Кара Хантер - Close to Home

He nods.

‘You were in your own room, with your own music on.’

He nods again.

‘So you were wearing your headphones.’

He hesitates.

‘I had my music too.’

‘Your music and your headphones?’

‘Whatever. I hate them. I hate all of them.’

And he probably just wanted to drown it all out. And who can blame him. He’s crying hard now. Really hard.

I reach forward and gently, very gently, take his hands and push back his oversized sleeves. The oversized sleeves he always wears, even in this heat. He doesn’t try to stop me.

I look down at the lines across his flesh. I’m guessing it started soon after he found out he had no family. The doctor knew and I think the school suspected too. But neither of the people who were supposed to love and care for him noticed anything was wrong. Poor little Leo. Poor bloody Jamie. Poor abandoned lonely boys.

‘I know what these are, Leo,’ I say softly. ‘I had a little boy once, who did this.’

I sense Everett stiffen beside me. She didn’t know. No one knew. We didn’t tell anybody.

‘It made me very sad and it took me a long time to understand because I loved him so much, and I thought he knew that. But I do understand now and I think I know why he did it. Doing this hurts less than all the rest of the hurt, doesn’t it? It makes it feel a bit better. Even if only for a little while.’

Derek Ross reaches across and puts an arm round the sobbing little boy. ‘It’s OK, Leo. It’s OK. We’ll sort it out. We’ll sort it all out.’

—

In the corridor, Sharon is already waiting. Waiting and blazing.

‘How dare you,’ she says, coming up far too close and pointing a long red nail. Those are new too. ‘How bloody dare you try to drag me into all this – if that stupid kid did something to Daisy, I knew nothing about it . Right from the start you’ve been insinuating I’m a bad mother, and now you’re actually suggesting that kid killed my daughter and I helped him fix it? I helped him cover it up? What gives you the right – what gives you the bloody right – ’

‘Mrs Mason,’ begins the lawyer, alarmed, ‘I really don’t think – ’

‘And if I were you,’ she hisses, ignoring him and bringing her face even closer to mine, ‘I would think twice before I started throwing accusations at other people about how they bring up their kids. After all, my daughter’s just missing. Your kid is dead .’

***

4 April 2016, 10.09 p.m.

106 days before the disappearance

5 Barge Close, sitting room

Barry is watching an American cop show on TV. He has a can of lager on the table beside him. Suddenly the door flings open and Sharon storms into the room. She’s holding his leather jacket in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.

‘What the bloody hell is this?’

Barry glances up, sees what she has and reaches for his can. ‘Oh, that.’

‘Yes. That .’

Barry shrugs. The nonchalance is perhaps a little forced. ‘She’s just a little kid cutting out pictures from magazines. They all do it at that age. She doesn’t know what it means.’

‘She’s not that little any more – she’s eight.’

‘Like I said, it’s nothing.’

Sharon’s face is red with fury. ‘It’s disgusting , that’s what it is. You think I’m thick, but I’ve got eyes in my head. I see the way you pick her up – the way you have her in your lap – and now this – ’

Barry puts down his can. ‘Are you seriously telling me I can’t pick up my own daughter?’

‘Not the way you do it.’

‘And what the fuck do you mean by that?’

‘You know exactly what I mean. I see the looks she gives you – ’

‘She looks at me like I’m her bloody father .’

‘ – and all that whispering behind your hands and looking down your noses at me.’

‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. How many more times do we have to go through the same old same old? No one’s looking down their nose at you. You’re imagining it.’

‘And you’re Daddy of the Decade,’ replies Sharon sarcastically.

Barry gets up. ‘At least I’m not jealous of my own kid.’

Sharon gapes. ‘ How dare you! ’

‘Because that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? It’s just like it was with Jessica.’

‘Don’t you dare drag her into it. It’s completely different.’

‘It’s exactly the same. You just can’t stand being second best, can you? Being anything other than the centre of attention all the bloody time. It happened with Jessica and it’s happening now. Your own fucking daughter. You never stop boasting about her when she’s not there, but you never say anything nice to her face. You never tell her she looks nice or she’s pretty – ’

‘My mother never told me I was pretty when I was a child.’

‘That’s not the bloody point . Just because your mother was a cow doesn’t mean you have to be.’

‘Daisy’s quite spoilt enough without me joining in. She needs to learn she can’t go through life expecting the whole world to revolve around her. She’s not some little princess , despite what you tell her every hour of every bloody day.’

Barry walks to the fireplace, then turns to face his wife. ‘Are you actually telling me you do it deliberately? That you do it to teach her a lesson? ’ He shakes his head. ‘Sometimes I wonder whether you love her at all.’

Sharon’s chin lifts. ‘You give her far too much love. I’m just evening up the balance. She’ll thank me in the end.’

‘ Jesus . After everything you had to go through to have her – what we both went through – that’s what you come out with. Sometimes I think I don’t bloody understand you at all.’

Sharon says something, but it’s too low to hear. Her face reddens.

‘What did you say?’

She turns to him and her chin lifts again in defiance. ‘I said it’s hard to love someone who despises you.’

Barry sighs theatrically. ‘She doesn’t despise you – she bends over backwards to please you . We all do. It’s like walking on eggshells in this bloody place.’

‘You don’t know the things she says. Nasty bitchy things. You don’t see it because she never does it when you’re around. She’s too clever for that.’

Barry puts his hands on his hips. ‘Like what?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You say she doesn’t do it in front of me, so give me an example. Something she said.’

Sharon opens her mouth and shuts it again. Then, ‘She said Portia’s mother was setting up a book club and they were going to start with Pride and Prejudice but she’d already told Portia I wouldn’t be interested.’

‘Well, you’re not, are you? You hate that sort of crap. You wouldn’t go if they begged you on their hands and knees, so what’s the problem?’

‘It’s the way she said it. Like I wouldn’t be interested because I was too thick to understand Jane Austen.’

‘You’re reading way too much into all of this. She’s only bloody eight – ’

‘And another time she said how Nanxi Chen’s mother was a Rhodes scholar or something, and she’d told them I was once runner-up for Miss South London.’

‘So? What’s wrong with that? She’s proud of you. And Nanxi would have been really impressed – she’d see it as Homecoming Queen or something. That’s a big deal in the US.’

Sharon looks at him with contempt. ‘You really don’t get it, do you? Daisy would have made it sound like some pathetic cattle market full of useless airheads walking up and down in bikinis.’