‘Hi,’ I said.
I could barely bring myself to look at her. Any affection I’d ever felt for her was dead in the ground. I could see only her failings as a parent, magnifying my own.
But I walked into that room, and I stood there, my weight on one leg, my arms casually folded in front of my waist, car keys dangling. The smile that I’d slapped on my face dug in at the corners, as if pins were holding it. Sam and Ella weren’t ready, they never were. They were upstairs with Abbie and Max; I could hear them all, their feet hammering on the floor above, the clashing racket of separate CDs.
Normally Melanie would invite me in for a drink. But this time, she said, ‘You been busy?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘You know . . .’
‘Oh I know,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Takes a lot of time up, moving.’ She turned to the stairs. ‘Kids!’ she yelled over the din of the music.
We stood there, waiting for a response.
‘Kids!’ she yelled again, louder. ‘Turn that off, won’t you? Jane’s here.’
Max came down first, with Sam following after. I could not look at Max, but I could feel him watching me, the smirk on his face turning sullen.
‘Ella!’ I called up the stairs. ‘Ella, we need to go.’
He was looking at me. He didn’t stop looking at me.
‘So have you sold your house yet?’ Melanie said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’
‘Mm,’ she said.
‘Ella!’ I called again. Without looking at Melanie I said, ‘Thank you for having them.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she said, so polite, so off.
I was shaking when I got back in the car. I drove too fast, gripping that steering wheel so hard I had bruises on my fingers the next day. I never wanted to see any of them again, but how could I avoid them, when my kids were friends with Melanie’s kids? When I had worked so hard for it to be that way? How could I disentangle us now?
Sam and Ella were both in the back of the car, both tired, both quiet, busy with their own thoughts. I looked at them in the mirror; I looked at Sam. What had he and Max talked about? Boys never talked about anything, did they? Just Xbox, games, football.
They wouldn’t talk about me, surely?
Would Max hint at what he’d done, though? Would he say . . . what? Your mum’s fit? Your mum’s . . . I could not imagine it. I slammed my foot down to hard on the accelerator and in the back Ella lurched in her seat.
‘Mu-um,’ she complained.
And I said, ‘Sorry.’
What had happened was bad enough, but it would be far, far worse if Max should ever tell anyone. Because how would I live with it then? How would I carry on? I looked at them again, at Sam and Ella; my children. And they were just children; innocent, oblivious. I loved them so much that it hurt my heart. They could never know about Max and me, never. The thought of it appalled me.
I had to speak to Max. I had to be sure he would never tell.
TWENTY-SIX
I needed to catch Max alone. It would be no good after school; he always came out in a crowd. And no way could I speak to him at his house, not with Melanie there. So it would have to be in the morning.
Each day I got up extra early. I chased the children along; I allowed plenty of time for starting the car. And so I dropped them at school earlier, and then I turned the car round and pulled up wherever I could to wait for Max. I sat in my car as so many kids dressed in grey and blue wandered past and watched out for him. It did not occur to me that anyone would think it odd should they see me; I could only think of what I had to do. The first couple of mornings that I did this Max walked past me, but he wasn’t alone, and if he saw my car he did not acknowledge it. On Wednesday I parked further down the road, nearer to the main turning into the town centre. He was late that morning and at first I thought I’d missed him, but then I saw him, hurrying up the road on his own.
I got out of my car. ‘Max,’ I said.
He hadn’t seen me, and now he looked up, and slowed his step. I watched the surprise on his face turn guarded, and he stopped in front of me, slinging his bag up higher on his back.
‘We need to talk,’ I said, my voice wooden and awkward. And I forced myself to keep looking at him. He’s just a boy, I told myself. He’s fifteen.
‘OK,’ he said, and very slightly he raised one eyebrow, and one corner of his mouth, in a look of studied cool. I bet he had been practising it in the mirror. I bet he had been practising it for years.
‘What happened,’ I said, struggling to keep my voice steady, ‘was wrong. You were wrong.’
That half-smile slipped off his face. ‘You’re saying I was wrong?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You had no right to do what you did.’
‘And there was me thinking it took two,’ he said.
My heart was pounding. I could feel the sweat trickling down my back. ‘I did not want you to do what you did,’ I said. ‘And it will not happen again.’
He stared at me now, eyes narrowed, looking every bit the petulant teenager.
I swallowed hard. ‘And I want you to promise me that you will tell no one.’
Slowly, he nodded his head. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘So that’s what this is about. You’re worried about your precious reputation.’
He smiled then, but it wasn’t a nice smile. And before I could say anything else he gave the bag on his back a shove and sauntered off down the street.
The following Friday Sam was invited to a party at a house just the other side of town. Normally, on such an occasion, he would stay over at Max’s. Normally, I would not have given it a second thought.
This time, I said, ‘I’ll come and pick you up, if you like.’ Yet even as I offered I was wondering what I would do with Ella, whether I would have to drag her out with me, to which she would most certainly object, or risk leaving her here on her own.
Sam looked at me, strangely. ‘What time?’ he said.
And I thought of Ella, and of how late I dare leave her. ‘Eleven?’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Sam wailed, the colour rushing into his face, ‘I can’t go home at eleven! Everyone would laugh at me!’
‘Well . . . I can’t really leave Ella,’ I said.
‘Then don’t leave her. I’ll stay at Max’s,’ Sam said, the fear of humiliation burning in his cheeks. ‘That’s what I always do. You just can’t pick me up.’
Sam spent hours getting ready for that party. I did not know that boys could take so long. Eventually he came downstairs in a waft of cheap aftershave, every hair carefully preened into place.
‘Lydia’s going to be there,’ Ella told me in a loud stage whisper, her big eyes gleefully round.
‘Oh,’ I mouthed back, and put a finger to my lips to hush her.
Sam had heard her anyway. His face, already flushed from the heat of the shower, turned pinker.
I dropped him off at Melanie’s at about eight that evening, without going in myself. And I went back to collect him on Saturday morning, when Ella was at the stables.
But he wasn’t there.
I knocked at Melanie’s door, and she looked almost surprised to see me. We had not spoken for over a week. Looking back, I think she must have assumed I’d come with an apology for my sudden aloofness, or an explanation at least. She stood in the open doorway, waiting for me to speak.
‘I’ve come for Sam,’ I said, and now she really looked taken aback.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he’s here.’
‘He stayed,’ I said. ‘After the party.’
It irritated me that Melanie didn’t know that my son was sleeping in her house, but it didn’t particularly surprise me. She walked into the living room and I followed, leaving the front door ajar. I didn’t expect to be there for long.
‘Max,’ Melanie yelled up the stairs. ‘Have you got Sam up there?’
We waited for a reply. I tried to think of some natural, chatty comment to make, to force myself to be friendly. I
clutched at the start of sentences in my head: How are you . . . sorry I’ve been so busy . . . I love your top . . . How much easier things would be if I could bridge the gap somehow, if I could reach beyond what Max had done and keep hold of my friendship with Melanie. How much easier, in every way.
But I couldn’t.
Melanie stood with her back to me, hostile.
‘Max!’ she shouted again, so loud the whole street would hear. Eventually Max stirred, and thudded his way down the stairs. I expected to hear a second set of footsteps in a moment: Sam’s.
‘What?’ Max said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
Oh so sweetly, her sarcasm aimed wholly at me, Melanie said, ‘Jane is under the impression that you have Sam hidden away upstairs.’
Max’s eyes darted to mine and just as quickly darted away again. ‘Well, I haven’t,’ he said.
‘He hasn’t,’ said Melanie. She folded her arms across her chest and looked at me. ‘OK now?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No.’ Panic flashed across my shoulders. ‘He has to be here. He said he was staying here.’ I looked from Max to Melanie and back to Max again. ‘Then where is he?’
Melanie said, ‘Perhaps he got lucky,’ and Max smirked.
I wanted to wipe that smirk off his face. I wanted to slap him. I said again, half shouting now, ‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know,’ Max muttered. ‘I thought he went home.’
‘But he didn’t!’
Max shrugged, and avoided my eye.
‘You want to calm down,’ Melanie said to me. ‘It’s not up to Max to know where Sam is. Max isn’t Sam’s keeper, you know.’
I managed to get the address of the party off them. It was at the house at the end of Bath Rise with the caravan parked out front, Max grudgingly told me, though he had nothing so useful as a number.
‘Where the hell is Bath Rise?’ I said.
And Melanie, showing me to the door, pointed up the street. ‘It’s off Angel Street. The new estate.’
And she closed the door, leaving me to it.
Surely, surely, Sam knew always to phone me if he changed his plans. I tried ringing his phone but it was turned off; no doubt the battery had gone down. But he could have used someone else’s phone, or the house phone. Anger with Sam competed with the panic in my heart and I clung to that anger – I did not dare consider that he might not still be at the house when I found it.
I drove erratically, looking for Bath Rise. It wasn’t off Angel Street; it turned out to be off Winkfield Drive, which itself was off Angel Street, and so I drove straight past it at first, wasting precious time. I had to be back at the stables for Ella in less than half an hour. Sam better be there; he simply had to be there.
I realized I didn’t even have the name of the person whose party it had been. ‘Some boy in my year,’ that’s all Sam had told me, and I hadn’t thought to ask Max. The new houses sprawled round, one road leading into another. I found the house; as well as the caravan parked out the front there were plenty of empty cans littering the drive, a smattering of broken glass and the partly burnt remains of an upholstered chair.
I rang the bell and a harassed-looking man answered.
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘No one stayed over. I got rid of the last of them in the early hours.’
I do not know how I managed to drive back to get Ella. All I could think was that I couldn’t lose both my children; I had to get Ella back where she should be, safe, before I could even think what to do about Sam. I drove too slowly for fear of driving too fast and not getting there at all; people overtook me on the road, some of them blasting their horns as they did so. My hands were so numb I could barely feel the wheel. I could not see beyond a foot ahead; my world had shrunk in on itself, boxed in by fear.
Ella had made her way halfway down the lane and was standing there on the roadside, cross because I was late.
‘Where were you?’ she complained, getting into the car. ‘I’ve been waiting for ages.’ She slunk down on the back seat, smelling of fresh air and horses. I drove on, hunched over that steering wheel, straining my eyes to see.
‘Where’s Sam?’ she asked when we were almost home, having noticed at last, that he wasn’t there.
I would have to phone David. This thought came into my head as though written on a list and I wanted to cross it straight back off that list. I did not want to phone David. I did not want this situation at all. I had trusted Sam. How could he not be where he was supposed to be?
I pulled up in our drive.
I had half expected Sam to be sitting there on the doorstep, waiting for me. Max had said he thought Sam had gone home, and I wanted to believe that. I wanted for there to have been some mix-up, and for Sam, magically, to have been transported all those lonely dark miles across the fields. I wanted him to be sitting there, waiting for me, and for him to stand up now, tired, hungry, happy to be home.
My house greeted me, as bleak as I had left it.
‘Put your stuff in the shed,’ I said to Ella.
‘What about Sam?’ she said.
And stupidly, as if we still lived in London, as if there were buses coming by every ten minutes, all day, all night long, I said, ‘He’ll be home in a minute.’
I walked into the house. My heart, if I ever had one, was stuck somewhere close to my lungs, a squashed, misshapen obstruction of a thing. I could not even feel my feet. I slapped my way across the cold tiled floor. I had worried about Sam getting lost in London. I had worried about all manner of things. The social pressures; the wrong friends; the bad influences upon my dear sweet boy. I had watched him go off to school with my heart in my throat. I had ideals then. I had hopes.
I made it to the kitchen and stood at the sink. I really did not know what to do. There were no streets to go out searching, no friends on whose doors to knock. I was in the wrong place; we all were. And my Sam was lost.
‘Mum! Mum!’ Ella was running across the garden. I watched her, as though through a dream. She started hammering on the back door. I listened, unable to make myself move.
‘Mum!’ she called. ‘Mum! Let me in. Sam’s in the shed.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
He was just sitting there, down among the old boots and paint pots and the lawnmower, arms around his drawn-up legs, face hidden on his knees.
‘Sam?’ I said. ‘What are you doing?’
‘He won’t talk, Mum,’ Ella said. ‘He won’t say anything.’
‘Sam?’ I said louder this time, as if to make him hear. The panic that I had felt dissipated now with relief that he was safe, but the anger stayed. The anger that he had put me through this; that I’d had to go into Melanie’s house and speak to Max; that whatever had happened, Sam hadn’t phoned. ‘I have just driven halfway across the county looking for you,’ I said, exaggerating somewhat. ‘How the hell do you think I felt when you weren’t at Melanie’s? Why weren’t you at Melanie’s and why didn’t you phone me?’
Sam’s arms unsnaked from around his legs, and wrapped themselves around his head instead. A beat of alarm kicked in my heart. Ella reached out a hand and patted him as if he was a cat and he flinched under her touch.
‘Are you OK, Sam?’ she asked tenderly.
‘What happened, Sam?’ I said, more gently now. ‘And how did you get home?’
He didn’t answer.
‘You didn’t walk, surely?’ I said. ‘It’s miles away. You could have got lost. You could have ended up anywhere.’ I could hear my voice, rising up again. Sam put his hands over his ears, shutting me out. He curled himself down into a tight, closed-up ball.
‘Come on, Sam. Come into the house,’ I said. ‘You can’t stay out here for ever. You’ll freeze to death.’
‘Good,’ Sam muttered into his knees, and a butterfly of fear flapped its wings in my chest.
He did come in, eventually. We coaxed him between us, Ella and I. He hobbled into the house like an invalid, exhausted. I fussed around in the shelter of my kitchen, scrambling h
im some eggs, heating a can of soup. All the while I talked, rambling on in a way that I thought any mother would ramble on in such circumstances, trying to keep things normal. I peppered my sentences with comforting ‘oohs’ and scolding ‘aahs’, just like Peter Rabbit’s mother in that dear old story, the story that Sam had loved so much as a child. But I was thinking on my feet, thinking ahead, covering myself. Because what if Max had said something to Sam?
He just couldn’t have. He wouldn’t dare.
‘I take it you’ve fallen out with Max,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t surprise me. That boy – I mean no disrespect – he isn’t always truthful, Sam. He isn’t an . . . easy character. I’ve thought it for a while. I know you’ve been friends for a long time, and I’ve been friends with Melanie, but, well, I don’t know, sometimes people aren’t what they seem, Sam. Sometimes it takes a while to realize that. Perhaps you’d do better to make other friends—’
Sam slammed down his spoon, splattering tomato soup everywhere. ‘Stop going on about Max,’ he shouted. ‘I don’t want to hear about fucking Max!’
He pushed back his chair so hard it fell over, smashing down on the tiles. And he went up to his room, and there he stayed for the rest of the day.
I had never heard Sam swear before, ever. That in itself was warning enough. I could not bring myself to think what Max might have said to him, but he had said something all right.
Later, Ella, who always loved a drama, said to me, ‘Do you think Sam’s upset because of Lydia? Do you think she doesn’t love him?’
Oh how I wished things might be as simple as that.
‘Maybe,’ I said, and I tried to ignore the pulse of foreboding throbbing through my head.
Strangely, whatever was going on in our house was put on hold for the hours that David was here on Sunday. It was as if there was an unspoken agreement: none of us wanted to involve Dad. I should take comfort from that at least. I should see in that the faintest flicker of hope.
Sam was very quiet, but I hoped that David was too preoccupied to notice. He spent most of his time here up a ladder, unblocking a blocked gutter, then raking the acorns off the lawn and sweeping up all the millions of leaves. I watched him, realizing how strange it must be for him to come back and do these dull, domestic things. I saw the expression on his face and I rather think that he thought that too, and my sympathy for him vanished.
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