate to think about it, he must have suffered. He must have suffered terribly.’ Her eyes are wet with tears. ‘I know the kind of thing that must have gone on, and that makes me so very, very angry, I want to find those men and kill them, kill them in the most horrible way possible, with knives and burning and anything else I can think of. I want them to suffer the way they made him suffer. That’s one reason for the wine. It makes me sleep, and takes the edge off all that anger.’
Matt’s appetite is suddenly gone. He recognises the rage she feels; as his car eats up the miles of his daily drive, he’s regularly planned murderous, bloody assaults on his son’s captors, slow deaths and vengeful tortures.
‘That’s understandable,’ he says. ‘No one would blame you for that. We can plot revenge together, pool our ideas.’
She manages a teary smile.
‘Maybe. But that’s not why you’ll hate me.’ She draws a deep breath. ‘When Ev
an was first home, I was patient. I tried to understand the silence, the bolted door, and I tried to cope with the rejection, but all the while a voice was nagging in me, a resentful voice asking why he wouldn’t trust me. Why he wouldn’t trust us. We’re his mum and dad, and he doesn’t trust us. And you can say all those things about how damaged he is and I know it isn’t logical or even beginning to be fair, but there came a day – I couldn’t say when, exactly – when I needed some acknowledgement, some gesture of affection, just a hug or kiss to say, I know you’re there, Mum. But that’s never come. He seems so lost, so shut down, that I doubt that he’s ever coming back. And so I started thinking I don’t have a son any more. He’s alive but that’s all he is. He’s like some kind of hungry ghost, a shell of what he was, and he’ll never have any affection for us ever again, because that’s what those men have taken. We have Evan’s body, but they’ve eaten his soul, and he’s never coming back. And so I thought – and this is the really bad part – I thought if we didn’t have Evan, if Evan is going to be a ghost for the rest of his life, haunting us from up there in his room, I thought I don’t have a son any more and I want a son, so I thought we should start trying for a baby. A replacement for the son we didn’t get back.’
It’s not what Matt’s expecting. Despite his protestations of an open mind, he’s shocked.
‘A baby? Really? Sweetheart, I don’t think . . .’
She holds up a hand to stop him.
‘I don’t think that now. I thought it for a couple of weeks. Then I thought with the way you and I have been . . . I mean, it’s a long time since you and I thought about each other in that way, and I’m not exactly an enticing prospect, am I? And I realised how shallow I was being and how crazy it was to even think about giving up on Evan, because that’s what I was thinking about doing, just abandoning him to his twilight world and saying, well, that son didn’t work out too well, so I’ll give it another go. I was putting my grief ahead of his well-being. I was being needy, when my needs pale into insignificance, into non-existence when you think about his needs. So I thought again, and I thought I wasn’t being much of a mother, was I, being pissed by four every afternoon and spark out on the sofa by seven. What boy could resist spending time with a mother like that? So in the spirit of being the change you want to see and in the interests of my liver, I’ve turned over a new leaf. Back to the old days of domestic efficiency and home comforts.’
