‘No,’ Jess says. ‘No, of course not. Sorry, I was being irrational. Because I was angry.’
‘OK,’ I say.
‘Just, maybe next time you hear someone being called a monkey, or told to go home . . . maybe look around you carefully. Because I can assure you that it won’t be aimed at you. Despite your very long arms.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘No, I get that, now. Despite my very long arms. So does that kind of thing happen a lot? To you, I mean? In London?’
‘A fair bit,’ Jess says. ‘Most of it’s a bit more subtle than that, but yeah, there’s some kind of event or remark, I’d say, almost daily.’
‘More subtle, how?’
‘Oh, like . . . I don’t know.’ Jess thinks for a moment before continuing. ‘OK, so, before I started ironing my hair, when it was frizzy, yeah? Well, people were always touching it. As if it was funny, or intriguing, or exotic or something. As if white people had some God-given right to touch my hair, yeah?’
‘And is that why you iron it?’
‘No. I iron it because it looks like shit if I don’t. Because I look like I’m wearing a Jackson Five wig. But it does have the advantage that strangers have stopped trying to touch my head all the time.’
‘Yeah, I can see how that might be irritating.’
‘Or people will ask where I’m from,’ she says. ‘Like he did, back there. If I’m at a party someone will always ask where I’m from, and then not be entirely satisfied with my answer.’
‘Which is?’
‘Well, Brixton, of course. I mean, I was born there. I grew up there. I went to school there. If you want to know where I’m from, then the only reasonable answer is Brixton. But people will say, “No, where are you really from?” I think I’m supposed to say Jamaica or Ah-fric-ahh or something. Something that might explain why my skin isn’t milky white like whoever is asking the question. Because being English, being British, just doesn’t make any sense to people if you look the way I do.’
‘So when he asked us where we were from—’
‘He didn’t ask us, Jude. He asked me. And yes, it’s annoying. And the hundredth time it happens, it’s really fucking annoying.’
‘Again, I’m sorry that happens to you.’
‘Well, I thank you for your concern, kind sir.’
‘I’m . . . well, I’m shocked.’
‘You’ll get over it,’ Jess says. ‘Though I probably won’t. And did they really call you Monkey Boy at school?’
‘Unfortunately so,’ I tell her. ‘But I do have long arms. I have to get shirts with extra-long sleeves. I have to get my jackets adjusted, too, because I’m too skinny for my sleeve length. So yes, everyone took the piss out of me at school.’
‘Well, I love your long arms,’ Jess says. ‘And I love the way you swing them when you walk.’
‘Really?’ I ask, glancing across at Jess to see if she’s taking the mickey.
She wrinkles her nose, cutely. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I think I love you, Monkey Boy.’
It’s almost 4 p.m. as I drive into Heysham, the tiny village just south of Morecambe where our holiday let is situated. The sun is already low, lighting up the horizon with a pretty swathe of orangey-yellow light.
We park up next to a brand-new Bentley and phone the number we were given when we booked this morning. A young guy appears from next door to let us in.
‘Am I OK parked there?’ I ask, indicating our car.
‘Sure,’ he says. ‘As long as I can get the Bentley out, you can park anywhere.’
Once inside the apartment, it becomes clear that the cost of this rental – three times what we paid in Bristol – has far more to do with the owner’s need to pay for his Bentley than anything to do with the accommodation itself.
Though the view through the small lounge window is admittedly stunning, everything else about the place is depressing. The armchairs, sofa and carpets are all decidedly old-fashioned, while the mattresses are simply old. It feels like we’re visiting someone’s grandma.
Once he’s gone, Jess puts her hands on her hips and combines a grimace with a toothy smile. ‘So, whaddaya think?’ she asks. She crosses the room and gestures amusingly at a horrible 3D Alpine landscape above the fireplace.
‘I know,’ I say. ‘Naff, huh?’
‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘But I can’t say I wasn’t expecting more. For the price, I mean.’
‘Nice setting, though,’ I offer. It’s my attempt at optimism. ‘I suppose it’s the view that we’re paying for.’
‘The view of the power station?’ Jess asks, peering out of a side window.
‘Yeah,’ I say, joining her. But with the orange sun reflecting across the wet sands, even the power station looks pretty this evening.
‘You’re right,’ Jess says. ‘I’m just being . . . you know . . .’ She shrugs. ‘So can we walk to Morecambe from here?’
‘Yep,’ I say. ‘It’s a biggish walk, though.’
‘Then let’s go now,’ Jess says. ‘Before it gets too dark. I could do with the exercise.’
She pulls on her bobble hat and I tie my scarf tightly around my neck, and then we head out along the coastal path towards Morecambe.
The sun is skimming the horizon now, and the sand flats look beautiful in the evening light, so we stop repeatedly to take photos – first of the sunset, and then of the elegant grey railings set against the icy grey sands beyond. ‘I like the minimalism of it all,’ Jess says. ‘I was expecting something more glitzy, but this is really pretty.’
It takes us an hour to reach Morecambe seafront proper, which is a little more glitzy, and by the time we get there night has fallen and with it the temperature. It’s bitterly cold.
‘Can we get a hot drink?’ Jess asks, dragging me across the road towards a coffee shop. ‘I’m freezing.’
‘I’ll bet you are,’ I say. ‘I’m frozen, and I’m in jeans. I can’t imagine what it must be like in leggings.’
‘Oh, it’s not my legs,’ Jess says. ‘It’s my ears.’ She pulls her hat as low as it will go. ‘I’m worried they’re going to drop off.’
Once we’re seated with our drinks, a hot chocolate for Jess and a tea for me, Jess says, ‘So, I need to ask you something. Something important. Something serious.’
I finish unravelling my scarf and unbutton my coat to let the heat in. I glance around the coffee shop, but the only other clients are at the rear, out of earshot. ‘Go on,’ I say, not without apprehension.
‘It’s my ears,’ Jess says.
‘Your ears?’
‘Yeah, will you still want to date me? If they fall off, I mean? Would you date a girl with no ears?’
I laugh in relief. ‘Do you think they really might?’ I ask, reaching across the table to cup her head in my hands. ‘Wow, they are cold,’ I say.
‘So would you?’ Jess says. ‘I could wear a hat. I could even stitch some fake ears into the brim.’
‘Lack of ears would change nothing,’ I tell her. ‘Ears, ultimately, are neither ’ere nor there.’
‘Cold ears, warm heart,’ Jess says. ‘That’s what they say, isn’t it?’
‘Something like that.’
She pulls her phone from her pocket. ‘Can you give me that address?’ she asks, her finger hovering above the screen. ‘The one the chip-shop lady gave you.’
‘I left it back there, in the car,’ I say.
‘Oh,’ Jess says, putting her phone away again. ‘Did you do that on purpose, or was that an accident?’
I shrug vaguely. ‘Tomorrow,’ I say, simply. ‘I don’t think I can face much more excitement today. Or disappointment, for that matter.’
‘Fair enough,’ Jess says. ‘It’s your mission, after all. So what do you want to do this evening?’
‘I was thinking we could go back to the Midland Hotel,’ I say.
‘The posh place on the seafront? The one we walked past?’
I nod. ‘For a drink, I was thinking. Or a meal. It’s all been redev
eloped by some big architect. I saw a thing about it on TV. It’s supposed to be amazing.’
‘It’ll be like Root, though, won’t it?’ Jess says.
‘Root?’
‘Yeah, you know. A grilled sardine for twenty quid.’
‘Yeah, I suppose it might.’
‘I’d rather find a pub with something filling,’ Jess says. ‘I’m pretty hungry, despite eating a billion calories of fish and chips. I looked at a pub near where we’re staying. In Hailsham.’
‘Heysham,’ I correct her. ‘Hailsham’s down south. Way down south, near Eastbourne.’
‘Heysham, then,’ Jess says.
‘Cheap to run,’ I comment approvingly, and when Jess unexpectedly frowns, I expound, ‘You . . . you’re cheap to run.’
‘Oh,’ Jess says. ‘Hardly! Our two nights in the world’s most expensive retirement home is my fault, remember.’
Our drinks finished, we head back into the icy evening. A breeze is rising, and it’s even colder now. Overcoat-piercingly cold.
We walk the full length of the seafront, and then when the temperature gets too much for Jessica’s poor ears again, we duck into an amusement arcade. It’s quite surreal moving from the dark, silent evening outside to the mad, flashing noise of the interior.
We race each other on Sega motorbikes (I win) and then play a few rounds on a slot machine (we both lose) before heading back outside.
‘Well, look on the bright side. At least we know we’re not epileptic,’ Jess comments, as the night once again envelops us.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘That was pretty full-on, wasn’t it?’
It’s truly too cold and too dark to walk back along the ragged coastal path, so I attempt to book an Uber on my iPhone. On discovering that Morecambe is an entirely Uber-free zone, we wander around the deserted streets looking for a taxi for twenty minutes. When we don’t manage to find one of those either, Jess checks Google for buses. ‘There’s one to Heysham every twenty minutes,’ she informs me.
‘A bus?’ I repeat.
‘Yeah, come on. It’ll be worth it just to see your face. It’ll be a whole new experience for you.’
I’m famous, apparently, for my aversion to buses.
We sit upstairs, which takes me back to my childhood. When Dad first left, I had to go to school by bus for a while. And I always chose to sit upstairs, and whenever possible in these same front seats.
We alight in Heysham, right next to the pub Jessica suggested, so feeling a bit like an old couple, we duck inside and, after a single drink each, we eat early, warmed by the crackling, spitting log fire.
‘So what now?’ Jessica asks, once we’ve let ourselves back into our granny flat. ‘God, it’s only eight,’ she announces, pointing her phone at me as proof that this is so. ‘It feels like midnight.’
‘Um, we could see what’s on TV,’ I suggest. ‘Or just, you know, go to bed?’
‘I don’t think I’m sleepy just yet,’ Jess says, pulling off her pink woolly coat and slumping on to the horrific faux-leather DFS sofa. She reaches for the TV remote.
I clear my throat. ‘I . . . didn’t actually say anything about sleep,’ I point out. ‘I said bed.’
‘Oh!’ Jess says, sitting bolt upright and then putting the remote on the coffee table. ‘Oh, OK then. Sure. Bed gets my vote. Definitely. Just don’t touch my ears until they’ve thawed. I don’t want you breaking them off.’
Seven
Mandy
For more than three hours, in the baking August sun, we hunted for Zoe.
To start with, I alternated between looking for her and greeting Jude after each ride on the roller coaster, but in the end, as my panic levels started to rise, I decided he was better off out of it. It made more sense to concentrate on finding my daughter, too. And so I told him to stay on the Big One – it was all he wanted to do anyway. I said that eventually we’d come and find him, but that he wasn’t to move under any circumstances from that ride.
‘Don’t worry,’ he told me. ‘I don’t want to.’
Scott and I searched together at first, exploring the funfair in ever-decreasing circles. But I was worried that we were somehow following Zoe around the park, even as she was hunting for us, so we split up and went in opposite directions.
At one point I thought I’d found her, and I sprinted across the tarmac, dodging through the crowds as fast as I’ve ever run, only to find that it was another teenager in an identical denim jacket.
Scott got a park employee to call out Zoe’s name over the tannoy system, but if Zoe heard it, she certainly didn’t reveal herself.
Just before five, as I was preparing what I was going to say to the police, who I’d finally decided we needed to call, she was there, as if she’d been teleported, standing right in front of me, nonchalantly nibbling at some candyfloss.
My mood switched from worry to steaming anger in milliseconds, and I shrieked her name so loudly that bystanders paused to stare.
I grabbed her arm and shook it violently, causing the candyfloss to fall to the ground. I told her we’d been looking for her for hours and asked where the hell she’d been, to which she replied with a shrug, no more. ‘Where were you, Zoe?’ I insisted.
‘Around,’ she said, pointing vaguely. ‘Over there.’
‘And your phone. Why aren’t you answering your phone?’ I asked, my voice trembling in fury.
‘Battery’s dead, innit,’ she said. ‘I told you I need a new one.’ It was as much as I could do not to hit her.
I phoned Scott to give him the ‘good’ news, and dragged Zoe off to find Jude.
Once we were all together, I asked her to apologise, but she remained staunchly silent.
‘You’ve ruined the whole day! Apologise!’ I shouted, loud enough to draw attention to myself once again, and this time Zoe complied.
‘Sorry, Mum,’ she said, investing the phrase with as little energy as possible.
‘And apologise to Scott,’ I instructed her. ‘He’s spent the entire afternoon looking for you, too.’
Zoe pouted and shook her head silently.
‘If you don’t apologise immediately, I’ll . . . I’ll . . . drive us all straight home,’ I told her.
But Zoe knew it was an empty threat. The bed & breakfast was booked and paid for. Jude was already protesting that he wanted to go to the beach the next day, that we’d promised and that it wasn’t fair. And Scott, lovely Scott, was already saying that it didn’t matter, and that he’d had a great day wandering around anyway.
‘I hate you sometimes, Zoe,’ I told her quietly, as we walked separately back to where the car was parked. ‘I love you, too. I’ll always love you because you’re my daughter. But sometimes you make that really, really hard work.’
Once again, her reply was nothing more than a shrug.
Our weekend in Morecambe was tense, to say the least.
Scott and Jude managed to have a reasonably good time, running around the beach flying a cheap kite they’d bought and hunting for crabs in rock pools.
But Zoe, my dear darling daughter, drove me to my wits’ end. She sulked constantly, and nothing anyone did or said was sufficient to get her out of her dark mood.
She answered questions, when she answered at all, with a shrug. The rest of the time, she refused to even grace us with a shrug, feigning deafness to whatever was going on – ignorance of whatever choice needed to be made.
Our accommodation was an old-fashioned B&B, one of those places with a ‘VACANCIES’ card in the window and a list of rules pinned to a corkboard in the hallway.
Zoe and Jude shared a room on the fourth floor while Scott and I were on the third.
When we got to our room, we made love, albeit briefly, on the ancient squeaky bed, and this relaxed me just enough to carry on with my day. Because until that moment I’d been feeling as if I might just implode with the stress of it all.
Afterwards, I went upstairs to fetch the kids for dinner. I paused outside their door in surprise,
because from the interior I could hear both their voices, and they were talking relatively happily about the funfair. For a moment I thought everything was going to be all right, but the second I opened the door and tried to join in, Zoe fell silent.
‘Can you go downstairs and join Scott?’ I instructed Jude. ‘I need to have a chat with Zoe.’
‘Good luck with that,’ Jude said as he grabbed his Nintendo from the sideboard and skipped from the room.
Once the door closed, I sat on Jude’s bed, opposite Zoe.
‘So, what’s going on with you?’ I asked, softly.
A shrug.
‘You seem upset. Is it because I was angry with you?’
Another shrug.
‘I was worried. You really scared me back there. We looked for you for three hours, Zoe. Do you understand that? Do you get why I was angry?’
Zoe nodded. ‘I said I’m sorry,’ she reminded me.
‘So what’s happening?’ I asked. ‘Why are you so miserable?’
‘I hate him,’ she said, simply. ‘You shouldn’t have made me go with him on that ride.’
‘Scott?’ I said.
Zoe rolled her eyes at this, and it was true that it was obvious who she was talking about.
‘You know, I didn’t make you do anything.’
‘No,’ Zoe said. ‘Right.’
‘And you don’t like Scott,’ I said. ‘I know that. You’ve made it quite obvious, but . . .’
‘I don’t not like him,’ Zoe said. ‘I hate him.’
‘Right,’ I said, doing my best to stifle a sigh. ‘Then why don’t you tell me why?’
Another shrug.
‘Please, Zoe,’ I said. ‘Tell me why you hate Scott so much and then maybe we can move on.’
‘I can’t,’ she said.
‘You can’t?’
Zoe shook her head.
‘You mean, you won’t?’
Zoe bowed her head and stared at her feet, which she started to kick together.
‘Just give him a chance,’ I said.
‘A chance to do what?’ Zoe spat.
The Road to Zoe Page 11
