The Invisible Ones

by Stef Penney

  “I suppose we had to have this conversation at some point. But you know . . . I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Why would knowing his name hurt me? Is he in prison or something?”

  “No, no, of course not! Well, as far as I know . . . You know, if you’re adopted, they give you the information when you’re eighteen.”

  “But I’m not adopted, am I.”

  “JJ, he was a . . . well . . . You deserve better. You deserve the best father in the world, sweetheart, but I can’t give you that.”

  “I’m not saying I want to find him, Mum. Just his name. I’m fourteen. I have a right to know that.”

  Mum looks at me without speaking for a good thirty seconds. I time it by the yellow clock.

  “All right, JJ . . . His name was Carl. Carl Atkins. I met him at a disco. We went out for a few weeks. He was a gorjio, a plasterer’s mate. I hadn’t had a boyfriend, so I didn’t know anything about anything.” She studies her plate, as though it might tell her what she should have known at the time. She looks at it for a long time without saying anything else.

  “Did you . . . love him?”

  She smiles sadly.

  “I thought he was the bee’s knees.”

  “Did he . . . Did he think you were the bee’s knees?”

  She almost laughs, as though I’ve said something funny.

  “Well . . . he said he did. Said he was going to marry me.”

  She shrugs, in a way that’s painful to watch. As if what’s on her shoulders is unbearably heavy.

  “I was a fool.”

  “Why?”

  Another sigh.

  “Old story: young girl, innocent. Flash geezer, bit older, gets her into trouble . . . Then she finds out he’s already married.”

  She gives a horrible fake smile.

  “He was married?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How could he?”

  “Oh, sweetie . . . Men can.”

  “But how . . . I mean, where was his wife?”

  “Back home. ’Cause he was on a job, no one knew him. Knew anything about him.”

  My father is an arsehole. This is something I have to come to terms with. What if I am like him? I feel sick, I can’t eat anymore.

  “And you didn’t know?”

  “Of course I didn’t know! Good heavens, JJ. I wouldn’t have had anything to do with him if I’d known!”

  “Couldn’t you tell?”

  “No. You can’t ‘tell.’ ”

  “So then . . . what did you like about him?”

  I try to tell myself I don’t care what he was like, as he obviously didn’t care two hoots about me, or Mum, either, but I’m seized with the need to know, a horrible, whiny need I can’t control.

  “Well . . . he was funny. Made people laugh. And generous. He’d always pay for a round. He earned decent wages, and he wasn’t mean with them. He had dark curly hair, and he wore gold earrings. Had blue eyes. Had a rose tattooed on his arm. I used to joke that he wanted to be a Gypsy. He was handsome . . . Maybe you do take after him in that way . . .”

  She leans forward and takes my hand. I take my hand away, cross my arms so she can’t get at me.

  “I thought I didn’t look like him. I thought I was a Janko through and through.”

  “You are. But there’s something . . .”

  She studies my face, trying to smile, but it looks like it’s harder and harder work. She leans forward again, puts her hand on my arm.

  “Pet, this is why I didn’t want to tell you. It was bound to upset you. Better forget about him. You have your family here. We all love you. You’re too good for him!”

  I hug my arms to myself. I’m trying not to be angry, I really am.

  “Did he ever . . . see me?”

  It’s not what I mean to ask, but it’s what I say. She hesitates.

  “No. It happens, JJ. It’s horrible, but some people are like that, and the best thing is to . . . walk away from them, try and forget about it. You should be glad you don’t know a man like that. Now, that’s enough, all right? I’ve told you what you asked. I’ve got washing up to do.”

  She gets up, scrapes the food off the plates into a bag, takes them over to the kitchen, and starts clattering around. I am left sitting at the table, feeling dirtier than I’ve ever felt in my life.

  Fathers, even if they’re absent from birth—even if they’re dead, for Chrissakes—are supposed to leave something behind for their kids. A locket with a picture in it, or a rare book. A box that contains a special, wonderful secret. In stories, that’s what they do.

  But in real life, you get nothing. I knew this, of course. This isn’t some fairy tale. I wasn’t expecting to discover I was a prince, or be given a million pounds. I don’t know what makes me so furious all of a sudden.

  Because I think she’s lying.

  And I am furious. Boiling. Something unleashes inside me; a dam breaks; like I’m a volcano about to explode, red-hot lava rises behind my eyes, building up to an eruption.

  “You could have kept up with him. For my sake. You must have known I’d want to know about him sooner or later.”

  Mum’s got her back to me, clashing plates and things in the washing-up bowl, so I don’t know exactly how she reacts. She speaks without looking around.

  “I had my dignity. I wasn’t going to go chasing around after him, when he was married.”

  “You had me! His son! If you’d cared about me you could have done it. At least . . . found out where he was. Like Mr. Lovell. That’s what he does. He finds people. Even when they don’t want to be found!”

  I’m shouting. Mum drops the saucepan she’s holding into the bowl with a slap that sends soapy water slopping onto the floor.

  “Well, he hasn’t found Rose, has he?”

  There’s a thick silence. She’s reveling in her triumph, I can tell. She turns around now.

  “JJ, if you want to hire a private detective when you’re eighteen to find this man, that’s up to you. I’m sorry things happened the way they did. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a good father. I’m sorry things aren’t different . . .”

  “You mean you’re sorry you had me!”

  “No, of course not . . . JJ, that’s enough!”

  Looking at Mum, I feel as though I’m looking at someone I don’t know. I don’t recognize the woman with frizzy blond hair and reddened hands—an ugly, frightening stranger who’s standing in my trailer.

  I speak very coolly.

  “You talk about dignity. What were you doing with Uncle Ivo the other night, when I came back? I saw you.”

  Stranger-Mum seems to shrink back against the counter. Her lips move, but no sound comes out. And then a harsh red flush flares over her cheeks; she looks so guilty, and so ashamed, that I don’t need to hear anything else.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I give a sort of nervous, stupid laugh. I’ve no idea what it means, other than that, right now, I hate her. I hate her, and I despise myself.

  “Take that disgusting smirk off your face. You don’t know anything.” “Don’t I?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t need to say it. Saw it with my own eyes.”

  Her eyes seem to have got larger still. She’s very, very angry, too. I wonder whether she’s going to admit it and say something like “Don’t you understand, Ivo’s your real father.”

  I wait. Nothing would surprise me.

  She doesn’t say that; instead, everything goes very slow, like in an action film when something explodes. Everything is crystal clear: I can see every molecule of her reddened face in amazing microscopic mega-vision. I see it coming, but I can’t do anything about it, because I’ve gone very slow as well.

  Mum hits me, a proper hard slap on the face with a wet, soapy hand, right on the cheekbone. It doesn’t hurt much, but it’s shocking. She hasn’t hit me for about five years. It makes me twice as angry as I was before. From red-hot to white-hot
. And it makes me glad, because now I’m allowed to be as bad as I like.

  I smile, feeling water and soap suds slide down my cheek, run under my shirt collar.

  “What would have happened if I hadn’t come home just then?”

  Whack.

  Backhand. This time I feel the ring on her middle finger connect with my ear. Blood whistles and roars in my head like the crashing surf in Big Wednesday.

  “No wonder you weren’t worrying about where I was.”

  Whack.

  She’s losing control, just brushed my cheek, fingertips, with no power in it. She looks like she’s about to cry, her cheeks all mottled red and white, her eyes screwed up and glittering.

  “Get out! Get out!”

  She yells it in a funny deep voice, all hoarse, and, feeling bad and glad and volcanic and terrible, I crash against the table so hard that it sends glasses sliding onto the floor—Good!—and go.

  It’s raining. I don’t care. How could she throw me out when it’s raining? She shouldn’t be allowed to be my mother. All the other trailers have their curtains drawn, so very little light comes out. Mum is probably thinking that I’ll go to Gran’s for a cup of tea, or Great-uncle’s, but I won’t. That would be too easy for her. I’m going to go, like she said.

  But first I break into Ivo’s trailer. He’s in London with Christo, seeing the doctor. I break the window in the door with a stone. I don’t hear a sound. I don’t feel a thing. I kind of hope I cut my hand doing it, but I don’t. I could pour with blood and not feel pain right now; nothing can stop me. Inside, I close the door, draw the curtains, and turn the place over.

  I am ruthless. Thorough. Mr. Lovell would be proud of me.

  Why? I don’t really know. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I have no more than the haziest idea—something that might give me a clue to the disappearance of Rose? Something that might prove Ivo is my father? I have no real conviction that he did anything to Rose. I have no more than the vaguest hunch about the other thing. But I want to punish him. For carrying out a crazy exorcism and making me know about it. For being in my trailer with Mum. For making her touch his face like that, and then lean over the counter, crying.

  For making me hate her.

  I’ve never broken into someone’s place before. Never stolen anything. It isn’t really me; it’s the volcano that does it. (I am the volcano.) Am I bad, because I do a bad thing? If I find something that proves a crime, does that cancel out the bad and make me good? In the end it doesn’t seem to matter. I do find something, but it isn’t evidence of a crime. Women’s private things—a bit disgusting—but why? Is it left over from Rose? Why wouldn’t he throw them out? Or . . . is it something to do with Mum? It’s not proof of anything, really.

  And then, at the back of a cupboard in the kitchen, behind some cleaning stuff and old cloths, I find a tightly tied poly bag. It looks like rubbish. We never keep rubbish inside the trailer—you put it outside, where it won’t smell. But I think of what Mr. Lovell said—that you can find secrets in people’s rubbish—and this bag is pushed right to the back of the cleaning cupboard, where no one would want to look. I undo it, careful not to tear the plastic, and then . . . I find myself pressed against the opposite wall in revulsion. The women’s things aren’t left over from Rose, for here is one—used. A dark, dry stain. The metallic smell hit me before I jumped back. It’s so mokady it’s untrue. It makes me mokady, too . . . Did I touch it? This is something a man should never see or hear about. It has the power to make him unclean. I’m shaking. But still, I have to put it back in the bag, and tie it up, and push it back in the cupboard.

  It’s not proof of a crime, of anything really wrong. It’s proof that they’re lying to me. What else could it be? Not a crime. But breaking into Ivo’s trailer that night is the worst thing I have ever done. It is the thing I most regret.

  29.

  Ray

  By now it’s after six, and everyone else has gone home. We hang around for another hour, in case Ivo decides to return, but there is no sign of him. Gavin’s secretary calls local casualty departments, but no one answering Ivo’s description has been admitted. I don’t know where he parked his van, and Christo makes no response that I can understand when I ask him, so in the end I have to phone Lulu. She is, after all, a blood relative, and she has a phone. And she’s the nearest. Luckily, she’s also in.

  “You’re where?” I’ve just explained the situation, rather succinctly, I think. “You’re with Christo? In Harley Street?”

  “Yes. And Ivo’s disappeared. A family member needs to be with him. He’s got to go to hospital. Great Ormond Street. You know—the children’s hospital.”

  A silence.

  “I’m supposed to be going to work in twenty minutes.”

  “I’m really sorry. I just didn’t know who else to ring. I’m not a relative, so . . . someone needs to be here, you know, to give consent. You need to sign something.”

  I think I hear a sigh of capitulation at the other end of the phone.

  “And you’re sure Ivo’s not coming back? He must do!”

  “He’s been gone over three hours.”

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  “So you’ll come?”

  Gavin is a star. He hangs on until Lulu arrives, which takes more than an hour; then he explains what he thinks should happen. I keep thinking that surely Ivo will walk back into the clinic with some reasonable-sounding, contrite explanation. But he doesn’t. Finally, Gavin ushers us out and hails a taxi. He rolls his eyes comically when I say I owe him one. I can’t think what I could do for him. Spy on his wife for nothing, perhaps.

  I fetch my car and drive back to find Lulu and Christo waiting on the pavement. Christo seems calm, despite the turmoil around him. Lulu is tense. For the first time, she isn’t wearing heels. I checked as soon as she arrived: plimsolls, sensible shoes for saving people’s bacon. We’re very polite. Neither of us mentions our last meeting. Now we’re back on a professional footing. And yet she and this strange, pitiable boy are in my car, accepting my help. I am of some use to her, after all. In some ways, it’s more intimate than any dinner could be.

  I explain how we have come to be here in the first place, how Ivo excused himself to go to the bathroom and never came back. Gavin had just asked him to provide a blood sample.

  “I suppose we should thank you for doing this for him.”

  She doesn’t sound grateful. I shake my head.

  “Do you know if he had a needle phobia? That’s what Gavin thought it might be.”

  She shrugs.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you any idea where he might have gone?”

  “Maybe he’s gone home.”

  “Can we get in touch with Tene?”

  “Not directly. Might be quickest to drive down there. God . . . How could he leave Christo there on his own? This family, I swear . . .”

  She’s sitting on the backseat with Christo leaning against her. Her arm is around him. Rain slicks the streets as we head for the children’s hospital, blurring lights into smears of color on the windows. I watch the two of them in the rearview mirror. Lulu looks out the window. Her lipstick looks darker in this light; it makes her seem different, unfamiliar. Christo is looking back at me in the mirror—pool-dark eyes wide, his face shining like a pearl. Lulu said she hasn’t seen him for nearly three years, so can he really remember her? He would have been barely four years old. Perhaps he would be this tranquil with anyone. Perhaps, in his mind, Ivo is still with him. Perhaps he knows exactly where his father is.

  “I just hope you get to find out what’s wrong with him. That would be something, wouldn’t it? Then maybe they can help him.”

  Lulu smiles absently but doesn’t reply. With a foolish jolt I remember that, whatever the illness is, she too may harbor it, slumbering in her veins. What did she say before—that it affected only the men of the family? Does that mean it’s one of those things that can be carried by women, li
ke a poisonous gift? The ability to give life and take it away in a single transaction.

  From the shadowy safety of my driver’s seat, I steal glances at her. Blue-white cheek. Dark, slanting fringe. One eye flickering with reflected lights. I see the ghost of a dark vein that goes down the side of her neck, before disappearing under the collar of her blouse.

  The blood beneath her skin.

  A couple hours later, I’m driving down the motorway, following a red river of taillights heading southwest. A soothing flow of bright red corpuscles streaming down a nether vein of the night. I don’t think she really expected me to offer, which is why I did, earning a smile, first of disbelief, then of genuine, astonished gratitude—my prize for the night. I imagine her relating this to a friend (but not a disabled male friend): “I don’t know where we would have been without Ray. He even drove down to Hampshire in the middle of the night to find Ivo. Can you imagine? I’d have been lost without him . . .”

  Of course, she probably doesn’t call me Ray.

  The rain comes on again, harder than before, then harder still, and the wind gets up, scudding and punching against the car as I near Bishop’s Waltham. The streaming tarmac shimmers like blood under the brake lights.

  Why, tonight, do I keep thinking about blood?

  30.

  JJ

  Like the climax of a film, it’s throwing it down when I leave. I don’t care. In fact, at first, I’m so hot that it’s a relief to feel cool water pelting my skin and hair. I’m not wearing a coat. If I had been, I’d probably have taken it off so that I could be even more righteously wronged and they would be even more sorry. Although, by the time I’ve crouch-run past the trailers, keeping close to the trees, it’s dark, anyway; the only light comes from the swooping headlamps of passing cars, and they don’t care that I’m there, if they see me at all—I’m not thinking of anything. Other than that I’m getting out of here and as far away from them and their dirty secrets as I can. Is this what Mum was talking about—that thing I can’t possibly know? I see her stranger-face, red-eyed, hot, shamed, and I hate myself for what I said. But she told me to get out. She said that.