While My Eyes Were Closed (13 page)

‘There we are,’ I say. ‘That wasn’t too bad, was it? We’ll just pop your socks on and I’ll take you up to see Matthew’s toys.’

The child looks up at me, a combination of anger, resignation and curiosity in her eyes as she points her toes to allow me to pull the socks on.

‘What toys has he got?’

Curiosity has won out. I smile and take her hand.
‘Let’s go and see. You can choose three toys you’d like to play with today and I’ll bring them downstairs.’

‘Won’t he mind?’

‘No, not at all. He’ll be pleased someone else is enjoying them.’

‘Mummy says I have to ask Otis before I borrow his toys.’

‘Yes, well, he lives with you, doesn’t he?’

‘And Matthew doesn’t because he’s a big boy.’

‘That’s right.’

She comes upstairs with me without any further protest.

‘Why have you got two lots of stairs?’

‘It’s an old Victorian house. They often had three floors. The servants’ quarters would have been up here.’

She looks at me blankly.

‘Servants are people who clean and cook for you.’

‘Do you have servants?’

I smile down at her. ‘No, dear. I use it as a storeroom. It’s where I keep Matthew’s things.’

We reach the top of the stairs. Matthew is in the box room. I can hear him playing on the glockenspiel. I wonder for a moment if he is doing it in protest. If he does not want some other child trampling over and playing with his things. I don’t think he is though. I think it is more of a welcome. I turn and look down at the child. She can’t hear the music, but it is enough for me to know that he was playing.

I turn the door handle and the music stops. We walk into a silent room. Only in my ears is the music still ringing.

I hear an intake of breath from the child. I look down and her face has brightened considerably. The tears dried and forgotten.

‘You can have a look at them,’ I tell her. ‘Just be careful with things and ask if you’d like me to get anything out.’

She squats down in front of me and peers into the mass of toys.

‘There’s a rocking horse,’ she squeals. ‘Matthew has a rocking horse.’

‘Yes, that’s Rocky. Would you like a ride on him?’

She nods vigorously. I step over a few things to reach him and manage to slide him out so that she can climb on board. She sits tall in the painted saddle and rocks gently back and forth a few times before gaining in confidence and rocking more vigorously. The child’s face is beginning to blur. The lips are fuller, nose slightly broader. He rocks so hard I fear he is going to tip over and fly off, either that or grind himself through the floorboards. He doesn’t though. He always come back to me smiling. Always.

The doorbell rings downstairs. I hear it only faintly at first but then it rings again. Whoever’s finger is on the bell sounds impatient. It will probably be the postman – he never stops even to pass the time of day. I glance
down at the child. She is in a world of her own. She will not notice if I slip away. But if he keeps ringing the bell she may hear it and run downstairs. I back out of the room and silently close the door behind me before hurrying down both flights of stairs. It suddenly occurs to me that it could be the father. That someone could have seen me with the child yesterday and told them. My throat tightens as I reach out and open the door. It is not the father though. It is a police officer. My fingers grip the door handle tightly. So tightly that I fear I might snap it clean off. I can’t work out how they know. How they found me so quickly. And then I look at his face and see that he is smiling, and I look down and see the pile of leaflets in his hand. Further down the road there are other police officers knocking on doors. He doesn’t know at all. I let go of the handle, put my other hand on the door frame to support myself, relieved that the shoe rack is safely out of view behind the door.

‘Hello, I’m a police community support officer,’ he says, flashing an ID card at me. ‘Sorry to disturb you so early on a Saturday morning. We’re doing house-to-house enquiries regarding the little girl who’s gone missing. You may have heard about it on the news.’

I shake my head. ‘No.’

‘Oh. Well, her name is Ella Dale, she’s four years old, and this is what she looks like.’ He holds up a flyer with a photo of the child on. She is wearing the stripy dress. The same one she had on yesterday. The one which is in
my washing machine. I ease the door closed a little, trying to work out how I will stop him if he asks to come in.

‘Right. Well I haven’t been out so I’m afraid I can’t help.’

‘Do you have any outbuildings? Only we need to check any sheds or other buildings which are left unlocked. Places she may have climbed into.’

‘Only a garden tool store. It’s there,’ I say, pointing to the corner of the front garden. ‘And it has a padlock on.’

He goes up to it and checks the padlock before coming back to me.

‘Well, thank you for your time, and if you do see or hear anything suspicious please do call us.’ He hands me a flyer as he says it. I take it without looking and manage to force the corners of my mouth up slightly.

‘Thank you, officer,’ I say, shutting the door quickly. I turn and start as I see the child peering down through the banisters at the top of the stairs.

‘Why did the policeman come?’ she asks. I keep my left hand, the one with the flyer in, behind me. I try to stop my other hand shaking.

‘Just to tell us it’s still not safe to go to the park.’

‘Because of the naughty boys?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Why doesn’t he tell them to go home?’

‘He does, but they keep coming back.’

‘The big boys are always naughty. Otis is sometimes a bit naughty but not as naughty as the big boys.’

I am aware that I need her to go away so I can hide the flyer.

‘Would you like me to bring the rocking horse down so you can play on it?’

She nods.

‘OK, you run upstairs and tell Rocky, and I’ll be there in a minute.’

She turns and hurries up the stairs. I wait until I hear her get to the top of the second flight before I bring my left hand out from behind me and look again at her photograph.

She looks very different now, with her haircut and Matthew’s clothes. Almost unrecognisable in fact. I fold the flyer in half and put it in the pocket of a jacket hanging on the coat pegs. I stand still for a moment. There is no way back now. I know that. I have to wait until they dig deep enough to find out the truth about the mother. I have no idea how long that could take.

I pick up my mobile phone from the hall table and turn it on. I very rarely use it. It is more for parents to leave messages than anything. They all seem to want to text these days. Anything to avoid conversation, it seems.

I type in the message. It takes a long time as I have one of those older-style phones. It doesn’t have the predictive thing. I keep the message brief and impersonal. ‘Apologies, all piano lessons cancelled for the next week due to illness. Miss Norgate.’

I send it to the list of parents in my address book. I realise belatedly that Olivia Harper’s lesson is at two o’clock this afternoon. It is very short notice. I should ring her parents and apologise in person. But if I do that they will ask me what is wrong and I will have to make something up and then it will all get difficult. And it is difficult enough as it is.

I climb the stairs, pausing on the first landing to look out of the window. There are three police cars parked further up the road. There appears to be a lot of activity in the park. Matthew will not like it. I know exactly what he will be doing. Covering his ears and singing ‘la, la, la’ at the top of his voice.

Monday, 3 March 2014

It’s like Mum has done something to piss off God (yeah, I know there isn’t one but just go with it), and he’s decided to throw a whole load of crap down to see how she copes with it. Nan’s died. She was eighty-five so it’s not like it’s a big deal or anything, but I guess it’s still a bit of a shock – it has been for Mum anyway. I mean Nan didn’t have cancer or anything and she still had all her marbles, and I have the feeling Mum thought she was just kind of invincible, like one of those old bids who goes on till she’s one hundred. Only she wasn’t.

It was Mum who found her. I’ve never seen a dead body, not in real life anyway. I guess it must freak you out a bit. Mum went to see her as usual on Thursday
morning and let herself in, and Nan didn’t call out or anything and she wasn’t in her armchair so Mum went upstairs and found her dead in bed. She didn’t say much about what happened after that but it can’t have been very nice. She’s been really quiet since, even at meal times when she usually does that making-conversation thing. I don’t think she’s really got over Dad leaving and now this. I mean this has to be one of the crappiest starts to a year ever. The funeral’s next week. I’ve never been to a funeral before. I was only nine when Grandad died and Mum said it wasn’t the done thing for children to go to funerals. Valerie next door but one looked after me. I remember we played board games and she let me watch
Newsround
because she didn’t know that Mum didn’t usually let me see it.

I don’t know if Dad’s going to be there. Mum probably hasn’t even told him and I can’t ask her because the ‘We don’t talk about your father’ rule still applies. I suppose I could tell him. I mean I’ve still got his mobile. But there would be a big scene if he went, and Mum would probably have a breakdown or something so I’m just going to keep quiet.

The trouble is, Nan dying means I’m like the only family Mum’s got left now (apart from Auntie Jennifer, and she’s in Middlesex so that doesn’t really count), which freaks me out a bit. I mean she is so in my face anyway, always wanting to know who I’m with or what I’m doing if I’m not at home or school. And now she’s got no one else to
worry about she’s going to be fussing over me even more. Always in my hair and checking what I’m up to.

The whole uni thing has been hard enough. It’s a bit of luck Leeds had a course I wanted to do (and that Sparrow wanted to go there) because Mum wouldn’t hear of me going anywhere a long way away. She said she wanted me somewhere where I could be back home on a Friday evening. Maybe she thinks all the sex and drug-taking only happens at weekends or something.

And now I’m going to be on a massive guilt trip if I don’t come home every weekend because I know she’ll be on her own and she hasn’t even got anyone to visit or talk to any more (apart from Melody). Which means I won’t be able to be with Sparrow as much as I’d like but I can’t even complain about that because Mum doesn’t know about me and Sparrow. It’s gonna be a real pain in the arse. I hate having to do all this secret stuff and it’s going to get even harder now because Mum used to go and see Nan twice a day so I knew she was always going to be out in the afternoon and that was when Sparrow came round. Mum would go ape if she knew. It’s not like we’ve been shagging or anything. We just kiss and stuff. Nice stuff, but she doesn’t want to go any further than that at the moment, which is fine by me. I mean, fucking hell, it’s not like I’m gonna complain or anything, is it? Sometimes I just look at her and I can’t believe she’s actually lying next to me. I mean she’s so beautiful, proper beautiful, like in an old oil painting or a statue,
not that fake beauty like the girls the other lads look at on their phones, all huge arses and tits and false smiles and faces plastered in make-up. She doesn’t wear make-up because she doesn’t need to. Her eyes are so dark and her lips are absolutely perfect, like the lips on a doll or something. And half the time I just lie there and look at her and wonder why the hell she bothers with a skinny geek like me. I mean she could have any of the lads at school if she wanted. They might pretend they’re not bothered when they see us together but I bet they wouldn’t say no to her. That’s why they take the piss out of me more when she’s around – they’re trying to show me up in front of her. She doesn’t care though. She really doesn’t give a toss about what they say. She says they’re all arseholes, which they are. Maybe I should get a T-shirt which says something like,
GEEKS GET BETTER GIRLS THAN ARSEHOLES
. No, actually, that doesn’t sound quite right. Anyway, what matters is that we’re together. I know Sparrow hates it as well, all this creeping around. She doesn’t let on, but I see her do this look sometimes and I just get the sense that she thinks I’m making it up about Mum, that she can’t really be that bad. I mean you can tell people about someone but unless they actually live with them, they can’t understand what they’re really like. And her family seem really nice, not that I’ve ever met them, mind, but the way she talks about them, they seem really laid-back.

I guess one day I’ll have to introduce her to Mum. I
mean I can’t expect her to marry me or anything without actually having met my mum. I’ll wait till the last minute though. Like when we’ve got engaged, and then Mum won’t be able to do anything about it. She’ll just have to smile and say congratulations like everyone else. I suppose she’ll be on her own then. Maybe that’s what she’s scared of, although it’s stupid really because she spends so much of her time slagging off other people and saying how awful they are you’d think she’d actually prefer to be on her own, it would make life easier for her.

I shouldn’t say that really. I know it sounds a bit mean. And I know she only goes on at me because she wants the best for me – that’s what she always says anyway. But she does bang on so much about what a lovely little boy I used to be that sometimes I can’t help thinking that she didn’t want me to grow up, that she’d have preferred it if I’d stayed a kid for ever, like Peter fucking Pan or something.

Anyway, I guess we’ll get through this like we did with Dad going, and things will all settle down again. And in the meantime all I’m going to think about is Sparrow and how brilliant it’s going to be when we’re at uni together next year.

I watch the light fighting its way through Ella’s curtains, signalling the end of the longest night of my life. I gave up trying to sleep at 4 a.m. and came in here. I wanted to be close to Ella. It is only a small room, barely enough space for a single bed and a tiny wardrobe. It’s the downside of being the youngest child, what Dad used to call the ‘last to arrive gets crappiest room’ policy whenever Tony complained about his. He got my old room when I moved out, of course. To be fair, Chloe did offer Ella her room when she went to university. Ella didn’t want it though. She said she liked her bedroom and she didn’t want to move. I remember saying at the time that she might change her mind when she was older. Now I don’t know if she’ll ever get the chance.