The Child Who (17 page)

‘That’s cheesecake, sir. This one’s vanilla: over here.’

‘What? Fine. Whichever.’

‘So . . . cheesecake then? Or vanilla?’

Move! Why would he not just move?

‘Sir? I . . . There are people waiting, sir.’

‘Leo!’

‘What?’ Leo snapped as he spun. The woman behind the counter was still waiting. ‘Cheesecake. Cheesecake’s fine.’ He dug out some change from his pocket and slapped it onto the counter. The woman handed over his cone and Leo ushered his frowning daughter from the shop. He heard, vaguely, Megan apologising to the owner in their wake.

There was no one out there. Just the same drifts of visitors parading around the square, groups here and there huddled beside the benches.

Leo trailed. Megan was up ahead and Ellie midway between them. Their daughter’s enthusiasm for her raspberry ripple seemed to have abated and she prodded half-heartedly at the contents of her tub. Leo, similarly, only licked his cone once in a while when he felt the cold slipping in tendrils across his fingers.

So much for ice cream.

There was a single bench unoccupied, damp and in the shade, and Megan seemed to be leading them towards it. They were in no hurry. When they got there they would poke some more at their ice cream and shiver for a moment in silence and then one of them – Megan – would suggest that they head back home. Which was something. Better that than any more of this. Better to be home, safe, warm at least, with their own corners of the house to inhabit and no obligation to pretend.

‘Hey!’

Leo’s hand drooped and the scoop of ice cream toppled from the cone.

‘Hey!’ he said again. ‘You!’ He lengthened his stride and bumped his daughter as he passed her. He heard her exclamation but did not turn to it. He focused on the man ahead and continued his march. ‘Stop right there!’

Leo expected the man to run and for an instant he seemed to consider it. He turned to his right but found his path blocked by the tree behind which he had been hiding. He turned the other way but there was a barrier now of people who had slowed on the pathway to watch. Leo, more to the point, was closing. Even were the man to run, there was no way he would get far. And so he waited, camera in hand, feet shuffling in a nervous dance.

‘Leo? What’s the matter?’ Megan diverted from the bench but stopped when Leo passed her.

‘Who are you? What do you want?’

The man was indeed young. Below his cap his hair was cropped and he wore his stubble the same length. His overcoat seemed too big, as though he had borrowed it from his father. Even Leo would have had to admit, the man looked more like a student than a stalker.

Even so: ‘Well? Let’s hear it.’

The man did his best impression of an innocent bystander. ‘Who?’ He looked about. ‘Me?’

‘Yes, you!’ Leo took a step forwards. He was an arm and a half’s distance now from his quarry. ‘I saw you! You’ve been following us!’

Don’t be ridiculous, read the man’s expression. But there was uncertainty – guilt – in his eyes and he glanced again as though seeking an escape route. ‘Why would I be following you? I’m just . . .’

Leo waited. The bystanders – a dozen strong now – waited too.

‘Just . . .’ The man smiled, incredulously, and gestured to the sea, the square, the sky. And then he ran.

Someone screamed. Megan? Leo tensed and almost darted but in the end there was no need. The man managed barely a second step before he stumbled, tripping on the protruding wheel of a pushchair. He fell gracelessly, his instinct to save his camera. Someone in the crowd laughed. Before the man could recover his footing Leo was looming over him.

‘What’s on the camera?’

The man tried to wrap the camera in his overcoat. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Pictures of the sea.’

‘Give it to me.’ Leo took a step and reached. The man scrabbled backwards on his heels.

‘What? No!’

‘Give me the camera!’ Leo made to lunge but felt a hand grip his arm.

‘Leo! What are you doing? What’s going on?’

‘I said, give me the . . .’ Leo shook off his wife and swiped. The man was quicker. He rolled and staggered upright and held the camera aloft.

‘They’re just pictures! I’ll delete them! Just mind the camera, will you!’

Leo grabbed and the man lurched. The camera floated out of Leo’s reach.

‘What kind of pictures? Who are you? Why are you taking pictures of us?’

‘I don’t know. They just said for me to get pictures!’ The man’s eyes darted across Leo’s shoulder. Leo turned to track his gaze but saw nothing. But then he did: Ellie, standing alone and watching, listening.

Leo whirled back. ‘My daughter? You were taking pictures of my daughter?’

The man took a step away. ‘I’m just doing what I was told. Okay? It’s just a job!’

‘Leo! What’s going on! Will you please—’

‘You’re a photographer.’ Leo stopped his advance. ‘You work for a newspaper?’

The man gave Leo a look, like why the hell else would he be here? ‘The
Post
,’ he said. ‘But it’s only a gig. I’m freelance really. I’ll delete the pictures, I promise. I’ll tell them I lost you at the station.’ The man backed through the boundary of onlookers.

‘Leo. Leo!’

Leo turned slowly towards his wife. He was aware, vaguely, that the people around them were dispersing, all except for a man in a woollen hat who was clearly holding out for something more climactic. But even he, when he noticed Leo glance, tucked his chin behind his upturned collar and fell into step with the rest of the crowd. Leo and Megan were left alone.

They were alone.

Leo looked left, right, then back at his wife, who was watching him with something like fear, something like disgust. Until her expression changed too, even before Leo could ask what they were all of a sudden both thinking.

‘Where’s Ellie?’

They found her discarded tub of ice cream atop a bin at the edge of the square. The contents had turned to soup, the raspberry ripples into streaks like blood.

From the square, at Leo’s suggestion, they split up. She had gone home. Of course she had gone home. She would be at the railway station or already aboard a train. And she was fifteen, not a child: it was not like she had never caught public transport by herself. Yet Leo did not want Megan to see his rising panic. His wife, anyway, seemed happy to go her own way. She seemed delighted, in fact, at the prospect of being able to escape the sight of him.

Megan headed straight for the station. Leo, they agreed, would retrace their route and then meet them, hopefully, on platform two. And so he rewound their day, pacing from the site of one minor failure to the next. None proved any more fruitful on Leo’s second visit, which meant his first instinct had obviously been correct. And so he sprinted, as best he could around pedestrians who refused to part, and braced himself for the prospect of his wife and daughter braced for the prospect of seeing him.

He almost missed them. The train to Exeter was at the platform and there were enough bodies interlacing through the doors that Leo struggled for a moment to distinguish his wife and daughter’s. Then he spotted them, finally – but even as he did, he thought for a second that he must have been mistaken. Because they were getting on. His wife, his daughter ahead of her and with Megan’s hand at the small of her back: they were about to board the train.

They were leaving without him.

Leo, rooted, called out. Ellie by now was already aboard but Megan, behind her, turned. She saw him. There was no question that she saw him. She did not answer, however. She did not wave, nor gesture for him to hurry. She regarded him for half a moment, then turned her back and stepped from sight.

It had, she said,
gone something like this.

Stephanie was seated when Karen arrived, facing the door and curiously still. Blake, behind her, seemed powered by the both of them: not muttering when Karen walked in but giving the impression he was merely drawing breath. He was pacing, or seemed to have been, because it took him a second or two after Karen entered to rein in his momentum. He came to a halt beside the armchair, partially obscuring his wife and soundlessly broadcasting his hostility. He checked his watch, as though Karen being ten minutes late were the cause of his disquiet. She should have been on time, of course. She had not intended to leave her office that morning but something had come up and it had taken longer than she had expected to deal with and the traffic, on the way back, had been . . .

Anyway. The point was Blake was hostile from the start, just as Leo had predicted he would be.

Karen apologised. Blake took her hand when she offered it, though for half a second she was certain he would not. Daniel’s mother did not stand but smiled up at Karen. She seemed calm. Chemically so, Karen would have said. It was a glaze she recognised. One, sometimes, she prescribed.

Blake was not calm. He acted, once Karen was in the room, in a manner to imply he was perfectly in control but his agitation simmered below his skin.

‘So you’re the shrink,’ he said, restating in his own terms Karen’s introduction.

‘
A
shrink,’ Karen said and reinforced her smile. ‘Leo. Leonard. Mr Curtice . . .’ she was unsure, it struck her then, how they would know him ‘. . . asked me to help out. With Daniel. With the case.’

‘Like you’re not getting paid,’ Blake responded. ‘Like “helping out” isn’t billed by the hour.’

Still Karen smiled. ‘Would you like coffee? Tea? Water or something?’

‘Let’s just get on with this.’ Blake sat on the join between the cushions on the sofa and aimed his knees at ten and two. ‘Shall we?’

Karen waited for Blake’s wife to decide for herself, then settled, when Stephanie shook her head, on the armchair beside her.

‘I was hoping,’ Karen said, impartially alternating eye contact, ‘for a little background. I invited you here because I thought, by talking to you, I might glean some insight into—’

But she need not have bothered with the rehearsals.

‘I have a living to earn,’ Blake interrupted. ‘Steph here has soaps to watch. What is it you want us to tell you?’

‘Well,’ Karen said, ‘I’m not sure exactly. Which is why I thought it important that we should talk. The three of us.’ She endeavoured, with a look, to include Stephanie.

‘Talk. Always bloody talk. That’s all any of you lot seem to do.’

‘Us lot, Mr Blake? Who do you mean exactly?’

Blake flicked a hand. ‘Curtice. Social services. The do-gooders from that charity that keeps bugging us, behaving like we’re the bloody victims. And doctors. Don’t get me started on doctors. God knows we’ve seen enough of them over the years to know they’re all full of piss and air.’

Karen said nothing. She watched.

‘This isn’t easy, you know.’ Blake’s tone was a challenge. ‘The waiting. The moving out, the moving in. The so-called bloody protection. And Steph here – she’s completely messed up about Daniel.’

Blake did not look at his wife but Karen did.

‘I’m upset,’ Stephanie said. ‘That’s all Vince means. It’s Danny, obviously, but it’s other things too.’

‘She means her mates.
Former
mates, rather. Mates who don’t call any more, don’t answer when she calls them.’

‘And you, Mr Blake? Are you upset?’

‘Course I am. But he’s not my son, is he? It’s different, isn’t it? I don’t feel so constantly bloody guilty all the time. That’s Steph’s trouble. She’s acting like she’s the one who killed that girl, like it’s her fault Daniel—’

‘Vince. Don’t.’

Blake gave Karen a look: you see what I mean? He patted himself down and located his packet of cigarettes.

‘I’d like, if I may,’ said Karen after a pause, ‘to discuss Daniel’s home life. His childhood. I’d like to establish a little background.’

‘What’s the point?’ said Blake. ‘He’s not mad, he’s not retarded – that’s what you told Curtice. He’s just screwed up. Right? So he pleads guilty. What choice does he have? How is talking about his childhood gonna change anything?’

‘You want to help him, Mr Blake, don’t you? You want Daniel to understand why he did what he did?’

‘He has to be guilty first. That’s what I read. No one can help him till he tells them he’s guilty.’ Blake turned aside, his voice dwindling into a mutter. ‘Which, the way I see it, he already has.’ He turned back to face Karen. He held up his cigarettes. ‘You’re gonna tell me I can’t smoke in here, aren’t you?’

Karen winced. ‘Sorry.’

Blake gave a sniff. He tucked the packet of cigarettes back into his shirt pocket.

‘We want to help.’

Karen turned to face Stephanie.

‘Of course we want to help. We just don’t see how we can. That’s part of the problem. That’s the reason we’re finding this so hard.’

Karen nodded. ‘I understand. I really do. We all want what’s best for Daniel and the information you give me should help us establish exactly what that might be.’

‘Why are you asking?’ said Blake. ‘That’s what I want to know. What did Daniel tell you? I mean, if he’s trying to sell you some sob story, blame everything that’s happened on Steph . . .’