Lullaby (42 page)

I went to make the custard. A few minutes later, Shirl followed me in with a stack of dirty plates, staggering slightly on her platform heels.

‘So it’s good to be back together, babe?’ she asked,
helping herself to the last roast potato in the dish. ‘Mickey seems very loved-up.’

I flushed. ‘God. Does he?’

‘Probably what he needed, a nasty shock.’

‘Shirl!’

‘I don’t mean Louis, stupid. I mean—’ She popped the rest of the potato in her wide mouth contemplatively.

‘What?’

‘Oh, never mind.’

‘What are you on about?’ Standing at the hob, I briskly stirred the custard but it wouldn’t seem to thicken. ‘Why’s this so runny? God, I never can do bloody custard.’ I topped up a glass with the dregs of the wine left on the sideboard and downed it. ‘Fancy some soup
à la
Jessica with your apple pie?’

‘Yeah, well, last of the domestic goddesses you are not, my girl.’ Shirl peered over my shoulder. ‘So, you’re going to make a go of it, are you? Here.’ She whisked the spoon out of my hand and beat the custard into submission.

‘What do you mean?’

‘With Mickey. You’re back on track?’

‘Why wouldn’t we be?’ I said, very carefully.

‘Oh, no reason.’

‘Spit it out, Shirl, for God’s sake.’

She cast a rather theatrical look over her left shoulder. ‘Oh, it was just that nice policeman. I thought you might be sad to see him go.’

I opened the dishwasher and started to stack the plates very fast. ‘So what if I was?’ My hair swung across my face conveniently.

‘I just thought you might have—you know. Wanted a bit more.’

Sometimes, you know, I wished my best mate wasn’t quite so candid.

‘Shirl,’ I straightened up, ‘Silver is the one bloke in my life who’s ever done what he actually promised. Why would I want to go and fuck that up? And anyway, even if I did like him, which I don’t, and he did like me, which I’m sure he doesn’t—well, Mickey and me—we’re good.’

‘Glad to hear it.’

‘I don’t think you are.’ I pushed the dishwasher door home with one hip.

‘I am, Jess, really. I see that Mickey appreciates you more now. I see how he looks at you. It’s just—I want you to have some—’ She snatched the pan off the heat in the nick of time. ‘Whoops. Nearly.’

‘Some what?’

‘Some peace in your life. What you deserve. And maybe now you get it anyway with that man out there. Maybe I was wrong all along.’

‘You were.’

‘I’m sure I was. Now, where’s the custard thingy? This is looking jus’ fine.’

‘You growing the apples out here or what?’

God, I jumped. Mickey put an arm around me and squeezed my shoulder.

‘I’ve just been chatting to your folks.’ He smiled at me, then cast his benevolence towards Shirl for once. ‘You’d make a good godmother, don’t you think?’

‘Char, man. The best.’ She poured the custard neatly into the jug.

‘I don’t follow.’ I pulled the apple pie out of the oven. The far edge had burnt a little. I prodded it sadly. ‘Bollocks.’

‘Your ma thinks we should have Louis christened.’

‘I thought you hated the church? You didn’t want to get married in one.’ I started to cut the charred bits off the pie.

‘That was different.’ For the first time today he looked like the Mickey of old. Guarded. A bit cross. ‘I couldn’t. I’d been married before. You know that.’ Like I said-surprisingly Catholic. ‘But in the circumstances I think it might be nice, don’t you? After everything we’ve been through. Good excuse for a party.’ He kissed my forehead. ‘We could maybe—’ Did he look almost bashful? ‘We could maybe renew our vows too. So your family could be there this time.’

‘If God approves.’

Were the fault-lines starting to shift? Mickey raised an eyebrow.

‘I think it’s a great idea,’ Shirl cut in. I raised my eyebrow at her now, but she ignored it. ‘Now, this custard ain’t gettin’ any better for hanging around. Shall we?’

When everyone had gone, and Louis was in bed, I found Mickey sitting in the near dark, nursing a whisky and staring at the Emin print he’d bought me all that time ago.

‘You look sad,’ I said, leaning over the sofa-back beside him. He reached his arm up and stroked my hair.

‘You know the real reason I liked that picture, whatever I thought of the artist. It reminds me of you. My
sad little Jess.’ He let go of me and pulled himself up. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

And he took my hand and led me up the stairs and then in the bedroom he silently undressed me, almost like he worshipped me. My final thought before sleep came was,
This is going to be okay.

In the night I woke and Mickey was lying next to me, and it took me a moment—and then I realised what was wrong. We would have to leave this house for good, to free ourselves of all the ghosts, forever. It was the only answer, I saw that now, the only feasible way to make a fresh start. I got up and padded round the packed suitcases ready for tomorrow, into Louis’s room, and I held my breath as I looked into his cot, just in case he wasn’t there again, just in case he’d—

But he was there, of course, deeply asleep, legs curled up like a little frog’s in the warm night, breathing softly, in, out, in, out. I reached down and stroked his face very gently so he wouldn’t wake, remembering how I used to hold my breath in terror sometimes, hold one anxious finger before his tiny nose to feel the heat when he was a newborn, when I was still so scared his breath might just stop. My milk hadn’t returned, but it didn’t seem to matter any more; Leigh said I was lucky I didn’t have to wean him from the breast, it was done for me, and I loved my sister more for looking on the bright side. It had brought us closer together, all this, and that was one good thing about those fourteen days of hell.

I lay on the sofa in Louis’s room and I stared at the moon that filled the room with pale white light, and it suddenly all fell into place. I thought about waking
Mickey now, and telling him my decision. And then I thought how much I did hate talking, and while I was thinking all these things I fell asleep again.

In the morning I woke quite early, before Louis even, a luxury these days. I had the strange feeling someone had been looking down at me, but I shook it off. Stiff from the sofa, I showered in the guest room so I didn’t wake Mickey up. I switched the radio on and it was tuned into one of those old hit stations, and I was humming along to a song that reminded me of Dad. ‘Nice legs, shame about the face,’ he used to shout out the window of that old Cortina at all the short-skirted girls we passed, if Mum wasn’t around; me and Robbie and Leigh screaming with laughter and ducking behind the seats when the flustered girls whipped round.

And when I stepped out of the shower, I felt revived. It was time to start things afresh, I felt optimistic and, wrapping myself in a huge white towel, I went back to check Louis—only he wasn’t in his cot. So I padded over to my bedroom, still dripping wet, to see if Mickey had put him in our bed, only they weren’t there either.

So then I called downstairs, and there was nothing, no answer, and I ran down, just as Jean was coming through the front door, and I said hello as I slammed into the kitchen, and the back door was swinging open. I stepped into the garden, shouting, ‘Mickey, where the bloody hell are you?’ but he didn’t answer, and the garden was empty, just Agnes’s bloody roses shedding their last tears, and I shivered in the September breeze as I realised Mickey had gone and taken Louis with him. And I was filled with fury, more angry than I’d
ever been before, because wherever he’d taken him, Mickey knew I couldn’t cope with this, not now, not any more. It was a visceral pain now, like Louis had been ripped right out of me again, and I was panting with the effort of just staying calm.

I ran through the house still in my towel, and I saw that Mickey’s car wasn’t in the drive, and with a sinking heart I cried to Jean, ‘Did you see Mickey leave?’, but she shook her head and looked terrified again—and so was I, just like the bloody last time. Just like the bloody last time.

I threw on my clothes in seconds, began to dial Mickey’s mobile. Then I saw it sitting redundant on my dressing table.

‘Don’t do this to me, Mickey, don’t do this, please,’ I muttered, taking the stairs three at a time. But I had a feeling, I just had a feeling I knew where they’d be.

I floored it across the heath, turned the car through the great wrought-iron gates into Greenwich Park, parking near the bobble-headed Observatory, where we always joked we’d like to live. I set off at a jog across the grass, Henry VIII’s old stomping ground, wending my way beneath the chestnut trees, crunching over their spiky conker-shells littering the leafy ground.

I couldn’t see the statue from here—Mickey’s favourite in all London, apparently—an early Henry Moore, balanced on the top of the steep park hill. Finally, as I reached the longer grass, it came in sight—but the bench where Mickey liked to sit was still
shielded from my view by an old couple doing Tai Chi under the watery sun.

And then I spotted a tall figure in the distance and my heart began to pound. It was Mickey, I was sure of it, it had to be, and in his arms—there in his arms, thank God, was Louis. Standing stock-still by the statue, they were looking down at London through the trees, gazing towards St Paul’s—towards the Tate, I realised with horrid irony. And I ran faster than I’d ever run before, and by the time I reached them I really couldn’t breathe.

‘Mickey.’ I was behind him now, panting, trying to catch my breath. He didn’t turn. ‘What are you doing here?’

Louis looked at me over his father’s shoulder and smiled, happily oblivious, his one tooth sticking up all pearly, but still Mickey didn’t speak.

‘We’re meant to be going this morning, aren’t we? Have you changed your mind?’ I panted, still gasping for air. ‘We don’t have to, I don’t care. Let’s stay at home.’ I was rambling with nerves. ‘It was your idea.’

And then he looked at me, finally turned and looked at me, and his lip went back wolfishly And something in his face made my stomach plunge, like a leaden weight, like a pendulum that won’t swing up again. A cold realisation was creeping slowly through me, icy in my veins.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ I whispered, and everything finally began to slot into place. ‘What is it?’ But I think I already knew. I stared at him, an utter stranger now. I’d been so stupid, so frantic with worry I hadn’t seen the truth.

Mickey was walking away from me, taking my son with him. He seemed so calm it was surreal.

‘Give me my son, Mickey,’ I said quietly. I held my arms out for the baby. But Mickey kept moving; like a wild animal, he slunk just out of reach. ‘So,’ I said, and I moved too, ‘how long did you know for?’ I tried to catch his eye. ‘When did you realise, Mickey?’

The vital thing now was to keep my wits about me. I stalked him, keeping Louis in my sight the entire time. Mickey reached his bench, and then he sat, sort of settled on the edge, like he was contemplating flight. Louis was struggling slightly now, and grizzling a little, but his father reached in his pocket and dug out a broken biscuit. Louis grabbed it with chubby dimpled fingers, pacified for a while at least.

‘You’re going to have to tell me the truth sometime, Mickey, you know,’ I said quietly.

It was very quiet as I waited for his reply. A lone dog barked in the distance; a far-off helicopter chopped the air.

‘Yes,’ eventually he sighed, ‘I suppose I am.’ He ran his hand over Louis’s silky hair. ‘You know, I thought it’d be okay, we’d make it work, you and me, once Agnes was gone. Only then,’ he looked at me accusingly, ‘only then I saw how you looked at your man Silver the other week.’

‘What?’ Slowly, oh so very slowly, I was edging ever nearer. ‘Don’t try to blame me. This is about you and Agnes, isn’t it?’ Tentatively I sat down too, careful to keep to the opposite end of the bench. I daren’t make any sudden movements.

‘Was. Sure, it was about us.’ Another pause. His voice
was very quiet now. ‘You know, I was shocked at how distraught you were.’

‘When?’

‘When Louis disappeared.’

I laughed incredulously. ‘What, you thought someone could steal my son away from me, and I wouldn’t care?’

‘Oh come on now, Jessica,’ he said harshly, staring down at the top of Louis’s swirly little head. The baby was nodding off. ‘You were hardly a natural mother, were you now?’

I was about to argue, but of course it was true; I hadn’t been. I’d had to dig extremely deep to uncover my maternal instincts, so shrouded in doubt and uncertainty they’d been. Mickey, on the other hand, had been besotted by Louis from the word go.

‘Maybe not at first,’ I admitted quietly. ‘But it’s different now. You know that.’

‘Yes,’ he said sadly, ‘yes, I do. Too late, I do.’

I looked down the hill. ‘So,’ I said warily. A girl in tight leggings jogged across my view. ‘So, when did you find out that it was Agnes? And why the fuck didn’t you do something about it?’

‘I did. But it wasn’t easy from that bloody hospital bed.’

A knife was twisting in my gut. ‘I loved you, Mickey. I believed in you.’

‘Did you?’ He turned and held my gaze. ‘I don’t think you ever really did.’ His expression was unfathomable. ‘I think you knew it wouldn’t work, if you’re honest with yourself.’

I was desperately trying to piece it all together. ‘You didn’t just see her once, did you?’ The words stuck in my craw. ‘Did you—were you sleeping with Agnes again?’

I couldn’t read his look.

‘God. The
whole
time we were together?’

He looked away.

‘Just bloody tell me, Mickey.’

‘No.’ He was quick, finally contrite. ‘No, I swear I wasn’t. It was only when you—when you were really pregnant, when you went off me, sure it was.’

‘Off you?’ My face scrunched in surprise. ‘I didn’t ever go off you. I just felt—odd. Self-conscious. And—’ I thought back to those days, of being huge, the weight, the pressure of my unborn child. Of feeling like I was about to split open down the middle, like a great ripe watermelon. I flushed. ‘And I was uncomfortable. I’m sure that was—that is quite normal. Not wanting to be touched all the time in pregnancy.’