The Day She Died

Twenty

Wednesday, 12 October

Which is why I ended up phoning her the next day. I only ever phone my mother when I’m dead angry and dead clear and there’s no chance she’ll gaslight me. As to why I phone her, I’m just keeping the lines open, just in case the day ever comes. And, she’s my mum. Caroline with the couch told me about these baby monkeys that get taken away from their mothers and put in a cage with a fur-covered box. It’s pretty useless, hard and hollow and that, but it’s all they know. And the thing is, if you take it away from them, they pine for it. Even if you take it away and replace it with an actual female monkey who cuddles them back, they pine for the fur-covered box cos it’s what they know. So I don’t beat myself up anymore about phoning my mum sometimes. I’m a monkey.

“Jess,” she said when she answered. I wasn’t holding my breath to hear what followed, not really. “Long time, no hear.”

“Things must be bad, Mum, if you’ve had to put your phone to incoming calls only.” Two sentences-one each-and we were fighting. I took a deep breath and tried again. “How’s Allan and Penny?”

“Fine, as you’d know if you ever called them.”

“Oh, they’re feeling the pinch too, are they? Can’t afford to call me?”

“Penny’s busy with the children,” said Mum. “It’s all right for you.”

“Yeah, lucky me. Okay, now you ask me a question and before you know, it’ll be a conversation.”

“Any man among you who bridleth not his tongue,” said my mother.

“James, Chapter 1, I forget the verse,” I said. “I’m rusty.”

“Well, I suppose you’ve no call for it, in your everyday life,” she said. “Just pick a saint and light a candle.”

“Actually, Mother, what I do is sort clothes and wash them and help people who really need them to choose what’s best and try not to make them feel too crap for being there. What have you done for anyone except yourself lately?”

“My prayer group-”

“Exactly,” I said. “Well, it was lovely to catch up, as always.”

“That’s it?” She almost shrieked it. “Not a word for months-”

“From either one of us,” I said. “Not until I phoned you.”

“I shouldn’t have to phone you,” she said. “I’m your mother.”

“How often do you phone Allan?” I said.

“Penny’s busy with the little ones,” she said again. “That’s different.”

“If I was busy with kids, would you phone me?” I asked.

“Don’t tell me you’ve disgraced yourself on top of everything,” she said. “I’m not stepping in, Jess, if the social workers take it off you. I can’t start all that at my age.”

“You are unbelievable,” I said. “No, I haven’t disgraced myself. I’m still single and childless and living alone in my thirties. Is that what you want to hear? Is that what you want for me?”

“Well, that’s a mercy,” she said. “But don’t try to make me feel guilty because you set your face against everyone. I didn’t train you to turn people away. I’ve done my best to help you make friends. If you were part of a community… ”

“I’m not joining the church, Mother. I don’t believe any of it. Why don’t you join a mosque first and tell me how it’s done when you don’t actually buy a single word?”

“Oh, Jess,” she said. “You push people away. You don’t keep in touch. You ignore people who’re trying to be in touch with you.”

“Give my love to Allan. And Penny as well if she’s not too busy with the children to take it.”

“I try to help,” she said. “I suppose nothing came of it?”

“And remember where I am, every weekday except Thursday. Don’t pass the door.”

“I’m not in the habit of going into such places, Jess,” said my mother. “You know how easily upset I am by… unpleasantness.”

“Yeah, beggars and lepers can whistle as far as you’re concerned.”

“I don’t share your taste for long-haired layabouts, Jess. That’s no need to-”

“Just as well there’s plenty of folk who don’t mind them. Like Jesus and me.”

“Do not take the Lord’s name-”

“I didn’t. I was referring to him in a completely normal-”

“-in vain, if you’ll let me finish.”

“-way. As opposed to Jesus motherfucking Christ in a”-the phone went dead in my hand-“cummerbund.”

“What’s a cumblebund?” said Ruby. She was right beside me, standing on the cold lino in her bare feet, her toes white. Her circulation must be as bad her daddy’s. I peeled off my bed socks and put them on her.

“You’re a cumblebund,” I said. “You’re the best little bundle of cumbles I’ve seen today, anyway.”

“Can I keep these socks?” she said, sliding them up the lino at the edge of the carpet strip towards the living room. She turned. “Dillon’s got a minging nappy, by the way.” She smiled and disappeared through the doorway.

It was long gone eight before Gus got up. He came into the kitchen wearing the old hairy suit and a white shirt and tie. His hair was in a pony tail. He had his everyday black work boots on.

“I know,” he told me. “It’s the best I can do.”

“You look daft, Dad,” said Ruby.

“Thank you, my sweetheart,” he said.

“But where are you going?” I asked him. He opened his eyes very wide and then glanced between both the kids.

“Quick word in the living room, Jess?” he said. I followed him. “Have you forgotten? I know you were upset last night, but… do you have black-outs?”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s Becky’s funeral today. You’re watching the kids.”

“I have absolutely no memory of this,” I said.

“You said days ago you would watch them whenever it was,” he told me. “I said I was taking them, and you said no. So I asked if you would watch them.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said. “I remember that.”

“You just said you didn’t.”

“No-yes. Oh, shit. Look. What I meant was I didn’t remember that it was today.”

“But I just told you last night.”

“I forgot.”

“You just said you remembered.”

I turned away and walked towards the front window. There must be a way to work this out; there had to be. I was freaking out at Gus because my mother had just scrambled me. That was all. Then I froze.

It was caught in a cobweb in the corner of the frame. Four inches long, grey and white, with a weird brown streak through it. It was kind of separating, like greasy hair combed away from a parting, and it blew gently back and forward.

“What’s up?” said Gus.

“Nothing,” I told him. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from it. The sheen on the curve of it, where it all held together; the little gaps on the straight bit where it spiked into points like the teeth of a comb. And the brown bit that didn’t belong. “Look, I was really upset last night, like you said. And I think you’re more upset than you know this morning. So I’ll phone in sick, you go to the funeral. I’ll see you tonight. I’ll get a hold of myself, I promise. Stop… fretting about things that don’t matter.”

“What things?” he said.

At last, I managed to turn my head. I turned my whole body, faced him.

He was looking at me in one of his many special, creepy ways. I had the thought before I could block it. Not creepy, I told myself. Just really alert, with his head on one side, slightly off to the side, like a bird with a worm. That bloody bird with a worm again.

“Stupid things,” I answered. “Like why Becky put the bins out last Tuesday before she drove away.”

“What?” There were two spots of colour high up on his cheeks.

“Things like that,” I said. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, right there behind me. What if a gust of wind blew it free? Was the window closed all the way? Could it blow in through a gap and land on my neck? I could feel my skin crawling.

“Tidying up,” said Gus. “Putting her affairs in order, they call it. Seems about right to me.”

“Okay,” I said. “But she must have waited for the binmen to come and then brought them back over too,” I said. “And that’s bothering me. Fine, I agree, she’d clear out the nappies, but why would she wait until the men came and then wheel them back? This week it was dead late before they showed up.”

“And what makes you so sure she did?” said Gus.

“They were here,” I said. “I met you in Marks, we came back here, you went away with the cops and came back with them. And then you got the pen from Ruby’s bedroom and went outside with it. The wheeliebin was there on the porch, and I don’t see how it got there.” He said nothing. Didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t even blink. “Stupid things like that,” I told him.

“Maybe the men were early that day,” he said at last.

“But she drove away through the farmyard so no one would see her,” I said. “Would she really risk bumping into someone when she was doing the bins?”

“Or maybe someone else brought them back,” he said. “For a favour.”

“Who, though? When I asked if there was someone who could come and stay with the kids, you said there wasn’t. And why wouldn’t they do the favour this week again when they knew what a time you were having?”

“Jessie,” he said. “Are you sure nothing’s upset you?” And I swear he glanced at the corner of the window. Unless I was going crazy. Unless my mother had really messed me up again.

“Noth-” I said, but he cut me off.

“It was probably Gizzy,” he said. “She hates our wheelies at the end of the path making her site look untidy. That’ll have been it.”

I nodded. It made sense. But I knew I would never ask Gizzy. I didn’t want to know.

“So,” he said, sounding like someone who was off on a picnic, not heading to where he was headed today, “you’re sure you can face the kids? Last night must have kicked up some dust.”

I went back to him and put my arms around him then. He was leaving his children with me. And I knew how much he loved them. And yet it was me he was worried about.

“We’re both knackered,” I said. “I’m going to ask for some time off once everything’s settled.”

“What everything?”

Kazek and the money and Ros and Gary the Gangster, was what I couldn’t say.

“This everything, of course,” I said flipping his tie. “The funeral.”

He tipped my face up and kissed my cheek. I waited until he was out of sight before I wiped the trace of the kiss away.

And I would be okay with the kids. I was in charge of whatever I chose to do. I wasn’t in charge of how I felt, but I didn’t have to let how I felt run the show. “Thanks a bunch, Stacey!” I whispered to myself. Nothing like a bit of cognitive behaviourism to strip you of any comfort and make you feel like crap. I went into the kitchen-“All right for a minute, kids?”-and put on a pair of rubber gloves.

“Another nap-py!” Ruby sang. “Cos of all the gra-hapes!” I wondered if it had ever occurred to her she used to wear them too. I didn’t tell her. I went through the living room, into the hall, out the front door. Since Ruby had my bed socks, my feet shrank and stung when they hit the cold brick of the path, beaded with melting frost, and reaching in towards the living room windowsill I stood on a thistle too.

I couldn’t have said why, but while I stretched my hand out towards it I thought of my granny’s face, wooden and purple, pebble-dashed with the dark vomit that she’d died in, teeth dry in her mouth, eyes clouding over like eggs slowly poaching.

And bugger me if it didn’t help. Or maybe Gus trusting me had helped. Or my mother giving me something to push against. Maybe all three. For whatever reason, I grabbed it, pulled it free of the spider’s web-it had stuck itself in there quite tightly-and brought it towards me, holding it up in front of my face for a good long look.

My heart was going gub-gub-gub, right up in my throat, and I knew I was shaking, and not just from the cold seeping up my legs and through my thin nightie. But I stared at it, the quill, like nail parings, like dead skin, like claws; and the grey part, stiff with grease, waxy; the softer white part, plump, plush, and gleaming. It was disgusting. It was horrific. And there was something else too. That funny brown streak running through it. I brought it closer still. Did they all have that? Did I just not know because I’d never looked before?

No. Definitely not. Not all feathers had that patch of stiffer brown in them, because it was a thread from a hessian sack. I pinched together two yellow rubber fingers and plucked it out, watching the waxy, gleaming length of it cleave to let it go and then fold in on itself again. I opened my fingers and let the strand of hessian fly away.

I dressed the children in warm clothes and wellie boots, did their teeth, brushed Ruby’s hair and tied it in bunches, then set out with them across the turf to the workshop. I had to know.

“Oh, Daddy’ll kill you,” said Ruby, when she knew where we were going.

“I’ll chance it,” I said. “Did Daddy not like Mummy coming here?”

“Mummy,” said Dillon.

“Mummy’s dead and living on a cloud in heaven,” said Ruby.

Yeah, I thought, as I dragged them along. Even though she wasn’t pregnant after all. Because she couldn’t stand it anymore. Even if she was gay, she wasn’t from the fifties (or the Brethren). She loved her kids and her garden and she had a friend. So what exactly was it that she couldn’t stand anymore? What else was there apart from the one thing in her life I hadn’t even looked at until now, because it was the best thing I’d ever had? A dream come true.

All any girl really wants is a guy who can get over his wife dying before the sun goes down. A guy who understands and understands, and then sets little hoops for you to jump through. Saves up a great big sackfuls of little hoops without even telling you and starts the training the very next morning after you’ve told him how bad it was-worse, surely, than he could have dreamed of. Or I wouldn’t want his dreams if not, anyway.

If it was true. Maybe it was just a feather, with a bit of brown crud stuck in it. Once I saw the workshop, I’d surely know. The picture of that sack was burned onto my eyeballs. If he’d moved it, it would look different.

He’d moved it right enough. I left the kids playing outside-they’d found a muddy puddle and couldn’t believe their luck-and opened up the House side of the workshop. It didn’t seem nearly so bad in the light of day with the children squabbling and giggling. Or maybe it didn’t seem so creepy without the sack lying all alone on the little bit of space between the stone wall and the breeze-block wall. It was gone. I walked to the corner and looked along the length of the room to the back. It wasn’t there either, just another passageway between the breeze block and the stone. A window in the stone on this wall. I walked along and looked round the next corner. Breeze block and stone. A door in the stone, wooden, barred shut and padlocked. And the fourth wall. Breeze block and the other wall this time was plaster, dividing this side of the workshop from the one where Gus had taken me. No sign of the sack anywhere.

I closed up again, padlocked the door, and opened the other one. The smell of the old drain was worse in here. Gus couldn’t have worked in it even if he’d wanted to. He’d definitely been here for a visit though, because there was the sack. Just inside the door, the neck tied tighter shut than I’d left it.

Still. Still I couldn’t bring myself to face it all. Still I was telling myself that his ploy with the feather in the spider’s web had worked. I had touched it and stayed standing. I hadn’t curled in a ball and squeezed my head. I had dressed the kids and come looking for more. Come looking for answers.

I let my gaze move around the crazy jumble of the workshop, over the shelves and tables, over the bags and boxes and parcels. The answers had to be here. He was a mystery to me, this man I’d fallen for like a rock off a cliff, and here was his secret place. Even if I couldn’t bring myself to ask the questions, the answers were here.

Only, once I’d been looking round for five minutes, I wondered how secretive he was really. Ruby-I lifted my head and looked out the door at them: muddy but happy-had said Mummy didn’t come here, but there were notes in Becky’s handwriting everywhere. That loose loopy script I remembered so well: I’m sorry, I can’t go through it again. I can’t go on. So she didn’t just scrawl in her suicide note. She scrawled all the time. Except in her diary. Which didn’t make sense at all.

Until all of a sudden it did. That diary wasn’t in Becky’s writing. That book in her bedside table belonged to Ros. Because Gus would know if Becky had kept one, and he’d have read it after she’d killed herself. So it wasn’t Becky’s. It was Ros’s, and she’d given it to Becky before she went away. Or Becky had taken it. And what else might she have taken? I remembered the phone in the basket on the porch. Ros’s phone? Becky’s mobile gone with her and Gus’s destroyed. Was that Ros’s phone?

Was this the answer at last? The police thought Ros had taken her things because her things were gone. But if Becky’d had Ros’s diary and her mobile, then she could have had her passport and clothes and everything.

I started searching in earnest then, because wherever Ros’s stuff was, it wasn’t at the house. I tore into boxes of nails and bolts, tore open sacks and bin bags, rummaged through piles of canvas and tarpaulin, peered into drums of wire and plumbing parts and finally found it right at the back of the room, a black sack, another bloody black bin bag, that felt-who knew it better than me, who booted them over the floor every day and rooted through them?-like clothes and shoes.

“Oh shit,” I said, dragging it into the middle of the floor where there was some space to open it and some light to see. “She killed her friend and then herself and Gus knows it. That’s what he’s hiding. That’s why he freaked when Ros’s sister phoned.” A tingle went through me and I knew what had been niggling away at the back of my brain. If Becky killed Ros, then Ros hadn’t phoned to say she was fine. Gus lied. Gus knew. Oh God, if only he’d told me last night when I asked him about the worst thing he’d ever done. I didn’t even think-not really-that covering up a crime by his children’s mother when she was dead anyway was all that bad. Understandable anyway.

If, I reminded myself, catching hold of the runaway train of my thoughts. If this is Ros’s stuff in here. I stuck my fingernails into the plastic and pulled open a hole.

Jesus God! I reeled backwards at the smell. Mould and mud and something foul like a bunch of flowers left in the water too long if you breathe in deep when you pour it away. Rot and slime and decay.

But not death. Not animal. If it had been, I’d never have been able to turn the hole into a tear and see what I’d found. I closed my eyes, opened them again, looked down, and let my breath go in a rush of disappointment and foolishness. It was just a load of Gus’s old clothes. Soaking wet. Shoved away in a bin bag like only a guy would do, but Gus’s clothes. Not Ros’s. My lovely, horrendous solution wisped off like the smell that was clearing from the bag now that it was open again. I raked through the things: a coat, one of those khaki ones with a long tail that kids used to paint the Anarchy sign on the back of; a jersey, ruined; a pair of tweedy trousers, totally ruined; black dress shoes, well-ruined. He could have worn them to the funeral if they hadn’t been, instead of going along like some lout in his work boots. A flicker of unease crossed me at the thought of it. The thought of what, though? I sat still and listened to myself.

How long had this lot been here? Not long, if they were still soaking. How could he not remember that he’d just ruined his black shoes, the day he put work boots on for his wife’s funeral? When he remembered, why would he not come here and get the bin bag to start drying the stuff out again? Why didn’t he dry it out straight away? So I started going through the pockets, thinking maybe a petrol receipt or a lottery ticket or something would tell me they’d been there longer than I thought.

There was nothing in the jacket pockets. Nothing in the trousers’ back pocket. I pulled the front pockets inside out to look, and that was when I saw it. I stared. I reached my hand out and picked it up. It was tiny, the size of an apple pip. I’d never have seen it if it hadn’t been so bright. So unbelievably fluorescent orange. It was a crumb of rubber from the broken end of a bracelet.

I was so calm. I locked up and got the kids, took them home, only using half my brain to fight the madness that was growing inside it. Gus might have waded into the sea to save a baby gosling that was getting swept away. (Except that was river water, and I knew it). And maybe when Ruby broke her bangle that Ros gave her, he put it in his pocket. (Except Kazek said it wasn’t hers). I still had half my brain free for the kids.

“You are so having a bath when we get in. Yes, before lunch. You look like chocolate mice.”

“Lot-lit,” said Dillon.

“I’ll bring you some treats to eat in the bubbles, but you’re getting a bath and you’re getting your hair washed. Ruby-licious, you’re filthy!”

I dropped the torn bin bag into the wheelie. I’d tied the stuff back up again in a new one and hoped he’d not have memorised the knot he’d used the first time. Then I hurried inside. The phone was ringing.

“Hello?”

“It’s Gus,” he said. He sounded hoarse and far away.

“Hiya,” I said.

“Becky?” I couldn’t cope with what it might mean if he was asking what he seemed to be. So I pretended not to understand.

“What about her? Gus, are you okay?”

“It said in the online Standard her funeral was today. What the hell’s going on there?”

“I don’t know what you’re asking me. What do you mean it said in the Standard? Who picked the day?”

“What’s happening?” said Gus. “Is Becky dead, or isn’t she? Who are you?”

“What’s this?” I said, “the start of an insanity defence? Where the hell are you anyway?”

“I’m closer than you think, and I’m coming home,” he said. “It’s way overdue.”

“Was that Daddy?” said Ruby. I was staring at my reflection in the mirror, thinking about Granny laughing with the feather stuck to her lips, Granny twisted on the floor with her eyes clouding.

“It was,” I told Ruby. I looked down at both of them, hair stiff with mud, dried mud cracking off their anoraks, cheeks daubed like war paint. “What are you like?” I said. “Well, here’s the good news. You’re not going in the bath. We’re going on a trip. We’re going to visit… can you guess?”

“Mummy?” said Dillon.

I kicked myself. “Kazek!” I said. “Yeay!”

“Yeay,” said Ruby. “Mr. Wet Guy. Dzieki, Jessie.”

“Deekeeeee,” said Dillon.

I was reeling, but I still managed to notice that there were two proper baby seats in the van. And that’s when the anger arrived at last to take over from all the fear. He’d done nothing but lie to me since the minute I met him. What was the point of that one that day? To keep me at home with the kids while he… what? Was that the day he went to the morgue or was that the day he went to the cops? Becky wasn’t pregnant and she probably wasn’t gay either, and Gus had a piece of Wojtek’s bangle in his pocket, a guy who ended up dead in a river. And Gus had river water all over his clothes. And-this filled me with such boiling rage I thought I’d have to pull over, like I wasn’t safe to drive-nobody talks back to voice-mail messages. Nobody!

This time I got a parking space no bother, middle of the day, middle of the week, and I hustled the kids up the stairs into the flat.

“Mr. Wet Guy,” said Ruby. “Czesc!”

“Czesc mala,” said Kazek. He turned to Dillon. “Czesc maly. Co dzis porabiasz?”

“Eh?” said Ruby. “Is this your house? I thought you lived at the beach.” She started wandering round looking the place over.

“This is my house, Roobs,” I told her and was surprised to see her turn on her heel and shoot me a look of anguish.

“You live with us!” she said. “Daddy and Dillon and me.”

“This is my old house,” I told her. “Kazek lives here now that I live with you, sweetie.”

This satisfied her and she went back to her poking around. Dillon had found the remote and switched the telly on. Some programme about houses in the country. He held the handset up to me, the mud cracking off his cheeks as he stretched his pleading smile as wide as it would go.

“Cartoons, Jessie.” I got my Shrek DVD out and put it on for them.

“I’ll bring you some crisps,” I told them, but Kazek pulled me out into the hall.

“Why babies here? Gary! Dangerous!”

“Gary doesn’t know I live here.”

“Gary find out.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Well, okay, at least Gus doesn’t know I live here. Look, Kazek.” I pulled the broken bracelet out of my pocket and put it in his hand. He groaned-such pain-and two tears fell onto the little curl of orange rubber in his palm.

“Wojtek,” he said. “Where find?”

“Gus,” I told him. “I think… I don’t know what to think, but we have got to go to the police. We have to.”

“No, Jessie-Pleasie,” he said. “Gary zna tego policjanta I sa dobrymi kumplami. Nic nie rozumiesz! You no understand.”

“No kidding!” I said. “Okay, well, what about this? What about a priest? A Father? I need to tell someone. What do you think of that then?”

Kazek blew his cheeks out and wrinkled his brow. Then he nodded. “Okay. Holy Father? Okay.”

I dialled the number praying that it would be Father Tommy and not Sister Avril who answered.

“Good morning,” said his voice. Was it really still morning?

“It’s Jessie,”

“Jessie, my child,” he said. “How are things down on the catwalk?”

“I’m not at work, Father,” I said. “I’m at home and I’m in trouble. I need you to come. I-” I was ready to plead and cajole, but I’d forgotten who I was talking to. He might not wear a cape or his pants outside his trousers, but Father Tommy was already in the chute to the Batmobile.

“God keep you, my child,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

It was less than ten minutes later when the pounding came on the door.

“Jesus, Father, cool it,” I muttered, as I trotted along the corridor. He hammered on the door again, and I was on the point of taking the chain off when something stopped me.

“Who is it?” I said.

“Jessie, I know you’re in there.” Gus’s voice was ragged, like he’d been running. Or crying. I could hardly hear him through the door.

“How?” I said. “How do you know this is my flat?”

“Just let me in and I’ll explain.”

My hand was on the chain when he thundered his fists against the panels again. Both fists, fast as anything, like in a cartoon when they go round and round and turn blurry. It sounded like insanity.

Kazek came out of the living room, pulling the door shut behind him.

“Is Gary!” he whispered. “Don’t open, Jessie-Pleasie. Is Gary. He kill me. No open door.”

“It’s Gus,” I whispered back. “Gus?” I said in a normal voice. “Please tell me what’s going on. How did you find me?”

“Why did you run away? Where are the kids?”

“They’re here, of course,” I said. “Where else would they be? But Gus, you need to calm down if you want me to let you in. You’re scaring me and you’ll scare them too.” Ruby had sidled round the living room door with her eyes like saucers.

“Is that Daddy?” she said.

He heard her. “Ruby!” he shouted. “Daddy’s here, darling. Open the door.”

Ruby sprang forward and when I held her back, she started to scream. Gus went back to pounding.

“Let me in or I’ll call the cops, Jessie,” he said. “You’ve no right to take my kids away.”

He had a point. And how was he supposed to explain anything through a door?

“Just promise me you’ll stay calm,” I said. Kazek was shaking his head. He took Ruby and lifted her up into his arms, holding her tightly. I undid the chain and had my hand on the lock to turn it before Kazek understood what I was doing.

“No, Jessie-Pleasie!” The pounding stopped. There was silence.

“Gus?” I said. “Are you still there?”

I heard a whisper and put my ear close to the door.

“What did you say?”

“Bitch.” He hissed it at me. “Who the fuck have you got in there?”

I felt my face drain. “Gus, no,” I said. Even then, even then, I was looking for reasons not to believe what was happening.

“Fucking filthy bitch.”

He was upset after the funeral.

“Fucking filthy wheedling whining bitch.”

I’d taken his kids.

“Fucking moaning stinking filthy bitch.”

He heard a man’s voice in my flat.

“Gus, no,” I said again.

There was an explanation for everything else. Somehow. And I’d listen to it too. If he just passed one test. There was a bag of clothes hidden in his workshop. Either it was innocent or it wasn’t. I had to know.

“Gus,” I said. “I’ve got something to tell you. I brought the kids here because I don’t want them to see the cops at your place.”

And here was my answer. His footsteps hammering on the concrete close, and ringing on the stairs as he ran away until there was silence apart from Shrek and Dillon eating crisps and Ruby still softly crying.

I went to the bathroom and got cool cloths for the children’s faces to wipe away the muck and the tears in one go. I was numb. Hands cold, lips blue, but still my head was fizzing. How did he know where I lived? A week ago he hadn’t known a thing about me. He hadn’t even known my name. And then with a click, another piece of it fell into place. He had known my name. He thought it was Jess. And at long last I knew why.

I was coming back from the bathroom when I heard the sound of new footsteps on the stairs. Soft as it was, Kazek heard it too. And Ruby. He had put her down but he kept his arms around her.

“Daddy?” she said.

But I’d know those crepe soles anywhere.

“Father?” I asked, loud enough for him to hear me through the door. “Before I open up, is there anyone hanging around? Did you see anyone out on the street?”

“Oh, Jessie,” he said. “What manner of mess are you in now? No, there’s no one.”

I opened the door and he took in the tableau. Kazek crouching on the floor, Ruby red-faced and sniffing, me white with shock and still shaky. It was Kazek he came back to.

“Kazimierz Czarnecki,” he said. “We’ve all been looking for you.”