best he could, while the need to know about his son raged, For God’s sake, spit it out, woman! What’s happened? But he held on, stroking her hair with one hand while she clung to him, sobbing into the shoulder of his jacket until she finally gulped, shook her head and loosed her grip around his body.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘But…’
‘What is it, love? What’s happened?’ he asked gently.
‘He’s… He nearly bit some boy’s nose off. On his first day! My God, what have we raised, Pete?’
Some of the contents of the file Simon Phillips had compiled on Tommy while searching for him last year flashed through Pete’s mind and he wondered the same thing – as he had done since reading the file, months ago. Yet, his fatherly instinct kicked in behind the doubt, pushing it down, feeding that tiny residue of pride that he would never lose. Surviving, probably, he thought. Knowing what kinds of kids end up in those places and the softly, softly approach they have to use with them, these days…
He almost asked again: what happened? But no one would have the answer other than Tommy and some of the other inmates, he guessed. The staff would just have come upon the end result. Kids weren’t stupid – especially, in some ways, the kinds of kids who ended up in places like Archways. It would be a huge mistake to underestimate them, and one he’d learned long ago not to make when dealing with criminals of any age.
‘So, they’ve put him in solitary,’ he guessed. It was the ultimate punishment in places like that. ‘How long for?’
‘A day.’ Head tipped forward, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Then she looked up at him, her eyes large and moist. ‘How did it come to this? Where did we go so wrong?’
‘We can’t have gone completely wrong. Look at Annie.’
The girl had been a minor miracle last year, after Tommy disappeared. As Louise had spiralled downhill into a deep clinical depression, so their daughter had stepped up, almost to the point of swapping roles with her mother, taking on responsibilities an eleven-year-old never should have needed to.
‘Yes, but…’ Louise shook her head. ‘It’s like he’s got the Devil inside him. He’s…’
‘He’s our son,’ he said firmly. ‘He’s got his problems, but he’s surviving the only way he can. He knows the score. He’s not daft. He wouldn’t have done something like that without needing to.’
‘Yes, but… to try to bite somebody’s nose off!’
‘He’s been a snotty little bugger for years.’
She stood back, staring up into his face. ‘Really? You can joke at a time like this? Jesus! No wonder we’ve raised a bloody psycho.’ She spun away, heading for the door.
Something stirred in Pete’s chest. Fear, anger, he didn’t know, but… ‘Don’t ever call him that. He might be troubled. He might be in trouble, but he’s no psycho. Rosie Whitlock will testify to that.’ He snatched up his briefcase and followed her as she opened the front door and stepped in.
‘Maybe, but that doesn’t make this a time for jokes.’
Pete took a breath, regaining control of his emotions as he fought to keep hers from pulling her back into the darkness. ‘It worked, didn’t it? You’ve got the fire back in your belly.’
‘I’ll give you fire in the belly, Pete Gayle…’
‘Good. You do that. We haven’t had a good curry in ages.’
She spun on him, fists raised. ‘I swear, you get bloody worse!’
He stepped in close, caught her round the waist with both arms and hugged her tightly. ‘Whatever gets us through, Lou.’
He felt her draw in a deep, slow breath and let it out. Then the living-room door opened and Annie burst out.
‘Daddy!’
*
Emma leaned both arms on the roof of the Nissan, drawing in deep, watching the seemingly endless flow of vehicles pass by. Finally, a bright-yellow van with a large logo on the side came through the roadworks. Orange lights began to flash on its roof and she breathed a sigh of relief.
At last.
She checked her watch. 6.38. The woman on the phone hadn’t been off by more than a few minutes. It just felt like an age had passed since she made the call. The van passed her then stopped. Reversing lights glowed and it swung half onto the verge before rolling gently back towards her, other vehicles sweeping past like impatient bats coming out for the night’s feeding.
The van stopped. The driver stepped out and headed towards her.
‘Evening, miss. What’s the problem?’
‘It just lost power and died on me. There was nothing I could do to keep it going.’ She used the remote to unlock the little car. ‘It’s not the first time it’s happened.’
‘OK. And what have you found, if anything, that gets it going again?’
‘Just time. Let it rest awhile and it’s fine. It starts up and off it goes as if nothing’s wrong. That’s the frustrating part.’
He nodded, opened the driver’s door and popped the bonnet catch.
Emma didn’t bother to watch what he was doing. She had no clue about what went on in an engine, other than that it required occasional top-ups of oil and water, and no interest either. Instead, she continued to watch the traffic pass by as the uniformed man worked under the bonnet.
The downhill flow stopped again and she glanced down towards the far end of the cones, waiting for the vehicles to start coming through from there. When a voice sounded from a few feet away, she jumped, her head snapping around, expecting it to be the repairman.
It wasn’t.
The second car back in the queue had its window rolled down and the driver was speaking to her.
‘Sorry?’
‘I said, broken down again?’
She frowned as a flutter of fear swept through her chest. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Wasn’t that the same car I saw down by the Old Mill the other night?’
Now her heart was hammering, her breathing rapid and shallow as the fear of discovery froze her brain. What should she say?
But then, she realised, she had no idea who this man was, he didn’t have a clue who she was, and she would probably never see him again. She forced a shrug. ‘It’s not the first time this has happened. I just hope it’ll be the last.’
‘I bet. Good luck with it.’ He wound the window up as the repairman moved from the engine compartment around to the passenger side of the vehicle, opened the door and ducked down to check something under the glove compartment.
Emma was torn between seeing what he was doing and trying to memorise the numberplate of the man she’d just
