Hold My Hand (20 page)

Neither of them speaks for a moment. Fletcher gets another cigarette out, lights it, stares at the private detective. “I want to know where they are,” he says. “She can't be allowed to get away with this. Just find them for me, okay?”

 
Chapter Twenty-nine

“Euugh.”

Bridget suppresses the urge to roll her eyes. The euugh phase will pass. It will pass, like Thomas the Tank Engine and Pingu and pulling down her nappy to see what's inside. It will pass.

“Rabbit shit,” says Yasmin.

“Rabbit
poo
,” says Bridget. “It's rabbit
poo
.” Realises too late that she's backed herself into a corner.

“Rabbit poo, then.”

“You used to love peas.”

“Lily says they're rabbit shit. She says the rabbits wait until night when no-one's looking and then they shit it out and you eat it.”

“Well, Lily's wrong,” says Bridget, “and she needs to watch her language. Doesn't her Mum mind her talking like that?”

“She hasn't got a Mum,” says Yasmin, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

“Oh, sorry.”

Yasmin starts picking the peas out, one by one, from the rice. At least, reflects Bridget, she's using her knife and fork to do it with.

“Eat some chicken, anyway,” she orders.

Yasmin waggles her pigtails, spears a piece of chicken nugget and chews.

“Mouth shut,” says Bridget.

Yasmin washes the food down with a gulp of squash, goes back to separating pulses from grains.

“Cauliflowers are cows' brains,” she announces.

“Lily says that too, does she?”

A vigorous nod.

“Come on, you've got to eat
some
peas.”

She pulls a face like a gargoyle. “Euu-yachh.”

Bridget decides to wait a while between pestering. “So which one was Lily, again? I thought she was one of the Aykroyd children.”

“No.
You
know.
Lily
.”

One, two, three, four, five. All children think that their concerns are the only concerns, believe that anyone who doesn't know immediately what they're talking about is stupid. No need to get irritated.

I need some adult company. I love her, but I've really got to make friends.

“No,” she says, “I can't say I do.”

“Well she knows who
you
are.”

“Have we met?”

“Yuh.”

“When?”

“The day we were playing pilchards.”

Bridget gapes, uncomprehending.

“Sardines,” says Yasmin.

“Eat some rice.”

She spoons up a forkful, spills half in the transfer to her mouth.

“What does she look like?”

“Taller than me. Brown hair. Sort of messy. Skinny.”

“Is she a bit older?”

Yasmin nods. “Lily's nine,” she says. Then corrects herself, “Sort of.”

Sort of? What's
sort of
?

She vaguely recalls the girl. Skinny and sallow with hair that looked like it had been done in the kitchen, with a blunt knife.
It wasn't me. I didn't bloody do it. Didn't do what? I didn't bloody do it…

“And she swears like that all the time?”

“Oh,
Mum
.”

“I don't want you swearing like that.”

“Huh-huurrr,” says Yasmin.

“What do you want for dessert? Yoghurt or banana?”

“Banana.”

“So maybe she wants to come and play sometime?” asks Bridget.

Yasmin swivels to look at her. Damn me for desperate, using my child as a way of making friends for myself. The kid's got to have an adult attached somewhere.

“Maybe when Chloe comes tomorrow?”

Yasmin sounds suddenly condescending. “I don't think that'll be necessary, Mum,” she says.

She's a bit offended. “Oh. All right, then. Sorry.”

“It's okay,” says Yasmin. “We see plenty of each other. It's just – she doesn't really like grownups.”

“Fair enough.” There are a fair number of grownups who don't like children, after all.

“She says you're okay,” says Yasmin, propitiatively.

“Well, I'm honoured.”

“She just doesn't – want to be friends. With you.”

“Fine,” says Bridget. “Whatever.”

“Sorry,” says Yasmin.

“Believe me,” says Bridget, “I'm not upset if a nine-year-old doesn't want to be friends with me.”

Only upset enough to sound like a nine-year-old myself.

The mobile rings in another room.

“Phone's ringing,” says Yasmin.

“Thanks, smartarse. Where is it?”

“It's your phone,” says Yasmin. “As you're always pointing out.”

“You're not getting down 'til you've finished.”

Yasmin shrugs, American-adolescent style. “What
ever
.”

She can't help smiling as she leaves the room. That's the worst thing about disciplining children: the urge to laugh when cheekiness is done with flair and imagination. The phone's in her handbag, she remembers now. In the sitting room. It's on its third repetition of
Chocolate Salty Balls
when she puts her hand on it, buried down in the bottom under the empty diary and the spare tights. She hits the on button as she pulls it out, puts it to her ear.

“Hello?”

“You are so in for it now,” he says.

“Kieran,” she says. Thinks about hanging straight up, stays on the line. I have to get a new phone, she thinks. Can he find me by my records?

“When I find you,” he says, “you are so fucking in for it.”

“Go away, Kieran,” she says.

“Don't even
think
,” he says, “about telling me to fuck off.”

“I didn't. I told you to go away.”

“Shut the
fuck
up! Shut it!

What do you want, Kieran?”

“I want to give you a last chance. Tell me where my daughter is or I'll find out, and when I do…”

“That's why I'm not telling you,” she says.

“You've got to stop calling,” she says.

“Oh yeah? And what are you going to do about it?”

“I'm not going to answer. From now on, when I see it's you, I'm not going to answer. If you're going to call and threaten us, I won't answer.”

He ignores her.

“I want to speak to my daughter.”

“Tough,” she says harshly. “She doesn't want to speak to you.”

“It's not up to you.”

“It is,” she says.

“I'll fucking – you wait, Bridget. Just you wait. You can't stay hidden forever.”

She can't resist goading him, the distance giving her a sense of power she would never have had a month ago.

“You sound fucking pathetic. Little man, little Hitler. Don't you know it was your threats that made us go away in the first place? You're fucking pathetic. That's why you used to take it out on me, wasn't it? Beating up your family because you couldn't stand up for yourself when it came to people your own size.”

“Fuck you, Bridget,” he says.

“Yeah,” she sneers. “That's good. You always had a way with words, didn't you, Kieran?”

“Aah, fuck
you
!” he repeats. “You can't do this! You can't keep me away from my daughter!”

“Or what?” she says triumphantly. “Or you'll call the police?”

Silence.

“In case you'd forgotten, Kieran Fletcher,” she snarls, “the police were already meant to be keeping
you
away from
her
. A small matter of a thing called a restraining order, yes? You remember?”

“You're a lying bitch,” he says, sulkily.

“Yeah, but I'm not, am I? Fuck you, Kieran. It's because you couldn't control yourself that we've had to go away, and you're never getting back into our lives.
Never
, do you hear me? You can go fuck yourself and you can threaten me all you want, but you're never seeing her again. Fucking free with your fists cunting
bastard!
”

Her voice has risen to a shriek as she speaks. She hates him, hates him with boiling rage. Hates him for the years of fear, for the broken skin and broken bones, for the look in her daughter's eye she's not seen for weeks now.

“You will
never
find us. Do you hear me? It's
over
! Go and find someone else to bully!”

Bridget stabs a thumb onto the off button, throws the phone onto the sofa. It bounces off a cushion, slips to the floor, skids under the chair. Bridget hugs herself, wipes a lock of hair from her eyes. She feels shaky, strong, weak, tearful, brave. She feels free and trapped, enraged and at peace. She has told him. Finally told him. All of it, to his face, no fear of reprisal, no repercussions. Right, she thinks. And now we go on with our lives. I'll get a new phone. Leave that one down there. Let it ring until it dies.

She turns round to return to the kitchen.

Yasmin stands in the doorway. She is shiny white. As if she'd seen a ghost.

Chapter Thirty

“Mummy?”

She swims up out of sleep, heavy as though lead weights have been attached to her limbs. The clock reads 3:17. Her mouth is dry and furry.

There's a small figure in the doorway.

She smacks her lips together, unglues her tongue from the roof of her mouth. “What is it, baby? What's up?”

“Can I get in with you?”

“What's happened?”

“I saw Daddy in my room.”

“Oh, darling.”

She lifts the duvet and opens the bed up. Yasmin crosses the room and climbs in beside her. This is wrong. Supernanny would be wagging her finger if she saw me now. But it's after three and my baby's in a state.

Yasmin smells of talc and No More Tears. Bridget puts her arms round the frail body, breathes her in.

“He was standing at the foot of my bed,” says Yasmin. She sounds – defeated, exhausted.

“Oh darling,” she says again. She'd been half-expecting this. Whenever there was an incident with Kieran in London, Yasmin would be clingy and nervous for days, following her from room to room and kicking up a fuss whenever they left the house. I can't expect it all to clear up in a few weeks. She's lived her whole life with the shadowy promise that one night he might get in; you don't shrug that sort of history off just by moving.

“You know it was a dream, don't you?”

She feels Yasmin's hair scrape across her cheek as she nods. “But I dream about him.”

“I know. So do I, sometimes. But, darling. They're only dreams. Nothing in a dream can hurt you. It's just – stuff inside your head. Dreams are good. They're memories cleaning themselves out.”

“Then why do they have to be so scary?”

“Because –” she doesn't really have an answer for this. Except that she suspects that it's something that afflicts most species. She remembers the way Jinx, the fat tabby they had when she was Yasmin's age, used sometimes to caterwaul in his sleep, legs pumping as though he were running. Hunting or being hunted? Either, or both: but it was plain to see that what he was seeing was real to him. “I don't know, darling. It's just one of nature's little tricks.

“Chloe says that if you die in a dream you die for real.”

“Yuh, I know. Everyone says that. Of course, there's no way to actually tell if it's true.”

But I've always saved myself, haven't I, in nightmares? Always come to just before I hit the ground, or summoned the will to soar upward again, an inch from the pavement.

“I don't want him to find us,” says Yasmin

“I know, baby, I know.”

“He won't find us, will he?”

“No,” she says, definitely, defiantly. “And he won't be calling again anymore, either. I'm going to get a new phone, and then he'll never be able to call us again.”

“Do you promise?”

How can I promise? How can I promise something I can't be certain of? How do parents lie so blithely to their children, just for the sake of convenience?

She shifts, pulls her daughter closer to her bosom, kisses the top of her silky head.

“I promise, baby,” she says. “You're safe here. There's nothing here that can hurt us.”