There’s far more junk inside than even I thought. Long-expired coupons for restaurants, keys for the old shed we got rid of years ago, endless receipts for goods we threw away. There’s a bit of emergency money, old shopping lists. Everything except for my work pass.
As I slide everything back inside, that niggling devil at the back of my mind only has one conclusion. It’s Dan – he’s messing with me.
Chapter Five
Except Dan was missing his fob, too. Is that a coincidence? He said he’d found it but didn’t say where – and I wasn’t bothered enough to ask. I glance towards the back door and then through the house towards the front, as if wondering if we’ve had a break-in. It’s nonsense, of course. If someone broke in, they’d be interested in more than Dan’s gym fob and my work pass. The more obvious conclusion is that I can’t have left the pass in the drawer. I must have put it somewhere else. Ageing is a terrible thing. It starts with that extra half-a-second to remember a name and only gets worse from there. Next, it’s an hour-and-a-half lost trying to remember where a pair of shoes have been left. That or my work pass. Let’s not get into waking up in the middle of a field.
I take a moment to sit on the sofa and try to actually think about where it might be. Those thoughts are distracted by the sound of the front door banging open and clattering into the wall. There’s a gust of wind and then stomping feet.
Olivia.
The mother inside me that definitely isn’t my mother bristles at the slamming door and loud footsteps. I’ve tried to stop myself from making these small digs, from causing these arguments about nothing, but it’s almost automatic. If we’re going to fall out, it should at least be about things that matter, not feet and doors.
Olivia lurches in from the hallway, Doc Martens scuffing across the wooden floor. When she gets into the kitchen, she stops dead, noticing I’m home. She stands straighter, as if challenging me to say something. I wonder if she was waiting for my text about seeing her later before she entered the house. She might have been around the corner anticipating an empty house.
She’s wearing a tight leather jacket with a tartan skirt and ripped tights. We’ve had the ‘you’re-not-going-out-in-that’ arguments years before and I suppose I’m used to it now. Clothes are one thing, but it was the nose piercing that really set us at each other’s throats. She was only sixteen when she had the ring put through her septum. It was perfectly legal, of course, but the first I knew of it was when I saw it. It’s hard to argue back when she says it’s her body and she can do what she wants with it. What is there to say? ‘Yeah, but I kinda made it’?’ Instead, I said she’d struggle to get a job which, it’s fair to say, didn’t particularly appeal to a sixteen-year-old.
‘Good night?’ I ask, forcing a cheerfulness I don’t feel.
‘Salright.’
The words slice together into one and then Olivia scuffs across to the other sofa, dumping her badge-covered backpack on one cushion and flopping into the other. She digs deep into the bottom of the bag for a tangled phone lead and then, having set the device to charge, begins to thumb away at the screen.
I want to say, ‘Oh, so your phone does work?’ but can only hear those words in my mother’s voice.
Olivia’s fingers flash frenetically across the screen and then she holds a hand to her head, and sighs.
‘Anything I can help with?’ I ask.
She angles her head a tiny amount, just enough so that she can stare crookedly at me. I’ve seen the scowl numerous times in the past few years and it can mean anything from she missed a bus to the world is actually ending. The Four Horseman could be coming down our road as we sit here, or her hair straighteners have stopped working.
I wait, knowing full well that the wrong word now will get me nowhere.
She looks back to her phone before finally speaking. ‘I can’t get hold of Ty,’ she says.
That explains it. Tyler is the boyfriend.
‘He’s not replying to my texts and his dad says he’s not been home since Friday.’
Not replying to texts? Oh, the irony, daughter.
‘Isn’t that normal for him?’ I reply.
Another sideways scowl and so I quickly add: ‘I’m not having a go.’
‘I’ve tried Nicky and Will – but they’ve not seen him. Neither’s Dele or Gadge.’
There was a time when I knew all of Olivia’s friends but that was when she’d happily have birthday parties at the house with party bags and cake for everyone. It was a long time ago but those were happy days. Dan and I were getting along and Olivia was still our little girl. Now, of the four names she’s mentioned, I think I know one – and I’m not even sure about that. I hope to everything that’s holy that ‘Gadge’ is not some lad’s real name.
‘When was the last time you saw him?’ I ask.
She sighs and her entire body slumps. ‘Saturday night.’
Her eyes narrow momentarily and then she turns back to her phone. There was an accusation in that stare but I’m really trying not to argue.
‘How’s the café?’ I ask.
‘It’s work. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. Rahul seemed pleased with you the last time I saw him.’
‘Yeah.’
Olivia is all elbows and knees as she hugs her legs to her chest, peering around her legs to continue using her phone.
I try a different approach: ‘What about the accountancy lessons with Ellie?’
She rolls her eyes. ‘They’re fine.’
The worst thing about my relationship with Olivia is that I know it’s not that different from the one I had with my mother when I was the same age.
‘What are your plans for today…?’
A shrug. ‘Try to find Ty.’
I leave it a moment, not wanting to jump on her. ‘He has done this before, though…’
She looks up, frowns, looks down.
I suspect that, deep down, this is the fact that’s annoying Olivia the most. Her boyfriend has done this before. It’s fair to say his relationship with his father isn’t the best and he’s disappeared for days at a time on at least two occasions that I know of. Then there’s Olivia and Tyler’s relationship in itself. They’re one of those couples. Everybody knows one, especially at that age. They break up and make up incessantly, falling out and arguing over petty things and then getting back together days later.
When they first broke up, I was stupid and na?ve in assuring her it was all for the best; that she could do better, and so on. Three days later and they were back together. I know she told him what I said because he was brazen enough to tell me to my face that he was definitely good enough for my daughter.
Even though they’ve broken up at least three times since, I’ve not made the same mistake.
There’s a part of me, that I’d like to think is small, which hopes he doesn’t come back. The truth is he’s not good enough for her.
‘Have you heard from him at all since Saturday?’ I ask.
‘I already said.’
‘You said you’d not seen him since Saturday…’ I tail off, immediately regretting firing straight back.
She spins to face me, knocking her phone onto the floor in the process.
Olivia’s top lip has curled in fury. ‘And whose fault is that?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re the one that argued with him. You made him run away.’
‘I really didn’t.’
‘I was right here, Mum! I heard you.’
‘All I said was that I wasn’t going to lend you money if you were going to give it straight to him.’
She bends to scoop her phone from the floor, checking the already cracked screen as she shakes her head. Her hair is baby pink at the moment, having gone through the full rainbow in recent rimes. She tugs at the short curl that’s come from tucking it behind her ears. Dan always says she’s her mother’s daughter – and there’s a certain amount of truth to that. As much as Tyler and Olivia antagonise one another, the same is true of me and her. When it comes to looks, however, Olivia is her father’s daughter. They share the same high, angled cheekbones that are topped off by big brown eyes. Though I’d like to pretend it isn’t true, there are times when I’m jealous of how little she looks like me.
Olivia is on a roll now: ‘You called him a scrounger.’
‘No I didn’t.’
‘Last week you did.’