When the situation was so hideously grown up…
And yet, there was something in Juliet’s eyes, and around her plump, wet bottom lip, that made Maggie think of a doll her daughter used to cling to; that made her want to hold on to Juliet and squeeze for all she was worth. There was something that told Maggie how much Juliet needed to be held.
‘Where’s Dad, Mum?’
‘He went out, pigeon. I don’t know when he’ll be back.’
Or perhaps Maggie was the one who needed to be held; who looked for comfort while giving it to her daughter when she couldn’t find it elsewhere. She hated herself for the sudden, malicious thought; for judging him. She knew it was unwarranted, implying a lack of concern for her that should have been forgivable, considering.
She could see in every half look, in every glimpse of him moving across a doorway, how crushed he was. How shrunken. If he was focusing every ounce of love he had inside him to wherever Luke might be, then he could hardly be blamed for that, could he?
And whatever else he was, whatever could be held against him if you were taking stock… Jesus Christ Almighty, she was hardly one to talk.
‘Mum, if Luke is dead-’
‘Juliet! ’
‘Please, Mum, listen. I’ve been thinking about this. If he is, we’ll only lose the least important part of him. There’s so much of Luke that’s still here in the house. Can’t you feel it?’
‘He’s alive, love…’
‘It’s fine, honestly. I’m not being Goddy or anything – you know I can’t be doing with any of that – but I really believe this. And it really helps. It’ll be sad, of course it will, and we’ll always miss him, and things will remind us that he was here. Like when we eat certain meals he loved or he couldn’t stand, or we hear a piece of music or whatever, but we’ll always have the important stuff. That won’t go anywhere, I promise.’
In the days since Luke had been taken, Maggie had mastered the art of crying without making a sound. All she had to do was turn her head away, walk to the window, lift a newspaper. And though the tears came, the racking sobs and the gasps for breath were held inside, clutched tight behind her breastbone.
She did it because it wasn’t necessary for anyone else to see. Because it wouldn’t help.
Now, she wept in secret to be strong for the daughter who was trying to be strong for her. She listened to Juliet’s words while tears that her daughter couldn’t see ran under her chin and slipped below the collar of her nightdress. Lying on the sofa, her daughter’s long legs stretched out across her own, watching something or other on TV, and thinking about her boy’s smell and the way his hair was at the back of his neck. About the hole that had opened up at the centre of her, red and raw as a butcher’s window.
Finding no comfort at all in the knowledge that Juliet was just about old enough, and independent enough, to cope with losing a brother and a mother.
The thought of leaving her was almost unbearable. But if anything had happened to Luke, the thought of not rushing to catch up with her firstborn was worse.
There was next to no traffic as they drove south towards Kentish Town, the empty roads being the only plus side to the stupidly early mornings and shitty late nights.
‘Have you got any music?’ Porter asked.
Thorne reached towards the button, began searching through the six CDs that were stored on the multi-changer he’d mounted in the BMW’s boot.
‘Any of that twangy-guitar country shit?’
Thorne looked over, in little doubt as to who she’d been talking to. He matched her smug grin with a couldn’t-careless one of his own. ‘Holland’s a dead man. You know that, don’t you?’
‘I like some country stuff, actually: Garth Brooks, Shania Twain…’
Thorne grimaced, then tried to find one CD in particular. ‘Right, since you took the piss, I’m not going to make things easy for you.’
‘It wasn’t Holland, by the way,’ Porter said.
‘So who was it?’
The music started: a delicate, plaintive guitar picked out below the mournful breaths of an accordion. Then the voice…
‘What’s this?’ Porter asked after a minute or so.
‘Hank Williams. Sort of…’
Porter looked confused, pained even. ‘Is he not going to sing?’
As he got up to sixty between speed cameras, Thorne explained that Williams had made a series of records throughout his career under a pseudonym. As ‘Luke The Drifter’, he’d written and recorded a number of ‘narrations’ – spoken-word pieces over a simple musical background. Some were straightforward talking blues, but others sounded closer to prayers or spoken hymns. These moralistic recitations – deemed far too uncommercial for the jukeboxes and radio shows that were the great man’s bread and butter – were bleak but compassionate, a long way from the hard-drinking renegade that country music fans had come to worship.
‘It’s bloody depressing,’ Porter said.
‘Serves you right.’ Thorne put his foot down, made it safely through an amber light and swung left towards Belsize Park. ‘Be nice to have an alter ego, though,’ he said. ‘Don’t you reckon? Some other side of your personality that nobody knew was really you. That you could blame shit on and send along to do the stuff you didn’t fancy.’
Porter agreed it sounded like a nice idea. ‘What would yours be?’ she asked.
Thorne considered it for a minute, then smiled. ‘It’d be great to tell Trevor Jesmond he was giving the wrong man a bollocking. “Sorry, sir, I think you’re confusing me with Kevin the Fuck-up. Or perhaps you mean Roger the Couldn’t-give-a-toss.” What about you?’
Porter thought too, but said she couldn’t think of one, so they drove on in silence listening to ‘Men with Broken Hearts’, which Williams had proudly described as the ‘awfulest, morbidest song you ever heard in your life’.
Thorne slowed a little as they approached the flat. Drew Porter’s attention to shops and local landmarks; to pubs of interest. On Kentish Town Road he took care to point out the Bengal Lancer. ‘Best Indian restaurant in London,’ he said. ‘You like Indian food?’
Porter nodded. ‘I’m not sure they’ll deliver to Pimlico, though.’
‘I could take you.’ Thorne glanced across, his eyes meeting Porter’s for half a second on their way to the far-side wing-mirror. ‘They’d look after us,’ he said.
When they reached the flat, Thorne walked quickly inside, keeping a few feet ahead of Porter and tidying as he went. In the hall, he nudged discarded shoes towards the skirting board with the outside of his foot, straightened the rug, hung up a jacket that had been tossed across the back of a chair. Porter moved past him as he stopped to add the day’s post to the pile on the table. When he caught up with her in the living room, she was leaning down to make a fuss of the cat, pretending not to look at the note that had been left on the sofa.
Thorne picked up the scrap of paper and read:
Don’t worry, I was talking shit last night. I’d had a drink, and I was tired.
Feeling much better now.
I’ve eaten the last of your bread. Sorry…
‘Who’s your friend?’ Porter asked.
‘It’s all right. It’s a bloke.’
Porter raised an eyebrow. ‘Now, that is even more interesting than the whole country music thing.’
‘It’s Phil Hendricks.’
‘Right.’ She stretched the word out. Left just enough of a pause. ‘Hendricks is gay, isn’t he?’
Thorne smirked, enjoying the wind-up, relishing the attention. He nodded towards the sofa. Elvis was curling up, making herself comfortable again. ‘That’s the sofa-bed,’ he said. ‘I’ll get it out later.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
He couldn’t help but mirror her grin. ‘Why do I feel like I’m suddenly in a remake of Carry on Constable? Isn’t this where you tell me that anything I say will be taken down, and I say, “knickers”?’