The Child Who

by Simon Lelic

  There was a delay, long enough to cause a ripple. This – those within – was what everyone watching had been waiting for. The page in Leo’s hands drooped into his lap.

  The door cracked and a foot appeared: a man’s lace-up, polished to a patent black. The gap widened and Felicity’s father followed. He was not a tall man but he unfurled himself to his full height, raising his chins and marshalling his shoulders. He faced out, and for a moment found the camera, but his expression did not alter and he turned back towards the car. He dipped and then withdrew and his sons, Felicity’s brothers, joined him on the cobblestones.

  Even the youngest was a clenched fist taller than his father. The boys were fifteen and seventeen, Leo seemed to recall. Frederick, was it? And Francis? Names beginning with F, anyway, because it was one of the Forbes family’s idiosyncrasies that all the children had names that began with F. Both boys were blond, unlike Felicity, and Leo was reminded of an image from a few years before, of the princes beside their father at Diana’s funeral. The boys, like their royal counterparts, appeared composed but heartbreakingly so. Even the commentator seemed struck, for he fell silent. Not a conscious choice, Leo supposed, but the appropriate reaction nonetheless.

  On screen there was confusion, briefly, until someone approached the group and guided them with an outstretched arm. The camera, though, floundered. Someone was missing. The picture panned left, then jerked right, before settling, it seemed, on a target. A woman and a girl, hand in hand, rounding the lead car from the passenger side. Felicity’s mother and Faye, Felicity’s sister, had emerged off screen, under cover of the mother’s improbably wide-brimmed hat. Again the camera jerked, as though jostled, and the picture switched to a different angle. The girl’s face – a more fraught, less rounded version of Felicity’s – became visible but the picture passed her by. The director, the cameramen: they wanted the mother. Anna Forbes’s hat, however, had clearly been chosen for a reason. Tipped towards the cameras, it masked all but her pale chin, until the aunts and the grandparents drew around her, her daughter too, and curtained their passage towards the church.

  The commentator found his voice and Leo switched off to it. He looked at his lap again and only caught sight of the coffin from the corner of his eye. Was that Felicity’s father bearing it? Alongside her uncles? Megan gave a whimper and Leo decided he did not want to know. He tried to concentrate on the task he had set himself but there was silence again from the screen and the silence, in a way, was more of a distraction than the punditry.

  He set aside the paperwork and picked up the mail he had collected that morning from the office. Grateful for something that required physical engagement, he inserted his finger into the topmost envelope and tore.

  ‘Leo. Please.’

  Leo met his wife’s tear-smudged frown.

  ‘The post,’ she said. ‘Do you have to deal with that now?’

  ‘I’ll do it quietly,’ Leo said. He lifted the letter, acting as though studying it but focused, rather, on the television screen.

  The coffin was three-quarter size. He could not, at first, work out what seemed odd about it but that, he realised, was it. Three-quarter size and a pure, lustrous white. Felicity’s family members bore it towards the cathedral entrance as though it were a tray of crystal. The two men at the rear – the girl’s uncles, it looked like – had their adjacent arms wrapped around each others’ shoulders, whether to help keep their burden steady or to give each other comfort, Leo could not tell.

  The images on screen were transmitting now from inside the cathedral. The pews, needless to say, were full. The coffin, being threaded so carefully along the aisle, was a stark contrast to the collective pall of black. Some mourners tracked its advance, Leo noticed. Others looked conspicuously away. They stared at their hands or their feet or the backs of their eyelids.

  ‘You can watch, you know. You don’t have to pretend you’re not.’

  Leo hastened to pick up another letter. ‘What? I know. I’m not pretending.’ He turned the envelope and acted as though intrigued by it.

  ‘Just watch it, Leo. I won’t tell anyone, I promise.’

  This time Leo scowled. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Megan sighed. ‘Nothing. I… Sorry.’

  Leo glared for a moment. He looked again at the envelope he was holding and tossed it without bothering to finish opening it. There was quiet: in the room, on the television.

  ‘Leo.’

  He did not look.

  ‘Leo.’

  He did.

  ‘Don’t be angry,’ Megan said. ‘I was only… I only meant…’

  Leo waited.

  His wife sniffed and gathered herself. She shuffled to face him. ‘I only meant… that no one would blame you. I wouldn’t. Certainly your daughter wouldn’t.’ Megan tipped her head to the ceiling, a gesture towards Ellie shut away in her room.

  ‘Blame me?’ Leo set his head at an angle. ‘Blame me for what?’ They were clearly not talking just about the funeral any more.

  Megan shook her head: not an answer but a dismissal. ‘Look, Leo. Just look.’ She pointed to the screen. Neither of them turned to it. ‘And your face. Have you seen what he did to your face?’

  Leo brushed his fingertips across the scores on his cheek. ‘It was an accident.’ He let his hand fall. ‘I told you how it happened.’

  Megan frowned.

  ‘What?’ said Leo.

  ‘Nothing. It was an accident. Fine. But I’m just saying. That’s all. If you handed over the case. If you decided it wasn’t worth it. I’d understand.’

  ‘Not worth it? What do you mean, not worth it? This is about the only thing I’ve ever been involved with that feels remotely worthwhile!’

  Megan bridled. ‘I’ll ignore that, Leo. I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.’

  ‘Professionally. I meant professionally.’

  ‘You mean you’re bored. Is that it? You’re putting your daughter, your wife, yourself through this because you’re tired of the same old commute?’

  The commute. Leo thought again of the processions of cars, the parade of drunk and disorderlies. He thought of his father, of his bitterness at his cigarettes-and-TV existence and his hope that Leo would achieve something more. Yes, he wanted to tell his wife: that’s it exactly. Because how else to put it? How else to admit that a year… No. More. Almost two years. How else to admit that almost two years after his father’s death, he was yet to move on? Was yet to see a means to.

  He said nothing. He picked up another envelope.

  ‘You have a family, Leo,’ said Megan after a moment. ‘You have a daughter. Ever since Matthew died you’ve been—’

  ‘I’ve been what?’ said Leo. He snapped. He did not mean to.

  Megan hesitated. ‘You don’t want to talk about your father,’ she said. ‘I get it. But Ellie’s terrified. Can you not see that? About going back to school. About leaving her room.’

  ‘Megan, please. Ellie will be fine. I went to the school, didn’t I? I spoke to the headmistress.’ Inside the envelope was a query about an invoice that should really have gone straight to admin. Leo flipped the folded page in the direction of the floor.

  ‘Well,’ said Megan. ‘That’s okay, then. If you went to the school. If you spoke to the headmistress. That makes the fact that someone threw blood at your daughter perfectly all right.’

  ‘It was ink! For Christ’s sake, Meg.’ There was a final envelope to open and Leo started his assault on the seal. On screen a eulogy had begun. Felicity’s death, the minister was saying, had not been in vain. Justice, apparently, would prevail. Over whom, he did not elucidate.

  ‘What do you think, Leo? That they would have resisted throwing blood if they’d had any? That the fact it only looked like blood made your daughter any less upset? That she came away any less traumatised?’

  Traumatised. Jesus Christ. Leo’s head juddered. He tugged at the sheet of paper caught inside the envelope.

  ‘Do you know
what I don’t understand?’ Megan leant towards him. ‘What I can’t – ’ his wife splayed her hands, gripping something solid but invisible between them ‘ – what I can’t grasp?’

  Leo did not ask for the answer. He focused on the note in his hands.

  ‘It’s that he did it. It’s that you know he did it. He’s told you he’s guilty and still you insist on putting his well-being above your daughter’s.’

  It was a prompt for him to rile and he almost took it. The note, though. He could not stop looking at the note.

  ‘He killed an eleven-year-old girl, Leo. He doesn’t deserve you. Maybe he doesn’t deserve to be defended at all, by anyone!’

  Leo felt for the empty envelope he had discarded. It was ripped now but the address, like the words on the note itself, had been typed or printed and gave away nothing more.

  ‘Leo. Talk to me! Don’t just ignore me. Don’t you dare just ignore what I’m saying!’

  Two sentences. That was all. Barely that, grammatically speaking, but enough to make their point. Enough, in the gloom, to make clear their intent.

  ‘Leo!’ Megan grabbed at his arm and forced him to turn. ‘Answer me!’

  But Leo, facing his wife, did not know what to say.

  -

  She trails, though she knows she is expected to lead. It is not, she imagines, what the boy is used to: this salesman, essentially, who every day must put up with being sold to. Look here, young man, at the flooring. And here, in the bathroom – we put that in ourselves. Megan, in comparison, must seem almost hostile. Uncaring, at least, though she does not mean to be. It is uncertainty. Bewilderment, rather. She is in a barrel, it feels like, on a hill – aware that she has set things in motion but too dazed to wonder where they might stop.

  ‘Cracking kitchen,’ the boy says. His head bobs as he surveys it. ‘Large,’ he says and he makes a note.

  Megan moves from her position in the doorway. Her toast is rubble on the worktop and some instinct, at the sight of it, reasserts itself. ‘Sorry,’ she says. She stacks the honeyed knife on the plate and slides the plate to the side of the sink, the half-full ashtray too. With her hands she makes an attempt at sweeping up the mess.

  ‘The units.’ The boy points with his pen. ‘Are they new?’

  ‘Um.’ Megan considers them. They are not. They came with the house. But the boy, before she can answer properly, has moved on.

  ‘What’s through here?’ he says, disappearing into the utility room. ‘Cracking!’ comes a voice and the boy emerges with his pen working in unison with his head. ‘Great space,’ he says. Then, earnestly: ‘Useful.’ He looks to Megan for agreement and she makes a noise like she should probably have spent more time thinking about it. She gestures for the boy to lead into the hallway.

  ‘So what’s the story?’ the boy asks as he bounds up the stairs. His head is turned to the ceiling and his mouth, between words, swings unhinged. He is like a tourist beneath the dome of St Paul’s.

  ‘The story?’

  The boy has stopped to make another note and Megan, reaching the landing, is grateful for the chance to draw breath.

  ‘The house. Have you got something else lined up? How soon would you be ready to push the button?’

  It seems an apt turn of phrase. Megan thinks of the films Leo always used to like to watch, of buttons controlling bombs.

  ‘Soon.’ She realises, as she says it, that she means it. ‘Immediately, actually.’

  The boy turns. ‘Oh,’ he says. He smiles. ‘Cracking.’

  ‘Would that be a problem?’

  ‘No. Not at all. It’s just… when we spoke on the phone…’

  ‘I know. But, well. Circumstances have changed.’

  The boy, finally, exhibits an expression that does not employ his teeth. In half a morning? he is thinking.

  She did not follow the boy into her daughter’s room but she returns there once he has left. She perches at the foot-end of the single bed, a notepad on her knees and Leo’s antique Casio beside her. She taps, reckons, taps. The calculator is straining in the dim light, displaying figures as faded as the pattern on the bed sheets. She has deducted all she needs to, though, and the important thing is that there are numbers still showing. Enough to pay off what she owes. Enough for rent. Enough, if things work out, for something permanent. And this, if the estate agent is to be believed, is worst case. Best case is… She taps the keys again. She shakes her head. Why on earth, she wonders, has she been deaf for so long to her own advice?

  The answer comes unbidden: circumstances have changed. Isn’t that how she put it? I have awoken, she might have said. Or, I was caught in a barrel on a hill and it has shattered, finally, and thrown me into glorious freefall. She laughs. She thinks she is laughing but it turns out she is crying. Worst case, best case. The money has nothing to do with it. Or perhaps it did, when she did not think she had enough. The point is, it does not any more. The money, now, is the least of things.

  She drags a hand across each eye and she stands. She straightens herself, as though there were someone there to straighten herself for. She glances around her daughter’s bedroom and she gathers her things as though to leave.

  She lingers.

  A shrine, her mother called it. She did not mean it in a good way. You can’t mourn forever, darling, she said. You should clear things away. I could help. It would be less painful. Wouldn’t it? To take down the curtains and box up the CDs and cover the wallpaper with just plain white. But Megan would not let her, so a shrine it remained: one Megan worshipped at, in the earliest days, but only ever visits now to clean. Or so she tells herself.

  She sets down her notepad and the calculator on the bed. She lets her hand graze the bed sheets. She would grip them, hold them, clutch them tight to her face and inhale – but she has done it before and it has never helped.

  Her eyes sweep the bookshelves and the CD spines, ordered to a code she has long since cracked. The music, by mood: melancholy, for the most part, through angry and then outraged and thinning, at the furthest end, towards joy. The books, by worth. Not simply most preferred, a teenager’s top forty, but by her daughter’s estimation of their content. On the top shelf, in prime position, To Kill a Mockingbird, the creases on the spine repaired to black with a Magic Marker. Beside it, T.H. White, L.M. Montgomery and L’Etranger by Albert Camus. A school copy, it looks like, read and re-read and requisitioned. There is more Montgomery on the bottom shelf, alongside C.S. Lewis and Enid Blyton and a re-issued hardback of The Catcher in the Rye, which for some reason her daughter took against. Also, beside it, Lord of the Flies, which to Megan has also never seemed quite right. Her daughter, though, was categorical: only a Beverly Hills, 90210 annual has been afforded a less esteemed spot.

  From the pen holder on the desk, Megan plucks a pencil. She studies the gnawed end for a moment, then sets it within the cradle of her tongue. She sits, on the floor, and she sucks.

  It is where she would often find Ellie: on the carpet, in the space between her desk and the foot of her bed, a pillow against the wall behind her and a book, often, propped on her knees. Other times she would simply be sitting, as Megan is, to a soundtrack perhaps and with her eyes lidded or to the ceiling. What are you thinking about? Megan might sometimes dare to ask from the doorway. Her daughter would rarely answer. Or, if she did, her response would in no way be formulated to reassure a worried mother. Nothing. Just things. Shut the door, Mum – please.

  A piece of pencil comes away in Megan’s mouth and she dabs to catch the scrap of sodden wood. It sticks to her fingertip and evades her flick so she uses the handle of one of the drawers beside her to dislodge it. Her grip, once she has, returns to the handle. She hesitates, then pulls, and the drawer expels its contents.

  The drawer, the topmost of three, is full of clippings. It was Leo’s idea to save them. He was in the habit, Megan would have said, but he claimed too that they might help. They might, he insisted, yield some clue. That he was wrong gives her no satisfa
ction. She would have sacrificed any part of her – her pride, a limb, her very life – if it would have meant that Leo was proved right.

  She did not read the clippings then and she has no desire to read them now. She makes to shut the drawer but pauses with it halfway closed. Well? she thinks. Why not? She opens the drawer more fully once again and begins taking out the clippings by the handful. She makes a pile. For recycling, is her citizenly instinct, but there are better options, surely. Shredding, say. Or burning.

  When the first drawer is emptied she shuts it and opens the next. She shifts herself onto her knees, taken suddenly by the decisiveness of the task. Her daughter’s waste-paper basket is beside her and she hoists the discarded clippings into it and scrunches them down. From the second drawer she takes out a folder and frowns at the absence of a label. She lifts the flap and, swallowing, shuts it again. Posters, a sheaf of them, with the sketch of the suspect beside a picture of Ellie, A4-size and copied by the ream at Leo’s office. They ran out of lamp posts.

  Below the folder is another, again unlabelled and this time empty. The ancient cardboard rips easily and she stuffs the pieces on top of the posters and the newspaper clippings. The bin, already, is halfway full.

  The next three folders she cannot bring herself to throw away. They are stuffed with letters, removed from their envelopes to save space. Leo counted them once. Megan cannot remember what figure he reached but she knows it was over two hundred. There were others too, less supportive – vicious, in fact; vindictive – but those are elsewhere. The police asked for them, as she recalls. She does not think they ever gave them back. They were welcome to them, as far as she was concerned, though she would take a certain pleasure in adding them to the kindling pile now.