‘Did you get the trailers sorted?’ Carrie asked.
‘Eight are going out this morning in the breakfast show and between news bulletins.’ Leah glanced at her watch and offered a small smile. ‘I hope it does the trick, Carrie, really I do.’ Friends forever, Leah couldn’t stand to see Carrie this way. There was a brief hug between the two women before they went off to find Dayna, no doubt in the guest dressing room, no doubt biting her nails, no doubt wondering if she could run for her life.
Carrie had no idea what she would say, how she would open. No clue how she would conclude or indeed what would happen in between. It was going to be just her and Dayna, the stage to themselves, plus a fifteen-minute segment on knife crime in London, finishing up with the scene of the stabbing at Milton Park. The production team never failed to astound Carrie and this time they’d surpassed themselves. They’d put together the short film in just twenty-four hours. She wasn’t alone in all this, she tried to tell herself, however much it hurt to lie alone –
really
alone – at night, waiting for the light to come. Having her team around her and Leah beside her gave some comfort. It was just that . . . she faltered in her thoughts as well as her steps as they entered the dressing room . . . just that she’d never properly noticed before.
‘Thank you,’ were Carrie’s first words to the mirror that reflected an image of a very frightened young lady. She tried to smile at her but it came out as pity and agony. The girl shrugged. Carrie approached the chair in which Dayna sat. Her hair was swept back with a towelling band.
‘I said I didn’t want any make-up. That I already got some mascara on.’
‘It’s the lights,’ Carrie explained. ‘So bright you’ll look dead if you . . .’ She wished she hadn’t stopped so suddenly. Dayna picked her nails. ‘Just a bit of foundation, eh, to give you some colour.’
Dayna nodded. ‘Do I have to do this?’
‘Course you bleedin’ do,’ came a rough voice from the other end of the dressing room. It was Dayna’s mother. Carrie remembered the woman from when she’d visited her house.
‘Mrs Ray,’ Carrie said. ‘Good of you to come.’
The woman stood and strode to Carrie like a man. ‘I won’t have any of this not doing it lark. We need the money. I told her that.’
‘I’m afraid there isn’t any money, Mrs Ray. The show doesn’t pay its guests.’ Carrie nodded at the make-up artist to continue her work on Dayna. The mother hovered. She reeked of smoke.
‘Then we’re off. Come on, Dayna.’ She pulled at her daughter’s sleeve.
‘Mu-um.’ Dayna shrugged away. ‘I’m doing it, all right?’
‘On, off, on, bleedin’ off. Make your mind up, girl.’ The mother’s vehemence that her daughter wasn’t doing the show for nothing was simply serving to make the teen more convinced that she was.
‘Mrs Ray,’ Leah said, stepping in. ‘Perhaps if you come with me, we can talk about the fee.’
Dayna’s mother nodded triumphantly at Carrie as she was led off by Leah.
Ten minutes later, Leah said, ‘I stuck her in the green room with one of the security guys. Told him that she shouldn’t move until someone comes to see her. Should keep her quiet for a while.’
Carrie was grateful. All she wanted was to focus on Dayna and getting the truth from her. A second-by-second account of what happened would not only help jog the public’s memory – someone’s son must have come home with blood on his hands, someone’s boyfriend must have seemed moody and detached – but, deep down, she hoped it would also give her a little peace. Not even recalling the last time she saw her son, not knowing how the last morning of his life panned out was, day by day, destroying her.
MARCH 2009
Dayna went to see her doctor. He barely looked up from his computer screen when she stumbled and tripped over the words as she explained how it had happened.
‘I see it a lot,’ he said, sighing through pursed lips. ‘You won’t be the last.’
‘What?’
‘Unplanned pregnancies. I’m sure I’ll have several more today.’
‘I won’t?’ Was he trying to make her feel better, she wondered, by not being the only one, by not being quite so different?
The doctor turned and looked at her. He was old, probably in his sixties, Dayna thought, and she didn’t think he really cared if she had the baby or not. ‘Are you sure you want an abortion?’
‘Of course. Why would I be here otherwise?’
The doctor shrugged. ‘Because you’ve been referring to it as “the baby” since you walked in.’
Dayna stopped and thought. Pink and smelling of talc, just like Lorrell had been not so long ago. A little wriggling bundle of tiny clothes and squirming fingers. Long eyelashes over deep blue eyes. The little pulsing soft spot on baby’s head and a throaty comfort noise while feeding.
‘I’m sure,’ she said.
It was likely, she’d been told, that she could get a phone call at any time if there was a cancellation. ‘Lots of girls get cold feet,’ the nurse had said. ‘So to save wasting the surgeon’s time, we like to get others to take the slots. Would you be willing to go on a waiting list and be called in at short notice?’
Dayna nodded and signed the forms. She liked the idea of short notice more than she relished waiting days or weeks for the operation. It was an operation, wasn’t it? she’d asked the nurse tentatively.
‘Yes, love.You’ll be asleep and won’t know anything about it. When you wake up, baby will be gone.’
Gone, Dayna thought. Just as seamlessly as it came into her life, it would be taken away, yet without the passion, love or excitement that she and Max had shared getting it in there in the first place.
She wouldn’t tell her mother or Kev, and Lorrell hadn’t mentioned the baby again. All being well, she’d be in and out within the day. That’s what the nurse had said. Her mother wouldn’t have a clue where she was and wouldn’t ask either.
‘That’s all then, chick,’ the nurse said, ushering her out. There were four other girls waiting to be seen. They stared at Dayna as she left.
She fondled her phone and considered texting Max but decided that there wasn’t anything more to say. He’d wanted her to have the abortion and that’s what she was doing. At school, they managed to avoid each other so that by the end of term it had become something of an art form. Occasionally, she had heard him set upon by the usual troublemakers and she herself was also menaced, although she didn’t have Max by her side to help fight her corner. She worked hard and was still determined to leave school at the end of the year with a few GCSEs. If she could get to college – ironically, a childcare course had taken her fancy – then she could get a job and get off the estate. She dreamt of working as a nanny for a rich family who took long holidays in tropical places. She’d have her own room and they’d give her a car to drive the kids to school. She’d be happy, meet someone, send a bit of money to her mum for Lorrell. All this was possible, she knew, if she studied and worked and got rid of the baby.
‘I’m hoping that you’re all pretty much ready to hand in your finished essays. The Easter holidays are only a few days away and I want all your efforts on my desk to mark during the break.’
The bell rang and thirty-seven chairs scraped and the same number of kids bolted for the door. All except two.
‘Sir, mine’s finished.’
‘Thanks, Dayna. I’m impressed with your work this year. You’re on target to get a good grade.’
‘Here you go, sir.’
Dayna swung round as the essay landed on top of hers. She was greeted by Max’s pack being hoisted on to his shoulder. It nearly hit her in the face.
‘You finished as well, Max?’ Mr Lockhart asked, but the boy walked off without reply. Dayna nodded at her teacher and followed slowly in Max’s wake, making sure she didn’t catch him up as she would have done once.
Life was desolate and he wasn’t winning anything. He stared at the piles of stuff in the shed. There was no point in selling it. He had a generous allowance and didn’t need the money. He wanted to make plans but, since he’d split with Dayna, he couldn’t bring himself to do anything much. His arms hung by his side. He was cold and could neither sit nor stand for more than a minute at a time.
Max had hoped they’d be closer than ever after what went on in the basement. It virtually killed him that Dayna had chosen to spread gossip and rumours and vile heartbreaking lies about him, which, of course, the other kids in their year – no, the entire fucking school – delighted in furthering.
With all the stories circulating, there was no way Dayna could play dumb about what was going on. That she hadn’t come to him to apologise or attempt, not a reconciliation, but some sort of explanation at least of why she did it was the worst to bear. Clearly, after everything they’d been through together, she didn’t give a shit. She was, ultimately, just like all the others.
He should have realised sooner. The Thing had barked it at him every day of his life until Dayna got in the way.
You’re different, Max. You’re an oddball. A freak. And guess what? Everyone hates you
.
Max dropped on to the car seat and lit a fag. The smoke filled the huge space left inside him. His fingers were cold and so he touched one on the glowing tip of the cigarette. It didn’t hurt but neither did it warm him. The crazy thing was, in all of this, what he really wanted was his mum.
She’d sowed the seed, all those years ago, with a throw-away comment at the start of term when he was ten, maybe eleven, and getting ready to leave Charlbury and head back to Denningham. His mother had not long owned the vast place and he hadn’t nearly finished exploring the grounds when the holidays were suddenly over. His trunk was packed for school but he didn’t want to go back. He cried and his mother had pulled him towards her – roughly at first, he remembered thinking, until he realised it was a hug – and then she’d whispered motherly things against his head almost as if she really was sad to see him go but was just too afraid to admit it. He’d closed his eyes and melted on to her, harvesting her scent, her touch, her words, in the hope that they would last the term.
‘Everything will be fine once you get back there, Maxie. You’ll be with your friends and fit right in like you’ve never been away.’
How he wanted to tell her that he wouldn’t fit in and that he didn’t have any friends. What would have happened if, back then, he’d stamped his feet and demanded that something be done about the kids who beat him up, about the teachers who ignored what futile complaints he’d made, about the long nights he spent sobbing in his dorm? He didn’t want to think about that; didn’t want to admit how things could have been different, that with one stubborn word he might have changed the course of his whole life.
‘I’ve got something for you,’ his mother said, sighing, reaching that place of patience where, just a moment later, either nothing more would be said or something would snap and words would be yelled. She went off briefly and returned to the hall with a few magazines and comics. ‘I almost forgot to give you these.’
He took the magazines. ‘Thanks, Mum.’
‘Something for the long drive to Denningham.’
In those days, she didn’t have the helicopter. He recalled thinking,
don’t you know that I get sick if I read in the car?
‘And take this, too.’
His mother always insisted that the polished oak table in the centre of the old hall be laden with a bowl of shiny green apples. She offered one to guests on their way out. She passed him an apple, rubbing it against her sleeve before he took it.
‘Do you know what my father used to say?’
Max saw his mother’s eyes hardening and, if it wasn’t for their glassy stare, he’d have thought she had tears in them. He shook his head.
‘My father wasn’t very good at telling me things, Maxie. He was in the army and away a lot. He had shiny boots and a stiff moustache.’ She smiled a little. ‘He would have been so proud of you.’
Max wondered if that was really true but listened anyway. He couldn’t imagine his mother having a father.
‘He told me that when you eat an apple and get to the centre, it’s as if you’re seeing light years into the future.’
‘How come?’
‘Just think about those apple pips, Caroline, he said to me. Each one has the potential to become a tree. And how many apples will each of those trees bear and how many seeds will those apples have?’
‘It would go on and on for ever,’ Max said, enthralled by what his mother was saying.
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘It made me excited when I was a child. The little things in life contain great hope if we bite deep enough.’
Max wasn’t sure he totally understood. He kissed his mother and got into the car. On the journey back to Denningham, the driver humming away to the radio, he flicked through one of the magazines.
‘Puzzle Tree,’ he read out loud. ‘Get all the words in the right order, solve the mystery riddle and send your answers on a postcard . . . winner receives fifty pounds . . .’ Max’s mouth dropped open. He stared at the apple and crunched deeply into it. Two more bites and he’d reached the woody centre. Several black pips nestled in pithy holes. Fifty pounds, he thought, wondering if that would be enough for a taxi home when he ran away from school. He took a pen from his blazer pocket and began solving the puzzle. He finished his apple. Five pips in all. Five trees. What if each tree had a few hundred apples and all those apples bore five trees? His maths wasn’t that good. He’d need his father to work it out but he was in Chicago so, for now, Max made do with infinity.
You could go on for ever, he thought, winding down the window and chucking out the core. He kept one pip back, though, for himself, tucked in his pocket because he liked the thought of going on for ever too.
The next day, puzzle completed, he posted the envelope.
Three weeks later, he got a letter back saying that he’d won fifty pounds. It was as easy as that. That same day, he noticed the first shoot from the apple pip he’d planted in a yoghurt pot of soil. He liked the feeling of being in control even when the odds were stacked against him. He liked the feeling of making something out of nothing. He liked the feeling of just a little bit of hope when everything else was shit.