Someone Else's Son (15 page)

‘When you came down to the shed,’ he suddenly whispered, turning to her, ‘I was going to give you something. A present.’ Dayna thought he looked wistful.

‘Oh?’ She was curious. Max often said strange things. That’s what she liked best about him.

‘But it got stolen. I was mugged.’

‘Bloody hell. Did you go to the police?’ She wanted to put a hand on him, to show she felt for him, to show she appreciated the thought, but she was frozen solid.

Max shook his head. A trailer for a film came on and he just stared at that.

‘Why not?’ When he said nothing, Dayna broke free from her reservations and pulled Max’s sleeve. She shook his arm. ‘What was it? What was the present?’

‘A computer,’ he replied without turning from the screen. The popcorn kept going in. Dayna had only tasted one piece of hers.

‘You were going to give me a computer?’

She saw Max nod.

‘That’s crazy. You don’t give computers to people you hardly know.’

Max shrugged. ‘I do,’ he whispered. Then, ‘Shh, the movie’s starting.’

Dayna chewed on her lip. There was a snag of skin. She tugged it with her teeth and waited for the burst of blood. Probably Max wouldn’t kiss her anyway.

The movie began. Dayna stared intently at the American whitewashed house. Someone’s dream home. A little boy and girl played in the garden. From the corner of her eye, she gave Max a glance. He was a mystery; not like ordinary lads. Slowly, she turned back to the screen and began to eat her popcorn. The chaotic music screamed that something bad was going to happen.

 

‘Shaved Head’s leaving.’ Fiona pulled an elastic piece of bacon rind from her mouth. She felt sick. She scraped the pool of tinned tomatoes to one side, along with the remainder of the egg and fried bread and dropped her knife and fork on to the plate.

‘Pay. Now.’ Brody was urgent. He stood. ‘
Now
.’

Fiona thrust ten pounds into Edie’s pocket as she carried a tray of dirty plates. ‘Keep the change,’ she said to the waitress. ‘In case you’re interested, Brody, the other two boys are leaving as well.’

‘Follow them.’

‘What?’ Fiona hissed the words at Brody’s ear. ‘We can’t.’

‘You want me to do it alone?’

Fiona rolled her eyes. She took Brody’s arm. It was rigid. She knew he worked out – she was there most times, watching as the personal trainer guided him around the equipment – but she didn’t think this was from honed muscle. This was pure tension. ‘What the hell’s got into you?’ These kids were upsetting him. She’d like to teach the little sods a lesson for whatever they’d done.

Brody said nothing but fell into step with Fiona. They had a way of walking, as if they were in a three-legged race, as if not only their stride became synchronised but their thoughts, too. Fiona liked to believe this, anyway. Working so closely with the professor for so many years, these things couldn’t help but become second nature. That was what she told herself. What she couldn’t stand to admit, though, was that in all the second nature, all the symbiosis and rapport they shared, the desire to take things further was purely one-sided. Brody Quinell was completely blind to the love that she’d grown for him.

‘Are we close?’

‘They’re up ahead. About fifty feet away. There are some shops. They’ve stopped for a smoke. Spotty’s kicking litter.’ Fiona gently pulled Brody to a stop. ‘We shouldn’t go any further. They’re probably just going back to school. What’s the big deal with following a few manky kids?’

This would be as good a time as any, Fiona thought, to kiss him, to distract him. She hadn’t kissed a man for years, not since Daniel broke her heart and walked out two weeks before their wedding. She stared up at Brody’s face, looming above her, his glazed eyes staring right over the top of her head. There were similarities between the two men, she thought. The same determined jaw bone, broad shoulders, full lips and a smile that didn’t break often but when it did, it came direct from the heart. She shook Daniel from her mind. He had no place in her life now.

‘It’s personal.’

He did that mouth-rolling thing, where his lips became virtually nothing. He sucked them in before releasing them and then did it all over again.

Fiona had learnt very gradually about the silent battle Brody fought with his emotions. He worked tirelessly to keep anyone from seeing them. She often felt blind herself as she fingered her way through his life, waiting for her touch to stumble across an hour of sadness, a moment of desire. Usually all she felt was the rough brick of the wall that he’d built up around himself. Today, though, she sensed – almost
smelt
– the welling emotion seeping through the cracks. It was, she thought, an awful lot like anger.

Fiona linked her arm with his again. She didn’t know what to say. ‘They’re making a move. Well, a swagger.’

Brody let out a sigh that had obviously been stuck at the bottom of his lungs for a very long time.

‘What was that for?’ she asked.

‘It’s complicated, Fiona. Family stuff.’

Fiona stared between him and the kids they were tailing. She shook her head. Family stuff – it sent ripples of jealousy through her as well as the desire to create her own. With Brody. But he’d already got a family. She didn’t have anything to do with his ex-wife but the son had been a problem. She steered Brody round a couple of mums and their pushchairs. She wanted to remind him that she was here for him, but even by the second word, she regretted saying it. ‘But you don’t have a family any—’

‘Don’t you ever, ever say that to me again.’ Brody swung round and grabbed her upper arms tightly, miraculously locating her first time. He pushed his face close to hers. Fiona caught the fry-up on his breath; the anger, the hate, the sadness mingled with the grease. They stood there, in the middle of the street in the lunchtime rush, stiff as boards, each waiting for the other to crack.

‘I’m so sorry.’ She felt wretched and meant it. It barely diffused things. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’ But she stopped. Brody was already walking on, about to plough straight into a bench.

She ran up to him. ‘I really am sorry.’ She took his arm and guided him to the left. ‘Bench,’ she said.

‘Just follow the boys.’

 

Brody instructed Fiona to take him right up to the school gates. In the past, he’d kept quiet enough about his family – a good thing, he now realised – and he doubted very much she would figure out that this was the school Max had decided to attend after eschewing private education, of which, Brody had to admit, he was not a fan. When Max was eight years old, it was something he’d just gone along with, trusting Carrie’s motherly instincts to make the right decisions for their son.

Brody’s heart beat heavy in his chest. Max skulked in here every morning, pack weighing him down, life making him stoop even more. He couldn’t see the place, of course, but the blackness in his eyes was representative of how Max must feel to act so rashly. Where did he go when he truanted? Brody wondered. He’d had four phone calls from the school so far, a meeting with the head threatened if the absences continued. He’d tried to bring the subject up with Max – what parent wouldn’t? – but the time had never been right. In his head, Brody had run through the conversation they might have but reckoned the damage to their tenuous relationship would be too great. Max was living on a knife edge as it was, adjusting to the new routine post-boarding school, coping with his mother, who Brody knew would have been livid about Max’s decision to quit Denningham. He couldn’t do it to the boy. Not yet. So what if he missed a few lessons.

But it was the messages last week that finally caused Brody to take matters into his own hands. It would kill the boy if he knew.
Watch yer back, you freakin’ loser . . . We’re following you, lowlife scum . . . Say anything and we gonna shank yer ass in school . . . We know you fucked yer own mother you ugly shitface
. . .

‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. They’ve just gone back into school like good little children.’

Brody imagined Fiona’s face, squinting and peering through the school gates on his behalf. He realised in all the time they’d worked together, he’d never once asked what she looked like. In his world the visual took a back seat. If pressed, he reckoned she was a redhead – a petite but feisty little thing with freckles all over her nose that she covered up with powder. He could sometimes smell it.

‘Can you still see them?’

‘Brody . . .’

He didn’t reply.

‘Is this to do with Max, by any chance?’

Silence.

‘Is it?’

‘Why?’ He’d really not wanted to talk directly about his son.

‘Because he’s walking right towards us.’

Brody pulled his arm from Fiona’s. Damn. Damn a thousand times. He hadn’t reckoned on running into Max.

‘Hello, Max,’ Fiona said a certain way. Cautious, Brody thought.

In meetings or when they came across colleagues, she would take the introduction initiative – stating names, angling her voice so he got a sense of position. It gave Brody immediate knowledge. She was his missing sense. She was good at it. He couldn’t argue with that.

‘What are you doing here, Dad?’ There was an indignant wobble in Max’s voice.

It was Brody who made the awkward teenage noise. Caught red-handed.

‘Are you checking up on me?’ Max found it in him to laugh. If they switched places, Brody reckoned he would be angry too. ‘Thanks a lot, Dad, for parading around here like a . . .

‘Stop. Don’t say it.’ Brody held up his hands, palms out. Kids could be so cruel.

‘Your father and I have just had lunch. We were walking back to the car,’ Fiona intervened.

‘Right,’ Max said sourly. ‘I’m OK, you know, Dad. I’m at school. English next, then double physics. We’re doing sound waves.’

‘That’s good.’ Brody picked up the scuff of his son’s trainer on the tarmac. ‘You at your mother’s tonight?’

‘Guess.’

‘Come round for some food if you like. I’ll cook.’ Brody put on his best father-son voice – one that promised a takeaway, a beer, a movie, silly banter. They could talk.

‘Nah. Already got plans.’

Brody wanted to ask what. Was he doing something with his mother? He doubted that. A girlfriend. Was he taking her out? That would be a good sign. Or maybe he just had loads of homework. But then how could he if he was skipping as many lessons as the head had told him?

‘OK, son. Well, let’s—’

‘Brody. He’s gone.’ Fiona’s hand clamped round his forearm. It was little comfort. Every time Max went away, Brody knew there was less of his life left in which to get things right.

‘Sure.’ Brody walked off and Fiona pulled him round in the correct direction. ‘Take me back to the car.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But only if you tell me what that was all about.’

When he’d strapped himself into the passenger seat, Brody felt along the dash for the air conditioner. It wasn’t that warm, but he was sweating. ‘What’s with all the blackmailing, woman?’

He heard her laugh. Something that didn’t happen very often. Fiona was quite intense. ‘Are you going to fire me?’

Brody didn’t reply. He heard the crunch of first gear as she drove off. She always did that, never quite depressed the clutch enough. Once, he’d forced her out of the driver’s side and got in himself. ‘Just be my eyes. Left or right. Fast or slow.’ They didn’t make it out of the university car park before Brody had crumpled the left wing on the gatekeeper’s booth.

‘See what you’ve done?’ Fiona had said, running her hand over the impacted front panel.

Of course I didn’t see, he thought, but he did now. As Fiona forced the gear stick into third then fourth, he saw quite clearly what was happening. He imagined Max veering off from the school entrance as all the other kids reluctantly went back to lessons after the lunch break. He would take a detour down to the canal or the railway for a smoke, to think, to ponder the car crash that was his family, his life.

‘What this is all about,’ Brody said slowly, ‘is saving my son.’

‘From what?’

He heard the indicator ticking as they sat still at a junction, the whir of Fiona’s thoughts. Was she working it out - his obsession with the lads in the café, the book on bullying he wanted her to read to him, hanging around the school?

‘Never mind,’ Brody finally replied, thinking that, apart from the bullies, what Max needed saving from most was his parents.

By mid-afternoon, Carrie had managed to change into a pair of trousers, a plain sweater. She was in the kitchen. Why were there so many people in her house? Everything was fuzzy. She didn’t understand. Someone had made her a cup of tea.

She found herself opening her laptop, feeling strangely serene. Her fingers tingled and her skin danced as if she’d been out in the sun, whereas her heart beat slowly as though it was on ice. She thought she might be hungry. Did a part of her not realise?

‘They say this happens, Carrie. Just go with it.’ It was Leah’s voice, prising apart the shroud. ‘Why don’t you sit somewhere more comfortable?’ A hand on her shoulder, another on her waist.

‘But I want to check my emails.’ Perched on the kitchen stool, one foot hooked over the rail, Carrie tried to log in. ‘I eat a snack and sometimes check my messages here. It’s what I do.’ She sighed and nodded, entering her password. The computer made a noise and rejected the log-in attempt.

‘But today I think you should take it easy. Come and sit over here.’

‘No.’ Carrie entered the password again. Log-in failed. She turned her head and looked at the woman beside her. It was definitely Leah, but she was all misty, like a photo taken through a filter. She thought Leah looked beautiful.

Carrie smiled. ‘Why can’t I remember my password?’

‘Because you’re in shock. Your emails don’t matter. I wish you’d come—’