‘I am,’ adds Michael, holding his hands up in confession. ‘If I was a cat, I’d already be dead.’
Belinda looks uncomfortable, her hands shoved into her pockets, chewing one side of her lip.
‘Please,’ I say. ‘You know all about it. You heard the story from Joe. You heard it from me.’
‘Joe talked about nothing else for months. He replayed every moment, every word you spoke before it happened. I know what you ate at your parents’, and I know Santa was drunk, and I know what was playing on the bloody radio. He couldn’t talk to you about it, and I think he was trying to make sense of it all. Plus find ways to blame himself, obviously. And … well, I also heard it from the police reports, years later, after I qualified,’ she replies, looking slightly abashed, as though she has invaded my privacy.
I am not surprised, having met the grown-up Belinda. She was always formidable – now she is formidable and skilled. Of course she would have done some nosing around – it’s in her nature.
‘Well, then. You probably know more about it than I do. So tell him – tell him everything.’
Chapter 15
17 Dec. 2002
‘I swear I heard one of your mum’s friends say I looked as though I had a “touch of the tar-brush”, Jess – I almost wet myself laughing!’
‘You should have started speaking in your Jamaican voice just to freak them out. You know, the beer-can one?’
He grins as he navigates the battered but miraculously still-functioning Ford Fiesta through traffic, giving her a quick glance as he flicks on the indicators. It’s a dark evening, in a devastatingly cold winter. Jess is holding her hands in front of the warm air blowers, and a radio station is playing slushy love songs, ‘for anyone out there with a broken heart this Christmas’.
They are on their way back from an afternoon of torture at Jess’s parents’ house, where they were hosting a pre-Christmas celebration with her father’s work colleagues and neighbours. Although, thinks Jess, ‘celebration’ probably isn’t the right description for the atmosphere in the house where she grew up.
More like ‘suppressed hostility’, and ‘suffocating politeness’, she decides. The tension between Joe and her parents has never subsided, no matter how hard he tries, and these encounters are always difficult.
The posh house, the middle-class comfort, the quietness of the village – all of it is in stark contrast to their daily lives in the city. All of it, in her opinion, a challenge. Even the tiny ones pick up on it – Grace, usually full of life and light and energy, becomes subdued and silent, and her little cousin Michael just sat in a corner wearing a bow tie and playing with Lego. It’s like they know they’re not allowed to behave like actual noisy, dirty, mischievous children, and turn into Stepford toddlers.
‘Next time, maybe I’ll wear a Free Nelson Mandela T-shirt,’ Joe replies, turning the windscreen wipers up a notch as the drizzle thickens to snow. ‘And suggest a limbo contest in between the canapés and the sherry.’
‘I would love to see that,’ Jess says, reaching out to lay her hand over his on the steering wheel. ‘And you know I think you’re gorgeous, don’t you?’
He briefly squeezes her fingers in return, and gives her the smile. The killer smile that melted her heart that first day at college, a million years ago, and still has exactly the same effect.
‘I do know that,’ he replies, concentrating on the road as they enter the city centre. ‘And you are still the most beautiful girl in the world, Bambi.’
She snorts in disgust, and pulls a face that indicates she doesn’t feel quite so beautiful. She’s lost her baby weight, but is still slightly more cushioned than before. Joe tells her it’s more womanly – she just thinks it’s a bit depressing. She’s still young enough to have a thread of vanity, and is her mother’s daughter – her mother would have a full-blown panic attack if she couldn’t fit in her size twelve slacks. Being fat would be seen as a lack of self-control.
‘Don’t do that,’ he adds, seeing her reaction. ‘That thing where you don’t like yourself. I think you’re perfect. I’d think you were perfect even if you were the size of Santa after his Christmas dinner, and swapped faces with Danny DeVito.’
‘Some people might think that Danny DeVito is a very attractive man,’ she answers, a small smile quirking her lips.
‘I’m sure you’re right, but he’s not my type. Anyway … despite your physical flaws, which don’t actually exist but you’ve convinced yourself do, and despite the fact that your parents think I may have been touched by a tar-brush, we’ve not done so bad, have we? We have created undoubtedly the most beautiful little girl in the history of little girls.’
Jess’s half-smile morphs into the full version as she twists her head around to look at three-year-old Grace, fast asleep in her car seat behind them.
Grace is indeed the most beautiful little girl in the world, with Jess’s blonde hair, and Joe’s big brown eyes, and a joyous nature entirely her own. Her head is lolling to one side, her plump lips open, cheeks rosy, strands of curls clumped up on one side. She’s clutching the Minnie Mouse figure she acquired that afternoon, and Jess knows that even though she’s asleep, if she tries to remove it those pudgy little fingers will clasp on tight.
They’d called at a garden centre near her parents’ house on the way back and visited Father Christmas in his grotto, running around the model gardens in the snow flurries and going in and out of every single one of the sheds for sale. Santa had been less than convincing, with his silver nylon beard and a big red nose that spoke of too many nights in the pub, but at least she hadn’t burst into tears of terror like lots of the kids had.
‘She is indeed the most beautiful, ever,’ replies Jess, turning back to face Joe. ‘And not that it matters at all, but I always thought you looked a bit more Mediterranean than anything. You know, a sultry Latin lover?’
‘Who knows?’ he says, shrugging. ‘The Crazy Bunch always called me Black Irish. No idea what that really means. My working theory is that I am the natural son of an Italian duke, kidnapped at birth.’
‘I think that makes sense. You do really like spaghetti Bolognese.’
‘See – kidnapped at birth. Shall we have spaghetti for Christmas dinner?’
‘I don’t see why not – we can do what we like, Duke Joseph. Tell me again, now, why we’re here, in town, instead of going straight home?’
Her eyes narrow as she looks through the windscreen, sees the snow that’s been tumbling from the sky on and off all day thickening to something more substantial. Joe is pulling the car into a parking spot that has just been vacated by a Range Rover.
‘The Gods of Parking are with us today!’ he exclaims in reverent tones as he puts the handbrake on.
‘Are they an actual thing, the Gods of Parking?’
‘They are if you spend any time driving a car, yes. And we’re here because I just need to pick something up, OK? From inside there.’
He points at the brightly lit outline of one of the city’s smaller shopping centres, its arcades and windows draped in fairy lights and baubles. A real pine Christmas tree stands at its entrance, draped in fake candles and flowers dyed a shade of purple not known in nature.