The Orphans

by Annemarie Neary

  Down in the valley, the road is lined with the kinds of places where Jess likes to shop – twenty different kinds of olives, tasteful black and white photographs of local landmarks, focaccia with fines herbes frittata and Camembert. He looks in through the window of a craft beer place, and for a moment he can’t quite work out who is outside and who is in. A dark shadow moves across the glass like a floater on an eye – a silhouette of a woman on a bike. His rational mind assures him that a woman on a moving bike could not be inside the restaurant and yet he has no idea where the membrane might be that separates this space from that. He wonders if it exists at all or if everything is permeable, and all things possible. They are all there, more or less, and they are all in some way real, but which is his reality and which belongs inside that burger bar he really has no idea. In fact, he is beginning not to care about such distinctions. He is starting to discern that letting go of what the world calls reality will be a kind of liberation.

  When he first went away to school, he used to comfort himself from the deep well of his imagination in which he was a boy alone in the world whose magic powers were as yet undiscovered. He conjured up a kind of Dumbledore with a large ragged book. Inside that book, images of his mother could be animated at the touch of a finger – an iPad before such things existed. And this wizard promised that one day he would allow Ro to see his mother, though she would not be able to see him. He would be able to watch her eating, for instance, perhaps with a new family. She might be dancing or playing a guitar. He would even find out where she was. The story would be told and it would be true and it would be up to him to act on it or not. But he had to promise not to flinch when he heard the truth, no matter how hard it was.

  He remembers the feel of his mother’s hand outside the school, and the little rasp to it. It reminds him that she already has a life among everyday things that she may not want to change. It tells him what he has always suspected. If he wants his mother back, he is going to have to take her.

  His throat is parched at the thought of all that lies ahead, and he stops off at a corner café with blond wood shelves bearing rows of oils and biscotti and teas. How could there be so many teas? The ceiling is a tangle of taut copper wires that bloom into an overgrowth of Edisons. The tables glow with Apples. A crying child distracts him, and the next time he looks up, it’s as if everything has changed up there, the lights striking glints from different bottles. He slurps the dregs of his coffee, and as he tilts the cup back and sucks in the foam he feels as if those bulbs are trained on him.

  The girl is small, blonde. She is wearing high heels and a pale pink sweater, and looks a bit like Pia. Her hair swarms on her shoulder as she settles herself on the long bench to his right. He wonders how heavy she is, how determined she would be to put up a fight. Her thin bum hardly covers half the width of the bench. He could take her, but not without attracting attention. The girl would cry out, she might even scream. But he plays the moment in his head anyway.

  He imagines crossing that stained expanse of oak flooring, past the jam jars with their caps of paper lace and the clustered flasks of tap water by the till. The girl is engrossed in the blue glow of her phone. He imagines knocking against her as she’s getting up to leave and hustling her out the door. Or just scooping her up with one arm around her waist, and making off with her. But where would he take her? He is Jack without a beanstalk and she is surrounded by allies – boys with beards and beanies, girls with retro tastes plugged, one ear only, to the Smiths. When the girl has finished her coffee and gets up to leave, Ro is ready for her. She slings a backpack up over her shoulder with one hand as she thumbs down through Facebook with the other.

  He exits just behind her. When she turns right towards the Common, so does he. They pass the copse of trees where everything darkens. Although she doesn’t turn right around to check him out, he thinks her glances to the side are deep enough to take him in. Once they’re out of sight of the road, he launches himself towards her. As she whips around, he perceives the glint of metal in her hand. And as the key makes for his eye, he dodges. But not quite quickly enough. She jabs at him, just the once, and then she runs.

  He turns his jacket inside out as he’s seen done in the movies, and walks smartly off in the opposite direction. His eye is stinging, but the damage is slight. He can feel where she’s scraped a wound into his eyelid, but the eye itself still functions. He feels strangely blank about it. He’s glad he didn’t hurt the girl. He’s almost glad she got away. What would he have done if he’d got her? He feels no anger towards her, no desire. He has nowhere he could take her. He hadn’t even covered his face. It was an experiment, that’s all, and he’s lucky that it failed.

  The siren probably has nothing to do with him, but he tacks off across the Common anyway. On a dog-free paddock of mown green, a woman has set up a trestle table with an old-fashioned flowery tablecloth. She has hung pastel bunting from the trees, pink and primrose yellow and the palest of blues, and fat bunches of balloons trail ribbons onto a corral of cool boxes and picnic hampers. He looks at her for a long while. She catches his eye, and keeps busying herself with removing paper cups and plates from a large wicker bag. He knows she’s aware of him, that he is making her nervous, but he doesn’t look away. He feels a tide of envy for this woman’s children, two tiny blond boys in Chelsea shirts, tumbling over a football. He is heartbroken never to be a child again.

  As he turns away, he realises that smash and grab is the wrong method for capturing a mother and her love. He needs a pretext tailored to the target. Can you help? There’s been an accident or a mother looking for her child or a mother looking for a child who’s had an accident. Do you have a heart?

  But even if the pretext worked and he was able to persuade her towards the Common, she isn’t likely to let him lead her all the way. What then?

  He’d need to knock her out, that’s what. No blows to the head, not for his mother. No violent assaults. He needs a kinder method of oblivion. He’s thinking nineteenth century, a hankie to the mouth, a swoon. Can you purchase chloroform online? Do they even make it any more? He doesn’t know but he means to find out because that would be the gentle, silent business.

  11

  It is mid-morning when a message beeps in on Jess’s phone.

  ‘Happy to accommodate your request to bring the meeting forward. Miles can make three. Would that suit? Don’t forget that you’re entitled to have a friend in attendance.’

  A friend? The word alarms her in its assumption that she will be otherwise friendless. In the belated realisation that she should be taking this much more seriously than she has been doing, she calls Sarah’s extension, then her direct line, then her mobile. She messages her, sends emails to work and home, but Sarah doesn’t answer. Out in the PAs’ pod, there are Bake Off brownies, but she hasn’t got the stomach. ‘Anyone know where to reach Sarah Phelps?’

  But it seems Sarah has gone home sick. She almost asks one of the PAs to come along, to bring the brownies while she’s at it. But they all do occasional work for Miles; it would be putting them in an impossible situation. And so, when she heads for the lift, Jess is on her own.

  When the lift doors slide open, Miles is already in there and she has to share the lift with her executioner. They stand in silence as a faint strain of piano music circles overhead. Chopin. She is almost on the other side without having had to mount the scaffold. She allows herself a smile and then she catches Miles’s eye and it’s clear that smiling isn’t on the agenda today. She has come across as flippant. The abandonment of a client? The assassination of a rose? They are hardly capital offences. But smiling won’t do.

  In the Sixth-Floor conference area, the woman behind the desk exchanges greetings with Miles and looks straight through Jess, and it seems only moments later that they are walking down the corridor a foot apart and into a meeting room with a wall of windows looking out on St Paul’s from behind a stretch of lavender and box hedging.

  He has got it all �
� dates, times, stats. He is able to show that she is heading for a huge write-off on the Grosvenor deal, though of course that doesn’t show the true picture, where the resources she was given to deal with the work agreed were ridiculously inadequate. She forces a defiant smile onto her face as she watches a bluebottle move efficiently across the window. Because she will not show him how this feels.

  ‘There will be a compromise agreement, of course,’ says the woman from HR.

  ‘Of course.’

  Jess is calculating the value of a lump sum over the cost of trying to defend herself, not to mention the mental agony involved.

  The woman from HR looks bemused. She pulls her skirt down over her knees. Jess guesses that people usually put up more of a fight, but she knows that she has given Miles the whip hand. The morning after the Summer Party, she should have nailed him for assault, sexual harassment, the lot. In a place like this, charity is weakness.

  Miles has left the best wine till last. He has found the error she didn’t even realise she’d made. A Sale and Purchase Agreement from earlier in the year in which the IP was worthless, and yet no disclosures were made to that effect. As it happens, it’s a dead letter; the product in question is out of date, so the intellectual property would be effectively worthless now anyway. But it’s the principle that counts. She made an omission that could have been very costly to both the client and the firm, and so her competence is open to question. Miles couldn’t have known it, but this is his trump card. She would never be able to admit to Charlie that she was negligent, and so this is the very accusation she will never contest. She will take the pay-off and go.

  Before the meeting is brought to a close, she turns to the woman from HR. ‘I don’t hope to call this in aid for my own case. But I’d like to make a statement for you to have on file about Mr Rennie and an incident at the Summer Party.’

  The woman sits up in her seat and glances at Miles. ‘Would you care to elaborate?’ she asks Jess.

  ‘It was an assault. Mr Rennie assaulted me.’

  ‘Oh come on.’ Miles is consulting his watch in an exaggerated manner, as if to say he is much too busy for this.

  But the HR woman looks concerned. In fact, she looks as if Jess has just ruined her week. ‘Would you like to talk about it now, Jess?’

  ‘No thanks. I’m just flagging it so you know to expect a statement.’

  Miles’s face has reddened. He sits forward in his chair as if he might launch himself out of it. ‘Of course she doesn’t want to talk about it because it never bloody happened.’

  ‘Please moderate your language,’ the HR woman says.

  ‘How do you expect me to react when I’m accused of assault? My God, it’s pathetic,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Typical. If you’re in the shit, cry—’

  ‘I don’t need to remind you of the seriousness of an allegation like this, Jess.’ The HR woman cuts across him.

  ‘No,’ Jess says. ‘You don’t. I’m going to make a statement, and I want it put on Mr Rennie’s file. But don’t worry, I’m not intending to try to keep my job.’

  ‘The compromise agreement will stipulate that you withdraw any claims against the firm,’ the woman says.

  Miles sits back in his seat, looking gleeful.

  ‘In that case, I won’t sign it.’

  ‘Then there’ll be no payment.’

  ‘So be it.’

  They don’t leave the meeting together, Jess and her executioner. But he looks chastened, scared almost, as he sits on with the HR woman and Jess walks out the door. She had expected that someone would accompany her back to her desk. It has entered into office folklore, that walk of death. She is about to reach the end of the corridor when her escort finally appears. She recognises him from reception, a guy she passes the time of day with every other morning. But he doesn’t meet her eye today, and she guesses he is angry with her for forcing this situation on him. He slips into the lift beside her, just as the doors are sliding shut. And so she has a chaperone after all.

  Back on the Fourth Floor, she passes the pod of PAs. Kerry glances up at her and then at the security guard. She makes an ‘eek’ face and mouths ‘Sorry’. Liz offers to come and help her clear her desk. But the security guard says that’s what he’s there for. He says it quite nicely really, and the women hang back. All the partners have vanished. She can’t help thinking they are avoiding the area for the half-hour or so it will take for her to leave the building. Once they have passed the barrier at the lifts, the security guard leaves her. She hands over her pass to Mel on reception.

  ‘You have got to be kidding me,’ Mel says, grabbing a handful of tissues from the box she keeps beneath the counter. ‘What a fucking shithouse.’

  Jess hadn’t even realised she was crying. She doesn’t feel pain or sadness. She feels furious – with herself, with Miles, with Charlie, with Ro, with the whole world.

  ‘I’m on my break in twenty minutes if you feel like a coffee,’ Mel says. ‘We could go across the road?’

  But Jess needs to get away. She feels curiously ashamed to be here, where she no longer belongs. Walking across the plaza, the buildings all seem taller, more impregnable, than before. She’s been banished and all she wants is to be somewhere she isn’t reminded of that. But then the shame is blotted out by panic. Her heart drops in her chest when she realises that the worst has happened – unless she gets another job very soon, they will not be able to stay in the house.

  Once she’s left the Tube, she walks home past the bandstand café, but the Common is no comfort to her today. Groups of women are sitting at pigeon-haunted tables under the huge chestnut tree. Some are cooing over babies, shovelling puree into sparrow mouths. Others breastfeed ostentatiously. She tries to picture herself there, maybe even pregnant again, but the thought of losing an independent life terrifies her. And yet, that’s all she has now. The bastion of Charlie and Ruby is all there is. She has a momentary vision of Delia, striding across the concourse outside the offices, and her cheeks flush. Delia is the person she always thought she would become. There is no other template, and she is bereft.

  There’s a sprinkling of men at the café, too, sitting singly with their toddlers. Men in open-necked polo shirts, their chinos worn high at the waist. They seem harassed, unmanned. One man is redder than the sun could have made him. He is like a scalded chicken. The baby with him doesn’t notice the colour of his face. She doesn’t know that green glass bottle he is necking doesn’t contain juice. She doesn’t smell the alcohol, but Jess does and Jess feels the man’s desperation as if it were her own.

  Back at the house, there is no Hana, no Ruby either. But Ro is there. He gets the look she normally reserves for Ruby, a sweeping glance that takes in everything. She notices a cut, just above the eye. No more than a scrape really. As a child, he was always covered in cuts and bruises. He blinks at her, bites his lip and she knows that he’s remembering too. He leaves the room, and she can hear him pissing in the loo next door. A man all right. But still a child too.

  She shudders to think of the harm he used to do himself. Poor little Sparrow, pale and blank-eyed at the remembrance service Rae arranged for their mother, soon after their father’s funeral, to ensure that Sophie wasn’t forgotten. Ro was standing at the granite ledge where they had placed the items they wished to remember their mother by – her guitar, of course, a tortoiseshell hair clip, a jar of cornflowers because she loved them. Rae had tried to get Ro to participate, perhaps by carrying up the little jar of flowers, but he turned towards a column, hooking his finger into the stone and scratching away at it. When nothing resulted from his efforts, he began whipping at the column with his knuckles. Jess understood what he was trying to do because he had whispered to her that he wanted to take away the bits of bright. But no matter how hard he picked at the shiny specks, they wouldn’t detach themselves. When Auntie Rae began to read from The Prophet he started to burrow at the granite ledge with his forehead, as if trying to take himself away from all this and
into the stone. Later, at their aunt’s house, she found him picking bits of mica off the pebble dash on the sunny side of the house, the side that faced the flat green garden. He was picking off the stones and putting them in his pocket. When she asked him why, he said it was so that he would always be able to remember how this day had felt.

  And then she realised he had come to understand that even sunny days might need to be remembered, that adults might expect you to recall a thousand random things that had seemed unimportant at the time.

  When she came back later, though, he was at the wall again, working at the patch from which he had removed the stones, headbutting it as if trying to work his way inside. She pulled him away, and put her arms around him. And for a few moments he let her hold him. But even then she could feel his heart thrashing, the rush of his breath. It was like trying to still a bird.

  Years later, she would hear of girls who’d slashed at themselves to feel a sense of release. And she would think of Sparrow, miles away in boarding school. She would worry about what he might be doing to himself, surrounded by boys who liked to run and shout, hitting out at balls, trees, whatever. How she worried about Sparrow, with his pale, vague eyes and his habit of banging his head on sharp-edged things.

  The loo flushes, and he is back with her again.

  ‘What happened to your eye?’ she asks.

  He looks away from her. ‘What happened to your job?’

  She feels her eyes smart, but he walks past her to the bread bin. The sky might just have fallen in, but for Ro it’s all about carbs.

  He draws up heels of half-eaten loaves and flings them away. ‘Any bread in?’