‘Can we meet?’ she says. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about.’
14
Dom wasn’t happy about handing over his car to me, once I’d dropped him at Huntingdon station.
‘Why am I the one who has to get trains and taxis home?’ he asked.
‘Please, Dom.’
‘I understand why you want to talk to this receptionist, but why do you need my car for that? Why can’t I just drop you at the school? I assume this Lou woman has a car – can’t she drop you at the station once the two of you have had your chat?’
‘I don’t know how it’s going to go. If the conversation ends badly, I’ll be in no position to ask favours by the end of it. I don’t want to risk being stranded,’ I told him, wondering if he’d see through the excuse.
I’m meeting Lou after school finishes for the day. That’s an hour from now. It means I can get to the car park well before that and be in position to catch another glimpse of Thomas Cater, and maybe Emily too, if she comes with whoever’s picking her brother up today. Dom’s car has tinted windows, making it unlikely that I’ll be noticed inside it, though there’s a chance that if Kevin Cater or ‘Jeanette’ turns up, they’ll recognise the car as the one that was parked on their driveway while they lied to us.
There’s nothing I can do about that. I’m not sure it matters, in any case. I’ll be there legitimately, to meet Lou, which I can say if anyone bangs on my window and gives me a hard time; I’ve been invited. Whether I’m watching or not, Thomas will have to walk out of the building and over to the car park area. No one will be able to stop me from seeing him. They’re hardly going to put a blanket over his head so that I can’t catch a glimpse of him.
Who is ‘they’?
Who will come to collect Thomas? I’ve got a strange kind of premonition in my mind, as I pull into the school car park, that I’m about to see Flora again. It doesn’t strike me as impossible. Either Lewis could have worked out a way to make a phone call seem as if it’s coming from America when it’s not, or he drove Flora straight to an airport after they made that call together. She could have flown at nine or nine thirty in the evening, Florida time, and landed before midday UK time. She’d probably be jet-lagged, but it would be just about possible for her to get to Thomas’s school by kick-out at three thirty.
I pick a parking space at the centre of a grid of white-painted rectangular boxes on the ground. As and when other cars arrive, they’ll have to park all around me, hemming me in. That will provide some cover.
I use my phone to send some basic, easy chore-emails while I wait for school to finish: yes, Ben can go and see a production ofLen and Ezra, whatever that is, and I’m willing to pay £30 for him to do so; yes, I can confirm that I’m expecting Pam Swain for a back, neck and head massage on Monday and that, no, I definitely won’t need to cancel her again.
At three fifteen, other cars start to join me in the car park. I sit up straight in the driver’s seat when I see the silver Range Rover, which is one of the last to arrive, at three twenty-eight. I haven’t decided what I’ll do if it’s Flora. Will I get out of the car, walk over, try and talk to her? If I did, would she run away from me again?
It’s not her. It’s the woman who pretended to be Jeanette Cater. She steps out of the Range Rover, slams the door behind her, then walks briskly over to two other women, both younger than her, who are standing behind a larger group of waiting parents. Either Emily’s not with her or she’s waiting in the car. Today Not-Jeanette is wearing leopard-print leggings, a black V-neck jumper with a thick gold belt, and flat slip-on shoes that look as if they came from a child’s fancy-dress box: glittery and gold, with bows on them and no visible soles.
I lower my window an inch or so and take a few photos of her with my phone. They’re not great, but they’ll do. I edit the best one to enlarge her face. Ideally, I’d like a photo of Flora too, to show Lou Munday. I do a Google image search for Flora Braid, Flora Tillotson and Jeanette Cater, but each one yields only photos of people I’ve never seen before.
I hear the muffled sound of a bell. A few minutes later, there’s a burst of purple blazers rushing out of the building. Some of the children run to waiting adults, their faces lighting up with joy. Others slump and limp along, looking down at the grey concrete.
There he is: Thomas Cater. I recognise him straight away.
No, you don’t. You recognise five-year-old Thomas Braid. That’s who this is. That’s the face you know, the same face you saw last Saturday, and twelve years ago. Isn’t it?
I stare at his face, wishing he’d keep still so that I could see it better. Is it identical, or slightly different? Is this the boy who came to my flat in Cambridge in 2007, who pulled the skin off a blister on his foot and needed a plaster?
Why am I allowing myself to think this way? I know it can’t be the Thomas I knew, still five years old. Then I notice his shoes and feel as if I’ve caught my heartbeat in my throat.
I know those shoes. They’re horribly scuffed after so many years. One of the soles has partly come loose and flops to the ground with each step Thomas takes. It’s the same pair of shoes that Thomas Braid wore twelve years ago: black with a white star on the side and the lowest point of the star hanging down and curling under at the bottom, like a tail. I can picture them on my lounge floor, amid the plastic toys, and Thomas next to them, barefoot, crying because he’d just pulled off his blister and now it hurt more and was bleeding.
Emily Cater, when I saw her outside the house on Wyddial Lane, was wearing hand-me-downs too: the ‘Petit Mouton’ top I’d seen before on Emily Braid.
All parents know shoes are different. You don’t pass them down from one child to another. If you care about your child’s feet, you have them properly measured and buy shoes that are a perfect fit, unless you’re too hard up and can’t afford to. When you live in an enormous house on Wyddial Lane, you don’t send your son to school in twelve-year-old shoes that are falling apart – not unless …
I can’t bear to think about what the ‘unless’ might be. An urge rises inside me: to leap out of the car, grab Thomas and take him home with me, where I can make sure no one harms or neglects him.
All the other children are coming out in groups, but Thomas is alone.He looks neutral – not happy or sad – and walks at a steady pace, neither quickly nor slowly. He seems unaware of his surroundings, and more focused on whatever’s happening inside his head.
The two young women that Not-Jeanette is chatting to look more like au pairs than mothers. That might be why they’re standing apart from the larger group of adults: the help in one cluster, the parents in another, no mixing.
Thomas eventually comes to a stop next to the glittery gold shoes. He doesn’t do or say anything to attract attention. He stands and waits. Fake Jeanette, if she has noticed his arrival, shows no sign of it. Eventually one of the other two women nudges her and nods to indicate that Thomas is there.
Even now, there’s no communication at all between the two of them. Pretend Jeanette hugs one of the women goodbye, then sets off walking towards the Range Rover, trailing her arm out behind her and waving her hand as if to say, ‘Come on, this way.’ Thomas follows her, but he hasn’t looked at her, not once, and nor has she looked at him. They haven’t spoken at all. It’s as if there’s no relationship between them, only indifference that goes both ways. The sole of Thomas’s damaged shoe continues to flop beneath his foot.
I duck down in my seat and cover my face with my hand, so as not to be seen as they pass me.
