Ten Days (17 page)

On the High Street, security grilles had been levered off and windows punched out, the whirlwind of destruction leaving behind empty boxes, unwanted remains and dazed shopkeepers who were trying to bang in wood and steel to cover the breaches. Others lined up shovels and spades in case ‘those bastards come again', as one of them shouted to his neighbour.

He thought of Mr Hashi. There wasn't much of value in his shop that would have attracted any looter, but Mr Hashi and his mother always kept themselves quiet. They must have been terrified by the noise and the destruction. He'd drop by on his way home, check that they were okay.

When he got to the shop, he saw that it had been hit, its grilles levered off and glass shattered. And while the shop might not have been looted, it had been trashed. Where once had been shelves now were only holes in the wall, with pottery dogs and china pigs and crockery that no one ever bought broken amongst the plastic buckets and splintered brooms.

The place stank as well. He couldn't tell of what, but it made him gag.

Mr Hashi was by the counter with his back to the door. He must have heard Jayden coming in, but he didn't turn.

‘Mr Hashi.'

‘Go away.' A voice that didn't sound like Mr Hashi's.

‘It's me, Mr Hashi.'

Mr Hashi whirled round. ‘Get off my property.'

‘I came to see if I could help.'

‘You have done enough, Mr Jay Don. You and your kind. Look.' Mr Hashi swept out a hand. ‘Everything broken. Not because it was desired but because what they wanted to do was break me. Look there.' He was pointing at a wall on which somebody had painted ‘Go Home'. ‘The message is plain, is it not? And they passed their water on the wall. One of them, he did not stop there. Look again.' Mr Hashi was now pointing at the floor. ‘Come on, Jay Don. If you are so brave, come and look.'

Even from where he was standing, he could see the sticky brown mess and he could tell what it was from the smell. He didn't move.

‘Animals,' Mr Hashi said. ‘To call them so is an affront to animals.'

‘I'm sorry, Mr Hashi. Let me help you clear it up.'

‘I saw you, Jay Don.' Mr Hashi bent down to pick up one of the broken brooms. ‘I saw you with them.'

‘I wasn't with them.'

‘I saw your face. I know what was going through your mind. You think this comfortable life is all the life that I have lived? You think I have not known how it is to be carried by a crowd? I saw that this had happened to you.'

Nothing Jayden could say to deny it. He shuffled his feet. Looked down at them moving in the mess.

‘I, in my own time,' he heard Mr Hashi saying, ‘I resisted such a crowd. You did not. I saw you, and the dirt on your face is the mark of your guilt.'

‘I didn't take anything. Honest, Mr Hashi, I didn't.'

‘I didna.' Mr Hashi jabbed the broom at him. ‘I didna . . . You do not even know how to speak your own language.' He began to move towards Jayden. ‘It may be that you did not do your business on my floor, but you let them do it. That is all it takes: for people like you to stand to one side. Do so now. Get off my property. Or I will hurt you.'

The fury in his expression showed that he meant every word. Jayden turned to go. He heard a loud ‘Aaaaaaahhhh.' He looked over his shoulder. Mr Hashi, broom held above his head, was running at him.

He also ran. Out of the shop, his vision blurred by tears he didn't know he was shedding. And when he heard someone shouting, ‘Stop,' he ran faster, and faster still at the shout, ‘Police: stop where you are,' rounding the corner, his feet pounding in an effort to get as far away from Mr Hashi's shop and from the Lovelace as he could.

2 p.m.

Jayden was still not back.

When Cathy walked to the police station, to check whether they had him, she found it ringed by uniforms. The new sign had been demolished – concrete couldn't have set in time – and the only way of getting in was to pass through a narrow corridor between two police lines.

As she made her way towards it, a familiar figure emerged.

‘Banji.'

He kept walking away from her.

‘Banji.' She started running.

He had a head start and he was moving so fast that he rounded the corner before she had time to catch up with him. She kept running – ‘Banji' – her sandals slapping against the road. ‘Banji.'

He must have heard her, he couldn't not have, but he neither stopped nor turned. At the same time he didn't seem that serious about getting away from her. If he had run, she would have lost him, but he didn't run. And when she came abreast of him, and when she grabbed his arm, although he still didn't turn he did stop moving.

She scooted round to stand in front of him. He looked a wreck, his clothes messed up by what looked like oil and his eyes bloodshot. And cold as well. Like a stranger's, and when he said, ‘What a sight you are,' his icy voice showed that he didn't mean a sight for sore eyes.

She didn't know whether he was referring to the sweat pouring down her face or her badly singed hair. It didn't matter: what she registered was his hostility.

Part of her wanted to ask why he hadn't bothered checking on her and Lyndall. What she said instead was, ‘What were you doing in the police station?'

‘I went to tell them what I saw on Friday,' he said. ‘Not that it's any of your fucking business.' He narrowed his eyes. ‘And why the fuck are you following me?'

‘I wasn't.'

‘A coincidence, is it, that everywhere I turn, I bump into your lard arse?'

It was as if he'd hit her. She took a step back.

‘You haven't changed, have you?' He closed the space between them. ‘All those years ago, you clung on like a limpet. You're fatter now – I'll give you that – but you're still the same fucking drag. Who never could take a hint.'

As she stood, reeling from the impact of his words, he flicked out an arm. She stood her ground. He wouldn't hit her. Surely not.

He did. He hit her in the stomach. The blow was not hard enough to cause her to double over, even though this is what she did. Because of shock that he had hit her.

‘Get away from me,' she heard him saying. ‘And stay away. I'm warning you. Stay away.'

And then he went.

There was a small park – more a green enclosure and children's playground, really – nearby. She made her way to it.

This oasis, surrounded by council blocks, had once been gardened to within an inch of its life, with primroses and marigolds planted in strict rows and anything more luxuriant severely pruned. Scorched-earth gardening, Lyndall used to call it. Now, as Cathy pushed open the squeaking gate, she saw that the earth had been, quite literally, scorched. Not a single flower had survived the water ban, while what grass remained was brown and so full of thistles that no one would ever dream of trying to sit on it.

This had once been a place where mothers could let their young children run free. Now half the slats on the bench that Cathy went to sit on had been broken off, and under the section that was still useable lay used syringes.

He had hit her.

She kicked the syringes. Pushed them further back under the bench.

Actually hit her. And for no reason. The shock of it hurt more than the actual blow.

She disgusted him. He'd made that clear.

A voice inside of her protested. She had not been following him. And she had not done anything wrong. And yet this voice was soon drowned out by a much louder one. A voice that said that he was right. That she was fat. That she was slow. And that she couldn't see a hint, never mind take one, even if it slapped her in the face. If she had been able to, she never would have let him back into her life.

All these years since Lyndall's birth that she told herself she had changed. Grown up. Become a different person.

Ridiculous. She was the same fool she'd always been. Who – and however hard she tried to keep the sentence at bay, it still came bursting out – who had loved a monstrous man.

Who still loved him.

That was the worst of it. The things she had told herself. That she was over him; that he was nothing to her; that it was better he had gone. All lies. That's why, when she'd bumped into him after all those many years, she had invited him into her home. Because she could not bear to lose sight of him again.

As if this had ever been her choice.

Last night she had not cried. Not in relief when she'd escaped the burning building. Not when she had heard that the woman she had rescued might never recover from the effects of the fumes she'd inhaled. Not when Lyndall and Pius had been moved to tears by the unfolding mayhem. But now her tears were splashing her neck, soaking her blouse.

She made no attempt to wipe them away. She sat and went on crying as if her tears would never stop. And all because a man she had trusted and loved had once again abandoned her.

11.55 p.m.

The call came just before midnight, Joshua's home phone ringing. He picked it up to hear someone say, ‘Hold for the Prime Minister.'

At long last.

A lucky coincidence that the PM had caught him at home. He'd only just dropped in to pick up fresh shirts, his intention being to return to work.

He could have sent his driver for the shirts, but he hadn't fancied those big boots plodding through his private space. And it was helpful to leave the pressure of the control room, if only for a short time. Time to think. Which, come to think of it, he was getting a lot of as he kept holding for the Prime Minister. Seconds turned into minutes. He looked impatiently at his watch.

‘Joshua.' That familiar voice. ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting.'

‘Not a problem. Are you on your way back?'

‘I shouldn't walk out on the negotiations.' A pause, while Joshua wondered how the negotiations could be more important than the country going up in flames. ‘I trusted you to deal with this,' the PM continued. ‘How could things have got so out of control?'

‘There have been cuts,' Joshua said.

‘Cuts . . . the perennial excuse when anything goes wrong. It won't wash, Joshua. Not when everybody has had to pull their belts in.'

‘There have been other factors,' Joshua said, ‘that affected our ability to respond. We had to divert valuable manpower into guarding the solvent factory in Rockham. If it had gone up, all hell would have been let loose. If we hadn't had that to contend with, we might have had enough men to stop the rioting in its tracks.'

‘I see.' The doubt in the PM's voice suggested that even if he saw, he didn't believe it, a suspicion confirmed when he followed up with: ‘I understand you clashed with the Home Secretary at COBRA.'

‘He was spoiling for a fight.'

‘Probably not the best idea to give him one.'

Pot, kettle, black, Joshua thought, but before he could frame this thought into a coherent sentence, the PM shifted the terrain. ‘Look, I know you've got a lot on your plate, and I am confident that you will resolve the problem asap. I'll let you get on with it. But before you go, have you had time to look into that matter I mentioned the other day?'

What was he talking about?

‘When you came to Downing Street.'

Oh. That.

‘Yes, Prime Minister,' Joshua said. ‘I did look into it.'

‘And?'

‘And there is no record of Teddy having been picked up.'

Another pause followed by: ‘Good. Well, I'm sure you're busy. I'll leave you to it. Goodnight.'

11.55 p.m.

Cathy could hear the din of riot issuing from the television, cutting through the similar noises that were reverberating through the Lovelace. In every living room in all the land, she knew people must be sitting on the edges of their sofa, mouths agape as they watched the riots spreading. Not her.

Banji's blow had felled her. She had come home and gone straight to bed, where she lay for hours staring up at the ceiling, looking at nothing as darkness fell.

He had done it to her twice. That's the thought that kept recurring. Twice.

The first time she'd been young and desperately in need of love. He'd been everything that she was not: streetwise, sure of himself and enigmatic. Even his ability to stomach drugs and alcohol had seemed exotic to her then. But when he'd left her, she'd persuaded herself that it was for the best.

Fine. Good. We make mistakes and move on.

She had spent years making herself feel better by pretending that she'd never really loved him. Now she knew that for the lie it was, and now, as well, she knew the truth. Which was that he had never really loved her.

She could forgive the girl she once had been; she didn't know if she'd ever be able to forgive the adult.

The sound of running feet. She shut her eyes.

The door burst open. ‘You've got to come and see this, Mum.'

‘I'm tired.'

‘But you've got to.'

All she wanted was to be left alone.

‘Come on.' It was clear from Lyndall's stance, feet planted and hands on hips, that she was determined to get her way.

Easier to follow her to the living room than to resist, so that's what Cathy did. ‘What's so interesting?'

Lyndall pointed at the television. ‘Keep watching. It'll be on again in a minute.'

The screen showed one of those loops they used when everything is happening at once and they didn't have sufficient cameras to cover it. Footage, already familiar, of fires burning, and policemen in retreat, and a woman jumping with her child from a building.

‘I've already seen this.' She made to turn away.

‘Wait. It's coming.'

A new sequence. The skeleton of the building she had run into yesterday. Still smouldering but with no roof and no outside walls.

‘Yes, I've seen that as well.'

‘Not that,' Lyndall said. ‘Wait.'