Cathy’s son Jamie was sullen and spoilt in Trish’s estimation. He attended an exclusive private school where he seemed to learn less than Trish’s other grandchildren did in the state system. They went on a picnic to Windermere and Jamie found fault with everything from the food to the lake. What worried Trish was the way Cathy agreed with him and appeased him, as if she were afraid of upsetting him. Jamie reminded Trish of Mark, and of Doug as a child, enjoying bullying. She didn’t understand how he could be like Mark. He had only been a year old when Mark died. Surely a tendency to like bullying couldn’t be genetic?
The next year, when he was sixteen, Helen told Trish that Cathy was going to buy Jamie a moped. “A moped, in London! I’d never let Donna or Tony,” Helen said. “And they’re going to be on at me again now that Jamie has one. Cathy has no sense with that boy.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Trish said. “And it’s not being a single mother, because look at you with Tamsin, or Bethany with Alestra for that matter.”
“I was never on my own with Tamsin the way Cathy has been with Jamie. You were there, and Gran, and then Bethany too. Cathy had nannies and au pairs, but they were employees. She’s got too much money, that’s what it is. Did you know she boasts about being in the sixty percent tax band?”
Trish couldn’t remember. “Are you short of money?”
“We’re doing fine. Computers are the big thing. I’d rather do more programming and less selling, but that’s not the way things are these days. My only problem is that I’m bored with Don. He doesn’t want to do anything different, ever. I suggested we have a holiday in Greece or Italy, but he only wants to go to Spain like always.”
About a month later, in early December, Trish got an anguished call from Cathy very early one morning. “Mum!”
“What’s wrong?”
“He hasn’t come home!”
“Jamie?” Trish rubbed her eyes and looked at the clock: 06.17.
“He wasn’t home and I went to bed, and he still isn’t home.” Cathy was screeching into the phone.
“Call the police,” Trish said. “He’s only sixteen. They’ll have to do something.”
She made a note to herself “Jamie missing.” She didn’t think she’d forget, but these days she never knew what might go out of her head.
“Wouldn’t they have called me if they knew something?” Cathy asked, sounding a little more collected.
“If they knew something, probably, which means he probably isn’t in a hospital or anything like that. But if he’s gone off somewhere they can try to find him.” Trish calmed Cathy down and got her to agree to call the police.
She got up and had a hot bath and a cup of tea to get her mind working. Then she got the twins up for school. They were old enough to go by themselves now, but she made Rhodri porridge and Bronwen toasted cheese. “The strongest correlation to doing well in school—” she began when Rhodri protested.
“—is eating protein in the morning, yes, I know,” Rhodri said.
“And your father always ate breakfast and none of my other children did, and look at him now.”
“I can’t, the moon has set,” Rhodri said.
“Smartass,” Bronwen said.
They went to school and Trish called Cathy back. “Any news?”
“Nothing,” Cathy said.
That afternoon the telephone shrilled, but it was Helen, calling to tell Trish that Donna had won a County Art Prize. Trish wrote it down before she forgot. “Did you speak to Cathy?” she asked.
“No?”
“Jamie didn’t come home last night.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Helen said. “Oh no. I hope it’s not something terrible.”
“Coming off the road on that machine would be terrible enough. There was ice last night.” Trish shuddered.
She called Cathy again and had no answer. She left a message. The twins came home from school, and Bethany came home from the food co-op and made dinner. She had a council meeting that night and was in a rush so Trish didn’t take her aside to tell her about Jamie.
Cathy called just after ten. She was hysterical. Trish caught “pond” and “dead” and “body.”
“What has happened?” she asked. “Shall I come? Where are you, Cathy?”
Cathy was at the police station in Twickenham. “Twickenham! That’s where Gran lived and I grew up.”
As it turned out, it was also where Jamie had died, skidding on an icy road and coming off his moped and going into a pond, where he had drowned. Trish went cold hearing about it.
“Shall I come?” she asked again, calculating how she would ask Helen and Bethany to cover for her with the twins.
“What good would it do, Mum?” Cathy asked.
After that she went to bed. She had thought it bad to outlive a son; now she had outlived a grandson.
She remembered it in the morning. She knew she had, because she had told Helen when she called in to the shop and spoke to her. Helen had been shocked that Cathy hadn’t called her, and that Cathy hadn’t wanted Trish to go. “Does she want me?” Helen asked. “Should I call and ask? She shouldn’t be on her own.”
“You can try,” Trish said.