Jenna
Jenna
Jenna slots her key in the front door, supermarket shopping bags bunched around her ankles like anxious children.
The smell of toast greets her, and she realises Callum must finally have surfaced. He was still asleep when she left just after eleven, and she’d decided not to disturb him on a Sunday morning.
‘Do you want a hand?’ Callum appears in the small, square hallway, wearing a pair of shorts, chest bare.
‘Thanks, love. Can you grab the other bags?’
She carts the shopping through the living room, into the compact kitchen, uses every available space – floor, work surface, draining board – to stow the bags before she unpacks. Behind her, Callum brings the last of it through, places it under the fold-out table.
‘What time did you wake up?’
‘About half eleven.’
Jenna pulls out frozen salmon, a bag of peas, a tub of Callum’s favourite ice-cream, and manages to cram them into the freezer compartment at the top of the fridge. ‘You obviously needed a lie-in. Hopefully it’ll have done you good.’ She hears the formality in her voice, knows that at some point she has to confront Callum about what’s been going on. Ever since the call from Mr Marlowe on Friday evening, Jenna has been burying her head in the sand, hoping that all the uncertainties will somehow magically disappear. She has been deluding herself that she doesn’t need to ask Callum the truth about what’s been happening at school, about his rekindled friendship with Liam Walsh, about what happened the night Isla was killed. Every time she thinks she is on the verge of broaching it, her courage abandons her, too fearful of what the answers may be.
Placing two cartons of milk in the door of the fridge, she knows she cannot leave it much longer. The doubts are burning a hole in her chest, keeping her awake at night.
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
Callum nods, mouth full of toast. Jenna fills the kettle, pulls two mismatched mugs from the cupboard above the microwave, places a teabag in each.
‘There’s something I need to ask you.’ The words are there, released into the ether, before her brain has time to stop them.
Callum eyes her with mild caution. ‘Okay.’
Jenna pulls a teaspoon from the drawer, twiddles it between her fingers like a majorette with a baton. ‘Have you seen Liam Walsh lately?’
She trains her eyes on Callum’s face, witnesses the hesitation: the weighing up of the scales, contemplating truth versus fiction.
‘Why are you asking?’
‘He came here, a couple of weeks ago—’
‘Liam came here? How did he even know where we live?’
Jenna scrutinises her son’s expression, searches for any trace of deception, but finds nothing. Either her son has become a skilful liar or he’s telling the truth. ‘I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me.’
‘I honestly don’t know. I’ve never told him. Maybe he... I dunno... followed me or something.’
Jenna allows herself a pause. She has no idea how he will respond when she tells him what she knows. ‘He said you’d seen him lately. Been hanging out with him—’
‘That’s a lie—’
‘So you haven’t seen Liam? You haven’t seen him since that day in court?’
There is a momentary silence, such a narrow sliver of time, and yet enough for Jenna to discern the answer to a question that has plagued her ever since Liam’s visit.
‘Why, Callum? Why would you start hanging around with him again?’
‘I haven’t—’
‘I thought we were beyond all that. I really thought that when you got your place at Collingswood it was going to be a fresh start—’
‘It is—’
‘But now you’re hanging around with people who are only ever going to get you into trouble—’
‘Mum, will you just stop and listen, please .’
Behind Jenna, the kettle boils, but she does not turn around, keeps her eyes locked on Callum’s face.
‘It’s not what you think. I haven’t been hanging out with him.’ Callum picks up a t-shirt from the back of the kitchen chair, slips it over his head and through his arms. ‘The night Isla died, she and I had a row, at the party. I left. I was going to come straight home but I was angry and I just needed to walk it off.’
Jenna waits, listens, dreading whatever he is about to tell her.
‘I was on the high street, near the bridge, and I saw Liam, outside the off-licence.’ Callum swallows. ‘He was with a couple of mates – I don’t know who, I’d never seen them before.’
He pauses, and Jenna has to restrain herself from urging him to continue.
‘Liam was being really friendly, asking how I was getting on at my posh school—’
‘How did he even know where you go to school?’
‘I dunno. Someone must have told him.’ He runs a hand across the back of his neck. ‘And then three other blokes turned up and started cussing Liam—’
‘What blokes?’ Jenna can hear the alarm in her voice, a thousand different permutations hurtling through her mind, each worse than the last.
‘I don’t know. But I think Liam might be dealing.’
The kitchen feels claustrophobic suddenly, as though the walls are closing in on them, trapping them both.
‘I promise I won’t be angry, love. Whatever’s going on, we’ll sort it out. I just need you to be honest.’
He takes in a deep breath. ‘These blokes were talking all kinds of shit, and then one of them pulled a knife—’
‘Jesus, Callum—’
‘It’s okay. I just turned and ran. One of them tried to chase me but I lost him within a couple of minutes.’
Jenna tries to steady her racing thoughts, imagining what might have happened – how that night might have turned out – if Callum hadn’t got away.
‘That’s how I got that mark on my face. I was climbing over a wall and I banged it against the brick.’
Jenna’s memory rewinds to the night of Isla’s death, to Callum’s return, to the red streak across his cheek. ‘I thought Isla had hit you.’
A rueful smile upends one corner of Callum’s mouth. ‘Actually, she did. But not hard enough to leave a mark like that.’
Assumptions recalibrate in Jenna’s mind, like squares in a game of Tetris. ‘And you haven’t seen Liam since? He hasn’t been in touch?’
Callum shakes his head. ‘I haven’t, I swear. I blocked his number ages ago. I haven’t seen him since that night.’
There is an earnestness to his voice, and Jenna is sure he is telling the truth.
‘So the CCTV footage the police found of you running away, near where Isla was killed – you were running away from this gang?’
Callum nods.
‘Why didn’t you say so at the time? Why didn’t you tell the police?’
He sighs with an air of resignation. ‘Because it would have got me into more trouble. The police wouldn’t have believed I’d just bumped into Liam. They’d have assumed I’d been with him intentionally, that I was dealing too. They’d probably have thought I was carrying a knife as well. You know they would, with my track record.’
Jenna wants to dispute it, but she knows Callum is right. She has seen it too many times, in her line of work. Innocent kids tarred with a criminal brush because of one prior mistake. Fingers pointing towards a child who comes from a broken home, an undesirable neighbourhood, a working-class family. Knee-jerk assumptions of guilt when a kid fits a profile the police are seeking.
She recalls the accusatory eyes of other parents at the sixth-form play when Callum was taken in for questioning, the certainty that the right person was being apprehended, as though it was only ever a matter of time before the police came for him.
Guilt needles her thoughts. For days – weeks – she had allowed other people’s prejudices to make her doubt her son, to entertain suspicions that now fill her with remorse. To imagine that perhaps he’d fallen back in with the wrong crowd. That perhaps – god forbid – he was in some way implicated in Isla’s death.
Looking at Callum now, something solidifies in her: a determination that she will never again allow anyone to make her question her son’s integrity.
‘What were you arguing about that night? You and Isla?’
Colour pinks Callum’s cheeks. ‘Promise you won’t say anything if I tell you?’
Jenna nods.
Callum pauses before speaking. ‘Isla was having a... a thing... a relationship with Andrew Forrester. As in, Nathaniel’s dad. It’s why she dumped me.’
For a few seconds, it seems too preposterous to be true. But then Jenna allows herself a moment for the revelation to slot into the narrative, like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
It never really made sense to her, Isla’s abrupt ending of her relationship with Callum. One day they were so in love, and then suddenly she announced it was over.
But Isla and Andrew?
She thinks about Abby and Nicole, about how envious of their gilded lives she has been since Callum started at Collingswood: their affluence, their wealth, their confidence. But now she thinks of Abby and what she must be going through: the double loss of her husband and daughter in the space of five years; the rage she must be feeling towards her best friend’s husband; the impotent fury that she wasn’t able to prevent it. And then she thinks of Nicole, her seemingly perfect life shattered by a middle-aged man taking advantage of an emotionally vulnerable seventeen-year-old girl. Jenna has seen this predatory narrative play out many times during the course of her career but never so close to home.
She looks at Callum and knows that for all their imperfections, for all the frustrations of their daily lives – the bills, the inconsiderate neighbours, the inequality – she would not swap places with Abby or Nicole for all the money in the world.
‘I don’t know what to say. I’m just so sorry you’ve been going through all that on your own. I’m sorry it’s been such a hard time. And I’m sorry for Isla, sorry that she got... coerced by that man. God, what a mess.’
Callum chews the edge of his lip. ‘Can I tell you something without you going apeshit at me?’
Jenna forces her voice to be calm, neutral. ‘Course.’
He pauses, breathes. ‘I’m not sure I want to stay at Collingswood.’ His voice is tentative, as if testing his weight on the edge of a frozen pond.
‘But it’s only a few months until your A levels.’
‘Can’t I just study for them at home or something? I’ve got all the textbooks. We’ll have covered all the syllabus by Christmas anyway.’
Jenna studies his face, sees his unease. ‘What’s wrong?’
He shrugs. ‘Nothing. I just don’t feel it’s the right place for me.’
Indignation rises into Jenna’s cheeks. ‘Of course it is. You can’t let them make you think that—’
‘I’m not, it’s just how I feel—’
‘It’s not how you felt this time last year. You loved it then.’ She pauses, tries to gather her thoughts, steady her voice. ‘You earned your place there, Callum. You can’t let people make you doubt yourself just because they live in bigger houses, or their parents have more money, or they go on fifteen flipping holidays a year. That does not make them better than you. And it certainly doesn’t give them the right to make you feel unwelcome in a school you’ve every right to be at—’
‘They’re not. And I know all that. I just don’t feel like I fit in. I never will—’
‘Listen to me, Callum. Loads of kids would have fallen apart after what you went through with Liam and Ryan. They’d have gone completely off the rails. I’ve seen it a hundred times before. But you picked yourself up, got on with your revision, passed your GCSEs with flying colours. Got a place at Collingswood. Do you realise how much courage that took? How much resilience? It’s an incredible achievement. And you must never – for a second – think of giving up on an opportunity like that because of some misplaced belief that you’re not worthy of it. You deserve that education and all the opportunities it brings just as much as a kid who happens to have rich parents. You deserve it more, in fact, because you’ve had to work harder for it. Do not let other people’s attitudes get the better of you. If you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.’
Callum is silent for a few seconds before he nods – hesitantly at first, and then more definitively – and Jenna knows, deep down, that he will not quit. Her son is a fighter. He is too smart to relinquish an opportunity like this. He will, she feels hopeful, manage to navigate his way through this turbulent patch, and when he emerges, he will be all the stronger for it.