Just What Kind of Mother Are You? (12 page)

Jackie’s leaning against the lounge door. Her face is flushed pink. She’s probably had a couple of Bacardi Breezers already.

‘D’you think you’ll find her?’

Joanne shrugs. ‘Hope so. What’s for tea?’

‘Breaded fish. It’s a bit dry. There’s some tartare sauce in the fridge. Oh, and I got some nice strawberry trifles for afters.’

Joanne smiles at her. ‘How many’ve you had?’

‘Two. Saved you one, though.’

Jackie follows Joanne through to the kitchen. It’s a mid-terrace house in the centre of Windermere. Two up, two down, with a kitchen extension at the back. ‘I’ve just watched the girl’s
parents on the news. How were they doing when you saw ’em?’ Jackie asks.

‘Gutted. Scared. What you’d expect. Their name’s Riverty – do you know them?’

Jackie shakes her head.

‘They thought she was staying over at her friend’s house after school, but that girl never went to school that day so … you know, crossed wires. I went up to interview the mother, the mother of the girl where she was supposed to be staying, and—’

‘What’s she called? She local?’

‘Lisa Kallisto.’

Jackie’s face drops and she blows out a sigh.

‘You know her?’

‘Yeah. Nice woman. She runs the animal shelter. I was only in there a couple o’ days ago, dropping off the cat of a dead client. She’s taken a few off my hands this past year … when I’ve not been able to get the relatives to take ’em, that is.’

‘Client’ never seems to be the right word to describe the people Jackie deals with. They’re old folk in their own homes, folk who need help getting up, getting dressed, who need their commodes emptied.

Whenever Jackie mentions ‘a client’, Joanne imagines her handing out legal advice or completing tax returns. Not wiping arses and checking leg sores. Jackie can be difficult to deal with sometimes, but Joanne knows she’s good at her job. She does the extras the young carers don’t do. Like painting ladies’ fingernails and calling to the library for audio books … and rehoming pets when she finds ‘a client’ dead in their bed.

‘Lisa Kallisto’s a grafter,’ Jackie says. ‘She’s a good little worker, an’ she’s proper caring, too. She’ll be beside herself if she thinks she’s caused this.’

‘They’re friends – her and the other mother – good friends, I gather.’

Jackie sucks in the breath through her teeth; the air makes a whistling sound. ‘That’s awful,’ she says. ‘Imagine that! Your friend’s kid goes missin’ on account of you. That’s really shit, that is.’

But Joanne couldn’t imagine how it would be, because she didn’t have kids. She wanted them, but she didn’t hold out much hope. She knew of a woman in the village who’d paid to become ‘inseminated’, as she termed it, down at a private clinic in Cheshire.

‘Inseminated?’
Jackie had said, truly staggered, when Joanne told her about it. ‘Why’d she not just go out and shag someone?’

Jackie’s son worked abroad. Dubai. He’d cleared off after all the trouble of last year and hardly rang his mother any more. Joanne knew it broke Jackie’s heart, but she never spoke of it. She was too ashamed about what had gone on.

Joanne opens the oven and sets her plate on a tray. She’ll eat it on her knee in front of the telly and watch
Emmerdale
. Jackie’s in the fridge getting the wine out. Officially, Jackie limits herself to half a bottle a night (because of the calories), but Joanne usually finds that she’s drunk the other half by the end of the evening without really realizing. Jackie looks at her. ‘Do you think it’s that same pervert who raped that young girl and left her in Bowness? Do you think it’s the same guy?’

‘We were working on that presumption, but he only kept that girl for a few hours … and then he let her go.’

‘So this one should have been back by now? That what you’re saying?’

14

I
T
’
S AS IF WE
’
VE
been dropped into a new world. A world so unfamiliar and bleak that we don’t know how to survive in it.

Me, Joe and the three kids are sitting around the kitchen table. The younger two, the boys, are shovelling their food down, racing against each other, as whoever finishes first will get to go back on the PlayStation. They feel the atmosphere and can’t wait to escape.

Sally and I are pushing the food around our plates. We can’t eat. Joe is hungry, but he’s not speaking. He’s been out searching all afternoon in the cold and will be going out again in an hour. They’re meeting up at the village hall to continue looking for Lucinda throughout the night. Mountain Rescue have joined the search now, and they’re bringing the dogs, the collies they use to find bodies beneath the snow and stuck in ravines. I can faintly remember putting some money in a box for them recently. Like all of us in the charity game, they’re struggling for funds.

Sally talked briefly about being questioned by the police. She said the officer she spoke to was nice, and was relieved when he just wanted her to tell him what she knew. I think she’d been expecting a telling-off, to be blamed.

I sense there is more, though. Sense she’s hanging on to something, and I’m waiting for Joe to leave the house before I push
her. This is how I play it with Sally. I can tell immediately, the minute I set eyes on her, if there’s anything wrong. But I wait. I’ve learned. I might ask if school’s okay. ‘Any gossip from today?’ I might say, and she’ll say no. But then, later, when I’m clearing away after tea, making tomorrow’s sandwiches, she’ll appear. And, after a gentle prod, it’ll all come pouring out of her.

The thing I mustn’t do if I’m to get to the bottom of things is to judge her friends. If I were to say
one
thing to slight them, one thing that suggests I’m being critical, then her back is up and she shuts down. She’s incredibly loyal. So I tread carefully. And I listen.

We’ve had junk for tea; all of us on chicken nuggets, chips and beans. It was the best I could manage under the circumstances. Sally scrapes the leftover chips from her plate into the dogs’ dishes. I see her take two out and pop them into the next bowl so they’re divided equally. Joe has gone to the woodshed at the back to make sure I’m stocked up for the evening and Sally turns to me.

‘Mum?’

‘Hmm.’

‘Do you think Lucinda could have gone off with someone, like, I mean, on purpose?’

Carefully
, I say to myself.
Tread carefully
.

I do my best to keep my voice even. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘I was just thinking, that’s all … I mean, it’s not like she’s a little kid. So it would be kind of hard to steal her.’

I cock my head to one side, make it seem like I’m weighing up what she’s said, rather than what I’m actually thinking, which is:
Do you know something? Tell me. What do you know?

‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘It would be hard to take Lucinda against her will in broad daylight, but I don’t think that’s how it would’ve happened. I think if a man wanted Lucinda to
get into his car, he would have been more subtle than that.’

‘Like how?’

‘Well, usually what happens is they trick them.’

‘But Lucinda’s not stupid. She’s not going to climb into his car if he tells her he knows her mum or something.’

I know what she’s getting at here, because this was what I used to warn my kids about when they were little. It crosses my mind that I’ve not had this talk with Sam for a while. And boys are daft. They don’t listen when you tell them. You have to keep reminding them.

You say,
‘Even
if a person says they know your mummy, you don’t go off with them, okay?
Even
if they say, “I know your mum, she’s called Lisa, and she asked me to collect you from school today,” you
never, ever
go with them. You find a teacher, all right?’

And they look at you soberly, and you think,
Yes, that went in. I think they got it
.

But then their face changes, there’s a glint in their eyes, and they announce, ‘It’s okay, Mummy, because
if I did
get into the car, then I would bash him! And punch him! And make him crash. And then I’d run! And he’d never catch me because I’m really, really fast and …’

And your heart sinks. Because your child has descended into fantasy.

I stop what I’m doing and face Sally.

‘They don’t try to trick a teenager the way you’d trick a child, Sal. They talk to them, and flatter them, they—’ I try to think how to put this so she’ll understand what I’m getting at. ‘A man would pretend to fancy a girl so the girl will think,
He likes me
, and because he’s older, and teenage girls are often insecure, they fall for it. They fall for what they tell them.’

I don’t tell her that abductors really do fancy teenage girls, that part is not a trick.

Sally starts nodding. ‘I get it,’ she says softly.

I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘I love you, Sal,’ I say, and her eyelids flicker.

She looks away, and I realize she’s trying to blink back tears that are forming. ‘It’s okay,’ I tell her. ‘You’re bound to be upset.’

She looks so young and vulnerable, and my insides ache for her. Her world is changing out of all recognition and—

‘Mum, that’s what’s happened!’ she cries suddenly. ‘Lucinda … this man, he’s been talking to her on the road after school. And, well, she said she was going to meet him.’

‘To
do what
?’ I say, astonished.

‘I don’t know!’

I sit down, the breath knocked out of me. ‘Why didn’t you tell us? Why have you kept this a secret? You know better than that. Christ, Sally, have you not listened to anything I’ve told you?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘But what?’

‘Lucinda didn’t want anyone to know. She didn’t want her mum to—’

‘Jesus, Sal, this is
beyond that
. It’s beyond keeping a secret. You can see that, surely?’

She’s crying. ‘Don’t shout,’ she sobs.

Joe comes back in. ‘What’s going on?’

I turn to him. ‘Don’t speak, just for a moment. Just stay there.’ He stops, mid-stance, rooted to the spot. He’s holding the big plastic bucket filled with split wood; he doesn’t even lower it to the floor.

‘What’s happened?’ he asks quietly.

‘Lucinda’s been meeting a man and Sally knew all about it.’

‘Did you tell the police?’ he asks her.

She shakes her head. ‘No.’

‘What?’ I yell. ‘What is
wrong
with you?’

‘They didn’t ask me! They didn’t ask about it, and I didn’t
want to come out and say it, because her mum doesn’t know, and what if she blames me when—’

‘What if she blames you? Sally, she’s probably dead. Dead. Do you understand that? Nobody is going to give a shit about blaming you. But they might
now
.’

‘Enough,’ says Joe, and I glare at him.

‘Don’t protect her, Joe. She should’ve said something sooner.’

‘What difference would it make?’ he asks me.

‘Well, there wouldn’t have been three separate search parties for a start.
You
,’ I say, pointing a finger at him, ‘wouldn’t be wasting time searching through the scrub and the woodland in minus-God-knows-what temperatures when she’s obviously not going to be found anywhere near here.’ I close my eyes. ‘Fuck,’ I say. ‘Fuck.’

Sally is crying pitifully and I know I should stop, but I just can’t believe she’s been so stupid as to keep this to herself.

I look at her sharply. ‘Pass me the phone. I’m ringing Kate.’

Joe puts the wood down. ‘Hang on,’ he says.

‘Why? She needs to know.’

‘Ring the police first. Ring that detective, speak to her first. Then ring Kate.’

I dial DC Aspinall and get her voicemail. ‘It’s Lisa Kallisto. Please call me as soon as you get this.’

Then I take a breath and I look at Sally. She can’t meet my eye. ‘Why did you not tell us this, Sal?’

Her shoulders heave up and down twice. ‘Because it’s not always the way you think it is,’ she sobs. ‘You think everyone’s like us, you think they’re all like me … and they’re not.’

‘I don’t know what you mean … tell me what you mean.’

She glances across at Joe, and bites her lip.

‘Would you prefer to tell me this without Dad in here?’

She nods.

I throw Joe a quick look and he shrugs, because he doesn’t have a choice.

He leaves, and I say, ‘Okay, go on. You can tell me, I won’t be mad, I’m sorry I got mad. It was frustration, that’s all. And I’m scared, too, Sally. That’s why I lost my temper.’

‘You think that because I don’t have a boyfriend, and none of my friends have boyfriends, you think that everyone at school is so innocent. And they’re not. They’re really not, Mum.’

‘Honey, I know. There’s a world of difference between some thirteen-year-old girls and others. Same back when I was at school. Some were having sex, but most weren’t.’

She cringes when I say the word ‘sex’. I’ve tried over the past year to think of a different way to say it, but it all sounds ridiculous, so that’s what we’re stuck with.

Sally blows her nose. ‘There’s pressure on us,’ she sniffles. ‘The boys are laughing at us if we’ve not
done
anything, they’re saying we’re—’ She stops here. Instead she says, ‘It’s hard, Mum. It’s really hard sometimes. They can make it unbearable.’

The plight of the teenager. No one can possibly know how hard it is. Especially your mother.

‘They don’t stop hassling us. They’ve been calling Lucinda frigid and posh, and she hates it.’

I can see why the lads have seized upon Lucinda. She can come across as a little haughty and holier-than-thou sometimes. And she speaks differently to the other kids. It’s partly because Kate used to have her in the private prep school and it’s partly down to Guy. Guy’s not from around here, he’s from the south, so Lucinda and Fergus lengthen their vowels and mimic his speech patterns, something Kate has always encouraged.

I explain to Sally that these boys, these relentlessly nasty, awful boys – the chavvy boys, as she calls them – are the ones who’ll want to sleep with her in around a year’s time, and this is just their way of getting her attention. But she dismisses this
totally, looks at me as if to say,
Are you insane?
So we drop it.