The Secrets We Left Behind (19 page)

The memory faded.

She became aware of a child crying. There were so many people milling around she couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from at first, but then she saw him, about two or three years old
with white-blond hair, his head turning this way and that and a look of mounting panic on his tear-stained face. He was wearing white shorts, a red-and-white-striped T-shirt, with red-leather
sandals buckled over chubby feet. He was trying hard not to cry but his face kept crumpling in distress. Jo looked around to see if she could see who he belonged to but no one seemed to be paying
him any attention. She stood up and went round to the front of the stall. ‘Are you lost?’ she asked, crouching down to the little boy’s height.

He nodded solemnly.

‘Who’ve you lost? Is it your mummy?’

Again the child nodded and a fresh wave of tears came.

‘Hey, don’t cry. Let’s see if we can find her, shall we?’ Jo stood up and the child slipped his warm, sticky little hand into hers. ‘Tell you what, how about if I
lift you up and let you stand on my stall, then perhaps you’ll be able to see her, okay?’

He nodded and bit his bottom lip.

She lifted him up onto the table, surprised at how light he was. She stood behind him with her arms around his waist so he didn’t fall. He smelled both sweet and salty; the smell reminded
her of Lisa and Lynne, the twins she used to babysit when she lived in Newquay. ‘Can you see her yet?’ she said, catching a whiff of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. He shook his head and
gave a shuddering sigh, but at least he’d stopped crying. ‘What’s your name, chicken?’

He turned towards her and spoke for the first time. ‘I not a chicken,’ he said with the ghost of a smile.

Jo smiled back. ‘True,’ she said. ‘My name’s Jo. What’s yours?’

‘Andrew.’

‘Okay, Andrew. Let’s see if we can find that mummy of yours, shall we?’

He nodded again, and allowed her to pick him up and rest him on her hip. It felt so easy and natural to be carrying a child. She knew she’d be a good mother; like her own mum had been in
the early days. She couldn’t wait to have her own babies. Once, after she’d slept with Rob the second time, her period had been ten days late. She’d been terrified, wondering what
on earth she would do if she was pregnant. She’d written all sorts of embarrassing things in her diary, and had even written to the problem page in
Jackie,
asking them to please print
the reply instead of writing back because she couldn’t risk her mum finding the letter. But then her period came, and she tore those pages out of her diary and threw them away in a bin in the
park. It was only then that she allowed herself to think about what might have happened if she actually had been pregnant. Of course, her mum would have been furious, but she was not the sort of
mother who would throw her out – that’s what all her friends at school were worried about: getting ‘chucked out’. When Norma Wilson had got pregnant in the fifth year,
although her mum had apparently gone berserk at first, she’d calmed down in the end and even looked after the baby, who was called Luke, while Norma studied for her O levels. Maybe, Jo had
wondered, her own mum might have changed back into a proper mother if there had been a little baby to look after. But she hadn’t been pregnant after all, so there was no point in thinking
about it.

She was about to head off into the crowds with Andrew when she remembered the tobacco tin full of cash, which she’d almost left open on the table. She grabbed the tin and asked the girl on
the next stall to keep an eye on the stuff . As she walked among the stalls with Andrew on her hip, she wondered what would happen if they couldn’t find his mum. She’d have to take him
to the police station, she supposed. When she was about thirteen, there had been a story in the paper about someone finding a newborn baby in a shoebox in the park. For ages after that she’d
fantasised about finding a baby and had even made a point of walking through the park on her way home from school, looking under all the hedges and bushes, in all the shelters and under the benches
in the swing park. If she did have to take Andrew to the police, perhaps they’d at least let her look after him for a while; after all, he trusted her – see how he was cuddling in to
her now, his weary head resting on her shoulder? She turned and gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

Just then, she saw his mother. She knew instantly because of the woman’s expression, which was one of agonised panic, and she had that same white-blonde hair, cut in a neat bob. Any
thought that Andrew’s mother didn’t care about him disappeared now as she saw the terror and pain etched on the woman’s face. Andrew himself obviously hadn’t spotted her
yet, but Jo was about to shout and wave when his mother saw them. Jo smiled but the woman’s expression turned to fury as she barged through the crowds. ‘There you are!’ She pulled Andrew
roughly from Jo’s arms, causing him to begin crying all over again. ‘What have I told you about going off with strangers?’ And then, to Jo’s horror, the woman slapped
Andrew’s leg twice, making him cry even louder. ‘You stay with
me,’
she yelled, but then her voice broke and she clutched him to her, her face a study in anguish. ‘I
thought you’d gone,’ she said, stroking his hair. ‘It’s all right, darling; shush, shush. But you
must
hold Mummy’s hand, okay?’

Andrew nodded, sniffed, then took his mother’s hand and trotted off happily with her towards the ice-cream van. Neither of them looked back at Jo, who was still standing in the same spot
feeling unaccountably tearful and embarrassed, her hip aching with a melancholy lightness. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but she’d have thought a distraught mother might
have managed a ‘Thank you’ to the person who’d helped her child, a child that she, the mother, had allowed to wander off in crowds of people, any one of whom could have taken him
away. But she’d looked at Jo as if she was the one in the wrong; as if she’d been trying to kidnap him. Maybe it was how all mothers would react; maybe real mother-love made you do
irrational things, even hurt someone you really cared about.

As she made her way back to the stall, she reflected on how poor little Andrew had instantly forgiven his mother for slapping him, and then her thoughts returned to her own
mum. Had she properly forgiven her? It was easy to forgive the irrational, drink-sodden arguments, the being sick in the bathroom, the embarrassment of her mum’s drunken attempts to banter
with her friends. But what hurt the most was the sense of abandonment, the sense that she’d only really had a mother until she was twelve or thirteen, because by that time the booze had
definitely become more important. Once, Jo had deliberately stolen a Miners eye shadow and lipstick from the counter in Woolworth’s, half hoping she’d get caught, because she wanted to
make her mother
do
something for her, even if it was only coming to pick her up from the police station.

She slipped back behind the stall and sat down. People were walking past with
towering pink mounds of candyfloss, and the sugary smell was making her feel sick. Scott had been gone a long time; she wished he’d hurry up – she was dying for a cold drink. There were
still quite a few people stopping to look at the jewellery. An old lady was fanning herself with one of the same fans Jo had bought earlier. She smiled at Jo and pointed to a pair of lapis lazuli
earrings. They’d taken Eve quite a long time to make, and they were beautiful – deep blue stones with a gold vein, in good-quality settings. Probably quite expensive compared to the
other earrings, which were mainly made using shells or glass stones with cheap metal settings.

‘Those blue ones are so pretty, aren’t they? It’s my daughter-in-law’s twenty-first coming up and they’re definitely her sort of thing.’ The woman held them up and
looked more closely. ‘How much are they, dear?’

‘I’ll have a look.’ Jo opened the tobacco tin to check the price. A fat, oily bluebottle landed on her arm and she batted it away. The price list wasn’t there. It must
have fallen out. Perhaps she’d knocked it onto the grass. ‘Just a sec,’ she said to the customer as she lifted the tablecloth. She knelt down and looked under the table, certain
she’d see the piece of paper covered with Eve’s neat handwriting resting there in the dry grass, but no. Surely it couldn’t have blown away? There was barely any breeze.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the woman. ‘I can’t seem to find the price list—’

‘Shall I pop back a bit later, then?’

She hesitated. If she let the woman go now, she might not come back. ‘I think they’re about . . .’ They weren’t cheap, she knew, because Eve said there was a good profit
on them, but they were quite expensive to make and she only ever made a few pairs at a time because she didn’t sell a lot of them, not like the other earrings, which were selling like hot
cakes at a pound and £1.50 a time. Use your common sense, Scott had said. They’d both be impressed if she managed to sell an expensive pair of earrings. ‘I’m almost certain they
were £4.75.’ She held her breath. That was more than three times the price of the others – was it way over the top? Why hadn’t she paid more attention when Eve was talking
about the prices? ‘They’re lapis lazuli,’ she added. ‘And the settings are pure silver.’

‘I’ll take those then, please.’ The woman began rummaging in her bag for her purse while Jo carefully wrapped the earrings in the pink tissue paper that was only for the more
pricey items. ‘There we are, dear.’ She held out the exact money – four pound notes and 75p in silver. She put the earrings carefully in her bag and then waved as she headed off
into the crowd.

There was still one pair of the lapis earrings on the stall, and Jo took another pair from the box under the table and laid them out alongside them. Eve had told her to try and keep two pairs
out at a time, because then people tended to notice them more easily.

‘How much did you say them earrings was, darlin’?’ A middle-aged bald man with no shirt on and a badly sunburnt chest appeared in front of her. He wore huge mirrored sunglasses
and was smoking a cigar, which he didn’t take out of his mouth when he spoke. ‘£4.25, was it?’

‘£4.75,’ Jo said.

‘They’ll put a smile on my old lady’s face, I reckon. Here, I’ll give you four quid.’ He took a handful of silver out of his shorts pocket, and began counting it
out onto the table.

‘Sorry, I can’t take four pounds, because they’re not even mine to sell. I’m minding the stall for a friend.’

‘”Minding the stall for a friend
”,’
he mimicked, making her sound uptight and prissy. ‘Are you, darlin’?’ He puffed on the cigar and a cloud of
blue-grey smoke billowed out around him. ‘Well, I’m sure your mate told you it’s normal to haggle, didn’t she?’ He was smiling, but there was a hint of menace in his
tone. ‘Look, I tell you what, me old mum would probably like them earrings as well, so I’ll give you nine quid for both pairs. How’s that? Bulk order discount.’

When she didn’t reply, he puffed on his cigar again. ‘Your mate’ll be a bit cheesed off if she finds out you’re not playing the game, won’t she? Nine quid, cash
– that’s a good price, you know. Wha’d’ya say?’ He began drumming his fingers on the table.

‘I’m not sure . . . ’ That would make it £4.50 a pair; it was only a bit cheaper than she’d sold the others for. It would probably be all right. ‘Well,
perhaps —’ But before she could say any more, the man thrust six pound notes into her hand and pushed a pile of silver towards her.

‘There you go, babes; nine pounds exactly.’ He winked at her, pocketed the earrings and was gone, disappearing into the crowd before she could do anything to stop him. She opened her
mouth to speak, but there was no sign of him. With a bit of luck, she’d overpriced the earrings, anyway. She started counting the money he’d pushed towards her, but there was only
£8.50 there; so he’d managed to beat the price down
and
diddle her. Not only that, but he’d made her feel like an idiot. Horrible man. It was at that moment that she
sported Scott weaving his way towards her.

‘Hey.’ He looked cheerful. ‘Brought some refreshment.’ He swung his green canvas bag off his shoulder and took out two bottles of lager. He took the caps off with his
teeth and handed her one of the bottles. It was wonderfully cold. ‘Cheers.’ He clinked his bottle against hers. ‘How’s it been? Business still booming?’

Jo went to speak, but without warning she felt tears spring to her eyes. Scott put his beer down. ‘Hey, what’s the matter?’ He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her
towards him. She could smell a mix of salty sweat and tobacco. ‘Come on now; tell Uncle Scott.’

‘God, I’m sorry,’ she sniffed, wiping her face. ‘I’m being stupid. It’s nothing at all, really. Just this horrible man beat me down on the price
and
diddled us out of 50p, and he made me feel as though I was thick, like some silly child. Oh, I don’t know, he was just so,
slimy,’

Scott sighed and patted her arm. ‘That’s shit, man. But listen, it’s not a fortune, right? These things happen. And on the whole, it’s a good scene, yeah? A good payback
for all the work we’ve put in. We’ve sold a lot of the lavender candles you made – chicks really dig those.’ They both looked at the box of candles that had begun to melt in
the heat. ‘Anyway.’ He picked up his beer again. ‘What else have you sold while I’ve been gone?’ His gaze began to rove across the stall. ‘Where are the lapis
earrings?’

‘Oh, I sold three pairs.’ She brightened. ‘Although two were to that horrible man, so we’re short on each of those. I wasn’t sure of the exact price – the list got
lost, but I got £4.75 for the first ones and £9.00 for the other two – well, £8.50 because he disappeared before I could count what he’d given me. Anyway, I sold three
pairs. Was that okay?’ She waited for his approval.

He turned towards her slowly, his eyes now cold with anger. ‘For the lapis earrings?’

The sickening certainty that she’d got it badly wrong rendered her silent.

‘High-quality lapis lazuli, set in sterling silver, and you thought you’d let the whole lot go for less than fifteen quid?’ He banged his fist on the table, making everything
jump and rattle. ‘Fuck!’