Claire Moss - Then You Were Gone

‘You do know you’re going to stink?’ she said to him as the food arrived.

He shrugged, batting a baby octopus from one hand to the other as he waited for it to cool down. ‘Doesn’t matter, got no one I need to impress after this.’

‘So,’ Simone said, unable to wait any longer. ‘Why did you want to meet?’

Jazzy pulled an envelope from his laptop case and handed it to Simone. ‘It’s from Mack. He says he’s sent one to you too.’

Simone took it from him and read it, wishing she had wiped the aubergine grease from her fingers first.

‘What do you think?’ Jazzy asked when she had finished.

Simone swallowed. ‘I think… Shit!’ she said, more loudly than she had intended, slapping the greasy paper back down on the table, her hands shaking. ‘Oh, shit is what I think. This is crazy, this is bullshit…’ She pointed at the letter. ‘I mean either he’s…’

‘Lost it?’

‘Well, yeah. Or he’s actually telling the truth and something really bad’s happening to him. What the fuck, Jazz?’ she said angrily. ‘What’s been going on with you guys that I don’t know about?’ She felt hot and sick and was sincerely regretting the slimy moussaka.

‘Nothing,’ Jazzy said, and he sounded so plaintive, so boyish and frightened that she believed him. ‘This is as much a bolt from the blue for me as it is for you. Listen, do you know someone called Ayanna?’ he asked. ‘Have you ever heard Mack mention her?’

‘No,’ Simone said, her voice incredulous. This was just like Jazzy, being cryptic, ignoring her, asking stupid questions rather than getting to the point. ‘No, I don’t know anyone called Ayanna.’

‘Or Anna?’

‘My sister’s daughter is called Anna.’ Simone tried her best to sound sarcastic. ‘Does that count?’

Jazzy ignored her. ‘She’s the cleaner at Anastasia Ltd. – well, the cleaner for the whole office building. Mack was – is – pretty pally with her I think.’

Simone closed her eyes. ‘Are you going to tell me he’s been having an affair with the cleaning lady and that’s why he’s run off?’

Jazzy snorted a bleak laugh. ‘No. And she’s not the cleaning lady, she’s just a girl – seventeen. No, what it is, she told me this morning that Mack had been to see her at her sixth form college one day last week. He was waiting outside for her when she finished.’

‘What?’ Simone and Jazzy were the only diners in the restaurant and at Simone’s loud protestation all three of the waiting staff looked over. One of them, the only woman, suppressed a smirk as she looked away. She clearly thought the two of them were having a lovers’ tiff.

A hundred thoughts shot through Simone’s brain. Hanging around outside the school gates? Surely that was what perverts did. Perverts or parents denied access to their children. Mack did not look like a pervert. He did not seem like a pervert. But… a cold, sick shiver rose from her stomach… when she thought about it, until her most of Mack’s girlfriends had been considerably younger than him. And was there a point where liking them young crossed over into something more sinister? She wiped her mouth with a wax-coated paper napkin. Her hand was shaking. Was she really questioning whether or not Mack was a paedophile? The sick feeling washed higher into her throat. Nothing she knew about him seemed stable any more, everything was lurching and tilting in her mind so that the things she thought she had understood about him had flipped around until they looked as though they could mean something else. Christ, she thought, she was losing her grip here. Mack needed to come back, and fast. Clearly she couldn’t keep her mind together without him.

‘So why had he gone there?’ she said lamely, at a loss for anything more pertinent to say.

Jazzy took a deep breath. ‘Well, apparently Mack was in a right state, pale, fidgety, didn’t look like he’d slept. And then, he asked her…’

‘Hang on a minute,’ Simone interrupted. ‘Did she not wonder what the fuck he was doing there? Or how he’d found her there in the first place?’

Jazzy shrugged and looked sheepish. ‘I think to be honest she might have had a little crush on our Mr Mack – you know the effect he has on young girls. And I guess she must have told him which college she goes to – maybe because she was hoping he’d turn up there one day looking for her.’

‘Which he did.’

‘Well, yes, but not for the reason she’d hoped. Like I said, Mack wasn’t himself – from what she said he was barely even making sense – but apparently he was asking her for help.’

‘Help for what?’

Jazzy winced. ‘This sounds weird – well, it sounds worse than weird. Just remember that this girl has absolutely no reason to lie to us.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Jazzy!’ Simone wanted to reach across the table and slap him, put her hands around his throat, throttle him. Just tell me! she wanted to scream, but the waitress was looking sidelong at them and smirking again.

‘OK. Well… What it was… He wanted Anna to get him a credit card and passport in a false name, and to see if she could get him access to a car.’ He blurted out the last sentence in a rush, as though once he expelled the words from his mouth, they were no longer his responsibility.

Simone did not say anything for a minute. She knew she was pulling the kind of face that was expected of her, wide-mouthed, wide-eyed, a parody of shock. She did not know what other kind of face to pull. ‘But Mack’s got a car,’ she said eventually.

Jazzy shrugged. ‘That’s the thing. He needed another one, one that – well, I suppose one that couldn’t be traced.’

‘Traced by who?’

‘Simone, stop shouting at me! I’m not saying all this to you because I get a kick out of it, I’m just telling you what this girl told me!’

‘OK,’ she said, making a conscious effort to moderate her tone. ‘Sorry. Go on.’

‘He didn’t tell Anna who. He just said he needed a fake credit card, a car and a passport – I mean, for fuck’s sake. A false passport ? Who, outside of the bloody Bourne Identity, needs a false passport?’

Simone could not process what Jazzy was saying. He was right, it was something from a pumped-up, macho, mindless work of fiction, not from the life of a thirty-one-year-old book restorer quietly minding her own business in north London. ‘But… why Ayanna? If he needed help, then why did he go to her? Some kid he hardly knows? Of all the dodgy people Mack knows, surely one of them would have been able to help him out?’

Jazzy nodded. ‘I know, I thought that too. But Anna told me –’ Simone sighed heavily. It was getting on her nerves, this ‘Anna’ business, as though Jazzy was best mates with this girl, on pet name terms with her. Jazzy ignored her. ‘Anna said that he made her promise not to tell Keith about any of it. He made her promise not to tell anyone, but he was particularly firm on Keith. Don’t tell Keith . She kept making me promise too. So I think that’s why he went to Anna, instead of one of his dodgy cousins, or even Keith himself, I guess. I mean, if I ever wanted to go underground I think I’d go straight to Keith, he knows half the crims in London. But this Anna, she’s no link to anyone else in his life. Whoever’s looking for him, they probably won’t think to start with her.’

Simone closed her eyes. Too many questions were popping into her mind. ‘And how come she could help him, then? Is she some sort of people-smuggler on the side, between cleaning your office and doing her A-levels?’

Jazzy looked pained. ‘Well, she wasn’t very forthcoming about it really. Apparently she’s got a brother who – well, I don’t think he’s a gangster or anything, but he does… From what she said, he helps people out when they first come to London, or that’s how she put it. The family are Somalian, at least by background, but Anna was actually born here and her brothers have been here since they were little kids. Reading between the lines, I think this brother helps out people coming over from Somalia to join their families, gets them fixed up with papers and stuff if they’re not entirely legit when they first get here. You know the sort of thing.’