Silent Children (32 page)

"Thanks. So is Jack..."

"Why should he be here? Why do you want to know?"

"Because Ian, you met Ian, my son, he's gone missing."

"Why should that have anything to do with John? What are you trying to make out?"

"Just that they were friends and Ian might have gone to him if he wanted someone to talk to."

"About what?"

"Being blamed too much."

"I can't imagine what you think John would know about that." Before Leslie could decide whether that was meant as an accusation or a denial, Mrs. Woollie said "How do you think he would have got in touch with him?"

"I suppose he would have had to call you to ask where Jack was."

"I hope you don't think I'd have told him. I got the impression you wanted rid of John, and I presume that includes your son."

Leslie had to reassure herself that Mrs. Woollie meant she wanted to keep Ian away from Jack, not get rid of him. "And if he calls to ask where he can find John," Mrs. Woollie said, "you've my word as a mother I won't tell him."

"If he does, could you tell him to call me instead? I just want him back."

"I understand. As long as I'm respecting your wishes, can I ask you to respect ours?"

Leslie couldn't help growing wary. "Which are..?"

"Just that John would like to choose his own time to let the world know who he is. They know here because one of them recognised he was my son, they can be sharp like that sometimes, but you and of course your boy are the only others who do."

"I've no reason to tell anyone. Jack's been there, then."

"He couldn't stay away from his mother. I'm sure your boy won't be able to either. Things are never as bad as they seem, that's my experience."

Leslie had to assume Mrs. Woollie was putting her husband out of her mind. "Jack isn't there, I don't suppose," she heard herself admit to wanting to know.

"He's not. Now I must go and see what one of my residents needs. If you're worried about your boy, I should call the police."

"Thanks," Leslie said, even less sure than before why she was saying so, especially since Mrs. Woollie hadn't hung on long enough to hear. She wasn't ready to contact the police—she had to make another call that would be at least as fraught. Beyond the front door the houses were losing some of their colour, and three parked cars had taken their places along Jericho Close, but otherwise nothing had changed. The evening hush made her feel overheard as she took a deep breath before hefting the receiver.

The phone had hardly rung when it was answered. "Yes?"

"Hilene?"

"Yes, who is it?"

"Leslie Ames."

"I thought so."

This was so toneless that the only rejoinder Leslie could think of was "How are you?"

"Feeling like I'd never want anybody in the world to feel."

"I'm really sorry. There's been no news, then."

"No."

Leslie had the grotesque notion that one of them was about to be compelled to quote the old saying about no news. Instead Hilene demanded "Have you got something to tell me?"

"What do you mean? What could I have?"

"Anything that would help."

Leslie experienced a rush of sympathy for the other woman. She'd let herself speak sharply because she'd been too quick to feel Hilene was accusing her on Ian's behalf. "I wish I had, honestly I do," she said. "I just called—"

"I'll give you Roger."

"I only—" But Leslie was talking only to herself. She had plenty of time to reflect how distressed Hilene must be to have used the words she just had while a muttered conversation, mostly in Roger's voice, eventually delivered him to the phone. "Leslie," he said.

"Is—"

"What did you say to Hilene?" he said, more reproachfully still.

"Just asked her how she was."

"That would do it. I'd have thought you would have known."

"How could I when I didn't know if you'd heard anything?"

"I'd have called you."

"You might have been trying to get through." Feeling encumbered by too much needless argument, Leslie said "I'm sorry if I upset her. Tell her if you like I'm a bit upset myself."

"Oh." That was close to a rebuke, and so was the pause before he said "By whom?"

"Not by Hilene, if that's what you think I meant. By Ian. He's run off and I don't know where."

"You surely weren't thinking he'd come here."

"I had to check. Why, are you saying he couldn't have?"

"I shouldn't think—" Roger lowered his voice, presumably below Hilene's hearing. "He'd hardly want to be around us when we can do nothing but worry."

"I do see that. Sorry," Leslie said, this time for having heard another accusation aimed at Ian where there had been none. "I'll have to try and think straighter, won't I? All I've got to go on is a note."

"From Ian, you mean."

"There's nobody else to leave me one, is there?" Angry with herself for having said that, Leslie blurted "Do you want to hear what it says?"

"I should."

Leslie knew it by heart, but blinked at it anyway. It must be the withdrawal of the sunlight that made the large untidy capitals look already faded, writing from the past. "It says 'I've gone because you said I took Charlotte.' "

"When did I ever say that to him? You were there. I didn't and I wouldn't have."

"Not you. He means me," Leslie said, and with rather less conviction "I didn't either."

"I'm sure you never would. He'll be feeling guilty for what he did do, that's all, and trying to load some of the guilt onto you. How long has he been gone?"

"There's no time on the note, Roger. Maybe as long as I've been out at work."

"Very likely not that long then, would you say? Just long enough to make sure you feel as bad as he thinks you ought to feel, or maybe now he's staying away because he feels guilty about that."

"You don't think I should call the police yet."

Roger was silent, and she had time to wonder if he thought she was trying to compete with Hilene. At last he said "I think you should call them when you feel you have to."

If she let herself, she already did. Roger promised to contact her if he should hear from Ian, and then he said goodbye with an abruptness that might mean Hilene was wanting him to finish, unless he was giving Ian a chance to call. The receiver had no more to say to her, however. When she found herself wondering if she should ring her parents, she knew whom she indeed ought to call. Nevertheless it was dark, and she'd found several ways of pretending to use her time—making dinner for herself and Ian and even managing to eat a mouthful, tidying his room so that she could confront him with having failed to do so, sitting on his bed and leafing slowly through Jack's novel, staring out of Ian's window as the twilight drained colour from the streetlamps and blurred their outlines until they resembled sculptures constructed of fog and finally touched their lights off—before she called the police for advice.

"They're noisy, aren't they, Charlotte? Noisy neighbours that don't care about a little girl who wants to go to sleep. You try anyway. Look, he's trying, the other babe in the wood, the big babe. You try as well and when they stop their row next door I'll sing to you. I'll sing you my song for babes that are going to sleep."

Woollie pushed himself up on the bed, resting his back against the headboard, and laid his pink and yellow left arm across Ian's chest, his right across Charlotte's. The shaggy head loomed, not much less blurred than a chunk of dust, above Ian in the dimness that was almost dark, and a smell of stale cloth and sour sweat descended on him. He willed Charlotte to give in to her exhaustion so that she would be less of a problem and less at risk. He tried to quell his awareness of the arms that were pinning him and Charlotte down, and strove to lie absolutely still, hardly even moving his chest when he breathed, in the hope that Woollie would conclude he had no need to wonder what Ian was thinking or planning. The trouble was that while Woollie kept hold of Charlotte, Ian was unable to plan and not much more able to think. For the moment he was reduced to listening, and as close as he had ever come to praying—wishing fervently that whatever happened next door would do him and Charlotte some good.

The noisy neighbours Woollie was deploring were Ian's mother and someone who had come to visit her—surely the police. Ian had heard the slam of a car door and a louder slam from his front door, which his mother must have opened before her visitor had had time to ring the bell. Then, so faint it had almost been destroyed by the throbbing of his pulse as he'd strained his ears, Ian had made out the sound, agonisingly close yet impossible to reach, of his mother's voice.

Almost at once it moved out of earshot, taking a male voice with it, presumably into the front room. There was silence except for Woollie's breaths, each of which caught in his throat with a sound like the start of a snore, so that Ian wondered if the man might be the first of them to fall asleep. He tried to send the thought across to Charlotte that both of them should keep still to lull Woollie to sleep, an attempt at telepathy that showed him how desperate he was. Woollie's breaths were growing slower and deeper, and Ian found himself counting them mentally in the yet more absurd hope that he might be exerting some kind of mute hypnosis over the man. He was in the thousands when he heard his mother's voice again—not her words, not even her tone. Her visitor said something Ian guessed was meant as reassurance, followed by an elongated silence that was brought to an end by the microscopic clang of Ian's gate and two slams, one of metal, one of wood. "And don't come back," Woollie muttered.

Ian tried to relax so as not to betray his panic at discovering the man was awake. Through his slitted eyelids he saw the blur of a head turn to him. "One of you's off, anyway," it said in its throat. "Time the other one was."

Ian couldn't tell which of them Woollie was addressing, nor which he took to be asleep. The gaping smile lowered itself toward him, and its smell found him, a reek like old raw meat. He did his best to close his nostrils and keep a shudder to himself, but his shoulders writhed. "Thought as much. Just playing, eh?" Woollie whispered into his face. "Stay shut up, son. She's gone at last."

Far too much time passed before he raised his head, grasping the quilt beside Ian and not letting go, and Ian had to take a breath while the smell of the mouth hovered over him. "You're a bit old to be sung to sleep," Woollie said, quieter than ever. "I should try and get some all the same."

Ian's body yearned to do so but felt as though it might never be able to rest again. "What'll you be doing?" he had to ask.

"Don't you fret about me. I'll be seeing you don't get any ideas."

Though sleep had to overpower him at some point—it struck Ian as unlikely that he'd slept since he'd trapped Charlotte—keeping watch on two captives might render him more sleepless in the meantime, hence more dangerous. "But what are you going to do?" Ian whispered. "We can't stay here."

"Can we not, son? Who'll be chucking us out, you?"

"The people who live here. They're nearly back."

"Are they now? When are we expecting them?"

Ian almost said the next day, but then Woollie might decide to take Charlotte out at once, giving her no chance to rest and so making her more of an unpredictable threat to him. "The day after tomorrow," Ian said.

"Cut their holiday short, did they? Got too much sun?"

"Don't know what you mean. They were always coming back then."

"Well, there's a laugh. I'd have sworn the woman said they wouldn't be back for three weeks. What a joke, eh?" Woollie said, and emitted a satisfied grunt that perhaps was intended as mirth. "Any more tricks?" he enquired, aiming a raw breath at Ian's face.

"Don't suppose."

"Better be surer than that, son. Think of your playmate. You don't want her upset, do you?"

"No," Ian said, and nothing more until the head, whose presence felt like the slab in his mind, raised itself. He had to talk to Woollie—had to find a way of reaching him. "What are you going to do with her?" he dared to ask.

"I've done it. I've put her down."

"What about when she wakes up?"

"Let's hope that's none too soon. We can all do with a bit of peace."

"But when she does..."

"You've known her longer than me. You'd better come up with some games to take her mind off things."

"What things?" Ian almost demanded. Was Woollie determined to pretend there was nothing wrong or odd about his having captured Charlotte, or did he believe it? "Suppose I can't?" Ian said.

"Then nobody's going to be very happy, are they, son?"

The fist at the end of the arm that was pinning Ian down took a firmer grip on the quilt, and Ian guessed the other hand was doing so beside Charlotte, or was it grasping the knife? "How long do you think you can keep her?" he whispered.

"As long as it takes. Her and you both, mind. Don't leave yourself out."

As long as what took? Ian swallowed the question and a stale taste of panic, and thought of an approach that seemed worth trying—had to be. "Why don't you just keep me?"

"How's that again?"

"When she wakes up let her go and I'll stay, all right? It's her you're afraid will make a fuss. I won't, and she won't dare to say you're here when you've got me. Then I'll come with you and help you hide somewhere else she won't even know about. That's what you want, isn't it? That's what you'll have to do."

The lump of dimness leaned down to peer at him in the gloom that was all of the glow of the suburb the curtains admitted. The impression of a mouth widened and hitched up its corners before it spoke. "Good try, son, but you're not on."

"Why not?"

"I told you before about how loud to talk. We don't want her back with us yet, do we?"

"Okay," Ian said urgently in a voice that was little more than a breath with syllables in it, "but why not? I can make her promise not to tell."

"Oh, she'd do that for you. There's not much doubt of that, I reckon."

"She'd mean it. I'd make her. She would."

"Maybe so."

"And then you could get out of here before anyone finds you."