Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

He’d taken a pint glass of water and a bottle of paracetamol and gone back to bed.

The prospect of trying to apologise to Zoe over the phone was too daunting, so he’d waited until Monday morning. He hadn’t been sure if she’d turn up at the studio, but she had, no later than usual but uncharacteristically subdued. They’d skirted around each other, quietly polite, until Ben had finally blurted, “Look, I’m sorry for running out like that.”

She stopped with her back to him. “It’s okay.”

“It was just too soon.” He winced at the cliché.

Zoe had turned but didn’t look up. She ducked her head in agreement. “Yeah. Bad idea all around, really.”

There was a pause when they both found other things to look at.

“Do you still think we can work together?” Ben asked.

She was very still. “Do you want me to leave?”

“No, course not. I just didn’t know if you wanted to.”

“No. Unless you want me to.”

“I don’t.”

Zoe nodded. She put her hands in her pockets, then took them out again. Ben picked up the camera and examined it.

“So how did you feel on Saturday morning?” he asked.

She pulled a face. “Like death.”

They had grinned at each other then, and although there was still some embarrassment, at least it had been faced. When he heard her swearing down the phone at someone later he knew things were back to normal.

Yet not quite. Once, as Zoe crouched to adjust the hem of the model’s dress, an image of her kneeling in front of him flashed into Ben’s mind. He’d looked away, quickly, but the memory had triggered something else that had been tugging at his subconscious. Reluctantly, he’d let himself acknowledge it.

He couldn’t remember having an erection.

Specifically, he could remember not having one. He’d been drunk, anaesthetised with alcohol, and he was glad nothing more had happened, but he couldn’t deny that he’d been up for it until the point when he’d pulled away.

Except that one part of him obviously hadn’t been.

What was even more unsettling was the realisation that he hadn’t had an erection since Sarah had died. Which might or might not be a natural reaction, but the fact remained that it had been over four months now. Not a long time in itself, and it wasn’t as if he was ready to sleep with anyone else yet.

But even the guilt he felt at thinking of such a thing couldn’t stop him worrying about it.

As he sat outside the courtroom in the roped-off waiting area, though, his lack of a hard-on wasn’t foremost in his thoughts. There were other people waiting to be called as witnesses but he didn’t recognise them. No one spoke to anyone else. There was a heavy-set, middle-aged woman whose bust filled her dress like a roll of carpet. She had red hair piled up into a bun and squinted with concentration at the paperback novel she held with the cover bent back against the spine. The hand that gripped it had thick sausage fingers, scrubbed pink as if they were used to being in water.

Ben decided she was a nurse from the hospital Jacob had been taken from. The Asian man a few seats away he tagged as the doctor who’d attended Sarah after the ‘birth’. There were two policemen, one in uniform, one in plain clothes but with a jacket, trousers and short haircut that identified him just as clearly. He kept scratching in one ear with a finger, giving it a surreptitious wipe afterwards on his trousers. There was another man, and two other women, but by then Ben had tired of the game. He’d probably guessed them all wrong anyway.

His turn came in the afternoon. He felt something like stage fright as he went into the courtroom and took the stand.

His voice sounded unnaturally loud when he read the oath.

He couldn’t see Jessica at first; there were too many faces all staring at him. And when he saw the woman in the dock it wasn’t the Jessica he remembered.

She’d lost weight. Her brown frock hung on her like a sack. She was still pudding-faced but now the line of her jaw and cheeks was visible, and a wattle of loose skin hung below her chin. Her skin was pallid, her hair lank and lifeless.

Even across the court, Ben could see the streaks of grey in it. She only once looked at him, an apathetic glance without recognition or interest, before staring off again at some point on the floor. With a peculiar mingling of revulsion and pity, Ben realised that the trial was irrelevant. Nothing anyone did would make any difference to her now.

The prosecuting counsel questioned him, then he was passed over to the defence. It was as bad as he’d expected.

When he was told to stand down his legs shook. He kept his eyes set straight ahead as he left the court.

The verdict was reached two days later. Ben heard it on the radio as he was driving. Jessica had been found guilty of aiding and abetting, and sentenced to three years.

He turned the radio off.

Once the trial was over there was nothing to get in the way of his anticipation of seeing Jacob. He expected to feel excited, but as the Sunday he was due for his first contact approached, the anxiety he’d felt over the court case seemed simply to be transferred to the new target.

Colin had offered to go with him but he’d declined.

There was still a bump on the bridge of Colin’s nose from the last time he had provided moral support, and Ben’s relationship with Maggie was strained enough as it was. He didn’t want to risk anything making it worse, if only for Colin’s sake.

But the real reason was that he wanted to see Jacob by himself.

The journey seemed quicker now that he knew the route. It was a close, cloudy day. The fields were stripped bare, bleached to a golden stubble instead of the lush green they’d been the last time. Some of them were blackened from fires that in places were still burning, trailing curtains of smoke like mist across the road. Ben had thought that stubble-burning was illegal now. If it was no one around Tunford seemed to care.

He had phoned the Kales the night before to arrange what time he should arrive, but there had been no answer.

He hadn’t been in touch with them since the handover — not that they’d spoken much then, either. He’d been tempted to call several times to see how Jacob was, rehearsed what to say, assured himself it could be kept casual. But he hadn’t. No matter how much he worried about Jacob, he wanted to be seen to be keeping his side of the bargain. He didn’t want to give John Kale any excuse not to keep his.

The possibility that Kale might not need an excuse was something he tried not to dwell on.

As he drove through Tunford he wondered if they could have forgotten it was his day for contact and gone away for the weekend. Or remembered but gone away anyway. That stirred up all the other fears, and he was wondering if Jacob could have forgotten him in a month when he turned on to their road and saw Kale’s car outside the house.

It was an old Ford Escort, a 1980s model, dappled with rust but with a serviceable air about it. A coating of dried mud and dirt dulled the original red paint. He had seen the Kales getting into it once outside the local authority building, but he would have known who it belonged to anyway. It seemed to fit Kale, somehow.

At least they’re home. He parked behind the Escort and looked inside as he walked past. The seats were covered with a black nylon stretch fabric, holed and gritty with crumbs. A puzzle, the one Kale had given Jacob at their first meeting, lay on the back seat. The sight was strangely painful. Ben turned away and went down the path.

There was even more junk in the front garden than he remembered. It was all car parts; chrome bumpers spotted with corrosive acne, doors with gaps where the handles used to be, decaying bonnets, wings and headlamps. The colours were gradually oxidising into a universal shade of brown. Grass and weeds sprouted through glassless windows, tangling dead metal with splashes of living green. Where pieces had been moved there were telltale imprints of flattened yellow stalks and slimy soil. Wondering why anyone would want to litter his own outlook with scrap metal, and what the hell Kale did with it all anyway, Ben skirted the radiator grille of a Mini and went to the front door.