PC Kenworthy didn't look bored. She stood, leaning against the kitchen cabinets, taking notes. Then she asked Jess to show her the fence. "There," Jess said, pointing through the window. "You can see where I've mended it, by the lighter wood. And the accident, if that's what we're calling it, happened about fifty yards up on the right." She watched the officer walk outside. Aileen Trent, pulling her shopping trolley, gave Jess a cheery wave over the hedge. Then, when she registered who was in the garden, she ducked her head and walked swiftly the other way.
The officer was out there for almost ten minutes. Jess was unloading the washing machine when she let herself back in.
"Can I ask you a question, Mrs. Thomas?" she said, closing the back door behind her.
"That's your job," Jess said.
"You've probably been through this a dozen times already. But your CCTV camera. Does it have any film in it?"
--
Jess watched the footage three times after PC Kenworthy called her into the station, sitting beside her on a plastic chair in interview suite three. It chilled her every time: the tiny figure, her sequined sleeves glinting in the sun, walking slowly along the edge of the screen, pausing to push her spectacles up her nose. The car that slows, the door that opens. One, two, three of them. Tanzie's slight step backward, the nervous glance behind, back down the road. The raised hands. And then they're on her and Jess cannot watch.
"I'd say that was pretty conclusive evidence, Mrs. Thomas. And on good-quality footage. The Crown Prosecution Service will be delighted," she said cheerfully, and it took Jess several seconds to grasp that she meant this. That somebody was actually taking them seriously.
At first Fisher had denied it, of course. He said they were "having a joke" with Tanzie. "But we have her testimony. And two witnesses who have come forward. And we have screenshots of Jason Fisher's Facebook account discussing how he was going to do it."
"Do what?"
Her smile faded for a minute. "Something not very nice to your daughter."
Jess didn't ask anything else.
They had received an anonymous tip that he used his name as his password. The eejit, PC Kenworthy said. She actually said "eejit." "Between us," she said, as she let Jess out, "that hacked evidence may not be strictly admissible in court. But let's just say it gave us a leg up."
The case was reported in vague terms at first. Several local youths, the local papers said. Arrested for assault of a minor and attempted kidnap. But they were in the newspapers again the following week, and named. Apparently, the Fisher family had been instructed to move out of their council house. The Thomases were not the only people they had been harassing. The housing association was quoted as saying the family had long been on a last warning.
Nicky held up the local newspaper over tea, and he read the story aloud. They were all silent for a moment, unable to believe what they had heard.
"It actually says the Fishers have to move somewhere else?" Jess said, her fork still halfway to her mouth.
"That's what it says," Nicky said.
"But what will happen to them?"
"Well, it says here, they're going to move to Surrey, to live with some relatives."
"Surrey? But--"
"They're not the housing association's responsibility anymore. None of them. Jason Fisher. And his cousin and his family." He scanned the page. "They're moving in with some uncle. And even better, there's a restraining order preventing them from returning to the neighborhood. Look, there're two pictures of his mum crying and saying they've been misunderstood and Jason wouldn't hurt a fly." He pushed the newspaper across the table toward her.
Jess read the story twice, just to check he'd understood it correctly. That she'd understood it correctly. "They actually get arrested if they come back?"
"See, Mum?" he said, chewing on a piece of bread. "You were right. Things can change."
Jess sat very still. She looked at the newspaper, then back at him, until he realized what he had called her, and she could see him coloring, hoping she wouldn't make a big deal out of it. So she swallowed and then she wiped both her eyes with the heels of her palms and stared at her plate for a minute before she began eating again. "Right," she said, her voice strangled. "Well. That's good news. Very good news."
"Do you really think things can change?" Tanzie's eyes were big and dark and wary.
Jess put down her knife and fork. "I think I do, love. I mean, we all have our down moments. But yes, I do."
And Tanzie looked at Nicky and back at Jess, and then she carried on eating.
--
Life went on. Jess walked to the Feathers on a Saturday lunchtime, hiding her limp for the last twenty yards, and pleaded for her job back. Des told her he'd taken on a girl from the City of Paris. "Not the actual City of Paris. That would be uneconomical."
"Can she take apart the pumps when they go wrong?" Jess said. "Will she fix the cistern in the men's loo?"
Des leaned on the bar. "Probably not, Jess." He ran a chubby hand through his mullet. "But I need someone reliable. You're not reliable."
"Give me a break, Des. One missed week in two years. Please. I need this. I really need this."
He said he'd think about it.
The children went back to school. Tanzie wanted Jess there to pick her up every afternoon. Nicky got up without her having to go in six times to wake him. He was actually eating breakfast when she got out of the shower. He didn't ask to renew his prescription of antianxiety medication. The flick on his eyeliner was point perfect.
"I was thinking. I might not leave school. I might want to stay on and do sixth form after all. And then, you know, I'll be around when Tanzie starts big school."
Jess blinked. "That's a great idea."
She cleaned alongside Nathalie, listening to her gossip about the final days of the Fishers--how they had pulled every plug socket off the walls, and kicked holes in the plaster in the kitchen before they'd left the house on Pleasant View. Someone--she pulled a face--had set fire to a mattress outside the housing association office on Sunday night.
"You must feel relieved, though, eh?" she said.
"Sure," Jess said.
"So are you going to tell me about this trip?" Nathalie straightened and rubbed her back. "I meant to ask, what was it like going all the way to Scotland with Mr. Nicholls? It must have been weird."
Jess leaned over the sink and paused, looking out the window at the infinite crescent of the sea. "It was fine."
"Didn't you run out of things to say to him, stuck in that car? I know I would."
Jess's eyes prickled with tears so that she had to pretend to be scrubbing at an invisible mark on the stainless steel. "No," she said. "Funnily enough. I didn't."
--
Here was the truth of it: Jess felt the absence of Ed like a thick blanket, smothering everything. She missed his smile, his lips, his skin, the bit where a trace of soft dark hair snaked up toward his belly button. She missed feeling like she had when he was there, that she was somehow more attractive, more sexy, more everything. She missed feeling as if anything was possible. She couldn't believe losing someone you had known such a short time could feel like losing part of yourself, that it could make food taste wrong and colors seem dull.
Jess saw now that when Marty had left, everything she had felt had been related to practical matters. She had worried about how the children would feel with him gone. She had worried about money, about who would mind them if she had to do an evening shift at the pub, about who would take the bins out on a Thursday. But what she mostly felt was a vague relief.
Ed was different. Ed's absence was a kick in the guts first thing in the morning, a black hole in the dead of night. Ed was a constant running conversation in the back of her mind: I'm sorry, I didn't mean, I love you.
More than anything she hated the fact that a man who had seen only the best in her now thought the worst. To Ed she was now no better than any of the other people who had let him down or messed him up.
In fact, she was probably worse. And it was all her fault. That was the thing she could never escape from. It was entirely her own fault.
She thought about it for three nights, then she wrote him a letter. These were the last lines.
So in one ill-thought-out minute, I became the person I have always taught my children not to be. We are all tested eventually, and I failed.
I'm sorry.
I miss you.
PS I know you'll never believe me. But I was always going to pay it back.
She put her phone number on it and twenty pounds in an envelope, marked FIRST INSTALLMENT. And she gave it to Nathalie and asked her to put it with his post at Beachfront Reception. The next day, Nathalie said a for-sale sign had gone up outside number two. And she looked at Jess sideways and then stopped asking questions about Mr. Nicholls.
When five days had gone by and Jess realized he wasn't going to respond, she spent an entire night awake, and then she told herself firmly that she could lie around feeling miserable no longer. It was time to move on. Heartbreak was a luxury too costly for the single parent.
--
On Monday she made herself a cup of tea, sat down at the kitchen table, and called the credit-card company; she was told that she needed to up her minimum monthly payment. She opened a letter from the police that said that she would be fined a thousand pounds for driving without tax and insurance and that if she wanted to appeal the penalty, she should apply for a court hearing in the following ways. She opened the letter from the auto pound, which said she owed a hundred and twenty pounds up to the previous Thursday for the safekeeping of the Rolls. She opened the first bill from the vet and shoved it back in the envelope. There was only so much news you could digest in one day. She got a text from Marty, who wanted to know if he could come and see the kids at half term.
"What do you think?" she said to them, over breakfast.
They shrugged.
After her cleaning shift on Tuesday she walked into town to the low-cost solicitors and paid them twenty-five pounds to draft a letter to Marty asking for a divorce and for back payments in child support.
"How long?" the woman asked.
"Two years."
The woman didn't even look up. Jess wondered what kinds of stories she heard every day. She tapped in some figures, then turned the screen to Jess's side of the desk. "That's what it comes to. Quite a sum. He'll ask to pay in installments. They usually do."
"Fine." Jess reached for her bag. "Do what you have to do."
She worked her way methodically through the list of things she needed to sort out, and she tried to see a bigger picture beyond that small town. Beyond a little family with financial problems, and a brief love story that had snapped in two before it had really begun. Sometimes, she told herself, life was a series of obstacles that just had to be negotiated, possibly through sheer act of will. She stared out at the muddy blue of the endless sea, gulped in the air, lifted her chin, and decided that she could survive this. She could survive most things. It was nobody's right to be happy, after all.
Jess walked along the pebbly beach, her feet sinking, stepping over the breakwaters, and counted her blessings on three fingers, as if she were playing a piano in her pocket: Tanzie was safe. Nicky was safe. Norman was getting better. That was what it all boiled down to, in the end, wasn't it? The rest was just detail.
--
Two evenings later, they sat in the garden on the old plastic furniture. Tanzie had washed her hair and was on Jess's lap while Jess tugged the comb through her wet tangles. Jess told them why Mr. Nicholls wouldn't be coming back.
Nicky stared at her. "From his pocket?"
"No. It had fallen out of his pocket. It was in a taxi. But I knew whose it was."
There was a shocked silence. Jess couldn't see Tanzie's face. She wasn't sure she wanted to look at Nicky's. Jess kept combing gently, smoothing her daughter's hair, her voice calm and reasonable, as if that might bring reason to what she had done.
"What did you do with the money?" Tanzie's head had become unusually still.
Jess swallowed. "I can't remember now."
"Did you use it for my registration?"
She kept combing. Smooth and comb. Tug, tug, release. "I honestly can't remember, Tanzie. Anyway, what I did with it is irrelevant."
Jess could feel Nicky's eyes on her the whole time she spoke.
"So why are you telling us now?"
Tug, smooth, release.
"Because . . . because I want you to know that I made a terrible mistake and I'm sorry. Even if I planned to pay it back, I should never have taken that money. There was no excuse for it. And Ed--Mr. Nicholls--was well within his rights to leave when he found out because, well, the most important thing you have with another human being is trust." She tried to keep her voice measured and unemotional. It was becoming harder. "So I want you to know that I'm sorry I let you both down. I know that I've always told you how to behave, and then I did the complete opposite. I'm telling you because not telling you would make me a hypocrite. But I'm also telling you because I want you to see that doing the wrong thing has a consequence. In my case I lost someone I cared about. Very much."
They were both silent.
After a minute, Tanzie reached a hand round. Her fingers sought Jess's, and closed briefly around them. "It's okay, Mum," she said. "We all make mistakes."
Jess closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, Nicky lifted his head. He looked genuinely bemused. "He would have given it to you," he said, and there was a faint, but unmistakable, trace of anger in his voice.
Jess stared at him.
"He would have given it to you. If you'd asked."
"Yes," she said, and her hands stilled on Tanzie's hair. "Yes, that's the worst bit. I think he probably would have."
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Nicky
A week went by. They caught the bus to see Norman every day. The vet had sewn up his eye socket so there wasn't an actual hole, but it still looked pretty grim. The first time Tanzie saw his face she burst into tears. They said he might bump into things for a while once he was up and about. They said he would spend a lot of time sleeping. Nicky didn't tell them he wasn't sure anyone would be able to tell the difference. Jess stroked Norman's head and told him he was a wonderful brave boy, and when his tail thumped gently on the tiled floor of his pen, she blinked a lot and turned away.
On Friday, Jess asked Nicky to wait in Reception with Tanzie, and she walked over to the front desk to speak to the woman about the bill. He guessed it was about the bill. They printed out a sheet of paper, then a second sheet, then, incredibly, a third, and she ran her finger the whole way down each page and made a little choking sound when it reached the bottom. They walked home that day, even though Jess was still limping.
The town started to get busier as the sea turned from mucky gray to glinting blue. It felt weird at first, the Fishers being gone. It was as if no one could actually believe it. Nobody's tires got slashed. Mrs. Worboys started to walk to bingo in the evenings again. Nicky got used to being able to walk to the shop and back and realized that the butterflies he still felt in his stomach didn't have to be there. He told them this repeatedly, but they refused to get the message. Tanzie didn't go outside at all unless Jess was with her.
Nicky didn't look at his blog for almost ten days. He had written his "my family of losers" post when Norman was hurt and he was so full of anger that he had had to get it out somewhere. He had never felt rage, real rage, where he had wanted to break stuff and hit people before, but for days after the Fishers had done what they did, Nicky felt it. It boiled in his blood like poison. It made him want to scream. For those awful few days, at least, writing it down and putting it out there had actually helped. It had felt like he was telling someone, even if that someone didn't really know who he was and probably didn't care. He just hoped that someone would hear what had happened, would see the injustice of it.
And then, after his b
lood had cooled, and they heard that the Fishers were going to have to pay, Nicky felt kind of like an idiot. It felt like that thing when you tell someone a bit too much and you feel exposed and spend the following weeks praying they'll forget what you told them, afraid they might use it against you. And what was the point of putting it out there, anyway? The only people who'd want to look at all that emotional crap were the kind of people who slowed down to look at car crashes.
He opened the post up at first because he was going to delete it. And then he thought, No, people will have seen it. I'll look even more stupid if I take it down. So he decided to write a short thing about the Fishers being evicted and that would be the end of it. He wasn't going to name them, but he wanted to post something good so that if anyone ever did come across what he had written, they wouldn't think his whole family was completely tragic. He read through what he'd written the previous week--the emotion and the rawness of it--and his toes actually curled with shame. He wondered who out there in cyberspace had read it. He wondered how many people in the world now thought he was a total fool as well as a freak.
And then he reached the bottom. And he saw the comments.
Hang on in there, Gothboy. People like that make me sick.
Your blog got sent to me by a friend and it made me cry. I hope your dog is okay. Please post and let us know when you get a chance.
Hey Nicky. I'm Viktor from Portugal. I don't know you but my friend linked to your blog on Facebook and I just wanted to say that I felt like you a year back and things did get better. Don't worry. Peace!
He scrolled down some more. There was message after message. He typed his name into Google: it had been copied and linked hundreds, then thousands of times. Nicky looked at the statistics, then sat back in his chair and stared in disbelief: 2,876 people had read it. In a single week. Almost 3,000 people had read his words. More than 400 of them had taken the trouble to send him a note about it. And only 2 had called him a wanker.
But that wasn't all. People had sent money. Actual money. Someone had opened an online donation account to help with the vet's fees and left a message telling him how he could access it using a PayPal account.
Hey Gothboy (is that your real name??) have you thought of a rescue dog? That way something good might come out of it. I enclose a contribution! Rescue centers always need donations ;-)