Owning Jacob - SA (14 page)

Zoe was leaning with her thumb on the bel . She jerked it away when he opened the door. A taxi was double-parked on the road behind her, its engine stil running. She gave a grin that didn't manage to conceal her nervousness. 'Hi. I tried to ring, but the phone's been engaged.' Ben was stil trying to adjust to seeing her. 'I took it off die hook,'

'Oh.' She put her hands in the back pockets of her tight black jeans. They rode low on her hips. The movement hunched up her shoulders. 'I heard about what had happened on the news. I thought I'd see if you were okay.'

"Yeah, I'm fine.' He remembered his manners. 'Are you coming in?'

"No, it's al right. The taxi's waiting.' Zoe watched herself stub her toe up and down on the step. Her hair was red this week. 'So what are you doing now?' Ben recal ed the solicitor's talk of an appeal over his contact with Jacob, but it had been half-hearted. And just then it seemed too abstract, too effortful for him to concentrate on now. 'I don't know.' She looked down the street as if something there had caught her attention. 'There's a party in a new club in Soho.

I've got an invite. Fancy going?' It occurred to him that perhaps she hadn't been asking about his long-term plans after al . He took in the lipstick and make-up. The orange top she had on was even briefer than the ones she wore to work, little more than a bra that clung to her smal breasts. 'No, I don't think so. Thanks for asking, though.' You got something else on?'

She squinted up at him.

'I don't real y feel like going out.' She nodded. 'So you're just going to stay in and get shit-faced by yourself.'

'Zoe, it's nice of you to come round, but …'

'But you're going to stay in and mope, yeah?' He felt too enervated to be angry. I'm not feeling very sociable.'

'Who said anything about being sociable? You can get shit-faced in company.' She looked more serious. 'I just don't think you should stay in by yourself tonight.' That was exactly what he wanted, to stay in and surround himself with memories of Sarah and Jacob, to wal ow in his lost family. It was easier than making the effort to drag himself out of the hole he was sliding into. Al he wanted to do now was give up and enjoy the ride down.

Except that Zoe was looking at him, waiting for an answer.

He tried to produce one, but somehow couldn't get beyond shaking his head.

'Come on,' she said, sensing blood. 'You'l feel better.' I don't want to feel better. But it was too much of an effort to argue. 'I can't go like this,' he said, feebly, glancing down at the creased trousers and the shirt smudged with dirt from the garden wal . He realised when he saw the grin spread across Zoe's face that she'd won.

Til tel the taxi to wait while you get changed.'

The club was a sweat-box. It was smal and dark and cramped, humid with the breath and perspiration of too many bodies.

Anonymous buttocks, hips and crotches pressed up to their table, leaning on the edge, the sharp corners digging into denim and leather and satin and flesh.

i 'They don't know what causes it,' Ben said. 'They say it's some kind of brain disorder, like epilepsy, but when it boils down to it they haven't a clue why some kids are autistic and some aren't It might be hereditary, it might be linked with childhood il nesses or vaccinations, lack of oxygen at birth.

You name it.' Zoe sat with her elbows propped on the table, chin resting on cupped hands as she listened, sitting close to him to hear above the thump of music. She took another drink from the neck of the beer bottle. Ben nursed his own, peeling off the corner of the label. Paper scraps were scattered around it.

'It's not something like Down's syndrome, where it's obvious if a kid has it or not. It isn't always easy to diagnose. Sometimes it's so mild kids can go to a normal school, and sometimes it's so bad they have to wear nappies al their lives. And it changes al the time, you get different symptoms as the kid grows up.' He took a drink from the bottle. The beer tasted warm and stale, although it was a new bottle. Or was it? His head was fuzzy. It was difficult to tel .

He set it back down and carried on peeling the label.

"Jacob's pretty mild compared to some of the poor little sods. With him it's more of a communication difficulty. He couldn't cope at an ordinary school yet, but there's always the chance he'l improve. Sometimes, he looks at you and you feel he's just on the edge, that one little nudge and he'd be a normal kid. And then he'l go away again, and it can be like he's from a different planet. It's real y frustrating, you feel he's sort of stuck inside his own head, but if you could only get him to come out …' He broke off. 'Sorry, I'm talking bol ocks.' No, you're not.' Zoe shrugged. 'It's interesting bol ocks, anyway. You don't normal y talk much about him.'

'There's nothing more boring than listening to people going on about their kids.' Especial y when they're not real y theirs. He raised his bottle to his mouth again but it was empty.

'Did you ever think about adopting him?' She immediately grimaced. 'Sorry, that was tactless.'

'It's okay, I don't mind. Sarah and I talked about it,

and agreed that I should at some point We'd talked about having kids of our own as wel . But there didn't seem to be any rush.' That sank the conversation like the Titanic. Ben felt his mood going down with it. He knew he was on the way to being drunk and maudlin, that he should stop talking and stop drinking and go home, but the thought was whisked away from him almost as soon as it occurred. 'It wouldn't have made any difference,' he said. 'I'd probably stil have let Kale have custody - sorry, I mean "residence" - anyway.' Would IP He moved on to safer ground. 'I just can't believe they'l only let me see Jacob once a month. Once a fucking month.'

'Can't you talk to his father? Explain, I mean. He might let you see him more often.' Ben thought about the way Kale looked at him. He shook his head slowly and deliberately from side to side.

"Not a chance.'

'But that's so unreasonable.'

'I don't think he's a reasonable man.' It struck him that he had put his finger on a simple truth. Whatever reasoning processes went on behind Kale's tan-coloured eyes were unfathomable. Perhaps he was like Jacob in more than just looks. Ben tried to pin the idea down so he could scrutinise it further, but it got away from him. Another thought replaced it. 'I hope Jacob's okay with him.' Zoe put her hand on his arm. 'I'm sure he wil be. They wouldn't have let him have him if there was any doubt.'

'God, I hope so.' But he remembered the house, and the junk piled up outside, and Sandra Kale's feral face that had only smiled for the cameras. Jacob seemed smal and vulnerable amongst al that hardness and sharp edges.

Someone nudged him. He looked up. Zoe was holding out a glass. He hadn't even noticed that she'd been to the bar.

'Beer time's over,' she said. 'Time to get serious.'

He sniffed at the drink. Vodka. Zoe anticipated the refusal before he could make it.

'I thought you wanted to get shit-faced,' she said.

There were windows of sobriety, when he would emerge from the alcohol like a drowning man coming up for air, just long enough to look around and see where the current had carried him before he sank under its pul again. The club became hotter and more crowded. The air was thick with body odours, perfume, cigarette smoke and spilt beer. The angry lights and screaming music pounded with migraine intensity. The only way they could hear themselves speak was to lean close and shout. He found himself at one point aware of the sensation of Zoe's mouth brushing his ear as she shouted into it. Her breath was hot on his skin. She smel ed of sweat and a spicy perfume, and ever so faintly of garlic. She had her hand on his shoulder as she spoke. It was warm and damp through his shirt.

He could feel the heat coming off her bare flesh. The halter top clung to her, exposing her midriff, arms, shoulders and chest. He closed his eyes. Everything was physical sensation, noise and touch without sense. He could hear her words but no longer understood them. He went away for a while and when he came back he was in the same place and nothing had changed. There was a pressure in his ear, smal pushes of air that he final y associated with someone talking to him.

He opened his eyes. Zoe's head fil ed his vision, too big to focus on. He drew back and watched her lips forming shapes.

He made an effort not to drift off again.

'What?' he asked. His voice sounded far away.

'I said are you going to dance?' Ben shook his head. It felt heavy, unattached. "You go.' She said something else, but he couldn't hear what. She stood up. Ben found himself looking at her stomach, pinkly suntanned and sweetly curved. When she turned and began to

push through the crowd jammed up to the table, the waistband of her jeans moved away from her back, exposing a further inch of knuckled spine below the imprint it had left of itself.

She vanished into the wal of bodies. Ben felt he had strands of tar pul ing at him. Every movement had to fight their resistance, but every now and again they would snap and his limbs would move in uncoordinated lunges. He knocked over an empty beer bottle as he raised his arm, and two more as he tried to grab it. They chinked but the noise was lost in the larger cacophony. He was suddenly thirsty. There was beer left in some of the bottles on the table but the thought of it nauseated him. He picked up a glass that had liquefying ice cubes in the bottom and tipped them into his mouth. Then he drank the dregs of lukewarm ice-melt from the other glasses on the table. It made him more thirsty than ever.

He looked above the people bunched in front of him. The ceiling over the dance-floor was mirrored. He could see heads and shoulders suspended upside down, rhythmical y bobbing and heaving, outflung hands waving like seaweed in the erratic blue and red lights. He felt sick.

Zoe came back. He had no idea how long she'd been gone.

Her hair was plastered to her forehead and her arms and torso were flushed and shiny with sweat. Her breasts rose and fel after the exertion. The halter top was dark in patches, sticking to her. She carried two glasses. She grinned as she gave one to Ben. He was aware that he had already had too much to drink but the glass was cold and had ice cubes in it.

He emptied it while he was stil wondering if it was a good idea.

: Then they were somehow outside and it was quiet and cool. Ben had a buzzing in his ears. His arm was around Zoe's shoulders and he felt hers around him. They were in a taxi and she was leaning against him. Her skin was burning hot and slick. The thought circled that he was going to fuck her. Somewhere miles away in his head was a protest but it was too distant to bother with. His hand stroked her bare back

117 I under the flimsy top. Her mouth was covering his. Her tongue and teeth seemed huge, covering him. The hard pebble of her nipple pressed into his palm through a thin layer of fabric.

Cold air hit him as he climbed out of the cab. He looked up at the sky. There was a faint lightening towards the horizon.

The stars wheeled above him. He stepped backwards to keep his balance, swaying as she unlocked a door. For a moment of clarity he saw Zoe again, the girl he worked with. Then he was going into an unlit hal way. A door creaked open and he was m a bedroom. She was pressed against him, cooling skin and hot, wet mouth. His hands were down the back of her jeans, inside her pants. His shirt was open. Her hands were on his chest, his stomach. The buzzing in his ears grew louder. It went away and he was looking down from a dizzying height at the top of a dark head. He felt a chil on his naked skin, but no sensation other than that He didn't know where he was. The head wasn't Sarah's. He felt panic, and then it came back to him in a rush that she was dead, that he was at Zoe s, and he stumbled away from her.

'I've got to go.' His voice sounded thick and unfamiliar.

He began pul ing on his clothes.

"What's wrong?' He didn't answer, not knowing, not able to speak anyway.

He began to dress, and the buzzing returned with the motion.

He overbalanced and almost fel . His trousers were on now, and his shirt, and he was searching for his shoes. Zoe was a shadow kneeling on the floor, watching him. She didn t say a word as he went out but he knew without looking that she was crying.c , On the street he began walking without any idea of where he was or where he was going. He wanted only to get away, to put distance between him and the memory of what had happened. The sky was lighter now, the stars beginning to pale out A police car slowed. Two white faces watched him.

He shivered without feeling the cold and walked past them.

Unfamiliar streets stretched out ahead and behind. He took them at random until he came to a main road. The sodium lamps on the pavement had winked out before he flagged down a taxi.

Jessica's trial was held three weeks after Jacob's final handover to the Kales. It fanned fresh interest in the case, and as Ben walked into the court building on the day he had been cal ed as a prosecution witness he was treated to a media phalanx barring his way.

'Mr Murray, are you relieved not to be standing trial yourself?' one woman demanded, walking backwards to keep pace with him. She held out a microphone like a baton, as if she expected Ben to take it and run with the question. He brushed past without even giving her the benefit of a 'no comment'. When he was inside the court and safely out of camera shot he stopped and leaned against a corridor wal until he felt less like punching it, and the spasm that had gripped his stomach had passed.

He had tried not to think about what the trial would be like. But even reminding himself that his first contact day with Jacob was soon afterwards didn't make the prospect any more palatable. He had done his best to move his life back to some sort of normal footing, or at least as normal as it could be now that two-thirds of it had been cut away. The only way he could think of to do that was to throw himself into his work. Ironical y, he had never been so busy. The tame events that had wrecked his private life had brought a boom to his professional one. When the phone cal s first started coming in he had thought it was a sign of support from editors and designers he'd known for years. That had been before he saw how his name had suddenly acquired a cachet that had nothing to do with his photography. One magazine editor had run a series of fashion shots that Ben had done months earlier completely out of context, hanging the piece entirely on his new notoriety. He had phoned her in the blazing heat of discovery and told her graphical y what he thought, the result being one source of work he could cross off his Christmas card list.