Walking with Skye through a shopping centre was strange and familiar. We both looked around in the same way as we used to. Searching for good opportunities, I suppose – only nowadays all I was looking for were half-price sales.
Skye bought football boots, flashy beyond Nathan’s wildest dreams. They had ten differently coloured inserts for designer stripes, extra studs and a tool kit. She threw in an England strip for nine-year-olds and paid for everything with a credit card in the name of Skye Rosetti. She caught me looking and said, “I had to marry a Rosetti for the Green Card. But I liked the name so I kept it.”
I called on all my nerve and asked, “What happened to Mr Bo?”
“Oh look, shoes,” she cried and flung herself through the door of the fanciest, most minimal shoe shop I’d ever seen.
“Do we have to?” Nathan whined. He wanted to change into his England strip.
“Ungrateful little toad,” Skye said cheerfully. “Here, kid, take your mom shopping.” She handed him a roll of twenty-pound notes.
“Wow!” he said.
“No,” I said. “Absolutely, no.”
“Fuck off,” she said. “Have a good time. Meet me at the Food Court on the ground floor in an hour. Don’t be late. And kid? I want to see at least one strictly-for-fun gift for your mom. Don’t try to scoop it all – I know you guys.”
“She said fu—”
“Nathan,” I warned as we walked away, “grown ups say stuff. And don’t think we’re going to spend all that money. You don’t want your aunt to think you’re greedy, do you?”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
All kids are wanty – they can’t help it. But I love the way he’s shocked by swearing. I melt at his piety. He wouldn’t believe it if I told him what I was like at his age. And I was the goody-goody one who crawled away from a smashed-up childhood via the schoolyard.
An hour later he had the hoodie jacket he’d wanted for months. He also bought a notebook and the complete range of metallic coloured gel pens. I chose The Best of Blondie CD for myself because for some reason I can’t listen to Blondie without wanting to dance. There was still a thick wedge of money to give back to Skye.
She was ten minutes late, and when she turned up she was followed by Wayne who was carrying enough bags to fill my spare room from floor to ceiling.
We sat in the octagon-shaped food court which had a carp pool and a fountain at its centre. Wayne took most of the bags back to the car.
Skye said, “C’mon over here, kid, I got something else for you.”
“Skye.” I held my hand up. “Stop. We have to talk about this. You’re putting me in a very awkward position.”
“I knew you’d spoil it.” Nathan’s mutinous lower lip began to shake.
Skye said, “Look at it this way, sis – how many birthdays have I missed? How many …?”
“Nine,” Nathan interrupted, “and nine plus nine Christmases make, um, eighteen.”
“See how smart he is? He’s a good kid who goes to school and learns his times tables, and I got a lot of auntying to catch up with. Right, kid?”
“Right.”
“But I understand your mom’s point of view. She doesn’t want me to spoil you. Your mom likes to do things the hard way, see. And I don’t want to spoil you either ’cos I think you’re perfect the way you are. So here’s what we’ll do. Do you have a cell phone?”
“We call them mobiles over here,” Nathan said bossily. “Mum’s got one but it’s old and she says we can’t afford two.”
“I can’t afford two sets of bills,” I said. “Skye, you would not be doing me a favour if you’re thinking of giving him one.” I put the roll of twenties we hadn’t spent into her hand. “You’ve been very kind, but rich relations can be too expensive.”
She stared at the money in astonishment. Then she closed her hand over it and tucked it safely into her handbag. “Okay, okay. But I’ve got two phones and they have lots of cool applications. Want to play a game, kid?”
I watched them poring intently over the phones, two curly heads close enough to touch. Nathan’s love of technology has been obvious since he first tried to feed his cheese sandwich into the VCR slot, so he didn’t take long to master Skye’s phone. I kept my mouth shut, but I was proud of him.
Suddenly I was content. I was drinking good coffee and eating a fresh Danish with my clever son and my unfamiliar sister. I was not counting pennies and rationing time. Worry went on holiday.
“Can I go, Mum?” Nathan was tugging my sleeve, his eyes alive with fun.
“What? Where?”
“Just down the end there.” Skye pointed to the far end of the mall. “He’ll have my phone and be in touch at all times. You don’t need to worry.”
“I’m Nathan Bond, secret agent.”
“I don’t know,” I began, but exactly then Skye turned her face away from Nathan, towards me and I saw with dismay that she’d begun to cry. So I let him go.
“Gimme a minute.” She blotted her eyes on her fur-trimmed cuff. “That’s a terrific kid you got there. I guess you musta done something right.”
“What happened to you, Skye?”
“Mr Bo died a year ago. He was shot by some county cops in a convenience store raid. Stupid bastard. I wasn’t with him – hadn’t been for years – but we kept in touch. That’s when I started to look for you. I thought if he was dead, you could forgive me.”
“Oh, Skye.” I took her hand. Just then I heard my son’s voice say, “Nathan to HQ – I’m in position. Can you hear me?”
She picked up her phone. “Loud and clear. Commence transmission. You remember how to do that?” She held the phone away from her ear and even in the crowded food court I heard the end of Nathan’s indignant squawk. She gave me a watery smile but her voice was steady.
He must have started sending pictures because she forgot about me and stared intently at her little screen. Then she said, “HQ to Nathan – see that tall man in black? He’s got a black and red scarf on. Yes. That’s the evil Doctor Proctor.”
“Skye?” I put my hand on her arm but she shook me off, got up and moved a couple of steps away.
I got up too and heard her say, “ … to the men’s room. Wayne will be there. He’ll give you the goods. Can you handle that?”
“No he can’t handle that,” I shouted, grabbing for the phone. “What’re you doing, Skye?”
She twisted out of my grasp. “Let go, stupid, or you’ll wreck everything. You’ll put your kid in trouble.”
I took off, sprinting down the mall, dodging families, crowds, balloons and Santas, cracking my shins on push chairs, bikes and brand-new tricycles.
I arrived, out of breath and nearly sobbing with anxiety, at one of the exits. There was no Nathan, no tall man in black, no Wayne. I saw a security uniform and rushed at him. “Have you seen my son? He’s wearing the England strip, red and white boots and a black hoodie. He’s nine. His name’s Nathan.” I was jumping up and down. “I think he might’ve gone into the Gents with a tall man in black and a black and red scarf.” Terror gripped the centre of my being. “I don’t know where the Gents is.”
“Kids do wander off this time of year,” the security man said. “Me, I think it’s the excitement and the greed. I shouldn’t worry. I’ll go look for him in the toilets, shall I? You stay here in case he comes back.”
But I couldn’t wait.
He said tiredly, “Do you know how many kids there are in England strips this season? Wait here; you aren’t allowed in the men’s facility.”
I couldn’t wait there either. I pushed in behind him, calling my son’s name. There were several boys of various ages – several men too – but no Nathan, no Wayne and no man in black.
“Don’t worry,” the security man said, although he was himself beginning to look concerned. “I’ll call this in. Natty … ”
“Nathan.”
“We’ll find your boy in no time. Wait here and … ”
But I was off and runni
ng back to the food court to find Skye. She had the other phone. She knew where Nathan was.
Except, of course, there was no sign of her.
I found our table. No one had cleared it. Under my seat was the carrier bag containing Nathan’s old shoes, his ordinary clothes, his gel pens and my CD. I lifted his sweater to my nose as if I were a bloodhound who could track him by scent alone.
My heart was thudding like heavy metal in my throat. I couldn’t swallow. Sweat dripped off my frozen face.
The most fundamental rule in all the world is to keep your child safe – to protect him from predators. I’d failed. My family history of abuse and neglect was showing itself in my nature too. Whatever made me think I could make a better job of family life than my mother? Neglect was bred into me like brown eyes and mad hair. There could be no salvation for Nathan or me.
I was fifteen when I lost Skye.
“We’ll start again in the Land of Opportunity,” said ex-jailbird, Mr Bo. “But we’ll go via the Caribbean where I know a guy who can delete a prison record.” Skye sat on his lap, cuddled, with her head tucked under his chin.
“But my exams,” I said. “Skye, I’m going to pass in nine subjects. Then I can get a good job and look after us.”
“You do that.” She barely glanced at me. “I’ll stay with Mr Bo.”
“Looks like it’s just you and me, kid,” he said to her, without even a show of regret.
I was forced to borrow money from Skye for the bus fare back to Crack House. I had a nosebleed on the way and I thought, she’ll come back – she won’t go without me. But I never saw her again.
I sat in a stuffy little office amongst that morning’s lost property and shivered. They brought me sweet tea in a paper cup.
Skye lent Nathan her sexy phone and I’d watched him excitedly walk away with it. It looked so innocent.
She was my sister but I knew nothing about her except that childhood had so damaged her that she experienced the control and abuse of an older man as an adventure, a love story. Why would she see sending my lovely boy into a public lavatory with a strange man as anything other than expedient? She’d been trained to think that using a child for gain was not only normal but smart.
I was no heroine – I couldn’t find him or save him. I was just a desperate mother who could only sit in a stuffy room, drinking tea and beating herself up. My nose started to bleed.
“Hi, Mum – did someone hit you?” Nathan stood in the doorway staring at me curiously.
“Car park C, level five,” the security man said triumphantly. “I told you we’d find him. Although what he was doing in the bowels of the earth I’ll never know.”
“Get off,” Nathan said crossly. “You’re dripping blood on my England strip.”
“Nathan – what happened? Where have you been?”
“Don’t screech,” he said. “Remember the black Jeep – Sierra, Charlie, Delta? Well, I found it.”
“Safe and sound,” the security man said, “no harm done, eh? Sign here.”
Numbly I signed for Nathan as if he was a missing parcel and we went out into the cold windy weather to find a bus to take us home. There would be no limo this time, but Nathan didn’t seem to expect it.
On the bus, in the privacy of the back seat, Nathan said, “That was awesome, Mum. It was like being inside of Xbox. I was, like, the operative except I didn’t have a gun but we made him pay for his crime anyway.”
“Who? What crime?”
“Doctor Proctor – he hurts boys and gives them bad injections that make them his slaves.”
“Do you believe that?” I asked, terrified all over again.
“I thought you knew,” he said, ignorant of terror. “Skye said you hated men who hurt children.”
“I do,” I began carefully. “But I didn’t know she was going to put you in danger.”
“There hardly wasn’t any,” said the nine-year-old superhero. “All I had to do was identify the bad doctor and then go up to him and say, ‘I’ve got what you want. Follow me.’ It was easy.”
I looked out of the window and used my bed-time voice so that he wouldn’t guess how close I was to hysteria. “Then what happened?”
“Then I gave him the hard-drive and he gave me the money.”
“The what? Hard … ”
“The important bit from the inside of computers where all your secrets go. Didn’t you know either? You’ve got to destroy it. It was the one big mistake the bad doctor made. He thought he’d erased all his secrets by deleting them. Then he sold his computer on eBay but he forgot that deleting secrets isn’t good enough if you’ve got enemies like me and Skye. She’s a genius with hard drives.”
“I’ll remember to destroy mine,” I said. “What happened next?”
“You haven’t got any secrets, Mum,” Nathan Bond said. “After that I gave the money to Skye and hid in the bookshop till she and Wayne went away. Then I followed them.”
“What bookshop?” When I ran after Nathan to the end of the mall there had been shops for clothes, cosmetics, shoes and computer games. There had not been a bookshop. I explained this to him. He was thrilled.
“You didn’t see me. Nobody saw me,” he crowed. “I did what spies do – I went off in the wrong direction and then doubled back to make sure no one was following. You went to the wrong end of the mall.”
“Is that what Skye told you to do?”
“No,” he said, although his eyes said yes. He turned sulky so I shut up. I was ready to explode but I wanted to hear the full story first.
When the silence was too much for him he said enticingly, “I know about Sierra, Charlie, Delta.”
“What about it?” I sounded carefully bored.
“You know I was supposed to look for it but I never saw it? That must’ve been a test. You know how I know?”
“How do you know?”
“Cos Skye knew where it was all along. She and Wayne went down to level five in the lift, and I ran down the stairs just like they do on telly. You know, Mum, they get it right on telly. It works.”
“Sometimes,” I said. “Only sometimes.”
“Well anyway, there they were – her and Wayne – and they got into the Jeep and the other driver drove them away. I looked everywhere for the limo, but I couldn’t find it. I thought maybe it was part of the game – if I found it we could keep it. I wish we had a car.”
“We couldn’t keep someone else’s car.” I put my arm round him but he shrugged me off. He was becoming irritable and I could see he was tired. All the same I said, “Describe the man who drove the Jeep.”
I was shocked and horrified when he described Mr Bo. But I wasn’t surprised.
Later that night, when Nathan had been deeply asleep for an hour, I crept into his room and laid his bulging scarlet fur-trimmed stocking at the end of the bed. Then I ran my hand gently under his mattress until I found the shiny new phone. Poor Nathan – he was unpractised in the art of deception, and when he talked about wanting to keep the limo, I saw, flickering at the back of his eyes, the notion that he’d better shut up about the limo or I might guess about the phone. I hoped it wasn’t stolen the way the limo and Jeep almost certainly were.
I rang the number Skye gave him. I didn’t really expect her to answer, but she did.
“Hi, kid,” she said. Her voice sounded affectionate.
“It’s not Nathan. Skye, how could you put him at risk? You’re his only living relative apart from me.”
“Did he have a good time? Did his little eyes sparkle? Yes or no?”
“If you wanted him to have fun, Skye, you could’ve taken him to the fun-fair. Don’t tell me this was about anything other than skinning a rabbit.”
“Well, as usual, you’ve missed the point. It was about making a stone bastard pay for what he’d done. Nathan was the perfect lure. He looked just like what the doctor ordered. And he’s smart.”
“If I see you anywhere near him again I’ll call the cops on you – you and Mr Bo
. You’re right, Nathan is smart. He followed you too.” That shut her up – for a few seconds.
Then she said, “Tell me, sis, what present did you buy yourself with my money?”
She’d probably looked in the bag when I went running after Nathan so there was no point in lying. I said, “A CD – The Best of Blondie. What’s so funny?”
She stopped laughing and said, “That was Mr Bo’s favourite band. He taught us to dance to Blondie numbers.”
I was struck dumb. How could I have forgotten?
“Don’t worry about it, sis,” Skye said cheerfully. “On evidence like that, if you never qualify, and you never get to hang out your shingle, you can comfort yourself by knowing you’d have made a lousy psychotherapist. Oh, and Happy Holidays.” She hung up.
Eventually I dried my eyes and went to the kitchen for a glass of wine. I sipped it slowly while I opened my books and turned on the computer. I will be a great psychotherapist – I can learn from the past.
Lastly I put my new CD on the hi-fi. It still made me want to dance. Mr Bo can’t spoil everything I love.
FOXED
Peter Turnbull
Monday
THE MAN WAS about thirty years old, the woman, thought George Hennessey, was approximately the same age, perhaps a little younger. Both were slender, both athletic looking and they lay fully clothed side by side in the meadow, among the buttercups. Hennessey pondered their clothing, both wore good quality designer wear: she has a blouse and skirt and crocodile-skin shoes; he wore a safari jacket over a blue T-shirt and white trousers. Both had expensive wrist watches. She wore a wedding ring and an engagement ring; he wore a wedding ring only. And they both looked like each other, both in their feminine and masculine way, they looked similar, same balanced face, and Hennessey could see the basis for mutual attraction: if they looked at each other they’d see the opposite sex version of themselves. He took off his straw hat and brushed a troublesome fly from his face. He glanced around him, meadows, woods and fields in every direction and above a vast near cloudless sky, scarred it seemed to him by the condensation trail of a high flying airliner, KLM or Lufthansa probably, flying westwards from continental Europe to North America. Then, nearer at hand the blue and white police tape suspended from four metal posts which had been driven into the rock hard soil, for this was mid June and the Vale of York baked under a relentless sun.
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