Ann Cleeves - Burial of Ghosts

‘Did you consider discussing Thomas’s problems with his father?’

‘Never. I’d had no contact with him since before Thomas was born.’

‘What was Thomas like at home?’

‘Always difficult. Moody and rude. I stopped asking visitors to the house because he embarrassed me.’

And what about him? I thought. Did he ask his friends here? Or did you embarrass him?

She sat there, rigid, unblinking. The sort of woman I’d take an instant dislike to, if I met her at a case conference or if she were sitting on the magistrates’ bench. The sort of woman who’d blow-dry her hair every morning and keep a small packet of tissues and a safety pin in her handbag for emergencies, whose life was ruled by timetables and certainties. But I remembered what Mrs Mariner had said about her crying her eyes out when her baby was born and I wanted to get through to her.

‘Don’t you miss him?’

Her head snapped back so she was looking straight into my face. ‘I’ll tell you what I don’t miss. I don’t miss the vomit in the bathroom when he comes in at one o’clock after a drunken party, the loud music in his bedroom and the unsuitable friends. I don’t miss the police turning up on the doorstep because the neighbours have complained.’

All that seemed to go with the territory of being a parent. When you have kids you know they’re going to grow up. Did she expect her little girls to stay in every night doing their homework when they were sixteen? They’d be down Whitley on a Friday night showing their knickers in Idols nightclub and throwing up over the sea wall. Of course they would. Then I tried to look at things from Kay’s point of view. One moment of freedom and she’d got pregnant. Perhaps she was just being bizarrely overprotective.

‘What was the final straw?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘What made you decide to throw him out?’

‘We didn’t throw him out. He had a choice. We’d have made him welcome if he’d agreed to abide by our rules.’

‘Something must have provoked the ultimatum.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m not prepared to discuss it.’

Had she caught him shooting up in the immaculate kitchen? Having sex on her and Ronnie’s bed? Whatever it was, she wasn’t prepared to face it now.

‘Does Thomas have a girlfriend?’

‘No one that he was prepared to discuss with me.’

What sort of answer was that?

‘Did he pass any exams in the end?’

‘Only GCSEs. He dropped out before A-levels. And nothing spectacular. Cs and Ds. B in English. He did manage an A in music. But music’s his obsession.’

I couldn’t understand why she was so dismissive. The grades weren’t bad, especially if he’d been bunking off school. But perhaps it was a good sign that she remembered them at all.

‘What did he do when he left school?’

‘He stayed in bed. For days on end.’

‘No job?’

‘How could he have a proper job? He was going to be a rock star. So he told us.’ The sarcasm was scathing and well practised.

‘Was he in a band?’

‘Apparently.’

I didn’t know how she could be so stupid. Music was his passion but she’d made no effort to understand what he was into. I couldn’t push it though. Soon she’d remember I hadn’t told her what I was doing there.

‘Were they any good?’

She looked at me as if I were mad. ‘How would I know?’

‘You never went to see them play?’

‘I’d be the last person he’d want there. And no, they never came here to rehearse. The neighbours are elderly. They wouldn’t have stood for it. The band practised in a garage belonging to another parent. Someone more tolerant than us, according to Thomas. Occasionally they were booked to play in a pub. It hardly counts as a career.’

‘Doesn’t Thomas work at all?’

She paused. I wondered why she was so reluctant to admit to the job with Harry Pool. Would she have preferred Thomas to be unemployed to justify her action in throwing him out? Or was she so snobby that she couldn’t bear him to be working as an invoice clerk for a friend of her dad’s?

‘He works for a haulage firm. There’s no future in it.’ She looked at me. ‘He’s not a stupid boy. With a bit of work and effort he could have gone to university. It’s the waste which makes me so angry.’ And this time she did look angry. Her hands were clasped together and the knuckles were white. ‘I don’t like the people he mixes with there. They’re a rough crowd.’

‘Did he enjoy the work?’

‘He got out of bed to get there on time, so I suppose he did. He was never prepared to do anything he didn’t want to. He’s not badly paid for what he does. I suppose he enjoys the money.’

‘When did he leave home, Mrs Laing?’

‘About four months ago.’

‘And you haven’t seen him to talk to since then?’

‘No.’

‘How did he get on with your daughters?’

It wasn’t a question she was expecting. ‘He spoiled them. They adored him.’

‘So they were upset when he left?’

‘Children adjust easily at that age.’

‘Has he been back to visit them?’

‘He wasn’t invited.’ I said nothing, but she continued as if I’d accused her directly of being callous. ‘We couldn’t take the risk of upsetting them again. They’re settled now. Why disrupt them? My son is unreliable, Ms Bartholomew. He could promise to visit but not turn up. Or he could arrive drunk. The girls have seen enough unpleasantness. I’m not prepared to put them through more.’

‘Did he ever turn up out of the blue? Uninvited?’

‘I wasn’t here. Cath, the childminder, let him in.’

‘And?’

‘The girls were pleased to see him. Naturally. He bought a bag full of sweets. But he left them overexcited. They couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t good for them. I told Cath she wasn’t to encourage him.’

‘So he’s not been back?’

‘He tried once or twice. Not in the last few weeks.’

‘Thomas hasn’t reported to the office either,’ I said, ‘though I’ve sent him a couple of letters. He is at the same address?’

She looked at me, anxious for the first time. ‘Well, you’d know more about that than me. You found him the place. Absalom House. That hostel in Bennet Street.’

‘Of course. It’s just that he seems to be a bit elusive at the moment.’

I stood up. Despite my fascination with Ronnie Laing, I didn’t want him arriving now and recognizing me. But although she’d been so reluctant to talk to me, now Kay didn’t want to let me go.

‘Are you saying you’ve lost him?’

‘Of course not. Nothing like that.’

‘He is all right, isn’t he?’ she asked.

‘I’m sure he is.’

‘Can you call me when you’ve talked to him? Just to let me know. This is my work number.’

She wrote it carefully on a piece of paper. Why didn’t she want me calling her at home? It wasn’t as if she could be scared of Ronnie. I thought she liked to keep her life compartmentalized and Thomas didn’t have a place here any more.

I was letting myself out of the front door when she called after me.

‘I thought I was doing the right thing. Tough love. Isn’t that what they call it?’

I supposed she’d read about tough love in a women’s magazine. Or perhaps the Methodist Wives had been given a talk on it. To me, it seemed like an excuse.

Absalom House was double-fronted, part of a terrace in a shabby street running up from the sea front. When family seaside holidays were popular and the workers of industrial lowland Scotland thought Whitley Bay would be a glamorous place to spend a couple of weeks in August, it had probably been a hotel. Now it was a place to dump homeless young people.