Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

The flare of indignation died. She raised one shoulder in a shrug. “I let blokes come around every now and again. Not many, because most of them are too frightened of John. But there are some who get a kick out of it. Sometimes I even kid myself it’s me they want. You’d think I’d have learned by now. Even John was only after something he thought he saw in me, and now he doesn’t even want that any more.”

She looked Ben up and down. He felt burned by the contempt he saw. “But it doesn’t matter, does it? I’m only a fucking whore. I should be used to selling myself.”

He pulled to mind an image of Jacob sitting beneath the suspended, mud-smeared engine, imagined it dropping. He tried to crush his conscience with it. “Will you help me?”

Sandra stared dully at the photographs on the floor. She looked old and beaten. “Do I have any choice?”

“We can keep whatever you say confidential. He doesn’t have to know.”

“Just get out.”

He picked up his bag and coat.

She was still standing among the photographs when he left.

When he got into the car he realised he was still holding the tissue he’d used to staunch his cheek. The blood on it formed a Rorschach pattern of spots and swirls. He screwed it up and thrust it into his pocket without trying to see what it told him.

Colin tried to kill himself in the same week that the social services agreed to hold a case conference about Jacob. Ben had presented them with the photographs of Kale’s activities in the back garden, and told them of Sandra’s willingness (if it could be called that) to verify that her husband was mentally ill and a threat to his son. That would have been enough to spark an investigation in itself, but his news that she had a past they had completely overlooked was like dropping a lighted match into a box of fireworks.

Ben told himself he had no choice. He was under no obligation to Sandra, and he couldn’t afford to ignore anything that would strengthen his case. He tried to convince himself that it would eventually have been discovered anyway, that he was protecting her enough by keeping quiet about her more recent affairs.

It didn’t make him feel any better.

Her request for confidentiality was agreed to by the local authority, although not happily. In spite of everything, Ben still felt they didn’t believe that Kale was actually dangerous.

He didn’t know if this was a reluctance to accept that their original assessment had been wrong or simple miscalculation, but Carlisle in particular responded with the grudging compliance of a child that’d had its fingers smacked. By now there was no disguising the antipathy the social worker felt for him. He obviously regarded Ben as a troublemaker who was trying to split up the newly formed family. Ben hoped that wouldn’t blind him to the risk Kale posed to Jacob.

He was trying to be realistic about what to expect. Even now Ann Usherwood insisted there was no chance of him getting Jacob back. That wasn’t something the case conference would even consider.

“As I’ve said before, Mr Murray, a definite threshold of risk would have to be reached for them to even consider taking Jacob from his father, and this falls well short of that. They might put him on the Child Protection Register, and insist on close monitoring while his father’s mental health is assessed, but that’s probably all. I really think you should put anything else out of your mind.”

He couldn’t, though. The feeling remained that it wouldn’t be so simple. It was no longer just a matter of Jacob and Kale, now it was Ben and Kale as well.

He couldn’t see it being resolved in a reasonable way. Kale wouldn’t permit it.

He was still fretting over what might happen when Maggie called to tell him that Colin had fed a hosepipe from the exhaust into his new BMW, locked himself inside and turned on the engine.

In some ways it was more of a shock than when Sarah had died. That had been a fluke, a capricious trick of a random universe, devastating but no more so than if she’d been in a plane crash or struck by lightning. But Colin’s attempted suicide seemed to contravene some undefined natural law. Ever since Ben had known him he had been the reliable, orderly one of the two of them. For him to try to kill himself was unthinkable.

But then so was his having an affair.

Ben had wanted to go to the hospital straightaway, but Maggie told him not to. Colin was out of danger, she’d said, and both she and the boys were there. “He doesn’t need anybody else.”

She had sounded cool and self-possessed, as if her husband were recovering from a bout of flu rather than a failed suicide attempt. Ben supposed it was shock, but when he called round to the house the evening after Colin had been discharged she greeted him with the same degree of control.

“You can’t stay long. I don’t want him to get tired,” she told him. Her smile was as unyielding as ceramic. He’d braced himself for tears, bewilderment or recrimination. Instead she exuded the self-satisfied confidence she normally assumed for her dinner parties.

He was still wondering at it as he followed her to the lounge. Colin was sitting in an armchair in front of the TV, but the sound was turned down so low he couldn’t have been following what was on. He looked embarrassed when Maggie led Ben in.

“Look who’s come to see you,” she announced, with a falseness that made Ben wince. She told them she would be in the kitchen if they wanted her, then left. The aftertaste of her presence hung in the air with her perfume, inhibiting conversation even more.

He sat on the edge of the settee. “So how are you feeling?”

“Okay.” Colin looked at his hands, the TV, and finally his hands again. His face was pale, thinner than the last time Ben had seen him. The enormity of what he’d tried to do stood between them. So did Ben’s sense that he’d let him down. He felt he didn’t know him any more.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Colin switched his attention back to the TV. “What is there to talk about? I tried to kill myself. I didn’t.” He shrugged, then broke out coughing. “Sorry,” he said when the spasm had passed. “Still a bit wheezy.”

“Why did you do it?” The question that had been pushing at Ben finally surfaced. “Why didn’t you fucking say something?”

“There was nothing to say. Jo finished with me.” Colin gave a wan smile. “Another fucking cliché, eh?”

Ben found he was vetting all his questions and responses before voicing them.

“When?”

“Last week.”

The first thing he felt was relief that it had been a sudden thing; that he hadn’t been so wrapped up in his own problems that he’d missed the signs. Then he felt ashamed for feeling that way.

“What happened?”

“She’s been offered the chance to work for the record company’s New York office. She’s going next month, but she said it was better to finish now so there were no loose ends. End of story.”

“That’s what made you... you know...”

“Try to kill myself? I suppose I didn’t like thinking of myself as a ‘loose end’.”

“Does Jo know?”

“I doubt it. Most people at work just think I’m ill. There’s no reason for her to know anyway. I didn’t do it to make her change her mind, or to spite her. I did it for me.”

The matter-of-fact way he spoke was unnerving.

“You’re not going to try anything again, are you?”

Colin put his head back and stared at the ceiling. “No, I don’t think so,” he said, thoughtfully. “To tell you the truth I can’t even really remember how I felt when I did it. It might be the sedatives they’ve pumped into me, but it all seems a bit distant now. I can’t imagine getting that worked up about anything at the moment. I just feel sort of hollow.”