Off Minor (24 page)

“Do you mind if I ask where you were last Sunday afternoon?”

Stephen’s eyes sought Joan’s before he answered. “Swimming.”

“You went swimming?”

“Yes.”

“Sunday afternoon?”

“Yes, I said.”

“I heard you, Mr. Shepperd. I just wanted to be sure.” Stephen clasped his hands together, crossed his legs, cradled his knee, loosened his grip, uncrossed his legs, laid both hands flat along his thighs.

“Ask my wife,” Stephen said.

Resnick glanced across at Joan Shepperd, but asked nothing.

“You didn’t see,” asked Naylor, leaning forward, “when you were watching the news, a drawing of a man in a track suit?”

“No. I’m afraid I didn’t. We didn’t, did we, Joan?”

“It must have been when there was all that kerfuffle.”

“Kerfuffle?”

“My drink got knocked over. Look, you can see, on the carpet, there. The stain.”

“A shame,” Resnick said.

“Yes,” Joan Shepperd said, “we’ve not so long had it down.”

“I know it’s only a sketch,” Resnick said, looking straight at Stephen, “a quick impression. But I would have to say, it looked an awful lot like you.”

Thirty-three

Lynn Kellogg had been thinking about what Kevin had said, Debbie walking out and taking the baby. The look on his face in the pub when he had told her, what it had cost him to blurt out the words: how he must be feeling. The front door of the house opened and she saw him, outlined for a moment against the light. Then Resnick was there with him, half-turned back towards the house, saying something she could not catch; the two of them heading back towards the cars.

Lynn went several paces to meet them, asking the question with her eyes.

“Denied it,” Kevin Naylor said. “Out of hand.”

Lynn shifted her gaze to Resnick’s face.

“Says he was swimming,” Resnick said.

“All afternoon?”

Resnick shrugged and smiled.

“What got me,” said Naylor, “reckons they were in there watching
News at Ten
, never saw the face.”

“Got distracted,” Resnick said.

“Spilt the bedtime drink.”

“At the crucial moment.”

“Convenient.”

Between the two men, Lynn could see the house, porch light still shining, a movement of the front-room curtains, someone peering out, curious to know if they were still there. “What are we going to do, sir?” she asked.

“Have a go at him again in the morning, maybe he’ll remember things differently. Till then, let him stew.”

As they turned Lynn glanced at Naylor, wanting to say, look, come round and have some coffee, it’s not late, we could talk. But there was Resnick, standing by her car, expecting a lift back home. There was still the taint of whisky on his breath and she knew why he hadn’t wanted to drive himself.

“Good night, Kevin,” she said.

“Night. Night, sir.”

Firm closing of doors, firing of engines, acceleration and a changing of gears. The Shepperds’ curtains twitched open, fell closed.

Stephen Shepperd backed away from the window, managed to step back into the room without once, even though she was staring at him intently, looking into his wife’s face.

“Where do you think you’re going?” He was almost at the door, fingers reaching out.

“Up to bed,” not turning. “It’s late.”

“Sit down.”

Stephen unmoving: allowing his hand to swing back to his side, his shoulders to slump.

“Sit down and talk.”

He wanted to ignore her, carry on through the door and not even up to the bed they shared, but out, out into the street, he didn’t know where and didn’t care, as long as he didn’t have to turn and face her.

Once, still a boy, twelve, thirteen, nothing more, he had waited in his room for his mother to confront him. Lying there in the narrowness of his bed, sheet and blankets high above his head, muting the click of the door as it opened and closed and the slight edge of her breathing as she stood there, prepared to be patient, knowing that he could not stay like that for ever.

“Stephen.”

Head down, he turned back into the room and crossed towards his chair.

The two of them sitting there.

“What do you have to tell me, Stephen?”

You can tell me anything, I’m your mother.

“Stephen?”

Anything: and slowly she had drawn the truth from him and as the words fell from his mouth he had seen the muscles of her face tense, her eyes tighten and her color change until she was suffused with shame.

“I’m waiting. Stephen.”

“No.”

“You can’t not tell me.”

“But there’s nothing to tell.”

“Isn’t there?”

“No.”

She was shaking her head, slowly, the twist of her mouth might almost have suggested that she was smiling. “You know you can’t lie to me, Stephen.”

“I’m not lying.”

And she made that little gesture of the hands, like someone brushing away crumbs: what was he doing, imagining he might fool her? Didn’t she know him better than he knew himself?

“I was swimming. Sunday afternoon. You know I was. Whatever it is they’re suggesting, I wasn’t there.”

“And the drawing?”

“We didn’t see any drawing.”

“Other people did. Isn’t that enough?”

“Why is it?” Voice shaking with anger, frustration, getting less than steadily to his feet. “Why is it, whatever happens, I’m the last one you’ll believe?”

“That’s simply not true, Stephen. It isn’t fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

“If you were out running that afternoon, why not say so? What’s the crime?”

“Joan, listen, look at me, listen. I was not running, not on Sunday. I was at the leisure center, swimming. I don’t see why you can’t believe me.”

“Stephen, I took your things out of the bag when you got back home. In case anything needed washing. Your costume wasn’t even damp.”

On the drive home across the center of the city, Resnick had said little, but Lynn had felt the tension accumulating inside him. If, as seemed likely, Stephen Shepperd spent some of his spare time in his wife’s classroom, putting his now redundant skills to work, he would have come into contact with Emily; as important, she would have known him. It would have been a simple matter for him to have found her address in the register; an address sufficiently close that even a middle-aged man, not especially fit, could include it in the itinerary of his afternoon run.

But Resnick voiced none of these things: instead he asked Lynn about her parents, her father’s health, the poultry farm. Nodding at her responses, anticipating, no doubt, the plump capon that would make the journey back from her pre-Christmas visit and find its way from the waste bin of Resnick’s office, first into his refrigerator and eventually his oven. Lynn slowed to a halt outside Resnick’s house.

“Early start, sir?”

“Absolutely.” A quick smile and he was gone, a blur of white as his hand came up to stroke the first of his cats to run along the wall.

Lynn brought the car around and headed back along the Woodborough Road, the night suddenly clear and pitted with stars. Naylor’s car was parked at the curb between the Lace Market theater and the probation service car park, waiting.

“I shouldn’t have come.”

“Nonsense. Of course you should.”

Behind the housing association flats where Lynn lived, someone, probably the Old Angel, had applied for an extension and the throb of bass was overridden at intervals by the shrill screech of over-amplified guitar.

“Someone’s idea of a good time,” Lynn smiled.

Nervous, Kevin Naylor said nothing.

There was a single can of Heineken in the fridge and Lynn offered to share it, but Naylor shook his head. She put on the kettle instead and found some music that might be more appropriate, Joan Armatrading, though she doubted it was Kevin’s cup of tea.

“How long ago did it happen?” Lynn asked, and, as he toyed with a tipped Rothmans and his lighter, passed him a saucer and said, “Here, use that.”

“I know it sounds stupid, but it’s hard to say. I mean, it’s not as if I came off shift one day and she’d got everything packed up and gone. It was more gradual, months. First off, she’d take the baby there, leave it longer and longer each time. Fair enough, I mean, I didn’t like it, not a whole lot, still, fair enough, she’d been, like, depressed, since the baby and she wasn’t getting much sleep, so if it was over there, well, at least Debbie caught a few hours’ rest, we both did.”

The kettle whistled and Lynn went to the kitchen. “Don’t stop. I can hear what you’re saying.”

But he waited, anyway, till she was back in the room.

“Sugar?”

“Thanks, two.”

“You were saying, the baby was sleeping over at Debbie’s mother’s.”

“Right. Next thing, she was staying there herself. Evenings, I’d get back …”

After a pint or two with Divine, Lynn thought.

“… and she’d not be there. In a while she’d phone, say she’d gone over to collect the baby, but she was fast off, asking for trouble to wake her, why didn’t she just stay the night, come back in the morning?” He glanced across at Lynn’s attentive face. “I’m not sure when it was she stopped coming back. I don’t know. We were snowed under. To be honest, I was glad to get home and not have to bother, not with Debbie, not with the baby, not with anything. Just sit there for a bit, you know, let your mind clear, off to bed knowing no one was going to be shaking you awake this side of morning.”

Lynn was looking at the patterns in the rug. “Sounds to me, as if maybe you got what you wanted.”

“It wasn’t what I wanted.”

“You didn’t try to stop it.”

“I told you, I didn’t know …”

“Your own wife and kid?”

“All right,” on his feet, “I didn’t come here for this.”

Lynn, standing, facing him. “What did you come here for?”

The richness of the singer’s voice, the same phrase over and over, slow build of intensity. All either of them had to do was take that first forward step, reach out and touch the other’s skin.

“Well?” Lynn said.

“I don’t know. I thought …”

“Yes?”

“No, I don’t know.” With a shake of the head, he moved back across the small room and sat down.

“You wanted to pour it all out, how badly she’s treated you, and me to sit here and listen, agree with you.”

“Probably.”

“Well, what I’ve heard, I do agree with you. Up to a point. Whatever Debbie’s playing at, it doesn’t sound as if facing up to things is one of them. But it also sounds as if you let her go.”

“She didn’t need much letting.”

“No, maybe. But what she did need, what she just might’ve wanted from you was somebody saying no. I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you that what she was waiting for all along was for you to tell her what you felt.”

“And what’s that?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know, Kevin, and if you don’t either, well maybe that’s part of the problem. But my guess is, all the time she was waiting for you to say, look, don’t do this. I want you here. I want us to be here, together.”

Naylor lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the other.

“When you didn’t …”

“How d’you know I didn’t?”

“Oh, Kevin.” Lynn shaking her head. “When you didn’t say anything, she thought that meant you didn’t want her. Her or the baby. So it was easier to stay with someone who did. And with someone who would help.”

“I did help.”

“With the baby?”

“Yes.”

“What? Helped with the feeding? Played with her? Changed her?”

“Yes. If I was there.”

Despite herself, Lynn knew that she was smiling.

“I don’t see what’s so funny.”

“Nothing. Nothing’s funny.”

“Then what the hell’re you laughing for?”

“I’m not laughing.” But she was; laughing until she leaned forward and steadied herself by holding his hand.

“Oh, Lynn,” he said, voice thickening as he gave her hand a squeeze.

“Kevin,” she said, “nice as it might be, it wouldn’t solve anything.”

“What? I didn’t …”

Lynn laughed again and got to her feet, releasing herself. “Have you talked to her? Recently, I mean.”

“I’ve tried.”

“How often?”

“Once.”

“Do you want me to talk to her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s our business, we’ve got to sort it out for ourselves.”

“I don’t want to be nasty, Kevin, but it doesn’t sound as if you’re making a great job of it.”

“Thanks very much!”

“Kevin, you’re impossible!” Bending low, she kissed him deftly near the top of his head. “I’ll give her a call, see if she’ll meet me for coffee, a drink.”

“She’ll only think I’ve put you up to it.”

“So? If nothing else, it’ll mean you’re trying to do something. It’ll mean that you care.”

Kevin sat and finished his drink and his cigarette; Joan Armatrading clicked off into silence. “I’d better make a move,” he said.

“Sure,” Lynn said, relieved that the one he was finally making was the one towards the door.

Stephen Shepperd turned towards the person lying beside him and slipped an arm around her, cuddling close against her warmth. “I’m sorry, Mummy,” he breathed into her back. “I’m sorry.” And although Joan Shepperd lightly stirred, it is unlikely that she heard.