The Things We Never Said (22 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Jonathan has been back at school for over a week, but each time he walks into the building, he feels more and more alien. It’s not the kids – some of them seem genuinely pleased to see him, and his form gave him a ‘welcome back’ card, which they’d all signed and which touched him more than he cared to admit. Chloé Nichols had even written him a letter of thanks and apology. But despite these things, he is becoming increasingly plagued by the sense that things are just . . . wrong.

‘How about what I was saying before? About going part-time?’ Fiona says as they eat. She’s home from hospital now, but she’s only allowed out of bed to go to the loo so he’s set up a small table next to the bed so they can eat together. ‘We could each do three days. I’m sick of us both being knackered.’

‘It’s not just the hours, though. It’s . . . I don’t know; I don’t
feel
like a teacher any more. I’m not sure I ever really have.’

Neither of them speaks for a moment. ‘Hey,’ he says, noticing her expression. ‘Ignore me; I’m just feeling a bit hard done by. I’ve been suspended and arrested, we’ve both been through hell because of it and what happens to Ryan Jenkins? A ten-day exclusion! He’ll be back on Monday.’ He hasn’t told Fiona, but today he came dangerously close to just walking out. Not only has he grown up with the wrong parents and the wrong name, he’d stumbled into the wrong career for the wrong reasons.

Fiona puts her hand on his arm. ‘I know; it pisses me off too. But it’s over now. And compared to . . .’ she points to the bump ‘. . . how much does it really matter?’

He nods. ‘Yes, you’re right.’ He leans towards her, picks up her hand and holds it to his lips. ‘God, I was scared.’

‘Me too.’ She leans into him so their foreheads are touching. ‘If I’d lost this baby . . .’

The idea of losing the baby is awful; horrible. But at one point, he thought he might lose Fiona, and that . . . well, that just didn’t . . . he closes his eyes, kisses her hand. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so crap,’ he says. ‘Things are going to change from now on, I swear.’ His voice catches and he doesn’t trust himself to say any more.

‘Hey.’ She slips her other hand into his and squeezes it. ‘It’s been a tough time; we’ve had a lot to cope with. Let’s take this as a new beginning. For a start,’ she lightens her voice, ‘we’ve still got to get through the next few months with me lounging around on my fat arse while you do all the work.’

He smiles. ‘Your arse isn’t fat.’

‘It will be if you keep cooking stuff like this,’ she says, nodding towards her plate. He’d poached the chicken breasts in white wine and stock so they stayed moist and tender, and served them with a creamy peppercorn and brandy sauce, new potatoes and green beans. ‘Come on, it’s getting cold.’ She picks up her cutlery and starts eating again. ‘Work-wise,’ she says, ‘what if you could do anything you wanted? And don’t say a milkman or a train driver.’

‘I don’t know. Social work crossed my mind, but . . .’ He thinks for a moment. ‘Do you know what, if money wasn’t an issue, I think I’d go back to cheffing. Not the fourteen-hour shift stuff I did before, but just being in a kitchen again, doing something people appreciate.’

She nods, running her thumb around the rim of the plate to scoop up the last of the sauce. ‘Well, you haven’t lost your touch.’

‘It’s badly paid, though. Not a problem if you’re young and mortgage-free, I suppose.’ He takes a mouthful of wine and smiles as he remembers his time in the kitchen: pans flying through the air when the head chef threw a wobbly; the heat; the shouting and swearing on some nights, the intense silent concentration on others. And then afterwards when the customers had gone, upstairs in the restaurant, exhausted but finally relaxing with cold beers and steak sandwiches while they shared out the tips and praised each other for a good night’s work. ‘I loved it – much to my father’s dismay.’ Gerald had been furious when Jonathan decided to train, even when he said it wasn’t something he planned to do for life. It was wasting his degree, in Gerald’s opinion. But Jonathan found a strange synergy in the way he thought about literature and the way he felt about food. When you studied literature, you looked at how the author put certain characters together, created dialogue between them, sketched out the fictional place they inhabited. And then you searched for the layers of meaning in the text, noticed how those layers were built up to produce just the right balance, the right texture for the story. As a chef, you had to blend the ingredients, putting together flavours that worked with each other, just the right amounts of each so that the overall dish had depth and complexity, was exciting on the palate and stayed in the memory long after the last mouthful had been savoured.

Fiona sucks the last of the sauce from her thumb. ‘If we won the lottery, you could open your own restaurant.’

‘We don’t do the lottery.’

‘Ah – a flaw in the plan! Seriously, though, what about doing dinner parties for the rich and lazy?’

‘Wouldn’t make enough money, not at first anyway. Oh, I don’t know; maybe one day.’ He stands up and begins to clear the plates. ‘Let’s not worry about it now.’ He kisses her on the head.

‘Okay,’ she smiles. ‘And we’ve got plenty to be cheerful about – the baby’s fine, I’m fine, and you’ve still got a job, despite almost ending up doing time for being drunk and disorderly.’

He looks at her. It was bound to come out at some point anyway, so he decides to risk it. ‘There’s something else I haven’t told you about that night.’

Her expression changes. ‘Oh?’

He finishes clearing the table, picks up the tray and walks to the door. ‘The reason I ended up in the cells . . .’ He opens the door with one hand, ready for a quick getaway – there are books and other missiles within her reach ‘. . . was that I was so drunk I pissed on the police-station steps and my zip got stuck so I couldn’t put my cock away and that’s when I passed out.’ He slips through the door and then peeps back round it. ‘It was stupid and embarrassing and I’m really, really sorry.’

But she’s laughing; hallelujah, she’s really, really laughing.

*

He’s painting the ceiling in the nursery when the call comes.

‘Jonathan,’ Bob says. ‘Is this a good time to talk?’

‘Yes, fine,’ Jonathan says, assuming Bob just has another question.

‘I’ve managed to locate her. Told you it could be quick! Do you want the details now or shall I call you in a day or two when it’s had a chance to sink in?’

Jonathan’s legs go suddenly weak and he can hear a buzzing sound. He holds the phone away from him so Bob won’t hear how shallow his breathing has become. ‘No,’ he says eventually. ‘No, it’s fine. Just hang on a sec, would you?’ He moves a paint-covered rag, the radio and his coffee cup off the old bentwood chair and sits down. Outside, the sky has darkened and there’s a smatter of rain on the window.

‘Sorry, Bob. Go on.’

‘Right you are. Birth mum was born in 1940. She’s called Margaret Kielty now – married in 1968.’

Jonathan tries to speak, but only makes a dry, half-formed sound. He clears his throat. ‘Where does she—’

‘She lives in Hastings.’

Jonathan lets out a breath. That day a couple of weeks ago when he walked around the Old Town and up onto the east cliff, he might have walked past her; all those times he’d been there as a child, loving the place, feeling at home; she might have been
there
.

‘Jonathan?’

Pictures flash through his mind: what she might look like, what sort of life she has. Kielty; Margaret Kielty. ‘Bob, you say she got married; did she have any more children?’

‘Nope. I checked right back to the date you were adopted.’

Bob speaks as though that’s good news, but ever since his mum told him about the baby who’d died, Jonathan has been thinking about what it would be like to have a sibling. When he’d discovered he was adopted, he’d felt doubly cheated; he’d been given a brother, albeit one who’d died, and then had him snatched away again.

‘I think it’s best if I make the first approach,’ Bob says. ‘If you’re in agreement, I’ll write a careful letter – she may not have told her husband about you – to see if she’s amenable to further contact. We can take it from there.’

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Hastings, February 2009

Maggie stands at the top of the steps, getting wetter and wetter. She should go back inside. Sam’ll wonder what on earth she’s doing. She puts the letter back in her pocket. She wants to tell Sam, but not yet. She needs to think about it a little more first. When she goes back down the steep steps, he’s standing at the door. ‘Och, hen. Look at you! You’re wet through. Come on in, now; ye’ll catch your death.’ Sam’s face is creased with concern. His hair is almost white now, but still thick and strong. There are loose threads hanging from the hem of his navy bathrobe. She’d better mend that before it comes down completely. It’s a detail she’ll remember; part of the picture of this day. When big things happen in Maggie’s life, they don’t sit around at the back of her mind, fading with the years like an old painting; they come back, stronger than before, shimmering into her memory and settling there, the colours and smells deepening, the shapes and sounds becoming more defined.

‘I . . . I need to go for a walk,’ she says.

He smiles. ‘Aye, but do ye no think it’s a wee bit wet to be walking out in your dressing gown?’ She manages to laugh, but she really does need to go outside again soon because she recognises the warning signs. Everything she looks at seems huge and vivid, then her vision goes black around the edges and her breathing comes too fast. She dresses quickly in the first things that come to hand – the old skirt she wears for gardening, a sweater of Sam’s, the raincoat she bought from the charity shop just last week. She transfers the letter from the pocket of her dressing gown to that of her raincoat, then heads off, up the steep steps and into the wet morning. She turns right onto the coast road and walks briskly past the fish market and the old net huts and along towards the pier.

Maggie was never a heavy woman, but there’s even less of her now, and she has trouble keeping her footing in this wind. She can hear the waves thudding against the sea wall, and see the seawater spraying high into the air and crashing down onto the road with a heavy splat. Her hand is in her pocket, her fingers curled around the letter that she has both dreamt of and dreaded. The wind gusts hard at her again, taking her back through the years and across the miles to that night in February 1962.

The wind rages through the city, tearing down trees and branches, ripping slates from roofs and flinging them to the ground. There are bangs and crashes, glass breaking, a dog barking in the distance. Jack kisses her harder, and she can feel the back of her head pressing against the cold stone wall. She tries to draw away, but his hand is on her breast, rubbing and squeezing. She yelps in pain and tries to twist out of his reach but he pulls her back. ‘Oh, no you don’t,’ he says. ‘Not this time.’ He kisses her again, slamming her head against the wall. His tongue jabs into her mouth and she can feel his teeth against hers. He pushes his hand down the front of her dress, yanking at the neck. For an absurd moment, all she can think about is that he’ll ruin the neckline. Then her breast is exposed and she feels a blast of cold air before his mouth clamps over her nipple, biting so hard she cries out.

‘No,’ she shouts, trying to push him away. But this time, she cannot move him. His knee is wedged between her legs and he is leaning his whole weight against her, pinning her against the wall.

‘Jack,’ she says, more quietly. But he is fumbling with his belt. She freezes. His hand flies up her dress, his nails scratch her thigh as he tugs at her pants. There is a hollow clattering as a dustbin rolls past, a crash as yet another tile hits the ground.

She can hear her mother’s voice:
‘Knee ’em in the balls, love. That’s what you do if you’re in trouble. Knee ’em where it hurts.’

With all the effort she can muster, she pushes against his shoulders and brings her knee up as sharply as she can.

‘Oh, spitfire, are we?’ He grabs her knee and twists her off-balance. She flings out her arms to steady herself and he grabs them, holds her wrists together and pulls up her dress with the other hand.

‘Fucking little prick-teaser,’ he snarls. ‘You’re all the fucking same.’

She is crying now. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Please don’t . . .’

His nails scrape her groin as he wrenches her underwear aside, then there is a hot, sharp pain. The shock makes her gasp. She thinks about screaming but knows no one would hear, not with the noise of the wind and the houses falling apart around her.

‘No, please.’

He jabs into her again, and again the back of her head hits the wall. She cries out. He slaps her on the side of the head and pain flashes behind her eyes. ‘Shut up, you little bitch.’

Just as Maggie thinks she cannot bear this for another moment, something happens: she realises she can no longer feel what’s going on. From where she is hovering a few feet above the ground, she watches herself being pummelled, shaken around like a rabbit in the jaws of a slavering dog. She can see a sticky dark patch of blood spoiling her lovely hair, trickling down her forehead and into her eye, and she can see the back of Jack’s head. She considers this calmly, and comes to the conclusion that she must have died, which is a shame, because she was only twenty-one and she really did have plans. But it is over, and that is that.

*

The crash of a wave breaking over the sea wall brings her back to the present. She realises she’s crossed the busy coast road without even noticing. She stops by a bench on the promenade, clenches and unclenches her fists, moves her toes, shakes her head and coughs to try out her voice. Good; she can feel everything, which means she’s properly back.

Tucking her head down against the gale, she carries on towards the disused pier, where she ducks under the padlocked chains and makes her way past the little art galleries, cafés and bohemian giftshops –
Covent Garden by the sea
, they’d said the last time it re-opened. Now it was closed again, everything boarded up. It was always a false hope, this pier, and building a few pretty shops on top couldn’t change what was underneath. The very fabric of the thing was rotting; the waves had torn off great sections of the metal supports and hurled them out to sea; barnacles clung to the salt-softened wood and the whole thing was in danger of imminent collapse. Through the gaps in the boards she can see dark, meaty waves, chopping and rocking beneath. It’s inevitable, she thinks; if the sea is determined to destroy this great foreign body that has waded uninvited into its waters, then it will. What if it were to collapse now, with her on it? She’s used to her life flashing before her, although these days it’s only when something snags on her memory and rips back through the years, like now.

Down on the beach huge seagulls, strangely vulnerable with their feathers fluffed up by the wind, pick along the strandline for scraps. Behind them, up on the coast road, the tail end of the rush-hour traffic pushes slowly through the rain. Maggie holds on to the metal rail and looks down into the slaty sea, unsure whether the water on her face is rain or spray from the waves below. With the cold reddening the skin on the backs of her hands, she stands on tiptoe and leans right over, so she can see nothing but the waves bashing against the pier’s rusty underskirts. Rivulets of icy water run down her neck and she can feel loose flakes of paint under her fingers. There is something inviting about deep water, she thinks; a certainty that beneath the thrashing surface there is a soothing silence, a velvet-blue calm, there for the taking.

Then she thinks of Sam, and of what he lost all those years ago. She forces herself upright again, unfolds the letter and watches it flap in the wind. If she lets go now it’ll be whipped up into the air, then tossed down into the ocean where salt water will eat the print away. But even if she throws it out to sea, even if it is torn from her hand and carried off by a shrieking seagull, the words will still exist; the
fact
remains.