Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

He did, draping it over his bag.

She handed him a towel. “Here.”

It was already damp and didn’t look too clean, but he took it anyway. Sandra rubbed her hair vigorously with another.

“I’m wet through.” Without any coyness she pulled off her sweater and dropped it on a chair. The skin of her arms, chest and stomach was pale and covered with goose bumps. Her white bra was semi-transparent.

“Don’t mind, do you?” she asked, pushing her wet hair back with her fingers so that it hung behind her ears. Her heavy breasts lifted with the movement.

“No.” He tried to remember what he’d been going to say next. “Look—”

“Coffee?”

“Uh, please.”

There was a small roll of flesh above the waistband of her skirt. She went to the sink and filled the kettle. To the left of her spine below her bra strap was a mole the size of a small fingernail. He hadn’t noticed it when he’d watched her through the long lens.

He made himself look through the window at the scrap metal.

“Why only wrecked cars?”

“What?”

She pushed the kettle plug into the socket with a firm jab from the palm of her hand. A muscle jumped down the side of her ribs.

“All the scrap. Why is it just cars? Why not bits of fridges and washing machines as well?”

“Because a car wreck’s violent. One minute it was driving around, the next it’s junk. And somebody with it. He thinks each piece he brings home is some sort of memento of that somebody’s life being smashed.”

She had turned to face him, but for a moment she seemed to forget he was there. Then she came back from wherever she’d been and smiled.

“I can’t see the point in looking for reasons,” she said. “Things happen, don’t they? You just have to make the most of what you’ve got.”

Ben didn’t say anything because she had started walking towards him. She didn’t take her eyes from his. The smile was still on her mouth. She came close and stood in front of him. He was surprised at how small she was. He could feel the fabric of her bra brushing his shirt. The weight of her breasts was an implied threat.

She rested her hands flat on his chest. They felt cold, then the heat of them came through.

“What have you got?” she asked, looking up at him.

She began to slide one hand lower. It burned a slow path down his stomach. There was a thrumming in his head, twinning the one in his crotch. Her hand reached it, pressed against it, and a vibration went through him as though she had struck a tuning fork. He stepped back slightly for balance and something crunched under his shoe.

He looked down. One of Jacob’s puzzles was crushed under his heel. Tiny silver balls had spilled from the broken plastic. He lifted his foot and more of them escaped, running like beads of mercury across the dirty carpet.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sandra told him. “John’s bought him loads of them. They’re all over the place.”

But Ben felt something shifting inside him, something that had nothing to do with the pressure of her hand. He took another step backwards. She looked surprised, then her expression grew closed at whatever she saw in his face. Her hand fell to her side.

“Well,” she said, looking away. She self-consciously folded her arms across her breasts. “Sorry if I’m not good enough for you. I expect you’re too used to models.”

Ben couldn’t think of anything he could say that would make things any better. The kettle clicked off, its steam adding to the fog on the window. He moved further away, careful not to step on any of the silver balls. He tried to reassemble his reason for being there.

“I’m going to tell the social services that I don’t think your husband’s mentally fit to look after Jacob,” he said.

Sandra went to where her sweater was discarded on the chair. “Do what you like.”

“All that stuff in the shed. He’s self-destructive. I’m not going to let anything happen to Jacob because he’s got some fixation.”

“Bully for you.” She felt the wet sweater and dropped it back down with a grimace of annoyance. She picked up a sweat-shirt from another chair.

“Will you back me up?” She paused in the act of pulling on the sweatshirt and stared at him. “Back you up? Don’t be fucking stupid!”

“You’ve just told me what he’s like.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to say he’s some sort of nutter so you can get his son taken off him.”

“He needs help.”

She laughed, harshly. “Don’t we all!” She jerked the sweatshirt over her head. “And don’t pretend you’re bothered about John. You don’t give a shit about him. You’re only worried about the kid.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

She raised a shoulder indifferently. “He’ll just have to take his chances with the rest of us. And since that’s all you came for you can fuck off. I’ve got to get tea ready.”

Ben went to his bag and took out the photographs of her and the men in the bedroom. Her expression became hunted as he held them out.

“What are they?”

When he didn’t answer she came forward and took them. She stared at the first one, then quickly at the next few. She flung them at him.

“You bastard! You fucking!”

He thought she was going to hit him, but she let her arms fall. She hung her head.

“I hope you enjoyed watching. You fucking shit.”

His cheek was stinging from the edge of one of the photographs. He put his fingers to it. They came away coloured with blood. He groped in his pocket for a tissue. His arms seemed sluggish. He felt he was moving through a mire of shame.

“So what are you going to do with them?” she asked. “Do a Quilley? Blackmail me into saying John wants locking up?”

He held the tissue to the cut. “I only want you to tell the social services what you’ve told me.”

“So you can get Jacob taken away? What do you think he’d do to me if I did that?”

“What will he do if he finds out you’ve been sleeping with other men while he’s at work? And taking money for it?”

She covered her eyes. Something inside Ben was curling up and withering. He did his best to ignore it.

“They probably won’t take Jacob off him, anyway.” You fucking hypocrite. “But if somebody doesn’t do something, sooner or later he’s going to kill one of them. Either Jacob or himself. You’ll lose him then, either way.”

Her throat was jumping in little spasms. She wiped her hand across her cheeks, dragging the skin like a rubber mask. Streaks of mascara followed her fingers.

“You think you can leave things behind,” she said. You think you’ve got away from them, but you never do. You take it all with you. When I met John I thought...” She didn’t finish. The smeared mascara made her face look like something left out too long in the rain. “We haven’t had sex in a year.”

I don’t want to hear this, Ben thought, but he didn’t move. He owed her that much.

She stared at the photographs scattered on the floor. “Not since before all this started. He isn’t interested any more. He’s like one of these bloody monks. Sex is ‘impure’, it’ll stop him seeing his Pattern. Specially with someone like me. He doesn’t say as much, but I can tell by the way he looks at me. I’m a cheap tart. More pricks than a pin-cushion, that’s me. So one day I thought, right, if that’s what he thinks I am, I will be. The next time a bloke in the pub made a pass at me I said okay. And after I’d done it once there was no reason not to do it again, was there? The money came in handy. That’s something else John isn’t interested in. We could have sold the story to the newspapers for a fucking fortune, but oh no! That would have been ‘impure’ too, wouldn’t it?”