She shook her head. Frank and Maureen had enough to worry about getting the boys under police curfew back in time. There weren’t any other rules.
“We have supper at about seven,” she said. “I should be home by then.”
That wasn’t quite true. Supper was a flexible meal usually eaten on trays in front of the television. Anyone not around was served later from the microwave. What she meant was that Charlie usually ate at seven and if she wasn’t there nobody thought to feed him.
“So we’ve got hours.” He tucked her hand in his arm and marched her down the wide noisy street towards the centre of town.
He seemed to know exactly where he was headed for and she thought perhaps he was taking her to his home. In the square the market was starting to pack up for the day. She came here often on Saturdays to buy cheap veg for Maureen and the stall holder called out to her, “You all right, pet?”
Perhaps she thought it odd for her to be walking along, arm in arm, with a middle-aged man.
“Fine,” she said. She would have liked to tell her that this was her father, but by then they had moved on, across the road, down the alley by Boots and towards the harbour where the big ships carrying timber from Scandinavia docked. He stopped outside a row of houses and at first she thought this was where he lived, then she realized it was a restaurant. The door had a sign saying closed but when her father pushed it, it opened. He seemed to know the owner, who was lazily polishing glasses, because although the restaurant was obviously shut he was waved good-humouredly to a table by the bar.
He said, “Any chance of coffee?” And when the barman nodded he added, “And ice cream? You’d like some ice cream, wouldn’t you, Grace?”
She answered that she would, though really she would have preferred coffee too.
The coffee came in a very small cup made of thick white china. There were three scoops of ice cream -strawberry, chocolate and vanilla in a white china dish.
“Now,” he said, ‘ don’t you tell me what you’ve been up to?” He replaced the cup in its saucer and it rattled slightly. She realized then that he was nervous. He had probably been building himself up to this meeting too. The jolly good humour outside the school was an act, like Charlie bouncing playfully around a stranger he wasn’t sure of.
So she took his question seriously and talked to him as she would to the social worker on one of her monthly visits, about school and how well she did in the maths test, and how difficult she found French and about the trip to the Hancock Museum in Newcastle. At first he listened intently but after a while his attention wandered. In the end he interrupted, “I expect you’re wondering why I haven’t looked you up before.”
“Nan wouldn’t tell me where you were.”
“You mustn’t blame her.”
“Is she still there?”
“Oh, she’s still in the caravan. They’re trying to persuade her to move into a home before the winter. She’s an embarrassment. She’ll go in the end but she likes to make them sweat.”
“Them?”
“Social workers, housing officials, people who know best. My bloody family, as if it had anything to do with them.” “But I thought she was your family.”
“What do you mean?” “I thought she was your mother.”
He threw back his head and gave a loud laugh like a vixen barking.
“Nan? No, of course not.” Then realizing that Grace was blushing at her mistake he added gently, “Next best thing though. She looked after me when I was little.” He looked at her across the tablecloth. “Don’t you know anything? Didn’t they tell you?”
“They gave me a photograph. You standing outside a house. Lots of rubbish.”
“I remember that one!” He seemed delighted. “That was the summer they let me stay on the estate. Before your mother rescued me.”
“From what?” She took the statement literally and was imagining robbers, pirates, hostage takers.
“From myself, of course.” He rubbed his hands and laughed. “From myself.”
“It didn’t look much like an estate. The photograph.”
She was thinking of the estate where she was living with Frank and Maureen, the neat cul-de-sacs of Barrett homes which housed other foster parents. This time he seemed to understand.
“Estate’s another name for the land attached to a big house,” he said.
“In this case Holme Park, Langholme.” He looked at her. “Have you heard of it?”
She shook her head.
“You’ve not met Robert then. Or Mother.”
“I’ve only ever met Nan.”
“So that’s how they played it.” He seemed shocked, but at the same time almost pleased. Grace thought it was like when someone you can’t stand lives up to your worst expectations, so you can say, “See, that’s what they’re like. I told you all along.”
“Who’s Robert?” “My brother.” He paused. “My elder brother.”
“Where do you live?”
For the first time he was evasive. “Nowhere special,” he said.
“Nowhere like Holme Park. And nowhere I could take a child.”
“I don’t want you to take me. I just want to know.”
“No point, until I’m settled.”
He stood up and she followed him to the door. It was only five o’clock and she expected him to take her somewhere else. He did, after all, talk about their having hours to spend together but outside the restaurant he shook her hand awkwardly.
“Can you make your own way home?” he asked.
She said she could.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said and walked away quickly, not stopping to look back.
Chapter Twenty-Three.
After waiting for four weeks without any word from her father Grace decided to take matters into her own hands. She knew that it was often necessary to force people to do the right thing. Some of the lads in Laurel Close would never attend school unless Frank took them there and watched them go in. Something about her father reminded her of a certain type of bad boy, the reckless ones who took drugs or set fire to buildings just for kicks.
At breakfast she told Maureen she’d be late home from school because she was going to a meeting of the Natural History Society. Maureen was hunched over the bench in the kitchen, spreading margarine on sliced bread to make packed lunches, as if, she often said, she didn’t have enough of that to do at work all day. She turned briefly.
“That’s all right, pet. I know we can trust you.”
At that Grace felt a pang of guilt because Maureen would inevitably find out that she had been lying. She’d feel hurt because Grace hadn’t talked to her first.
At midday, instead of queuing up to eat her sandwiches in the school hall she slipped out to the telephone box on the main road. There was a pay phone outside the sixth form common room but she was nervous to go there. The sixth formers, wearing their own clothes, talking in confident voices about music and parties, were more intimidating than the teachers.
The main road was noisy. She dialled the number she had copied from the list stuck next to the phone at home, but could hardly hear the tone. A motherly voice answered. “Hello. Social Services. Area Six.”
“Could I speak to Miss. Thorne, please.”
The social worker still called herself Miss. Thorne, though Grace thought she’d married the year before. A ring had appeared and she had been mellower since, more inclined to listen. “Who’s speaking?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear.”
“Who’s speaking?” the motherly voice yelled.
“Grace Fulwell.” It seemed very strange to be shouting her own name at the top of her voice.
Miss. Thorne came onto the phone almost immediately.
“Grace? Is anything wrong?”
“No.”
“Why aren’t you at school?”
“It’s lunchtime.”
“How can I help you?”
“I want to make an appointment to see you. Will you be in the office?
Today. About four thirty.”