Lullaby

by Claire Seeber

  Coming in still closer, he whispered, ‘There are ways to make me help you, you little tart, and we both know what they are, yeah?’

  I read the vicious lust in his look. His breath was warm and sour as he moved the hand from my breast, and it lingered cobra-like—until he shoved it between my legs. For Christ’s sake, was he going to rape me here before my doped-up brother; rape me while his girlfriend waited patiently outside?

  I struggled frantically, panting with the effort, but with every move I made his cock got harder, digging into my hip. The more I fought, the more turned-on he was. So I stopped fighting and stayed very still. I could feel my chest tightening, closing; I must try not to panic. I looked him in the eye and licked my lips; Black Narcissus tasted like crap. I could hear my wheezing loudly now.

  He thought this was his moment. He reached to my mouth, and I tried not to flinch. He brought my blood away on his finger, licked it lingeringly like a lover would. My stomach lurched queasily but he read my stillness as a signal, and he lunged down. I summoned every bit of hatred I felt for everyone involved, every person trying to hurt me and my son, and I kneed the filthy bastard where it’d hurt him most. With a yelp, he let go.

  Free of his weight, I fell forward onto my knees, spilling my bag across the floor. All I wanted was that photo of Louis. I scrabbled in the champagne sputum and the fag-butts for it, but General was back on his feet now, grunting, grabbing for me, and so I left the photo, I left Louis there, and I made a run for it. Vaguely, I thought I heard knocking downstairs and I ran towards the noise, gulping in air, praying I could keep breathing without having an attack. Rat’s-tail pushed past me on the stairs. ‘Oi, Gen! The fucking pigs are outside.’

  Silver—a little too late for me. I went flying down, taking two steps at a time. Robbie hadn’t even opened his eyes as I’d gone. I resisted the urge to shout into my brother’s face; instead, with a sob, I pummelled my way through the clothes standing sentinel to the madness going on above, sent a rack of trousers flying, grazing both knees as I fell. I was up again; the door was locked but I scrabbled with the bolts, the keys that Rat’s-tail had left swinging there, and I let myself out into that stinking alley, came out flying like a bat from a literal hell.

  Silver and DS Kelly were outside, a couple of uniformed men behind them. Silver, barking out orders to the others, tried to grab me as I passed but I slithered through his grasp, I couldn’t bear the thought of any touch right now. I thought I saw Deb sitting in an unmarked car on the road; in my confusion and my shame, I turned back the other way. I passed some middle-aged couple grunting in a doorway, his trousers round his knees, his arse pearly in the moonlight; I was halfway down the murky little alley before Silver caught me up. God alone knew where I was headed.

  ‘Jess, wait!’ he called, and his hand came down on my shoulder.

  ‘Get off me, please,’ I whispered, sliding away. I was seventeen again; I was locked in my old living room with that sweating rabid policeman. I needed my inhaler.

  ‘Jessica! Just wait a minute. What happened? Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ I intoned. I found my puffer, stopped to use it with blessed relief.

  ‘I must say that lipstick doesn’t do much for you, kiddo.’ He’d caught up with me. Then he peered closer in the half-light. ‘Is that blood?’

  I smeared the lipstick across my face with my hand; I was quite delirious with fear. ‘That bloke in there nearly—’ I heaved ‘—he nearly raped me and you’re making jokes.’

  Silver’s face went very still. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He had a photo of my son and he’s just—he mauled me. He wanted money,’ I sobbed, dry-eyed. ‘He’s an evil bastard. It’s him you need to get, not me. I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re not fine, you’re hurt.’ His face was still inscrutable, but his fingers tightened on my shoulders. ‘Let’s get you checked out now.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. Please, Silver, you need to find him. He might—I think he knows where Louis is.’

  ‘Jess, they’ve arrested him. He’s not going anywhere. Please, come with me now, will you?’

  I pulled away, bending to try and breathe. ‘I called you and you hung up. I needed you, Silver. You said any time, you’d be there—but you didn’t come.’ I started down the alley again, stumbling in my flip-flops that bent beneath my crazed, sore feet, and Silver reached out to steady me, but I was too fast for him. I ducked away but he was on my tail.

  ‘I couldn’t hear you, Jess. The line was too bad. Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Oh, sorry—I forgot you were busy.’ Anger began to pulse through me like a strobe until I was gibbering with hurt and fury and pure terror. ‘Did you fancy the lovely Agnes too? I expect you did. My husband still does, apparently. She’s very beautiful, don’t you think?’

  And suddenly my anger turned to ice, and a chill went through my body, pervading my very bones. I had never felt so sad and lonely in my life. The streets around me were filled with people: party-seekers and kids searching for cheap fun; City boys scoring Tanya’s coke; parents rushing home to relieve babysitters after a rare night out—but me? I was utterly alone, caught in the middle of the most abject misery, the hardest, most unrelenting misery I’d ever felt. The only thing that was ever really mine had gone; had been snatched from me; my reason to breathe each morning was out of reach. Unconsciously, I’d waited all my life for Louis, and when he’d come I’d woken from my slumber. Now someone else had got him. Every day it got harder to believe in him, in his fuzzy peach face and his crooked gappy grin.

  The tears came at last. I doubled over and I cried like I was dying; I sobbed the air in like I was taking my last breaths. I went down on my knees like I had that first night Louis went, and slowly and deliberately I banged my head against the pavement.

  ‘Stop, Jess, please. You’ll really hurt yourself.’ Silver was down beside me, holding me, restraining my head, rocking me like a little child, and I struggled for a while until I couldn’t any more. I rested my bleeding head on his chest and covered his smart shirt with tears and blood and Tanya’s dodgy lipstick, cried and cried and sucked at my inhaler, trying to breathe before I collapsed forever under all the pain. I hugged him like I hadn’t really hugged anyone since my dad had gone. Eventually my wheezing slowed, and the tears began to trickle less, and then he wiped my face with the pristine pocket-handkerchief that someone had ironed for him, and he half-carried me to the waiting car. He did it all so kindly and so gently that I nearly forgave him for not being there when I’d needed him. Nearly, but not quite.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I stood in the shower and it was truly freezing, so cold it took my breath away, making my teeth ache in my throbbing head. I was sore and bruised; my forehead was grazed from where I’d hit it on the pavement, my legs cut from falling in the shop. I was dirty all over, filthy from where that man had touched me. But the physical pain faded rapidly beside my longing. I desperately craved some solace, but I didn’t know what would do it.

  My world was crashing round my ears. I took a pill again, I really didn’t care now, I would take lots; and I went to bed with Shirl lying beside me. I couldn’t be alone, not now, not ever again, so she held my hand and promised it would work out—but I didn’t believe her any more.

  Deb tiptoed in as I was drifting off and leant down to say they’d taken General and my brother into custody, and that made me want to cry again; but I fell asleep before I found the energy for more tears.

  In the morning I got up early again and crept out of my room, leaving Shirl muttering, rolling in my warm spot, snoring softly. I opened the back door and heard the birds, and thought how hollow their hopeful sound suddenly seemed. I made coffee so strong it was thick and oily, I piled it with sugar, and then I sat on the floor of the living room and watched our few tapes of Louis, right from when he was born. I traced his face on the screen, and sobbed until my eyes were nearly swollen shut with tears.

 
; I thought of how I’d felt back when he was born, felt that I was playing a game, playing at being a grownup. How for weeks after my terrifying vision in the hospital of losing my new love, my baby son, I’d watch Mickey, who would just sit and gaze at him. ‘I just want to protect him,’ he’d say, but I was panicking. I’d turned away because I was so scared. I thought now of my useless parents and how frightened I’d been that I’d be just like them. I remembered the day when Mickey wasn’t there any more, left me with my son, alone; the day Louis looked up at just me, stared me in the eyes, and cooed. I’d looked behind me—but no one else was there. It was the day my heart began to thaw. It actually made me smile now.

  Eventually I switched off the TV and fetched more coffee and then Deb arrived, yawning. She saw my reddened eyes, but she didn’t mention them. We sat at the kitchen table, companionably quiet now, eating our toast. My mouth was sore and bruised from General’s ring. I wondered what I should do next. And then Deb’s phone rang and it was Silver, wanting to speak to me. He told me he’d had to let Robbie go; he’d committed no offence that they could charge him with, and secretly I was relieved. I knew my brother was no danger really, that he’d only lost his way. Mostly I was relieved that they were keeping that other bastard General in.

  Then Silver said he was going to Sussex for the day.

  ‘I must come with you,’ I pleaded.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sorry, Silver, but it’s non-negotiable. If you don’t take me, I’ll go alone. I’ll just follow you.’ And I would. Finally, he agreed. I passed the phone back to Deb.

  ‘Right, sir. See you there.’ She hung up. ‘DI Silver wants me to take you to meet him now. They’ve got some sort of new lead.’

  Hope shot through me yet again, making my hands tremble. I told myself it was the caffeine. Though I didn’t speak it, Deb must have sensed my surge of energy.

  ‘Just—’

  I was already dashing out the room when she grabbed my arm. ‘Just don’t get your hopes up too high, okay? These things can take time.’

  But how much time did they want? It was over a week since I’d seen my son.

  ‘I won’t,’ I agreed. But I was lying. This was it, I was quite sure. ‘But I’ve got a good feeling about it, you know, Deb. It’s that General bloke. He’s told them something, hasn’t he? I mean, how did he get that photo of Louis if he’s not involved? God, he was foul.’ I shuddered as I looked back at her from the door. ‘You know, my Uncle Jack always did say I had a touch of the psychic about me. And I feel—I do feel like something good is about to happen. Finally.’

  Deb smiled despite herself. ‘Well, let’s hope so, Jess. You deserve it, don’t you? I’m crossing all my fingers.’

  She drove me through the suburbs that sprawled beyond Blackheath, through the cut-price bathroom stores and the Chinese takeaways, past cherry-cheeked girls pushing smart prams bought on the never-never, out to Sidcup, where Kent begins. It was hardly the Garden of England it proclaimed to be. We met Silver at a petrol station; he came out of the kiosk drinking Diet Coke, without his jacket on, and I felt uncomfortable again. It was a bit like seeing your favourite teacher naked. I dumped my stuff on the back seat of his car while he and Deb muttered together. Then he opened the passenger door for me.

  ‘Looks like you’re with me,’ he said, as I waved her off. ‘No puking this time, right?’

  ‘I can’t promise anything,’ I said breezily, squeezing past him. ‘I do get very carsick you know.’ I plopped into the car seat. ‘And Diet Coke’s really a bit gay, don’t you think, for big butch policemen, I’d say.’ I grinned at his expression.

  Silver kept trying to read the map while he was driving. Finally, as he took yet another bad corner and I smacked my bruised head against the window for the umpteenth time, I lost my patience.

  ‘If you just tell me where we’re going I can read the map for you.’ I grabbed the atlas from the dashboard where he was attempting to hold it open with one hand.

  ‘Eastbourne. South Downs. Near Beachy Head,’ he said.

  ‘Beachy Head?’ Alarm bells rang. ‘Beachy Head, as in the most notorious suicide spot in England? Fantastic.’

  He ignored me, opened another can of drink, spraying it across the car.

  ‘But why there? Why would anyone take Louis there?’

  ‘Look, Jessica, I’m not saying he is there. You have to prepare yourself for that. But there are a few positive leads which are worth really checking out. And’, I couldn’t read his look, ‘the change of scenery might do you good.’

  My world drew in, grew smaller as he spoke. My head was in that clamp again.

  ‘I’m meeting Kelly and the Sussex lads down there.’ He popped another stick of gum in as we swerved precariously round a poor dead badger who looked like he’d just forgotten to keep moving.

  The countryside was too gorgeous for the occasion. We swept down tiny, lush green lanes, trees hugging above our heads. Red-bricked oast-houses with roofs like snowy curls of foolscap flanked the bigger roads, and, in the woods beyond the lanes, saplings stood bristly as a hairbrush. It all seemed strangely familiar.

  Silver’s phone rang. He answered it as he drove. Perhaps policemen were allowed to do what normal people weren’t.

  ‘Don’t cry, kiddo,’ I heard him say. ‘Please don’t cry.’

  I stared out of the window trying not to listen, trying not to feel a little envious as he reassured another woman.

  ‘I’ll be there next weekend, I promise. And if I can’t, I’ll get Mum to bring you down, okay? Yes, she will. She will, Molly, if I ask her to. We won’t, kiddo. I promise; no more arguing. What—why?’ His face went dark as he listened to his daughter. I felt terrible for my envy of a moment ago.

  ‘He hasn’t said anything bad, has he? Well, then. Look, I know you don’t like him much, but you’ll get used to him.’ He took a deep breath. A tic went in his cheek. I stared at my hands. ‘You will. He’s not that bad now, is he, Moll? I thought he bought you that nice book about the ballerina?’

  He swapped the phone to his other hand, the car veered very gently. ‘I love you too, sweetie-pie. Of course you can stay. I’ve got the marshmallows in already. Oh, and Moll? Don’t forget to bring the picture you did of—yes, that’s the one. I’ve got a frame for it now. Pride of place, that’s right. Above the telly. Yeah, big kiss to you too, my bonny lass. Big kisses all round, all right, kiddo?’

  Inexplicable tears pricked my tired eyes. He flung the phone down, glanced at me quickly.

  ‘Youngest daughter,’ he said quietly. ‘Struggling with her mum’s new fella.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ I felt so sorry for him at that moment that I sought desperately for something soothing to say. ‘I expect it’s, you know, very hard—’

  ‘It is.’ He spat his gum out of the window almost violently, and turned the stereo on. I shut up.

  ‘Silver,’ I said meekly, a short time later, when he was a bit more composed. I remembered last night’s hysteria with a shudder.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered idly, one hand on the wheel, the other arm casual on his open window. For the first time, I noticed a small scar beneath his left eye.

  ‘What did you really think of Agnes? Did you—’ I cleared my throat ‘—do you think she’s very beautiful?’

  ‘Cold fish. And her eyes are too close together,’ he said. Then he turned the radio up, his arm brushing my bare skin. ‘No competition,’ I thought he muttered quietly. Perhaps it was in my head. I thought about Mickey, about how he would have been riled just by me asking the question.

  We didn’t talk much the rest of the way.

  Outside a newsagent’s near Eastbourne Pier, DC Kelly was leaning on his car, eating a pork pie and reading the paper. Behind him in a marked Panda, a uniformed copper I didn’t know was talking on the radio. Kelly’s stomach had swollen back to its original size, a convenient shelf for all the crumbs he was dropping as he ate.

  ‘All right, Guv? Mrs Finnegan.’ He waved h
is lunch at us. If he was surprised to see me, he didn’t show it. Silver looked rather squeamishly at the greasy pie and fished his tie from his pocket. ‘Any good?’ he asked.

  ‘Not bad, Guv, thanks.’

  ‘Not the pie, you fool. The witness.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, sir. Well, not sure really.’ Kelly shot me a swift look. ‘Same thing—long hair, metallic car, screaming baby. Shopkeeper thought it was really odd that she didn’t seem to know what sort of baby milk to buy. Very flustered, apparently. Had seen the story on TV. Jogged his memory.’ Kelly gestured to the newspaper flapping gently in the mild sea-breeze.

  ‘Only trouble is, this bird—’ another quick look at me. ‘Sorry—this woman was dark. Other two said blonde. Constable’s getting the artist down.’

  Silver sighed. ‘I’d better have a word. You all right here, Jessica?’

  The two men went into the shop. Full of apprehension, I took over Kelly’s spot, glancing at the local paper he’d left behind. My story was on the front page, a description of the woman, another photo of Louis. I imagined the smile and blur of a thousand little faces whizzing through the presses; the photo of my son reprinted infinite times. How weird it was to have my life in strangers’ hands, people I knew nothing of trying to help. A harsher truth, perhaps—people I didn’t know simply doing their jobs.

  When they came out, Silver wanted to meet the first two callers from the other day. He wanted the artist’s impression done right now, again. Why hadn’t it happened already? We drove too fast round Eastbourne, above the azure sea, past the floral displays gaudy with mismatched splendour; revved impatiently behind lavender-haired old dears in ageing maroon Metros, never topping twenty on the clock; past peeling, white-fronted B&Bs with their endless ‘VACANCIES’ signs.

  Each time Silver got back in the car I felt his tension increase. The last time, out in Meads village with its elegant townhouses festooned with fading hollyhocks, he simply couldn’t hide it. The student witness had apparently been stoned and incoherent. ‘I’ve got half a mind to book him,’ he muttered to Kelly, who tried to pacify his boss with a conciliatory mumble that was ignored.