Cath Staincliffe - Looking for Trouble

I was in luck, or so I thought at the time. A couple of lads were sitting quietly in the entrance to one of the empty shops. A cardboard sign announced they were hungry and homeless. In an old Kentucky Fried Chicken carton they’d collected a handful of coins. Hardly enough for a chicken drumstick, let alone a decent meal.

‘Can I talk to you for a minute?’

The boy on the left sniggered, dug his fingers deeper into his anorak pockets.

‘What about?’ I judged the boy who spoke to be older, eighteen or so. He had a savage crew-cut and baby-blue eyes. ‘You making a documentary or summat?’

His friend erupted into childish giggles.

‘No, I’m looking for a friend of mine. He’s missing. I wondered if you’d seen him?’ I pulled out the photo of Martin with the carp. I’d cropped off most of the fish. Blue Eyes barely glanced at it and shook his head. He passed it to Giggler who seemed to find it hilarious.

‘You got any change?’ Blue Eyes nodded at the carton. With a rush of embarrassment, I realised I hadn’t any money on me. I knew a cheque wouldn’t be any good to them.

‘I’m sorry. I came out without any money.’

‘Great,’ he sneered. The younger boy was beginning to roll the photo into a tube. I held out my hand and took it back.

‘He went missing about a month ago. His name’s Martin, Martin Hobbs. I heard he was in Manchester.’

‘Big place,’ said Blue Eyes aggressively.

An old woman stopped beside us and fumbled in her purse for change. She dropped some silver into the box then hurried away.

‘Is there anywhere else you know I could look? Any squats you know about?’ Blank stares. ‘Look, there’d be a reward for useful information.’

‘How much?’ Blue Eyes was interested, if sceptical.

‘Well, it’d depend on what it was…’ I faltered.

‘Fuck this. C’mon.’ He scooped up the tray and leapt to his feet. Giggler followed suit.

‘Twenty quid for a definite lead, if I could talk to someone who’d seen him.’ Blue Eyes nodded. ‘Here’s my card, just ring…’

‘Yeah, right…“just ring”,’ he mimicked my voice.

They began to walk briskly away.

‘And the photo,’ I screeched. People turned to look. I ran after them and thrust it towards them.

‘You might need it…’ I tailed off. I felt embarrassed. I hadn’t a clue whether they’d met Martin Hobbs or not, whether twenty quid was too little or too much to offer, whether they thought I was a plain-clothes police officer or a social worker. But I recognised the look of contempt on the face of the older one. He took the photo and slid it into his back pocket.

With burning cheeks, I scurried back to the car. I gathered my thoughts and reined in my emotions for a few minutes before setting off. When it came down to it, I didn’t like hostility. I wanted everyone to be nice and friendly, especially to me. The people I’d just met had plenty to feel hostile about; they were hardly going to warm to a middle-class nosy-parker who hadn’t even the common decency to contribute to the day’s takings. My ears burned afresh. I cursed a bit. Eased my shoulders down from my ears and started the engine.

I called at Tesco’s on my way back, filled a trolley and wrote out a cheque which cleared out any money I’d made on the case so far. I just had time to unpack the shopping, put on a load of washing and tidy the kitchen before collecting Maddie from Nursery School. She was tired and bad-tempered. We argued about who would fetch her coat, then about who would carry her lunch box and the letter notifying me of another outbreak of head-lice. I began to itch. I pulled her, sobbing, to the car. A couple of other parents flashed me sympathetic smiles.

It’s not far to the Social Services nursery where Tom goes. The places are like gold dust, but Tom qualified as Ray is a single parent on low-income. It’s a lovely place and Tom thrives on the contact with other children. He wandered out to meet me, clutching a thickly-daubed painting.

‘Mrs Costello?’ The woman who addressed me was new on the staff and hadn’t worked out the relationships yet. Maddie sneered.

‘Hello, I’m Sal Kilkenny, I share a house with Tom and his Dad.’

‘Right.’ She didn’t let it throw her. ‘We’ve a trip planned next week, to the museum at Castlefield, if you could fill in the slip and return it.’ She handed me the form letter.

‘Thanks.’

Once home, Maddie headed straight for the television. Tom followed and within seconds the squabbling started.

‘Be quiet!’ Maddie’s voice was loud enough to wake the dead. ‘I can’t hear, be quiet.’

I rushed into the lounge.

‘He’s brumming too much,’ she complained, her face pure outrage.

‘Come on Tom.’ I scooped up his cars and took them into the kitchen. Tom followed, dragging the battered Fisher Price garage after him. He brummed happily away. I watched him for a while. At what age do kids get labelled? When does a quiet child become chronically shy? Had Martin Hobbs played happily like Tom, absorbed in an imaginary world? Had he hated school, shrinking from other children? And what about Barry Dixon? When had he developed his strange quirks and mannerisms? Had his mother noticed? Had she encouraged his clever ways with words, or feared them? Would Tom and Maddie turn out happy, at ease with other people, leave home when the time was right, or were either of them already heading for troubled times, loneliness, rebellion?

I scoured the house with a black bin-liner, collecting rubbish. I left it by the back door and put the kettle on. I never drank the tea. Kids seem to be born with an innate instinct for knowing when you’re about to start a hot drink. Since Maddie’s arrival my tea-drinking had been transformed from a revitalising ritual to a series of lukewarm or clapcold disappointments.

‘Mummeee!’

She was in mortal danger. I flew into the lounge.

‘I’ve got a splinter,’ she wailed.

‘Where? Show me.’

‘In my finger.’

‘Let me see.’

‘No, no.’ She was hysterical.

It took ten minutes to get a look at it and a further live to reach a compromise over treatment. Cream and plaster till bedtime and if it didn’t come out in the bath, then, and only then, would tweezers be used. Maddie has a great imagination and a very low pain threshold. On the way back to my cup of tea, I fell over Tom and the contents of the bin-bag. He’d laid out a neat trail of refuse from the back door, along the passage and into the kitchen.

‘Dustbin man,’ he beamed. I cleared up while he threw a tantrum. He stopped when I brought out the chocolate chip cookies. Bribery works.

I sat down with a fresh cup of tea when the phone rang. Maddie made no move to answer it.

‘Shit.’ I slammed my cup down.

‘Hello.’ I tried to keep the irritation from my voice.

‘What’s eating you?’

I’d failed. ‘Diane. Oh, kids.’ My old friend Diane hasn’t got children but I make sure she has a fair idea of the trials of motherhood.

She laughed. ‘Just checking you’re still on for tonight.’

‘Yes.’ We were going for a drink. ‘See you in there, about nine.’

My spirits were raised. There was nothing like a good natter with Diane to put things in perspective and take me out of my own little world. The kids began to argue again.

‘Only two hours,’ I reminded myself, ‘they’ll be asleep and I’ll be out.’

Diane was ensconced in one of the cosy corner seats when I arrived at the pub. Half-way between her house in Rusholme and mine in Withington, it’s one of the few locals that hasn’t been done up to appeal to lager drinkers. But it’s still respectable enough for husbands to bring their wives on the weekly night out. No spit and sawdust. Warm, quiet, dull if you like. I like.