A Traitor to Memory (82 page)

“Tha's okay.”

“Not,” she told him. She smacked his bum, then blew in his ear. “You don't get up, the kiss bugs're gonna go after you, Dan.”

His lips curved in a smile, although his eyes stayed closed. “Won't,” he said. “Got m' bug killer on.”

“Bug killer? I think not. You can't kill a kiss bug. Just you watch and see.”

She descended on him and planted kisses on his cheek, his ear, and his neck. She began to tickle him as she kissed him, until he finally came fully awake. He giggled, kicked, and fought her off halfheartedly, crying, “Yech! No! Get them bugs off me, Mum!”

“Can't,” she said breathlessly. “Oh m'God, there's
more
, Dan. There's bugs crawling everywhere. I don't know what to
do
.” She whipped back the covers and went for his stomach, crying, “Kiss, kiss, kiss,” and reveling in what always seemed like the newness of her son's laughter despite the years that she'd been free. She'd had to teach him the kiss-bug game all over again when she'd come out, and they had a lot of kisses to recapture. For being the victim of kiss bugs wasn't the sort of hardship a child in care ever had to endure.

She lifted Daniel to a sitting position and rested him back against his
Star Trek
pillows. He caught his breath and ended his giggles, gazing at her with brown-eyed contentment. She felt her insides swelling and glowing when he looked at her like that. She said, “So what's for Christmas hols, Dan? 'D you think about it like I told you?”

“Disney World!” he crowed. “Orlando, Florida. We c'n go to the Magic Kingdom first and then the Epcot Centre and after that Universal Studios.
Then
we can go to Miami Beach, Mum, and you c'n lay on the strand and I c'n surf in the sea.”

She smiled at him. “Disney World, is it? Where'd we get the dosh for that? You planning to rob a bank?”

“I got money saved.”

“Do you? How much?”

“I got twenty-five pounds.”

“Not a bad start, but not quite enough.”

“Mum …” He gave that two-syllable expression of a child's disappointment.

Yasmin hated to deny him anything after what the early years of his life had been like. She felt tugged in the direction of her son's desires. But she knew there was no sense in getting his hopes up—or her own for that matter—because there was more to consider than his will or hers when it came to how they were going to spend Daniel's Christmas holiday.

“What about Katja? She wouldn't be able to go with us, Dan. She'd have to stay behind and work.”

“So? Why can't you 'n me go, Mum? Just you 'n me? Like before.”

“Because Katja's part of our family now. You know that.”

He scowled and turned away.

“She's out there making your breakfast, she is,” Yasmin said. “She's doing those little Dutch pancakes you fancy.”

“She c'n do what she wants,” Daniel muttered.

“Hey, luv.” Yasmin bent over him. It was important to her that he understand. “Katja belongs here. She's my partner. You know what that means.”

“Means we can't do
nothing
without her round, stupid cow.”

“Hey!” She tapped his cheek lightly. “Don't talk nasty. Even if it was just you and me, Dan, we still couldn't go to Disney World. So don't you make Katja feel your disappointment, boy. I'm the one who's too short on money.”

“Why'd you ask me, then?” he demanded with the manipulative shrewdness of the eleven-year-old. “'F you knew we couldn't go in the first place, why'd you ask me where I want to go?”

“I asked you what you'd fancy
doing
, Dan. You changed it to where you'd fancy going.”

He was caught at that, and he knew it, and the miracle of her son was that somehow he'd escaped learning and liking to argue the way so many children his age argued. But still he was just a boy, without a full arsenal of weapons to fight off disappointment. So his face grew cloudy, he crossed his arms, and he settled into the bed for a sulk.

She touched his chin to lift his head. He resisted. She sighed and said, “Someday we'll have more than we got right now. But you got to be patient. I love you. So does Katja.” She rose from his bed and went to the door. “Up now, Dan. I want to hear you in that bathroom in twenty-two seconds.”

“I wan' to go t' Disney World,” he said stubbornly.

“Not half as much as I want to take you there.”

She gave the door jamb a thoughtful pat and went back to the
room she shared with Katja. There, she sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the sounds in the flat: Daniel rising and toddling to the bathroom, Katja making those tiny Dutch pancakes in the kitchen, the sizzle of the batter as she plopped a small portion into the shell-shaped crevasse where the hot butter waited, the
snick
of cupboard doors opening and closing as she fetched the plates and the powdered sugar, the click of the electric kettle switching off, and then her voice calling out, “Daniel? There are pancakes this morning. Your favourite breakfast I've made.”

Why? Yasmin wondered. And she wanted to ask, but to ask meant to question much more than the simple actions of blending the flour and milk, adding the yeast, and stirring the batter.

She brushed her hand along the bed, still unmade, that bore the impressions of their two bodies. The pillows still held the indentations of their heads, and the tangle of blankets and sheets together reflected the manner in which they slept: Katja's arms round her, Katja's warm hands cupping her breasts.

She'd pretended sleep when her partner had slid into bed. The room was dark—no light from a prison corridor
ever
cutting again through the black of a nighttime room in which Yasmin Edwards lay—so she knew that Katja couldn't tell if her eyes were open or closed. She'd breathed, “Yas?” but Yasmin hadn't answered. And when the covers shifted as she lifted them, as she slipped into the bed like a sail boat docking so sleek and sure where it always docked, Yasmin made the sleep sounds of a woman only half roused from her dreams by the interruption, and she noted that Katja froze for an instant, as if waiting to see how far into consciousness Yasmin would be able to come.

That moment of immobility had said something to Yasmin, but its full meaning was not entirely clear. So Yasmin turned to Katja as she drew the covers up to her shoulders. She said, “Hey, baby,” in a sleepy murmur, and eased her leg over Katja's hip. “Where you been?”

“In the morning,” Katja whispered. “There's too much to tell.”

“Too much? Why?”

“Shhh, now. Sleep.”

“Been wanting you here,” Yasmin murmured, and she tested Katja in spite of herself, knowing that she was testing her but not knowing what she'd do with the results. She lifted her mouth for her lover's kiss. She slid her fingers to graze the soft hair of her bush. Katja returned the kiss as always and after a moment gently pushed Yasmin onto her back.
She whispered deep in her throat, “Crazy lipstick girl,” to which Yasmin replied, “Crazy for you,” and heard Katja's breathy laugh.

What was to tell from making love in the darkness? What was to tell from mouths and fingers and lingering contact with sweet soft flesh? What could anyone learn from riding the current till it flowed so fast that it no longer made a difference who was guiding the ship to the port just so long as it reached its destination? What the hell was there ever to be gained in the field of knowledge from that?

I should've switched on the light, Yasmin thought. I could tell for certain if I'd seen her face.

She told herself simultaneously that she had no doubts and that doubts were natural. She told herself that there was in life no single sure thing. But still she felt the hard knot of not knowing tighten inside her like a screw being turned by an unseen hand. Although she wanted to ignore it, she couldn't ignore it any more than she could have ignored a tumour that was threatening her life.

But she shook off these thoughts. The day ahead intruded. She rose from the edge of the bed and began to make it, telling herself that if the worst was true, there would be other opportunities to know it.

She joined Katja in the kitchen, where the air was sweet with the smell of the little Dutch pancakes that Daniel loved. Katja had made enough for all three of them, and they were mounded like snow-dashed cobblestones in a metal baking dish that stood keeping warm on the hob. She was adding to their breakfast something decidedly English: Several rashers of bacon were sizzling on the grill.

“Ah, here you are,” Katja said with a smile. “Coffee's ready. Tea for Daniel. And where is our boy? Does he shower? This is new, yes? Is there a girl in his life?”

“Don't know,” Yasmin said. “If there is, he hasn't said.”

“That will happen soon, Daniel and girls. Sooner than you think. Children now grow up so very fast. Have you talked to him yet? Life talk. You know.”

Yasmin poured herself a mug of coffee. “Facts of life?” she asked. “Daniel? You talking 'bout how babies get made?”

“It would be useful information if he yet knows nothing of the matter. Or would he have been told already? In the past, I mean.”

Carefully, Katja didn't say “when he was in care,” and Yasmin knew the German woman would avoid voicing those words and invoking the memories attached to them. Katja's way had always been to move forward, making no reference to the past. “How do you think I abide
inside these walls?” she'd once said to Yasmin. “By making plans. I consider the future and not the past.” And Yasmin, she'd gone on, would be wise if she followed that example. “Know what you're going to do when you're out of here,” she'd insisted. “Know exactly who you will be. Then make it happen. You can do that. But start making that person now, in here, while you have the chance to concentrate on her.”

And you? Yasmin thought in the kitchen as she watched her lover begin to scoop the pancakes onto their plates. What of you, Katja? What were your plans when you were inside and who was the person you wanted to be?

Katja had never said exactly, Yasmin realised now, just, “There will be time when I am free.”

Time for who? Yasmin wondered. Time for what?

She'd never considered before what safety there was in imprisonment. The answers were simple when you were inside, and so were the questions. In freedom, there were too many of both.

Katja turned from the cooker, one plate in her hand. “Where
is
that boy? His pancakes will be like pucks for hockey if he doesn't hurry.”

“He wants to go to Disney World for his Christmas hols,” Yasmin told her.

“Does he?” Katja smiled. “Well, perhaps we can make that happen for him.”

“How?”

“There are ways and there are ways,” Katja said. “He is a good boy, our Daniel. He should have what he wants. So should you.”

Here was the opening, so Yasmin took it at once, saying, “And if I want you? If that's all I want?”

Katja laughed, placed Daniel's plate on the table, and came back to Yasmin. “See how easy it is?” she said. “You speak your wish, and it is granted at once.” She kissed her and went back to the cooker, calling out, “Daniel! Your pancakes are ready for you now! You must come. Come!”

The doorbell buzzed and Yasmin glanced at the small chipped clock that stood on the cooker. Half past seven. Who the hell …? She frowned.

Katja said, “This is very early for a neighbour to call,” as Yasmin loosed and retied the obi on the scarlet kimono she wore as a dressing gown. “I hope there is no trouble, Yas. Daniel has not played the truant, has he?”

“Better not have,” Yasmin said. She strode to the door and looked
through its spy hole. She drew in a sharp breath when she saw who stood there, waiting patiently for someone to answer, or perhaps not so patiently because he reached out and pushed the bell once again. Katja had come to the kitchen door, pan in one hand and pancake turner in the other. Yasmin said to her in a terse whisper, “It's that damn bloody
copper
.”

“The black man from yesterday? Ah. Well. Let him in, Yas.”

“I don't want—”

He rang the bell again, and as he did so, Daniel popped his head out of the bathroom, shouting, “Mum! There's the door! You gonna get it or wha’?” without noticing her standing in front of it like a disobedient child avoiding castigation. When he saw her, he looked from his mother to Katja.

Katja said, “Yas. Open the door.” And to Daniel, “You've got pancakes waiting. Two dozen I've made you, just as you like them. Mum says you want Christmas at Disney World. Put your clothes on and tell me about it.”

“We're not going,” he said sullenly as the bell rang another time.

“Ah. You know the future that well? Get dressed. We need to talk about this.”

“Why?”

“Because talking makes dreams more real. And when dreams are more real, they have a better chance of coming true. Yasmin,
mein Gott
, will you answer that door? He's heard us, that man. He plans to stay till you open.”

Yasmin did so. She jerked on the door so hard, it nearly flew from her hand as behind her Daniel ducked into his bedroom and Katja returned to the kitchen. She said without preamble to the black constable, “How'd you get up here, then? I don't recollect buzzing you into the lift.”

“Lift door was ajar,” DC Nkata said. “I helped myself to it.”

“Why? What more you want with us, man?”

“A few words. 'S your …” He hesitated and looked beyond her, into the flat where the kitchen light made an oblong of yellow on the carpet squares in the sitting room where no other lights were yet lit. “Katja Wolff here as well?”

“Half past seven in the morning, where'd you expect her to be?” Yasmin demanded, but she didn't like the expression on his face as she asked the question, so she hurried on. “We told you everything there is to tell when you 'as here before. Another time through everything i'n't going to make no difference to what we already said.”

“This's something new,” he told her evenly. “This's something else.”

“Mum,” Dan called out from his bedroom, “where's m' school jumper? Is it on the telly 'cause I can't find it with the rest—” His words trailed off as he left his bedroom in search of the piece of clothing. He was wearing his white shirt, his underpants, and socks, and his hair still glistened with the water from his shower.