Owning Jacob - SA (7 page)

'Okay, okay, I'm sorry.' Ben let the boy pul him towards an old postbox set low in the wal surrounding the school.

He waited while Jacob stood on tiptoe and inserted both hands, first his right, then his left, into its slot. Jacob had seen someone posting a letter in the box not long after he started at the school, and since then insisted on performing the ceremony every morning before he went in. Not when he came out, though; when school had finished he had to walk down the length of the car, top to bottom, brushing his left hand against it. Ben had learned from experience that, no matter how much of a rush he was in, it was better to let Jacob complete his rituals than try to interrupt them.

The formalities completed, Jacob took Ben's hand again and they went through the gates.

The Renishaw School was set in the grounds of an old vicarage. The vicarage itself had been demolished long since, but most of its garden remained, except a smal area that had been asphalted to serve as a carpark. Tucked behind the chest-high stone wal , it formed a smal oasis of shrubs, trees and lawn in the surrounding desert of brick and concrete.

Someone had cut the grass, and the rich scent of it masked the petrol fumes from the road and hit Ben like an essence of childhood. The nostalgia eased past his defences and deepened without warning into the poignancy of loss. Angrily refuting it, he took Jacob over to the prefabricated units that stood on the site of the old house and went into the second one.

At first glance it seemed like any classroom; childish paintings on the wal competing with colourful posters ful of bold lettering. But it was a much smal er group than a normal class, only eight other children in it besides Jacob, and only two of them girls. The other thing that set it apart was that there was less chatter than usual. Unless they were encouraged, the children tended to play by themselves instead of with each other, and when Ben had first taken Jacob there the classroom's relative quiet had struck him as eerie.

Now he barely noticed. The teacher, Mrs Wilkinson, smiled at him over the head of a little boy who was standing in front of her. He was talking almost without pausing for breath, al the time looking down at the wheel of a toy car he was spinning instead of at her.

'Excuse me, Terence, Jacob's here with his daddy,' she said, easing past. The narrative continued without a break as the boy turned and fol owed her, stil concentrating on the car wheel.

'Morning,' she said to Ben over the top of the monologue.

She was a plump woman in her forties, with a saint-like patience that made Ben feel both envious and mildly guilty. 'Terence, why don't you and Jacob go and see what Melissa's doing?' The teacher gently ushered the boys towards the other children, and Ben tensed as he saw what was coming next.

'I was so sorry to hear about your wife,' she said, and the sympathy in her voice almost choked him.

He nodded, retreating from it. 'Thanks. I, uh, I've arranged 5 for someone to pick Jacob up this afternoon. Anyway. Got to dash.' He gave her the best smile he could manage and headed for the door before she could say anything else. He couldn't bear to see the understanding look he knew she would be giving him. It was a look he was beginning to know wel .

He hated it.

Outside the sun was stil shining, and the air was stil thick with the smel of cut grass. Ben took deep breaths as he walked through the peaceful scene. He felt he had no right to be in it. He kept his head down as he went back to his car. When he reached the gates he looked up and saw Sarah coming towards him.

It wasn't her, of course. The impression lasted only an instant, the woman's hair and clothes giving a fleeting il usion, but Ben felt as though he had been kicked in the heart. The woman gave him an odd glance as she came through the gates, and he realised he had stopped and was staring at her. He went quickly to his car and got in. He gripped the steering wheel and banged his head softly up and down.

'Oh, fuck, Sarah, why did you do it?' He sat with his head resting on the wheel for a while longer, then started the engine and drove away.

The studio was on the top floor of an old factory. He had taken a lease out on it when the lower three floors were almost derelict. Since then they had been split into units and let out to design companies, marketing agencies and recording studios, and Ben paid less for nearly twice as much floor space than any of the tenants in the cramped, post-renovation quarters.

He let himself in and turned off the alarm system. The sunlight was dazzling through the three large skylights he'd had fitted to replace the rotting originals, and through the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the ful white-painted length

of the east-facing wal . In the afternoon it would be equal y bright through the windows on the other side. One of the reasons he'd taken the place was because it was perfect for shooting in natural light; the only way he could have got more would have been either to go outside or have the roof taken off.

It also made it like a greenhouse. Ben turned on the big overhead fan, and as it cranked up like the idling blades of a helicopter, he went to the drawstrings that lowered the blinds over the skylights and windows. The sunlight was reduced to a soft, muted glow.

He slipped off his shoes and socks, enjoying the feel of the varnished floorboards on his skin. He preferred working barefoot in summer, although Sarah had grumbled about the state of his feet when he got home and made him wash them before he got into bed. It gave him a sense of freedom that he knew was slightly ridiculous, as he was as much dependent on the income from his photography - and on pleasing his clients - as any office worker. But he felt it put him in contact with the studio itself; feeling the bare boards beneath his feet, he could walk around without taking his eye from the viewfinder, relying on their touch alone to guide him.

He was arranging the big reflective screens for that day's shoot when the door opened and Zoe came in. She flung her canvas rucksack on to one of the two overstuffed couches.

Tucking Tube strikes.'

'Morning, Zoe.' She fanned herself with the tight black T-shirt that showed a band of skin above her white jeans. 'I'm real y sorry I'm late, but I was stuck in traffic on the fucking bus for nearly an hour before I gave up and walked, and now I'm sweating like a pig! God, what's happened to your hairY

'I felt like a change.' Zoe tilted her head to one side, considering it. She was in her early twenties, slim but without the angular shapeliness of a model. Her own hair was cropped and currently dyed black, although the colour changed regularly. Not long ago it had been blond; before that red. Once it had been green, the accidental result of a cheap dye. She hadn't been fit to talk to for days.

'Looks okay,' she said. Judgment given, she resumed the heated account of her journey. Ben took no notice. Zoe was bad at mornings, and in the twelve months since he'd hired her as his assistant he'd grown to ignore her pre-eleven o'clock tirades. It was just her way of geeing herself up for the day.

He began sorting through a drawer for a screwdriver as she slammed around the studio. 'Oh, great! We're out of fucking milk!' The fridge door was banged shut. 'Have they phoned to say what time the clothes are going to arrive? What time is it? Half past ten? Shit, they should be here by now! Where's their fucking number?' The waterfal of words and curses was actual y quite soothing, a balm of normality after the solicitude he had been smothered in. The first day he had gone to the studio after Sarah had died, Zoe had awkwardly told him she was sorry, then crept around as though the slightest noise would make him shatter, shooting him anxious glances every few minutes until final y he had turned on her and told her to for God's sake stop it. She had looked hurt and shocked, and Ben had thought, Jesus, phase don't let her start crying, because he didn't think he'd be able to stand it. Then her cheeks had flared red and she'd thrown down the armful of clothes she had been carrying.

'Pardon me for fucking breathing!' It had put her in a bad enough mood to make her forget he was part of the alien species of bereaved and treat him like a normal person again, and pushed him back on to his precarious platform of self-control. Half listening to Zoe berating the people responsible for delivering the model's clothes for the shoot, Ben closed the drawer and began setting up the lights.

Thank God for this, he thought, fervently.

It was after seven when he pul ed up outside Maggie and Colin's house. They lived in a curving row of vil as not far from the Portobel o Road, with half a dozen steps running up to the heavy, lustrously black-painted front door. They had been there three years, and Ben wondered how soon it would be before they took the next step up the housing ladder. Not long, he guessed, judging by Colin's success in the music law business, and Maggie's capacity for advertising it.

Ben pressed the stiff brass bel and yawned, though not exactly from tiredness. The shoot had gone wel , but the sense of satisfaction he'd felt had been snuffed the moment he emerged from his universe of angles, light and shade to an awareness of the real world again.

The door was answered by Scott, who greeted Ben with a brief lift of his chin before turning away and leaving him to come in and close the door himself. At nine he was already showing signs of being an objectionable little shit, although Ben wouldn't have dreamed of tel ing Maggie or Colin that. He suspected that Colin already knew, but Maggie was overseeing to the point of blindness.

And of course I don't have any problems of my own.

There was a rich smel of beeswax from the antique furniture as he went down the long, thickly carpeted hal way.

From somewhere deeper in the house he could hear the murmur of Colin on the telephone. A door opened at the far end of the hal and Maggie came out. In the brown knee-length dress with its white lace col ar she looked, as always, like she was caught in a 1980s Laura Ashley time warp. She faltered when she saw his hair, then, obviously deciding not to mention it, fixed her eyes on his face and smiled her stuck-on smile.

'We thought you weren't coming,' she said, jovial y, but Ben knew her wel enough to detect irritation at his late arrival.

'Sorry. It ran on for longer than I expected.'

"Yes, so we gathered.' The effusive offers of help that Maggie had made after Sarah had died were clearly wearing thin. He knew he would soon have to make other arrangements for the days when he was too busy to col ect Jacob from school, and hope it didn't take him too long to adjust to the change in routine. Then the thought came to him that he might not have to worry about such things for much longer.

He couldn't say how that made him feel.

'He's in here,' Maggie said, going into what she cal ed the 'TV room'. Jacob was sitting cross-legged on the floor watching Tom and Jerry do violence to each other on the big colour screen. Scott was sitting next to his younger brother.

Both of them sat apart from Jacob.

'Hi, Jake, had a good day?' Ben asked, doing his best to sound cheerful. Jacob looked at him blankly for a moment, then gave him a rare smile before turning back to the TV.

Ben felt pierced by it.

Colin came into the room. He had already changed into his 'at home' outfit of jeans and a T-shirt, but his solicitor's persona was so strong that the casual clothes looked unnatural on him. 'Hi, Ben, fancy a beer?' Ben was about to decline when Colin gave him a look and jerked his head towards the door. 'Er, yeah, perhaps a quick one.' Conscious of Maggie's disapproval, he fol owed Colin into the kitchen. Colin glanced back to make sure no one else had fol owed them, then closed the door.

'I've got you the name of a detective.'

Ben couldn't park near the address Colin had given him.

The road, just off Kilburn High Street, was being dug up by workmen and was down to a single lane. The yammer of pneumatic dril s vibrated through Ben's skul as he walked past, each decibel a punishment for the beer, joints and final y vodka he had worked his way through the night before. The street was a run-down line of shuttered shop windows and disappearing smal businesses. He slowed as he reached the number he was looking for. A disreputable-looking second-hand jewel er's was on the ground floor, but the row of buzzers by the doorway at the top of the three cracked steps indicated the presence of other occupants in the building. The sun bore down on the top of Ben's head like a Klieg light, making him squint. He shuddered as a clammy wave of nausea left him prickling with sweat The air was ful of diesel and dust from the roadworks.

He took deep breaths of it anyway and went up the steps.

There was a smal , clear plastic strip containing a name next to each of the buzzers. The one that said 'IQ. Investigations' was right above the jewel er's. Ben hoped that meant it was on the first floor. He didn't think he could make it any higher than that. He pressed the buzzer and waited. There was a crackle of static and then a woman's voice said simply, 'Hel o?'

'I've an appointment with Mr Quil ey.' He waited for a

response. After a second the door hummed as it was unlocked.

Ben pushed it open and went inside.

The hal way was lit with a flickering fluorescent strip light, redundant with the sunshine coming from windows on the stairway and at the far end. It added another notch to his headache as he passed underneath. Little fluff bal s of dust were gathered in the angle of each linoleum-covered stair, and the banister wobbled beneath his hand. The first-floor landing was smal , with only a single door. 'I. Quil ey Investigations' was stencil ed on it in scratched white paint, apparently put there before the introduction of the snappier abbreviation. Ben tapped on the glass and heard a distant 'Come in'.

The office was long, dark and narrow. A girl and a desk were crammed into an alcove to one side, together with a battered computer monitor and a fax machine that looked as though its owners had beaten their money's worth out of it.