This Holey Life (33 page)

She stops and grins briefly at the camera, embarrassed at that word, ‘love’. And then turns her back, throws the stone and jumps off. The camera gets a bit wobbly at this point and
you can hear Jessica mutter under her breath at a child who has come up to her. Then it goes dark. A moment later the screen is back, Rachel’s feet, scuffed shoes, hopping towards the camera
and stopping. She has been asked a question but we don’t hear what it is. As the camera pans up to her face, we can see her expression while she considers her answer.

‘I had this baby brother. He was like small and wriggly and cried quite a lot. I used to hold him sometimes sitting on the sofa. He was warm and heavy. He felt nice. When Mum laid him on
the changing mat, he used to wee and it would like squirt everywhere. And we’d go out, Mum, Dad and me, to the park, and Dad would push me on the swings, really high so that Mum used to panic
and she’d push Thomas round the edge of the playground in his pram to like get him off to sleep and that. And then one day we went to bed and in the morning he was gone. To heaven. But
I’m not sure where that is or if I’ll see him again. And now I’ve got Olivia and Imo and they are well annoying. And sometimes they’re nice. And that’s it.’ She
turns and hop-scotches out of shot.

Cut to: St Hilda’s church hall. Tea and coffee after a Sunday morning service. People of all ages and backgrounds, all those people from the community, so diverse and yet gathered together
in a squat ugly building, drinking tea and squash and biscuits, even a few young people who don’t think church embarrassing. You can hear Jessica breathing as she walks around the periphery
of the room, filming the people in her path, dodging Desmond – the shot goes to the floor for a while as she tries to hide the camera from him, in case he asks her why she’s filming.
She stops when she reaches Karolina who is scowling. Jessica perseveres. Karolina takes out her lipstick and slashes it across her mouth. Then she smiles, says hello in Polish.
Dzien
dobry
.

Jessica: D’you like living in London?

Karolina: Is grey and dirty. Penge is very boring. But is okay. I get used to London one day I hope.

Jessica: D’you miss your family?

Karolina: (Sneers) No. I have my family here.

The camera pans down to Natasha, clutching onto her mother’s denimed leg.

Cut to: Interior of the shed. Two camping chairs set out like the set of Parky, Jessica sitting on one, Jeremy on the other. Rachel must be holding the camera.

Jeremy: Who is the most important person in your life?

Jessica: My dad I suppose cos he’s like around all the time. Tamarine nags him to get off his backside sometimes and make some more money but Dad says he’ll work when he wants to
work. But at least he’s around a lot. When I get back from school he’s usually there and he asks me about my day and stuff and if everything’s alright. And I always say yeah,
it’s alright even though sometimes I want to say, Dad, school was a load of pants, my teacher’s a muppet and I miss my mum.

Jeremy: And what’s it like being an only child? For the purposes of the tape.

Jessica: It can be boring. It can be a pain cos you don’t have no-one going through the same things as you. Not like her. (She points at the camerawoman.)

Jeremy: And what would you ask your mum, if you got the chance?

Jessica: (after a long pause) I’d ask her when she is coming back.

Fade to black.

Later. In the back room I come across Martin and Claudia sitting side-by-side on the zed-bed, his arm around her fragile shoulders. She is nursing Jeremy’s old school
tie, scratching away at a Tipp Ex stain with her chewed fingernail. They look up as I come in, faces hopeful for a moment, then scared.

‘No news,’ I tell them straightaway.

But they are not looking at me; someone else has entered the room. Rachel. She stands awkwardly, the friendship bracelet on one wrist, her other arm behind her back. She says in a strange voice,
like she’s in a school assembly: ‘People run away
from
something or
to
something.’ She sniffs. ‘That’s what I heard the police woman say to Bob. She was
trying to get him to think where they might have gone. Bob wasn’t very helpful. Said Jessica would never run away from home. She was happy. He never hit her if that was what they were getting
at.’ A pause while we wait for Rach to get to her point which I know is coming.

‘Anyway... ’ She reveals what is lurking behind her back: an envelope. ‘I should give this to Bob but he’s crying and I don’t want him to feel worse. It was in the
shed, in a seed packet. Runner beans. It’s time to plant them soon, Granddad reckons. I knew it was there all along and I thought the police would have found it but I suppose they were like
only looking to see if Jess or Jeremy were hiding in there.’ She hands it over to her uncle. Not a Basildon Bond blue envelope but a scruffy, brown one.

Martin carefully takes out the folded letter inside, a grubby piece of lined paper torn from a pad. He holds it so that Claudia can read it. Then he hands it to me. It is from Jessica’s
mother. It is from Jackie.

Easter Saturday may be a time of waiting and reflection but today requires action. I am no longer happy to have things done to me. I am going to do things myself, like the
little red hen. I am Vicky the Do-er.

It is dark by the time we hit the A303. No Jazz FM today. No music at all. Martin and I sit in silence, his Saab doing the work. I don’t know what is going through his
mind; it’s hard enough working out what’s going on in mine. I clutch onto the hope that we will find them. They weren’t snatched. They decided to go. But...

The wheels keep turning, taking us nearer to the West Country, to Devon, to a small seaside town famous for its black swans and Brunel’s railway. A long way from Lanzarote. How did Jackie
end up there? Why did she never come back for Jessica? Which I suppose is what Jessica needs to ask her.

I say nothing to my brother. It is my job to sit here quietly, to be next to him and to do whatever it takes to get his son back.

Nine thirty and we arrive in Dawlish, Martin’s sat nav wrestling with its one-way streets and narrow lanes. Finally we pull up outside a small painted terrace house. It
looks quaint and authentic, only the Sky dish out of place. A dim light gleams within and I take that as a ray of hope. Martin switches off the engine and instead of tearing out the car and
hammering on the door, he waits. And now I know exactly what he is thinking: What if that ray of hope is darkened?

‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s go.’ I open my door and clamber out, stiff and tired and anxious, into the cold evening. The sea sighs, a few streets away. And then I hear
Martin get out and click his door closed.

‘Let’s go,’ he agrees.

I follow him to the house and while he rings the bell, I try to peek inside the window, hoping for a pair of familiar shadows but there is nothing to see. The closed curtains give away no
clues.

We don’t have to wait long.

‘Just coming.’ I hear a voice that I haven’t heard in a while. Jackie. So she lives here still. Rachel has done well. Unless... but I don’t want to think about
‘unless’. I won’t. They will be here. They will be here.

As she battles with the lock and then pulls back the door, we can see her face, slightly older, but still definitely Jackie, though she’s lost her brassy blonde hair and appears altogether
more conservative than I remember.

‘I was expecting Bob, not you Vicky. And Martin, isn’t it? You’d best come in.’

We say nothing, but go in the door, straight into her living room and there in front of
Friends
are Jessica and Jeremy, side by side on a wicker sofa, the remains of a fish and chip
supper on their laps. They blink up at us, guiltily, but say nothing, waiting for the telling off that must be coming their way any second now. But Martin surprises us all and swoops over to his
son and does something I have wanted to see him do for months. He kneels down in front of Jeremy and clutches hold of him in a hug that might possibly go on forever.

Jessica looks up at me and says simply: ‘Don’t be cross with him. I wanted to find my mum and he helped me.’

Her mum, Jackie, is fighting back the tears, saying how sorry she is, that she was going to call us as soon as they’d finished their tea and gone to sleep. She just wanted Jessica to
herself for a short time, before she was taken back to London.

‘But you can come too, Mum,’ says Jessica, with a child’s simplicity.

I have to be the grown-up. I have to be hard. ‘We’d better call Bob. He’s out of his mind.’ I don’t tell them he didn’t come because he was so distraught,
blaming Jackie, blaming himself, and unfit to drive or come with us, that we’d persuaded him to sit tight at home with Tamarine.

And so I make a phone call that I know will give a father the best news of his life, but knowing there is no such thing as a simple, uncomplicated happy ending, whatever Steve might say.

Martin is being a pig. A bigger pig than normal. He shouts at me all the time and tells me I’m a stupid little girl whenever I open my mouth.

Mum came to see me in my bedroom. She said gosh it’s tidy in here and I said thank you. She said that Martin was upset because Heidi was moving away. I asked her where and she said to
boarding school so she wouldn’t be able to see Martin anymore. Martin had said they could write to each other and see each other in the holidays but she had said don’t bother. She said
it was easier if they finished. So they are finished and I am sad because I liked Heidi. But I can’t tell Martin that because he will say I am a stupid little girl.

Chapter Thirty-Seven:
Sunday 23rd March Easter Sunday

Very early in the morning and I am in the garden. In my nightie. I am Vicky, the Easter Bunny.

And why am I hiding cheap chocolate eggs behind drain pipes and under bushes? Because there’s an egg hunt this afternoon. In honour of the prodigals’ return. We will kill the fatted
calf (pre-killed actually, from Waitrose courtesy of Claudia) and we will hang out the bunting (a packet of balloons from the corner shop).

Dad appears suddenly beside me in his dazzling white dressing gown. My dad, the gardener. Seeing him there, his knobbly knees, his frailty, I start to weep. Big, fat,
snot-bubbling-out-of-nostrils, wet-faced, beyond-embarrassing sobbing. He opens his arms to me and I go to them, like a child, a little girl. I let him wrap me up and hold me until, much later, I
am still and quiet and relieved.

He offers me a hanky from his pocket and, after a quick inspection, I give my nose a good blow. ‘I often think that relief is the best feeling in the world.’

‘You could be right, Vicky-Love.’ He’s managed to extricate himself from me and is passing a critical eye over my beds.

‘I’ll give you a hand later. Get them dug over for those runner beans.’

‘With one hand?’

‘It’s surprising what you can do with one hand.’

‘Dad, please.’

‘I’m famished. You got any bacon? Pat’s doing a fry-up and she can’t find any.’

The story according to Olivia:
I am Olivia. I am three-years-old. I live in Penge with my mummy, my daddy, my big sister, Rachel, and my baby sister, Imogen. I go to
pre-school and soon I will go to big school when I am four. When I am at big school Rachel will be at a more bigger school. We have a cousin called Jeremy. He lives with us sometimes but mummy says
‘it will all blow over’. She says Uncle Martin should grow up. A long time ago, before I was born and came out of my mummy’s tummy, I had a brother called Thomas. He died. That
makes me sad. He is in heaven. So is Grandma. I don’t remember her neither. She looks after Thomas. She takes him for walks on the clouds in a shiny silver pram. I wish he was here with us in
our house. I would like a brother I could talk to. It would be like having Jeremy all the time. He might play the guitar or the drums or the recorder. When I am five I want to play the organ like
Mrs Filler. Mum said I’d probably be as good as Mrs Filler. I think she was making a joke but she wasn’t smiling when she said it. She’d had a busy day. She’s always having
a busy day. She says ‘hang on’, ‘in a minute,’ ‘give me a chance’. When I am growed up I don’t want babies. Unless Mary Poppins comes to help out. But Mary
Poppins isn’t real, she’s made up in your imagination like the bogey man. I think Father Christmas might be made up too but when I asked Jessica last Christmas, she said I better watch
it or I won’t get as many presents. So I didn’t say nothing. Jesus isn’t made up. I know he is real because I just do. I said a prayer for Jessica and Jeremy to be found, all
safe, and they were. Uncle Martin will be cross with Jeremy. But they might buy him a present. They said he can have a new cello but I know he wants a tent so he can go camping with Jessica.
Jessica is his girlfriend. Uncle Martin had a girlfriend but that was very naughty because he has a wife as well. That’s my Auntie Claudia who is the prettiest lady in the whole world and she
has lots of shoes...

Olivia is sitting at the kitchen table, doing a sticky picture, chattering away to the police officer while I clear up after a mammoth breakfast session. Martin and Claudia and
Jeremy are due round any second and Jeremy will have to be interviewed to find out why they went, as well as everything else, but the police officer says she won’t keep us long. I tell her
she’s welcome at the Easter service that Desmond, is taking – his last one as he’s just announced his impending retirement.

The officer looks doubtful, says she needs to get home as her shift is over. Then she says: ‘I’ve often wondered about doing one of them Alpha courses.’

I manage to smile and it doesn’t hurt.

I leave them to it for a moment, to check up on Imo who has managed to roll over onto her stomach. She is huffing and puffing, trying to keep her head up, like she’s Private Benjamin. I
grab her up off the floor and tell her what a clever girl she is, though life will be quite different from now on, now she is beginning to catch up with her sisters.