AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Unable to stop himself, he looks around for his wife, sees a woman he vaguely recognises with white hair, palm pressed to the top of a walking stick, in earnest debate with a tall bespectacled man with a grey Gandalf beard while Shirley, Pete’s wife, listens in.
‘I had a good chat with Ava,’ Jennifer is saying, pulling him back. ‘We stayed in the sitting room until she settled. Which she did. She’s coped brilliantly.’
He meets her eye. Her soft Irish accent soothes him; it makes him want to believe everything she says, though he has no idea why that is. She has a calmness, a deep intelligence in her soft grey eyes, which is in stark contrast to her husband’s rather jarring brand of being. If we’re lucky, we find the person we need, he thinks. That’s what Jennifer is for Johnnie, what Bella is for Neil and what Ava was for him; he can’t afford to forget that. He just has to get her back to being that person. He has to make her right, make her herself again. Perhaps tonight will be the start.
‘Ava said the police have scaled back the investigation,’ Jennifer says, with a directness that takes him aback but somehow doesn’t grate on his nerves like Johnnie does. No one apart from the Lovegoods has mentioned Abi tonight. No one ever does, unless he brings it up. Which he doesn’t. Ever.
‘Oh, that was months ago.’ He makes himself meet Jennifer’s gaze. ‘They haven’t closed the case, but there are no new leads for the moment.’ How odd it feels to say it out loud. ‘I suppose we’ll always be looking for new leads. I’m trying to get Ava to move on, but…’
Jennifer is nodding gravely, but there is nothing vampiric in her attention to the open, bleeding wound of his life. ‘It must be so tough.’
Such a simple statement.
‘It’s hell actually,’ he replies. Another simple statement. What else is there? It is hell. Or purgatory, perhaps – a grim antechamber, waiting. Forever, possibly. He wants to say more, to add that he believes his daughter drowned that day, that it was an accident, not a dumping of her body after something sinister, that he has chosen to believe this for his own sanity, but he doesn’t. ‘The police think she drowned,’ he says instead. ‘They think she was feeding the ducks and got overexcited, maybe tried to pet one and lost her balance. They’ve said as much.’ That it’s the police that have said this makes it sound less like he’s writing her off in one great dismissive act of callousness. Yes, he has felt callous. Feels callous. As if he wants his daughter dead. Which he doesn’t obviously. But if she’d had some sort of accident, that would be better. Better than…
‘Your daughters are lovely,’ he says, sounding inane even to himself.
‘Thank you. And your baby boy is an absolute darling. I love the name. Fred. A grandparent?’
‘Chopin.’
‘Ah. Of course. Ava teaches piano, doesn’t she? I’d love to learn to play. I used to but I gave up – typical idiotic teenage move.’
He gets the sense that Jennifer is acknowledging his need to change the subject rather than, as is often the case around here, simply waiting until she can talk about her own children. She has been so direct with him; he figures he can return fire.
‘Your elder daughter, Jasmine,’ he begins but hasn’t the courage to continue.
‘She has Angelman syndrome,’ Jennifer offers, her frankness extending, then, to herself.
He nods. ‘She seems incredibly happy. She lit up the room earlier.’
Jennifer smiles. ‘She does that. It’s part of her condition. She smiles a lot, laughs a lot. She flaps her hands. Other things too, which you won’t have noticed, like her obsession with water and shoes. She’s less obsessed now that she’s a teenager, but when she was little, she used to fill my slippers with water. Well, all of our shoes actually, but particularly my slippers for some reason.’ She laughs.
‘Wow. I’ve never heard of that.’
‘She’s echolalic too.’
Matt inclines his head in question.
‘Sorry, you get used to the terms. She repeats back what people have said. An echo. Echolalic. She has limited language, but she can attach words to things or people. She can ask for things in her own way. Earlier, she said “bicycle” because we always point them out to her and she’s seen Kevin so many times on his.’
‘And she called Neil “Pockets”.’
She grimaces. ‘He seemed a bit pissed off about that.’
Matt waves it away. ‘Oh, he’s OK, don’t worry about it. Neil’s a great guy but he can be a bit… sensitive, in a way. He’s one of the cleverest, smartest people I know, but he’s not… he’s…’
‘Not academic?’
‘Exactly. He’s dyslexic, but he’s clever. Cleverer than me in so many ways. And driven, you know? He’s done it all himself, in his own way. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been channelled through a tube, the funnel of higher education, I suppose, whereas Neil just got out there into the world and made it happen. He didn’t need channelling. The whole academic thing can be a bit in-your-face, particularly round here. It never used to be like that when I was a kid. Now, it’s like it’s the one true path or something. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say, to be honest. I suppose we all feel inadequate, one way or another.’
‘You’re obviously very proud of him.’ Jennifer takes a sip of her drink. It is clear and fizzy and he suspects it’s mineral water. She’s not the type to get drunk, he thinks. Not the type to lose control.
‘You seem very close,’ she continues.
‘We’ve been friends since we were eleven. We were each other’s best man, et cetera.’
‘Well, he’s a good guy. Very hard worker, very reliable. I trusted him one hundred per cent in the house, which is a bigger thing than you might expect when you’re having work done, especially with a vulnerable child. A lot don’t seem to remember they’re in someone else’s home, it’s just a job to them, but Neil respected my wishes without question. And Jasmine loved him.’
