Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

Sarah’s father chuckled. “We always kidded that someone had got their dates wrong. He weighed over six pounds. If you didn’t know better you’d have thought he was a full term baby.”

Jessica lived on the fourth floor of a block of squat council flats in Peckham. The lift was working, but when Ben saw the vomit drying on the floor and spattering the wall he took the steps instead. He was out of breath before he had reached the third level. He reminded himself that he ought to get back into playing football fairly soon. Or doing something. It was too easy to let it slide, and before he knew it he’d be forty and a fat bastard. There were still eight years to go, but already he’d found it only took a few weeks for the rot to set in, and it was becoming more of an effort to shake it off again.

Trying to pretend he wasn’t winded, he hauled himself up to the fourth floor. The walkways ran along the front of the flats, open except for a chest-high concrete wall. He ad never been there before. He and Jessica had never made any pretence of liking each other. He’d generally gone out whenever she called around to see Sarah, and on the few occasions when they couldn’t avoid one another they barely managed a minimal degree of civility for her sake.

The antipathy between them had been immediate and instinctive, on Ben’s part largely because he could tell that she disliked him, on Jessica’s for reasons she kept to herself.

But he thought he could guess. She resented him. Before he had come along and spoiled things, Sarah and Jacob had been part of her extended family. Sometimes he felt she thought they had hem her family. Jessica had treated the small one-bedroom flat that Sarah had moved into after Jacob was born as a second home.

She would drop in unannounced for meals, stay overnight, and answer the phone as if she lived there. Once, when he and Sarah had been seeing each other for only a few months, Jessica had let herself in and found him there alone, preparing dinner.

She had stopped dead. “What are you doing here?”

He’d given her a grin because he knew that would infuriate her. “Cooking. What about you?”

She’d ignored his question. “Where’s Sarah?”

“Jacob’s got a cough. She’s taken him to the doctor’s.

She had stood in the doorway of the lounge, on the other side of the work surface that separated it from the tiny kitchenette. He saw her take in the makings of a dinner for two spread out next to the open bottle of wine. “She didn’t tell me.”

“It wasn’t something she’d planned in advance.” Seeing her there, plain and heavy in her midwife’s uniform, he’d relented. “Do you want a glass of wine? She shouldn’t be long.”

Her eyes flashed to him again. Her mouth tightened. “No.” Without another word, she had turned and left.

“Poor old Jessica,” he had joked to Sarah one evening. “I think she’s jealous of me.”

“Of course she isn’t. She’s just shy with people, that’s all.”

“With men, you mean. If the woman was any further in the closet she’d be in Narnia.”

Sarah pushed him. “Don’t be rotten. And you’re thinking of wardrobe.”

“Okay, she’s a wardrobe lesbian.” She laughed, but he could see she was uneasy. “Come on, you know she is,” he said, teasing but exasperated too. “Admit it, it’s no big deal.”

“Why go on about it, then?”

“I’m not going on about it. I just can’t see why you won’t admit it.” It genuinely puzzled him. They both had gay and lesbian friends, so Sarah’s defensiveness about Jessica’s sexuality seemed odd. “You two don’t have any dark secrets, do you?” His smile dropped as Sarah turned on him.

“No, of course we haven’t. Don’t be stupid!” She had flushed angrily, her freckles standing out more than ever.

“It was a joke,” he said, surprised.

“I know, but you shouldn’t laugh at her.”

“I wasn’t laughing. Well, not much.” The red was fading from her cheeks, but she still seemed unhappy. “There wasn’t anything between you, was there? I mean, it’s none of my business,” he added, hurriedly. “I just wouldn’t want to upset you without knowing why.”

“She’s a friend, that’s all. I suppose I just feel a bit protective towards her.”

Ben couldn’t think why. Jessica was more than capable of looking after herself. But after that he tried to keep his opinions of her to himself.

Even so, when they’d moved to the house in Camden he had made it clear that he didn’t want Jessica to have a key.

He needn’t have bothered, because she’d hardly been there. There was too much of him in it. Sarah had only spoken to her once or twice in the past few months, and without really thinking about it Ben had been quietly pleased that the two of them were finally drifting apart. Friends or not, Sarah always seemed subdued when Jessica was around.

And now, he thought, reaching the right door number, they had both lost her.

He paused to catch his breath before knocking. When he realised the bumping of his heart wasn’t just exertion he clenched his fist and rapped on the door. There was no answer.

A small spyhole was set in the centre of the door, and he had the sudden feeling that Jessica was watching him through it. He knocked again, harder. This time, after only a short wait, the door was opened.

Jessica regarded him without expression. Sometimes, when she was with Sarah and didn’t know he was looking, she would smile and for a transient moment achieve an animation that was close to prettiness. That was rare, though, and she wasn’t smiling now. She wore her starched midwife’s uniform like armour. Her hair was parted in the centre and drawn severely back by a black plastic clip, while her moon face was free of make-up. Ben was faintly shocked to notice that her skin was clear and young-looking. He wondered if the absence of make-up was a denial of vanity, or because of it.

“I’m going to work in ten minutes,” she said without preamble, and stood back to let him in.

He went through the short hallway and into the lounge.

It was uncluttered and almost clinically clean. There was a neat three-piece suite, only one chair, which looked used, and a laminated cabinet that contained a hi-fi unit and a few books. Other than that the room was bare. There wasn’t a single plant.

He didn’t sit down, and when Jessica followed him in she made no attempt to offer him a seat. She stood in front of the unlit gas fire, arms folded.

“Well? You said you wanted to talk to me.”

They had barely acknowledged each other at the funeral, and she had been openly unwelcoming when he had phoned. He’d had to insist that it was important, but now he was there he didn’t know where to start. “It’s about Sarah.”

She looked at him, waiting.

“Look, I know we’ve never hit it off, but you were Sarah’s best friend,” he went on. “You knew her before I did.”

Jessica gave no sign of unbending. She stared at him, as hard and ungiving as stone. Ben couldn’t imagine how someone so cold and unsympathetic could be a midwife, and not for the first time wondered about her motives for choosing it as her career. But this wasn’t the time to think about that.

“I wanted to ask about when the two of you shared a flat when she was pregnant. Sarah told me some things, but not in any detail.”

“And?”

“It’s a part of her life I don’t know very much about.”

Jessica was almost smiling, although there was nothing pretty about it. “So now you want to take that from me as well?”

Ben hadn’t expected her animosity to be so naked. “I don’t want to take anything from you. I never did.”