Gone Again (9 page)

The Beach House was a mistake. Young mums with toddlers and babies filled the cafe, like some upscale lifestyle advert. The affluent middle classes of Portobello out enjoying their frappuccinos while their hubbies were off earning, mums swapping gossip and calmly managing the chaos of their kids. It seemed to Mark as if it was all an elaborate front, they weren’t really human at all, like
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
.

Ruth sat opposite him. She seemed older than when he’d last seen her, but then so did the rest of the world. Everything was broken or decaying now, without purpose.

He felt an urge to speak, but at the same time he couldn’t think of a single thing worth saying.

Ruth’s face was puffy from crying. They’d hugged awkwardly when she came in, holding on to each other for dear life, a release of tears from them both. Mark didn’t know how long they stood like that, but there were plenty of strange looks from the staff and the mums as the sobs escaped.

That release was eventually replaced by numbness as they sat down and ordered drinks. As if their worlds hadn’t just ended.

Mark looked around him. Cute little seascapes lined the walls in deliberately distressed white wood frames, artificially weathered. He caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the window. He had a similar weather-beaten look himself.

Ruth nursed a peppermint tea. Mark had a black coffee untouched in front of him, stone cold.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Ruth said. ‘My little girl.’

Mark couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t insulting to the universe.

Ruth looked out the window with a tissue pressed to her nose.

‘How, Mark?’

Mark shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘What did the police say?’

‘They’re waiting on the post-mortem.’

Ruth turned to him. ‘Do you think she . . . ?’

Mark knew what she was asking. Did her only daughter kill herself. He wished he could give an answer that wouldn’t break her heart even more.

‘I don’t know.’

Ruth was in tears again, head in her hands, sobs escaping.

‘I have to know what happened,’ she said.

Mark stared at her for a long time.

‘I’ll find out.’

He looked out the window. Far away, halfway to Inchmickery island, he could see the coastguard speedboat. He tried to remember it from two days ago, when he was taking pictures, when he thought his life was worth living. He couldn’t.

It was back out there which meant the pod of whales wasn’t in the clear yet either. Good, he wanted them to suffer like he and Ruth were suffering.

He turned to her. He wanted to gouge his own eyes out when he saw the look on her face. He thought about it from her point of view. First her husband missing, then dead, then revealed to have been abusing their daughter. Now this. At least he still had Nathan. His stomach tightened at the thought of the boy.

‘What did you do?’ he said.

‘What?’

Mark stuck a finger in his coffee and wished it was boiling hot.

‘I was just wondering what you did, when William first disappeared. Did you try to find out what happened?’

She took a sip of tea. Mark caught a whiff of straw and mint from her mug. Sickly. She nodded.

‘What did you do?’

Ruth put her mug down carefully. ‘A lot of silly things.’

‘Like what?’

‘I walked around our neighbourhood, handing out flyers and putting up posters. Went round people’s houses until everyone was sick of me. Then, when they found his car at the golf club, I pestered everyone there.’

‘And?’

‘Then I hired a private detective. Three months of time and money wasted, he came up with nothing either. None of it made me feel any better. At the time I thought at least I was doing something, but really I was just driving myself insane.’

‘I already feel insane.’

Mark looked at her and she glanced away.

At the next table, a little girl aged about three was smacking a Peppa Pig bracelet off the table. Clank, clank, clank. Mark remembered Nathan at that age, obsessed with Spiderman. When he was first toilet trained, he and his friends at nursery had been inordinately proud of their Spiderman pants, showing them off to each other and the staff at every possible opportunity. Who would remember that except for Mark, now that Lauren was dead? He was the only one left to tell his family’s story, all the stupid, irrelevant stuff that made up who Nathan was, how they related to each other.

The girl was still smacking away. Mark worried that she was going to break the bracelet, and felt like reaching over to stop her. He raised his hand and stared at it as if it was an alien artefact. Rubbed at his fingers with his other hand. The pinkie was cold and stiff, it had been ever since he broke it a few years ago playing football and it was badly reset. Only he and Lauren knew about that. Only him now.

Mark turned to Ruth. ‘How am I supposed to tell Nathan?’

Ruth looked as if she was going to take his hand, then had second thoughts.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I can’t do it. I can’t bear it.’

‘Children are amazingly resilient.’

‘It’s not him I’m worried about.’

This time he felt Ruth’s hand on his. He looked at it. Liver spots on slack skin. Her hand was motherly compared to that police officer’s, compared to Lauren’s. Thicker fingers, wedding and engagement rings tight on her swollen knuckles. He wondered why she still wore them, how she could. As if any of that meant anything.

The espresso machine screamed and hissed, drowning out the noise of mums and kids all around them. He looked at the little girl. She had stopped banging the bracelet and was staring at him. Lauren had been carrying a baby girl. A baby girl who would never meet her parents or her brother, who would never know what it was like to play in a play park or eat ice cream or go on a scooter or watch
Peppa Pig
.

The girl turned to her mum.

‘Mummy, that man is staring at me.’

It was only then Mark realised he was crying. He turned away and looked out the window at the implacable spread of water. He felt Ruth squeeze his hand and he wished that touch was Lauren’s.

Ruth had offered to come with him but he insisted on picking up Nathan alone. He was at the school gates in plenty of time, hands shoved into pockets, face set grim against the strengthening sea breeze. It felt like he was in a daydream, disconnected from the real world.

He could hear the prattle of mums waiting nearby. Usual crap. One was moaning about something the teacher had said about her boy, and she was being backed up by the others. Any tiny slight on the abilities of their little darling prodigies met with scorn and derision. The mums all hated Miss Kennedy, resented her youth and good looks, her easy way with the children, her ability to let all the six-year-old bullshit slide off her when the bell went.

Mark despised them for their puerile complaints. What the hell did they have to be angry about? Badly attended coffee mornings and misplaced uniforms, remedial reading practice and whatever other pointless shit they loved to bitch about all day.

The bell went, that sound producing a Pavlovian response in all the parents from somewhere deep in their brains. Everyone straightened up a little in preparation for the onslaught of mayhem about to be unleashed on the playground.

Miss Kennedy’s door opened and kids poured out. Mark knew all their names, had made a point of learning them all at the beginning of P1 just to show he could, and to keep a handle on Nathan’s ever-receding world. So here was Ahmed and Ethan, then Amy and Emily. He knew the ones he liked and the ones he didn’t. There was a handful of bampot boys who he’d regularly see kicking other kids or even their parents, others who could throw themselves on the ground in a tantrum worthy of a toddler. He hated them, but right now he also envied their uncontained fury at the world.

Eventually he saw Nathan trudging out. Mark’s heart was squeezed as he pictured himself telling the boy about his mum. No one should ever have to go through that, the telling or the hearing. Nobody deserved it. Though life wasn’t about what you deserved, he knew that now.

He began walking towards the boy, gliding through the melee around him.

A boy came out the classroom behind Nathan and shoved him hard in the back. Not an accident, not a clumsy mistake from a boy who hadn’t found his space in the world yet. A deliberate push. It was Lee, the worst of the bullies, the one who acted like he was entitled to the world.

Nathan stumbled forward and lost his footing. Mark was still fifty yards away. The noise around him seemed deafening. He watched as Nathan righted himself and turned to Lee. Lee had his hair gelled into a spike. Nathan shoved him in the chest. Lee was bigger, sturdier, taller. He snarled at Nathan and punched him hard on the shoulder. Mark was walking, getting closer, but he felt like he was drifting through a nightmare, unable to intervene or interact. Even from this distance the punch to Nathan’s shoulder looked sore. Mark felt a twinge of pride when Nathan hardly flinched, instead swinging his schoolbag round to connect with Lee’s cheek. The bag looked like it had nothing in it, more of a scuff on Lee’s face than anything.

Lee grabbed Nathan’s hair and pulled downwards so that Nathan had to lower his head in a movement of subservience. Lee then kicked him hard on the shin, making Nathan pull away hopping, leaving behind a tuft of hair in Lee’s hand that Mark could see even from twenty-five yards.

He glanced round briefly to see if Lee’s mum was anywhere, but he couldn’t spot her. Just a maelstrom of little bobbing heads and gossiping women. He turned back.

The boys were wrestling now, holding each other by the front of their jackets, kicking and trying to lever punches in wherever they could. Nathan was holding his own, despite giving away a big size and reach advantage. Mark had never seen him fight like this before, he was never normally a physical child at all.

He was close to them now as the boys tussled backwards and forwards. He looked beyond them to Miss Kennedy’s door, but he couldn’t see the teacher anywhere. Where was everyone? What the hell had happened to discipline?

He was nearly there now, as Nathan flattened a heavy hand against the other boy’s ear. Lee responded by punching Nathan in the kidneys and then, just as Mark reached the pair of them, his arms outstretched, Lee spat, a large splatter of phlegm hitting Nathan’s face and the sleeve of Mark’s jacket.

Mark grabbed Lee’s collar, hauling him away from Nathan so roughly that Lee was lifted off his feet.

‘Get off,’ Lee said.

‘Stay away from Nathan,’ Mark shouted in Lee’s face. He could see tears forming in the boy’s eyes, but he didn’t know if they were from the exertion, pain, regret, the stupid fucking wind, whatever. He didn’t give a shit. For a moment, he just wanted to destroy this boy, make him pay for everything he’d done, for everything that had happened.

‘Daddy.’ It was Nathan at his side. He felt a tug on his arm, a familiar weight. He ignored it and held tight to Lee’s collar.

‘Get the fuck off me,’ Lee said.

Primary two and he already knew ‘fuck’. Mark screwed his fist tight and pulled Lee close to his own face. He looked at his other sleeve, brought it round and wiped the spit from it across Lee’s face. Lee squirmed, taken aback by the move.

‘I said, leave Nathan alone.’

‘You’re not my dad. Let me go.’

‘How would you like it if I spat in your face?’

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

A sharp voice, angry, bitter.

Lee’s mum appeared from behind Mark and hauled the boy away so that Mark’s grip on his jacket was lost. Mark’s fist remained where it was, grasping the air.

‘How dare you threaten my son,’ the woman said. Mark could see the family resemblance, narrow eyes, heavy brow, defiant stare. He wondered for a moment if he and Nathan looked as much alike.

‘He hit my son,’ Mark said.

‘Your boy started it.’

Your boy. Did she even know Nathan’s name? Mark knew Lee’s name, knew everything about him, could tell from looking at him that he would grow up to be a grabbing, manipulative prick like his mum.

‘He’s got a name,’ Mark said.

The woman was confused for a second. ‘What?’

‘My son has a name. Please use it.’

This threw her off guard, but she pulled Lee close to her hip. ‘I don’t care what his name is, he’s a thug and a bully.’

Mark felt a colossal weight bearing down on his neck and back, like he was shouldering the whole world. A silence seemed to fall all around him, like a sudden fog, dampening the edges of his vision. Through the smear of the world he saw his fist pull back then drive into the woman’s face, square on to her nose, which made a satisfying crunch under his knuckle, sending shivers of joy up his arm and into his brain like an adrenalin shot. His mind fizzed with energy, with possibilities, like a whole new universe had opened up to him and only he could see it, only he was able to explore its infinite depths.

The woman’s hand was at her nose now. Drops of blood, surprisingly bright, trickled between her fingers and fell on to the concrete. Her eyes were wide and wet as she stared at Mark.

‘You’re a fucking maniac,’ she shouted, her voice wavering. ‘I’m going to have you done for assault.’

Mark was pulled back to reality as the playground swam into focus. Saturated colours, those glaring red uniforms everywhere, mirroring the drips of blood on the ground. And the noise, like sitting under a jet engine, a blasting roar of nothingness.

He turned to Nathan, who was gaping at him with a look Mark had never seen before. He didn’t know what it meant, had no idea what was going through the boy’s mind, and it struck him that it was just about the first time that was true.

He grabbed Nathan’s hand and turned back to Lee and his mum. He leaned towards the woman, and she cowered despite trying to puff herself up.

‘Do what the hell you like,’ he said quietly. ‘We’re going home.’

He walked at a calm clip, Nathan scurrying to keep up. He passed through the playground, other parents turning away from his gaze, their children, beautiful, honest kids, gawping straight at him in shock. He felt like something out of the Bible, a righteous man in a sea of compromise and corruption.