Silent Children (28 page)

Charlotte's head shook, or she shook her head. "Do you want to see it now?" he urged. "Do you want to see the dame?"

"Where?"

"Where do you think?"

"In a theatre?"

"If you call this a theatre. We aren't going anywhere if that's what you were hoping. Don't try to be funny, that's my job. The dame's already here. You watch."

He was pleased to find she couldn't take her eyes off him. He opened the wardrobe and glanced away from her just long enough to select a voluminous bright yellow dress with pink cartoon fish grinning all over it, which told him that it was meant for the beach. He thought of pointing out that the fish were laughing, but it was no longer his ambition to make her laugh. He unbuttoned the top of the dress and pulled it over his head, to see Charlotte hadn't dared move while he couldn't see her. He needed a hat to help him be the dame, and there was a black straw one on a shelf above the hangers in the wardrobe. Wasn't it judges who used to wear black hats? She wouldn't know that, and he needn't dwell on it himself. He buttoned the dress and forced the hat onto his head with a creak of straw, then bowed to his audience. "Do you know what happened to the babes?" he said.

He couldn't see why she should be afraid to answer that, but it took some time for her eyes, which were fixed on him, to let her head deliver a reluctant nod. "They got lost, didn't they?" he said. "Got lost in the woods and went on walking till they were so tired they lay down under a tree. And then the dame—no, it wasn't the dame, come to think. It was the good fairy. You'll like her."

He needed a wand. He'd glimpsed something glittering on the floor of the wardrobe—a pair of mauve shoes with sparkles on them. He picked one up and shut the wardrobe to give himself more room to perform. He pirouetted on his aching legs and waved the twinkling shoe at Charlotte, and was less than pleased when she flinched against the headboard. "See, it's magic," he said—might have said through his teeth if he'd had any, she was starting to perplex him so much. "It's got magic in it to help you sleep. Settle down now like a babe in the wood. Close your eyes and the good fairy will sing you to sleep."

He waltzed slowly back and forth and waved the shoe and beckoned to her with his other hand until she slid down the quilt as though dragged by a magnet, her head ending up on the pillow. "Close them now," he said, not least because the way her eyes protruded so as to watch him over her face was making his own eyes smart. "You haven't slept since you came. You must be sleepy. Your eyes must be heavy. Close them and I'll sing."

Fairies mightn't talk like that, but hypnotists did, and whenever you saw them on television it worked. She had to go to sleep so that Hector could think what to do with her. He'd taken her in because she'd seemed so lonely and frightened, he'd been unable to resist when she had strayed so near his hiding place, but he'd forgotten until it was too late that he would have to prevent her from betraying he was still alive. "Time to sleep now. Time to go to sleep. Close your eyes now. They're so heavy. Let them close," he droned, none of which earned him even a blink. Maybe she was waiting for the song he'd promised her, and so he began to sing in a whisper, beating time with the shoe.

"Now I lay you down to sleep,
Close your eyes good night.
Angels come your soul to keep.
Close your eyes good night..."

What was the matter with her? She was going to have to sleep sooner or later—why couldn't it be now? It looked as though she was determined to defy him, refusing to be anything but scared after he'd expended so much energy on finding ways that ought to have amused her. What did he have to do in order to make the lullaby work? Adele and the police had cut off his access to pills.

"Now I lay you down to sleep..."

Whatever happened ought to be as swift and gentle as he could manage. If instead of her face being on the pillow their positions were reversed—

"Close your eyes good night..."

If that was the only action he could take, there was no point in delaying. He wouldn't need pills, he reassured himself. She must be so exhausted that once she was unable to resist falling asleep she wouldn't even notice what was happening.

"Angels come your soul to keep ..."

They would take her away from whatever was making her so afraid. That wasn't only him—not even mainly him. If she hadn't already been afraid she wouldn't have needed him to give her a refuge. Even if he never learned what he was saving her from, it would be enough for him to know he'd brought it to an end.

"Close your—"

As though to demonstrate how completely he was wasting his breath, her eyes widened. At once they tried to pretend they hadn't, but they couldn't fool him. He'd heard the same noise she had heard. He was beside her in a second, and as she tried to sidle out of reach he snatched the pillow from beneath her head and pressed it over her mouth—just her mouth. For the moment holding her quiet and still was sufficient. Downstairs the front door had opened and shut, and somebody else was in the house.

Ian was returning across the park when he caught sight of a blue ribbon peeking over the bank of the river. He felt worthwhile at once, and glad he'd gone out to look for Charlotte. If she wasn't hiding down the bank, afraid to be found after having worried everybody overnight, at least the ribbon was a clue for him to show the police. That ought to prove they had no reason to suspect him, but more important—though he would never admit it to her, and probably not to anyone else either—was finding Charlotte safe. He ran across the patchy turf as quietly as he could, hoping that the scrap of blue material would be snatched into hiding as Charlotte attempted to take cover. It didn't stir, although something appeared to be moving on it—not only crawling but also growing bigger. He was nearly on top of it before he saw that the object he'd assumed to be a ribbon was the largest fragment of a pocket mirror, the rest of which was scattered down the bank, one shard winking at him as it snagged the river. The blue had been the colour of the bright sky, and the creature he'd taken for an insect was himself.

He wouldn't have believed he could be so disappointed not to find Charlotte. He felt as small and useless as the bit of mirror, and guilty all over again. Maybe she would have bolted if he'd introduced her to Shaun's little sister—if she'd heard about Crystal's experience at Ian's house—but they hadn't got as far as Shaun's. However often Ian told himself that Charlotte shouldn't have run away, that it was her fault for provoking him by going on about Jack until he'd told her who Jack was, it didn't make him feel any less responsible. He should at least have run after her, and then he would have seen where she went. Now he felt as though he'd wished worse to happen to her than he wanted to imagine—felt almost as bad as he might have if he'd done it to her himself—and so guilty that when he glanced across the park from the gate nearest home, pathetically hoping to find Charlotte sneaking after him, and saw that a police car had halted at the far entrance, he dodged out of sight at once.

He wouldn't have if his mother hadn't suspected him. Anyone else could—even his father since he'd left them for Hilene and Charlotte—and Ian would have managed not to care, but being distrusted by his mother was too much. Even if he'd succeeded in convincing her that he'd told her everything he knew about Charlotte's disappearance, she shouldn't have had to ask. He'd thought at least she would never wonder if he was the kind of person the Dukes and the wheelie woman and half of Wembley seemed to want him to be.

He had no idea how to spend the rest of the day now that he'd searched. He hadn't much enthusiasm for schoolwork just now, or trying to write another story or rewriting the same one, or even rereading Jack's book uninterrupted, since that would only remind him of having wished Charlotte away so that he could finish it. He unlocked the front door and stepped into less sunlight, and was about to give the door his habitual slam when he grew aware of the phone in the hall.

Suppose someone had called about Charlotte while he was out—perhaps even Charlotte herself? He eased the door shut with a gentleness that felt like an unspoken wish, one that stayed with him as he dialled 1471. Samples of a female voice informed him that an outer London number he didn't recognise had called less than twenty minutes ago. "To return the call press 3," the voice advised him as he did.

The distant phone had barely had a chance to ring when a man interrupted. "Haven," he said, sounding proud of it and of himself.

"What?" In an attempt to be more polite and perhaps more accurate, Ian added, "Who?"

"Haven Home." After a pause that might have implied he was having to remember his own name the man said "Arthur."

"Right. What..."

"Don't tell me you don't know what a home is, and I expect you know what a haven is, what is it, one of them, like a place to hide, a refuge, so is it me you want to know about?"

As if all this wasn't sufficiently distracting, Ian could hear sounds that suggested the man was dancing as he talked. He had to hold the receiver away from his face before he grasped that the thudding of feet was somewhere near the house. "Sure, if you called here," he said. "Did you call?"

"Me call?"

"You, right. Was it you calling before?"

"Me calling?" the man said, and in case that was insufficiently frustrating, expended several seconds on a laugh. "I never called. You're worse than me. You did."

"Not just now. Twenty minutes back. Someone called from your number."

"Wasn't me," the man declared with a finality that threatened to end the conversation, then only took his voice some way off. "Someone says I called when I never."

"Thanks, Arthur, I'll have it now. Arthur, could you take Arthur back to the lounge? Thanks. Thanks for answering the phone, Arthur." Throughout this the woman's voice had been approaching Ian, and now it addressed him. "Who do you want, please?"

"I don't know. Somebody called from there before."

"Who am I speaking to?"

"Can't you tell me that? The phone says you called us."

"This is the Haven Care Home and I'm Adele Woollie the proprietor. Do you know enough now?"

He wasn't sure how much he knew. "It's Ian, Mrs. Woollie."

"Ian who?"

"Ian Ames. You came to our house."

"Oh, the young boy. I remember. How are you now?"

"I'm okay. But listen, did you try and call my mother?"

"Not this lady, I'm afraid. If any of my residents have been bothering you I can assure you they don't mean any harm, but I'll see they don't trouble you again."

He had to ask the question, however impolite it seemed. "Was it Jack?"

"Didn't you understand me? I was talking about my residents. He's not one."

"I guess not, but was it him that phoned?"

"Why should you think that? You'll have to let me go now. Someone needs me."

"Wait," Ian said, feeling uncomfortable and rude but determined. "Will you tell him to phone again now I'm home?"

"How can I do that if it wasn't him?"

"If it was, will you tell him?"

"I'm coming now, Arthur," Mrs. Woollie said, to which there was such a lack of response that Ian deduced she was speaking to nobody. Nevertheless her voice moved closer to the phone before she said "I shouldn't think your mother would want you having anything to do with John."

"Why, what's wrong with him?"

"Not as much as some people have tried to make out. Not as much as he'd be entitled to have wrong, in fact not much at all," Mrs. Woollie said, and with anger Ian thought was directed at least partly at herself, "That's not the point. I can't be going against your mother, and she wanted him out of your lives."

"She won't want me getting depressed like I get. I never had a chance to say goodbye to him."

Mrs. Woollie released a long unsteady breath. "If I happen to see him I'll think about saying you called."

Though that didn't seem much of an undertaking, persistence was liable to turn it into less of one. "I need to talk to him," Ian risked saying, only to discover that he wouldn't have been able to provide a reason, so that he was glad when Mrs. Woollie's silence let him hang up. He might have wondered why Jack had called if there hadn't been a more immediate problem. Had the thump of feet he'd heard while he was on the phone come from the house next door?

He ought to check the house in any case—it was more than a day since he had. He scribbled Mrs. Woollie's number on the top leaf of the pad and wrote JACK even larger than the digits as if that could repudiate the name Jack's mother insisted on calling him, then he slipped the page into his shirt pocket and took Janet's spare keys from the drawer of the hall table. Even if nothing was amiss, it was more diverting to pretend something was, and so he slid a kitchen knife into his hip pocket once he'd caught the sunlight on the blade all the way to the front door.

He needn't have bothered concealing the knife unless any of the netted windows of Jericho Close weren't as blind as they feigned to be. The suburb appeared to be enjoying a siesta while using an unseen lawnmower to keep up a gentle snore. He opened the gate and its neighbour without making any noise he could hear, and hurried not much less quietly than a dream along the path parallel to his. He inched the key into the lock and turned it almost as slowly as the ticking of the seconds on his wristwatch, and set about creeping the door inward. It had moved nearly a foot when the phone rang in his house.

His reaction jerked the key out of the lock. The door swung toward him, and he had to block it with the toe of his shoe. He fumbled the keys into the hip pocket that wasn't heavy with the knife. The phone was still ringing, robbing him of thoughts while it demanded he think what to do. It surely couldn't be Jack so soon, and if by any chance it was he would certainly call back. If it was anyone else they would have to do that too, besides which Ian would be able to find out their number unless they withheld it, in which case it wouldn't be worth having. He edged the door open and sidled through the gap. He was releasing the latch when the phone, almost inaudible now through the wall, gave up.