Owning Jacob - SA

Simon Beckett

Owning Jacob

He found the locked box the day after the funeral.

It had been his worst day even before he opened it. Until then there had been an aim, something to focus on that fil ed the days with at least the il usion of purpose. The bureaucratic rituals of death and burial were details behind which he could hide, while the funeral itself was unreal, a pantomime which he watched with a numbed detachment. Afterwards, though, once he had closed the door on the last of the friends and mourners, there was nothing to occupy the space that Sarah's death had caused. He had put Jacob to bed, turned on the TV

and quietly got drunk until the fact of tomorrow, and the tomorrows after that, was smudged by an alcoholic fog.

When he woke the next morning the day was as cold and bleak as the empty bed beside him. He got up and dressed, as though by moving he could keep one step ahead of the awareness that dogged his heels. Jacob was silent as Ben poured milk on his cereal, but his eyes darted about the kitchen as if he were looking for something. Ben wondered how much of what had happened the six-year-old was able to understand.

He rested his hand on his stepson's head.

'Maggie's going to take you to school today, okay?' Jacob gave no sign of having heard. He bent and held one ear close to the cereal, listening to the puffed rice crackling in the milk. Ben tried to think of something he could say, but the effort of words was like lifting a weight above his head.

He gave the boy's hair a brief ruffle and moved away.

Maggie was on time, as usual Her forced cheerfulness fil ed the kitchen like a clashing colour scheme. Ben suppressed his irritation as she greeted Jacob with an enthusiasm that was as grating as it was false. Jacob didn't acknowledge her. His attention was stil fixed on his breakfast cereal, which by now had soaked itself into silence. He had eaten some of it and was arranging the rest in a neat line around the rim of the bowL Maggie looked at Ben, her expression becoming one of predictable concern. 'How are you?'

'Okay.' He turned away from her sympathy before she could offer it. "Would you like a coffee?'

'No, if Jacob's ready we'd better get off. It said on the radio that there's roadworks on the way to the school, so there's bound to be jams.'

"You won't forget to take him the usual route, wil you?' Her smile twitched a little. 'Of course not.' She had tried going another way to the school one morning and Jacob had thrown a tantrum in the car. Ben had apologised, explaining that he grew upset at any variation from his routine, without mentioning what they were both aware of; that she'd known that already.

Maggie had expressed regret, but it was a little too saccharin to be sincere. And he thought there was a trace of mistrust in her eyes now whenever she looked at Jacob.

She kept up an aimless chatter as Ben helped him into his shoes and coat. 'Are you sure you don't want me to col ect him as wel ?' she offered. 'It won't be any trouble.'

'No, it's al right, thanks.' He maintained the semblance of a smile until Maggie accepted this. She gave him a hug as she kissed his cheek. Her own was so over-powdered that it felt like suede. Her perfume had the same cloying pungency as the flowers on Sarah's coffin. 'If you want me to do anything, just give me a ring.' Ben said he would and crouched down to give Jacob a kiss. 'See you later, Jake. Be a good boy for Maggie.' The boy didn't answer. He had a puzzle game in his hand, a plastic maze with a tiny bal rol ing loose in it. Whenever he succeeded in manipulating the bal into the centre he gave the puzzle a quick shake and began al over again. He didn't look up from it as he went out with Maggie. Ben watched from the doorway as the two of them got into the car where Scott and Andrew, Maggie's own two young sons, were waiting. He waved as they drove away.

He closed the door and went back into the house.

The lack of Sarah echoed from every room. It battered at him as he returned to the kitchen. He picked up his coffee, but it was cold. He put it down again. Even the sound of the mug touching the table seemed loud in the silence. The familiar ordinariness of their home had been subtly altered, shifted into a new perspective, a paral el dimension of loss. Ben closed his eyes against it and straightaway his imagination began to play its cruel tricks. He could see Sarah, thoughtlessly humming along to the radio as she moved around the kitchen, pausing to take a hurried drink from her mug of coffee. The blue one, that she liked. He could hear her voice, internal y, but clearly nevertheless as she spoke to Jacob. 'Hurry up with your breakfast, Jake, there's a good boy.' She half turned to Ben as she fixed her light brown hair in the mirror. 'I forgot to tel you, I told Imogen that we might see her and Neil this weekend.'

'Aw, no, you're joking/ he heard himself say, mouth moving in silent unison to the remembered words. "Neil's the most boring man in die world.' Her reflection gave him an arch smile.

"Wel , you'l just have to be extra interesting to make up for him, won't you?' She turned her head and quickly examined her hair from the side. 'Sod it. That'l have to do.' She went to where her jacket hung on a hanger behind the door, short skirt whisking against her legs as she walked. 'Come on, Jake, time to go.' She squeezed her son's ribs from behind, making him squirm as she tickled him. Ben had smiled to see them both laughing. He smiled again now, replaying it.

Sarah planted a kiss on the top of Jacob's head and bent to tie his training shoe laces. 'Wil you be working late tonight?'

'Don't think so. I should be back by seven, anyway.' He watched her pul back the seat for Jacob to jump down.

As she straightened she winced and rubbed at her temple. 'I think I must have had one glass too many last night,' she said.

She looked trim and smart as she came towards him. He could see the exact pattern of freckling that spread faintly across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, smel her perfume when she came close. 'See you later.' She smiled up at him, lifting her face for a kiss, and the image was so vivid that he swayed forward and opened his eyes.

The empty kitchen confronted him. The breakfast dishes stil sat on the table. Two of them, his own and Jacob's. He wished now that he hadn't accepted Maggie's offer to take Jacob to school. For a moment he was tempted to go out, to escape to a more neutral environment that didn't resonate with Sarah's absence. But that would only be putting off what he knew had to be faced sooner or later. It was better sooner.

She wasn't coming back.

He took a rol of black plastic bin-liners and went upstairs to their bedroom. Her personality was almost tangible in here.

Trying to close his mind to what he was doing he opened the wardrobe and took down an armful of her clothes. Her scent dung to them like a distil ation of grief. He couldn't believe she was never going to wear any of them again. He got as far as the bed before he stopped, clutching the bundle to his chest as the sobs chopped into him.

The cal had come through just over a week ago. He had I been at the studio in the middle of a shoot when Zoe, his assistant, told him that Colin was on the phone. Colin was Maggie's husband and his oldest friend, a solicitor at the same entertainment law firm where Sarah worked. Ben hadn't looked up from the camera as he told her to say he'd cal back I think you'd better take it, Zoe had said. He was about to snap that he was busy when he saw the expression on her face.

The term the doctors used was aneurysm. It had been just another word to him before then. He hadn't even been sure what it was, but what it meant to him now was that a vein in Sarah's head had swol en and burst. A minuscule part of her, a fraction of the whole person that was his wife, had given way, and now she was in intensive care. There had been no warning, except for the casual mention of a headache that morning. Ben had felt a vast sense of wrongness as the doctor talked of CT scans, the possibility of emergency surgery.

They wouldn't let him see her at first. Intel ectual y he had realised it was serious, but emotional y it was too much to take in. The night before they had cooked a meal, put Jacob to bed, drunk a bottle of wine. It didn't seem possible that she could suddenly be desperately il . Even when the doctor came to tel him that she was on a life support machine, and that they had done everything they could, Ben couldn't accept what was happening. It was only when he saw her lying stil and unconscious in the hospital bed, with her head shaved and her face bruised and pale, that he understood she was dying.

The machines had kept her alive for three days. When they turned them off on the fourth, Ben had sat holding her hand, talking to her until she stopped breathing with a lack of fuss that was almost an anticlimax.

Maggie and Colin had taken him home. He'd known Colin since university, drunkenly tried to warn him out of marrying Maggie, reluctantly been best man at their wedding.

But now neither he nor Maggie seemed completely real. They 5 had waited with him until Jacob arrived back from school, and then left for Ben to try to explain to the boy that his mother was dead. Jacob had kept his eyes averted. Only the fact of him rocking backwards and forwards gave any indication that the news might, after al , have reached him.; Ben could have envied his stepson's autism right then.

He cried himself out and set the clothes gently on the bed before returning to the wardrobe for another armful.

There were a lot of them. Sarah had been a hoarder, never throwing away anything unless she absolutely had to. He had often ribbed her about it, cal ing her a magpie. She countered by accusing him of having a consumer mentality.

The memory brought a short-lived smile. 'Don't worry, Oxfam won't throw them out either,' he said out loud, but the joking tone rang hol ow.

He finished emptying her clothes from the wardrobe and moved on to her dressing table. He made a second pile next to the first, then a third. He tried not to look at what he was stacking, knowing if he weakened he'd never be able to get rid of anything. It was just pieces of fabric, not her favourite dress, the matching silk bra and pants he'd bought for her last birthday. He emptied another drawer, closed it and opened the one beneath. As he reached in to lift out the compressed clothes his fingers touched something cold and hard at the back. He carried the bundle of sweaters to the bed then went back and took it out.

It was a battered old strongbox. The black paint was chipped and faded to reveal the dul patina of brass. He couldn't remember seeing it before, but Sarah had been a compulsive wanderer of antique fairs and flea markets. He'd lost track of half of the things she'd bought. Even so, he thought, it was odd that it had been hidden.

There was a faint rustling from inside when he tilted it, but the lid was locked. He looked in the drawers for a key.

There wasn't one. He thought for a moment, then went to the antique tea caddy where she'd kept her jewel ery. She had been buried in her wedding and engagement rings, but there were other pieces, none particularly valuable in themselves, that he couldn't see himself casual y discarding. He tried not to think about that as he poked among them for a key.