The Orphans

by Annemarie Neary

  ‘Ouch,’ he says. ‘Still sore?’

  Just like Charlie to think it should all be over already. No more broken bones or hearts or anything.

  ‘Takes a while, you know.’

  ‘Hey, I got you a present.’ He has it under his arm, it seems. A small frilled box, black and white. Fragrance by Heart, it says.

  ‘Looks posh.’

  ‘Bespoke. Look, it’s got your name on it.’

  And so it does: Devised for Jess Clark, who is kind and dependable and very lovely.

  ‘Gosh. Who sent you there?’

  ‘I asked one of the secretaries at Rob Liston’s place.’

  ‘So, what was the brief then?’

  ‘Something nice. Flowery. Fruity.’

  She is not remotely flowery. She supposes she must be nice, then. Oh well. As for fruit, she imagines she is the English pear, Hana the small tart berry. She draws away from him, and it hurts, although the image of Charlie instructing some smart girl in Donna Karan on the flavour of his wife is funny, at least it’s that. But it’s not quite funny enough to divert her from all the things that aren’t funny at all.

  As she opens the box, she has a flash of white-hot clarity. She glances up at Charlie but finds herself unable to meet his eye, so dazzling is the realisation that she ought never to have married him. She was so desperate not to be Sophie that she crawled in under Charlie’s wing. He represented convention, security, and she thought he would keep her safe. When it came to all the things she thought she needed, Charlie had seemed perfect. His background was stolid, unexciting. There were no hippies there. Just accountants and lawyers who lived in solid houses with well-tended gardens. There was Renée, with her golf and her flower arranging. There was Ralph, with his vintage cars. There was his sensible sister who had married a GP up in Inverness. And so, she had cleaved to Charlie like he was a saviour, even though he could never have been that, she should have known. She should not blame him for marrying her, and yet sometimes she does. He is watching her, waiting for her to react to the little bottle fashioned to look like a black diamond. But she doesn’t touch it.

  ‘You brought Hana back,’ she says. And it brings tears to her eyes that he could do that.

  ‘She was the only one I could think of,’ he says without even realising what it is he’s said.

  ‘You should have thought a bit harder,’ she says. ‘I’m just out of hospital and barely able to make the stairs, and what do I find but Ruby all alone upstairs in her cot, her nappy not changed for hours while Hana entertains the press on our own doorstep.’

  Charlie walks round to the other side of the bed, where Ruby is still sleeping, perfectly still, her curls splayed across the pillow. He gathers the child into his arms and she clings to him without opening her eyes. He kisses her head, smooths down her hair.

  ‘What was I supposed to do? I had to find someone at short notice. By the time Martha offered, it was too late. I’d already contacted Hana.’

  She knows that’s not true, but she hasn’t got the strength to challenge it. She is just trying very hard not to cry, like a small child who has discovered that this too is just a fairy tale.

  He edges on to the bed and takes her hand, and she is suddenly too exhausted to argue. She shuts her eyes and tries to make the confusion go away.

  ‘Your brother was here, you know, when I rang. That’s another reason I got in touch with Hana. I suppose I panicked a bit, really. I couldn’t bear the thought of Ruby being looked after by him. The thought terrified me, to tell the truth. But it looks like he’s gone now. Off on his travels again, if we’re lucky. Poor old Ruby.’ He puts the child down gently and pulls the duvet up over her, tucking it in around her.

  Jess closes her eyes tightly, hoping fervently that this is true.

  He nestles his head into her shoulder. She feels like pushing him away, but she doesn’t.

  ‘I’m only going to say this once,’ she says instead, her eyes still shut. ‘So listen really well. Don’t ever be in touch with her again.’

  ‘I’ve not the slightest inclination.’

  When she dares to open them again, the expression on his face is fervent, contrite, and then she realises he thinks it’s all OK now, that she is his whatever he does.

  ‘Let’s go away, sweet,’ he says. ‘Just for the weekend. We could go to Renton.’ He takes her hands in his and kisses them, and she can’t help wondering if this newly found tenderness is because she is wounded and jobless, and therefore weaker than she was.

  ‘Renton, Charlie? Are you kidding? I’ve just lost my job.’

  ‘Well I haven’t,’ he says. ‘I’ll treat you. We’ll do it all, spa treatments, massage, the lot.’

  She has always collaborated in the fantasy that his job was the only one that mattered. It seemed necessary to his self-esteem that her work be characterised as a mildly admirable party trick, hardly a financial necessity.

  ‘Don’t you realise we’ll run out of money by Christmas,’ she says, ‘unless I find another job?’

  His face alters slightly, as if he has just passed an open drain.

  ‘They gave you a package, didn’t they?’

  ‘Actually, no,’ she says. ‘No package. I didn’t want to sign anything that would prevent me from suing the pants off them.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ he says. ‘Why not? There’s no way you’re going to sue.’

  She thinks of Miles, then of capable, implacable Delia.

  ‘I might,’ she says. ‘I very well might. As for Hana—’

  He looks her in the eye, and for the first time she can see a flicker of fear in there.

  ‘Oh my darling. Don’t worry about Hana. I have no desire to see her ever again,’ and then he kisses her closed mouth like he hasn’t done for weeks, gently, persistently, until he has opened her up.

  ‘Where is she now, then?’ she says.

  ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Well she was bloody here last night.’

  ‘BA to São Paulo. She left early this morning. Must be mid-Atlantic by now. So, what do you think? Renton? It’s only half an hour up the motorway.’

  ‘Hang on a sec. Just run that by me again. How do you know all this? Did you pay for her flight?’

  ‘Sure. Payment in lieu. For the babysitting, that is.’

  She swallows hard, tries to work out what she feels about that.

  ‘Come on, sweetheart. Let me treat you.’

  She can’t escape the feeling that she is being bought, and with a bad cheque, too. ‘We can’t afford it.’

  ‘Sure we can.’

  But his self-assurance is no longer as attractive as it once was.

  ‘Come on, Jess,’ he says. ‘What harm could it do?’

  She feels wrung out, exhausted, and so eventually she gives in. Yes, OK, let’s go. Because, what harm in linen sheets and candlelight and all the rest of it? What harm in a change of place and some peace and quiet? But already she is weighing lies against tenderness, care against negligence, and what they have against the cold dark matter of divorce.

  While Charlie goes to do a supermarket shop, Ruby and Jess sit together on the floor of the TV room. A Teletubbies DVD sends Ruby into a flurry of excitement. She wants her scooter. She wants to play. She flings herself around on the floor. Jess has never seen her so overexcited, feverish almost. She calms the child with some milk and they spend a quiet few minutes matching pegged wooden pieces to their butterfly- and lion- and ball-shaped voids. Jess rushes to answer the landline that scarcely ever rings. But it isn’t Ro.

  Eddie sounds subdued, hesitant.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asks. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to tell you that we’re going away. For a while, anyway. We’re going travelling again, Maya and me.’

  ‘But won’t that leave the school high and—’

  ‘They’ll have all summer to find a replacement. It won’t be a problem. But we’d like to come and see you be
fore we go. Is that OK?’

  She still feels exhausted and her ribs hurt, but of course it’s OK.

  ‘We’ll drop by around seven,’ he says. ‘I hope you’re feeling a bit better, Jess. I’m sorry we didn’t hear. Maya would have helped out, I hope you know that.’

  ‘I do know. Thanks, Eddie.’

  ‘Don’t bother with food. There’s no need.’

  But there is need, of course, and she goes down to the cellar to take something out of the freezer for supper, very carefully negotiating the narrow wooden stairs. Down there, a shadow household is stored in cardboard boxes – duvets past their best, stained pillows, old sleeping bags that they have never had a chance to throw out. After all, who wants to spend their weekends at the dump?

  Halfway along, past the rack of ordinary wine they will probably never get to before it becomes undrinkable, past the boxes of baby paraphernalia, there is an open cardboard box. A seasonal box she only discovered again last summer and whose contents she had already, annoyingly, replaced. Flask, picnic rug, an assortment of plastic cups and glasses. There was even a blow-up lilo – pink on one side, floral on the other. And it is all gone. All of it. She gazes at the open box. And, although those things mean nothing to her and have little monetary value, their disappearance gives her an excuse not to feel sorry for Hana, who is a thief now on top of everything else.

  Inspector Crowe is on the doorstep soon after lunch. He has a different man with him this time, younger and not so humble. If you passed this guy in the street you would never think he was a detective, with his tight jeans, his dreads, his bluish, mirrored shades. Crowe nods as she tells them to come in, but he doesn’t start to talk until they’re all seated – at the breakfast bar as before, and no further on.

  ‘You had a Princess Di moment, I hear,’ he says.

  She doesn’t get it, and he looks irritated at having to explain.

  ‘Chased by the paps? Anyway, you know why I’m here. You’ve got to let me talk to him, Jess. Because we will talk to him, I suppose you know that.’

  She knows that.

  ‘He upstairs then? Sleeping late?’

  She shakes her head. Ruby toddles over to her and she takes the child up on her lap.

  ‘Mind if Si takes a look?’

  Perhaps she looks doubtful, because he follows the question with a statement of fact. ‘We have a warrant, of course, just so you know, but I thought I’d do this the civilised way. You can go upstairs with Si, if you like.’

  She doesn’t need to accompany Si, with his shades and his disappointing name.

  ‘I have no idea where my brother is,’ she says.

  And the pleasure of being able to speak the truth gives her strength.

  ‘Mags Madden,’ he says then. ‘The woman in the caravan. We’re all clear who that is, yes? Well, the pathologist over there has made her report. Mags was kicked, they say. Kicked five times in the head. Cranial BFT. Here, you might want to have a read.’ He slides a printout over to her, but she doesn’t want to look at it.

  ‘Come on, Jess. Don’t pretend you don’t care what happened to Mags. We all care, don’t we? And you must care a little more than I do, if you spent half your childhood summers in her caravan. It’s not disloyal to Sparrow to care about an elderly woman who gets beaten to death.’

  ‘How do they know she didn’t fall?’ And this sounds like someone else talking, making excuses.

  He spreads his hands out on the counter and flutters his fingers on the surface. ‘Take it from me, sweetheart. She didn’t just fall. Drunk or not, she didn’t die without a lot of assistance.’

  Jess turns for the coffee machine.

  ‘No,’ he says, abruptly enough to make it sound like ‘Stop’. ‘No coffee, thanks.’ And then his voice softens. ‘I’d really like if you would just listen to me. OK?’

  And like the good girl she has always been, she nods and stays right where she is.

  ‘Here’s what we know. Taxi driver takes thin, pale young man to the Madden house that night. Guy hasn’t been traced, but given the subsequent discovery of the passport, given that we now know that Sparrow hired a car in Holyhead – and let’s face it, what other reason is there to be in Holyhead than to have come from the ferry? – given—’

  Given, given, given.

  Si is back downstairs again now, his shades pushed back onto his head. He has a plastic bag, and raises it in her direction. ‘A couple of bits and pieces from his room. OK?’

  She could object, and perhaps she should, but she doesn’t. She is thinking about all the things that are missing from the cellar. She doesn’t know why that disconcerts her so greatly, but it does. She can’t imagine Hana having any interest in a stained pillow and a pink lilo.

  ‘We haven’t had an extradition request. Not yet, anyway, but I wouldn’t rule it out.’ Crowe is examining her face, and it’s making her uncomfortable. She can feel herself redden under his scrutiny. What is she, after all? Just a woman without a job, in a sham marriage, with a loose cannon brother who might turn out to be a murderer.

  ‘Would it help to talk to somebody who was there when your parents went missing? I’m not saying this woman has any answers. None she’s given me anyway, but it might be good to talk to her.’

  She shrugs. What is there to hear?

  ‘She lives somewhere in Berkshire.’ And he is scrolling down his phone now. ‘Yeah, Datchet area. Evelyn Tuite. I can always ask her to give you a ring.’

  ‘I’d rather not,’ she says before she’s really given any thought to it. She is glad when he doesn’t take no for an answer, when he says that sometimes these things are better done by email, at least at first.

  ‘I suppose,’ she says.

  Ruby starts to cry, and they take that as their cue to leave. Jess leads them to the door. Saying goodbye, she comes face-to-face with herself in Si’s mirrored shades and is forced to look away. She knows they will be back, they say as much, but this time she is almost afraid to let them leave. She should have protected Sparrow better. She should have kept him with her from the start.

  That period just after their return to England is fixed in her mind for many reasons: the relentless attention of the press, the difficulty settling in at school, the great contrast there was between the way Christmas was celebrated by Auntie Rae’s family – with church, turkey, church, carols, church – and the chaotic approach of her own parents, with presents opened the moment they were received and Warninks Advocaat for everyone, served for the kids in eggcups, but served nonetheless.

  It was Christmas Eve, and Jess had been sitting at the top of the stairs on the first landing, when the man who turned out to be her paternal grandfather arrived at the door. Nestled down on the beige carpet, her nose crisp with allergens, she could see the tweed jacket, the snot-green V-neck stretched across his belly, the pate that gleamed beneath the light. She already knew that this man gave Auntie Rae money to help her to look after them, but she had barely ever met him and knew next to nothing about him other than that he thought Sparrow should be in a proper school in the countryside where they locked you in at night. As for the conversation between this man and Auntie Rae, she caught only jags and scraps before they moved into the front room and shut the door.

  ‘The girl remembers nothing. Is that right?’

  That statement triggered something in her and for the first time she was sure.

  The trees, the trees, the trees. Something was moving in the trees. Sparrow told me, but I wouldn’t look.

  By the start of the next term Sparrow was gone. He was still too young to board, but their grandparents were keen that he live with them in the meantime and attend the school as a day boy. Jess missed him but she felt liberated from him, too. She worked hard at school, was picked for the quiz team, and soon the story of the beach was crowded out by capital cities and prime ministers, highest mountains and longest rivers. Most nights she was so exhausted by the long school day that she would fall asleep right away.


  When she next saw Ro, she was shocked by how desperate he still was, how lost. He had begun to entertain the fantasy that his mother had been coerced into abandoning him, that she loved him too much, and so ‘they’ tore her away from him. On her own she felt powerless, but maybe that was the moment. Perhaps there was something more she could have done.

  Ruby is tugging at Jess’s leg now, and now there are swings to think about. Whatever else is happening, there are always swings.

  Ro is lucky, there is very little blood, and by the time he has finished cleaning up, there is hardly any sign that the slug was ever there. As for securing the cottage, he has bolstered its weak spots, and made his barricade, and now he is restless, out of sorts. He curses summertime and the long wait for darkness, but when finally it descends, he stalks across the Common with his cap down, suspicious of every park-bench loiterer who might turn out to be a Crowe. He avoids the burger stall on the cut-through with its side order of cops, and picks up a kebab on the South Side instead.

  The lights are on in Jess’s house, but whether it’s Hana in there or Jess is anyone’s guess. He still has the front-door key in his pocket, but now that he is a banished orphan, a slayer of slugs, it seems politic to take the back entrance instead.

  He keys in Charlie’s most obvious of codes, wondering idly if this is a universal password that could unlock the essential Charlie, and slips into the dark garden. It is like entering a cinema when the film has already begun. He stands there in front of the brightly lit screen of the kitchen window, transfixed by the high definition parade of domesticity. Jess is back, and apparently unscathed by her accident. There are no crutches or plaster casts or obviously disfiguring scars. There is warmth in there, and food, and candles. There are four of them for dinner, and Ro’s eye picks out Charlie next, blue shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled up, sitting square at the head of the table. He raises a virtual sniper rifle and blows the man away. Charlie halts, his fork halfway to his mouth, and Ro’s breath catches. For a moment, it seems, the weight of his desire has been enough to make it happen. But the moment doesn’t survive, and Charlie does, and, by the sound of muffled laughter from the screen, the joke is on him.