Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

Excitement and disbelief blew away Ben’s depression. But Usherwood hadn’t finished.

“That’s not all they missed,” she went on. “Sandra and Wayne Carter had a child, a little girl. She died from parental abuse when she was eighteen months old.”

The rain had stopped for a while, but by the time the figures began straggling out of the pub it had started to come down again. Most were men. They turned up their coat collars and bunched their shoulders against the wind-lashed downpour, apparently preferring pasted-down hair and soaked shoulders to the effeminacy of an umbrella.

Ben watched the last of the afternoon drinkers hurry away.

The street became deserted again. He cracked open one of the car windows a little to clear some of the condensation. A fine spray of rain gusted in, making him shiver. He’d turned the engine off when he’d parked twenty minutes earlier, and the warmth the heaters had built up had largely gone now.

He tucked his hands under his arms and waited. After another half-hour the pub door opened again and a woman came out. She was half hidden behind a telescopic umbrella which she struggled to keep from blowing inside out. Ben wiped the misted glass, not sure if it was her. Then a gust of wind plucked open her coat and revealed the shortness of the skirt underneath, and he knew it was.

Her umbrella blew inside out just as she reached the car. She stopped as she wrestled with it. The wind tried to tear the passenger door from Ben’s fingers as he reached across and opened it.

“Want a lift?”

Sandra Kale squinted through the rain, trying to see him.

He could tell when she realised who he was by the way her face suddenly became set. With a jerk she inverted the umbrella right side out again. Her high heels tapped on the wet pavement as she strode on as if he weren’t there.

“I can always come round to the back of the house instead,” he said.

She stopped and looked at him, trying to gauge his meaning. He was getting a twinge in his back from leaning over to hold open the door.

“There’s no point walking in this,” he said.

She stood, indecisive. Then, with a quick glance up and down the street, she folded the umbrella and got in.

She sat next to him, breathing slightly heavily as he pulled away. The inside of the car smelled of her perfume and wet cloth. Damp and cold had entered with her, but he thought he could detect her heat underneath it. Her hair, darkened to something like its natural colour by the rain, stuck to her forehead and the back of her neck. Water beaded the skin of her face like sweat.

He noticed a large bruise on one cheek, unsuccessfully disguised with make-up.

“What do you want?” she asked.

We need to talk.”

“Do we?”

“I think so.”

“I don’t. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

“You might have when you know what I want to talk about.”

He wasn’t as confident as he tried to sound. His excitement over Ann Usherwood’s news had faded when she’d told him that an undisclosed criminal record — particularly one twelve years old — didn’t have any bearing on the current situation. It would embarrass the social services, but that was all. And while the death of Sandra’s own child was more serious, only her husband had been prosecuted. He’d been found guilty of manslaughter; the worst charge against her was neglect.

“Kale can’t be held responsible for what his wife did before she met him, in any event,” the solicitor had said. “And even if she was deemed unfit to live in the same house as another child, which frankly I can’t see, who do you think he’d pick if he was forced to make a choice between them?”

The answer to that didn’t need thinking about.

What did it take? he’d wondered, wearily. What the fuck did it take?

Usherwood had gone on to tell him how it put them in a much better position to insist on his contact rights, and asked if he wanted her to present his case to the local authority now.

“No,” he’d said. “Not yet.”

There was someone he wanted to talk to first.

He was aware of Sandra Kale’s scrutiny in the close confines of the car, but kept his own gaze on the road. They drove in silence until they reached the house. He parked and switched off the ignition.

“Say what you’ve got to say, then,” she said.

“I’d rather tell you inside.”

“You can’t come in.” Beneath the aggression she sounded almost frightened.

“If we stay here the whole street can see us. He won’t like that if he hears about it, will he?”

Her mouth tightened, then she got out of the car. Ben picked up his bag from the back seat and followed her. The rain was bouncing up off the pavement, and he was soaked even in the few seconds it took him to reach the house. He half expected her to slam the front door behind her, but she left it open.

He went inside and wiped the water from his face. The hallway was dark and chill. There was a sour smell he couldn’t identify. From further inside he could hear Sandra moving about. He headed towards the noise.

The hallway went past the lounge. The door was ajar.

He paused, taking in the clothing strewn on sofa and chairs, the toys and magazines on the floor. One of Jacob’s T-shirts was hanging over the back of a chair. He could remember Sarah buying it. He turned away, skirting a car wheel propped up against the wall as he went into the kitchen.

The kitchen seemed at once familiar and strange, like somewhere visited in a dream. He was used to seeing it from the outside, framed first by the window, then the viewfinder, as two-dimensional as an image on a TV screen.

The reality was both more vivid and yet somehow less real. He couldn’t quite believe he was there. I’m inside the looking glass .

He glanced through the window, but the hillside was obscured by the rain and mist, reduced to a vague shape. In the foreground, the mound of wreckage formed a darker one below it.

Sandra finished plugging in a convection heater that stood against one wall and turned to face him. She leaned back against a work surface with her fists on her hips.

“Well?”

Now he was here Ben didn’t know how to start. He put his bag on the floor.

“I want Jacob back.”

Sandra stared at him, then put her head back and gave a laugh. “Oh, is that all?”

Her expression became heavy with disdain, but there might have been an element of relief there, too. “If that’s all you wanted to say you might as well fuck off back to London. Thanks for the lift.”

The hot air from the heater hadn’t yet warmed the room, but he was already feeling stifled in his bulky coat.

“What are you frightened of?”

“I’m not frightened of anything. I just wish you’d piss off and leave us alone.”

“Leave you alone?” he said, incredulous. “All this started because you wouldn’t let me see Jacob.”

“If you’re so bothered about the little bastard you shouldn’t have given him away.”

“I didn’t know what Kale was like then.”

She dropped her arms, stepped towards him. “He’s not a fucking dog! He’s got a first name!”

Ben refused to back down. “You know what he’s doing isn’t right.”

“Do I?”

“I think so. And you don’t want Jacob here any more than I do.”

“What makes you such an expert on what I want?”

I’ve watched you.

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

She looked away. “It doesn’t make any difference anyway. What I want doesn’t matter,” she said, and the bitterness was so close to the surface he could have touched it. Abruptly, she turned back to him. “You think it’s going to do any good, coming here? You think I’d really help you? Even if I fucking could?”