The Child Who

6

‘Leo.’

He could not stop pacing. Out of habit he had removed his shoes but he still had on his coat and even his scarf and he was explaining, or trying to, but the difficulty was knowing where to start.

‘Leo. Leo!’

He jiggled his head, held up a hand. ‘And honestly, Meg. They brought pushchairs. Pushchairs! One woman, she had her toddler with her. She was holding him up like… like, I don’t know… like he was a placard. Ha! Right, just like that. She had him here, like this, and in her other hand she had an actual placard, a sign, and it said—’

‘Leo, please. Just listen for a moment.’

‘– it said shame, just shame, just that single word: shame. And there were others too, like this one I saw that said, what was it, it said—’

‘Leo!’

Leo stopped. He stared at his wife, who covered her mouth with her hand. She shut her eyes.

‘Meg?’

‘Please, Leo,’ she said, opening them. ‘Please, just listen. Just for a moment.’

‘What? What is it?’ Leo frowned. He reached for his wife’s hand.

Megan pulled away. ‘It’s Ellie.’ She folded both arms, then let them drop.

‘Ellie? What about Ellie? Is she okay? Where is she?’ Leo spun towards the hallway but Megan reached and anchored him in the kitchen.

‘She’s fine, Leo. I mean, she’s not hurt. They didn’t hurt her.’

‘What? Who hurt her? Where is she?’ Again Leo made for the stairs.

‘Leo! I said they didn’t hurt her. She’s not hurt. She’s just upset, that’s all.’

‘Upset? Why is she upset? What happened, Megan, tell me!’

‘For pity’s sake, Leo!’ Megan glared until Leo fell still. ‘She came home without her coat,’ she said. Leo was about to interrupt but his wife held him off. ‘Her blouse, her white school one, it was covered in… I mean, it looked like she was covered in…’

‘In? In what?’

‘Blood. It looked like blood.’

‘Jesus Christ! I thought you said she—’

‘She’s fine! Honestly, Leo, she’s not hurt.’

‘But the blood! What then? Are you saying it wasn’t hers? Whose was it? Jesus, Meg, why didn’t you—’

‘It wasn’t hers. It wasn’t anyone’s. It wasn’t blood, Leo. It was ink.’

‘Ink?’

‘That’s what she told me. Ink. Red ink. But honestly, when she walked in that door… I mean, she was crying, or trying not to, and her shirt, her hands, her face: she was covered in this… this stuff. It was like… a dream. A nightmare, rather. Like every nightmare I’ve had since you came home with this blasted… Since, probably, that poor girl…’

Leo shook off the digression. ‘How did it get there? Why the hell was she covered in ink?’

‘She wouldn’t tell me. Obviously someone threw it at her but—’

‘Someone threw it at her!’

Megan made a face. ‘Of course someone threw it at her. What did you think? That she tripped in the stationery aisle at WH Smith?’

‘No. I mean… No. But who… Why the hell…’

‘I told you, she wouldn’t say. But they stole her coat, I’m guessing, and they must have been teasing her and somehow, for some reason, she ended up covered in ink. Or maybe it was just – ’ Megan shook her head, disparaging already what she was about to say ‘ – just an accident or something. Teenagers being teenagers and things getting out of hand.’

Leo scoffed. ‘An accident?’

‘Maybe! I don’t know! I haven’t exactly got a lot to go on!’

‘Well we can put that straight for a start. Where is she? Is she in her room?’ Leo made to move but Megan was quicker. She darted past him and pressed her shoulders to the door.

‘Leo, no.’

Leo felt his lips form a humourless grin. ‘What do you mean, no? We need to talk to her, Meg. Come out of the way.’ He took a step. Megan gripped the architrave.

‘I mean it, Leo. Not until you calm down.’

‘What the hell are you talking about? I am calm!’

‘You’ve still got your coat on. You’re flushed and you’re sweating and you’re shouting. You don’t seem calm.’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake.’ Leo tore at his scarf and wrenched off his coat. He spread his arms. ‘Satisfied?’

Leo listened at Ellie’s door before he knocked. He heard nothing – no music, no television – so he rapped with a single knuckle. He reached for the door handle, expecting the door to be locked, but the catch clicked and the door opened.

‘Ellie?’

The room was dark but for a lamp on Ellie’s desk that had been angled upwards to spotlight the wall. The desk itself was otherwise clear but for Ellie’s computer, a parade of reference books and a bright yellow pen holder: only the masticated ends of the items it contained tarnished the overall sense of order. The rest of Ellie’s bedroom was similarly neat. Her posters – souvenirs from London art galleries, mainly – were, even to Leo’s wonky eye, regimentally aligned; her clothes were shut where they should be; her CDs were stacked and, probably, categorised. The books on the set of pine shelves seemed, at first glance, more of a jumble but Leo suspected that these were arranged, too, to satisfy some taxonomical urge. The overall impression, Leo had once pointed out to his wife, was of a bedroom auditioning for an IKEA catalogue. It wasn’t normal, he had insisted, not for a teenager. Neither, Meg had countered, was a parent bemoaning having nothing to complain about. It was just their daughter’s way: her space, her choice. Leo’s appetite for disarray, meanwhile, was surely sated by the condition of his office.

‘Go away.’

Ellie was a corpse on the bed. With her back to the door and Rupert a tabby bundle in the crook of her knees, she made no movement. Her words, for all the signs that she was otherwise sentient, might have been carried on her dying breath.

‘Darling, we just want to talk to you for a moment.’ Leo squinted. ‘Do you mind if I switch on the—’

‘No!’

Leo recoiled from the light switch. He looked at Megan, who said, without saying it, what did I tell you?

Leo hesitated, then forced a smile. He stepped towards his daughter’s bed and attempted what he hoped was an empathic-sounding sigh. ‘It seems we’ve both had quite a day,’ he said. He regarded his daughter’s back, cast in the light from the hallway. Ellie’s fine, fragile spine jutted through her vest-top towards him. Her shoulders, heartbreakingly slender, were drawn in a self-protecting pinch. Her hair seemed damp – washed but not combed – and Leo could sense the chill of its touch on her bare shoulders. He had an urge to sweep the hair from her skin, to tuck his daughter beneath the bed sheets on which she lay. He sighed again. The mattress was pressing his knees and he thought about lowering himself onto a corner. He brushed it with his fingertips instead, trailing his touch across the balled-up cat. ‘I’ll make you a deal,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about my day and then you can tell me all about—’

‘I don’t want to hear about your stupid day!’

Leo flinched. ‘Ellie, I—’

‘Go away! Just go away!’

Leo parted his lips. Ellie, listen, he was about to say but when Ellie turned towards the light he was distracted by the flush to her skin. It only covered one part of her face: a raging red that extended down the left side of her neck and to her collarbone, too lopsided and vivid to be explained by Ellie’s anger. Leo could not stop himself reaching.

‘Leave me alone!’ Ellie wrenched her chin from Leo’s touch.

‘Switch on the light.’ When his wife did not respond, Leo turned. ‘Meg. Switch on the light.’

This time Megan obeyed. Ellie winced and Leo stared. Once again he reached and this time Ellie allowed her face to be turned.

‘I couldn’t get it off,’ she said. She began to cry. ‘I scrubbed but I couldn’t get it off.’

Leo heard his wife’s exclamation. He felt Megan draw to his side. His attention, though, was on his daughter’s skin: blotched from the ink but scoured, too. Along her jaw line and below her cheekbone there were sketches of blood, as though she had been dragged along tarmac.

‘Ellie,’ Leo said and barely heard himself. His fingers gravitated towards his daughter’s wounds. This time Ellie flinched and Rupert, reluctantly, stirred.

‘Don’t!’ Ellie shuffled towards her headboard. She was sobbing now. ‘Just go,’ she said. ‘Please. Just leave me alone!’ And she thrust her face into her bloodied pillow.

They pieced it together. In the living room and with barely a discussion they worked out what, when, why. Who, they did not tackle. In one respect, they could hardly hope to. In another, they both already knew.

Ellie’s coat was taken from her just as Felicity’s had been. The ink: it was Felicity’s blood. They might have used fairy lights, had they found any. They might have threatened to drag her to the river.

‘I’ll talk to the school,’ Leo said. He glanced at Megan, who was beside him on the sofa, staring at the blank television screen. ‘Her teacher. The headmistress. I’ll go in first thing.’ Although, as he spoke, he was struggling to see how he could afford the time. After the riot Daniel had changed his story, had admitted what everyone else had already known. So there was the confession to get on record and the remand hearing to discuss and the boy’s parents to deal with because everything was moving at such a pace that Leo had not really had a chance yet to—

‘First thing,’ Leo said. Megan sniffed and fiddled with her tissue and seemed not to have sensed his vacillation.

Leo shuffled closer and reached an arm around her shoulders. ‘It’s kids, Meg. It’s kids being cruel like only kids can be.’

His wife pulled away from him.

‘Meg? What’s wrong?’

Megan hesitated before answering. ‘I was spat at,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘We were. Ellie and me. Yesterday, at the supermarket. I wasn’t going to tell you but… after today…’ Her voice seemed colder all of a sudden.

‘Spat at? By who?’

‘By a woman. A mother. She was my age, younger. She had a shopping trolley and two children and as she passed me she turned and spat.’

‘What? Are you sure? I mean—’

‘I’m sure, Leo. I’m perfectly, one-hundred-per-cent sure.’

‘No. I know. I just meant, why? Did you say something to her or—’

‘It wasn’t my fault!’

‘Calm down, Meg. I’m not saying it was. I’m just trying to understand what happened.’ He shook his head. ‘Why on earth would someone spit at you? Do you think… Are you saying… You think it was because of the case?’

‘The thought occurred to me.’

‘Why though?’ Leo said again. ‘How did she even know who you were?’

‘Your secret’s out, Leo. You’re a big name, suddenly, in a small town. No.’ She corrected herself: ‘You’re a small name in a smaller town full of even smaller-minded people. That’s why, Leo. That’s how.’

Megan shuffled round to face him. She took his hand and held it. ‘The point is, it’s not just kids. What happened today, what happened at the supermarket: it’s not just kids.’

Leo looked down. He felt Megan’s plaintive stare and turned from it.