Serena finally gave a mighty sigh and said, “’F that’s what you want,” although she shook her head in an unmistakable don’t-blame-me sort of motion as she set to work. “These’re gonna last all of five minutes,” she said darkly.
“The five happiest minutes of my life.” Carole settled back into her chair and looked at Joel. She drew her eyebrows together, her face clouding. Then she brightened. “How’s your auntie Ken?” she asked. This caused Joel’s heart to bump hopefully. Over the years, his mother had rarely even acknowledged that there was an Auntie Ken. Joel said, “She’s good. Dix’s back. Dat’s her boyfriend. He’s keeping her happy ’nough.”
“Auntie Ken and her men,” Carole responded. She gave a shake to her coppery head. “She always had a soft spot for the hard spot, didn’t she?”
Serena guffawed and lightly slapped Carole’s hand. “You mind your mouth, Miss Caro, or I got to report you.”
“But it’s true,” Carole said. “When Joel’s gran followed her man to Jamaica and the kids’ aunt Kendra started minding them, the first thing I thought was, Now they’re going to get some real sex education. I even said it as well, didn’t I, Joel?”
Joel couldn’t help grinning. She’d never said such a thing, but the fact that she was pretending she had, the fact that she was aware that his grandmother had decamped for Jamaica, the fact that she knew very well where the children were living and with whom and why . . . Before this moment, Carole Campbell had not spoken of Kendra, of Glory, of Jamaica, or of anything else that indicated she knew what period of time she was living through. So all of this—off colour or not, true or not, imagined or not—was so new to Joel, so unexpected, so welcome . . . He felt like someone at the gates of heaven.
Carole said, “And Ness? Joel, why doesn’t she come to see me? I know how much she hurts from your dad’s death, with how he died, with all of it. I understand how she feels. But if she’d just come to talk to me, I can’t help but think how much better she’d feel in the long run. I miss her. Will you tell her I miss her?”
Joel hardly dared to reply, so difficult was it for him to believe what he was hearing. He said, “I’ll tell her, Mum. She’s . . . she’s goin through a bad patch jus’ now, but I’ll tell her what you say.” He didn’t add more. He didn’t want their mother to know about the attack upon Ness, about how Ness was reacting to that and to everything else. To give Carole anything that resembled bad news felt like too risky a proposition. It might send her back to the Nowhere Land she’d inhabited for so long.
Thus, Joel cringed when Toby spoke unexpectedly. “Ness got in a bad fight, Mum. Some blokes went af’er her and bunged her up. Aunt Ken had to take her to Casualty, innit.”
Serena looked over her shoulder at them, an eyebrow raised and a tube of nail glue suspended in her fingers. “She okay now?” she asked before she applied the glue to a false nail, which she pressed uselessly onto one of Carole’s stubs.
Carole was quiet. Joel waited, breath in, for what she would say. She cocked her head and looked thoughtful, her gaze on Joel. When she finally spoke, her voice was as before. “You are looking more like your father every day,” she said, although the remark was odd because all of them knew that nothing could have been further from the truth. She clarified her statement with, “Something about your eyes. How is your schoolwork? Have you brought me some to see?”
Joel let the breath go. He felt uneasy with the remark about his father, but he brushed it off. “Forgot,” he said. “But we brought you these.” He handed over the WH Smith bag.
“I love Harper’s,” Carole said. “And what’s this? Oh, are there sweets inside? How lovely. Thank you, Joel.”
“I’ll open ’em for you.” Joel took the tin and removed its plastic covering. This he tossed into a swing bin, where it became caught up in someone’s shorn, damp hair. He prised open the lid and handed the boiled sweets back to his mother.
She said mischievously, “Let’s each have one, shall we?”
“They’re meant to be only f’r you,” Joel told her. He knew to be cautious with sweets around Toby. Offer him one and he’d likely eat the lot.
“C’n I have one?” Toby asked on cue.
Carole said, “For me alone? Oh, darling, I can’t eat them all. Have one, do. No? No one wants . . . ? Not even you, Serena?”
“Mum . . . ,” Toby said.
“Well, right then. We’ll set them aside for another time. Do you like my hearts?” She nodded at the card to which the nail jewellery was fi xed. “They’re silly, I know, but as we’re to have a little Valentine party. . . I wanted something festive. It’s a dreary time of year anyway— February. One wonders if the sun is gone forever. Although April can be worse except it’s the rain then and not this infernal eternal fog.”
“Mum, I want a sweet. Why can’t I have one? Joel . . .”
“Anything that serves to cheer us up at this time of year is something I want to participate in,” Carole went on. “I always wonder, though, why February seems so long. It’s actually the shortest month of the year, even during leap year. But it just seems to go on and on, doesn’t it? Or perhaps the truth is I want it to be long. I want all the months that precede it to go on and on as well. I don’t want the anniversary to come round. Your dad’s death, you see. I don’t want to look that anniversary in the eyes another time.”
“Joel!” Toby’s voice rose. He grabbed Joel’s arm. “Why won’t Mum let me have one of dem sweets?”
Joel said, “Shh. I get you one later. They got a machine somewheres round here, and I get you some chocolate.”
“But Joel, she won’t—”
“Jus’ hang on, Tobe.”
“But Joel, I want—”
“Hang on.” Joel loosened Toby’s grip. “Whyn’t you take your skateboard outside? You c’n use it in the car park a bit.”
“It’s cold in the car park.”
“We’ll have a hot chocolate after you practise round here and when Mum’s done wiv her nails, you c’n show her how good you ride it, okay?”
“But I want—”
Joel turned Toby by the shoulders and propelled him towards the caravan door. He was in a terror that something might set their mother off, and to him Toby was looking more and more like a human detonator.
He opened the door and took his brother down the steps. He looked around and saw a vacant patch of car park where Toby would be safe with his skateboard. He made sure his brother’s anorak was zipped, and he pulled his knitted cap tightly over his hair. He said, “You stay here, Tobe, and I’ll get you some sweets af ’er. Hot chocolate as well. I got the money. You know Mum’s not right up here.” He pointed to his head. “I meant the sweets for her and she pro’lly misunnerstood when I said I di’n’t want one. She pro’lly thought you di’n’t want one either.”
“But I kept saying . . .” Toby looked as bleak as the day and bleaker than the car park, which was bumpy and no place to practise with his board. He sniffed loudly and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his anorak.
He said, “I don’t want to ride the skateboard. It’s stupid, innit.”
Joel put his arm around his brother. “You want to show Mum, don’t you? You want her to see how good you are on it. Soon’s she gets her hands done, she going to want to see you, so you got to be ready. It won’t take long.”
Toby looked from Joel to the caravan to Joel. “Promise?” he said.
“I ain’t never lied to you, mon.”
That was enough. Toby trudged off in the direction of the open space, his skateboard dangling from his hand. Joel watched until he dropped the board to the lumpy tarmac and scooted a few yards forward, one foot on the board and the other on the ground. That was as well as he rode it anywhere, so it didn’t matter much what kind of surface was beneath its wheels.
Joel returned to their mother. She was in the midst of examining the false nails that Serena had so far managed to glue to her fi ngers. They were overlong and pointed, and the manicurist wa
s trying to explain that they needed to be shortened considerably in order to stay put for even a day. But Carole wasn’t having any of this. She wanted them long, painted red, and decorated with gold hearts. Anything less would not be acceptable. Even Joel, lacking all knowledge of plastic nails, glue, and fingernail jewellery, understood that Carole had a bad idea. You couldn’t glue something to nothing and hope to make it stick.
He said, “Mum, maybe S’rena’s right. If you shortened ’em a bit—”
Carole looked at him. “You’re being intrusive,” she said. He felt slapped. “Sorry.”
“Thank you. Go ahead, Serena. Do the rest of them.”
Serena pursed her lips and went back to business. The truth was that it was no skin off her if some nuthouse woman insisted on having nails glued to wherever she said she wanted them glued. The end product was just the same: money in Serena’s pocket.
Carole watched and nodded in approval as the second set of useless nails went on. She gave her attention to Joel and indicated a small padded stool that sat nearby. “Come and sit,” she said. “Tell me everything that’s happened since the last time I saw you. Why’ve you stayed away so long? Oh I’m so happy to see you. And thank you so much for the gifts.”
“They’re from all ’f us, Mum,” Joel told her.
“But you bought them, didn’t you? You chose them, Joel.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I knew it. Your name was written all over everything. Your sensitivity. You. It was very thoughtful, and I wanted to say . . . Well, this is a bit more difficult, I’m afraid.”
“What?” he asked.
She looked left and right. She smiled slyly. “Joel, thank you so much for not bringing that grubby little boy with you this time. You know the one I mean. Your little friend with the runny nose. I don’t mean to be cruel, but I’m glad not to see him. He was beginning to get on my nerves.”
“You mean Tobe?” Joel asked. “Mum, tha’ was Toby.”
“Is that what he’s called?” Carole Campbell asked with a smile.
“Well, whatever, darling. I’m just thrilled to bits you came alone today.”
Chapter
25 What Joel had not considered in his careful planning was that he and his siblings had ceased to be part of London’s anonymous mass of children and adolescents who daily go about their lives: in and out of school, taking part in sports, doing homework, flirting, gossiping, shopping, hanging about, mobile phones pressed to their ears or gazed upon raptly as text messages appear, blasting music into their heads via various intriguing electronic devices . . . In an ordinary London world, Joel would have been a fellow among them. But he did not live in an ordinary London world. So when he took the decision to travel out to see his mother, he was not able to do it surreptitiously.
In part, this was because he went to the hospital in the company of Toby, whose absence from school was reported at once. But in part it was also because, having come under closer scrutiny since his brief encounter with the Harrow Road police and owing to a message from Fabia Bender, his own absence from school was duly noted. Both notations triggered a phone call to his aunt.
With Toby missing as well as Joel, Kendra did not leap to the conclusion that Joel was involved in anything risky or illegal. She knew her elder nephew would never jeopardise Toby’s safety. But a serial killer had been stalking young boys just Joel’s age, and since the most recent two boys had been from North London, Kendra could not stop her thoughts from heading ineluctably in that direction, just as they’d done when Joel had gone missing for two nights.
She didn’t arrive at that mental destination immediately. Instead, she did what any woman might have done when informed that her boys were not where they were supposed to be. She phoned home to see if they’d bunked off school to watch videos; she phoned the child dropin centre in the unlikely event they’d gone there to hang about; she phoned the Rainbow Café to check with Dix on the chance he’d taken them to work with him for some reason; ultimately, she panicked. She closed the charity shop and went on the hunt. After driving up streets and through housing estates, she remembered Ivan Weatherall and phoned him as well, to no avail. This sent her into further panic, which was her state when she went into the Rainbow Café.
Dix didn’t join her in full-blown anxiety. He sat her down with a cup of tea and, not as sanguine as Kendra about the probability of Joel’s keeping his brother out of trouble at all costs, he phoned the Harrow Road police. Two boys were missing, he told them when he learned Joel was not in custody for some heretofore unknown malefaction. What with the serial killings . . .
The constable on the other end of the line cut him off: The boys had not been missing even twenty-four hours, had they? Put quite simply, there was nothing the police could do until they’d been missing for a longer period.
So Dix phoned New Scotland Yard next, where the investigation into the serial killings was headquartered. But there again, he had no luck. They were being inundated with phone calls from parents whose boys had been missing far longer than a mere few hours, sir. New Scotland Yard was not equipped to send up a hue and cry over two boys who’d merely played truant from school.
There was nothing for it but for Dix to follow Kendra’s example. He turned his job over to his harried mother and changed out of his cook’s garb. He had to be part of the search, he explained, handing over his apron.
His mother made no comment. She glanced at Kendra, tried to keep her face impassive, rued the day her son had fallen into the clutches of a woman with whom he could build no conventional future, and donned his large apron. Go, she told him.
Dix was the one to suggest the hospital where Carole Campbell was housed. Could the boys have gone there?
Kendra didn’t see how. They had no money for the bus and the train. But she phoned anyway, and that was how Dix D’Court came to be waiting at Paddington station when Toby and Joel debarked some hours later.
He’d been meeting every train. He’d missed his workout. By the time the boys showed up, he was devilishly hungry but unwilling to pollute his body with anything sold within the station. He was, as a result, tightly coiled from frustration and annoyance. It wasn’t going to take much to set him off, no matter his earlier intentions.
When Joel saw Dix on the other side of the barrier, he could tell the man was coiled like a wound-up spring. He knew he was in trouble, but he didn’t care. He saw himself as someone out of every option, so the fact that Dix D’Court was cheesed off at him was a minor wrinkle in the altogether permanently crumpled linen that was his life. Toby was tripping along at Joel’s heels, mostly involved in a conversation with a spider transfer that a previous owner had applied to his skateboard. He didn’t see Dix until Dix was upon them, until Joel said,
“Hey! Let go my arm, mon.” Then Toby looked up and said, “’Lo, Dix. Mum wanted fingernails. I got a bag of crisps. It looked like snow ever’where, only it wasn’t.”
Dix marched Joel out of the station. Toby followed. Joel continued to protest. Dix said nothing. Toby grabbed Joel’s arm, needing the reassurance of something solid that represented something he understood. At his car, Dix stuffed both boys into the backseat. Looking into the rearview mirror, he said to Joel, “You know the state you put your aunt into? How much more you ’spect she’s goin to take off you?”
Joel turned his head away and looked out of the window. Hopes dashed, he was in no state to accept blame for anything. He mouthed Fuck you.
Dix read the words. They were match to tinder. He got out of the car and jerked open the back door. He pulled Joel out. He shoved him against the wing and barked, “You want to take me on? Dat’s wha’ you lookin to happen just now?”
“Hey,” Joel said. “Lemme alone.”
“How long you t’ink you last wiv me, mon?”
“Lemme the fuck alone,” Joel said. “I di’n’t do nuffink.”
“Dat’s how you see it? Your aunt out searchin, phoning the cops, gettin told there’s no h
elp, fallin into a state . . . And you di’n’t do nuffink?” In a disgust that was only in part directed at Joel, Dix shoved him back inside.
The drive to North Kensington was not a long one. They made it in silence, with Dix incapable of seeing past Joel’s external animus and Joel incapable of seeing past Dix’s reaction to what lay at the core of it. In Edenham Way, Joel flung himself up the steps to his aunt’s house. Toby rapidly followed. He clutched his skateboard to his chest like a life ring. When inside the house Dix snatched it from him and tossed it to one side, he began to cry.
It was too much for Joel. He said, “You fuckin leave Toby alone, mon! You got summick to say or summick to do, you do it to me. You got dat, blood?”
Dix might have responded but Kendra came from the kitchen. So instead of speaking, he pushed the boy towards his aunt, saying, “Here he is, den. He’s a big mon now, hear him talk. Cause of all th’ trouble and him wivout a care in th’ world dat he worried anyone.”
“Shut up,” Joel said. He said it in exhaustion and despair. Dix took a step towards him. Kendra said, “Don’t.” And then to Joel, “What’s going on? Why’d you go out there without telling me?
You know the school phoned? Yours? Toby’s?”
“I wanted to see Mum,” Joel said. “I don’t get what the big deal’s all ’bout.”
“We had rules. School. Toby. Home.” Kendra ticked off these items on her fingers. “Those’re your limits. That’s what I told you. The hospital isn’t among them.”
“Whatever,” Joel said.
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