The Child Read online

  Will must’ve caught me staring at him and smiled. Jude didn’t see, she was too busy closing the front door, so it was a smile just between us and it made me feel a bit tingly. He might be my friend, too. Or my dad.

  “Tea?” Jude said as she led him into the sitting room.

  “Lovely,” he said. “What a great house.”

  In the kitchen, filling the kettle and searching for two matching mugs, I remember wondering what sort of man wears a ring on his thumb.

  He must be nearly forty, I thought, spooning the tea into the pot. It’s like your granddad wearing platforms.

  I laughed to myself at the idea and carried the tray through.

  The professor had kicked off his sandals to sit cross-legged on the sofa and his feet looked soft and white like bread against the cushions.

  “I can’t quite believe you’re here,” my mother gushed.

  Very unlike her. Very un-lawyer-like, I thought, crossly crashing the tray down, spilling the milk into the saucer of sugar.

  “Sorry,” I said, not meaning it. Jude looked furious, but Will swooped forwards, nearly toppling from his guru pose, to help steady the table.

  “No damage done,” he said. “Just ready mixed.” And he and Jude laughed.

  I felt left out of the joke, but when Jude was mopping up, he winked at me.

  FIFTEEN

  Jude

  MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2012

  There was still a trace of lentils on the plate she picked up off the draining board for her toast and she plonked it straight into the sink.

  Her daughter had hardly touched the meal yesterday. It used to be her favorite meal, back in the day. When Emma was eight or nine and they first moved into their rented Victorian villa in Howard Street. The late seventies had been tough for Jude, trying to forge a new career with a child to look after, but the rent was cheap because of the area. And it didn’t seem to matter to Emma where she lived. She was always caught up in her own little world, anyway.

  If she closed her eyes, Jude could almost smell the house at Howard Street, a pervading mixture of damp plaster and her favorite perfumes. It hadn’t been a palace but it had character. The house had a hall paved with cracked black-and-white tiles—“they’re antique, not old,” Jude had told her mother when she turned her nose up.

  Will had liked it straightaway.

  “Oh, Emma!” Jude said out loud now as she banged about in the cupboard, looking for another plate. “Why can’t you let things go? It was you who brought Will up.”

  Jude had never intended to tell her daughter all the details of the telephone call that had come out of the blue, how she’d known straightaway it was Will’s voice even though it’d been nearly ten years since she’d last heard it. He’d slammed out of the house with his bag in 1992, calling over his shoulder that he’d be in touch when she’d calmed down. But she knew he wouldn’t be. There’d been a row too far.

  His attention had begun to wander again. She’d hit her fifties by then and he’d lost interest in her, preferring to flirt openly with waitresses during supposedly romantic dinners.

  “Oh, Jude,” he’d laughed when she finally decided to confront him. “I just appreciate a pretty face—I’m only looking.”

  But he wasn’t. He was doing as well as looking. Jude knew. She smelled it on him and lay awake worrying that he would leave her. She’d tried to keep cool, telling herself it was a midlife crisis and he’d grow out of it. But when she caught him groping one of her friends at a party, there had been a flaming row and he’d packed his bags.

  There had been complete silence after that, even when she made the first move. His phone went straight to voicemail and he didn’t ring back. Or reply to her e-mails. Or her letters. And gradually, she stopped trying.

  But he’d rung when he read her father’s obituary in 2001, in a Cambridge University newsletter. She had recognized the voice but not the tone. He was quietly polite as he offered his condolences but there had been no small talk. Good of him to bother, she’d thought, but it had been horribly awkward and hadn’t led to any more contact.

  Until now. This time, he’d called her “my lady” like in the old days and flirted with her. And how good—and young—it had made her feel. But telling Emma about wanting to see Will again after all this time, she knew she had the wrong audience. And Em had sat there, her face frozen, as if she’d just vomited on the table.

  Like the day I told her she had to leave, Jude thought.

  It had been different when Will had made his first appearance—when Emma was thirteen. She’d liked him then, she thought. Adored him. Like I did.

  • • •

  Will had been so special when she met him at Cambridge. A boy born to succeed. She’d joked with friends later that genius oozed out of his every pore, and if she licked his skin, she would be able to taste it.

  She remembered telling that to a colleague in the office once—and the way her face had twisted with disgust.

  “Sounds revolting. You were a handmaiden, then?” Erica, the senior clerk at Bowen and Bailey Solicitors, had said. Erica was no handmaiden. She was a feminist. It said so on a sign on her desk—“Sexism Is a Social Disease”—and she never missed an opportunity to put her views forward. The partners were all very right on with their long hair and ironic, secondhand pinstripe suits, but they still called her “the dyke” out of her earshot. Jude was sure Erica knew—she knew everything—but she didn’t object. She probably saw it as fair exchange for being in charge.

  Jude had laughed off the handmaiden barb and pretended to get on with her work. But little Barbara Walker, the office junior, wouldn’t let it drop. She’d wanted to hear all about it.

  All this talk of Howard Street from Emma had awakened old memories, and Jude wondered where Barbara was now. She’d been a close friend of Jude’s once. She could picture Barbara—annoyingly pretty, she recalled, but hopeless with money. She’d moved into Howard Street—“the room on the middle landing, that’s right”—in 1983 to help Jude pay the rent, but she kept getting behind and the landlord had to keep coming round.

  Al Soames, she remembered. A former public schoolboy who used to turn up uninvited and sit in the kitchen. He’d ladled on the charm, talking about all the important people he knew and the parties he went to. She’d been impressed—when she’d first moved in—but she began to wonder if he was a bit of a Walter Mitty. And he made Barbara very nervous.

  Jude licked her finger and dabbed at the crumbs on her plate. Will had liked him, though. Said he was good company.

  Poor Barbara had moved out quite quickly really—less than a year, she thought. Jude had been a bit fed up—it was more money for her to find each month—but Will had been pleased.

  “Nice to have you to myself without the Barbie doll hanging around, making eyes at me,” he’d said. Jude hadn’t noticed but Barbara was gone, anyway, and she hoped that Will would think he had found his match—intellectually and sexually—and would settle down. At university, their affair had lasted just three weeks, but this time would be different. Then, there had been other women in the queue for his attention and they had grown impatient for their turn. Jude had found him ministering to the next girl late one Friday morning when she skipped a lecture to call on him.

  She glossed over this now in her head. Along with the retribution she’d taken on the Next Girl, breaking into her room and smearing dog shit on her bed the following day. People got that kind of thing out of proportion, didn’t they?

  Anyway, the Next Girl hadn’t complained. Jude imagined she’d simply taken the bedspread to the launderette. Will hadn’t found out—at least he’d never mentioned it—and he’d stayed friendly, having the occasional coffee with Jude when they bumped into each other in King’s Parade. But he’d vanished from her world when she left Cambridge.

  And she’d met someone else. The total bastard,
as she always referred to him now. But he’d been Charlie until he left Jude and Emma. She’d been forced to return home to her parents with a newborn baby so they could torture her with guilt.

  She could feel the bitterness darkening her day, even after all this time. It wasn’t good for her to revisit past hurts. People said you shouldn’t bottle things up but she could never be this open with anyone else. People jumped to conclusions, rushed to judgment. Better to keep things to herself. She’d been too open with Will, she knew that now. She’d let him know how desperate she was to keep him. She’d gone along with everything—changed her clothes, her hair, her friends, everything. She’d even taken his advice to push Emma out of the nest when she got too difficult.

  He’d made it sound caring and responsible: “Tough love will help her, Jude. You’ll see. It’s what she needs.”

  She’d done it. Told her child she had to go. Helped her pack. Closed the door on her.

  And, with Emma gone, Jude had poured all her energies into Will, running after him, trying to anticipate his every wish. At first, he’d loved it. Loved having his favorite meal on the table every evening, the sexy underwear she bought to please him, the phone calls at work “just to say I love you.”

  But he grew to see it as needy.

  “Men hate needy,” Jude told herself as she cleared the breakfast things. “It’s a big turnoff.” Will had told her so the day he left.

  SIXTEEN

  Kate

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 2012

  She’d had enough of the day already when she emerged from the lift at work. Her foul mood had soured her eyes and lined her forehead, but Joe Jackson still hadn’t got the hang of people.

  “Hi, Kate, how are you?” he’d chirped like a friendly budgie.

  Kate had given him a look that would have made a Rottweiler hesitate. She threw her computer bag on the desk, the laptop making an unhealthy clunk, and stalked off to the ladies’ to give herself breathing space.

  Steve had brought her “bed tea” half an hour earlier than usual that morning and stood over her until she surfaced from sleep.

  “Sorry it’s so early, love, but I need to leave for work at eight—I’ve got ward rounds this morning—and Jake is downstairs already,” he’d said, a warning note in his voice. They both knew there was trouble coming.

  Jake, their eldest, had appeared unexpectedly the night before, in the middle of his university term. It had been too late to talk—Steve was already in bed, exhausted by the day’s appointments with his cancer patients, and Kate couldn’t face tackling Jake’s latest crisis alone. She’d packed him off to bed with the promise that they’d talk in the morning. That moment had clearly come.

  Kate had stumbled out of bed and hardly had time to sit down at the kitchen table before Jake announced he was dropping out of his law degree and going traveling.

  Well, “announced” was probably overstating it. Jake had mentioned it in that irritatingly casual way he had as he swirled two poached eggs in a pan of water. He was a boy who “took everything in his stride,” according to his senior school reports. “Rolling over” is what Kate called it, but Steve had always counseled against confronting their son.

  “It’ll just make things worse. He’ll grow out of it,” he’d said.

  But he hadn’t.

  “He just gives up when things get difficult,” Kate had said when Jake decided to stop playing the saxophone after three months, despite having begged them to buy him an instrument.

  “He’s so clever, but he can’t be bothered to put in the effort,” she’d complained. “Poor old Freddie has to work his socks off to get the grades. It must be infuriating for him to see his brother flick through a book and get an A.”

  And it infuriated her, too. She’d been just like Freddie. And she couldn’t see where Jake’s lack of motivation came from. Both she and Steve had the work ethic in spades, but Jake just stood at the foot of the ladder, looking up and shrugging at the idea of climbing.

  It was Steve who had broken the silence that followed their son’s latest news.

  “Where are you thinking of traveling to?” Nice and neutral. Very Steve, Kate thought.

  “Not sure really,” Jake had said, smiling his beautiful smile. “Thailand, maybe?”

  “Couldn’t you do that when you finish your degree?” Kate had said as he put his plate of food down on the table. “You’ve only got one more year to go.”

  “I’m not sure I’m doing the right subject, Mum,” Jake had said, tackling his eggs, tea towel over one shoulder.

  “But you’ve always wanted to do law,” she’d said, sinking down further into her chair. “What’s changed?”

  “I think I have,” he had said, mopping the yolk with a crust of bread. “I think I want other things now.”

  Kate and Steve had exchanged looks over their son’s bent head.

  “Well, best not to make any hasty decisions, Jakey,” Steve had said. “Why don’t you finish this year and then take stock. Give yourself a chance to think it through.”

  “Actually, I’ve told college I’m not going back,” their son had said. “They were very nice about it. It’s all sorted.”

  There’d been stunned silence and then raised voices—Kate’s mainly, with Jake patiently munching his way through his food—followed by pleas, recriminations, and slammed doors. Breakfast had ended as an ugly showdown. Steve had stormed off to the hospital, Jake had gone back to bed, and Kate had stood in the kitchen and sworn.

  “It isn’t even bloody eight a.m. yet and the day is a nightmare,” she’d said.

  Later, as she’d driven across London to the office, Kate had ground her teeth and practiced what she would say to Jake later, cursing the black-cab drivers and white-van men who dared to cut her off.

  • • •

  The stress had taken its toll. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw the bags under her eyes, the mascara already smudging, and her hair escaping from a collapsing ponytail.

  Christ, what a sight, she thought. She looked like she’d just stumbled up the embankment after a train crash.

  She pulled the elastic band off her hair and got a brush out of her handbag to repair the damage.

  Oh, get a grip, she told her reflection.

  You can do this, played in her head as she brushed her hair into submission. It was a mantra she’d picked up from her dad, a man who was not at home to negativity.

  “Come on, Katie,” he’d say as she struggled to ride a bike, pass maths exams, or get a job interview. “You can do anything.”

  It was wonderful to have your own personal cheerleader, but the constant pressure for her to succeed was exhausting. Okay, Dad. I’m on it, she thought and gripped the sink to still her hands.

  SEVENTEEN

  Kate

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 2012

  When she emerged from the ladies’, there was a strange silence in the office. No one was speaking, no one was clattering on a keyboard—not even the online crew—and no one was making eye contact. Kate’s “Morning all” petered out halfway through, the “all” abandoned as she sat down at her desk.

  “What’s going on? Has somebody died?” she hissed across at the Crime Man.

  He looked up, eyes pouchy and bloodshot.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “God, you look awful,” she said. “What were you up to last night?”

  “Out with my colleague from defense. He looks worse than me.”

  Kate whirled round to look at the defense correspondent—the Major, to his workmates—and laughed at the sight. “Has he been to bed?” she asked the Crime Man.

  “Mind your own bloody business, Kate. You haven’t looked at your e-mails, then?”

  “No, I was late leaving home. Why?”

  “There’s another round of redundos. The bloody bea
n counters are at it again,” he said. “Costs are being cut. Again. They say we’ve got to lose fifty-two people across the titles—seven from our newsroom.”

  “Seven? Christ! That’s half the reporters,” she said, looking round the room, ticking off her colleagues in her head.

  “Don’t be stupid. There are at least thirty of us,” he said. She looked blank.

  “The online staff, Kate.”

  “Oh yes,” she replied. “Well, it won’t be them getting the boot. Bloody hell. Who is going from our lot?”

  The Crime Man shook his head. “Two subs, but no one has been invited for the coffee of death from our side yet. We’re all just waiting.”

  They both knew he was a prime candidate; Gordon Willis was old, difficult to manage, a Luddite when it came to technology, and, perhaps most important, highly paid. Kate cast about for something positive to say.

  “Spoke to Colin Stubbs the other day, sent his best,” she said. The Crime Man nodded, preoccupied.

  “Says leaving journalism was the best thing he ever did.”

  “Did he? Haven’t seen him in months. Thought his witch of a wife had locked him in a cellar. Look, I’m going to the Yard for the daily briefing. Can’t sit around here, waiting for bad news. Give me a shout if anything happens.”

  “Sure,” she said. “You’ll be fine. You’re way too valuable to them.”

  He tried to smile. “Thanks, Kate. See you later.”

  She watched him shamble out of the door, the collar of his jacket half up, a bed hair rosette on the back of his head, and his notebook poking out of his pocket. He nodded at the news desk as he passed. Terry didn’t nod back. Bad sign, she thought. The pack abandoning its own.