I couldn’t understand why she was so dismissive. The grades weren’t bad, especially if he’d been bunking off school. But perhaps it was a good sign that she remembered them at all.
‘What did he do when he left school?’
‘He stayed in bed. For days on end.’
‘No job?’
‘How could he have a proper job? He was going to be a rock star. So he told us.’ The sarcasm was scathing and well practised.
‘Was he in a band?’
‘Apparently.’
I didn’t know how she could be so stupid. Music was his passion but she’d made no effort to understand what he was into. I couldn’t push it though. Soon she’d remember I hadn’t told her what I was doing there.
‘Were they any good?’
She looked at me as if I were mad. ‘How would I know?’
‘You never went to see them play?’
‘I’d be the last person he’d want there. And no, they never came here to rehearse. The neighbours are elderly. They wouldn’t have stood for it. The band practised in a garage belonging to another parent. Someone more tolerant than us, according to Thomas. Occasionally they were booked to play in a pub. It hardly counts as a career.’
‘Doesn’t Thomas work at all?’
She paused. I wondered why she was so reluctant to admit to the job with Harry Pool. Would she have preferred Thomas to be unemployed to justify her action in throwing him out? Or was she so snobby that she couldn’t bear him to be working as an invoice clerk for a friend of her dad’s?
‘He works for a haulage firm. There’s no future in it.’ She looked at me. ‘He’s not a stupid boy. With a bit of work and effort he could have gone to university. It’s the waste which makes me so angry.’ And this time she did look angry. Her hands were clasped together and the knuckles were white. ‘I don’t like the people he mixes with there. They’re a rough crowd.’
‘Did he enjoy the work?’
‘He got out of bed to get there on time, so I suppose he did. He was never prepared to do anything he didn’t want to. He’s not badly paid for what he does. I suppose he enjoys the money.’
‘When did he leave home, Mrs Laing?’
‘About four months ago.’
‘And you haven’t seen him to talk to since then?’
‘No.’
‘How did he get on with your daughters?’
It wasn’t a question she was expecting. ‘He spoiled them. They adored him.’
‘So they were upset when he left?’
‘Children adjust easily at that age.’
‘Has he been back to visit them?’
‘He wasn’t invited.’ I said nothing, but she continued as if I’d accused her directly of being callous. ‘We couldn’t take the risk of upsetting them again. They’re settled now. Why disrupt them? My son is unreliable, Ms Bartholomew. He could promise to visit but not turn up. Or he could arrive drunk. The girls have seen enough unpleasantness. I’m not prepared to put them through more.’
‘Did he ever turn up out of the blue? Uninvited?’
‘I wasn’t here. Cath, the childminder, let him in.’
‘And?’
‘The girls were pleased to see him. Naturally. He bought a bag full of sweets. But he left them overexcited. They couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t good for them. I told Cath she wasn’t to encourage him.’
‘So he’s not been back?’
‘He tried once or twice. Not in the last few weeks.’
‘Thomas hasn’t reported to the office either,’ I said, ‘though I’ve sent him a couple of letters. He is at the same address?’
She looked at me, anxious for the first time. ‘Well, you’d know more about that than me. You found him the place. Absalom House. That hostel in Bennet Street.’
‘Of course. It’s just that he seems to be a bit elusive at the moment.’
I stood up. Despite my fascination with Ronnie Laing, I didn’t want him arriving now and recognizing me. But although she’d been so reluctant to talk to me, now Kay didn’t want to let me go.
‘Are you saying you’ve lost him?’
‘Of course not. Nothing like that.’
‘He is all right, isn’t he?’ she asked.
‘I’m sure he is.’
‘Can you call me when you’ve talked to him? Just to let me know. This is my work number.’
She wrote it carefully on a piece of paper. Why didn’t she want me calling her at home? It wasn’t as if she could be scared of Ronnie. I thought she liked to keep her life compartmentalized and Thomas didn’t have a place here any more.
I was letting myself out of the front door when she called after me.
‘I thought I was doing the right thing. Tough love. Isn’t that what they call it?’
I supposed she’d read about tough love in a women’s magazine. Or perhaps the Methodist Wives had been given a talk on it. To me, it seemed like an excuse.
Chapter Twelve
Absalom House was double-fronted, part of a terrace in a shabby street running up from the sea front. When family seaside holidays were popular and the workers of industrial lowland Scotland thought Whitley Bay would be a glamorous place to spend a couple of weeks in August, it had probably been a hotel. Now it was a place to dump homeless young people.
‘It’s not a hostel,’ said the woman who answered the phone when I rang. She sounded indignant. ‘I mean it’s not the sort of place where they’re pushed out of the door after breakfast and not let in until suppertime. We’re a real community.’
Maybe so, but from her voice – middle-class prim – I doubted that she lived there. More likely she went home every night to a nice home in a nice area. She could have been a neighbour of the Laings. I doubted too that she had much contact with the residents. I imagined her as one of the social workers of my childhood, locked in her office writing reports while we played fretfully outside, desperate for adult company and support.
This time I’d planned a different cover. I told the woman I was a journalist researching a feature on young runaways. She was sniffy until I implied that the publicity would be good for fund-raising and promised faithfully not to use individual residents’ details without their consent. If I’d said I was a social worker she’d probably have let me in more easily, but I knew I’d get nothing out of Thomas and his mates that way.
I conned a lift out of Ray again. It wasn’t much out of his way, he said, though I knew fine well his next job was in Berwick, in completely the opposite direction. He didn’t speak all the way down the Spine Road. He just sat with his eyes on the road and a daft, dreamy grin on his face.
‘What is going on with you and Jess?’ I asked suddenly. I wanted to know how things stood. I must have sounded like an angry father asking the intentions of a daughter’s suitor, because he blushed.
‘I think I want to marry her,’ he said.
‘What do you mean, you think?’
‘I mean I do.’
‘What does she say?’
‘I’ve not found the courage to ask yet.’
But he would. I could tell by the self-absorbed smile. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was there, with him, at every sooty boiler and leaking radiator. I wanted to ask what would become of me then. Would they sell the house in Newbiggin? Would they keep it for themselves? In the end I didn’t say anything. I left him to his marshmallow fantasies. But the thought of Jess as a married woman added to my edginess and uncertainty. If she settled down with Ray, where would I go? Somewhere like this?
There was another jolt when the door was opened to me by Dan Meech. We stared at each other on the doorstep. Inside there was the sound of music. Through an open door I saw a couple of lads bickering over a pool table, but they took no notice of us. I was embarrassed. It occurred to me that Dan was living there. He’d never made much money at work. Like most actors, he seemed to be without a job for most of the time. Perhaps Acting Out, his community theatre group, had finally disbanded through lack of interest. I suspect he felt equally awkward. I’d behaved very oddly when we met the day before, lurking outside an estate agent’s. Perhaps he’d heard rumours of the incident in Blyth – these things are hard to keep quiet – imagined I’d had a breakdown, been kicked out onto the streets.