The Orphans

by Annemarie Neary

  Once upon a time, when he was doing casual building work in Berlin, he was painting a wooden fence under a baroque frieze still shot with bullet holes. When he saw a woman cross the street towards him, his heart flared, until he remembered that his mother would no longer be that woman with her long blonde plait, that he might no longer recognise the real Sophie Considine at all. His heart had leaped and fallen in the space of those few seconds, and he was somehow duller, sadder at the end of that day than he had been at the start of it. In his early twenties, that kind of thing was happening once a year at least, and sometimes more. In his middle twenties the frequency declined until, now that he was almost thirty, it was hardly happening at all. But then France occurred, and Durham, and then there was Curramona. He winces when he thinks of that. It’s not that he’s sorry Mags is dead, not Mags with her thin mouth, her taunts and jibes. But if he’d kept a cooler head he might have come away with something useful.

  He reflects on tonight, and Nefertiti. Lovers are two a penny. What he’s always been looking for is an accomplice. Someone who will accompany him to dark places, to rotten cottages or tunnels beneath railway bridges, to the bricked-up room beneath a bandstand or the unexpected space between two walls, to a damp hole in the ground. He thinks Nef might come there with him; she has the balls for it anyway.

  He steps through the hole in the fence and into the wild garden where creatures scurry away from him. The building is silent, heavy with its own presence. He tries the door. It feels stiffer than before but, when he gives it a sharp tug, it opens so easily it almost knocks him over. He flicks at his ears to repel the sound of rustling leaves. And Mags is keeping away, right enough, at least for now. But he can’t bring himself to stay, not tonight. Just inside the door, he dumps the things he crammed into the backpack earlier – the sleeping bag, the throw, the rope he will only use to keep her safe when he’s not there. The cottage and Nefertiti and the red van, they are all part of a tomorrow that is already lightening beyond the black fringe of trees.

  When Jess awakes, the sound of Ruby’s breathing on the baby monitor is barely perceptible. The first thing she does is check Ro’s room, but he isn’t there. She thinks of Inspector Crowe and feels a surge of relief that she is no longer obliged to lie. She is just out of the shower and in her dressing gown when the phone rings. Charlie sounds very far away. It must be two in the morning over there and she is listening hard for anything in the background that might reveal where he is – music, traffic, the clink of glasses. But he is speaking out of silence, so perhaps he really is where he says he is – in his hotel room in New York, just before sleep. She reminds herself that he’s away on business, that this is not something he’s chosen.

  ‘Has he gone yet?’ he says.

  She pretends not to know who he’s talking about.

  ‘Oh come on, Jess. Your fucking brother. Is he gone?’

  And then it kicks off. Because she no longer cares if it was Hana with Ro last night. He is not her fucking brother.

  ‘You know the history. Have a tiny speck of decency, if you wouldn’t mind. But since you ask. Yes, he’s gone.’

  She can hear him swallow hard, and wonders what it is he’s drinking, whether he has managed to find a Speyside malt to fit the bill.

  ‘All I care about is you and Ruby and all of us getting mixed up in whatever fantasy is churning round his head right now. Because don’t tell me he’s taking this passport thing lying down. He’s developing theories, isn’t he? He’s drawing conclusions and lining up the wild geese. Oh my God, I can’t stand it.’

  ‘Is that why you rang?’

  She can hear him more clearly now. The slur of too much booze is not the same as the slur of sleep. He is pissed.

  ‘I suppose it is really. Now that you ask. I suppose that’s what prompted the call. You’re sure he’s gone for good?’

  ‘Sure? Of course I’m not sure.’

  ‘Did you confiscate his key?’

  ‘Did I what? What did you expect me to do? Empty his pockets? Pat him down before he left?’

  ‘Well, if he comes back, take his key. Please, babe?’

  ‘Please, what?’

  ‘Babe.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake.’

  ‘Whaat?’

  ‘You don’t have any empathy, do you? You really don’t feel things.’

  He makes a noise that might be a snigger. ‘I feel. In fact, I feel lots of things.’

  ‘I don’t mean …’

  She lies on the bed, that extraordinarily comfortable bed, and lets it comfort her.

  ‘Is that what you want, Jess? To chase me away? Because if life is always going to be one great big quest. If you and your fucking brother are always going to be searching for the thing that nobody will ever be able to give you. The great big answer to the great big mystery. Well then, I’m sorry, babe, I really am. Because I’m not so hot on all that. I mean, it’s even getting to me. I’m here in New York, right? So I go into a café, you know? It’s just one of those regular Italian places you find everywhere here, the ones with the trays of sandwich fillings and the flat whites. And even I think I see your fucking mother. There’s this old couple behind the counter. And they’re say sixty, sixty-five, and I have myself convinced that the woman is Sophie. I’m telling myself, it’s her. I’m sure of it. In fact, I was so sure that I stopped and spoke to them just to hear the accents. Isn’t that ridiculous? I mean, isn’t it, Jess?’

  She doesn’t reply because she doesn’t want to start bawling down the phone. She has to hold it together, doesn’t she? Full-time mother. Full-time charge. Full-time strength. Don’t waver. Don’t lose concentration for one single second because if you do, you’ll be punished for it.

  ‘Jess? Jessie Jess? Look, I’m sorry for being a dickhead.’

  She should hang up on him, but she doesn’t. She wants to keep him here with her. Here and not here.

  ‘What did you say to them? The people behind the counter?’

  ‘I told them the truth. That she reminded me of someone who isn’t here any more. At first that freaked them out a bit. And then I explained that it wasn’t like that, or not quite, that the woman had disappeared from my wife’s life, someone dear to her. And you know what they’re like over here. Even the word dear is enough to make them cream their pants.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Charlie.’

  ‘They said it was sad. I’m sorry, Jess. I should have been able to work that out for myself. It is sad. It’s so terribly sad that one moment they were there and the next they weren’t. And it’s even worse that it’s still going on, the not knowing, the maybe never knowing. That bloody passport, I wish we’d never heard about it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because of what it means.’

  ‘You think it means something? One thing? As in, one thing and not another thing?’

  ‘Well, yes, I do. Don’t you?’

  ‘You didn’t say anything about this before, Charlie. So, OK, tell me then. What does it mean?’

  ‘I think she planned it, her own disappearance, and I think she might have disappeared your father too. Thank God you didn’t get whatever twist there was in her. But that brother of yours, he’s a fucking lunatic. You know? That scene in the kitchen last time – ridiculous.’

  She has still got the phone in her hand but her other hand is clenching and unclenching the soft fleece of the bedcover. And all she can think is that it’s just as well she hasn’t told Charlie about Inspector Crowe.

  ‘He’s up there on Mars. I mean, you’ve thought that too, haven’t you? You must have thought that.’

  And she is afraid to answer because there is only one honest answer and it’s not something she can bring herself to say.

  ‘Look Jess,’ he says. ‘I’m not away from you because I want to be. I’m here in some miasma they call a hotel. I’m in a tiny bedroom with a porthole for a window and a light so dim you can hardly read the fucking room-service menu. It’s not where I’d choose to
be, Jess. I’d choose to be with you.’ And he lets that line settle, and seep in.

  But she doesn’t believe it, and she is almost able to say that and risk the roof falling in on top of her, but he keeps on going.

  ‘I wish I was some use to you and not just this joke who doesn’t know where he put his feelings. Because that’s what you think, I know. At least, some of the time that’s what you think. Look, serious now, I love you. Don’t give up on me. I think things will be better for us, now that our little friend is gone.’

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘You’re right.’ And then she lets him have the quid pro quo. ‘I’m so glad I finally got around to sacking Hana.’

  He starts to laugh. Is it a laugh? Not really a laugh, no. More a hard crack in his voice.

  ‘You sacked old Hana?’ he says then. ‘Well, blow me down but you’ve got nerve. She’ll hate you for that, you know. In fact, make sure she hands over her keys. She’s a feisty little minx.’

  ‘Listen to yourself. You’re like something from before the Flood.’

  But his voice is serious now. ‘Just be careful, Jess. My guess is she’s a bad loser.’

  ‘Oh yes? And what has she lost, Charlie?’

  He doesn’t answer that, just gives her one kiss, two kisses, three. Soft smacks against the earpiece. ‘Don’t worry, sweet. When I’m out of this shithole, we’ll get back to normal. We’ll be a little nuclear family again, and we’ll forget all about that beach.’

  And for the moment it takes him to say that, it seems like a plausible option. Forget the past and move on. Start again, just the three of them, secure and happy behind their garden wall. But as soon as she puts down the phone, she knows the moment for that has already passed.

  She pulls on her old running shoes, and gets Ruby dressed for nursery. It feels like a novelty to be pushing the buggy across the Common instead of heading for the Tube. On the way back, she stops in at the newsagent’s to pick up some milk. Asmita looks worn out this morning, and Jess can tell from her body language that something is wrong. She is talking, talking, talking. About her nephew and how his school just doesn’t prepare them properly, about how his mother is determined to have his class changed. She is talking as if she doesn’t want to let Jess go. Jess reaches for the fridge, takes down a dewy white carton of milk. But as she moves towards the newspaper rack, a look of alarm passes across Asmita’s face. Her hand darts to her cheek. Jess is about to ask what’s wrong when she looks down at the overlapping newspapers that stretch all the way along that side of the shop. The Daily Post is always the first one she notices these days. And there is Ro, his face snarled up, his body a flurry of limbs.

  FROM ORPHAN TO BEAST.

  ‘Your brother?’ Asmita says.

  We’ve interviewed one Orphan. The other one has been less forthcoming. We wanted a word with Mr Considine outside the home of his sister, City lawyer Mrs Jessica-May Clark (34). But Mr Considine had other ideas.

  ‘Your brother is in trouble?’

  Jess pictures Crowe and his kind face. But then she remembers the voice at the other end of the phone, the clear insinuation that this goes beyond old loyalties, that, when it comes to Ro, something more is required of her.

  Suddenly, this ordinary shop feels like hostile territory, the rows of brightly packaged sweets obscene. Asmita is still talking, but Jess’s ears no longer seem to work. She is trying to untangle the emotions. Anger, yes. Anxiety. Disgust. Fear for the future. Despite all these things, she won’t ever abandon Ro, whatever he has done.

  She imagines the questions they might ask. You must have known how dangerous he’d become. There must have been a sign.

  And she’ll say no. There was never any sign. No pulling wings off insects. No torturing the cat. And yet that answer wouldn’t be entirely truthful. She did know that he had given his whole life to a single obsession, and how greatly he craved respect for that. She knew that his heart was a shrivelled thing, that his natural affections were blunted by disappointment. Outside the shop, she starts scrolling through the Cs. Cabot, Carpenter, Cathy, Centre for, Chiropodist, Crowe. But she finds herself unable to make the call, not without giving him a head start. She wants to scream it out so that somehow he will hear her. Run, Sparrow. Run.

  Turning the corner into Riverton Street, she sees them. Two men propped against the low wall opposite her house, one smoking a cigarette, both weighed down with cameras. She quickens her step, then breaks into a jog. After all, who’s to say she’s not a jogger? But they have seen her now, and they are shouting out the name her mother abbreviated, but which Auntie Rae insisted on using in full. Jessica-May. The name swamps her like an old fog. And there she is again, a responsible kid holding her confused little brother’s hand. She turns and runs. But they are after her. Grown men running up the road behind her. Out of nowhere, she hears a whisper in her inner ear.

  Take to your heels and run.

  And she is with Auntie Rae down at Clapham Junction twenty-five years ago. The man had been standing next to the flower stall until, like an assassin, he whipped a camera out from under his raincoat.

  Take to your heels and run.

  They ducked across the street into Arding and Hobbs and through its close-packed aisles full of old-lady clothes to a curtained changing room where they clung together until the danger passed. For a while after that she’d thought that’s what a flasher was – a man in a dirty mac who stole something from you, then put it in a newspaper. She found a scrapbook at Auntie Rae’s once. Press cuttings and photos and tickets pasted onto thick blue-grey pages. It was a record of such incidents, of theories and speculation, pasted in week after week.

  Take to your heels and run.

  As soon as her foot leaves the pavement, she knows she should have looked. The taxi’s shunt is almost loving. It shrugs her up onto its shoulder, then off. She falls awkwardly, and stretches her hand out to catch something – a wing mirror? A handle? She watches the carton of milk spin away from her, then bounce and twist and split. Her hands don’t find an anchor, and she falls from the taxi’s shoulder onto her own. The milk is chugging out of the plastic carton now, making a puddle of white around her. There is a petrolly smell to the tarmac. And then the pain seeps through the shock. Her hands have slapped hard against the road. She hasn’t moved them yet, but she can feel the raw tear of pain along each palm. A word jags across her mind. Shatter.

  14

  Ro lets himself in to Jess’s house for tea and toast. Once inside, it’s hard to leave. He is ravenous for everything that Jess’s kitchen has to offer. He fries some rashers, scrambles some eggs, then settles into a beanbag to rehearse his spiel. He will serve her up a slice of guilt, with a dash of enlightened self-interest. When the squat hallway clock strikes eleven, he’s surprised Jess isn’t back yet. He begins to pace, and then the landline rings. It keeps on ringing until the sound starts drilling through his head. It makes his heart race and his breath tight, and in the end he has to answer it.

  ‘Yeah what?’ That’s all he says, but it’s way too much.

  ‘It’s you,’ Charlie says. ‘I bloody knew you’d still be there.’ This is not a friendly start. ‘Jess said you’d gone.’

  ‘Wishful thinking,’ Ro shoots back, and he’s pleased with that.

  But Charlie isn’t playing. He sounds fretful, stressed. Jess has had an accident. Knocked over by a taxi on Sisley Road. No real danger, but kept in for observation. Ribs. Blood pressure. Concussion.

  Ro says he’s sorry. And he is sorry, but he tells Charlie he doesn’t do hospitals.

  ‘You fucking toerag. I’m not asking you to go to any hospital. I’m making sure you fuck off as far away as possible. Timbuktu? Great. Outer Mongolia? Even fucking better. I’m up to my neck here trying to extricate myself from this deal, and you are not going to be there when I get back.’

  ‘What you don’t realise—’

  ‘I’m not interested. I’m sick to death of it all. You’re a liability to the rest of us and I won’t
have you under my roof. That’s the end of it. Now, Hana will be there in twenty minutes—’

  ‘Hana? Jess won’t like that,’ Ro says. ‘She’s only just fired Hana.’ It’s a new experience for him to champion Jess’s interests, and he finds it pleasing. ‘If it’s babysitting you’re after, why don’t you call in Renée?’

  He articulates the name as extravagantly as possible because Renée is a ridiculous woman who deserves all the mockery he can muster. She is a booming voice beneath a wide, pink hat. Petunia Dursley made flesh.

  ‘You can leave my mother out of this. And then you can bugger off.’

  ‘Hang on a sec,’ Ro says then. ‘I’ve got a much better idea. I’ll take care of Ruby.’ He likes how that makes him feel. Heroic, capable.

  ‘Are you actually kidding me? No bloody way. One word from Hana that you’re still here, and I’m calling the police. And I don’t think you want that.’

  Ro takes a lie-down on the sofa, flicks on the TV. Escape to the Country. Sweet. He enjoys having the place to himself. It gives him time to think. Out on the terrace, there is an assortment of chairs including a large white ovoid with a red fabric centre he’s been meaning to sample for a while now. He sits into it and it tips a little, and he imagines himself rolling down the garden like a sparrow in an egg, through the gravel and the obedient plants, and smashing into Jess’s tasteful blue wall.

  He has taken her iPad out there, and now he is travelling deep into the Web, where he is William Wren, journalist, a man with many questions. The efficacy of chloroform. The effects of Rohypnol. How to overpower your victim. How to disable but not to injure. Truth serums. Lie detectors. The painless winkling out of fact. He immerses himself in 4chan and Reddit, tugging on the threads he started earlier. Comments trail down the first screen and the next one and the one after that. There are jibes about lace hankies, about twiddling his moustache. But most of the comments address his fundamental question. What is the perfect drug to bend the subject to your will without rendering her inanimate?