Random Acts of Unkindness (13 page)

Rumours of the trial had been rife. When we finally got the place and the date, there was much talk about turning up and throwing bricks at the van. I wasn’t the only woman consumed with hate for
her
, most of the street where seething for
her
blood. I kept quiet, going to Ashton Train Station as soon as I could to book my ticket for Chester.

On the day, I waved Colin off to work and raced to the station. I got there just before the van carrying
him
drew up. For a horrible moment I thought I had missed
her
, but soon it raced along outside the court, people chasing it and banging on the sides.

The windows were blacked out, but I still stood on tiptoes, wanting to get on a level with
her
, to try to catch a glimpse of
her
. I willed
her
to hear me, to hear my plea. What was I pleading for? I just wanted to know if
they’d
murdered my son. If he was buried up on Saddleworth Moor.

I felt a little bit woozy and I sat down as soon as the van had gone in. Soon, the people had cleared and workers walked past me, glancing down as I sat on the kerb. A few reporters gathered to stare at me, asked me if I was the mother of a murdered child. I shook my head. I wasn’t. No one knew what had happened to my son. They dispersed, over to a café and two policemen were stationed outside.

I repeated this every day the trial was held. There was no need to rush home, because Colin had stopped coming home for his tea, telling me he was looking for Thomas, but I guessed he was round at his mother’s listening to her poison words about me and Thomas.

On the 6
^th
of May
they
were both found guilty of the murders. There was an uproar in the court. It spilled out onto the street and flashbulbs exploded everywhere as the police team came out onto the street. I was standing at the side of the court door and I blinked as the explosions of light blinded me.

For two hours I was trapped behind a large crowd of people waiting around for the police, then the lawyers, then the families to come out. My train wasn’t until teatime, and I could get a later one if I missed it.

I sat on the pavement outside the court, waiting for
her
to pass in the prison van, like
she
had the previous fourteen days of the trial. Waiting to make that connection with
her
, to ask
her
if
she
had seen my son.

The crowds became thinner, then the reporters left, and finally the two policemen went off duty and were no replaced. It was getting dark. As I sat alone on the pavement, staring at the courthouse, I realised that I had no control over this situation at all.

Until the day Thomas had gone missing, I’d been able to lie in bed at night and bless everyone. God bless me mam and dad, me gran and granddad, Colin and Thomas. As I blessed each one of them, I pictured them in their beds, peaceful and asleep. My family in Chadderton, all living together in a semidetached. Colin beside me and Thomas in the next room, lying on his side with one foot out of the blankets. I liked that feeling of certainty, of knowing where you are, of safety.

Now, it was gone. When I imagined Thomas, there was a blank space. Even Colin slept who knows where; I always pictured him in the single bed at his mum’s. I always knew there’d be a time when Thomas left, and I might not know his exact whereabouts every moment of the day, and just before he went missing I had stopped worrying about him cutting his fingers off at the joinery.

Now I had no idea where he was. Other people would know him, but not me. I’d missed him growing up. From seventeen to twenty, out of his teens, shaving, meeting a girl, maybe having a kiddie. If truth be known, he was still a boy when he went.

He had a teenage air about him, a ruddy embarrassment if you mentioned girls, and a temper on him that was just like his dad’s. Not that he ever used it against me, not really. He looked at me like I imagined I looked at him; with pure love. Somehow his eyes softened and he’d bend over me as if he were protecting me. He’d carry my bags and hug me and kiss my cheek.

His red cheeks, his turning into a man, getting a job. His eighteenth birthday, my birthday cards that he always chose with care, and wrote that I was the best mum in the world. Mother of the groom. I’d never wear that hat I bought when he was just fifteen, the white hat I saw on the second-hand market, probably chucked out by some posh woman, made by a London hat firm.

I’d bought it with my bread money and carried it home like it was a tray of eggs. I’d thought what I could wear with it; anything would go with white. Thomas and Colin in suits, his fiancé in a white dress, silk most probably, and me standing proudly next to them in the photographs.

Then a couple of years later, at the hospital, when she had a kiddie, my grandchild. Would I be Granny or Nan? I couldn’t decide. All I knew was that life looked good, like our little family would grow and thrive and I would be surrounded by love. I’d missed it. It had been taken away from me. Or maybe he was dead. He hadn’t had an accident because they would have found his body by now.

I lit a cigarette and sighed. All the probabilities pointed toward him being murdered by these two and being buried. But because
they
hadn’t written his name on a random piece of paper, recorded his last screams, taken photographs as
they
abused him, or got caught killing him, I wasn’t allowed to say it. I wasn’t allowed.

More importantly, I wasn’t allowed to ask
them
. I wondered if, at any point, someone had asked either of
them
, to their faces, if
they
had taken Thomas Swain. Shown
them
a photograph. I’d asked the police, but they’d never told me the answer. Said they were too busy with the actual murders, and afterward they’d focus on Thomas’s case again.

The top and bottom of it was, no one cared anymore. Unless he had been a victim, no one cared. Colin’s mum headed up the ‘he’s buggered off with a girl’ camp, while a reporter had started a rumour that he was living in Manchester. Not that any of that mattered. I loved my son no matter what.

Don’t get me wrong, I often thought about the poor parents of those kiddies. I’d seen the Kilbrides since the discoveries and they looked like shadows, grey and pallid, bent over in their grief. Like the rest of us, shopping for the food we needed to survive, survive our children, in a world that shouldn’t be like that. I was as bitter for their lack of grandchildren as I was for my own.

I’d started to add the reports about the families to my scrapbook, hoping for a snippet that would lead me to another line of thinking, apart from the he’s dead/he’s alive confusion at the forefront of every day.

In my own life, I’d been cooking breakfast, dinner, and tea for three people every day and eventually I had to stop. One night I asked Colin if he’d be home for tea.

‘No, Bess. No, I won’t.’

‘So where are you having it, then?’

He looked up from polishing his shoes. I’d ironed all his shirts and they hung on the back of the chair. He picked one and pulled it on. When he didn’t answer, I persisted.

‘At your mam’s?’

He smoothed Brylcream over his hair and he looked handsome. He had a good colour and his clothes were smart, his shoes gleaming. He was wearing his good watch and I felt a surge of unfamiliar affection for him. I went to straighten his collar, but he edged backward.

‘Leave it, Bess.’

‘But you’re never here. I know you’re always out looking for our Thomas, and I’m grateful for that, but can we spend some time? You know just us two.’

He looked confused and his face softened.

‘All right love. On Saturday. We’ll go out on Saturday night. Make a change, won’t it?’ He pulled five pounds out of his pocket and gave it to me. ‘Here, on top of your housekeeping. Go and get a new dress. Something that fits you. And get your hair done.’

He grabbed his jacket and he’d gone. I went upstairs and looked at myself in the full-length wardrobe mirror. I knew I’d put on weight and my clothes were tight. My roots were inches long and my hair unkempt.

I felt a little bit excited and thought about the hairdressers, but then I felt guilty about wanting to do something without our Thomas. We should all be going out now, to the singsong at the Prince of Orange, or to the pictures.

Then I realised. Saturday was Thomas’s twenty-first. His special twenty-first birthday. I’d planned to cook a lovely dinner and decorate the house with bunting, just in case he came back. I’d gone into a wild panic, wondering if I should call it off with Colin, but something told me not to. Somewhere inside I knew that I still needed him, that if the worst happened at least we could share the grief.

I was equally determined to celebrate Thomas’s
twenty-first. I’d been collecting little bits and pieces for a long while, blue ribbons and all the ingredients for the cake, which I’d already baked months ago. It was like a Christmas cake, but for a birthday, rich fruit and brandy and best butter. It was in the pantry, sitting under a Tupperware cake cloche. I’d wanted to get it right, and it said in the recipe that the longer you leave it the better it is. That’s what Colin had said about me once.

‘Like a good wine, Bess, the older it gets the better it is.’

I’d still celebrate. I was determined. After all, in my optimistic moments, I knew that he could knock at the door at any time, or come striding through the back way. In my fantasies, I saw him in the kitchen making a brew, or knocking on the front door, I’d peer through the curtains and see him and his new wife with a pram. He’d tell me he couldn’t keep away and he was sorry and we’d all sit around and chat.

In my fantasy scenes, there was always one person missing. Colin was never there. I was still cooking for him and Thomas, doing their washing, but in reality, neither of them were really here anymore. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that Saturday would be make or break for me and Colin.

I decided to tone down Thomas’s birthday to a card and a cake, and concentrate on my date with Colin. I went and had my hair done, chatting about anything except the Moors Murders, as all the women in the salon knew better than to get me started. Then I picked a dress off the market and spent the rest of the money on a scrapbook and some notepaper. Finally, I picked up a lined exercise book. It was a children’s exercise book, with a picture of a nursery rhyme chicken on the front, but it would do for what I wanted.

As an afterthought, I got some prawn cocktail, steak and after eights for a special tea on Saturday. Thomas wouldn’t want party food now, not at twenty-one. He’d want proper, sophisticated food. Colin would think it was for our romantic evening, but it would do for if Thomas turned up.

Saturday came and I had butterflies in my stomach. I’d seen Colin just after tea on Friday when he came home to change his shirt. I’d put his pools coupon on the kitchen table, ready for him to fill in, and he sat down for a minute.

I watched as he put the tiny crosses in the boxes. When we’d been married for ten years, we’d had a small win on the pools and gone on holiday to Margate. We’d been to Blackpool since, but never anywhere farther. I knew Colin wanted to go to France.

‘Keep fillin’ ’em in, love. You never know.’

It had been a secret message between us, a way of saying we’d escape together to the country. We’d laugh and nod and Colin’s eyebrows would go up and down. Now, he snorted and carried on with the crossing.

He hadn’t looked at me or noticed my new haircut, a shorter bob. It was blonde and slightly wavy, a bit too young for me, I thought. The pools man arrived and Colin spent a lot of time talking to him on the doorstep. When he came back in I held out my hand for the new coupon so I could put it away safely in the sideboard. He looked at my feet.

‘I won’t be doing it any more. You know, the money.’

‘Are we short? I could get a job.’

‘No. No. It’s all right, Bess. I’m just not doing it anymore.’

His voice was funny and he went out. I knew he’d been doing overtime, but I never thought we were short. Our house was on a mortgage loan from the bank and it would be ours one day, to pass on to Thomas. My insides had shuddered at the thought of not being able to pay the monthly bills, the shame, on top of everything else.

I lit another cigarette and my mind wandered to the scrapbook. Tonight, on the eve of Thomas’s twenty-first, I’d sit here with it. If he came back, I’d be able to show him. I wouldn’t let myself think that he would knock on the door, in case it jinxed it.

I looked through the pages and frowned at the reports, then the pictures of
her
. How could
she
?
She
had at least one answer that I needed. Even if it was a no, that would give me hope. But how could I know if
she
was telling the truth?
She
could say no and mean yes. After all, hadn’t
she
lied to the police, saying
she
was never there at the murders? Besides the photographs and the tape, it was obvious
she
was there. How could
she
?

I took Thomas’s birthday cake out and mixed the icing. I’d even bought marzipan, and when the cake was cool, I draped the yellow sweetness over it, a mountain of a creation that looked professional. I stiffened the royal icing with corn flour and rolled it out. I cut around the bottom and I had the perfect canvas.

I mixed blue icing and white icing, and I piped and intricate edging around the side, with elegant swirls. My hand shook as I piped the tiny dots into words: My Dearest Thomas—21 Today.

A tear dropped onto the icing and I covered the pockmark it made with a blue dot. By midnight I’d put up all the bunting. Blue and white twists, all around the room. I’d made a collage of pictures from when he was a baby until when he disappeared. I’d already considered that if he did knock on the door, he probably wouldn’t stay, just visit, and he could take the collage, as some kind of history.

I had a box of family photographs upstairs, and mementos from all through my life. It struck me as strange that someone could leave all that behind, as if they had no history, nowhere they belonged. I knew I shouldn’t judge. People were different.