Val McDermid - The Vanishing Point

It was the young bloods who thought they knew best, and sometimes it took a while for Pete to drag them round to his way of thinking. If they didn’t agree with him, he went ahead and did it his way and pretended it was what they’d asked for. Most of them were too ignorant of the finer points of production to know any better. It simply took time and persistence.

He grabbed a beer from the fridge and fixed himself a sandwich. He loved American food. Wafer-thin ham, egg salad and Cheez Whiz on rye toast. Beautiful. Before he sat down at the table to eat, he stepped into the hallway and listened. He could hear the distant chatter of the TV, but that was all. The kid wasn’t crying, which was what counted. The last thing he wanted was the neighbours calling the cops to complain about a screaming child.

He went back to his beer and sandwich and contemplated his options. He had another week’s work here in Detroit, then he was due to fly back to the UK. He had unfinished business with Stephanie and he wanted it sorted out sooner rather than later.

Pete had been at a loss for some time over Stephanie. He couldn’t work out why she hadn’t come back to him. She belonged with him. He was devoted to her. Nobody could love her the way he did. He’d offered her everything a woman could want and still she denied herself. But now the kid was in the picture, he was sure she’d see things differently. You needed two people to take proper care of a kid. She must realise that now.

OK, he’d resented Jimmy when he’d first been born, but that was because Stephanie was spending so much time and energy on that slapper Scarlett and her bastard. Time she should have been devoting to him and their relationship. All his mates agreed. Her place was in her own home, not out in that bloody plastic palace in the middle of Essex, helping out with a kid whose own father was too busy with his parasite DJ career to be bothered taking responsibility. Early on, he’d driven out there to take a look at it. Just out of curiosity. It wasn’t hard to find, and it was every bit as ugly as he’d expected. He couldn’t understand how a woman with as much taste as Stephanie could abide being there.

But things were different now. OK, it wouldn’t be the same as having his own son. That would come later, once they were settled down as a ready-made family. But he could bring Jimmy up properly. Show him what it was to be a man. The kid had been over-indulged from birth. He’d been cuddled and soothed instead of disciplined. And what was the result? He was a spoilt cry-baby. But Pete would soon change that. Teach him to be a little man. Strong and resilient. Stephanie would be proud when she saw how he could take responsibility for giving a boy manly guidance. He could see them in years to come, the boy knowing his place and showing he knew the way to behave.

He’d taken the first step by building a connection with Jimmy that was based on discipline and doing as he was told. Back when the Scarlett Harlot had still been alive, Pete had volunteered at the kid’s nursery school. They’d been delighted by this charming man who turned up once a week with various musicians dedicated to working with the children. The kids made noise on a variety of instruments, which Pete painstakingly recorded then engineered into something approximating music. He posted the end results on YouTube, where adoring parents could indulge in the fantasy that little Orlando and Keira were fast-tracking towards the Young Musician of the Year.

And the teacher’s pet was little Jimmy Higgins. Actually, he did seem to have a bit more of an idea than most of the kids. Probably because he’d been exposed to loud rhythmic music from an early age, thanks to his useless waster father. Pete fed that green shoot and made Jimmy push himself to try harder. It had been gratifying to watch the kid learn about carrot and stick. Maybe, once he’d got Stephanie sorted out, he could make something of the kid as a musician.

His fantasy was shattered by a faint, thin wail from above. Pete slapped his palm hard on the table then took off up the stairs. His hand was itching to deliver a hard slap. The kid had to learn, after all.

32

First there was the surgery. What Simon called ‘a wide local excision’, it was designed to leave Scarlett with as much breast tissue as possible. Because of the early diagnosis, he was confident they could cut away the cancerous tissue and clean margins around it, leaving the disease without a foothold in her body. As well as the cancer, they took the lymph node nearest that part of the breast. ‘We call this a sentinel node biopsy because it’s like an outpost for your immune system. If it’s clear, the chances are the rest of your body’s clear,’ he explained.

Scarlett coped well with the surgery. Her high level of physical fitness helped. Even after Jimmy’s birth, she’d continued to swim every day. She’d bought a cross trainer too, and ran five kilometres three or four times a week. Simon said apart from the cancer she was in great shape and encouraged her to get back on her regime as soon as possible.

But that wasn’t enough to keep the pain and fear at bay. She wasn’t on morphine for long, and I could see she was suffering. ‘You don’t have to put up with the pain,’ I said. ‘They’ll give you something to ease it. There’s no advantage in hurting.’

She grimaced. ‘The painkillers send me sky high. I don’t like drugs. Don’t like the way they make me feel. Never have. It’s bearable, Steph, trust me. Because I know I’m getting better, I can stand it. It won’t last long.’ She puffed out a breath. ‘And Simon says the surgery was successful. Now I just have to go through the chemo and watch my hair fall out.’

Which it did, in handfuls. After the first dose of chemo, a grim day when Scarlett endured an intravenous infusion of toxic drugs and felt increasingly lousy as the hours passed, her hair started to thin. By the time she’d undergone three sessions, there were clumps missing. It looked like she’d been in a particularly aggressive catfight.

Back at the hacienda that evening, she decided to take the bold step of shaving her head. But first she had to find a hat. Nothing in her wardrobe fitted the bill, so she dispatched Leanne down the A13 to the late-night shopping possibilities of Lakeside shopping centre.

By the time Leanne returned with bulging carrier bags, we had trimmed Scarlett’s hair to stubble. She held the heavy swatch in her hand, her eyes glistening with tears. ‘What do you think, Steph? Should I keep it? Tie it up in a ribbon to remind myself what I’ve lost?’

‘It’s up to you. But it’ll grow back, you know. With some people, their hair actually comes back thicker than before.’

She made a face. ‘You’re right.’ She crossed to the kitchen bin but just before she dumped the hair inside, she stopped herself. ‘What am I thinking?’ she said. ‘You need a picture of this. There’s a piece in this for somebody’s women’s page.’ Scarlett shook her head in disbelief. ‘Bloody hell, Steph, we’re losing our touch. Get the camera out.’

And so I did what I was told. I shot her stubbled head from every side, I shot her looking regretfully at the severed tail of hair in her hands, I shot her gleaming head after the electric razor had stripped it bare and finally I shot her trying on the array of hats Leanne had brought back.

‘I like this best,’ Scarlett announced, turning her head this way and that in front of her dressing-room mirror. It was a sage-green cloche with an upturned brim made from a light fleece. It suited her, especially when she smiled.

‘Good pick,’ Leanne said. ‘They do it in three or four different fabrics and about ten colours. I can go back tomorrow and do a total commando raid. You’ll have hats for all weather and all your different outfits.’