Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

Afterwards they watched the football match on the small TV in the lounge. Ben felt drowsy and comfortable. The beer, the roast lunch and the coal fire popping in the grate combined to make him feel more relaxed than he had in ages. Whole swathes of the afternoon passed without them talking, but there was no awkwardness in the silences. When Paterson announced that he would have to get ready to visit his wife, Ben offered to go with him to the hospital. The decline came without fuss or self-consciousness.

“She’s not at her best just now. You can call round again when she’s back at home.”

Ben understood, without feeling offended, that it was time for him to go. Paterson saw him to the door, but they didn’t shake hands. It wouldn’t have felt right.

“Don’t push him too far,” the older man told him as he left.

Ben almost said okay. But he didn’t.

He spent Christmas in the Caribbean. It was one of the plum jobs that came along every now and again, a scramble from an advertising agency who had decided to switch photographers at the last minute and needed something to show their clients early in the New Year. They sounded relieved when Ben accepted the job. Almost as relieved as he felt.

He sent Jacob a big parcel of Christmas presents, but he had no idea if he’d understand who they were from. Or if Kale would let him have them.

Before he went away he spoke to Ann Usherwood about investigating Sandra’s background. The solicitor had been doubtful. She’d warned it would be expensive, and probably not tell them anything they didn’t already know. “If there was something incriminating the social services would have it on record,” she pointed out.

But Ben insisted. If it had got Quilley nearly killed, it had to be worth knowing.

He left for the shoot without having heard anything. At the last minute a heavy weight of reluctance descended and almost made him back out. He felt certain that he was letting down his guard, struck by a superstitious conviction that something disastrous would happen if he wasn’t at hand to somehow prevent it. Only the fact that he wouldn’t hear anything from Usherwood over Christmas anyway, and the knowledge that his professional reputation might not stand another dent, made him go.

When he came off the plane and felt the sun bake down on him he was glad he had. It was so far removed from anything he associated with Christmas — and any stinging reminders of Sarah and Jacob — that the period he’d been dreading slipped by almost without him noticing.

Even Christmas Day passed relatively painlessly. They worked in the morning then spent the rest of the day getting slowly pissed at a beach bar. By the evening Ben had even forgotten what time of the year it was.

There was no escaping New Year’s Eve, though. He was back in London by then. He had been invited to several parties, more even than usual, but while he knew the reason for it and was grateful, he had no intention of going to any. He planned to lock the door, turn the clocks to the wall, then watch videos and drink until January had safely started.

But memories of other years came at him like a juggernaut.

Only four of them; that was all they had spent together. It seemed incredible that it had been so few. The best had been their second, when he and Sarah had left Jacob with her parents and gone to a New Year’s Eve party in Knightsbridge. The house had been ridiculously opulent but they hadn’t known many people there and had left not long after midnight.

Slightly drunk, they had returned home, gigglingly stripped off and made love on the lounge floor. Sarah had gone down on him, teasing him with hands and tongue, and when he came in a spine-arching spurt she had grinned up at him and mock-roared, “Hap-py New Year!” The previous year’s hadn’t been so memorable — Jacob had come down with flu, so they’d stayed in — but looking back on it now, that was the last they would spend together, the last Sarah had been alive for, making it if anything more poignant.

It seemed at once close enough to touch, yet much further removed than a mere twelve months.

He put the vodka bottle on the floor within easy reach and chain-watched one mindless video after another.

When the phone rang it startled him out of a doze. He jumped, spilling vodka from the glass loosely balanced on his chest. The room spun as he stood up. On the TV a mass of images refused to congeal into any coherent picture. The phone continued to ring. He wished he’d thought to disconnect it. He didn’t want to hear anyone wishing him a Happy New Year.

He didn’t think there was any such thing.

Resenting the intrusion, he answered it. “Yeah?” he said, deliberately surly. Sounds of a party came down the line — cheers, hooters, the cracks of party poppers.

“Ben? Is that you?”

The unexpected voice cut through the vodka. “ Dad? ”

“Can you hear me?”

“Yeah. Where are you?”

“We’re at some friends’ house.”

Ben couldn’t stop the drop of disappointment that he wasn’t nearby, even while he recognised its absurdity.

“I thought I’d call and see how you were.”

“Oh... not bad. You?”

“Fine.” There was a pause. “I just wanted to say...”

Don’t. Not ‘Happy New Year’. Please don’t.

“...well, you know. I’m thinking of you.”

Ben felt a lump rise in his throat.

“You there, Ben?”

“Yeah.”

Somebody whooped in the background. There was a burst of laughter. He could hear someone calling his father’s name. It sounded like his stepmother.

“I’d better go,” his father said, but didn’t break the connection. Whoever was calling his name grew louder. “Look after yourself.”

Ben tried to say something, but the background noise of the party had been replaced by the dialling tone. He put down the receiver.

Fireworks were being let off outside. It couldn’t be long after midnight. He wiped his eyes.

“Fuck it,” he said, for no particular reason, and went over to where he’d left the vodka.

The New Year carried on from where the old had left off.

There was work, and there was going out after work, and there was going home to an empty house. January had always been his least favourite month. He told himself it was just a matter of getting through it.

One rainy Sunday afternoon he realised as he watched a video that it should have been his contact day. He’d forgotten about it. It upset him, not because he’d held out any hope of Kale letting him see Jacob, but because he was already starting to let things slide. It seemed to foreshadow the way things would be in future.

He wondered if he shouldn’t stop clutching at straws, aim for something more attainable like his contact rights, as Usherwood had advised. But the same arguments still applied. Kale wasn’t going to share his son, no matter what anyone said. As long as he had Jacob he would continue to do what he liked, until he ultimately did something that even the authorities couldn’t ignore.

Ben hoped Jacob could survive his father’s free will for that long.

He expected to hear from Ann Usherwood soon after the New Year, but February arrived without any word from her. He had begun to regard Sandra Kale’s past as another dead end when the solicitor called him one morning.

“How soon can you get in to see me?” she asked.

He was at the studio, just about to start a shoot. His first impulse was to cancel it, then he thought about Zoe and decided against. “Not till tomorrow. Have you found something?”

“Enough to know that the social services didn’t check up as well as they should,” she told him. “Sandra Kale’s got a twelve-year-old criminal record for prostitution and drug offences. She’s been married before, to a pimp and drug pusher called Wayne Carter. It was in Portsmouth, under a different local authority, and when she divorced him she reverted back to her maiden name. Unless the social services here ran a pretty thorough check on her background — which they obviously didn’t — they could easily have missed it.”