Do not talk about Larry, she wanted to say out loud. Do not mention that man.
‘It is very hard,’ Mamma continued. ‘I do not like to leave my little one alone, but there are times when I have to work. Saturdays are the worst, when there is no school.’
Golden-haired Lily was nodding. ‘If it would help, my husband and I can look after her sometimes.’
Carla felt her breath stop. Really? Then she wouldn’t have to stay inside the flat all on her own, with the door locked. She would have someone to talk to until Mamma got home!
‘You would look after my little girl? That is very kind.’
Both women were flushed now. Was Lily regretting her offer? Carla hoped not. Adults often suggested something and then took it away.
‘I must go now.’ Lily glanced at her case. ‘I have work to do and you’ll want time with your daughter. Don’t worry about the cut. The hospital said it would heal fast.’
Mamma clucked. ‘That school, she is no good. Wait until I see the teachers tomorrow.’
‘But you won’t, Mamma! You will be at work.’
‘Tsk.’ Already she was being whisked inside.
‘We’re in number 3 if you need us,’ Lily called out. Had Mamma heard? Carla made a mental note just in case.
As soon as they were alone, Mamma rounded on her. Her glossy red smile had become a creased crimson scowl. How could adults move from one face to another so fast?
‘Never, never speak to strangers again.’ Her pointed red finger wagged in front of her nose. There was a small chip in the polish, Carla noticed. On the right of the nail. ‘You were lucky this time to find an angel, but next time it might be the devil. Do you understand?’
Not exactly, but Carla knew better than to ask any more questions.
Apart from one.
‘Did my father really come from Sicily?’
Mamma’s face went red. ‘I cannot talk of this. You know it upsets me.’ Then she frowned at Carla’s blouse. ‘What are you hiding in there?’
Reluctantly, Carla brought Charlie out for inspection. ‘He’s a caterpillar.’ She had to squeeze the words out of her mouth with fear.
‘One of those pencil cases you’ve been nagging me for?’
Carla could only nod.
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. ‘Did you take him? From one of the other children? Is that why you have a bruise?’
‘No! No!’ They were speaking in Italian now. Fast. Fluid. Desperate.
‘Lily told you. Someone threw a ball at me. But on the way back from the hospital, she bought Charlie to make me feel better.’
Mamma’s face softened. ‘That is very kind of her. I must thank her.’
‘No.’ Carla felt a trickle of wee run down her legs. That happened sometimes when she was nervous. It was another reason why the others teased her at school. It had happened once in PE. Smelly Carla Spagoletti! Why don’t you wear nappies, like a real baby?
‘She would be embarrassed,’ Carla added. ‘Like Larry. You know what English people are like.’
Holding her breath, she waited. It was true that when the man with the shiny car gave them things, Mamma said they mustn’t talk about it too much in case it embarrassed him.
Eventually, Mamma nodded. ‘You are right.’
Carla breathed out a slow sigh of relief.
‘Now go and wash your hands. Hospitals are dirty places.’ Mamma was glancing at herself in the mirror, running her hands through her thick black curls. ‘Larry is coming for dinner.’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘You must go to bed early.’
7
Lily
Mid-October 2000
‘Sugar? Sellotape? Sharp implements? Crisps?’ barks the man on the other side of the glass divide.
It’s true what they told me in the office. You get used to prison: even by your second visit. I face the officer impassively. His skin is clean-shaven. Almost baby-like.
‘No,’ I say in a confident voice which doesn’t belong to me. Then I step aside to be searched. What would happen, I wonder, if I succeeded in hiding anything illegal – drugs or simply an innocuous packet of sugar from a coffee shop? The idea is strangely exciting.
Clip-clop across the courtyard in my new red kitten heels. Just to boost my self-confidence, I told myself when I bought them. Today, there are no men in prison uniform tending the garden. It’s a dull day with a nip in the air. I wrap my navy-blue jacket protectively around me and follow the officer through the double doors.
‘What’s it like in prison?’ Ed asked the evening after my first visit.
To be honest, I’d almost put it out of my head after the drama of taking the little Italian girl to hospital and then facing the wrath of her mother until she’d calmed down. Her reaction was, of course, understandable. She’d been worried. ‘Thank you from the bottom of my heart for looking after my Carla,’ she had written in a little note that I found slipped under the door later.
I still doubt my wisdom in stepping in. But that’s what happens when you have an overdeveloped conscience.
‘It’s airless,’ I said to my husband in reply to his question. ‘You can’t breathe properly.’
‘And the men?’ His arm tightened protectively around me. We were lying on the sofa, side by side in front of the evening television; a little squashed, but in that nice together sort of way. A married cosiness that almost (but not quite) makes up for the other part of a relationship.
I thought of the prisoners I’d seen in the corridor with their staring eyes and short-sleeved T-shirts with bulging muscles underneath. And I thought of Joe Thomas with his surprisingly intelligent (if odd) observations and the puzzle he had set me.
‘Not what you’d think.’ I shifted towards my husband so my nose was nestling comfortably against his neck. ‘My client could be an ordinary next-door neighbour. He was clever too.’
‘Really?’
I could feel Ed’s interest stirring. ‘But what did he actually look like?’
‘Well built. A beard. Tall – about your height. Very dark-brown eyes. Long thin fingers. Surprisingly so.’
My husband nodded, and I could feel him drawing my client in his head.
‘He talked a lot about Rupert Brooke, the war poet,’ I added. ‘Implied that this had something to do with his case.’
‘Was he in the army?’
It was a tradition that the men in Ed’s family went to Sandhurst before enjoying distinguished careers in the army. During our first date, he told me how disappointed his parents had been when he refused to follow suit. Art school? Was he mad? A proper job. That’s what he needed. Graphic design in an advertising company was an unhappy compromise all round. People didn’t rebel in Ed’s family, he told me. They toed the line. Ironically, I rather liked that at the time. It made me feel safe. Secure. But it seems to have given my husband a chip on the shoulder. At the few family gatherings I’ve been to with him, he’s always felt like the odd one out. Not that he’s said so. He doesn’t need to. I can just see.
‘The army?’ I repeated. ‘No, apparently not.’
Then Ed sat up and I felt a breeze of coldness between us. Not just the loss of warmth from his body, but the distance that comes when someone is on another plane. I hadn’t realized, until our marriage, that an artist could move so smoothly from real life to an imagined world. Ed’s family may have refused to finance art school, but no one could stop him from doing what he did best, in his spare time. Already a sketchpad appeared in his hands and my husband was jotting down the facial features of one of the men in the photographs staring across at us from the mantelpiece. This particular one was of his father as a young man.
Father …
And now, here I am, walking across the courtyard with the answer to my lifer’s puzzle right here, in my briefcase.
‘Your father was in the army,’ I say in the visitors’ room, sliding a folder across the table towards my client.
Joe Thomas’s face goes blank. ‘So what?’
‘So he was discharged. Not honourably either.’