Then You Were Gone (28 page)

Mack had come to see Simone the next afternoon. He was in tears, his words stumbling into each other as he gasped and blurted his way through his side of the story. He had come straight from seeing Jessica for the first time since Maria had told her the truth, which in hindsight was probably a mistake. Jessica had been distraught, Maria had been angry with Mack all over again and Mack had fled, hating himself more than ever before and somehow hoping that Simone could be the one to give him absolution.

‘I know that it’s got to be over now between us, Simone, I know it has to be, but can you please, please at least just say that you understand? Please?’

At that time, and for a long time afterwards, Simone had not been able to tell him that, but now she was beginning to feel that perhaps she might. Mack had put his side of things to her over and over, from every conceivable angle, never trying to absolve himself or make excuses, rather trying to get her to see the choices he had made from the point of view of his fifteen-year-old self. And slowly, perhaps, she was partly beginning to.

Despite his insistence that their relationship must surely now be over, and Simone’s implicit acceptance of this by her failure to disagree with him, Mack had not really acted as though they had split up. He called and messaged her all the time. He sometimes met her from work or popped round to the flat in the evening or at weekends. And although there were cold echoes of Jed in this behaviour, somehow from Mack it did not feel scary. It felt like a lost man in need of a friend who was trying to reach out to the only person he thought could help him, and Simone had not so far been able to turn her back on him. She had made liberal use of Jazzy as a buffer, but Jazzy himself was frequently on the receiving end of Mack’s desperate need for forgiveness and the corners of their triangular friendship were beginning to fray apart.

On no occasion had Mack tried to kiss her or even put an arm round her; he had made no hints about staying the night. She almost wished he had so that she would know how she would respond; sometimes she longed for him to touch her. It was almost unbearable, sitting close to him and not being able to reach out. At other times she felt such searing, white-hot rage towards him that she worried that if he came too close she would hit him. During one of those evening when he had come to her flat after work she had told him about Jed. She had cried and he had listened so patiently, then said, ‘You know, I can tell you this because I know it,’ placing huge emphasis on the word ‘know’. ‘What happened to you in the past can’t define you now unless you let it. It’s the choices you make today that matter, not what happened then and not what’ll happen next week. We all have things we wish had happened differently, but if that hadn’t happened to you, then you couldn’t be who you are now, could you? And I wouldn’t want to be in a world without who you are now.’ That had been one of the moment when Simone had wished she could touch him. She wondered then, as she had wondered many times, whether Mack’s bad choices really did make him a bad person, and she wondered how many people could truly say that if they had been offered a get out of jail free card at that age and in those circumstances, that they honestly would have turned it down.

She gave up on hearing back from Jazzy, picked up her bag and set off to the hospital on the other side of London where a bouncing baby boy was waiting to meet his thirty-three-year-old grandfather.

When she arrived, Mack was sitting in the coffee concession drinking an espresso from a tiny paper cup. ‘This is my third one,’ he said with a self-deprecating raise of the eyebrows. ‘Maria rang me last night to say Jess had gone into labour so I didn’t sleep much, then she rang again at half five to say he was here and they were both OK.’ He rubbed a fist into his bloodshot eyes then cracked a grin and the fatigue in his face melted away. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said in a voice brimming with joy. ‘A grandson! I have a grandson.’

Simone winced at the sound of the words, but could not help but smile too. ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘Congratulations, Grandad.’

Jessica was on a ward with three other women, all at least a decade older than her. She was in the bed nearest the window with the curtain pulled part-way round her. Mack barged straight in, as Simone hung back, mortified, feeling like a divorce lawyer at a wedding. Jessica was sitting up in bed, her face turned away from them; her hair was scraped back and her face was pale with large grey circles under her eyes, but still she looked beautiful. She was staring into a transparent plastic crib at a round, chubby red-faced baby with a thick shock of black hair. Simone would have bet good money that his eyes, once opened, would be a bright, glacial blue.

When she heard them come in, Jessica turned to them and smiled a smile that seemed broad and true and uncomplicated. ‘Hello,’ she said softly, ‘Mum said you’d be coming in.’ She nodded down at the baby. ‘What do you think of him then? Quite a little bruiser, don’t you reckon?’

Mack had his lips pressed together. He shook his head slowly. ‘Unreal,’ he croaked in the end. ‘Unreal. I can’t believe he’s here.’

They all stared at the baby for a minute longer, then Jessica said, ‘Mum reckons he looks like me when I was born. Apparently I was a right bruiser as well.’ She stroked the baby’s round cheek with one perfectly manicured finger. ‘He does look like me though, Marcus is gutted – he’s not really of course, he’s over the moon. Mum’s taken him home now to try and get some sleep.’ Marcus was making a good recovery now, from what Simone had heard, and had even started back at work.

Jessica laughed and looked at Mack. ‘Which means,’ she said in a teasing tone, ‘that this baby must look like you as well, seeing as I’m the absolute image of you. I don’t know why I didn’t realise it the first time I saw you.’ She laughed and so did Mack, and Simone felt the elephant in the room recede somewhat. She knew that Mack and Jessica had seen each other a few times since she had found out he was her father, but from what Mack had told her the meetings had been awkward and stilted with Jessica reluctant even to acknowledge the fact of the genetic relationship between the two of them. Maybe her sleep-deprived, pain-addled self would be more accepting of reality.

‘Let Simone get closer,’ Jessica chided gently, gesturing for Simone to move into the cubicle. ‘She hasn’t had a proper look yet, have you?’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Simone said, ‘barging in on you like this. I bet all you want to do is sleep.’

Jessica smiled and shook her head, ‘Nah. I can’t sleep anyway, I’m too excited to finally get to know him. And I don’t mind who comes in to have a look at him, I’m so desperate to show him off I’d shout at passers-by in the street to pop up and have a look if only these bloody windows opened.’

They all laughed again and Simone reflected that Maria’s warm personality had been amplified ten-fold when combined with Mack’s platinum-grade charm. She was so glad for this lovely, sweet girl that despite everything her life seemed to be working out well.

Mack leaned over the cot and got his phone out. ‘Is it OK if I take a picture? I’m seeing Jazzy later and I know he’ll ask. We’re going for a drink to wet this little guy’s head while Petra gives Ayanna some more Maths coaching.’ Simone smiled to herself. Ayanna was now a pretty much permanent fixture in Jazzy’s life, as had seemed inevitable for some time. Petra was tutoring her for her A-levels in exchange for Ayanna babysitting Rory, and Petra had even promised a month’s work experience at her company over the summer. Despite declaring actuaries ‘well boring’, it seemed Ayanna’s head had been turned by the mention of the handsome starting salary.

‘Of course,’ Jessica said, then when Mack had taken the photo she said, ‘You can hold him if you want, you know. He won’t wake up. Here.’ She scooped the baby from the cot and carefully passed him to Mack. He sat down next to Simone and stroked the baby’s cheek, then looked at Simone and grinned again. She was overwhelmed by the moment; the soft scent of the baby, breathing gently, swaddled in a white blanket, the warm generosity of Jessica and Maria allowing her and Mack to be part of this special time in their lives, the possibility that this baby, even more than any other newborn, offered for redemption of past hurts. She reached over and squeezed Mack’s arm. It was a small gesture, but one that they both knew spoke volumes.

Jessica cleared her throat and for the first time looked slightly awkward. ‘Erm, did Mum mention about his name?’

Mack nodded without looking up from the baby’s sleeping face. ‘She did mention something, yes,’ he said gruffly.

‘You see,’ Jessica went on, ‘I thought – we thought, me and Marcus – we want you to be able to be part of his life.’

‘Like I wasn’t with you, you mean?’ Mack said with a snort of humourless laughter.

‘Well, yes,’ Jessica said seriously. ‘You weren’t, there’s no arguing with that. And I’ve been pretty pissed off with you about it – still am some days if you want the truth. But there’s no changing that, is there? So I want you to be able to be part of my family.’ She stared at Mack until he was forced to look at her, two crystal blue pairs of eyes flashing across at each other. ‘If you want to?’

You go, girl,
Simone wanted to say. Inviting
him
to be part of
her
family – that was the way to do it. Mack looked as though he had been left with no uncertainty about where he stood in the hierarchy of this new family of his, but also as though he was pretty happy with that situation. ‘I do want to,’ he said softly.

Jessica smiled. ‘Good,’ she said simply. ‘Because we’d like to give him your name. We loved the name Joseph anyway, even before I met you, and now it just seems like the right thing to do. But I wanted to ask you first if it’s OK.’

Mack laughed and shook his head. ‘Of course it’s bloody OK. Of course it is. But,’ he hesitated and his tone changed, ‘what if once you get to know me better you don’t like me? Poor little bugger will be stuck with my name for the rest of his life.’

‘But that’s just the point,’ Jessica said. ‘You’re his grandfather for the rest of his life, no matter whether we like each other or not. He’s stuck with you anyway.’ She smiled and rolled her eyes. ‘Anyway, we’re going to give him the middle name William so if you turn out to be even more of an arsehole than you seem we can always change his name to that.’

The three of them laughed again, and Simone felt more of the tension dissipate. Mack stood up and put the baby, still sleeping, back in his cot. ‘We’ll leave you to get some rest,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back again tomorrow if that’s OK?’

Jessica smiled fondly. ‘That’s fine. I’ll look forward to it.’

As Simone and Mack walked down the corridor together, he reached out for her hand and she took his. He squeezed it and she squeezed back. ‘Do you want to come home with me?’ she asked.

He looked at her and held her gaze but did not speak. They both knew what it was she was really asking. ‘Do you really want me to?’ he asked at last.

Simone swallowed and nodded. ‘Yes I do,’ she said. ‘Come home and be with me and we’ll worry about everything else tomorrow.’

If you loved
Then You Were Gone
turn the page for an exclusive extract from
Who Do You Think You Are
, another brilliant novel from Claire Moss.

Chapter 1

Ed

‘Have you always been a librarian?’ I asked her.

Her eyes narrowed but she was smiling. The smile sent a warm rush through my stomach but the narrowed eyes scared me slightly.

‘Well,’ she said slowly, still smiling, ‘I wasn’t born a librarian, if that’s what you mean.’

I smiled too. ‘What, you mean you didn’t come out of the womb with a finger to your lips, telling the midwives to “ssshh”?’

She rolled her eyes and tried to look annoyed. ‘No. And I didn’t have a pair of half-moon glasses round my neck or my hair in a bun either.’

‘I must confess,’ I said, leaning on the desk, which, incidentally, meant I was leaning closer to her, ‘the dark-rimmed glasses are there so you’ve ticked that box but –’ I shrugged, ‘– your hair is disappointingly stylish.’ Was I flirting with the librarian? I never flirted with anyone. Or if I did, I didn’t realise I was doing it until it was too late.

She ran a hand over her cropped, dyed-red hair; her cheeks flushing slightly. I appeared to be the only person in the room other than her – possibly the only person in the building other than her – who was under forty and in possession of a full complement of teeth. If flirting was unusual in this kind of situation for me, it must be pretty much unheard of for her. She rallied pretty quickly though.

‘Oh yeah,’ she said, leaning back in her chair. ‘You only get your bun when you become chartered.’

I laughed. ‘You can get chartered? What like, “I’m a chartered librarian”? Like a chartered accountant?’

She pulled the kind of face girls at school used to pull when they’d hit you with a ruler but you were still the one who got bollocked by the teacher. ‘Yes, like a chartered accountant. Or like a chartered – I don’t know, a chartered something else that’s a proper profession. It is a proper profession, you know. Why, what do you do?’

‘What do you do that’s so clever?’ was obviously what she wanted to say, but at the last minute she seemed to pull back. Maybe she had suddenly become aware that we were two strangers conducting a conversation in Doncaster Local Studies Library and that the over-familiar piss-taking had already crossed the line into inappropriate. And, more to the point, that she was at work and that I was a customer.

‘I’m a journalist.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Right. Are you researching an article?’

‘Something like that.’ Time, it would seem, to talk shop. I opened my bag and pulled out the cuttings folder. ‘I’m thinking of doing a piece on this guy,’ I said, handing it to her. ‘He disappeared twenty years ago. Thought I might do a follow-up or something.’

She opened the file and spread the contents across her desk. ‘Peter Milton,’ she said slowly, reading from the headlines.

‘Pete,’ I corrected, before I could stop myself. ‘Or Peter. Whatever.’