Thursday's Children (27 page)

‘He doesn’t smoke.’

‘He did when he was sixteen, though.’

She saw Chas deep in conversation with one of the women she’d met early on, not Paula, the other. He raised a hand and pushed a strand of hair away from her face, and then touched her lip with his thumb, very gently. It was like watching him at work at a party many years ago. Where was his wife, rail-thin, wretched Clara? She found her in the Ladies. She was standing in front of a mirror, absolutely immobile, staring at her reflection as if she’d seen a ghost.

‘Should I leave him?’ she asked Frieda, as if they were continuing a conversation they’d started earlier.

‘Leave Chas?’

‘Yes. You tell me.’

‘I have no idea. It’s not something anyone can decide for you. And I don’t even know you.’

‘You know Chas, though.’

‘Not really.’

‘I think I have to leave him. But I know I won’t.’

Eva and Vanessa burst in. ‘Guess what?’

‘What?’

‘There’s a fight going on in the playground.’

‘Between who?’

‘I don’t know. Men with fists. It doesn’t look like in the movies, though, more like a messy, undignified scramble.’

Frieda touched Clara’s thin arm. ‘You don’t have to stay, you know,’ she said, then walked back into the noise. The music had started up.

‘Want to dance?’ asked Jeremy, appearing at her side. His head was shiny with sweat. ‘For old times’ sake?’

‘No.’

‘Can’t you even say, “No, thank you”?’

‘I’ll dance,’ said Vanessa.

‘Where’s Ewan?’

‘Probably talking about computers,’ said Vanessa, with a laugh. ‘He was never a great dancer. He just sort of bounced.’

Frieda saw that Maddie Capel had arrived, in a shiny, short red dress with red lipstick like a gash across her face. As she looked at her, Frieda thought, This is what this is all about, people coming here and dressing themselves up and performing in order to say, Here I am. This is what I’ve made of myself. This is what time has done to me. This is what I’ve become.

And then she thought, Someone in this room raped me, raped and killed Sarah May, raped and killed Becky Capel. He’s here.

The music got louder, the lights were turned down lower, people were dancing, at first just a few pairs, then a thickening crowd. It was like a teenage party performed by a middle-aged cast. She saw Eva dancing with a man she didn’t recognize, Greg Hollesley dancing with a woman she didn’t recognize, then with Maddie, holding her close. Maddie’s eyes were shut and her mascara had smudged: she’d been crying. She saw Jeremy standing at the side with his wife, who was saying something in his ear, angrily. His bow-tie had unravelled. She saw Chas walking out of the hall with the woman who wasn’t Paula. She saw Clara leave, car keys in her hand.

‘Aren’t you going to dance?’ Frieda looked around. Lewis was there, but not Penny.

‘No.’

‘Not with me?’

‘Not with anyone.’

‘Why did you come this evening?’

‘Why did you?’

He shrugged. ‘A trip down memory lane?’ he suggested. ‘Look at us all.’

‘I like Penny.’

‘You think she can save me?’

‘I think only you can save you.’

‘Same old Frieda. You shouldn’t have come back.’

‘People keep saying that.’

Eva broke away from her partner and made her way towards them. She’d taken off her shoes and her hair had come loose. She looked absurdly young. ‘Come and dance, Lewis,’ she said, holding out her hand to him.

‘Not just now.’

‘Please. Just once.’

He took her hand and let himself be led into the crowd. He’d always been a good dancer.

‘All alone?’ It was Vanessa again, breathing slightly heavily.

‘Hello. Are you enjoying yourself?’

‘Well,’ Vanessa began, then stopped. ‘Wait here,’ she said, and disappeared into the crowd. A couple of minutes later she re-emerged. She was clutching a bottle of white wine and two plastic glasses. ‘Let’s go outside for a moment. I can’t talk in here.’

The two of them walked out of the front entrance of the school, the one that was normally reserved for teachers. They sat down on a low wall. It was dark now and they could see shapes of people around them. Some had their arms around each other, kissing, murmuring. There was a glow of cigarette ends, the smell of smoke.

‘How old are these people?’ said Vanessa. She poured wine into two of the glasses and handed one to Frieda. Then she took a cigarette packet out of her pocket. She offered one to Frieda, who shook her head. She lit one for herself. ‘For one night only,’ she said. She took a deep drag, then coughed.

‘I was going to ask you,’ said Frieda, when Vanessa had got her breath back. ‘Max told me about Becky giving you a package to keep.’

‘That’s right. He seemed very agitated about it.’

‘Why did she give it to you?’

‘I have no idea. I imagine she didn’t want Maddie finding it.’

‘Do you know what it was?’

‘It was all taped up. She obviously didn’t want anyone prying.’

‘You weren’t tempted to look?’

‘Of course I was tempted. But she trusted me so I couldn’t. One of the things you learn with having children is that they have to have their secrets.’

‘There are good secrets and then there are secrets that are better told.’

‘Yes.’ Vanessa sighed. ‘Now I wish I’d made her confide in me more, but at the time it seemed like she was just another adolescent. Like Charlotte. Or Max – he’s another one I fear for.’

‘He’s very upset about Becky.’

‘That’s complicated, of course.’

‘Why? They were friends.’

‘Is that what he told you?’

‘Yes.’

‘He was more like her stalker. I think he scared her a bit. That’s why I was a bit taken aback when he came storming round to our house asking for that bundle she left. It seemed odd.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I don’t think I’m saying anything in particular. Just that you shouldn’t believe everything Max tells you. He’s very like his father was, isn’t he? I know you and Lewis went out, but that was decades ago. He always was a bit of a strange one.’

‘Who isn’t?’

Vanessa laughed. ‘That’s true. Anyway, I feel sorry for the young ones. It makes me remember what it was like at that age. So intense. So easy to go off the rails.’

‘You were close to Becky.’

‘She was a sweet, vulnerable girl and she was friendly with my girls. I was fond of her. I wish I’d been able to help her.’

‘I’m sure you did what you could.’

‘I don’t know.’ Vanessa said. ‘And I worry about the effect on others. I do feel anxious about Max, though.’

‘In what way?’

‘I think he let Becky’s suicide get to him. He seemed distraught. I’m afraid he may do something stupid.’

‘He seems all right to me,’ said Frieda.

‘He’s so unstable, like his father. I talked to him this evening and something about him really scared me. It reminded me of her.’

Frieda started to say something but then a man stumbled past them, brushing up against Frieda so that her wine spilled.

‘That was Jeremy,’ said Vanessa.

‘I know.’

‘Where’s he off to?’

Frieda just shrugged.

‘You hate this place, don’t you?’

‘That’s not right exactly.’

‘You know, people can surprise you, even at their worst.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

Vanessa drained her glass and refilled it. ‘Doesn’t this bring back memories?’ she said. ‘In the garden at parties?’ In the dark, Frieda could barely make out her expression. ‘People don’t always stand by, you know. A few years ago I was out with a girlfriend – we had a meal or something, a bottle of wine, maybe more than a bottle. Afterwards I was walking back, looking to get a taxi, and I bumped into a
group of young men. They started saying things and then it all got out of control. They started touching me, putting their hands on me.’ She stopped while she took another drag on her cigarette. ‘It was horrible, utterly humiliating, and then it became frightening. I thought that was it. Then, quite suddenly, a man walking past intervened. I thought they were going to kill him but he somehow managed to talk them down and take me by the arm and get me away and find me a cab. In the end nothing happened at all and I never knew his name. I sometimes think there’s an alternative universe where that man didn’t walk past and I’m dead and those men are in prison or maybe still walking free.’

There was a long silence.

‘Ewan told me that story,’ said Frieda.

‘Really?’

‘In a slightly different version.’

‘That’s the thing about a marriage. You have your fund of stories.’

Frieda looked at her watch: it was nearly half past nine. ‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ she said. She made her way down to the playground, which was empty now apart from a man standing alone and smoking a cigarette. Max wasn’t there. She waited a few minutes, then walked swiftly back inside and through the hall into the kitchen. It was full of teenagers. A couple was standing up against the wall, kissing; the boy had his hand up the girl’s skirt, and Frieda recognized the girl as Charlotte. She tapped her on the shoulder.

‘What?’ said Charlotte. ‘What are you doing in here?’

‘I was looking for Max.’

‘That creep. He’s pissed.’

‘Where is he?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’ She stared at Frieda, wrinkling her nose. ‘You’re weird.’

Frieda went back into the hall and made almost an entire circuit of it, in the dim lights and grinding music, through the hot bodies and past the grinning, grimacing faces, before she found who she was looking for.

‘Are you having a good time?’ said Lewis. He seemed more sober than anyone else in the room. ‘I’ve been talking to Penny about the old days.’

‘Where’s Max?’

‘Max?’

‘Yes, where is he?’

‘I’ve no idea. Probably still in the kitchen. I saw him a bit ago. He was having a fine old time.’

Frieda felt she should stop worrying but she couldn’t and at first she couldn’t remember why, then suddenly she could. She remembered Vanessa’s words: she had said that Max reminded her of Becky.

‘Ring his mobile.’

‘What’s this about?’

‘We don’t have time: ring his mobile.’

Lewis pulled his phone out of his pocket and called.

‘Straight to voicemail.’

‘We’ve got to find him.’

‘Won’t you tell us what’s going on?’ This from Penny.

‘I’ll explain later. Come with me.’

She pulled Lewis after her and they ran outside, past couples and groups. The night air was cold and damp.

‘He’s not in the hall or the kitchen or the playground. Let’s look in the car park. Keep calling his mobile.’

They hurried through the rows of parked cars. She stared
around at the dark crouched shapes of cars, then back at the school where lights spilled out across the gravel driveway. They could hear the music from where they stood, but faintly.

‘How did he get here?’ she asked Lewis.

‘With me and Penny. He’s staying with us for the weekend.’

‘Did he say anything about leaving early or going on somewhere else?’

‘No.’

He could be anywhere. In one of those unlit classrooms, by the bike sheds, on the sports field, on the flat roof that was so temptingly easy to climb on to, in some clinch with one of the girls who’d been laughing at him earlier. He could be smoking with a group of friends. He could have gone on to a pub.

‘We’ve got to go to your house. Where’s your car? Have you got your keys on you?’

‘Yes.’

Lewis wasn’t protesting any more. He had picked up on her urgency. He ran over to a small, rust-spotted car and unlocked the doors. They both climbed in.

‘Is it far?’ Frieda asked, as they drove out of the school gates.

‘Near the old barracks, up the hill.’

‘I know them.’

‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’

‘I think he’s in danger.’

The car veered round a corner. Rain started to fall heavily; the windscreen wipers had frayed and the loose rubber slapped against the glass. Soon they were out of the centre
of the town and were driving along the ridge of the hill, looking down at Braxton. Here, the houses were identical, row upon row of small, flat-fronted buildings in an interlocking grid of small roads and cul-de-sacs. Frieda saw that all the roads were named after flowers: Hollyhock Close, Sunflower Street, Lupin Rise. It felt very quiet, no cars on the roads and no people; most of the windows were unlit, with curtains drawn. Lewis screeched to a halt outside number twenty-seven Campion Way.

At the front door, his hands were trembling and he couldn’t get the key into the lock. Frieda took it from him. The door swung open and they stepped into the tiny hall. Everything was dark and quiet.

‘There’s no one here,’ Lewis said.

They heard the screech of tyres coming from the road at the back of the house as a car drew away. Frieda called out but there was no reply and she ran up the stairs, two at a time.

One door was open and the room empty. One door was closed. She hurled it open and stepped inside, Lewis on her heels. She could hear him breathing, a ragged gasp.

Even before Lewis turned on the light she could see the shape in front of them. Above them. Legs moving slightly. The dazzle of the bulb brought his face into view, blue lips and open mouth. Open eyes staring. Strung from a rope.

‘Hold him up,’ she said. Lewis looked at her unseeingly. She wrapped her arms around Max’s legs and pushed upwards, taking the weight from the rope. ‘Do this. Hold him.’ Lewis was staring at her, his face sweating. He looked like he was in shock. Could he do this? Then, like a man in
a dream, he put his arms round his son’s legs and Frieda stepped away.

‘Just for a few seconds,’ she said.

She ran down the stairs again, feeling her ankle turn on the bottom step, into the kitchen, wrenching open drawers until she found a serrated knife, and then upstairs again. She pulled a chair from the side of the bed and stood on it, then sawed at the rope until it gave and Max’s body fell in a soft, heavy heap into Lewis’s arms and toppled him; they lay on the floor together, father and son. Lewis was crying out Max’s name.