Unforgotten

by Clare Francis

  Hugh hung his suit jacket and trousers on separate hangers to dry and, with his mood long broken, abandoned the idea of a bath in favour of a shower. As he ducked his head under the streaming water he pondered, as he had pondered so many times before, the unanswerable questions about Charlie, why twenty years of nurture had been unable to override the disadvantages of his birth, why the receiving of family love had failed to translate itself into self-love. Had his first twelve months with his natural mother been so irretrievably damaging? Would everything have been different if they’d been able to adopt him immediately after birth? Or had the tendency to insecurity and lack of self-worth been ingrained in him from the start, set hard in some immutable genetic amber? Was the physiology of addiction itself genetic, as some scientists liked to claim, inherited just as surely as blue eyes or red hair? In which case Charlie would be battling the odds for the rest of his life, only ever a spliff away from falling over the next precipice.

  Above the din of the water he heard Lizzie’s voice and turned to see her blurred outline through the shower door. The familiar happiness bobbed up in him only to be overtaken by an acute, nameless anxiety, a sense of dangers padding up around them like wolves, and he came out hurriedly, with a clang of the door. Lizzie was holding up a towel to him.

  ‘Hello, you,’ she said.

  ‘Hello.’

  As he wrapped the towel round his waist she craned forward to kiss him without getting wet. He kissed her with equal care, then, forgetting caution, pulled her into a damp all-enveloping hug.

  She gave a small muffled laugh and tilted her head back to give him a questioning look. ‘All right?’

  ‘All right.’

  They embraced silently, swaying very slightly as if to some half-remembered dance music. When they finally drew apart he looked into her gentle honest eyes and followed the outline of her beautiful smile, and felt his anxiety slip away.

  ‘How did it go today?’ she asked.

  ‘Okay. Well, I think so. Desmond Riley seemed pleased anyway.’

  ‘And Tom?’

  ‘One of his fretful days.’

  ‘Well, he’ll always find something to fret about, won’t he?’ she said sympathetically. ‘No point in you fretting too.’

  ‘I can’t help it. I always think that if anything’s going to go wrong, it’ll go wrong for Tom.’

  ‘But you’ve done everything you can, darling. It’s out of your hands now.’

  This was another reason he loved her, because she brought him back to earth, she made him see things in proportion.

  ‘And you?’ he asked. ‘Lots of happy customers?’

  She made a so-so movement of her head. ‘Never as many as I’d like.’ Kissing him lightly, she made for the door. ‘It’s pasta and salad, if that’s all right.’

  It was a family joke that he would eat anything put in front of him. ‘Pasta and salad sounds all right to me.’

  She called from the bedroom, ‘What happened to your suit?’

  ‘I got caught in the rain.’

  A short silence while she puzzled over this. Then: ‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘Being in the wrong place.’

  ‘An umbrella problem?’

  ‘A stupidity problem.’

  She laughed, then after a minute or two he heard the radio come on in the kitchen.

  It had so nearly not happened, their getting together. He could never remember quite how close it had been without a shiver of relief. He had been in his second year’s training in London when he’d come back to Bristol for a party. The party had been hot and noisy and overcrowded. The next morning, hoarse from the shouting and the smoke and too much rough wine, four of them had gone into the country for lunch. It was Andy, an old university friend of Hugh’s, who’d suggested the pub high on the Quantock Hills, and a friend of Andy’s called Sam who’d insisted on a full roast lunch in the dining room because he was bloody hungry, but it was Hugh alone, taking his first conscious decision of the day, who’d left the others to their food and gone outside for some air. The day was cold, with a fierce biting wind, the terrace deserted except for a hardy couple hunched over a table at the far end. Hugh went to the railing and, gazing out over the sweep of the flood plain to the hazy line of the coast, let the wind chill his skin and sharpen his brain. After a minute or so the couple got up from the table. Hugh had an impression of a striking-looking girl with a curtain of hair blowing across her face, and a man a generation older. Only when the man gave Hugh a smile of recognition and came forward to greet him did Hugh realise it was his old public law tutor, Professor Askew. As the professor asked after Hugh’s progress, Hugh glanced towards the waiting girl with her flying hair and dark eyes. Something made him keep looking – the honest gaze, the lovely smile – and he found himself smiling back, it was impossible not to. Afterwards, he always maintained that everything was decided there and then. In fact it was a moment later, when Peter Askew took him over and introduced her as his daughter Lizzie. As they shook hands it struck Hugh with absolute clarity that this was the one, the search was over, he need look no further. Lizzie liked to say it took her quite a bit longer, at least five minutes, because she didn’t want to seem fast. The reality was a little less straightforward. There was a boyfriend on the scene, and Hugh had the disadvantage of living in London. It took five weekends and a lot of rail travel to see the boyfriend off, and another three months before Lizzie agreed to marry him. Then, his training over, he landed the job at Dimmocks and they set up home together in a flat in Clifton.

  Why had he chosen that particular moment to go out onto the terrace? Ten minutes earlier and Lizzie and her father would still have been in the bar, finishing their coffee. Five minutes later and they’d have been in their car driving away. He didn’t believe in fate or any of that stuff, but he believed in luck, and, most important of all, in being thankful when it came his way.

  When he got downstairs Lizzie was at the hob, tipping ingredients into a pan. She said, ‘I thought we might text Charlie tonight.’

  ‘Yes?’ He pulled some Merlot from the rack and set two glasses on the worktop.

  ‘But I couldn’t decide what to say.’

  Keeping in touch with Charlie was a delicate balance. Too many messages and there was a risk he might feel suffocated; too few and his confidence, always brittle, might falter at a critical moment, such as when he was being offered a joint, which for him was only ever one puff away from all the other so-called recreational drugs that sent him off the rails.

  ‘What about his plans for the Christmas holidays?’ Hugh said.

  ‘Well, he’ll be here most of the time.’

  He put her glass on the worktop beside her. ‘News then?’

  She threw him an amused look. ‘Since when did we have any news that was remotely interesting to the children?’

  He went through a little pantomime of the thinking man perplexed, brow furrowed, eyes hunting around as if for ideas. ‘Parents planning New Year break in sun?’

  She laughed. ‘Like I said – nothing that would be of the slightest interest.’

  Hugh thought fleetingly of the hooded figure in the garden. That was news all right, but not the kind that Charlie needed just at the moment. ‘How about asking how the NA meetings are going?’ Charlie was meant to attend Narcotics Anonymous every day and counselling twice a week.

  Reaching for her wine, Lizzie leant back against the counter. ‘You don’t think he’d see that as a lack of trust?’

  ‘But it’s meant to be part of the deal, Lizzie. That we’re open about these things, that we don’t do any more pussyfooting around.’ This lesson had been drummed into them at the rehab centre’s family sessions, along with the importance of rules and honesty and tough love.

  She was nodding slowly, as if to persuade herself to his point of view. ‘How would we word it though?’

  ‘Just ask him how the meetings are going.’

  She said proudly, ‘He’s done so well to get
this far.’

  ‘He’s done very well.’

  ‘It’s almost six months now.’

  ‘Well, there’s your message, isn’t it?’ Hugh raised his glass to the idea. ‘Let’s congratulate him on however many days it is.’

  ‘You don’t think that would make him feel pressurised?’

  She was right, of course. It would sound as though they were ticking off the days on a huge wall calendar. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘What about, Is it six months yet? We want to celebrate with you.’

  ‘Mmm. I’m not sure celebrate’s quite the right word . . . And I think we should get away from questions that need answers.’

  ‘Okay. What about So proud of you?’

  She wasn’t convinced.

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘It sounds a bit . . . I don’t know, as though he’d won a marathon or something.’

  ‘But he has, hasn’t he? Well, not won exactly, but on the way to winning.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘What about . . . How’s things? With you all the way, love Mum and Dad?’

  She gave her wide smile. ‘Perfect!’ She dug her mobile phone out of her bag and held it up. ‘Shall I go for it then?’

  Since Lizzie was a master of texting and Hugh was still struggling with the basics of abbreviation, he waved her on enthusiastically.

  ‘If you could just keep an eye on the sauce . . .’

  The sauce contained meat, onion, and tomato, to which he added random quantities of herbs and chopped garlic, though from the smell he suspected there was quite a bit of garlic in there already. Garlic was meant to be good for colds, he vaguely remembered from one of Isabel’s strictures, its bug-defying properties enhanced, he supposed, by its ability to keep people at a distance.

  Lizzie declared, ‘There! Done.’

  She took charge of the sauce again while Hugh began to make the salad dressing, which was always his department.

  ‘I was thinking,’ Lizzie said, ‘that Charlie should have a counsellor in the holidays, someone fairly local.’

  ‘You don’t think he’ll manage without?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he will. But there’s no harm in knowing he has support close at hand if he wants it. A sort of safety net.’

  Lizzie often floated ideas like this, variations on the theme of how best to support Charlie. In her volunteer work at the Citizens Advice she helped people tackle a wide range of problems, from debts and benefit claims to housing and legal disputes. She was trained to cover every angle, though when it came to Charlie Hugh suspected that her industriousness owed as much to the need to feel useful as to any practical help she might be able to give.

  Hugh said, ‘But Charlie would have to decide, wouldn’t he? Whether he needed someone. And who to go to.’

  She poured steaming pasta into a colander. ‘Of course. But I thought we could ask around. Find a name or two.’

  ‘Okay . . .’

  Catching the hesitation in his voice, misunderstanding the reason, she said, ‘Oh, don’t think I’m losing faith in him, Hugh. I’m not. Far from it. No, in fact—’ She paused, as if about to say more than she’d meant to. ‘I’m actually starting to believe he’s going to be all right. I mean, really all right. I’ve never dared think it before. Not after all the disappointments. But now . . . well, he’s been sounding so good on the phone, hasn’t he? So together. It’s as if he’s finally got the message that life’s far more wonderful when he’s not stoned or high all the time. That he can get through the dark times okay with the help of NA and all the rest of it. Oh, I know it’s tempting fate, Hugh. I know.’ She clutched a hand to her head in a gesture of foolishness. ‘But I can’t help it.’

  Hugh smiled, both to reassure her that the idea wasn’t so foolish and to conceal the fact that in recent weeks his thoughts had been running in rather a different direction. It seemed to him that the odds of someone as fragile as Charlie beating his addiction first time round weren’t too good, that it would be sensible to prepare for the possibility that he would have to go back into rehab at least once, maybe twice, in the course of his recovery. This thought had seemed rather disloyal at first, but as he took the new rules on board and began to absolve himself of responsibility for Charlie’s addictions, to ‘release with love’ as the rehab centre put it, he began to accept the thought for what it was, not a matter of guilt but of guarding against disappointment.

  ‘Go for it!’ he declared.

  ‘You don’t think it’s unlucky?’

  ‘Totally not.’

  ‘Totally not.’ She laughed. ‘You sound like Lou.’

  ‘Do I?’ The thought didn’t displease him. ‘Where is she? Still in Madras?’

  ‘Till tomorrow.’

  ‘Then north, is it?’

  ‘Yes. She should reach Calcutta in about a week.’

  ‘By bus?’

  ‘I think so.’

  They never worried about Lou, who at eighteen was responsible and level-headed, and far more organised than anyone else in the family. When she had finished trekking through India with her friend Chrissie she was going on to Sri Lanka to do two months’ voluntary work in an orphanage before coming home to read medicine at Edinburgh. She e-mailed at least once a week and regularly posted smiling snapshots on a travellers’ website.

  They carried the supper to the table and Hugh went back for the wine.

  ‘By the way,’ he said as they sat down, ‘there was a hoodie-style kid hanging around the gate when I got back.’

  ‘Oh?’ she said calmly. ‘One of Charlie’s old crowd?’

  ‘Could have been.’

  ‘You’d think they’d have got the message by now. That he’s away at college.’

  ‘Ah, but they don’t get the message, do they? That’s their trouble – they’re too spaced out.’

  ‘You’re sure it wasn’t Joel? Back from wherever he’s been.’

  ‘Canada. No, it definitely wasn’t Joel.’ Joel was the son of the people who lived two houses away; a gangling monosyllabic youth with bad skin who shared Charlie’s passion for IT.

  ‘I can’t say I’ve ever really taken to Joel,’ Lizzie said, ‘but at least he’s not into anything worse than computers.’

  ‘Charlie gets on with him okay.’

  ‘Yes, that’s all that matters.’

  Now they were back on to Charlie, Hugh was tempted to leave the subject of the youth behind. But he felt bound to add, ‘If you see the hoodie hanging around the gate again, you’ll call the police straight away, won’t you, Lizzie? Or get help from a neighbour.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be all right, darling. Don’t forget, I deal with hoodies all day. They don’t worry me.’

  ‘Well, perhaps they should.’

  She gazed at him for a moment before asking, ‘Is that how you got wet?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Talking to the hoodie?’

  ‘Well . . . trying to talk to him.’

  ‘Ah.’ She put on a solemn expression, to assure him of her sympathy. ‘He ran away?’

  ‘Sprinted, more like.’

  ‘Probably just as well you didn’t catch him.’

  ‘Huh. If I’d just had the chance!’

  ‘Well, what would you have done with him if you’d got him?’

  ‘I’d have given him a bloody good hiding.’

  Lizzie’s eyes gleamed with a suppressed smile.

  ‘And why the hell not?’

  ‘You might have come out of it worse.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Anyway, with most of these kids it’s all show, isn’t it, the hood business. They’re just trying to look cool.’

  ‘He was up to no good.’

  ‘Why, because he ran away? He was probably scared out of his wits.’

  ‘It’d be nice to think so. Trouble is, Lizzie, you only get to see the hoodies who make it as far as the Citizens Advice, the ones who’re together enough to ask for help.’

  ‘Oh, I get some fairly untogeth
er ones as well.’

  ‘Really? I thought they were too busy robbing off-licences and mugging old ladies.’

  She shot him a look of tolerant rebuke, and he withdrew the remark with a wave of his glass. He loved this Merlot, so silky on the throat, so soothing on the brain. Already he felt the day’s problems miraculously postponed, his thoughts spiralling happily around Lizzie, the meal, the hours till sleep. He asked, ‘What customers did you have today?’

  ‘Well, it was a Monday, so it was non-stop. I had a credit card debt, a couple of eviction notices, a loan-shark victim in hock for ten thousand. Oh and, last thing, Gloria James, the woman from the Carstairs who’s so desperate to be rehoused.’ Seeing that he was struggling to remember, she prompted, ‘The one with the agoraphobic son.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Hugh said, as the story came back to him. The Carstairs was a notorious council estate on the northern borders of the city, a run-down concrete monolith with dark passageways, broken lifts, and litter-strewn landings that had long been a byword for drugs, crime, and anti-social behaviour. The only surprise was that all its residents didn’t besiege the offices of the council, the Citizens Advice, and every other agency in the city, demanding to be rehoused.

  ‘Agoraphobia?’ he murmured, as something else drifted into his memory. ‘I thought the son was living in fear of the gangs, of getting beaten up.’

  ‘That’s what Gloria says, yes . . .’ Lizzie frowned, as if turning something over in her mind. ‘But whatever the cause, the effect is the same. Wesley’s terrified of going out, and Gloria’s convinced he’ll never get better till they move.’