Dying Flames

by Robert Barnard

  “Well, I think someone must have been back.”

  “Maybe Mother came home for a warmer coat than the one she wore to Luigi’s. It’s a favorite with her, but it’s really a summer coat. Or maybe Adam came for some of his sports things.”

  “What on earth could he want with them?”

  “Maybe he couldn’t bear to leave them behind. Qualifying for the underfifteens would win out over rage at Mum any day. It’s sort of Linus’s blanket with him. I can imagine him sleeping rough with his football boots for comfort.”

  “Come on. Let’s go and have a look.”

  Christa let them in and put the light on. The hall had been a good-sized one, but the cupboard to the right of the door cut down the space. The door was open and Christa looked in.

  “Looks like I was wrong about Adam’s sports things. They all seem to be here.”

  “We could check upstairs. He could be in bed.”

  “Maybe…Mother’s coat she wore to Luigi’s is here, and a thicker one has gone…and a pair of walking shoes. She wore high heels to Luigi’s, because the Halliburtons took us in their car.”

  “The changes make sense if she was going to tramp the streets looking for Adam or Terry.”

  Christa screwed up her forehead. “Yes, apart from the fact that neither of us saw her doing any tramping.” She cast her eye around the hall, but saw nothing out of place. “Let’s just have a look in the front room.” She opened the door and switched on the light. “Ah.”

  A dining table dominated the room. On the table was a sheet of exercise-book paper, lined, and torn from its binder. They both went over and leant over it to read, Graham very conscious of the closeness of the girl. The note was in fact two notes, in different handwritings. The top one was in a childish hand that was just beginning to find individual characteristics of its own.

  Im leaving mum. Im fed up with being the one who you love only when your trying to make an effect. You don’t care a bit about me or Christa or anyone except yourself. Id rather be on my one, don’t look for me.

  The other handwriting was undoubtedly adult, but with little flourishes and curlicues for effect.

  I don’t give a naughty word whether you go or stay, but I’m willing to bet you’ll be here when I come back. I’m going off with a friend for a few days. Any problems Christa, go to Michael and Vesta—or Graham might like to give a hand. About bleeding time I’d say.

  “Sorry about that,” said Christa, embarrassed.

  “Don’t worry. Since I was never told about Terry, there wasn’t much I could do.” He thought for a moment. “I wonder what I would have done if I had been told.”

  “Anything but marry her. We mustn’t show Adam this.”

  “You mean he’ll see it as some kind of challenge, and it’ll make him still more determined to stay away?”

  “Yes…I wonder if he’s gone to Mickey Leatherby’s.”

  “Who’s that? One of his friends?”

  “Adam just has chums—mates he hangs about with but never really confides in. But Mickey’s the one he’s closest to. They share a mania for football—athletics too, but not so passionately.”

  “Where does Mickey live?”

  “I think it’s Hamnet Street. I’ll look him up.”

  Hamnet Street it was, number forty-eight. Since it sounded as if this was the only “friend” Adam would have thought of going to, Graham agreed it was worth a try. Christa said it was a ten-minute drive away, and after a quick trip upstairs to check on Adam’s bedroom, which was empty and undisturbed, they went out to the car again and Christa gave directions in intervals of talking.

  “We left the light on in the hall cupboard,” she said as they drove away.

  “I know. I thought about it, but decided we should leave things as they were when we arrived.”

  She shot him a glance. “Why?”

  “In case we have to call in the police.”

  “Why would we?”

  “Christa, women who go away leaving their children—sorry, one of their children—to fend for themselves, and any woman who disappears with ‘a friend,’ are possible objects for the police to investigate. At some point we may have to decide among ourselves whether to call them in.”

  Christa considered this.

  “But she’s done it before, more than once.”

  “That makes it worse. What did you do? Just cope until she came back?”

  “Yes. I can look after Adam. We got on all right.”

  “I’m sure you did, but that’s not the point. And this time there’s the complicating factor that Adam had decided to leave home and announced it in his mother’s presence.”

  “Will the police take that seriously?”

  “I don’t know. We all did, didn’t we? And the police won’t think much of a mother who takes off just when her fourteen-year-old son has run away—and who leaves a note that says in effect that she doesn’t give a damn.”

  Christa pondered this.

  “You don’t like Mum much, do you?”

  “No. I thought I might when I met her again, but, no: I don’t like her, and I don’t think much of her either.”

  “This is Hamnet Street. Go slow—it’s difficult to see the numbers…. That was thirty-six…. This is forty. We’re going in the right direction…. This must be forty-eight.”

  Graham stopped the car. The house was a detached one from the same era as the Milton Terrace house, and thousands more all over Romford. The hedges were low and well cared for, and they gave a view of the whole house. One room had lights on that blazed through their flimsy curtains.

  “They’re still up,” said Christa.

  “It could be a family conference. There are no lights on anywhere else—kitchen or bedrooms, for example. We’d better think about whether we should interrupt it. If it’s a conference about Adam, we might annoy him, especially if he thought they were about to let him stay. We could ruin our chances of influencing him.”

  “Maybe I should go on my own—” Christa began.

  “I was about to suggest that,” said Graham, grateful again for her fund of common sense. “I’m an unknown quantity to Adam, and there’s no reason why he should like or trust me.”

  “He and I have always been good mates. We get on, because we have to. I think it would be best if I went on my own. I could feel a fool, of course: we don’t know yet whether he’s actually here.”

  But they soon did. They were interrupted by the front door opening. Two shadowy figures were just visible in the hall, but through the door came Adam, his school-bag on his back, walking with a hangdog slump to his shoulders. The fire of his departure from Luigi’s was now burning low. Christa’s face twisted with pity. She wound down the window and called his name softly as he came out through the gate onto the street.

  “Adam.”

  He jumped, looked as if he might run, then saw her face.

  “Did they chuck you out?” Christa asked.

  “Yes. They wouldn’t even let me stay overnight—just said I ought to go home and make it up with Mother.”

  “You’d have a job. She’s gone off again.”

  “With a man?”

  “What do you think? She left a note…. Why don’t you get into the car?”

  Adam, without reluctance, got in. His relief was palpable, but so was his sheepishness. Christa slipped out of the car and got into the backseat with him.

  “I’m sorry I jumped,” Adam muttered. “You get strange ideas…”

  “I’m sure you do,” said Graham. “It seems so easy, living rough, when you think about it, but it’s hard and dangerous when you try it.”

  “Yeah…. But I don’t know what to do. I mean, even if Mum’s not there, going home seems—”

  “A bit of a climb down. Yes. Anyway, I’m not sure it’s a good idea. Your mother comes home, there you both are all safe and she gets the idea that taking off is somehow all right.…And in my book it isn’t. There’s your grandfather.”

&
nbsp; Christa made a face. “He’d cope for a few days, but he wouldn’t like it. He’s not great with people our age. If Kath was there, it would be better—”

  “Kath from Bidford?”

  “That’s right. They get on really well together. There’s Grandma Webster in Stanway, but it’s a bit the same there: we love her, and she loves us coming on a visit, but anything more than a few hours she’s not too happy about.”

  “Look,” said Graham, starting the car. “We shouldn’t be discussing this, late at night on a drizzly street after a difficult evening. I live an hour away, Adam. I’ve got a guest bedroom and a little box of a room. Will you both come back with me, for a night or two at least? So we can discuss what should happen next, without any pressure?”

  “Yes,” said Adam, trying to keep the extent of his relief out of his voice. But he added, “It’s very kind of you.”

  “Not at all. Peggy seemed to think that because I had nothing to do with Terry, I was a bit responsible for you two.”

  “That’s just garbage,” said Adam bitterly. “Peggy’s garbage. The sort of thing she thinks up to get people to do the things she ought to be doing herself.”

  “I rather think you’re right,” said Graham. “Especially as Peggy didn’t have a lot to do with Terry’s upbringing herself. So regard this as just a lonely middle-aged author getting himself a bit of companionship for a while, between books.”

  “I’d better ring Grandad,” said Christa, taking out her mobile. She pressed numbers expertly in the near darkness, then said, “He’s on Answer. He almost never does that. He must have put it on when he went back home, to keep in touch tonight…. Grandad, we’ve found Adam. He’s fine. We’re all going down to Hepton Magna, to stay with Graham for the night. Love you.” She put her mobile away. “I bet he’s relieved.”

  They were beginning to leave the hideous parts of Essex that were no more than London suburbs. Graham could see in his mirror that in the backseat Adam’s head was resting on Christa’s shoulder, his eyes shut. It was ten minutes later, when he saw Adam waking up and blinking, that he said:

  “It doesn’t have to be just a night at my place, you know. We ought to sit down tomorrow and decide exactly what is best for you two.”

  Christa thought about this.

  “You think it might be a good idea for us to get away from Romford for a bit, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Maybe.”

  “That means get away from Mum.”

  “Well…I shouldn’t judge her…. I don’t think your mother behaved very well tonight. I don’t think she put your interests first.”

  There was a duet of chortles and snorts from the back.

  “You don’t have to be embarrassed about criticizing Mum,” said Christa. “Our family is not a mother and two children, it’s three independent people. Mother has never put our interests first, so we don’t owe her, and certainly don’t give her, any particular respect as a parent.”

  “I see…I do feel in a way that she should be taught not to take you for granted—that she can’t just come back and you children would move back in and everything would revert to normal.”

  “Teach her a lesson, you mean?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “She’d think all her birthdays had come at once.” There was now an outright burst of laughter from the back. “She’s wanted to get rid of us for years, you know. It would give her her ‘freedom.’ She’s happy with Terry because he doesn’t threaten her freedom in any way.”

  “Not that we stop her doing anything much,” said Adam.

  “You’re probably right,” said Graham. “But that shouldn’t stop us doing anything if that thing is the best for you. I think it would be advisable to try to find a school for Adam—just temporarily. It would make it clear that he does have other choices, and it would look good if the authorities start sticking their noses in. And then there’s you, Christa, and your courses at the Jeremy Bentham College.”

  “They’re pretty understanding there, especially about difficult home conditions. If you could get me to a railway station, I could stay the night in Romford when I need to, otherwise work from home. Your home. I’ll need to collect books and clothes and things from Milton Terrace.”

  “These are all just possibilities, of course,” said Graham. “What do you say, Adam?”

  “I don’t know…. It’s very nice of you…but I was hoping to get selected for the underfifteens.”

  “This is a lot more important than the underfifteens,” said Christa tartly.

  Graham rushed in with balm.

  “Romford is a place with a big catchment area. I’m not an expert, but I should have thought if you’re considered promising in a Romford school, you’ll be considered bloody brilliant in any school you might go to in my part of the world.”

  “Oh? I hadn’t thought of that,” said Adam.

  Ten minutes later he said:

  “It would have to be a football school. I wouldn’t go to a rugger school.”

  “Of course,” said Graham with a straight face.

  Never underestimate the elasticity of youth, he said to himself. Whenever, as he covered the journey to home, he could see Adam’s face in the mirror, he was looking out of a window, his eyes bright. Once he even saw a smile on his face.

  Chapter 9

  The Morning After

  They got to bed late that Monday night. Graham tried to be businesslike and organized the two beds efficiently, but of course the two children (I must stop thinking of them both as children, Graham had said to himself) were stimulated by the new surroundings, their sudden change of circumstances: even after they had all gone to bed, Graham heard them talking in the tiny extra bedroom, which Christa had taken, on the grounds that she would only be around in Hepton Magna for part of the time, so Adam should have the guest room. It was around two when Graham finally dropped off to sleep, and he rather thought next morning that they were still talking then.

  When he awoke at nine fifteen he listened. They were still talking, or rather talking again, downstairs. Probably they’d rummaged around to get themselves breakfast. He took advantage of their preoccupation to use for the first time the telephone he’d had installed in his bedroom after his wife had left him. The person he rang was the headmistress of the local secondary school—a woman he knew well enough to exchange casual social banalities with. He explained to her Adam’s current predicament.

  “So his mother has gone off without making adequate provision for the children?” Mrs Hayward asked.

  “Without making any provision. One of the ‘children’ is nineteen—the age, I suppose, when they’re delighted to be left on their own.”

  “That doesn’t mean they should be, or that they should be left in charge of a younger sibling.”

  “Adam is fourteen, sports mad, and inclined to bunk off school, except that he’s scared of not being selected for the various elevens, squads or whatever. The bunking-off is something, I suspect, that Peggy, his mother, can take in her stride—pay no attention to, in fact—but I feel he should get some schooling as long as she is away.”

  “Of course. And you’ve no idea how long that will be?”

  “No. It’s not as though she’s gone on a package holiday. She’s just gone off with a man, identity unknown.”

  “I see. It sounds a very unsatisfactory situation. Well, we’ll do what we can for the boy.”

  “I’ll bring him along when they’ve finished breakfast, if that’s all right by you.”

  “Can I suggest that you send him along? Hepton Magna is not a large place, so he can’t miss the school. Coming on the first day with a parent, or someone in loco parentis, can arouse ridicule when you’re a fourteen-year-old. The third year have sports on Tuesday afternoons, so that will be a good time for Adam to make his own way.”

  “Excellent idea. Many thanks.”

  Adam showed something of a child’s traditional reluctance to go to a new school, but the idea of being a
large fish in a small pond won out, and he went off reasonably happily, even agreeing to take one of Graham’s blank exercise books (in which he first-drafted his novels) as a token that he might do some regular school-work.

  “So what will you do?” Graham asked Christa when Adam had set off, both of them still chewing toast at the table.

  “I think I should go and collect more clothes and books and let them know at the college that things are going to be a bit haywire in the near future. I can stay the night with my friend Josie rather than alone at home, then I can go to a lecture or two, come back tomorrow evening, and stay till Monday. I think Adam will settle in better with me around.”

  “I think so too,” said Graham heartfeltly. “So what we do next is get you to a station.”

  Two hours later, with Christa seen off to London from Ipswich station, Graham was home and waiting for Adam to return from school. He decided to fill in the time by informing anyone who would be interested what the situation of Peggy’s two children was. The first person had to be Peggy’s father. Ted was glad to hear from him, but he himself had no fresh news.

  “Nothing at all, I’m afraid,” he said. “I kept looking till two thirty, but then I went to bed. I’d got your message about Adam and Christa. Christa can take care of herself, so Adam is the main one I worry about. I can’t care any longer about Peggy. What can be done about a middle-aged woman who’s man mad and lives in a fantasy world?”

  “I don’t know,” said Graham. “I am worried about her, and that’s the truth. She’s gone off with a ‘friend.’ Okay, probably a man. But what kind of man friend? An instant one, made on the street? More likely someone she knows a bit but not well. Going off with a man can be dangerous rather than pleasant. It’s the sort of thing any parent warns a teenage girl against. I think the police should be brought in on this.”

  “Oh, Lord,” said Ted. “That means you want me to do it, doesn’t it?”

  “I’d be grateful if you would.”

  “I will, I suppose, but I feel quite embarrassed doing it. How do I explain if, after ten years of having nothing to do with my daughter, I call in the police when she’s only been gone a night? And claims to be with a friend?”