Mothers & Daughters (25 page)

Dad's birthday: Jaz, Phil and Dad sitting round the table and holding up glasses of wine (Pomagne for Jaz).

Calais: Jaz sitting at a wrought-iron table, sipping a bottle of grenadine through a straw. Phil next to her wearing a child's beach bucket on his head and making a Tommy Cooper gesture with his hands.

Jaz and Phil perched on a flint wall, squinting in the sunshine. Jaz's long limbs are milk-white; Phil is boiled pink.

Jaz dressed as Marceline for a school production of
Le Mariage de Figaro
.

The back page of the school prospectus, showing Jaz in the library with her head bowed over a copy of
Das Beste
.

Jaz and me on the patio, soaking up the sun on the last afternoon before she left for Leeds.

Rare close-up of Jaz without make-up, eyes cast down modestly.

The back inside cover of the album had a pocket for negatives, and in there was a folded newspaper clipping:
Missing Girl Found
. I didn't need to take that one out and look at it because it was burned on my memory.

These albums are my most precious possessions
, I imagined telling Ian.
I couldn't put a price on them. They're the first things I'd grab if the house was on fire
.

After Matty
, said Ian.

Obviously after Matty. I'd throw myself into an inferno to save Matty. And I saw myself battering down a door – no, running up a burning staircase – no, stumbling through a smoke-filled bedroom, calling his name.

The sound of a diesel engine faded in on the other side of the window; swelled, throbbed, then went ominously dead. As I pushed myself up off the carpet to see who it was had pulled into our drive, a car door slammed.

Jaz's car.

For a split second, all I could do was stare in horror.

Then I was staggering to my feet and throwing myself down the hall towards the back door.

CHAPTER 20

Photograph 256, Album Two

Location: the garden, Sunnybank

Taken by: Carol

Subject: A close-up of seven-year-old Jaz grinning
, sans
two of her top teeth. Her hair is in bunches and her lashes are impossibly long. It is about this age people start to recommend child-modelling agencies
.

The teeth have been having adventures all of their own. The first popped out while they were in the car, and promptly fell down the hole at the base of the seat belt. Carol has to ask Phil for his flexible claw and torch (it's lucky he knows his way round that shed, because she certainly doesn't). The second tooth gets mislaid by an idiot dinner lady and is never found, but Carol pretends, by substituting the first in its place, to have discovered it lodged in the front pocket of Jaz's school bag. The third Jaz loses herself, but it turns up in the lining of her coat, a barely detectable lump in the hem. ‘Why are they so damn small?' asks Phil, as though there's something personal and deliberate about Jaz's dental dimensions
.

The fourth tooth makes it unscathed to the pillow, but Carol, distracted by a bad marital row, forgets and is woken
in the morning by howls of outrage as Jaz unwraps the hanky to find the tooth and nothing but the tooth. ‘I expect the fairy was called away to a molar emergency,' says Carol, and gives her double-pay the night after
.

She's heard recently that some parents leave trails of glitter across the windowsill, make footprints by poking dolls into plant pots, leave gifts of new toothbrushes and certificates and stickers. Well then, Jaz shall have it all. There is nothing Carol won't do to make her daughter's childhood as secure and magical as it can be
.

The minute or so Jaz spent hammering on the door was enough for me to get out the back and warn Ian.

All I had to say was her name. His face went rigid and he just stood there, holding the football between his hands while Matty reached up and pawed at it. I thought, Oh God, he's going to argue, he's going to face her out.

‘Where's your car?' I hissed at him.

‘Round the back of Rydal Avenue. There wasn't room when I—'

‘Then she doesn't know for certain you're here,' I said. I was still holding onto the shred of hope that if I got him off the premises, we could bluff our way out. ‘Please, Ian, oh, please, go. For me.'

My distress outfaced him, I think. He glanced quickly round the garden as if assessing where he might hide, like some lover in a farce, and I heard him swear under his breath. Then he took off, running at the fence and vaulting it easily. He landed heavily, then righted himself, pelted across Laverne's lawn and disappeared round the side of her house. Immediately I hoisted Matty up into my arms, and hurried back through to let Jaz in.

It was Penny who was my undoing. Once again.

She'd heard Phil talking to me on the phone, caught the gist of the conversation, taken herself straight upstairs and called Jaz.

‘Why would she
do
that?' I asked Phil later.

‘Jealous,' he said.

The irony of that nearly killed me.

‘Where is he?' shouted Jaz, bursting in the second I unfastened the door.

‘Matty's here,' I said.

She stormed past me and into the lounge. Matty was wriggling to be put down, so I lowered him to the floor and he tottered after Jaz. But she took no notice, almost knocking him over as she doubled back. I watched her grab the newel and swing herself round, her knuckles white. She wrenched open the stair-gate, then her feet were pounding up the steps, and after a moment, I heard doors slamming against walls.

‘Come on,' I said to Matty. ‘Let's get you some juice.' And I walked him to the kitchen.

I ran the tap to get the water cold and reached for his beaker, at which point Jaz dashed past us, yanked open the back door and threw herself out onto the patio. I carried on making Matty's drink, counting down the last few seconds of calm.

‘I know he's been here,' she cried as she came back in. ‘I know what you've been up to.'

So here I was, in the scenario I'd never dared rehearse for fear of bringing it on. As Jaz stood and looked at me I thought, I've got to decide, here and now, to lie. Once I'm committed, that's it. ‘You don't mean Ian, do you?' I said, as neutrally as I could.

‘Of course I bloody mean Ian. Where is he? Where
is
he?'

I snapped the lid on the beaker and passed it down to Matty, who was clinging to my skirt. He refused to take it off me, so I stuck it on the corner of the table, then leaned myself against the sink unit to try and stop my legs shaking.

‘He's here,' she said again.

‘No, he isn't.'

Jaz seemed uncertain for a moment. She's not used to me lying, and she was probably considering her source, weighing my truth against Penny's. But her eyes were still wild.

‘I promise you, Ian isn't here.'

Her hands went to her scalp and she started pulling at her hair. She was breathing very fast. ‘If I find he has been.'

‘Well, he hasn't. I don't know who's put the idea into your head, but you need to calm down. You're upsetting Matty and you're doing yourself no good. Listen, I'll put some milk on and I'll make us a Horlicks, then you can talk about what's upsetting you.' I managed a weak smile. ‘After I've changed someone's nappy, anyway.'

I detached myself from the sink and steered Matty past her, towards the hallway.

‘If he's been here—' she said again, menacingly.

Once I was round the corner, my legs nearly gave way. I steadied myself on the back of a chair while my grandson tugged at cushion tassels. ‘Come here,' I said to him, and to my surprise he left the tassels at once and edged round till he was up against me. I bent down and held him very tight. ‘Nanna loves you, you know,' I said into his hair.
You have no idea how much. There aren't the words to describe it
.

He began to wriggle, but I held on another few seconds.

‘I hate Ian,' said Jaz from close behind me. ‘It's like a suffocating sensation when I think about him, like I can't breathe. Do you know what I mean?'

I nodded, then let Matty go.

‘I couldn't bear the thought of him sneaking round here.'

‘Well, I don't know where you got the idea from.'

The changing mat was in the far corner along with the nappies, bags, wipes, cream. I got Matty laid down and commenced removing his trousers.

‘Someone rang me,' she said.

‘What?'

Jaz looked sheepish. ‘Someone. All right. You can guess who.'

For a few seconds, I couldn't. Not for seven years has Penny had any contact with me, made any kind of approach. She took my husband; why would she need to do more?

‘Pen said she'd overheard Dad talking to you about it,' Jaz went on.

‘So Penny rang you?'

‘Yeah.'

‘She overheard us talking? She's never been here, how could she?'

‘On the phone.'

As understanding dawned, I thought I'd burst into flames with the horror of it. My skin grew hot and my heart banged against my ribs as I pictured Penny hovering on the stairs, ears strained. What had I said? What had Phil said? Oh dear God, dear God.

‘I know,' Jaz was saying. ‘I should have thought. The woman's a bitch, she'd claim anything to make trouble, wouldn't she?'

Dimly I was aware of Matty rolling and kicking his naked legs against the plastic mat, clean nappies scattering.

‘But you get a call like that – You can understand why I came haring round, can't you, Mum? Just the thought.'

I wanted to cry out, run upstairs and shut the bedroom door and howl. Matty, taking advantage of my distracted state,
squirmed some more and sent the Sudocrem pot rolling towards the hearth. I bent and placed my hands on his waist to calm him down, and because I needed to hide my face from Jaz till I got myself under control.

‘She's a nasty piece of work,' I said, my voice coming out strangled and high.

‘It is such a bloody mess, though. All of it. Like, you've made a massive mess of your life and now mine's gone the same way, and they're kind of rebounding off each other.'

I said nothing to that.

‘See, I know I'll have to let Ian see Matty at some point, I'm not stupid. But he can bloody well wait on me, till I'm ready, and I'm not ready yet, Mum. I still wake at night thinking of what he did, and replay that bloody text message, and it all sits on my shoulders and weighs me down. I'm never free of it. I can never forget. Some days I'm so depressed I could—But he'll not win, I shan't let him bring me right down. No one's ever going to hurt me like that again.'

I carried on cleaning my grandson, bagging up his nappy, pushing a new one under his hips.

‘So he can wait, because he deserves to be kept waiting; he needs to know how it feels to have everything ripped from under you.'

If Jaz would only go, it might be all right. I could close the front door, draw the curtains and have a good furious weep, I could be back in control. From there, we could maybe move the access thing forward so I was never in this position again. I'd sit down and think about a better way. But for now I was wrung out and distressed, and I needed to be on my own.

‘I suppose what I mean is, he needs to be hurt before he can understand what he's done.'

‘Could you get the Sudocrem for me, love,' I said.

She walked over towards the fireplace. ‘See, Matty's the only power I have over him now.'

I reached for Matty's trousers and began feeding his feet through the elasticated bottoms. ‘That's not true, Jaz. He loves you.'

‘Fuck you.'

‘Jaz,' I said urgently. ‘Matty's listening.'

‘
Fuck you
.'

The trousers had caught under the back fold of the new nappy, but they came free at last and I pulled them up. Then I turned round.

Jaz was holding the jacket Ian had hung on the back of the chair.

We stared at each other for the longest moment.

‘Fuck you both,' she said.

If I thought I'd seen Jaz angry before, I was wrong. She seemed to tower above us, raging, a cyclone of furious abuse. You came out of me, I thought as she flailed her arms and yelled. I nursed you on my lap. ‘How could you?' she was screaming. ‘Behind my back! You lied! I knew something was going on! Whose side are you on? I thought I could trust you!' And I remembered a doctor once asking, the time Jaz was ill, had I noticed how she seemed to direct her emotions inwards rather than outwards. And I hadn't noticed that, no, and I wondered what he'd say if he were here now.

‘How many times?' she went on. ‘How many lies have you told me? Sneaking behind my back. And to think I was bothered about you seeing David; Jesus! I suppose it was him who fucking talked you into this set-up. It was, wasn't it? I can tell by your face. Jesus fucking wept. What kind of mother are you? Interfering, making me look a bloody fool. This is
worse
than what Ian did. Has he been laughing at me? Have all three of
you been? How could you
do
it, Mum? How could you set up something like that after all I've been through. How could you even let him in the house?' I'd have attempted a reply if she'd paused to draw breath, only she didn't. ‘I should have expected this,' she shouted, ‘this betrayal. After all, it's what my whole life's been about, hasn't it?'