Wildest of All

by P. K . Lynch

  But that was her teenage voice talking, her scared voice. She wasn’t the child any longer. The important thing was to make sure Sissy was okay. That she wasn’t about to throw her entire life off a metaphorical cliff. That she hadn’t already done that.

  The view from the taxi alarmed her further. How could there be so much homelessness in this day and age? It had been bad before but nothing like this. How could it have gotten so much worse? What did Sissy make of it? Did it tarnish her? Was she still positive about life?

  And the people – so many different types of people. How was it possible they all existed alongside each other in such close proximity?

  Eighteen is too damn young to be an adult, she thought.

  By the time the cab reached Walthamstow, Jude had a new-found respect for her daughter. Whatever the reasons, however she had arrived at the decision, coming down to London had been a bold choice. Staying down, even bolder. Jude had never been that brave.

  She asked the driver to drop her at the top of Sissy’s road. She wanted the last few seconds to compose her thoughts, or perhaps she was just postponing the moment of truth.

  So this is where her daughter had been living. Good for her.

  An old lady came out of one of the doors ahead. Jude smiled and received a curt nod in return. As she approached, the lady shuffled down the short path carrying a plastic bag full of rice which she upended onto the curb. It was immediately set upon by a noisy flock of seagulls.

  Seagulls in London, Jude thought. Everyone wants a piece of the action.

  She counted the numbers until she came to a green door half-way down the street. Looking up at it, she experienced a moment of elation. No unsightly cling film on the inside of the windows for warmth, no steel bar across the door. It was a proper house, respectable. Quickly, she chastised herself. When had she grown so old?

  She stepped up the tiny path and rapped smartly on the door. No more thinking. She heard movement inside, saw a shadow on the other side of the glass. She fixed a smile on her face, but when the door opened it revealed no one she knew.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the young man said.

  Flustered, Jude stepped back and checked the number.

  ‘Maybe I’m at the wrong house… I’m looking for my daughter?’

  Another voice carried through – ‘Who is it?’ – and a face appeared. At last she was back on familiar ground.

  ‘Rik! How are you?’

  It wasn’t that he seemed displeased to see her, but she could sense he wasn’t happy.

  ‘Jude!’ said Rik. ‘What a surprise. Are you all right? Would you like to come in?’

  He shuffled the other man out of the way and opened the door wide.

  ‘Come in, come in. Noah, put the kettle on, there’s a love.’

  He brought her into the living room and sat her down on the couch. He’d developed a passion for interior design of late. New items arrived weekly: cushions, lampshades, rugs, fairy lights, mirrors, cactus plants. A massive chandelier hung from the tiny ceiling. Jude couldn’t help smiling at the clash of styles.

  ‘So this is where you’ve been,’ she said, taking it all in.

  He stood in the centre of the room and gestured nervously. ‘It isn’t finished yet.’

  ‘It looks great,’ Jude said. ‘Really great.’

  He smiled, gratefully.

  ‘Ah. Oh. This is my boyfriend,’ he said, as the other man came in carrying a mug of tea. ‘Noah, this is Jude. Sissy’s mum.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know how you take it,’ he said, handing the tea over. ‘I took a guess. Just milk?’

  ‘That’s perfect, thank you. Aren’t you having one?’

  A look of panic crossed his face and he looked to Rik for guidance. Jude took a sip to hide her amusement. They clearly weren’t used to entertaining. Their nerves were endearing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I should have called but – ’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Rik said. ‘I’ll have a coffee. Go on then.’ He practically shooed Noah out of the room.

  ‘So how have you been?’ he said, taking a seat on the other sofa.

  She wasn’t sure how honest she should be. The last time she’d seen Rik, he’d been a child.

  ‘Not bad,’ she decided. ‘And you? Are you enjoying London? You seem to be doing all right for yourself.’

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded, his eyes drawn to the window by the noise of a passing moped. ‘I’ve been promoted at work, so that’s nice. More pennies. I mean, the job is dull as sin,’ he rolled his eyes, ‘but I love London. Work’s work, you know?’

  Noah arrived with the coffee. Looking at him properly, Jude could see he appeared to be a few years older than Rik, slightly podgy with a dark stubble. Not the type she imagined Rik would go for. But then, he was so young. Too young to have a type. She resisted the urge to tell him she hoped he was being careful. There was no point. Hearts were made to be broken.

  A swell of emotion caught her by surprise. She tried to hide it behind her mug but spilled tea on herself in the process. She apologised for the mess and Rik showed her to the bathroom so she could clean up.

  She gripped the sink and stared into the mirror. She had to get her nerves under control before she saw Sissy. She splashed her face and practised her breathing. After a few moments, she felt calm enough to face them again. They were waiting for her in the kitchen.

  ‘So, Sissy’s not in, I take it? Typical. Where is she then?’

  A nervous look passed from Rik to Noah.

  ‘Jude,’ Rik said. ‘Sissy doesn’t live here any more.’

  ‘What?’ Jude said, as she felt the room tip sideways.

  ‘She moved out a few months ago,’ Rik was saying. ‘I thought you knew.’

  ‘Months ago? What?’ she said again.

  ‘She’s going to fall!’ a voice called, and a pair of hands grasped her.

  ‘Sit down,’ Noah said. ‘Look, here, at the table. I’ll make more tea.’

  When she was safely deposited in a chair, Noah filled the kettle. The water came out in a rush. Somewhere a dog began to yap. It was too much. Her mind was flooded.

  Rik sat opposite her and took her hand between his. Here was something solid to hold on to. Something to blame.

  No, they hadn’t had an argument, as such. Well, actually, there had been several, but there was no single issue that had pushed her over the edge. After Cam left, they’d grown apart. She was seeing someone – a guy she worked with – and had a different set of friends. Different interests. Meanwhile, Rik had fallen in love and Noah had moved in. Seemingly that had been the last straw. He was sorry, but he hadn’t expected her to be so jealous that he’d found someone. He’d thought she might be happy for him.

  Jude listened to it all with a growing sense of foreboding. Poor, poor Sissy. It had happened all over again. She’d lost someone she loved and then had to deal with a stranger in her midst. Not that Anne was a stranger, of course, but she had made their home seem strange in the strangest of times. Jude suddenly understood why Sissy had left, and with the arrival of this understanding she felt the awakening of a wildness, a primitive, urgent need to bring her daughter home and keep her close.

  ‘Where is she? She must have left a forwarding address?’

  ‘You could get her on Facebook,’ Rik suggested, pulling his laptop towards him. He pressed a couple of keys and swivelled it so Jude could see. ‘That’s her page.’

  Jude leaned into the screen, disbelieving the images before her. Sissy, her sweet, tomboyish, fun-loving girl had seemingly morphed into a party girl. High heels, tiny shorts, impossible cleavage.

  ‘Her hair…’ breathed Jude.

  ‘Extensions,’ said Rik. ‘Honestly. She went full-scale diva on me.’

  Jude clicked through the pictures. Sissy in the middle of the crowd; Sissy with her tongue out and some type of pill balanced on the tip; Sissy kneeling at some stranger’s crotch, looking suggestively at the camera; Sissy, with long tumbling red
locks falling around her bare shoulders, one finger poised provocatively between brightly painted lips; Sissy, with her back to the camera, being held by a dark, long-haired man, he grinning straight down the lens with one hand tucked in the back of her skirt.

  ‘That’s the boyfriend,’ Rik said.

  Jude peered into the screen. He was older, but how much older was difficult to say. Instantly she despised him. Arrogance oozed: the tilt of his head and jut of his chin, the twist in his smile, and worst of all, the complicity between him and the photographer as he fondled her daughter.

  Noah placed a fresh mug of tea before her. Without meaning to, her eyes scoured the room for alcohol. She was relieved not to find any. One less battle to have. She curled her hand around the mug, and when it began to burn her hand, she held it tighter. She thought she might vomit.

  ‘It doesn’t seem so long ago she was in a school uniform,’ she said. She knew how trite and predictable she must sound but she didn’t care.

  ‘Do you have an address for her?’ she asked again. Please let him have an address I can go to, she thought. Please don’t let me have to write to that girl, a complete stranger.

  ‘Nah,’ said Rik. ‘She’s somewhere in Hackney though. So not far away.’ He nodded encouragingly.

  Christ, young people are so bloody stupid, she thought. She gritted her teeth and pulled the laptop towards her.

  ‘All right then,’ she said, grimly. ‘How do I do this?’

  With Rik and Noah’s help, she composed a short message and sent it off. Once it was gone, she felt helpless. Almost immediately, Rik announced it had been received and read. Hope soared.

  ‘How can you tell?’ she asked, sitting up straight.

  ‘It tells you. Look, there.’

  They waited expectantly for a reply. When it didn’t materialise, Jude sent another: I’m in London. Your old house. I need to see you, Sissy. PLEASE.

  They watched the screen avidly. The notification came through informing them the message had been read.

  ‘She’s writing, she’s writing,’ cried Rik, wondering how he’d suddenly come to be so invested in this relationship.

  Jude heard his excitement and took it as encouragement. The reply arrived: GO AWAY.

  Jude slumped back in her chair. Rik’s smile froze on his face. Noah remained by the kitchen sink wondering if he should offer more tea, possibly with sugar because he recalled his nan saying that was good for shock.

  ‘What do I do now?’ Jude looked up at Rik, whose confusion was so apparent she immediately felt bad for asking.

  ‘Um. Mobile?’ he offered, realising as he said it that Jude must have surely already taken the obvious approach.

  ‘Not unless you’ve got a new number for her? It just goes dead.’

  He shook his head. ‘Same number as always. I haven’t used it in a while.’

  ‘What the hell happened down here? Where’s Cam?’

  Rik filled her in on the main details, leaving out the more salacious aspects of their early time in London. ‘And then I met Noah. I thought she’d be pleased we could split the rent three ways again at least, but she didn’t like it, did she?’

  ‘No, no, she didn’t really,’ Noah agreed. ‘I’m a good housemate,’ he said to Jude. ‘House-trained and everything.’

  His limp joke made no dent in the mood.

  ‘Oh my love,’ Jude murmured, staring at the long-haired party girl on the screen. ‘It happened again, didn’t it?’

  Rik and Noah exchanged worried glances. Jude reached forward and stroked Sissy’s face. Then she looked up at Noah and said, ‘You pushed her out. You didn’t mean to, but you pushed her out.’

  Instinctively, Rik and Noah knew not to object to Jude’s words, however hurtful they were. In fact, they’d done everything they could to accommodate Sissy but, despite this, her moods had only grown darker. The only time they truly relaxed in their own home was the weekend when she went to party at whatever club night her boyfriend was promoting. Through the week, they were forced to tiptoe around the house, so as to avoid incurring her wrath, which was ironic, as they considered themselves highly evolved members of the species, whereas she had become nothing more than a lout, leaving a messy trail wherever she went.

  ‘I don’t know what to do now,’ Jude said again. ‘I just don’t know.’

  No one knew what she should do. Rik felt particularly helpless. As the person who’d known Jude and Sissy longest, he felt he ought to offer some solution. At last he announced she must stay with them, at least for the night. Ignoring Noah’s panicked expression, Rik gave Jude’s shoulders a squeeze.

  ‘Maybe she’ll have a change of heart overnight,’ he smiled.

  She patted his hand in gratitude. How the world moves on when the child becomes protector of the adult. She hadn’t expected the day to arrive so quickly.

  There was no trace of Sissy left in her bedroom, though at least the bed remained. A faint scent in the air suggested it had been repainted recently. She knew it was unreasonable of her to feel offended that Rik had moved on so easily. It wasn’t unusual for friendships forged in school to fall away. She was irritated he knew so little about Sissy’s life, however. Unable to even say where she worked, other than somewhere close to Liverpool Street. Just as quickly, she forgave him. He wasn’t Sissy’s mother. Why should he know if she didn’t?

  Next day, with nothing more than ‘Hackney’ to go on, Jude took the train to Bethnal Green and wandered the streets in search of Sissy. She couldn’t contemplate the possibility of not finding her. Sissy would come out of a corner shop, carrying a pint of milk, or she’d be on her way home from work, or en route to a bar, and when she laid eyes on Jude all her resistance would fall away. Finding her was the only obstacle and it was completely surmountable. They were mother and daughter. Natural law would lead them to each other.

  By the third day Jude was desperate. The dank, crumbling streets and constant blare of traffic, the hostility of strangers, the sheer futility of trying to find one person among millions. She felt permanently grubby and her feet ached. She could do with a drink but she didn’t want her grasp on reality to dilute in any way. She needed her daughter. That’s all she needed.

  She took respite in a cafe that gave the appearance of having had a great deal of money spent on it in order to look old and shabby. An older couple, perhaps in their sixties, came in and sat at the table next to hers. The man asked his wife if she needed to go to the bathroom before they ordered ‘so we don’t have to shift these tables again’.

  ‘No,’ she replied, firmly. ‘I’ll go after we’ve ordered.’

  ‘Righto, righto,’ he said, in a placatory tone. He picked up the menu and read aloud, suggesting they might have this, or that, reminding her he’d already had two eggs that morning. When the waitress came to take their order, he did the talking, acting as a middle man between she and his wife – Do you want this? Or that? He negotiated a double shot Americano but emphasised it had to be in a small cup, the implication being his wife’s bladder was not up to the task of holding the contents of a large cup.

  Jude wondered if he realised how loudly he was speaking. His wife didn’t look at him but appeared to stare at some indeterminate object lying somewhere behind the waitress. All that caffeine buzzing around her system. Maybe that’s how she gets her kicks, Jude mused. Maybe she needs it just to maintain a conversation with her overbearing husband.

  He excused himself and went to the bathroom. His wife didn’t alter her gaze in any way. Jude thought she detected a delicate kind of sadness; it was there in her perfectly tidy honey-coloured hair, her cardigan, her rounded shoulders. She seemed out of place for the area.

  He returned and their food arrived. They ate; she in dainty little bites, never once looking up from her plate, he in great chunks which he chewed while watching her. Without meaning to, Jude weaved their life story. It consisted of boredom and oppression and, she thought, could only culminate in them hating each other.
/>   It came time for Jude to leave. Her body was tired, but she wouldn’t find Sissy in here. As she gathered herself to leave, she noticed beneath the couple’s table that the man continually rubbed his foot against his wife’s calf. It was such an unexpected intimacy that she gasped. She felt like a small child at the theatre when the curtain is pulled back to reveal the hidden world behind. Their discreet exercise in love, or perhaps just forty years of gentle habit, hit her with force. She paid her bill hurriedly and burst out of the cafe onto the street where she doubled up and retched. Her breath came rapid and deep, and then she was sobbing, great hoarse sobs that wracked her body. All around her the writhing powerhouse of London continued its grind and everywhere within it, nowhere to be seen, was Sissy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Uncharacteristic Consideration

  Jude explained it to Anne as a wall of sea that rose from the concrete and smashed over her. Anne listened quietly, patiently, and when Jude finished she still said nothing.

  Instead, she laid a hand on Jude’s knee and patted it. After a moment or two, she took out her rosary and began to pray. When Anne asked with uncharacteristic consideration whether she should go on, Jude said yes, please.

  A space opened up between them which left room for conversations that had never happened before.

  ‘As a child,’ said Jude, ‘I thought all I had to do was hold on till I was an adult and then all the fear would go away. And for a while it did, but… lately, it feels like I’m just… I don’t know… kind of loose? Like there’s nothing holding me together. And I’m getting looser every day. There’s nothing holding me down. I could just float away. I could disappear and no one would care. Not even me.’

  ‘Oh, now, stop that at once. People would care. I would care! Sissy would care! Oh, she’s having a tantrum just now but she’d care all right, mark my words. She doesn’t know how lucky she is to have a mother who cares. To have a mother at all. Excuse me.’