The Missing Marriage

Today though, Jamie caught her off guard.

She was busy reading a filthy text a friend had just sent her about Daniel Craig while talking to her daughter, Kayleigh, who was in the booth with her because it was Sunday, and who wanted to know what a zombie was – when she looked up and saw Jamie standing smiling through the security glass at her. The locket she’d been sucking on dropped out her mouth and fell wetly against her skin. That’s exactly who Jamie Deane reminded her of, she thought – Daniel Craig.

‘Haven’t seen you in a while,’ Leanne said, pulling her tracksuit top down nervously over her waist, breathing in and sliding off the chair.

‘Missed me?’

She pulled her hair back over her shoulders and laughed.

‘Put a pack of Bensons on the tab for me, will you.’

‘Your tab’s getting long.’

‘I’ll make it up to you.’

She was shaking as she got the cigarettes off the shelf and slid them through to his side, and thought she might cry when he stroked the back of her hand – briefly – with his forefinger.

Close to clinically obese, there was so much going on between chin and counter that all Jamie could do was stare vaguely but appreciatively at Leanne’s midway bulk – em blazoned with the word SWALLOWS spelt out in sequins (a gift from the friend who sent the Daniel Craig text) – before heading out of the shop and back into his van.

Two minutes later, he was back.

‘You can’t of smoked the whole pack.’

Jamie, distracted, said, ‘There’s a car parked outside dad’s – know anything about it?’

‘What car?’

Abandoning Kayleigh and leaving the booth door propped open with a fire extinguisher, Leanne followed Jamie out of the shop, but didn’t recognise the car parked outside Bobby Deane’s bungalow.

‘It might not be for your dad,’ she said at last, pleased with herself for thinking this.

Jamie grunted in concession to this theory as her eyes slid over the chain caught in the crease at the back of his neck and she breathed in the smell of him – take away food, dog, dope, anger, and a sweetness that vanished as soon as she tried to define it, and that wasn’t aftershave or the backlash of the dope.

‘Any strangers been in the shop this morning?’

‘No. Wait –’

‘Who?’ he demanded, irritable. ‘A woman who knew mum.’

‘Police,’ he hissed, turning round suddenly and nearly knocking her backwards she’d crept so close.

She lifted her eyes with difficulty from his neck and watched Inspector Laviolette leave Bobby Deane’s bungalow then ring on Mrs Harris’s door.

‘What the fuck’s he doing now?’ Jamie mumbled running, crouching into his van, which had Reeves Regeneration painted on the side.

He watched through the windscreen as Laviolette stood talking to Mrs Harris then Mrs Harris’s front door shut and the Inspector got back in his car.

Soon after this the burgundy Vauxhall accelerated past Jamie Deane’s parked van and Mo’s daughter, Leanne, standing with her arms folded on the pavement outside the shop. Behind her, Kayleigh was pressing a tongue dyed red with lolly against the glass.

Jamie wound the van’s window down. ‘Has he gone?’

‘Yeah – he’s gone.’

‘Get me a pasty.’

Leanne turned and walked automatically back into the shop, taking a pasty past its sell by date from the cold cabinet.

Jamie took it from her then put the van into gear without another word, without so much as even looking at her.

She stood on the pavement and watched him turn into Armstrong Crescent, her heart breaking.

*

‘What was he doing here?’ Jamie yelled at Bobby, his mouth full of pasty, staring at the Inspector’s card. He’d already been in the kitchen, and the stuff in there was untouched. ‘I can’t believe you let that bastard in here. Him!’ he cried out, in frustration.

He knew that losing patience didn’t work, but he hadn’t yet discovered what did so in the meantime he carried on yelling at Bobby Deane who’d just had time – following the Inspector’s departure – to walk into the hallway in search of a staircase that didn’t exist in order to go upstairs to a bedroom that also no longer existed.

Perplexed at being unable to find any stairs at all, Bobby had gone back into the lounge and sat down in the armchair again when he heard the front door opening. The next minute a man walked into the room who he briefly recognised as one of his sons – he just couldn’t remember which, and had no idea what his name was.

Then his son started yelling at him and then he stamped on his left foot, which was bare still, and the pain was such a shock to Bobby it blocked out the yelling for a while.

He became confused and as a result of this confusion, Jamie and the bungalow slipped entirely from his mind as he fell into a profound sense of unfamiliarity, which made him panic and want to leave the chair he was sitting in and go in search of the stairs again. If he could only find the stairs, he’d be able to find Rachel.

Rachel was upstairs waiting for him; she had something to give him – a flower – and the flower was beginning to wilt; it needed water.

He tried to get up, but was pushed back down.

After that, he kept his eyes on the man pacing in front of him.

There was a dense pain in his left foot that made him feel helpless – then he remembered, momentarily. ‘I told him Rachel would be back soon – that she’d know where Bryan was.’

Jamie stared at his father. ‘Bryan? It was nothing to do with me then?’

‘Who are you?’ Bobby said, managing to get to his feet at last, in spite of the pain, and shuffling to the window.

‘I’m your son, you stupid fuck – your son, Jamie.’ He let out a few brief, frustrated sobs. ‘And I did twenty years for you. Twenty years – and you’ve got no idea who the fuck I am.’ He put his hand over his face.

Bobby, who was looking out the window, said, ‘He’s gone.’

‘Who’s gone you daft fucker?’

‘Our Bryan was parked outside. I thought maybe he’d come to take me for a drive up the coast – I haven’t seen the sea in a while – but he never came in. Why didn’t he come in?’ Bobby appealed briefly to Jamie, who was now smoking one of the Bensons he’d taken from the shop. ‘Can I have one?’

‘No,’ Jamie yelled. Then, ‘I don’t fucking believe this. Twenty years and it’s still Bryan. Bryan.’

Bobby looked down at the windowsill where there was a spider’s web flecked with flies. ‘Are you looking for Bryan too?’

‘Why would I be looking for Bryan?’