Starting Over (33 page)

Olly Gray. Olly Gray. Ratty’s strides back to Pennybun Cottage spoke the name. Turned into Olly Gray. You’ve turned into Olly Gray.

Reaching the cottage, he had other things to worry about. ‘Oh
Christ
.’

Angel squeezed into the kitchen beside him. ‘You’re absolutely barking mad, Ratty, d’you know that? Where do we start with this lot?’

‘Oh Christ,’ he repeated, barely able to bring his eyes to settle on the havoc, from the gaping of the burst windows to the mulch of smashed china and glass. The fallen dresser, the upturned chairs, one broken.

The pictures of McLaren and Lucasta peering back oddly from behind glass spiders’ webs.

They could only start at the top and work down. Knock out the remaining glass from the sashes and sweep up, right the wardrobe, remove the door with the broken hinge until it could be repaired.

A screw had ripped from the frame of the dressing-table stool. Two bathroom tiles were cracked.

‘This is like clearing up after an air raid.’ Angel picked splintered glass from her fingertip. ‘Overwhelmingly depressing.’ But mainly she and Pete worked alongside him in silence, doing what had to be done. And he was grateful for their help. Grateful that Pete rang the joiner and, because Ratty was a fast payer and realised he’d have to pay top rates, got an agreement to re-glaze the following morning. Grateful that Angel had asked Pete’s parents to have the kids so that she could collect empty boxes from Crowther’s to fill with the millions of glass crystals.

And then all he wanted was for them to go away.

So he could be alone, alone in the empty shell of a home with the night wind blowing the curtains in empty windows.

‘Bit more compromising now, aren’t we? My God! Aren’t you the chap who was confident everything would work out like a dream? No chance of unhappiness, not with you looking after her?’

Asking James if he knew where Tess was because he seemed to have lost her, was bound to cause a furious eruption. It was precisely what he’d expected. Ratty let him have his rant, then lunged in when James took a breath. ‘Did you hear from her, yesterday? Today?’

Fresh heights of outrage emanated from the phone. ‘
Don’t
you think I might have
mentioned
it?’

‘Not necessarily.’ He stretched wearily and listened to the joiner and his mate knocking, upstairs. Apart from the unavoidable hammering and chopping, they worked in awed – or disgusted – silence. So much damage, no explanation. He’d shut himself in the sitting room with the telephone.

‘... It was
you
, Mr Five Houses,
who said you’d always be fair ...’

‘I also suggested you didn’t comment on my behaviour! Listen ... just a minute ...
listen
...’

Hopeless; he closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and waited for James to run down from a fresh tirade of ‘
What d’you think you’re’
and ‘H
ow dare you’
. Fought to resume in a neutral tone of unnatural courtesy. ‘Please, Mr Riddell. If you know anything, anything at all, just tell me she’s all right. If she doesn’t want me to know her whereabouts, OK. But,’ he swallowed, hearing his voice hoarsen, ‘
please
let me know she’s safe!’

James blustered. ‘Why shouldn’t she be? She’s surely capable of taking a hotel room or something? She always has been before!’

Through the window the shrubs nodded, dusty green. If only she was still the other side of them, busy in her workroom at Honeybun. Why had he pushed her to join him at Pennybun? At least if she’d stayed in her own place she could’ve locked the doors against him and he’d know she was there. Know she was safe.

‘She’s pregnant. Just.’ The phone was beginning to slip in his hand. And then, in a sudden burst of fear, ‘What if it happens again, the bleeding? What if she’s alone? She could bleed to ...’

‘Oh, you
stupid
young bastard!’ Bang. Phone down.

He called back. James exploded afresh. ‘Now what do you want?’

‘Telephone numbers. She hasn’t left them here.’

‘You’ve got some nerve!’

Must keep a grip. A hold, even if precarious, on his temper. Focus only on the important. ‘OK, I’m next best thing to an axe murderer, if I had a brain I’d be dangerous. But let’s make sure she’s OK. Shall we?’

James retired into silence, sighed, creaked his chair. Eventually he spat, ‘Who?’

‘Guy. Kitty, her agent. Olly. Old friends.’

‘I’ve been trying her mobile,’ James offered grudgingly.

‘Pointless, isn’t it?’

‘So that’s the picture. She’s vanished. If you know anything ... I need to know she’s all right.’

Guy’s disembodied voice was careless. ‘Haven’t heard a thing! Disappeared whilst you were at work, did she? What about her mobile?’

‘She’s obviously changed her number. Look, Guy, I know she’s your cousin but for Christ’s sake, let me know if you hear from her. You don’t have to go into detail, as long as I know she’s safe.’

‘She’ll be OK, when she scarpered during her A levels she came home when she ran out of money.’

‘That’s not going to apply now, is it?’ He squashed down impatience, it was vital that he kept all avenues of communication open. ‘Anyway, if you come up with anything ...’

‘Well, well, well!’ Olly was going to be difficult. Going to adore being difficult, in fact. Ratty could just imagine his wide, thin-lipped smirk, his delight that Ratty had fucked up.

‘Yeah, yeah, have your little gloat.’ Desperation was threatening. He felt distant and unwell, and needed to eat. The joiners, at the kitchen window now, pounded their patterns on the front of his skull. He’d cease to function competently if he didn’t eat something. But his throat kept closing at the prospect.

He picked up a pen and stabbed it at the little pad he’d searched out, hoping to have lots of information to list on it. Apart from the stab marks, the page was blank. ‘Is she with you?’

‘So you think she might come here?’

Stab. Stab-stab. ‘I don’t know. Is she there? Do you think she might turn up?’

‘If she was coming to me she would’ve been here by now. James will know.’

‘Apparently not. Can you think of anyone she might’ve gone to? Friends?’

Ratty persisted and Olly, with a show of reluctance, read out some numbers. Ratty could envisage him scrolling through a list on his personal organiser. ‘But don’t waste your time. She won’t be with any of them, they haven’t heard from her since we split. They were people we knew together. I tried them before James coughed up her address.’

Ratty bulldozed on. ‘But if you do happen to hear, call me? Or at least James?’

Olly laughed. ‘I might.’

If he pressed the knuckles of his hand between his eyes hard enough, he might be able to burrow into the hammering and stop it. ‘You fascinate me. I don’t understand why you ever got together when you so obviously couldn’t give a toss.’

‘In actual fact I do, of course I do! Tess looks great, I like to go to bed with her and she’s good at looking after me. I thought being married to her would be comfortable, then I met someone else and lost the plot for a while. It happens. But if I get another crack at her, it won’t happen again. And, from what you say, I might be getting my next crack any minute.’

‘You give blokes a bad name.’

Unseen, through the French doors he watched his father turning papers, box file on knee, chin on knuckles. Pressing the door handle, he stepped inside a room that never changed. Parquet, pale wallpaper up to the moulded cornice, ornate plaster roses, a five-armed light fitting matching the one visible through the arch to the dining room. He wished, irrelevantly and irascibly, that his parents could have one single, pendant light in the house, with an ordinary cotton shade.

‘Miles!’ His father jerked up, flitting through surprise, pleasure, and into wariness. ‘What’s up?’

And suddenly he couldn’t speak, couldn’t loosen the knot in his throat to confess. He felt like a child who’d smashed a window. More than a smashed window though, this time.

Lester closed his file. ‘Come through. How about coffee?’

Follow. Follow grey trousers and leather moccasins, his own boots leaving the parquet with a sucking noise. Through into the spacious kitchen with oak units and a peninsular breakfast bar. He slid onto a tall wooden stool, propped the heaviness of his head on his palm while Lester bustled with the kettle. When the coffee came he looked down into the steam until his eyes smarted. Glanced at Lester and away.

‘What is it?’ Lester’s voice was kind.

Clearing his throat, he watched the little island of foam spin in the centre of his coffee. Mustn’t cry, too ridiculous, a grown man! Deep breath. ‘The CSA are alleging that I’m the absent parent of a little boy. Tess has left.’ It became easier, whilst Lester listened intently, to talk about Madeline and the bits of heedlessness that had jumped up to bite him, Tess’s extreme reaction, his endless, fruitless attempts to find her.

Thank God, Lester, sympathetic hand on his shoulder, was going to be reasonable, helpful. ‘You know, Miles, if she doesn’t want to be found it’s simple enough. People do it every day. Hotel, motel, rented house. Disappear into an unconnected part of the country. I’m not sure there’s anything to be done.’

‘And she’s pregnant. And in the past she miscarried, had a massive bleed that put her in hospital. I prefer her not to be alone somewhere, in those circumstances.’

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’

Ratty ground his teeth. ‘Is plural blasphemy the thing in legal circles these days?’ Why did Lester always make him sarcastic?

‘Well, you are rather springing grandchildren on me, Miles!’ Lester laughed shortly. ‘So, what have you done to find her?’

And he went though it all again, drinking coffee which was somehow strong yet tasteless, wearily enumerating the prolific phone calls. James, Guy and Olly. The frustrating chain of unreturned calls to Kitty, Tess’s agent, culminating in a curt refusal to discuss one of her artists. The pointless wading through the list that Olly had provided, every Melissa and Melanie, Jack, Samantha, Clare, all vague or surprised or uninterested.

‘It’ll have to be the police, then.’ Lester became businesslike.

Ratty looked up. ‘Will they help?’

‘Might. Depends who’s on duty.’ Lester drummed his fingers and thought. ‘But they’re reluctant to intervene in a domestic. We’ll have to be very concerned for her health, stress her history and that her parents haven’t heard from her, that sort of thing. ’Course, the police will automatically approach the Riddells and they’d be obliged to be frank with them in a way they might not with you, if they did happen to know anything.’

Glumly, he sipped the strong yet tasteless coffee. ‘Her father says I’m a stupid young bastard.’

‘Yes, well. List all the phone numbers of the people you’ve approached, all that. See what the boys in blue can do if you’re nice to them.’

Ratty grinned faintly, remembering
it’s no wonder the children call you pigs.
He’d be nice. Too nice for words if it got him somewhere. Some of the tension rolled away. At least he was getting the sensation of travelling positively instead of careering round in squawking circles.

Lester rubbed his chin. ‘The other baby. The mother?’

‘Madeline Gavanagh.’

‘Oh, yes. Dates fit?’

The obvious question. He let his elbow slide along the breakfast table, taking his head with it. ‘Couple of times we dispensed with condoms. It’s a possibility. Probability, even.’

He mustn’t be impatient that Lester was gazing at his garden, frowning. Odd not to be sure, he realised. Ratty’s son? Lester’s grandchild? Was their blood circulating the little body of Jason Gavanagh, a stranger?

So he explained about attending the Child Support Agency for interview, prior to arranging an appointment for a pinprick blood sample to be taken by a local doctor and sent to the DNA testing company. The two passport photos, so that Madeline could check the right person had provided the sample. Then all he had to do was wait a few more weeks.

‘And if he’s mine, I’ll be supporting him financially until he’s eighteen, I suppose.’

Lester rubbed his eyes. ‘What about ... meeting him. Will you want to be in his life?’

The stool screeched the tiles as he flung it back. ‘How the hell do I know? This is all new to me, I don’t know how it feels to be a father!’

Extending that sympathetic hand again to sit Ratty back down, Lester observed gravely, ‘It can be a hell of a job. Finish your coffee. Let me think.’ He tapped his terribly clean fingertips on the bar.

Ratty watched, sipped. The old man could be a great asset when he chose. It hadn’t apparently occurred to him to distance himself. There he was, bending his considerable intelligence to the problem without giving a second thought to all the wary years between them. Was that fatherhood?