It’s not far to walk, and as I do I picture the scene back at the office. Picture Belinda telling that sad story to my cousin. I wonder if I should have stayed, borne witness, forced myself to hear a re-creation of events that I’ve blocked out over the years.
That would be the noble thing to do. The strong thing to do. But I’m just not ready for that yet—and this is challenge enough.
When I arrive, I see that the street has been done up a bit, like Belinda said—but some things always stay the same.
Their house still has a car on bricks in the driveway, and an assortment of rusty toys in the front garden, and a collection of kids who look like street urchin extras from a period drama playing outside.
There’s still a dog—there was always a dog—on a long chain at the side of the house. This one looks old, some kind of German shepherd cross, and it looks up at me half-heartedly as I approach. I wonder if it’s going to try to protect its territory, but frankly it doesn’t seem to have the energy. It trots toward me, tail between its legs, ears pricked.
I hold out a cautious hand for it to sniff, then once we’ve become friends, give it a scratch and a stroke. It licks my fingers, then lies down again, back against the brick wall to make the most of the shade.
I skirt past the car on bricks, knowing that someone will already have clocked my arrival, and that the turrets will be armed. As I look relatively smart and respectable, they will assume I am possibly something to do with The Man, and will be frantically tidying away anything incriminating.
Right on cue, as I’m about to knock, the front door opens. There’s a concrete ramp in front of it, and it soon becomes apparent why—Father Bunch greets me, in a wheelchair.
I back up as he rolls down it, and we inspect each other. He’s obviously much older now, and the years have not treated him kindly. His hair is streaked through with yellowing gray that looks like nicotine stains, tied back into a loose ponytail that might have been passable on a man two decades younger.
His jeans are stained, and he has his ever-present pack of Benson & Hedges tucked into a pocket on the front of his denim shirt.
I loathe this man. I loathed him then, and I loathe him now. I stare at him, taking in the disability and the decay and the fact that he is struggling to breathe, and I don’t have it in me to feel sympathy. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
He returns my stare, as the children playing out front realize something new and possibly interesting is happening and fall silent. I see the cogs turn, and his clouded eyes look me up and down, and feel my stomach curdle as he smiles in recognition.
“Bloody hell!” he says, grinning, revealing the fact that he’s lost another tooth since I last saw him. “It’s Princess Perfect! We thought you were dead!”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I reply briskly, refusing to take a step back—you can’t show weakness to a creature like this. Joe taught me that much. “Still very much alive and kicking.”
He yells at the children to stop gawking, and lights up a smoke. As ever, he seems to take great pleasure in blowing it right into my face.
“So, to what do we owe the honor?” he asks, gazing up at me through the toxic cloud, eyes narrowing. “If you’re looking for our Joe, he’s long gone.”
I hate the way he calls him “our Joe,” as though he ever belonged to them. He might have lived in this house for much of his childhood, but he was never one of them. By the time I met him, he was already sofa surfing to get away, fighting to tread a different path.
The first time I saw Joe naked, I also saw the scars that had been left by this man’s belt—faded red welts across his back that painted an ugly picture of abuse and neglect. The scars I couldn’t see were even worse.
I’d always wondered how they were allowed to carry on fostering, in my young and idealistic view of the world. Now, with age and experience of working with kids myself, I understand more clearly—nobody ever complained. They were too scared to complain, and the Crazy Bunch can put on a show when they need to. Appear charming, and caring, and self-sacrificing.
Some of the children in my school are fostered, and their new families are exactly that—it’s not a job to them, it’s a calling, one they do without regard for their own battered emotions or the pain of giving back a child they’ve grown to love. I like to hope that most people in the foster system are the same, real-life angels willing to give these kids a second chance and some stability.
I tell myself that the Crazy Bunch are the exceptions to the rule, but still feel angry. For Joe. For the children who went before him, and the children who are here now, trying to make a fort out of an abandoned clothes horse and a rotten piece of tarpaulin.
“I know he is,” I reply, refusing to give him the satisfaction of showing any emotion. “I’m looking for him, and wondered if you could help me.”
He raises his eyebrows, and puffs away, considering what I’ve said. There’s a rain barrel by the drainpipe, obviously installed in an eco-friendly refurbishment that is lost on this home owner. The top has been roughly sawed off, and he throws his cigarette stub in there, where it floats on the surface of scummy-looking water.
“And why would I do that, then?” he asks, looking genuinely interested in my reply. I have a momentary fantasy where I become one of those kick-ass heroines in an action movie—Lara Croft, or the Black Widow—and I knock him to the ground and threaten to squeeze the life out of him unless he does as I ask.
I’m not, though, a kick-ass heroine from an action movie. I’m a school admin, and don’t know jujitsu, and I also don’t want to touch him. Instead, I respond in a way that I know will at least make him take some interest.
“I don’t have much, but I’ll pay you,” I reply evenly. “If you can find me the name of his birth parents, and maybe their address.”
“They went back to Dublin—couldn’t tell you where if I wanted to. I do remember their names, though. How much is it worth, princess? You must have a bob or two, big fancy house and all. Bet you’re something special these days, aren’t you—lawyer? Doctor? Accountant?”
“No. I just work in a school office. I have fifty pounds, and then I’ll never bother you again.”
He weighs it up, and as I knew he would, he negotiates upward. I never once even considered the option that he’d tell me out of the goodness of his own heart, because I suspect he has neither heart nor goodness. I’m sure he was different once—when he was an innocent child himself. I’m sure there’s a sad tale behind his cruelty and disregard for others, and I’m sure he carries his own scars—but I’m not interested. I can’t get sucked into excavating the layers of dysfunction that this family lives beneath.
We eventually settle on a figure, and I hand over a wedge of notes I took from the cash machine on the way here. The kids are looking on in interest, and the dog raises one lazy ear.
“The mother was Mona,” he says, once he’s made a show of counting the cash very slowly, as though I am not to be trusted. “Mona Farrell. The father was a Ryan, I think Patrick, but I’m not a hundred percent on that. It was a Paddy name, anyway. I don’t know why you think that’ll help you, though—they let him go when he was four, didn’t they? Good job we were around to step in. In loco parentis, and all that.”
I’m not sure why I think it will help me either—but I knew they were from Dublin, and that Joe went there, and any information might add to the pot. I also realize, as he squints up at me through the sunlight, that I needed to come here and do this. Remind myself of what Joe came from. What he faced while he was growing up.
“It’s an absolute miracle Joe turned out to be the man he was,” I say quietly as I prepare to leave.
“Yeah, yeah. Blessed be the Lord. Now fuck off, I’ve got the Racing Post to read.”
He maneuvers his wheelchair around to go back in, and I back away to avoid getting my shins bashed. He disappears through the door, leaving it open behind him.
I stand for a few moments, gathering my wits, fighting a rising tide of nausea. Joe’s parents left him here, to face this. My parents protected me by cutting off my lifeline to the man I loved. I never got the chance to find out what kind of parent I would have been—but I damn well hope it would be better than this.
I look at the kids, listen to their shrieks and yells as they scoop water and sodden cigarettes from the rain barrel and throw them at each other. One of them—probably about seven, and old enough that he should definitely be at school—stands and stares at me, his head cocked to one side.
There’s a half-smile on his face, like he wants to approach but doesn’t quite have the confidence. He’s clearly been left in charge of the younger ones, and my heart breaks at the thought. I root through my bag, find a pen and an old till receipt, and scrawl my phone number down on it.
I hand the receipt to the boy, who shyly accepts it, along with a ten-pound note.
“If you ever need help,” I say, smiling but not getting any closer in case he spooks, “you can call me. My name’s Jess. And use that money to get yourselves some ice creams when the van comes around, OK?”
He nods, glances nervously at the window, and quickly hides the cash in his sock. So young and yet so wise.
I wave goodbye, and the dog lazily thumps its tail on the concrete.
I decide I might come back for the dog some other time.