Don’t You Cry
‘I don’t understand,’ I manage to squeeze out. ‘What is it you want?’
Angel continues to stare down at the mobile, ignoring me. She places the gun in the pocket on the front of the dress. I spend approximately one second contemplating whether I could wrestle it off her, but swiftly conclude that this would be pointless and ridiculous. This woman is taller than me, younger by at least fifteen years, and – crucially – clearly a bit unhinged.
‘We just want some space,’ says Angel when I had already given up on a reply.
We?
Then her expression softens slightly. ‘Look, you seem like a nice woman,’ she says. ‘I’m not coming here to bring you a load of grief. But you said you wanted to help me and that’s what I need right now. Help. From someone with no connection to us. Do you understand me?’
No, I don’t understand any of this. I can feel my knees knocking together and shivers running up and down my arms. I have to clench my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering with the shock.
Think.
‘The thing is,’ I say after a moment’s silence, ‘my husband is asleep upstairs. He was very tired after … working late. He’ll wake up soon.’ Shit. I’m a terrible liar. But I force myself to meet Angel’s gaze evenly. ‘He won’t be happy about this.’
Angel half smiles, almost sympathetically.
‘I know there’s no one else here,’ she says.
‘How?’ Anger rises, hotly, inside. ‘How can you possibly know that?’
Angel gestures towards the kitchen surfaces. ‘One plate, one cup. Ready meals in the recycling bin. I think you have a kid, judging by all the …’ she waves her hand at the fridge, where various school letters and pieces of art work are pinned with magnets, ‘… but the kid isn’t here. Or the father. Are you divorced?’ She pauses. ‘Was that your new bloke?’ She says this last bit with genuine curiosity, as though we are two women having a chat.
‘None of your business,’ I reply. I pull out the chair and sit down again. ‘And no,’ I add, despite myself. ‘He was … no one.’
Angel makes a face. ‘Good,’ she says. ‘Because he was a tosser.’
A laugh almost slips out before I remind myself that this strange, probably unstable, young woman invading my house has threatened me with a gun. Having one aimed at me in my own kitchen doesn’t feel quite real. Yet it still manages to be horribly frightening.
‘Look,’ I say, going for calm and trustworthy. ‘What do you want from me? Do you want money? Is that it?’
Angel looks up from her phone, where her thumbs have been a blur of motion, and stares at me. She has extraordinary hazel eyes that are almost golden. Quite cat-like. But it is impossible to read what she’s thinking; her expression is as flat as a pool of still water again. She seems to slip in and out of this state. As though other conversations are buzzing in her head at the same time and she has to tune in to hear me.
‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘I think so. And a car.’
I let out an exasperated sound.
‘My car is in the garage,’ I say. ‘And I’ve got about a tenner in my purse.’
‘Oh fuck, really?’ Angel’s dismay is palpable. ‘That’s a pisser about the car.’
She drags a hand through the bird’s nest of her hair and then an old-fashioned bell ringtone comes from her mobile. She snatches it up and holds it to her ear. Getting to her feet, she says, ‘I’m coming.’
Hope spasms in my chest as I hurry after her down the hallway. Maybe someone is here to pick her up. I can just shove her outside and lock the door.
But before I have time to do anything, Angel is pulling another stranger, a man, through the front door and into my home.
7
Nina
He is slightly built, shorter than Angel, with wet, black curls plastered to his face and dark eyes sunk in shadowed sockets. He’s enveloped in a long tweed coat that’s reminiscent of the sort me and my friends bought from charity shops in the eighties. He smells of wet dog, with another, staler smell underneath it. The coat seems to hang on his frame oddly, as though he is fat and thin all at the same time. He bulges around the middle, but his thin neck and narrow, white wrists protrude. It’s like a tall child wearing a grown-up’s clothes.
Angel touches his cheek, tenderly, and he visibly shivers.
‘Come on through,’ she says in a practical sort of tone. ‘You look freezing.’ She bolts the door then lifts the keys from the bowl on the hall table before locking the door and pocketing them.
I don’t even know where to start with this.
Angel almost drags the man by the sleeve down the hall towards the kitchen. I find myself following, mutely, torn between trying to escape and the dangers of leaving these two strangers here.
In the kitchen, Angel mutters something to the man, who is trembling so violently now that he looks as though he might collapse. He listens with his eyes closed as though receiving instruction. They stand over by the sink. I hover by the doorway, trying to work out what I can do.
I catch him say, ‘The blood. There was all this blood,’ which makes my stomach clamp like a clamshell, but then Angel shushes him and I don’t catch the rest.
‘Who are you?’ I say finally, in my boldest voice. ‘What do you want?’
The boy – man – I should say, drops his head, avoiding my gaze. Angel turns to me and I almost take a step back at the ferocity in her expression.
‘This is Lucas. He’s my little brother and he needs a bloody minute.’
Little brother.
Lucas looks only a few years younger than Angel, maybe early twenties. His face is much finer-boned than his sister’s, his shoulders hunched and narrow. He’s slightly built but looks like he has a wiry strength. His eyes are what frighten me the most though; they’re wide and staring as though he is watching something playing out in his mind and doesn’t like what he sees.
Lucas murmurs something then and that’s when I become aware of another sound, coming from somewhere about his person. It’s a sort of creaky puttering noise; familiar but so out of context I can’t place it. I move a few steps closer, drawn to its source, and that’s when I see what is causing that odd bulge in the coat.
‘Oh Jesus!’ I cry out.
Tufty, reddish hair pokes up from a head the size of a grapefruit.
The baby stretches its neck backwards, revealing a scrunched face. It’s so small; surely only a few weeks old; possibly new-born. The little twist of a mouth puckers and forms a square and the unhappy creaks turn into an ear-splitting wail.
All instinct, I cross the room and reach for it, hands outstretched.
‘Get back!’ Lucas yells and flails his arms and I stumble back. Lucas’s eyes are wide and a little unfocused. Is he on something? He lifts his hands up and says, in a strangled voice, ‘Just give me space! Don’t crowd me. I just need space, that’s all!’
‘Get away from him,’ shouts Angel. ‘Can’t you see what a state he’s in?’
She has the gun in her hand again now and is waving it around wildly, horribly close to the baby’s tiny head. Barely breathing, I peel my gaze back to Lucas and the shrieking bundle in his coat.
He wipes his face with a hand that’s battered and cut, the knuckles raw. I can see what looks like dried blood on his fingers and the backs of his hands. His nails are rimed black. When he places a filthy hand on the baby’s tiny head, I experience an internal mushroom cloud of pure horror.
The blood. The gun. The baby squirming visibly at the opening in his coat. Any combination of these things is wrong.
‘Lu babe,’ says Angel over the wailing. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘What’s wrong with you?’ I shout then. ‘Don’t you care more about that baby?’
‘The kid looks fine to me,’ says Angel sharply.
‘Oh, you know that, do you?’ I say. ‘Because I don’t think that’s a given right now.’
Angel stares at me and, for a second, she looks unsure.
She gives her brother a slight smile. ‘It is OK, isn’t it? Lucas? Can I just …?’
Lucas is breathing heavily, almost panting, as she approaches him, her movements slow and careful. When she reaches out he whimpers and steps back. But with shushing, comforting sounds she begins to open his coat. The baby is straining hard against the makeshift sling, which appears to be made from a man’s shirt. The sleeves are tied around Lucas’s back, the back of the shirt bagged into an unsatisfactory pouch. One of the baby’s legs, encased in a white sleepsuit, protrudes and dangles awkwardly.
Lucas closes his eyes as Angel reaches behind him and tries to unknot the sleeves. The baby screams on, jolting downwards with every tug of Angel’s arms. It is unbearable to watch. I bite back helpless tears and wrap my arms around myself. I can’t stop shaking.
‘Please,’ I whisper, ‘be careful.’
Somehow, I know this baby does not belong to either Angel or Lucas. So where is its mother?
Angel now has the baby, who is puce-faced, drawing knees to chest. She looks like she is carrying a bag of sugar rather than a squirming child and she places it on the table, not exactly roughly, but with little care. Then she peels off Lucas’s coat, speaking in a quiet, fussy tone all the while, before dropping it onto the floor.
I can’t stop myself from lunging for the child. But Angel is faster and with a yell she slaps me, hard, around the face. My cheek rings, hot with pain. Tears spring to my eyes and, for a moment, Angel looks almost contrite.
‘Look, it doesn’t have to be like this,’ she says, defiant again. ‘I don’t want to have to hurt you?’ She pauses. ‘But I will if I have to. Do you understand me?’
I nod dumbly, holding my cheek.
Angel sighs and says, ‘Oh for fuck’s sake.’ She snatches the baby up. ‘Happy now?’
She holds the hot, angry face to her shoulder, as the baby shrieks on. Lucas emits a small moan and wraps his arms around himself, rocking gently.
Somehow, I find my voice again. ‘Please, please, Angel,’ I say. ‘I won’t do anything. Just please be careful! Can’t you see how little he is?’ I’m sure he is a boy.
Angel meets my eyes, her expression toxic with resentment. ‘It’s all going to be fine if you don’t do anything fucking stupid, alright?’ She begins to jiggle the baby a little roughly, and then, in what is presumably an attempt at a softer tone, says, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK.’
The very words said by Angel in the restaurant after she saved my life. It seems so long ago.
Who, what, have I brought into my home?
The baby isn’t showing any signs of quietening.
‘Please make it stop?’ Lucas’s voice is plaintive, his accent more plummy than Angel’s flat London vowels. ‘I can’t stand this fucking noise! It won’t stop. It’s getting inside me!’ He presses his fists against the sides of his head and lets out a moan of despair.
Dread throbs through me. What is wrong with him? Whether it is drug-induced or simply how he is wired is unclear. But it doesn’t really matter which. What matters is that baby not being injured in any way. I look at the blood on his hands again. I desperately want to examine the child to see if it’s hurt but must tread carefully. Neither of the other two adults present seems to be stable.
‘Come on, babe,’ soothes Angel. ‘It’s just pissed off. Babies are always grumpy, aren’t they? It’ll settle soon, you’ll see.’ Her tone is gentle, cajoling, and it seems to work because he moves his hands away from his head.
‘Now get those wet things off, right?’ she says briskly. ‘Then we can all calm down.’
Lucas shucks the wet black T-shirt over his head and stands there shivering like a whipped dog. His chest is almost concave, delicate, like a boy’s. He has bruises on his ribs. The shape of him reminds me of Sam but the sharp, fearful smell of sweat is adult.
‘Where can he get dry clothes?’ demands Angel. ‘Which room?’
It seems challenging to think of the right answer to this question.
‘What, oh uh … upstairs, second door on the left,’ I say, then, ‘Shall I go?’
But Angel shakes her head. ‘No, not you,’ she inclines her head at Lucas. ‘Find all the landlines while you’re at it, yeah?’ As he begins to walk out of the room she calls out again. ‘Hey?’ He turns to look at her.
‘Wash your hands up there,’ she says gently, then gives a small, tight grin. ‘Your pits too. You stink.’ Lucas’s mouth twists and he leaves the room.
The baby screams on, hoarse now with misery. Every nerve end cries out to take over as Angel jiggles it roughly and says, ‘It’s OK,’ over, and over, again in a voice lacking any warmth at all.
8
Angel
Angel has seen her brother at his lowest ebb before, but this is something different. It is beginning to scare her now, the desperate look in his eyes. She hasn’t seen him for months and now this?
If he’d only tell her the whole story. She hasn’t had all of it, she knows that. It’s something about the way his gaze keeps sliding away from hers, like he’s frightened to meet her eyes full on.
When he’d rung earlier, Angel had been on her way back to a mate, Liz’s, where she’d intended to kip until the next morning. Then, bright and early, she planned to be off into London where she’d blow her money on a ticket to Inverness. She was really going to do it, too, this time. Make a fresh start in the clean sweet air, away from all the crap.
When her brother’s name had appeared on her screen she’d had the briefest moment when she contemplated not answering. It would serve him right for his recent lack of contact.
But she couldn’t do it. She could never really say no to Lucas.
When she heard the state he was in, she’d known straight away that this was it, a turning point in her life, albeit not the one she had been hoping for. He’d been incoherent with gasping sobs. As Angel tried to get him to calm down and tell her what had happened, it felt like everything inside her was swirling helplessly down a plughole. Whatever this was, it was very bad indeed.
She’d finally managed to extract the barest details from him and, while they’d sounded terrible enough, they hadn’t been everything. There was something missing.
It feels like he doesn’t trust her and that is beginning to piss her off. Hasn’t she always been the one to protect him? Didn’t she promise to do that very thing when they were kids?
Whatever he has done, they can find a way through it. How bad can it really be?
He just needs to calm down. Then they can make a proper plan and get the hell away.
The baby is on the table, next to her, screaming its head off still. The noise road-drills inside Angel’s skull. She shoots a look at the squalling creature. Tiny babies are so weird, with their jerky little limbs and crumpled pensioner faces. Strong and delicate all the same time. God knows she doesn’t want to have to hold it.
Angel’s disobedient brain immediately lobs an unwelcome image into her mind, like a shuttlecock over a net.
Her skinny sixteen-year-old legs with blood running down them, and the awful pains slicing across her stomach. The unsympathetic way the people in the hospital had spoken to her, about how she only had herself to blame and that she may have done some ‘permanent damage’.
Lucas keeps gazing at the baby, mournfully. It isn’t even his. But Angel knows her brother and has a strong suspicion that he isn’t going to agree to leaving it and getting the hell out of here. Why even bring it in the first place? It’s insane.
She pictures the bus to Scotland, weaving its way between soft green hills. Travelling far, far away from here.
9
Lucas
For the moment, he’s still bubble-wrapped against the pain.
Getting away had been a good distraction. Pounding down those endless country roads, across rutted fields and along the side of the dual carriageway in the rain, feeling the bouncing squish of the baby inside the coat, had taken every bit of his resources.
But a juggernaut of guilt is bearing down on him and he won’t be able to out-run it for long.
Lucas recognizes this feeling. He wonders whether everything in his life has been a series of wobbly stepping stones from there to here.
‘I’ve found somewhere,’ said Angel when he’d rung her, almost incoherent with shock. ‘It’s not ideal but it’s all I can think of for now. A place with no connection to either of us.’
She knew only the bare facts and hadn’t pressed for more. But she will. And Lucas can never tell her the truth. He can picture all too well how she would look at him if she knew what he’d done. No, he needs her too much right now. His sister is the only person in the world he could have called. If she abandoned him …
Angel had been almost calm on the phone. But Lucas knows this is how she deals with the really big things. For all her dramas, she’s capable of going to a quiet, still place in a storm. That’s what he needs right now.
‘Whatever has happened, we’ll get through it. Together,’ she’d said, then, ‘Hey, do you remember Grandad’s? Remember what I said?’
How could he forget? It was what he’d been thinking about all the way to this woman’s house.
Their safe place.
The sharp animal stink and the prickly, itchy straw in the barn. Lying on their bellies and peering down, pretending no one could find them. Eating Grandad’s weird old-school food. Pies and tinned peas. Custard creams and cocoa.
Laughing at his crap jokes, and playing with Boris. Lucas having to be prised away from him every night at bedtime. And even then, the old sheepdog would find its way onto his bed and Grandad would pretend not to know anything about it in the morning. He’d say things like, ‘It’s the funniest thing, but Boris’s bed looks quite untouched. I can’t understand it,’ and pretend to shake his head, while Lucas vibrated with suppressed giggles and hugged the dog harder.
Angel doesn’t know about the photo he keeps in his wallet, soft now with age and handling. Marianne is in it, grinning at Angel, so Grandad must have taken it. His sister is standing on one leg and making a daft face. Lucas leans against Marianne, with one hand on Boris’s head.
‘It’s OK,’ Angel had said in a harsh whisper. ‘I’ll look after you, Lu. I’ll always be the one who looks after you best.’
He looks at himself in the mirror in the small bathroom now, forces himself to meet his own eyes. He almost flinches at what he sees there, the burning shame.
Leaning his head against the cool glass, he tries to slow his breathing down.
He wishes the baby would stop crying.
10
Nina
The water pipes rattle, telling me that Lucas is using the bathroom upstairs. I try to summon the most benign expression I can muster but my face is stiff and mask-like. It feels like an impossible thing, to make this horrible situation better.
The pure disbelief – that this really is happening to me, ordinary me – is beginning to pass now. I’ve finally stopped shaking. But every time I look at the baby I’m overwhelmed by an instinct to grab him and just run for my life.
‘Look,’ I say gently, ‘Angel. I think the baby is too hot under all those layers. Can you please let me hold it and help? I’m not going to do anything stupid.’
Angel regards me warily. ‘I wouldn’t.’ She lifts her chin. ‘You have to know that the kid isn’t important to me. It’s Lucas I’m bothered about, alright?’
‘Yes, yes.’ I know I’m nodding a bit too vigorously. ‘I get that … please? Can I? I might be able to settle him.’
Angel pulls in a long suck of breath and then thrusts the baby towards me like an unwanted parcel. I cringe at her lack of gentleness and quickly take hold of him. The baby hesitates, contemplating this new location and then, presumably finding it still isn’t the desired one, continues to wail.
‘It’s OK, little chap,’ I croon gently, looking around.
I need somewhere soft to put him down.
When we had the large kitchen renovated, we made the decision to hang onto a battered old mustard-coloured sofa we’d had since first getting together. It sits at one end of the room and is covered in a fleece blanket. I cross the kitchen and grab the blanket, fashioning it into a mat with one hand, while I hold the tiny boy over my shoulder with the other.
Then I lay him down gently, murmuring the sort of soft nonsense words I used to say to Sam; a time that feels both near and yet very long ago. The baby pauses and for a moment I think it’s me, I’ve performed the magic of making him calm, then the room is filled with a powerful smell.
‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ says Angel holding her wrist delicately towards her nose, her face scrunched. ‘Has it done a shit?’
The baby is now grumbling, rather than giving full-throated cries. I ignore Angel’s theatrical complaints.
‘You just needed a poo, didn’t you?’ I sing-song, ‘and now you feel better, don’t you?’
The little boy stares up at me. His eyes are a dark blue, which might be on the cusp of turning brown. It gives them a look of being bottomless; alien and other.
How am I going to change him? There haven’t been any nappies in this house for years and years. And what about when the child becomes hungry?
He starts to cry again, his little face scrunched in pure misery as I try to unpeel the suit. I’m terrified of hurting him, of being too rough. All the hours I put in with Sam as a baby seem to be for nothing; I have entirely lost that ease with small babies. There is apparently no muscle memory for this practical role. I feel an irrational but powerful disappointment at this.
‘Can you fill the washing up bowl with warm water?’ I say to Angel. ‘And bring me the kitchen towel roll?’
Wrinkling her nose, she moves around the kitchen and mechanically follows instructions, bringing bowl and paper towels to the table. Then she steps back and lights up a cigarette, standing with her smoking arm resting on her other. I will deal with that later, I think, peeling off the white sleepsuit. It all feels so unfamiliar. I have forgotten about bending tiny limbs in and out of clothes and the fear of causing accidental hurt. I used to do this ten times faster, when it was part of my everyday life.
Angel is now pacing the room, darting glances at her phone screen and occasionally mumbling under her breath.
It’s like having a small electrical storm in the kitchen, whirling around me. She positively crackles with a malign energy that makes me instinctively want to hold the baby as close as I can. Would she hurt him? Maybe. I wouldn’t put anything past her right now.
I finally release the small nappy and the smell intensifies. I was right. He’s a boy.
Mustard-coloured shit is smeared up to his belly button, which is still new enough to be swollen with a small scab nestled in the folds. This baby was clearly born very recently. Far too tiny to be away from his mother. Where is his mother?
I quickly check him all over for injury, but, thank God, he seems unharmed. As I then carefully wash around the scrawny little legs and the nub of the penis, he releases a thin stream of urine in a perfect arc I just manage to dodge. This makes Angel laugh – a quick, sharp bark of mirth – and I snap her a look before continuing with my task. The little boy is now hiccupping miserably. I try to fashion a nappy out of clean kitchen towel but it’s hopeless. All I can do is wrap it around his bottom, awkwardly.
‘Does Lucas have any of the baby’s things?’ I ask, but I already know the answer. He arrived with only that coat as far as I could see. A too-big coat and a too-small baby.
‘No,’ says Angel, distractedly, looking again at her phone. ‘We’re just going to have to make the best of it.’ I wonder if she is waiting for a message from someone.