Slip of the Knife

I

The morning was bright as Paddy led Pete around the corner. The street was swarming with small children in red T-shirts and gray skirts or trousers, ready for the new school year. The children came from a poor catchment area and the uniform was minimal.

It was an old-fashioned primary school, the playground railed off from the street and the building arranged in a tall U around it. The two entrances were at opposite ends of the yard and carved into the stone above them were GIRLS and BOYS.

Pete stopped dead. “Mum! Gym kit!”

Paddy touched his backpack. “In here.”

He did a comedy phew, rolling his head in a figure of eight, showing the small hairs on the back of his neck, like Terry’s. She considered picking him up and running back to the car. Phone the school. Plead a cold. She could give in to her fears every day and keep him under her bed until he was eighteen.

A young man in a black tracksuit stepped out in front of them, crossing the road to the railings, pressing his face through, looking for a kid.

In the yard a blonde teacher, Miss MacDonald, was marshaling the children into groups of their own year in preparation for the lineup and roll call they took before the kids went into the school building. Out on the street parents were lined up along the railings, staring into the yard at their children, who were showing off their latest toys, making alliances for the fresh day, or chasing each other within the limited parameters of the group Miss MacDonald had put them in.

Suddenly, Pete slipped Paddy’s hand and bolted into the road. She leaped, grabbing his shoulder with a talon hand, spinning him so hard he almost fell to one knee.

“Mum!” He looked up at her, mouth hanging open in shock.

She saw herself, grabbing him to assuage her insecurity, keeping him from his life. Flattening his hair with her hand, she avoided his eye. “What have I told you about running into the road?”

“You hurt me.” He looked at her, demanding that she look back.

She busied herself straightening the straps on his backpack. “Just… be careful.”

He hit her hand away. “I am being careful.”

“I’m sorry. I got a fright when you ran out. Sorry.” Apologizing to a child-her mother would hate that. Never apologize and never explain, Trisha would say, which was all right for her: everything she did was explained by the Church or by teachers in the Catholic school. Paddy wanted Pete to grow up being able to question authority, but it was a lot more work than telling him to shut up and do what he was told.

“Sorry.”

Pete nodded and looked over at his friends, his face lightening in delight, her offense forgotten.

“Come on.” She took his hand and led him over the road.

He ran into the yard, straight into Miss MacDonald, who ordered him over to another group, away from his friends. Paddy followed him in.

“Miss MacDonald? Could you keep an eye on Peter today?”

“Is he ill?”

“No.” She didn’t want to sound paranoid. “You know Peter’s father and I aren’t together?”

Miss MacDonald touched the tiny gold crucifix around her neck and mugged sorrow, as if everyone had tried but failed to keep them together.

“We’re in dispute about access,” she said, sounding stern when sad would have done better. “I’m concerned Peter’s dad might try to come and take him out of school today. Could you keep an eye on him?”

“Of course.”

“He might not come himself. He might send a friend to get Peter.”

“We’ll keep an eye on him.” She turned to a child who was wandering around between groups, ending the conversation.

“Don’t let him leave with anyone but me, is what I mean.”

But Miss MacDonald was out of earshot.

Paddy shuffled out of the yard and stood outside with the other mums, holding on to the railings with both hands, fighting a familiar knot of terror with phrases that didn’t mean anything: he’s fine, you’re worrying too much, it’s normal to be afraid, you have to stop this.

A loud, rankling bell ripped through the cheerful sounds from the children, bouncing off the sides of the building. Late parents hurried their children along the road and shoved them roughly through the gates. Miss MacDonald waited for the last few stragglers and pulled the gates closed, shutting them with a latch.

Paddy watched as Pete was put in line, hoping for one last wave from him, but he was talking to his friends.

She walked sadly back to the car, thinking about Michael Collins and how terrifying being a mother was. There was no need to be so scared: she had a photo of Collins now, she could show it to people, get an ID.

She unlocked the car door and climbed in, rolled down all the windows, and lit a cigarette.

Parents were dispersing in the street. Women walked in ones and twos, those with cars pulled out slowly, all a little dazed at the sudden calm after the rush of the morning, looking forward to the next six hours until home time.

The one-way system in the small backstreets channeled Paddy up to the lights on Hyndland Road. She stopped for red and shut her eyes, thinking through what she had to do today. Find Collins’s real name. Kevin Hatcher should be up now. She’d call him and ask him about the picture.

A car behind her hooted its horn. Glancing in the mirror she saw a mum she recognized from the school, a pretty woman whose son had a stammer. The woman smiled, pointed at the green light up ahead and the empty road ahead of her. Paddy held her hand up in apology and took the handbrake off. She glanced to the side, looking for oncoming cars, pulling out into the road.

She was focused on the distance, that was why she didn’t see him at first. He was in the corner of her vision, a small blurred head, leaning casually on the bus stop. The silver zip on his black tracksuit caught the sun, glinting like sun-kissed water, and made her look at him.

It was the young man from outside the school, the childless man who crossed in front of her and Pete and watched through the railings. He was standing, body casual but the expression on his face curiously intense, staring straight in at her. Under the black tracksuit she could see a flash of green and white. He was wearing a Celtic top.

Unnerved and jittery, she pushed hard on the accelerator, shot straight across the road and into the mouth of a lane, throwing the door open as she pulled the handbrake on, jumping out and looking back.

A bus was between her and the young man but she ran across the road anyway, bolting around the back of it.

She reached the corner no more than five seconds after she’d seen him, but he was gone.

II

The tenements in Kevin’s street were five stories high and in an area so aspiring that every single flat had at least one car. Paddy toured the street twice, looking for a space to stop.

One of the corners looked marginally less illegal than the others and she parked carefully, her car bonnet sticking out into the street. She’d only be ten minutes. Kevin probably wasn’t in anyway, and if he was, all he had to give her was three lines of information. She wasn’t going to take a cup of tea if he offered. She’d get a name, call the police, and go straight back to Pete’s school and pull him out of his class.

Kevin’s close was nicer than she remembered. She’d only seen it in the evening and the dusty forty-watt bulbs didn’t do justice to the green wall tiles. The neighbors had put plants out on the landing and they flourished in the south-facing light coming in through big wire-meshed windows.

Kevin’s door was firmly shut. She rang the bell and waited for a polite length of time before knocking. She could hear the sound of her knuckle raps echo around the empty hall. He wasn’t in. Considering the trouble Michael Collins had taken to frighten her, he might have freaked Kevin out too.

She took a notepad from her pocket and scribbled her number on the back with her name and a request that he call her. She was holding the letter box open to slip it in when she heard the sound of music.

Bending down, she peered through the letter box. She couldn’t see anything: on the other side of the door was a two-sided brush, the bristles coming up and down to meet in the middle, a device designed to stop drafts and nosy people from doing exactly what she was trying to do: looking into the flat. She tried pushing the bristles apart with her fingers but the letter box was too deep and she couldn’t reach. There was definitely music coming from in there, from the living room, she thought.

Kneeling down on the rough doormat, she used her pen and one of her house keys to hold the bristles slightly apart. She could just see in but not much. She put her mouth to the opening.

“Kevin? Are you in?”

He could be sleeping in the living room, using the music to block out morning noises and sounds from the street. She could see the rug on the floor, the foot of a tripod, the chair where he had put her coat on Sunday night.

Shuffling sideways on her knees like a pilgrim, she changed her point of entry: the living-room door was open, sunlight pooled on a discarded trainer lying on its side, the worn sole towards her. The music was coming from there, the cheerful overture to Marriage of Figaro. It sounded like the radio was on.

She was just about to withdraw her eye, to pull back and shout in again, when she saw the toe of the trainer twitch. The trainer had an ankle attached to it.