We sit by the window. Outside, the river is choppy. In spite of the lovely start, the weather has changed, clouds have gathered as the light has begun to fade, and the wind’s got up. Everything outside, beyond the window, has returned to monochrome, sludgy water, leaden sky, brown buildings on the other side, grey seabirds bobbing on the waves. What used to be the pub’s old terrace has long since come adrift in a storm and is now moored out a little way, a strange wooden reminder of the days when the pub’s punters used to stand on it and laugh and drink the evening away. The murky water sloshes over its dingy brown sides, and the once finely carved fence posts around its edges are jagged. Eaten away by the tides.
‘So I guess things could change in the next twenty-four hours.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve not been listening to a word have you, Sonia! What’s distracting you? You’ve been staring out there for ages.’
The platform. That’s what’s distracting me. The day I saw them come in on the raft. I was here! Here at the Anchor, standing on that very platform, outside, waiting, waiting for Seb. Leaning over and staring upriver and waiting for him to come back to me.
Images march through my mind like those characters in Fantasia, grotesque caricatures of the people who had come to the River House that day. My mother was there of course, tall and haughty, her perm distorted into a vast bird’s nest on her head, her lips pink, and to one side of her the couple she introduced as Joyce and Roger from the Choir. Joyce was wide and pudgy and Roger was small and wiry and between them was . . .
‘Sonia, this is Jasmine. ’
Jasmine, unlike her parents, was perfectly proportioned. Jasmine had long hair the colour of butter and almond-shaped eyes the colour of grass. Jasmine was about my age but taller and better developed and in my imagination now her eyes grow wider and her lashes longer and her stare more penetrating, than they could ever really have been. Jasmine wore a cheesecloth dress with tiny spaghetti straps and buttons down the front in the shape of daisies. Her hair coiled around her as if it were the hair of a mermaid in a fairy tale, wrapping itself in long tendrils about her body, and glowing yellow-gold until it almost blinded me. I stood in the living room and stared at the group until my mother told me to stop looking gormless and fetch Jasmine a drink.
When Seb’s voice called me from the door in the wall, I went to him with relief. His trousers were wet and muddy, rolled up above the knee, for he’d been messing about on our raft again. Hair standing in wild peaks. Bare feet. Mud drying between his toes. He’d come to find me.
‘I need you, Sonia. Technical problem with Tamasa.’
‘We’ve got visitors. I can’t come out now.’
‘I’ll come and say hello, then,’ he said, and without waiting for me to agree to it, he followed me into the living room. I saw Jasmine lock her green eyes onto him.
And he was hooked. He couldn’t look away. His lips turned up a bit at the corners and he never even glanced in my direction after that.
‘Jasmine,’ said my mother in a voice that seemed to me to be artificially syrupy. ‘Meet Sebastian.’
‘Hi,’ he said.
Jasmine smiled at him. ‘Hi,’ she said.
My mother sat on the sofa and poured tea for Jasmine’s parents Joyce and Roger, and Roger said, ‘What have you been up to, Sebastian, to get all muddy like that?’
‘Oh, just messing about on the river,’ said Seb.
‘Could I go down to the river, Mummy?’ asked Jasmine.
‘As long as you don’t try any funny business like taking a boat out,’ said her mother.
‘Oh don’t worry Mrs . . .’ Seb began.
‘Harrison, Sebastian, Mrs Harrison,’ she said and smiled at him in a flirtatious way.
‘Don’t you worry, Mrs Harrison. It’s not a boat, it’s a raft.’
‘And it’s not as safe as a boat even,’ I said. ‘It’s not even properly buoyant.’
Seb gave me a hard look. ‘That’s what I wanted you for,’ he said, ‘To help with the buoyancy aids.’
‘Sonia will take care of Jasmine,’ my mother said. ‘Don’t you worry, Joyce.’
I glared at her as hard as I could and she didn’t notice.
My mother had always said she was too tired to entertain other people’s children, or that Daddy wouldn’t like the noise. I no longer expected to have friends home, and they’d stopped asking me to their houses. Why had my mother suddenly conjured Jasmine out of the blue?
‘Off you go now. But take care, do,’ she said.
‘And don’t stay out after dark, Jasmine,’ said Mr Harrison. ‘We’ll need to go.’
‘Oh, but you’re staying for supper,’ I heard my mother say as I left the room. People never came to supper either. What was going on?
As I reached the hall Seb said, ‘Follow me, Jasmine,’ and I could sense them walking behind me as I crossed the footpath to the steps and began to go down.
It took me the best part of half an hour to sort out the buoyancy, getting cold and filthy in the water. But it was worth it to maintain Seb’s respect, to prove to the buttery Jasmine that girls did not need to look like Sindy dolls to attract and keep boys like Seb. I was sure that there was no way Seb could take Jasmine out on Tamasa when I was the one to have made her river-worthy. Still, Seb held the raft and Jasmine stood on the shore, giggling as he fiddled with the crates and oil drums and swore and ordered me about. And then, when we were sure it would float again, Seb asked me to run up to the River House and borrow a torch.
I could hear the voices of the grown-ups, in the living room, and grabbed the torch without telling them. I wanted to get back to check Seb wasn’t going take Jasmine on my raft without me.
But already, only a few minutes later, as I came back out of the house, I saw Seb had Jasmine by the hand and was leading her through the water. She shrieked. She was petrified, and enjoying it.
It was as if I’d never had anything to do with either the making or the naming of the raft we’d nearly drowned on, in Seb’s quest to explore the other side of the river. It was as if for Seb, I no longer existed.
‘You can’t go! They told you not to!’ I shouted. I ran down to the steps and although they were slippery that day – it had been raining, and the tide had not long begun to go out – I jumped down them two at a time. The lower steps still glistened with water, I didn’t bother to be careful but slithered to the bottom banging my thigh hard as I slipped and not caring about the pain or the livid bruise that would appear soon afterwards. Seb was leading Jasmine out to Tamasa, which he’d tied to one of the pillars of the coaling pier, and she was climbing aboard. She’d left her lovely high, rope-soled wedges on the mud, near the wall and had pulled up her cheesecloth dress to reveal long golden thighs. Seb came to the shore, took the torch from me, then waded back. He leapt on to Tamasa next to Jasmine and untied the rope that tethered the raft to the pier. I watched them as the river swept them upstream.
‘See you later, Sonia,’ Seb yelled. ‘Wait for us in the pub. Mark’ll be there. Buy us a drink for when we get back!’
‘I won’t get served!’ I cried, and my pathetic words were simply tossed up into the air by the wind.
What choice did I have? I wouldn’t let them go off for the night. I swore I’d keep them within my sight, so I went straight to the pub where I knew I’d have a better view of their voyage. Mark was at the bar. He offered to buy me a drink and I asked for a coke. Mark was never refused at a bar. You never got ID’d anyway in those days. We took our drinks out to the wooden platform. Mark began to fool about, putting his arm around me to reach his crisps when there was no need to, then dropping an ice cube down my top. I think he fancied his chances, having seen me kiss Seb. But I never wanted to kiss anyone else. I’d sworn to myself that I never would, that Seb would be the only one.
That hour stretched on forever. Mark told unfunny jokes and tried to touch me and laughed so that his spit flew into my face but every one of my senses was straining fo
r sight or sound of Tamasa returning.
‘Where are they?’ I asked Mark at last. ‘That raft isn’t safe. I should know. I helped to build it. The buoyancy is as basic as it gets. The whole thing’s dodgy.’
‘Maybe they’ve been mown down by a pleasure cruiser,’ said Mark. ‘Their dismembered parts are bobbing about amongst the flotsam and jetsam.’
I ignored this and made him buy me another drink.
‘Is that them coming now?’ Mark asked at last. He leant over the barrier of the platform. Sure enough there was the tiny beam of light from the torch wedged on to Tamasa. The raft bobbed towards us. There was only one person on board! I looked again. Yes. Just Seb. My heart rose. He’d got rid of Jasmine, tossed her overboard, left her on the Isle of Dogs. Tied something heavy round her and sunk her. She was lying with her butter-coloured hair wafting upwards like weed, at the bottom of the Thames. Her bloated figure would wash up in a few days down at Dartmouth, at Tilbury, amongst the car plants. Green and rotting.
The raft came closer, carried by the incoming tide. Seb was not rowing the raft at all but lying on his front.
I ran straight down to the shore to help, all Seb’s thoughtlessness forgiven in the second it took to spot that he was alone.
Jasmine was neither lying at the bottom of the river, nor stuck on the Isle of Dogs. She was in my place, underneath Seb, and she had her arms wrapped around him. He didn’t seem to be objecting. As they bobbed closer and closer and the vision could no longer be disputed, my whole world turned black.
‘So,’ Helen’s saying, ‘Alicia, tell Sonia what you found.’
Alicia looks up at me and I notice that, like Jasmine, she has eyes that are an unusual shade of green. She puts her hand slowly into her little shoulder bag and rummages about for a minute, then extracts something tiny and holds it out for me to look at. I stare. For what feels like a long time I have no idea what I’m supposed to be looking at. In her palm is a tiny, curled, and slightly ragged piece of card.
‘What’s that?’
‘Guess!’ says Helen, excited.
‘I’ve no idea what you’re showing me, I’m afraid,’ I say.
‘You tell Sonia, Alicia. It’s your story.’
Alicia shrugs. Looks at Helen. ‘I dunno what I’m meant to say,’ she says.
Helen takes over, enjoying another opportunity to spin a yarn.
‘She found a butt end on the path near where you live, Sonia, and the roach – this piece of card in her hand – was made of a piece of a ticket from the gig they’d been to the week before. What was the name of the band, Alicia? Anyway, I’m getting distracted, sorry. Look, she’s certain it was Jez’s. They’d rolled that joint the night before he disappeared, and I’d come in so they hadn’t smoked it. As if I don’t know they all smoke weed. She says Jez must have been smoking it along the footpath that Friday afternoon. She reckons he’s somewhere not far off, being held against his will. He must have been abducted that day on the way to the foot tunnel, the day he didn’t turn up to meet her. I told her he was coming to see you to borrow some music, so he would have gone along the river path. She wants to know if you saw him?’
The whole world slows down, as if it is grinding to a halt. As I speak, my words sound like an old vinyl 45 on LP speed.
‘How d’you know it was his?’
‘It’s the piece of ticket. We went to that gig together and, like, used the tickets to make roaches,’ squeaks Alicia. Her voice wavers as she continues. ‘Jez would never have gone off on his own without his guitar. I know him too well. He tells me everything.’
Jez, tell her everything? He didn’t tell her he wanted to stay with me, did he? Snooping along the river path, informing the police about Jez’s personal traits, he would have taken his guitar, he wouldn’t have gone off without telling me. She thinks she knows him best, but she doesn’t know him like I do.
‘The police will take this theory seriously, Sonia. We haven’t told them yet because we want to get more evidence. That he may have been abducted on his way to your house. Seems Alicia may have found a vocation – future DI of the South London Metropolitan Police!’
Perhaps it’s the whisky at this time of the day, but I suddenly have a ridiculous urge to giggle. An image has come into my mind of a character from an Enid Blyton series, one of the baddies, who referred to the children who set themselves up as detectives, as ‘them meddling kids’. I feel like telling Alicia to mind her own business, that she’s nothing but a meddling kid.
‘She and I both wondered if you’d help us,’ Helen goes on. ‘You live on the river. We wondered whether you’d seen Jez, without realizing it was him? He must have been near your house that Friday. Try to remember. Did you see a teenage boy? It’s pretty urgent, Sonia. The longer a person goes missing the less likely it is they find him alive. Jez could be in real danger.’ Helen’s bottom lip starts to wobble.
I glance out at the river again. Jasmine and Seb bob towards me, across the water, a ray of sunlight illuminates them as they come to shore, as if it, too, is conspiring to rub their partnership in my face.
‘Sonia?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘The police have already asked me about that. The album he was supposed to be coming for. I told them he didn’t.’
‘Didn’t what?’
‘Didn’t come for the music. I didn’t see him. They asked me that too. But I told them no. I saw no one.’
I stare at them. They both look fraught. Pale and petrified. And now I’ve answered their question, despondent.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘That I can’t help.’
I can see Helen’s not been sleeping either. She looks dreadful.
‘How are things with Mick?’ I ask at last.
‘Yes, there have been some . . .’ she lowers her voice, ‘developments. You know, all that stuff I told you about. The stomach patting and all that. The udon noodles.’
At this, Alicia sticks her fingers down her throat the way Helen told me she’d done and makes a puking sound. I look at her coldly and turn back to Helen. Alicia shrugs and stands up.
‘I was about to go anyway,’ she says. She picks up her shoulder bag and drags it across the floor, turns briefly and raises a hand in farewell to Helen. Then she goes out of the pub, not bothering to thank me for the drink, nor to say goodbye.
I sigh. Turn to Helen. ‘The last time I heard from you, it all sounded rather . . .’
‘It’s all awful,’ she says, now Alicia’s gone. ‘I’ve had to take time off work it’s so bad. The doctor’s signed me off for two weeks with stress. The family liaison guy suggested I ask for it.’
‘Family liaison guy?’
‘Oh. They sent a family liaison person over to stay with us while all this is going on. He watches the dynamics. I told him a bit about it, I don’t think he would have realized otherwise. I had to talk to someone. He says it’s common for people like Mick to react like this by wanting to become ‘rescuers’ of the victim’s nearest and dearest. He’s advised me to let him be. But it’s still pretty ghastly, Sonia. Watching Mick in some kind of thrall to my sister.’
‘Have you talked to her?’
‘I’ve tried. But she’s still got it in for me for not looking after her son properly.’
‘It does seem tough on you,’ I say. ‘But this liaison guy sounds pretty astute. Hang on in there while you can.’
‘Sonia, you could really help,’ Helen says. ‘I know you don’t want to cover for me, and I understand that. But you could make a few enquiries. Find out if anyone saw Jez that afternoon? Take regular walks along the tideline, and look for clues. I didn’t want to say in front of Alicia, but I’m worried that’s it’s worse than I thought, that something unthinkably nasty’s happened to him.’
‘Aren’t the police going to do another search themselves?’ I ask.
‘Oh yes. They talk about it. They want to question everyone all over again. But there are certain areas in which they prefer to remain a bit mysterious it se
ems,’ Helen says, looking at me oddly. ‘Sorry, does this trouble you Sonia?’
‘Trouble me? Why would it trouble me?’
‘You look alarmed. No one likes to be questioned by the police. Believe me, I’ve been through enough of that myself over the last couple of weeks. There’s always that niggling worry in your mind that they won’t believe you’re innocent. I still have it. ’
‘Oh, that’s not a concern,’ I say. ‘Mind you, think of all the miscarriages of justice the police have been responsible for over the years.’
‘Quite,’ says Helen. ‘Tell me about it. For a while I thought they’d just arrest me whatever I said. I had visions of being convicted for Jez’s murder and spending the rest of my days in prison. But this lot do seem pretty sharp. I have to hand it to them. They’ve changed my opinion of the police, in fact. Don’t know if they get some kind of psychological training these days.’
I stand up.
‘And you haven’t told them where you were on Friday morning?’
‘Sonia. I can’t.’
‘I’ll do what I can,’ I say. ‘I must go.’
‘You won’t stay for another?’ Helen asks as I move towards the door. I shake my head and leave her making for the bar to order another large glass of wine.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Monday night
Sonia
At home I clear up the kitchen as quickly as I can and go straight up to see Jez. I feel the heat radiate against my face as I lean over him. He whimpers but doesn’t wake. There’s a smell coming off him of illness, pungent, yeasty. I go down, get him some paracetamol. Shake him awake, make him swallow two tablets with some water. He slumps back, falls asleep again. There’s just room on the mattress for me. I lie with him for an hour, maybe two.
‘What are we going to do, Jez?’ I whisper.
I’m afraid he’s lost more weight. His hip bone under my hand feels sharp. It’s lost its soft contours. His face, too, is more defined than before, the shadows under his cheekbones darkly angular in the dim light.
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