Keeping Sam

by Joanne Phillips

  Surfing the Internet was not an activity Barbara had indulged in often. She knew that Margaret at the health club liked to order her groceries ‘online’ but couldn’t see the point of this herself. David was always buying this or that from the web – mainly things to do with golf or first editions of boring old books. But she knew it had more important uses than retail therapy. She had heard all about the Internet’s magical ability to help anyone search for anything.

  What she was searching for was people. Or, more specifically, one person. Evan Williams. Father of Samuel; on-again, off-again boyfriend of her daughter for over a decade. He was out there somewhere, and Barbara intended to find him. The only problem was, she had absolutely no idea where to start.

  So far she had found the online version of the phone book and typed his name into the little box. The search for E. Williams in the Manchester area produced more than twenty names, but short of phoning each one personally, Barbara had no idea how to narrow it down. Kate had told her that Evan dropped out of ‘the scene’, as she so charmingly put it, just before Barbara came to stay when Samuel was only a few weeks old; she had been sure he’d moved away so as to avoid all contact with Kate and his baby. This wouldn’t have surprised Barbara at all. Although she’d never met him, she didn’t have a high regard for someone who could abandon his own child, no matter how annoying Kate might have been. But she thought she knew enough about human nature to think it fairly certain that he would gravitate back towards his old hunting ground eventually. It took guts and stamina to start up from scratch in a new location; she doubted Evan had it in him.

  The library’s home page on the computer had its own search facility, so Barbara thought she’d try this next. She typed in the name carefully. 2,120,000 results. That was not narrowing it down. She huffed and sat back in her chair. Bloody computers. She should have known not to trust them.

  ‘Are you okay?’ a voice to her left asked quietly. Barbara swung round. She hadn’t noticed that the rabble had gone and been replaced by an earnest-looking young man in black-framed glasses.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said automatically.

  The man nodded and turned back to his own console. Barbara looked again at her screen. She tried retyping Evan’s name, this time with the surname first. It made no difference at all. She tutted loudly, annoyed with herself as much as the computer.

  A second or two later the young man spoke again. ‘Are you sure I can’t help you with anything?’

  Barbara told him politely no. And then she thought, why not? She was certain Kate had people fawning around her all the time.

  She gave the young man her best, most helpless smile. ‘Actually, maybe you can. You don’t know anything about computers, do you? It’s my son. He’s missing, you see, and I’m just desperate to find him …’

  Chapter 8

  The box arrived on Saturday morning, delivered by courier to the house on Bow Hill. Marie stood at the bottom of the stairs and called for Kate, her voice high-pitched with excitement.

  ‘Something for you,’ she cried. ‘Something very big!’

  The box was indeed enormous, the size of a washing machine or freezer. Kate had been sitting up in bed, gazing out of the dusty window, watching the progress of a black cat over the random collection of fences that separated the terraced gardens of Bow Hill. At the sound of Marie’s voice she climbed out of bed, pulled on her thin dressing gown, and reached for her crutch.

  She stepped gingerly down the stairs, holding onto the banister with her free hand. The courier was still in the narrow hallway, forced to stand far too close to a delighted Marie, who was leaning on the box to scrawl her name onto an electronic pad. You could tell she was taking her time over it, enjoying every minute.

  ‘I wonder what it is?’ Marie said. Kate shook her head and edged closer. The courier grabbed the device as soon as Marie let go of the stylus and headed for the door. Marie laughed and waved to him, then she turned to Kate and clapped her hands.

  ‘He can bring me a box any day of the week,’ she said, grinning.

  ‘Marie, you are incorrigible. He’s at least half your age.’

  ‘Who cares about age when he’s got muscles like that?’

  ‘What about Big Tony? Doesn’t he have muscles too?’

  Marie smiled wistfully. ‘He certainly does, my dear. In all the right places.’

  The box took up most of the hallway. Kate scanned the label; the return address was in Manchester. It must be her things out of storage. So this was what her whole life amounted to, this was all that was left. When you thought about it that way, it didn’t seem such a big box after all.

  Just then a key turned in the door. Kate looked up in surprise, and then found herself unaccountably reddening when she saw Patrick squeezing into the narrow hallway.

  ‘You dirty stop out,’ Marie said, her eyes glinting. ‘Putting in an all-nighter on the sly. I didn’t know he had it in him,’ she added, turning to wink at Kate. ‘And such a quiet, mild-mannered boy.’

  Patrick pressed himself back against the door, his expression dubious.

  ‘Oh, come on past,’ Marie said, pulling in her stomach. ‘You can just about get through.’

  Kate breathed in his scent of the outdoors as he passed her, his chest level with her face, his arm briefly brushing hers. The contact was electric, a shock wave through her body, filling her with heat. For a moment she felt a little lightheaded, and she leaned on the box for support.

  ‘Who was the lucky lady?’ Marie cried as Patrick began to mount the stairs. He turned and grinned. Kate noticed again how his face seemed to come alive when he smiled. She seemed hyper-aware of every detail of his face, his hair, the shape of his body.

  ‘You know perfectly well I’ve been at work,’ he told Marie, shaking his head in mock despair. ‘Honestly, you’ll give our new resident the worst kind of impression.’

  His accent was mildly Scottish, only a hint, but it gave his voice a soft, melodic note.

  ‘And I imagine you are very concerned about making the right impression on our lovely Kate, aren’t you?’ Marie teased. Kate felt her cheeks growing pink again; she could see that Patrick was embarrassed too. He started up the stairs again, but Marie hadn’t finished with him yet.

  ‘Hold your horses! We need a big strong man to carry this up to Kate’s room. You can’t expect us feeble ladies to do it.’

  Marie gave the box an almighty shove, but it didn’t budge. She winked again at Kate as Patrick lifted the box with ease. Marie followed him up the stairs, making swooning gestures behind his back while Kate threw her friend warning glares and tried very hard not to fixate her eyes on Patrick’s very attractive behind. The poor man. How he’d lived in this house with Marie as his landlady for over two years was beyond Kate’s comprehension.

  Once the box was safely installed in Kate’s room, Marie bustled off to find scissors to cut the tape and Patrick made himself scarce. Suddenly, Kate found she couldn’t wait for the scissors. She had no idea what she would find in there – she had spent so much time thinking about Sam, focusing on Sam, she’d hardly given a thought to her life before. She grabbed her keys and stabbed them into the brown tape, dragging them along the join until the top of the box flew open. She lifted the flaps and peered inside.

  Whoever had put this lot into storage had packed it with care. Polystyrene chips filled the space, flying up around her as she grabbed the first thing her fingers touched, landing on the carpet like snow around her feet. The inside smelt of a musty garage, but didn’t feel damp. She pulled out a plastic vacuum-packed bag that looked to be full of clothes and laid it on the floor. Next came a painted wooden jewellery box, bringing with it a sharp stab of memory – Evan, reflected behind her in their bedroom mirror, doing up the silver choker he had bought for her birthday. She opened the jewellery box and rifled through it. The silver choker wasn’t there; nor were any of her better pieces of jewellery. Well, of course they weren’t. Everything of value must have b
een taken during the break-in.

  ‘Oh, sweetie, I see you’ve managed without me.’ Marie arrived back in Kate’s room, out of breath and holding a pair of kitchen scissors. Kate looked up. She had sunk to the floor, clutching the jewellery box to her chest, pulled back through time by her memories of another life. She started blankly at Marie: who was this woman, and what was she doing here? A stab of fear shot through her at the sight of the scissors, but then her memory reoriented itself and the fear ebbed away. Kate shook her head. Corrin Cove. Bow Hill. Sam.

  Sam.

  She said, ‘Marie, please don’t be offended but I’d really rather do this alone. These are my things, you see. From … from before.’

  Marie nodded, and then she did something that Kate thought was extraordinary. She bent down and kissed Kate lightly on top of her head. ‘My dear thing,’ she said, ‘you know where I am if you need me.’

  Once Marie had gone, and Kate had heard her footsteps on the stairs, the door to her own rooms on the ground floor slamming cheerfully behind her, she reached into the box again. She laid out each item, one by one, on the worn carpet. A plastic file full of out-of-date paperwork and unpaid bills; a photograph album with curling cellophane pockets and a ramshackle handful of prints shoved inside; three pairs of shoes, snuggled together heel to toe, and a stack of clothes wrapped in tissue. Another flat-packed bag of linen; a stack of paperback novels; a collection of postcards, bound together with elastic bands. A plastic carrier bag of toiletries; a grubby-looking bright green handbag and various belts and scarves. Near the bottom were two cardboard cartons filled with ornaments wrapped in newspaper.

  Kate unwrapped one sheet of newspaper and looked at the date. She scanned the headlines, feeling like a time-traveller, feeling lightheaded and a little strange. She recognised everything, and yet none of it seemed to be her, somehow. It seemed to belong to a different Kate, an earlier version. A Kate who collected china owls, who read books for fun, who bought shampoo for colour-treated hair. She ran a hand through her hair and wondered whether someone had cut it for her while she was asleep. Any colour had grown out or washed out a long time ago.

  She reached into the carton again and pulled out a wooden concertina sewing box. The tiny hinges squeaked as she opened both sides of the lid. Inside, a mass of thread and bobbins and ribbons and pins greeted her in cheerful chaos. She ran her hand through the rainbow colours and smiled sadly. Here was the Kate she remembered. Sewing had filled the void in her life when she and Evan began to drift apart. She’d discovered a natural talent for following patterns, loving the feel of crinkly brown paper pinned to fabric, delighting in the way each pattern piece fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle.

  She thrust her arms into the cavernous box, rummaging through the remainder of the polystyrene chippings. It must be in here. In fact, that would have been what made the box so heavy. Her fingers touched something solid and cold, and she breathed out in relief. It was here. She felt her way around it, lovingly stroking the machine’s curved bulk. It was too cumbersome for her to pull out of the box herself. She looked around, biting her lip, then had an idea. Leverage was what she needed. Suddenly imbued with an energy she hadn’t felt for the longest time, Kate dragged the massive box over to the bed. She stood and wedged her body against it, then she reached down again, gripping the sewing machine with both hands, and heaved. It moved about an inch.

  ‘Damn it.’ She just wasn’t strong enough. In her old life she could have done this. She remembered heaving the ancient machine up the stairs to her flat and installing it on the kitchen table. How she had loved to sit there sewing while Sam gurgled in his playpen or sat in the high chair by her side. She had made him more outfits than he could ever wear, had spent hours online searching for new patterns, becoming a regular fixture at the haberdasher’s she found in one of the older, less affluent parts of Manchester’s sprawling centre.

  But now, even with her arms strengthened from all these weeks hauling herself around, she was too weak to get her most prized possession out of a cardboard box.

  ‘No,’ she said out loud, not caring if Marie or Patrick heard her talking to herself. She tried to picture Joseph’s challenging face, his tone of blithe instruction. He would tell her it was all in her mind. He would say she could do it if she really wanted to.

  Kate set to work. She stuffed the polystyrene chippings back into the box, batting at them as they flew up around her face and got stuck in her hair. Once the sewing machine was well and truly packed in, she carefully lowered the box onto its side. From this position she could simply slide the machine out, and then righten it once it was clear of the box. She looked down at her handiwork, brushing the white chippings off her legs and her arms, then she tipped the nearly empty box upside down, laughing again at the cascade of snow, feeling free and strong. Her hands itched to get hold of some fabric, to begin that satisfying process of cutting and matching, tacking and hemming. She picked up a loose bobbin and rolled it around in her palm.

  What if she were to start making clothes again? Or what if she offered some kind of alteration service locally? It might be a way to earn some money, a way give her and Sam a better start in their new life together. A way to get back on her feet.

  Kate jumped up, her scalp tingling with excitement. Marie would know people – didn’t she go to that slimming group at the community centre? There might be successful dieters in need of clothes taking in, and she could put up a poster in the newsagent’s and advertise for customers, start off small and grow by word-of-mouth. She could check out the competition, find out what they charged, make sure she wasn’t too expensive, but just add that personal touch ...

  She ran her hand through her collection of threads and allowed the nugget of excitement to grow. Her room sat in disarray, packaging and clothes and boxes strewn by her feet, but Kate didn’t care. A plan was forming, and for the first time in years she felt strong. Better than strong. She felt in control of her future.

  Chapter 9

  The weekend passed in a flurry of activity, and while it didn’t drive thoughts of Sam from her mind, Kate found that having something to do helped her cope with missing him just a little bit better. She enlisted Marie’s help in setting up the sewing machine, and Marie had shot straight upstairs to get Patrick, who appeared on Sunday morning carrying a fold-out table he’d found at the junk shop on the Parade. Marie had her own contribution: a boxful of old curtains and a stack of vintage bedding.

  ‘They were my mother’s,’ Marie explained, throwing the fabric onto Kate’s bed with no care at all. ‘I’ve never had a clue what to do with them.’

  Kate picked up a set of curtains – sunshine yellow with a pattern of green and gold leaves – and stroked them in awe. ‘These are silk,’ she said. ‘They must be worth a fortune.’ The fabric was soft against her cheek; they smelt of perfume, the flowery kind that no one wore anymore.

  Marie shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t want them. Maybe you could make me a dress or something,’ she added, laughing as though the very idea was completely impossible. But Kate nodded slowly.

  A swift assessment of the contents of her storage box had produced very few wearable clothes for Kate herself. Most of the items she had thought to be clothing when they were vacuum-packed in the transparent storage bags had turned out to be either her own collection of fabric scraps or the bits and pieces she’d made for Sam during the first few months of his life. These were currently hanging in Sam’s room, or in what would soon be his room, even though it was doubtful they’d actually fit him. Kate’s favourite piece was a sailor’s outfit she’d constructed for Sam when he was six months old. She remembered that she had used offcuts from an old shirt Evan left behind, and some navy cord from a skirt she sourced in a charity shop. The buttons had been scavenged from a jacket left behind from Kate’s clubbing days, the ship design perfect for the tiny outfit. Kate had sat at the kitchen table for hours, working in the light of an angle-poise lamp clamped to the edge of the chipped Fo
rmica, sewing on the buttons so securely they could never be pulled off by tiny hands. The sailor suit was her finest piece, and she longed to show it to Sam. She wondered whether he would remember it – maybe not consciously, but perhaps the memory of the sense of it, of how she had made it just for him, would have lived on inside him somehow.

  There was no sign of the angle-poise lamp, but the table Patrick had bought for her was practically the twin of her old one. Kate tried to pay him for it, but Patrick wouldn’t hear of it.

  ‘It cost buttons,’ he told her. He was under the table, replacing a blown fuse in the socket she needed for the sewing machine. Kate watched him from her perch on the bed. He was lovely, there was no denying it. Even in his Sunday scruffs – loose T-shirt and greying shorts – he had a presence that made Kate aware of his every movement. He was different from Evan, different from any man Kate had met before.

  Patrick was nice.

  ‘Well, that’s lucky, because I have buttons,’ she said lightly. ‘I can pay you with them.’

  He eased out from under the table and looked up at her, his eyes twinkling. ‘Okay. It’s a deal. You can pay me in buttons.’

  Was he flirting with her? Kate had no idea. But if she couldn’t read his signals, she was even less adept at reading her own.

  ***

  On Monday morning, Kate dressed in her smartest pair of jeans and a white blouse she remembered buying from a Manchester boutique during one of her flush spells.

  ‘Morning,’ Marie said, magically appearing in her doorway just as Kate reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘Off out, are we?’

  ‘Physio,’ Kate explained with a grimace.

  ‘Ah, yes. Hold on a minute.’ Marie disappeared back into her part of the house, which Kate had yet to explore, but which she imagined to be decorated in bright, gaudy colours with lamps shrouded in tasselled scarves and cushions plumping up every conceivable surface. She tapped her fingers against the worn wooden banister, then glanced at her watch. Her appointment was in fifty minutes. She’d be pressed to make it to the bus stop in time if she hung around much longer.