She heaved herself up and reached for the half-empty glass of Pinot on the low table beside her. Once again she dialled his number, but it was his voicemail that clicked in. She ended the call without leaving a message.
She waited. As a girl, she had waited for her mother. Isabel Goddard was an actress who, for most of Mel’s childhood, had played a pivotal role in a long running soap. During the day there had been rehearsals and filming. After coming home from school and letting herself into the empty house, Mel would pour herself an orange squash and stretch out on the first-floor landing with its clear view of the front garden. There she surrounded herself with biscuits, books, magazines, reading and nibbling through the blissful suspension of late afternoon, waiting for the sound of the key in the lock.
On arrival Isabel would stand in the hallway. Now it was her turn to wait as Mel abandoned her pleasures to run downstairs and hurl herself against her mother’s tall, unyielding body. Even at home Isabel Goddard carried herself with regal detachment. In her small way she was a star. To Mel she was the brightest in the sky.
Mel’s father had disappeared when she was six, reappearing at Christmas and birthdays for the next ten years. He had married again and now lived in Spain. He rarely flew over to see them and Mel had no desire to see him. Mistakes travelled down generations. She gulped her wine. How was it possible to hold a family together nowadays? Three quarters of Jacob’s class had separated parents.
She glanced at her watch. Twenty-two minutes past one. She must have drifted off. A second wind had hit, and she knew she would not sleep again while Jacob was out. She was due at Feltham Family Court in seven hours’ time to meet the client in a contested care application. Her cross-examination required more work. But she was too tired to focus. Jacob was never this late on a week night. Should she ring his friends’ parents? There seemed to be nothing else she could do.
‘I’m afraid I can’t help, Melanie,’ said Jonathan’s mother, Clare. ‘I’ve no idea where Jacob is. Jonathan’s asleep in bed. Do you have any idea what the time is?’
‘I’m really sorry,’ mumbled Mel. ‘It’s just that I’m anxious.’
‘I wouldn’t worry. He’ll be back.’ Clare put the phone down. She tried other numbers, Kim’s father, Hannah’s mother. Then Mel called the only other person in the world who would drop everything and drive across London to pick up Jacob at this hour.
‘He’ll be fine. It’s his last exam. He’ll be celebrating.’ Claude might be sleepy, but he spoke with the usual iron certainty. Was it his last exam? Wasn’t there one more next week? She couldn’t remember. She could hear Jo’s voice murmuring in the background.
‘How do you know he’ll be celebrating?’ Mel asked.
‘Leave off, Mels. I’m in the Court of Appeal tomorrow.’
He was always in the Court of Appeal when she needed him.
‘I think I should call the police.’
‘Don’t be daft. They’ll tell you to go to bed.’
‘He might be hurt.’
‘I’m telling you, Mels, they won’t give it a thought. It’s the end of the exam season. There are thousands of sixteen-years-olds on the streets after midnight.’
She put down the phone without saying goodbye. She had come to hate what she had once loved, his freedom from doubt. She would wait ten minutes then call the police. She didn’t need Claude’s approval. The police might indeed tell her to go to bed. If that was the worst they could do, she had nothing to fear. She stood up to go to her desk. Her legs were unsteady. This was ridiculous. She’d had two glasses. Or was it three?
The door of his room was ajar. Mel swung it open, hit by the smell of unwashed socks and sweat, laced with the tang of cheap deodorant. She hovered. He was her son. This was his territory. She would have been furious if Isabel had invaded hers. But when, on rare occasions, she had cut a swathe through the clutter to tidy up, Jacob had seemed indifferent. Not because he had no secrets, surely. More likely that, as a child of the millennium, his darker secrets were stored in a cyberworld she could not imagine, let alone enter.
Mel switched on the centre light. Clothes were strewn over the floor. There were books too, magazines, fantasy and sci-fi scattered between mugs half-full of cold tea, chocolate wrappings, empty crisp packets. She picked up a T-shirt, sniffed it, dropped it, hesitated. What was she looking for? Only the essence of the boy who should be here. She surveyed what he called his desk, an old door resting across two trestles, seeking some clue as to where he might be, who he might be, this child who had become a stranger. A couple of chemistry textbooks, covered in yellow and green highlights, scraps of paper and post-it notes covered in doodles, scribbles, names, telephone numbers.
She stopped, conscious of the ambient hum of London traffic. Was it her imagination or had cars become quieter? A sudden burst of rock music pummelled the air, thrumming across the gardens. She leant down and picked up the T-shirt for the second time. She would take it to the laundry basket.
She looked at the scraps of paper on his desk, telephone numbers, girls’ names, Hannah, Maud, Lola. Then she looked at her watch. Ten minutes had passed since she’d spoken to Claude. It was time to call the police.
As she headed for the phone in the hall, she heard the scratch of metal on metal. His key in the lock. Relief washed through her. She waited.
He stopped in front of her. Something about him was drawn away from her, inward, as if he didn’t wish to meet her. She detected a new crop of spots on his forehead. His hair looked greasy, uncombed.
‘Sorry, Mum. I thought you’d be in bed.’
‘I was worried.’
She noticed his right arm was held across his stomach, the hand and wrist tucked inside his cotton jacket.
‘I need the loo,’ he said.
He strode past her into the bathroom. She heard the tap running and waited a little before walking in behind him. He was standing at the sink with his back to her. She took a step forward to see what he was doing. The water was pink with blood.
It was a cut, about half an inch long. As he lifted his arm from the water she could see the white edges of the wound, the open flesh. Her stomach turned as it always did when she saw blood, anyone’s blood. She reached for the towel and held it towards him.
‘Here,’ she said.
Without a word he extended his arm, let her wrap it. Staring down as the scarlet seeped into its fluffy whiteness.
‘Hold it,’ she said. He obeyed, and she dived into the cupboard to get lint and gauze. Her first aid training was rusty, but she remembered enough to fashion a rough bandage and stem the bleeding.
‘You’re going to hospital,’ she said.
‘No, not hospital.’
‘You need stitches.’
‘I’ll be fine. It’s tiny. It’s not deep.’
‘Deep enough.’
‘Leave off, Mum. I’m all right.’
‘It needs to be checked. You don’t want a scar.’
‘I don’t care. Anyway, it’s tiny.’
‘Was it a knife?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
Something unyielding settled inside her, the tough persistence of cross-examination.
‘I said, was it a knife?’