The Orphans

by Annemarie Neary

  The tranquillity only lasts another half-hour or so before the scrape of a key in the front door and the clack of heels in the hall. He jumps up to take a look, then almost collides with Hana as she enters the kitchen, hooking the strap of her bag over a chair. She slides a blue silk scarf from around her neck and shrugs off her jacket. It’s like she never left.

  ‘Well don’t just stand there,’ she says. ‘Double espresso. Use the purple capsule. Two.’

  When he doesn’t move, she tilts her head to look at him. ‘What’s wrong? Aren’t you glad to see me, Sparrowman? Charlie told me you sneaked back in. Me too.’

  She gives him a half-hearted high five, and then busies herself with the coffee machine. ‘But aren’t there people looking for you?’ She flexes her hand and examines her nails, painted battleship grey today. ‘Photographer? Journalist? Maybe even policeman? Soon, you might need to hide somewhere like your mama.’

  He doesn’t want to talk to Hana about his mother. ‘Charlie gave you your job back then?’

  ‘I don’t need a job. This is just charity work. Telephone rings, and Charlie is begging me. Come for two, three days, just for Ruby’s sake. Please, please Hana, look after Ruby so she is safe. And make sure my fuckwit brother-in-law stays away.’ She shakes her head sadly. ‘But it is fine with me, Sparrow, if you stay. If you play nice and be a helpful person, then so do I.’

  But with Hana around, sharp little Hana with her pink cat’s mouth, he can see his room for manoeuvre start to shrink in front of him. Before she offers to collect Ruby, he’s on to it himself. He pulls on a hoody and a baseball cap to deflect attention, grabs the buggy and is out the door, quickening his pace across the Common, which, despite last night’s rain, is like a desert shot with clumps of green.

  Turning towards the bandstand, he spots Eddie’s van parked in the same place as before, in between the playground and the section of Common that has been turned into a wildflower meadow. It crouches there, red and squat and covered in wild streaks of yellow paint. The notice tied to the tailgate seems like overkill, but even the spelling mistake makes him smile.

  Don’t buy from this man. No Peados here.

  Eddie’s ice-cream days are over.

  There is no Mother shaking hands at the school gate today, just a dandy in a yellow tie and matching socks and a sharply cut pale grey suit. The man is an irritation – all jazz hands and banter – and Ro could happily take him by the throat for not being who he’s meant to be. When Ro gets back to the house with Ruby, Hana is making herself a quinoa salad with strips of avocado and tiny moist olives. She cuts through a lime and forks its juice over the plate. Ruby doesn’t seem to recognise her at first, but Hana brings her round with little pieces of chocolate crumbled onto the tray of her high chair.

  Meanwhile, Hana is talking to the air. ‘I have new life now, Sparrowman. They can’t just expect the world to stand still for them. They can’t expect to treat me like I am trash and then expect me to come back whenever they say. They shouldn’t be surprised if I look after myself.’

  A message pings into her phone, and she jabs at it in response. If he were Jess he would worry what this girl could do.

  She turns on her heels and surveys the fridge. ‘Ah,’ she says. ‘I forgot. Would you please be darling man and go and get some milk.’

  He is not used to being given instructions, and he stands his ground until she glances sharply up at him and shoos him along.

  ‘You want me to have to put poor, tired Ruby in buggy? Play nice, Sparrowman.’

  He gives in then, and drags a shopper off the hook on the back of the kitchen door.

  The Indian woman in the shop is reading a magazine when he gets there. She gives a little start when she sees him, and is careful not to touch his hand when she passes him his change. But he doesn’t let it bother him. When he gets back to the house, he notices that all the shutters at the front have been closed. He slides his key in the door but then he realises she must have put the deadlock on. He decides that it’s deliberate because Hana never does things by accident. He bangs, kicks, shoulders the door. He tries to shout through the letter box, but it is bristled with something that stops him seeing through. And then he goes round the back.

  At the gate, he removes the strips of Sellotape from the keypad and holds them to the light to reveal the code: 8912, 1289, 9821? The order is a matter of experimentation, but he is lucky. Charlie is predictable to the last. Year of birth, of course – 1982. The code gets Ro into the back garden, but no further. He comes right up to the bifold doors and peers inside, but there is no sign of Hana. The kitchen is empty, the door into the hallway closed. Glancing around the garden for an implement, he grasps a trowel in his fist like a dagger and begins gouging at the glass. Dig, dig, dig. But the glass is toughened, just like his mother, just like Jess, and his blows make no impact on it. He yells up at Hana’s window to let her know he isn’t taking this. The bitch has shut him out of his own sister’s house, and he will wring her neck for it.

  As he leaves, he is awash with longing for the simpler life he might have had – a place of his own and a sofa life spent drinking beer in front of an endless stream of hopeless optimists with their barn conversions and built-in barbeques, their chalets that are just off the piste.

  When he reaches the café, it is still full of the after-school crowd. By the time Nefertiti has finished her shift, he has concluded that he needs more than just the one drug. He needs his mother to be compliant, of course, but that’s just a means to an end. What he really requires is the truth. The shiny truth from his willing mother’s mouth. There is someone on 4chan who calls himself the Go-To Guru and claims to have access to every solution you could ever need. Ro hasn’t messaged Guru yet, but he will.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ Nef asks as they walk back to her flat.

  She is the nearest thing he’s ever had to an accomplice, but he’s still not sure if he can trust her. He is half thinking of trying her out for a role in all of this. He is half thinking she might know someone who could supply him. But first he needs a bed for the night.

  The flat is small and smells of patchouli. It is less chintzy than he remembered, and maybe it was just the contrast between the story she told him and the airy, flowery decor that struck him then. There is a flatmate, apparently, but she isn’t there today.

  ‘Thursdays, she stays with her boyfriend. He’s an electrician down in Croydon.’

  Nefertiti is looking steadily at him over the rim of her glass on the opposite side of the small veneered table. She starts to jiggle her knee, as if she’s wondering why the polite conversation. Because, to tell the truth, he’s wondering that himself. Mostly, though, he’s trying to broach the perplexing subject at the front of his brain.

  ‘I’m looking for something,’ he says. ‘But I don’t have a dealer.’

  He has imagined a train station at dusk, a deserted shopping centre. He has thought of places like Peckham, maybe, though he’s never been there. Somewhere on the East London Line. Dalston, perhaps, where he had a job once in a bar. Or New Cross.

  ‘What kind of something?’ She leans towards him, and he can smell her perfume now, like a fleshy, musky flower. ‘Is it because I is black?’ she says, and then she flips the side of his face with her fingers – not too hard, not too soft, and turns away laughing.

  For a moment, Ro thinks he’s blown it. He quenches the anger, at himself, at her. But it’s not over, not yet.

  She raises a finger, then shimmies herself forward and starts working her fingers into the front pocket of her jeans. She draws out a tiny plastic bag, holds it up in front of him, then drops it into the middle of her own outstretched palm. She smiles – strong white teeth, bubble-pink gums – and it’s a shame she doesn’t use that asset more. He reaches out and takes the baggie. And though MD isn’t what he needs, not for the cottage anyway, it will do for now, for Nefertiti. It will wipe away the indignity of the school gate, the yellow tie and matching socks, the lack o
f progress he’s been making on the cottage, the worry that he might never get his mother back. He pops open the bag and puts a pill on his tongue. She smiles that smile again and does the same.

  One thing leads to another. And once they have done it up against Nefertiti’s primrose-yellow wall, and collapsed panting onto the birch floor, he feels more powerful than before. Nefertiti props herself up on an elbow. She doesn’t stretch for her clothes, doesn’t flinch when he looks down at where he’s just been. He likes that. She is bold and daring, just like him.

  When she sits up, there is barely a bulge in her belly. She stretches herself into a kind of lotus position and listens, her chin in the heel of her hand, her eyes trained on him. Whatever is happening here, he likes it. He prefers being one of two. All the twos he has tried to forge have been fraught with impossible expectation, but perhaps there is an alliance to be had here.

  They are coiled up on the gleaming floor, and his knees are beginning to ache, but it is warm there with her, and he’s not inclined to move just yet although that is probably just the little pill talking.

  ‘So, why do you really hate the paedo?’ she asks.

  ‘Because I think he killed my father.’ He’s never said such a thing out loud before. In fact, this might even be the first time that he’s formed the thought. But the cat is out of the baggie now.

  Her chin is still in her hand and it hops when she starts to talk.

  ‘The paedo? Are you sure?’

  ‘How about this, then.’ He tries to concentrate on her face and nowhere else. ‘She planned to run away with him, my father found out, and there was a struggle. They didn’t mean to kill him.’

  ‘Your mum and the paedo? And that all happened on the beach?’

  It sounds ridiculous, of course. These things always do when you say them aloud. He should have known better. There is a slick of sweat on his forehead, and he’s fighting now to recover the situation. ‘OK, so he went off to get drugs – a prearranged thing – and Eddie is waiting there for him in the trees and clocks him one on the back of the head in the trees when he’s out of sight.’

  ‘But why would he do that? And your mum, how come she didn’t come back to you? She isn’t just going to dump you, is she?’

  He needs to put the blame on Eddie.

  ‘Well, is she?’

  ‘Eddie stops her. He says it’s them or me. And anyway, I know that you wanted him dead so you’re fucked unless you come with me. And then her only option is to use her spare passport and get away from him.’

  ‘Eddie Jacques? How come?’

  ‘He was at the beach.’

  ‘Really? You sure? And she’s got a spare passport now?’

  ‘You know she does.’

  ‘Oh, OK, the thing you mentioned. I never read the papers, sorry. But why did she have another passport anyway? Did she plan all this or something?’

  And she has put her finger on the very problem he doesn’t want to countenance. He could curse Mags Madden for that passport. If she’d only kept it to herself. And then there’s the photo taken on the beach. He’s waiting for her to mention that. But Nef doesn’t go there.

  ‘What you’re really saying is that you hate him because you think he stole your mum. And you know what, Ro? I can understand that.’

  He supposes that is what he’s saying.

  ‘So, if he stole your mum. Where is she now?’

  He realises right away that he can’t just come out with it, pat, like that. She’s here, she’s round the corner, hiding in plain sight, living with Eddie Jacques. It all sounds too fortunate, too coincidental, if you put it like that. But he can’t help smiling at her, like the sun has just burst inside his chest. He taps the side of his nose at her, but he doesn’t think she catches on to that.

  When Nefertiti puts her clothes back on she doesn’t bother with her knickers, just scrunches them in her hand and shoves them into the jeans that she slides on standing up, hopping on one leg then the other. She tosses her hair forward and runs her fingers through it. Her bangles jangle and the air smells of her. She cooks him chicken and rice and pours him glass after glass of sharp white wine until he is as happy as a stupid person. They fall into Nefertiti’s not-quite-double bed, and he is soon asleep. He wakes abruptly around dawn. There is a siren, and he knows that his real world is out there, not in here. He eases himself out of bed and through the door and out into the sharpening day.

  Maybe Hana has already been out of the house this morning, or perhaps she’s had a visitor. Whatever the reason, she hasn’t put the Chubb lock back on, just the Yale. So careless, he thinks, so very careless. If he were a different kind of man she might come to regret such an oversight. He lets himself in, and walks through the hallway towards the stairs. He climbs one storey, then another, until he is standing outside Hana’s room. If it weren’t for Ruby he’d have walked right in there. He’d have given her what she deserves. But he likes Ruby, who has no one better to look after her. And so he proceeds with the plan instead.

  This time, he isn’t limited by one small backpack, so he takes everything his mother might possibly need. Medication in case she’s sick, an old pillow and a blow-up lilo from the cellar to use as a mattress. He has changed his mind about not needing to pack food, because he has the feeling that his mother will be a harder nut to crack than he first imagined. And so he includes hip flasks, a camping stove, jars of olives and roasted peppers, cans of soup. Wedged in beside the boiler, he finds a picnic rucksack with plastic plates and cutlery for two. There is even a small radio complete with earphones, in case she is afraid, in case he needs to fill her head with music.

  He tops up the hip flasks with spirits from each of the bottles he finds in Jess’s walnut sideboard. Brandy, schnapps, whisky, vodka, gin. Something for everyone. He brings a hammer and some nails so he can decorate the walls of the cottage. A picture of the home place he found in Jess’s upstairs loo. The Orphans on the Beach, swiped from one of Rae’s old scrapbooks that he found in Jess’s wardrobe, and a photo of them together, Mama and Pa.

  15

  Into the space between sleep and wakefulness comes a white-coated man with a clipboard. Beamed up by the side of Jess’s bed, he delivers his diagnosis – cracked ribs, fever, concussion, elevated blood pressure. The bedlinen is glacial, and the doctor leaves her feeling even weaker than before – something small and weightless trapped between sheets of ice.

  She feels a vague sense of unease, even in her semi-conscious state. But it is only when she wakes properly that she remembers Ro, and all the other things she should be dealing with but has left undone for however long it is that she’s been here.

  For the first time ever, not having a job is a relief. Then she remembers the passport, and the fact that there is a puzzle in her life now, something she has to try to decipher. The last thing she remembers is Ruby, who should have been first, not last. Her negligence alarms her. She needs to get up, right now, and find Ruby. She turns to the stainless-steel pan by the side of the bed and throws up into it.

  The hospital room is small, low-lit. Wired up through a port in her hand, she waggles her fingers to make sure that she still can. She glances around for her phone to call the house, but it’s nowhere to be seen. The room is comfortable, but anonymous, and there is a distant hum of air-conditioned purpose, but she has no idea how long she has been here or where they might have put her belongings. The next time she wakes, the person hovering by her bed is wearing a pale pink dress with a stark white pinny. She isn’t sure whether this pink and white nurse is real or not. She stretches out her hand and, as the woman whips back and forth between this and that, she feels the starched cotton graze the back of it.

  This pink and white nurse is the person to give her back her mobile phone, still partly charged, with messages from all sorts of people she never realised gave her a second thought. Not just Sarah and Martha and Max and her couple of other close friends, not just her far-flung cousins who have somehow heard about the acc
ident, but Delia too, still in Dubai but apparently already on the warpath over what she delicately calls Jess’s ‘departure’. A whole three scrolls of other people have somehow heard about her accident, whether through Facebook or via the old networks of college and work, and it warms her heart. But there is nothing from Ro.

  There has been a stream of texts from Charlie. To sweeten the news of his continued absence, he sends an army of emojis, an embarrassment of kisses. He says that Martha has everything under control, and the thought of gentle Martha taking care of Ruby is a huge relief. The warm fuzz of all this kindness surrounds Jess like a cloud of candyfloss hot off the wheel until she remembers Crowe, and all the texts she hasn’t answered. She watches them accumulating, green rectangle over narrowing green rectangle, on the screen of her phone.

  He has been to the house twice now in search of Ro, he says, and he is losing patience. Each text is shorter, curter, less emollient than the one that preceded it. The next time the doctor appears beside her bed, he is more substantial, more of a person who could be out in the real world beyond the hum. He could be someone who knows about her, who knows about Ro. But there is no sign of that.

  Charlie calls. His voice is soft, coaxing. ‘How’s my sweet?’ he says. ‘How’s my lovely one?’

  ‘Say that again,’ she says, and he has the grace to laugh at himself.

  ‘How’s Ruby?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh Ruby is fine, she’s great.’

  ‘Is she going to nursery?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, she’s going. At least, I think—’

  ‘But isn’t that a complete nightmare for Martha? I mean, she’s got the girls to take to Balham. How does she cope?’

  He is silent for a moment, and then he tells her that there’s been a change of plan.