The Mother (16 page)

Inside the busy packed pub, we loiter close to a couple who look as though they are on the verge of vacating, grab their table the moment they do. There is a large group gathered around a couple of tables beside us, suited men and women in stilettos, celebrating something, a birthday or victory of some kind. They are unaffected, loud, and laughing frequently in the parallel universe that exists alongside ours.

“I'm surprised Quigg didn't ask more about Sweetie's mugging,” Kwame says.

“I think you mean her so-called mugging,” Lorna says. “What a huge coincidence. Tyson's furious with her, enough for her to warn Ryan and give him a knife, then that same evening she's badly beaten enough to be admitted to the hospital. What are the chances of it being completely random?”

“Those chances are the ones that are slim to none,” I say. “But why do you think she didn't just say it?”

Kwame says, “Maybe she was scared? Maybe it would implicate more people than just Tyson Manley.”

I feel sick just thinking about it, try to prevent my imagination from going there, from visualizing a group of boys beat
ing that tiny girl on the stand, maybe more than just beating her, worse.

“I was thinking about Fimi,” Lorna says. “When Sweetie was giving her evidence, thinking about Fimi telling us her son was killed because of a look he gave someone, thinking about Ryan being killed 'cause he fancied the wrong girl.”

“It's insane,” Kwame says. “Pure madness.”

Lorna says, “I don't know, this generation of boys, we've failed them completely.”

I will not accept the blame for Tyson Manley, for the deplorable things he has done. I say, “
We?
There is no
we
in this. It's slack parenting, nothing more, parents not doing their job properly. Blame the mother.”

“Marce, that woman was out of her depth. I don't know if she ever had everything in place to be a great mum in the first place, but it seems to me that even if she did, her life would've knocked it out of her.”

“Why're we even talking about her?” Kwame asks. “What about his dad? Where was Vito's dad, Tyson's dad? Have you seen him in the public gallery? Two people conceived that boy, brought him into the world. Where the hell's the other one?”

It strikes me as extraordinary that I've never given Tyson Manley's father a thought before, just accepted his complete absence without question. Maybe he's a conservationist. Maybe he's in Borneo this very second, working to protect some indigenous rain forest tribe from extinction. Perhaps that was what he and Ms. Manley had in common when they met. He is obviously not around now, has obviously massively failed his son, but I think about Ms. Manley, her cool shades and overpowering perfumes. His absence is not enough to
exempt her from blame. Look at Lorna, Leah. “It
is
possible to be a good single parent,” I say.

“It's easier to be a single parent raising girls,” Kwame says. “Girls take their role models from their mums, the nursery staff, teachers, dinner ladies, the school nurse, their child minder. They're surrounded by women from birth. But if you're on your own and your boys are heading off track . . .” He shakes his head. “Some of these boys, their first serious interaction with adult males is when they get expelled or in trouble with the police. They need their dads before they get to that point.”

“In an ideal world,” Lorna says. “But these kids aren't living in an ideal world. I thought it was pretty wretched when Sweetie was saying she liked Ryan not because they had the same sense of humor or masses of things in common, but because he was the first person who was interested in her. I mean, how tragic is that?”

Kwame shakes his head. “It's a killer.”

“You never really think about those kids who've never had anyone in their life interested in them, not one single person,” she says.

“Loads of the boys I work with, no one cared about them till they bucked up on other boys no one cared about,” Kwame says. “No one does anything till they've completely gone off the rails. Suddenly there's no end of resources, for court costs and solicitors, PRUs, detention centers, prison, you name it.”

Lorna says, “You're right. By the time they've got our attention, it's already too late. We're just too selfish, all of us, too busy and selfish to care.”

“Some of us
are
trying to make a difference,” Kwame says, and for a moment he is illuminated in my mind, Kwame the
football coach, teaching his young men a thousand things other than how to correctly kick a ball.

“Some,” Lorna says, “but not enough,”

They're right. I kept my little family safe. I concerned myself with me and the people closest to me. I read about young people, crime, knives, gangs, guns, killings over nonsense, but they were nothing to do with the tiny safe haven I thought I'd created to insulate myself and mine. I have never done a single thing in my life for anyone like Tyson Manley or Sweetie. I've given money to help refugees and political prisoners abroad, paid monthly standing orders to the Red Cross, Sight Savers, Amnesty International. I've made donations by text when I've been on trains and seen posters; for child brides in third world countries whose wombs and lives are devastated as a result of giving birth too young; to eradicate polio in Nigeria and Afghanistan. I've made one-off payments by debit card to hurricane and tsunami and Ebola appeals, and here at home across the way from where I live, there are children bringing themselves up, responsible for managing their time when they are excluded from school and society, getting involved in crime because there is nothing else to do, carrying knives because in their world it is the only way to overcome an aggressor who has a problem with you, asks no questions, and carries a knife too; children being shot, stabbed, living in fear, and not only have I never given a penny or a minute of my time to make a difference, but the thought has never even crossed my mind. The only reason I'm even thinking about it now is because that underworld out there has crashed in irrevocably on my own. If it hadn't, I would still be oblivious now.

“What do you think will happen to Sweetie?” I ask. “And
the baby?” That little girl whose odds against her being my grandchild are stacked so high.

“I don't know,” Lorna says. “I was gonna speak to Nipa about her, whether anyone's working with her. She's brave, but she's in deep shit. I can't imagine she can go back home. I'm gonna speak to Nipa, make sure she doesn't slip through the so-called safety net . . .”

“Or worse, next time we hear about her is on the news,” Kwame says. “Those people she's dealing with aren't jokers.”

“I'll speak to Nipa today,” Lorna says, “Make sure something's done, someone knows she exists and needs help.”

“And if we can see her, see the baby, make sure they're okay,” I say. I don't add
so we can see if her tiny face bears any resemblance to my son's
, but I think it.

That evening I saw her standing outside the front door, in the garden speaking to Ryan, I watched them from my bedroom window, kept the light off so I wouldn't be seen, went so far as to close the door to extinguish any silhouette that might be cast by the passage light. I thought he had broken up with her and she had come to beg him to change his mind; that's how it looked. She was clearly upset, very emotional, and Ryan was so calm, talking down whatever she was saying with his youthful logic. I imagined he was saying, “I need to concentrate on my studies. We had a good time, Sweetie, but it's over now. I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt you.” Instead she was giving him a knife to protect himself, and my son, so trusting,
too
trusting, Sweetie said, was taking it, promising her he'd keep it close. All those talks we'd had, the things I'd sheltered him from, all so that we, Lloydie and I, would be the greatest influence on his childhood and future, all those discussions and he still took the knife she gave him, had it on
him the day he died. If only I had seen it from the window as I watched, but I wasn't looking out for knives. My focus was on Ryan's resolve. My worry was that if she carried on, he might weaken, give in, and agree to go out with her again. That was my biggest fear the day before he died, the worst thing I could imagine, that my son might make the decision to go out with someone I didn't like. So naïve. So naïve.

So I went downstairs, opened the front door, and called him in, stood there allowing them no further time together, waited for him to come inside and her to leave. I feel a quickening in my stomach, swallow another glassful of wine to settle it. When I drove her from my front door, I never gave her welfare a thought. Now I'm being forced to, and it's too much.

“This is all my fault,” I say, and hear in my voice the quaver of the closeness of tears.

“Rubbish,” says my sister. “It bloody well isn't.”

“I don't even know if it's helpful for me to say this,” Kwame says, “but once Tyson felt dissed it was always gonna end bad. Whether he killed Ryan that day or the following one or the next week, whether it was at the Sports Ground or the playground or the library, that boy is so damaged and angry, only thing that would've stopped him is if someone killed him first or he got locked up for something else, and even then he would have passed time planning to kill Ryan when he came out. He doesn't think like me or you. Once he made the decision, nothing you could've done would've changed it.”

I was his mother. It was my job to see Ryan safely through to adulthood. That was my job and I failed. There must have been something more I could have done.

“There's me buying him PlayStation and Wii,” I say. “I should've been spending that money on karate, teaching
him how to use a bow, given him boxing lessons, knuckle dusters . . .”

“Taught him to hurt? To hate instead of trust?” Lorna asks. “Yeah, he would have been quite some nephew then.”

“I just don't understand why he took it, that knife, why he was carrying it; I don't understand.”

“Marce, you're never gonna know. Maybe he didn't wanna leave it in the house in case you found it. Maybe he carried it because he was scared. Maybe he forgot he had it on him. It was at the bottom of his rucksack, not stuck in his waistband. It was an error of judgment. Everyone's allowed an error of judgment. It doesn't mean anything.”

But she's wrong of course, because it means everything. If he was scared enough to carry it, he was scared enough to discuss it with me, and maybe he would have if I'd left that doorway open instead of doing what I did, marching in all guns blazing and telling him what to do.

I feel guilty. My son is dead and I feel guilty. There were opportunities that I missed and I feel guilty. That's what I should have asked Fimi when I had the chance; as a parent of a child who has been violently killed, is it possible, ever, to completely absolve yourself of blame?

We wait on the stairwell outside the doorway that leads to the public gallery entrance for about fifteen minutes before we are permitted back into the courtroom after lunch. Ms. Manley is sitting on her own in the corner seat of the front row, the guy who was with her this morning nowhere in sight, and although it's perfectly reasonable I suppose, he's perfectly entitled to choose what he does and where and for how long, because of Sweetie's evidence this morning, his absence feels ominous.

Ms. Manley's expression is indifference with a touch of attitude, just like her son's. There is nothing in her bearing of humility or embarrassment, no indication that listening to the details of this trial has been unsettling for her, raised any questions about her parenting approach, made her wonder whether maybe somewhere along the way, possibly she could have done something wrong. It is the same indifference I have been observing in her son. What if one of her children had been a daughter? Would she have seen things differently then? Would she still have thought it okay for her son to use women and call them whores? I glance over at her, watch her uncross her legs then cross them again, adjust her posture, trying to get comfy. It wouldn't have made a difference. Ryan didn't have any sisters. Either you know right from wrong or you don't.

I wonder how they are together, the mother and son. Sixteen years of age and Ryan still liked to snuggle up beside me when we were home passing an evening, watching a film. Lloydie always ended up in the single chair, apart. I would sit at one end of the settee and Ryan took up the rest of the space, lying across it with his head on my lap and Sheba in close proximity, a living body-warmer sprawled across his feet or behind his legs, or stretched out lengthways on the settee in front of him so he could stroke her while I stroked his hair. Did Ms. Manley ever do that with her boys? It seems unbreachable, the space between an evening passed that way and killing someone simply because they've pissed you off.

Then Sweetie is called in and she enters and takes her place in the witness box. She looks exhausted, which I'm sure she must be. I have no idea how much sleep she's been getting, how much support she has by night while she and the
baby are at the hospital. Even if she'd had a straight week's worth of sleep, this has been a very grueling morning for her. If it were me, having made it through the morning session, I wouldn't have wanted to return. I would've been tempted to do a runner over the lunch break. But here she is, back and facing the court. She's brave, this girl, and strong. I hope her strength extends beyond this room, to the world outside it she is going to have to face.

Tyson is as he always is, appearing disengaged but not taking his eyes off Sweetie, who I think has steeled herself to not look his way. Though presumably they have recently eaten, the jury have none of that full-bellied afternoon drowsiness, instead they are alert, clearly focused on these proceedings. I see empathy and pity on the faces of at least three of the women. Sweetie's body language is defiant, perhaps in response to this. Even the judge appears to be moved by compassion for her. He asks whether she is okay to carry on giving evidence, whether there is anything that would make the process easier, advises she can take a break when she needs to, have water if she wants, sit or stand to give her evidence, whatever is most comfortable, and she thanks him, has a glass of water, takes a seat.