“You’d better come back,” Daniel had said on the mobile. “Something’s happened.”
Then he started to say something else but the phone cut dead. Her battery! Alice could have wept with frustration. With everything that had been going on, she’d forgotten to charge it.
“Please,” she said frantically to the young girl in the travel agency in that smart electric blue suit and tiny sparkling silver nose stud. “May I use your phone? It’s an emergency.”
The girl looked at the clock pointedly. “I’m afraid we’re closing now.”
“But my son!” Alice found herself tugging the girl’s electric blue sleeve like a mad woman. “He’s caught up in that earthquake. The one in South America. That’s why I needed the flights.”
She glanced at the glossy brochure the girl had handed her when she’d first come in. The one with a picture of a beach in one corner and a rainforest in the other. It was aimed, clearly, at people who didn’t mind paying a bit extra for luxurious holidays.
The girl glanced with a mixture of disdain and fear at her hand which was still on her arm; clutching it even tighter now from fear and desperation. The irrelevant thought occurred to Alice that she was more able to touch this girl’s hand than her own husband’s.
“Please stop doing that or I will have to call the police.”
Her other hand, she could see was reaching for the phone. Alice broke away, heading for the door. “You’d understand, if you had children,” she called out. Then she spotted a side exit on the other side of the mall, leading directly to the car park. Breaking out into a run, she bumped into a pair of women clutching shopping bags and laughing. A mother and daughter perhaps. Her heart lurched with jealousy as both glared at her.
“Sorry,” she gasped. “I’ve got an emergency.” Yet the word seemed inadequate to describe the terror inside. Maybe Daniel had been about to tell her something terrible before he’d been cut off. Garth had been found alive, perhaps, but had died, calling out her name. “Mum!” he would have said. And she hadn’t been there.
By the time Alice had reached the car and peeled off the yellow and black parking fine sticker, flinging it on the ground (what relevance did it have to a dead son?), her hands were shaking so much that she could barely start the car, let alone reverse it.
Bang. Out of the rear window, she could see she’d hit something. A red car. Garth had done this once; in the same car park, strangely enough, when she’d been giving him ‘driving practice’ before his test. It had struck her at the time that dual control was something which should be fitted on all children from birth.
They’d left a note with their details because that had been the right thing to do, as she’d explained to her son. Now, as she glanced in the rear mirror at the not-insubstantial bump in the red car’s bumper, she didn’t have time to do the same. She needed to get back and find out what had happened. Swerving round the corner, she shot out in front of traffic from the left to get through the orange lights. There was a massive fanfare of horns. “All right, all right,” Alice shouted, waving a hand at the other drivers.
“Always stick to the speed limit,” she had told Garth before he’d passed his test. Yet now, here she was, well over the 40mph sign, ignoring the DRIVE SLOWER neon sign. “Garth,” she moaned, “where are you?”
The radio! Of course! There might be some news. She could hear it now.
British boy found alive after days under rubble in earthquake.
No. That was in her head. Besides, it was usually babies who survived impossible odds; something, she’d read once, to do with their lack of fear and supple bones.
But maybe, just maybe, Garth had been found lost and bedraggled. Wandering, stunned, without anywhere to go. Lost and bedraggled. With a jolt, Alice remembered the pale, auburn-haired girl on the stone steps. “Wait there,” she had said. “I’ll be back. Promise. ”
But she hadn’t. She’d got distracted by Daniel’s call in the travel agency and now the girl would think she’d forgotten her. How awful. But Garth had to come first! He was her son. Heart beating in her throat, she pulled up sharply on the drive, leaving skid marks in the gravel. Not bothering to lock the car or rifle through her bag for door keys, she hammered the heavy black knocker with the lion’s head.
Where the fuck was Daniel? Alice, who rarely swore, began hammering again. At last! “What’s happened?” she demanded.
Daniel had the phone to his ear, motioning to her to be quiet. “I see,” she heard him saying in a tight voice. “Right. Thank you. I’ll tell my wife and then we’ll come back to you.”
He spoke calmly and evenly as though discussing a household matter like insurance or a quote for a new kitchen. Alice yanked on his arm, much as she’d yanked on the girl’s arm in the travel agency. “For God’s sake, tell me what’s happened!” she yelled.
Mungo, who always hated conflict – and was capable of sensing unspoken distress as much as out in the air arguments – began whining, pawing at her.
“They’ve found Garth.” Her husband’s voice was steady, as if about to tell a child something serious.
“Is he …” she stammered, tugging his sleeve even harder. “Is he …”
Daniel’s eyes were wet. “He’s not dead.”
A huge wave of relief washed through her, followed by doubt. But why wasn’t Daniel ecstatic? Dancing around with joy even though he wasn’t the dancing around type?
“Injured?”
Daniel shook his head.
“Then what?”
Her husband took a deep breath. “It seems that Garth went to the airport just before the earthquake happened.”
“So he’s safe!”
“Not exactly.” Daniel took off his glasses and put them on again. “He was stopped at security for carrying drugs. He says he didn’t know they were there and that someone must have slipped them into his rucksack from behind. But he’s in prison. That was the Foreign Office on the phone. They’ve advised us to find a good lawyer.”
“But he’s alive!” Alice sank on to the floor, weak with relief.
“Alice.” Daniel crouched down next to her, his face close to hers. Mungo, misinterpreting this as an invitation for a joint love-in, began licking both their faces. “I don’t think you understand. Garth was carrying a serious quantity of heroin.” He faltered. “Out there, the penalty can be death.”
How could he have been so stupid? That’s what Alice had expected her husband to say. Wasn’t that what she’d been thinking to herself? Hadn’t she told Garth, over and over again, not to carry anything for anyone – and not to have your rucksack on your back at airports where someone behind you in the queue could slip something in and then retrieve it at the other end.
She’d read a piece about that in one of her women’s magazines, written by a mother warning others, and had dutifully reported it to Garth. But like all her other advice (keep emergency money separate so you have something left if someone takes the first lot), it had been met with a wave of the hands and a “Stop fussing, Mum”.
And now he was in some horrible South American jail, waiting for them to get him out. “Can’t I talk to him?” she’d pleaded to Daniel again and again as if the repetition might somehow bring about a change.
“I’ve told you. He was allowed just one phone call and it was imperative that he spoke to Brian.” Daniel rubbed his face which was grey with exhaustion. “If anyone can get him out of there, it’s him.”
Through sheer good luck, Janice’s husband Brian was a lawyer specialising in crimes committed by British nationals abroad. “But he hasn’t committed a crime,” Alice protested when Brian came round for an emergency meeting in the drawing room. There was still a stain on the walnut table, she noticed, from her argument with Daniel a few weeks ago. Now both seemed totally trivial.
“Alice,” Brian had said solemnly, “in some countries, you are guilty until proved innocent. I know it’s hard but try to leave it to me.”
Hard? Impossible, more like. In some ways, it would have been better if Garth had stayed just a few more hours longer in South America before getting to the airport. The chances of her son surviving an earthquake now seemed, in her mind at least, greater than getting off a serious drugs charge.
Over the next few days, there was a flurry of phone calls and emails and text messages. The news in the paper had moved to more unrest in the Middle East. The earthquake only occasionally merited a mention with the odd worthy article on famine relief.
There was no reference at all to a British gap-year kid on drugs charges.
“Good,” declared Daniel briskly. “The less publicity the better, Brian says. The worst thing that could happen is a piece on a middle-class kid with too much money and not enough sense.”
He was angry, she knew, to hide his fear. Was this how the girl in the park’s mother had reacted, she wondered, when she knew her daughter had been taking drugs? Or, as Paul Black had implied, didn’t she care? Maybe she hadn’t understood what was happening, rather as she, Alice didn’t understand what was happening right now.
“There will be a trial of some sort,” Brian had tried to explain during another meeting. “But it won’t be like one in this country. The judge might well be biased.” He gave a little sigh. “You can appreciate that they’ve had enough of young kids smuggling drugs.”
“Can we go out to the trial?” she’d asked.
“We don’t know when that is, yet.”
“Then surely I can visit him?”
Brian shot Daniel a look across their whisky glasses. “It’s not as simple as that. Trust me, Alice, we’re doing everything possible. And, I have to say, the Foreign Office has been pretty helpful.”
Over the next few days, Alice tried to distract herself through mending a pretty little blue and pink china pot that an old lady had brought in. It had belonged to her father’s second wife, she’d explained, and she’d ‘stupidly’ dropped it while washing up. The stepmother hadn’t been an ‘easy woman to live with’ but the old lady felt she ought to try and sort it nevertheless as it had been a favourite.
Yet the pot, as though sensing Alice’s distress, refused to be mended. Again and again, she painstakingly matched up the jagged fragments and smeared the tiny amount of glue required. But it wouldn’t stick. There were some pieces, she’d discovered, that weren’t meant to be fixed.
Giving up, Alice rang Janice to suggest a dog walk. “I’m going mad, waiting for the phone to ring. I need some air. I’ve got my mobile anyway.”
Janice was quiet as they ambled along the river, watching Mungo tear ahead and rub noses with other dogs. Perhaps, thought Alice, she’d understandably run out of the “It will be all right” phrases that her friends had used during the earthquake scare.
In truth, she had told very few well-wishers about Garth’s true location apart from Mum.
“Prison?” There had been a silence at the other end of the phone and an almost audible pursing together of the lips. Then Mum had quietly said that she would remember Garth in her prayers even though Alice knew she wasn’t religious.
“Look,” said Janice suddenly as Mungo returned with another dog’s ball. “Isn’t that your man from the coffee shop?”
Alice’s heart did a little flip. It was indeed Paul Black, striding towards them. Ironically, they were almost at the very spot where she’d seen Kayleigh and the man. It gave her a slightly queasy feeling. Since the incident, the park had felt sullied in her mind.
“Alice,” he said, pleasure written all over his face. Don’t be so friendly, she wanted to say. Janice, she could see, had clocked the look along with his familiar use of her first name. Nervously, she observed his brown cord trousers, casual yet smart Barbour jacket, and sturdy walking shoes. Was this plain-clothes or was he off-duty? It struck her that she hadn’t thought of him since the news about Garth. For some unknown reason, she now desperately wanted to tell him.
“I was just coming to see you,” he added as if reading her mind.
To her deep embarrassment, Alice felt herself flush deeply so that her cheeks stung with the heat. “Mind giving us a few moments?” she said, turning to her friend. “Could you keep an eye on Mungo?”
Janice gave her a hard look before shrugging as if to say “Do you really know what you’re doing here?” and walking a short distance away.
Paul Black’s clear blue eyes were alive with excitement. “We’ve found her. The girl. Kayleigh. I thought you’d like to know. She’s in a foster home now. Safe.”
Instantly Alice felt guilty. If she’d gone back to her at the shopping centre, might the girl have been allowed back to her real home instead of a foster place?
“There’s another piece of news too.” A date has been set. For the trial.”
For a minute Alice thought she was talking about Garth’s trial. Don’t be silly, she realised. He wouldn’t even know about that. “They’ve brought it forward,” he said eagerly. “Apparently the judge is very keen to nail this man. As I said before, he’s caused a lot of trouble.”
Paul Black glanced across at Janice who was coming back to them now. Close enough to hear. “You’re still prepared to be a witness, aren’t you?”
It might have been phrased like a question but it came out like a statement. So that was why he had come to find her! Not to tell her about Kayleigh. Or to see how she, Alice, was. But to make sure that she would still play his game.
Not for the first time, an uneasy feeling crawled through her. Paul Black had talked about boys like Frankie grooming girls like Kayleigh. But was he doing the same? Keeping her sweet just so that she would keep her promise to be a witness? It made her feel used, all over again.
“I’ve got a lot going on in my own life,” she started to say. Then she stopped. Maybe it wasn’t a good thing to tell him about Garth, held for drug charges. No. Perhaps that had been her trouble before. She’d been too open. Too gullible. Too keen to please. “I’m not sure that I can be a witness now, I’m afraid.”
Those blue eyes held hers in disappointment. “Then Frankie may well go free to do exactly the same to another girl.”
She shivered, yet at the same time, she was angry. “This is blackmail.”
“No, Alice. It’s not. It’s doing the right thing as a responsible member of the public. As a parent.”
He’d got her. And he knew it. Either Paul Black was a very clever manipulating policeman. Or else he knew her better than her own husband and mother. Yet if it was the former, whose fault was that? Hadn’t she encouraged him to call her Alice the first time they’d met? Hadn’t she made the classic mistake of a lonely woman, unhappy with her marriage, clinging to the first man who seemed to ‘understand her’?
How stupid, Alice told herself furiously. She should have kept a distance right from the start; both with the girl and the policeman. But now it was too late. She was in too deep, both legally and emotionally. With both of them.
“I’m not keen,” she conceded grudgingly. “But I will if you think it will make a difference.”
He nodded, relief washing through his face. Was that, she wondered, relief for the girl? Or for his own career which, doubtless, could be affected by all this. “It will. I promise.”
Promise . The same word she had used to Kayleigh outside the shopping centre.
Promise . The same word that Garth had reluctantly used when she’d asked him to be careful before setting off.
“That thing you said earlier,” she said urgently. “About girls being seen as … as loose because they don’t have enough self-esteem to stand up for themselves. Do you really think that’s true?”
He nodded. “I do. You know, there’s a saying, Alice. You’ve probably heard of it but every now and then I say it to myself to remind me why I do this job. It goes something like this. ‘Evil happens when a good man does nothing.’ His eyes met hers. ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?”
Despite her doubts, she found herself nodding. This is your chance, Alice, she told herself. This is your chance to put things right. Maybe not for yourself but for other people.
“There’s an official letter in the post to you,” he added. His confidence that she would go ahead was both empowering and irritating at the same time. “It gives the date of the trial and the practical things you need to know.” Then he stopped as though he was going to say something else. There was a tight pause. He put out his hand in a sort of handshake but took it back before she had a chance to reciprocate. “Thank you,” he said simply.
“Do you want to tell me what that was about?” breathed Janice after he’d gone. “Come on, Alice, we’ve known each other long enough. Anyone can see he fancies you.” Then she looked sad. “Poor Daniel.” Her eyes grew fierce. “How could you do this to him?”
Alice began to laugh. Tinnily. Manically. “It’s not what you think.” Then she grew serious. “You see that hedge?”
Her friend frowned. “Yes. Why?”
“It’s where I saw them. That young girl who was having sex with the older man a few weeks ago. The couple everyone was talking about.”
Janice’s eyes widened. “You saw them?”
She nodded. “I didn’t want to tell anyone because I was embarrassed. But the policeman tracked me down and got me to give a statement. Daniel knows all about it.”
Janice shook her head. “I knew something had happened. You’ve been acting all strangely and that was before Garth.”
Alice felt a shiver going through her.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to be thoughtless.” She touched Alice’s arm. “Listen. I’d think twice about being a witness if I were you. I knew someone once who was attacked after they stood up in court and described seeing a robbery. Mind you, that was in Hackney before we moved down here. She was under some protection programme too but it didn’t help her.”
Alice’s throat went dry. Hadn’t she voiced similar concerns when giving her statement? “Paul … the policeman, said I’d get help if I needed it.”
Janice snorted. “They can’t look after everyone, can they? Honestly Alice, if I were you, I’d tell him you’ve got enough on your plate and refuse to do it. After all, that girl has nothing to do with you, does she?”
For an instant, Alice could see Kayleigh clearly in front of her. Looking up at her trustingly when she had ‘promised’ to return. I always wanted to be called Victoria.
“I’d like to think that someone might help Garth if they could,” she ventured. “Paul says the man involved was a predator of young girls. He drugs them and then has sex with them.”
Janice shuddered. “Don’t. And I’d watch out for the ‘Paul this and Paul that’, if I were you.”
Alice pretended she hadn’t heard the last bit. “He says that I’m the only witness who saw the whole thing. By the time someone else got there, they’d … they’d finished. The only other evidence they’ve got is an anonymous phone call, tipping them off in the first place. Someone else who saw it, although they can’t trace the call because it was from a pay as you go. My evidence is crucial in sending the man down. I’ve got to do it, Janice. I have to. Not despite Garth. But because of him.”
Her friend shook her head. “You’re a braver woman than me, Alice. I’m not sure I could do that. It’s not just the fear of being attacked. It’s the embarrassment bit too.”
“I know.” Alice bit her lip. “I’m scared too.”
How she would have loved to have confided in her friend about Phil. But it was no good. Janice, with her secure childhood that was now carrying her confidently through life, would never have understood. There was no point in even talking about Garth in prison. No one could understand the cold terror inside; the ‘what ifs’ and the fears that were whirling round her head; far more important, surely, than some girl in care whom she hardly knew.
Instead, they walked back home in silence; Janice leaving her at the front door with a kiss on each cheek. When she went in, placing her keys carefully on the hook behind the hall curtain, Daniel was talking on the phone. His face was rigid as he put the receiver down.
“That was Brian.” His lips tightened. “It’s not great news, I’m afraid.”
“What?” Alice could hardly get the word out.
“He’s been trying to get a date set for the hearing but the authorities are stalling. It could be years before Garth is tried.”
“But he can’t just waste away there.” Alice felt sick to the core. “It’s not human. There’s got to be something you can do.”
Daniel shrugged. “It’s a different world there, Alice. Different rules. Different regulations. A different way of thinking. We did warn him.”
There was a crash. The sound of splintered china. Red and blue china. Appalled, Alice looked at the segments of the old lady’s stepmother’s pot around her, just like the glass the other day.
Daniel stared at her. Once more, like the other day, it wasn’t difficult to see what he was thinking. Are you quite mad? On top of making things up and being a slut?
Numbly, Alice knelt down to pick up the pieces, cutting herself as she did so. She couldn’t even remember throwing it. How scary was that?
“What did you do that for?”
His voice boomed out over her.
“What did you do it for?” Mum had asked again and again when accusing her of lying about Uncle Phil all those years ago.
“I don’t know,” Alice repeated now to Daniel. “It just sort of happened.”
Hold me, she wanted to say. Hug me. But he was just looking at her as though he’d never seen her before.
“When all this is over,” he said slowly. “I think you ought to get some help. For the sake of all of us. You do agree, don’t you, Alice?”