Chapter Four
As Erin walked home from The Bookmark in the half-light of the spring evening, her thoughts were a jumbled mass of contradictions.
Adam Darling’s eyes had lingered on her longer than anyone else as they all said their goodbyes at the end of book group.
She was sorely out of practice at recognizing the signs, but that look seemed to indicate the attraction was mutual.
Even so, she struggled to see his addition to the group as positive.
Everyone else had welcomed him without any apparent misgivings, and he’d accepted the terms of the book group without further argument, but there was something unnerving her about the last couple of hours.
Surely it couldn’t just be that there weren’t quite enough comfortable chairs?
Whatever it was, she couldn’t quite put her finger on it other than sensing a jittery feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Suddenly drained of energy, she pushed her weary legs to the end of Hare and Billet Road, then made the last effort up Dartmouth Grove to the approach of the two-bedroom flat she’d bought for her and Jack almost twenty years ago, in an Art Deco mansion block.
She always thought mansion block was a grandiose term for the building which was originally constructed as a nurses’ home, and then became, fittingly she thought, a home for single mothers.
Admittedly, the facade and communal areas did look far better since the renovation, but back when she bought it, it was a shock to find herself there.
After she and Andrew married, they’d bought a small, terraced house in nearby Hither Green.
She adored their home. After her fertility battle, and the failed rounds of IVF, finally having Jack felt like the fairytale ending at last. She’d decorated the nursery and anticipated their son growing out of his cot and into a toddler bed, then a single bed, all under that same roof, with his mummy and daddy and a life full of love.
But where she saw a happy ending, Andrew found disappointment and dissatisfaction.
He’d discovered a steady life with a wife and child wasn’t what he wanted after all.
He wanted a different story: a new, more exciting, more unpredictable one.
One without two of the main characters, her and Jack, in it.
He shattered her dreams of a happy-ever-after and left her to bring up their hard-won child on her own.
Already exhausted from becoming a new mother, Erin went through the next months shell-shocked.
She couldn’t afford to keep the house, and her parents had recently downsized from the semi-detached house she grew up in to a flat, so she had to find somewhere else to live, pack up the life she loved, and start again.
The only consolation was that she found a place very close to her parents, so at least she had their support with Jack when losing the man she’d loved since she was a teenager, plus the life she’d always dreamed of, became too much to bear.
As she reached the front of the building, she remembered the awful first months after she and Jack moved into the boxy flat.
The distress of that time would never leave her.
The memories of the nightmare that came along with Jack’s teenage years were still too fresh for her to bring to the forefront of her mind without feeling physical pain, so she didn’t allow them to surface now.
She pushed them away, looking forward to being inside with her feet up at last.
As she was about to turn into the communal driveway, she glanced up.
Fingers of fear crept over her scalp when she noticed lights on in the window of her first-floor flat.
The jittery feeling in her middle intensified.
She’d turned the lights off when she left.
She was sure she had. With fuel bills being what they were, she couldn’t afford to leave a lamp on to welcome her home on dark evenings.
A shadow moved across the window. Her heart stalled. There was someone in her home. An intruder. She grabbed her phone from her bag with shaking fingers, glancing up to see the shadow move again, before dialling 999.
‘Police. We’re coming in.’ The larger of the two police officers turned Erin’s key in the lock of her flat, as she stood with her back against the wall near the top of the communal stairs, heart leaping in her chest. A patrol car with two uniformed constables had arrived eight minutes after she called.
She’d followed them into the building, mouth dry as they checked they had the right flat, before asking for her keys.
Now, the one at the front held a baton aloft as the other, a slighter man, had his hand poised over what Erin presumed was a pocket containing pepper spray.
In her head, she saw a masked intruder barelling out of her apartment, slamming the police aside as they launched themselves towards the stairs, a swag bag filled with all her most prized possessions bouncing on their shoulder as they escaped.
Her blood froze in her veins as she heard the door open. ‘Put your hands in the air,’ shouted the bigger officer. So there was someone in there. Acid burned up her throat.
‘What the …’ said a man’s voice. Only it wasn’t just a man’s voice. It was a voice she recognized as well as her own. It was Jack’s.
She leaped away from the wall, and rushed to where the police officers were standing. ‘Jack!’ It had briefly crossed her mind that it could be him, but she’d dismissed the thought because she was sure he would have called if his plans had changed.
‘Mum? What’s going on?’ His hands were raised, his face ashen.
The officer’s hand dropped to his side. ‘This is your son?’
‘Yes, I—’
‘And you’ve given him permission to be in your property?’ His voice was weary, and Erin couldn’t blame him.
‘I live here,’ said Jack. ‘Tell them, Mum.’ Two red dots appeared in the middle of his cheeks, like they always did when he was frightened or embarrassed. She wanted to rush forwards and hold him.
‘Yes, he does,’ said Erin, her own cheeks flushing with heat. ‘Sorry.’
‘So, what, you forgot you had a fully grown member of the family living with you?’ said the second officer, his irritation clear. He scrutinised Jack, making it clear he thought the young man was big enough and ugly enough to be noticed.
Erin searched the officer’s face for signs he recognized Jack from that awful time when he was threatened with a Penalty Note for Disorder for possession of cannabis.
That had been the pinnacle of a dreadful period, where Erin hardly recognized the boy she’d brought up singlehandedly.
He’d begun to experiment with weed when he first started sixth form, and when she’d refused to allow him to smoke it in his room, he would stay out late, never telling her where he was going, who he was with, or when he’d be back.
Desperate and out of other options, Erin had begged Andrew for help.
Much to her surprise, he’d stepped up, offering to share the burden of caring for their increasingly troublesome teenager.
Jack started to stay at his father’s flat in Lewisham at weekends, then during the week, until Erin hardly saw him.
She’d accepted it as a necessary sacrifice.
Jack’s welfare was all she cared about, and if Andrew could manage him better than her and keep him on the straight and narrow, then that was all that mattered.
But it soon transpired that Andrew wasn’t actually parenting Jack at all.
Emails from school arrived, asking why Jack was absent, and when the call from the police station came, she discovered the truth; Andrew hadn’t stopped Jack taking drugs, he’d joined him in some kind of messed up father–son bonding.
When she picked up a tearful Jack from the police station, she’d discovered it was Andrew who’d sourced the cannabis their sixteen-year-old son was caught with.
Jack had refused to tell the police that and begged Erin not to share the information either.
She agreed on the proviso that Jack moved back home.
Thankfully, being picked up by the police seemed to be enough of a wake-up call for Jack to change his ways.
He settled into his studies, and she hadn’t seen any more evidence of drug taking, although she was always alert to the signs.
To her astonishment, Andrew didn’t seem to think he’d done anything wrong.
He took a new job in Hertfordshire soon afterwards and dropped out of Jack’s life again, as if a child was something you could pick up and discard depending on your whims. Jack had been hurt by the way his father lost interest in him again, and it killed Erin to see him check his phone, hoping for a reply to a text he’d sent to his dad, and always being disappointed.
Eventually he seemed to stop trying and accept that Andrew was absent again, and Erin hated her ex-husband even more than she had before.
To her immense relief, there was no hint of recognition on the face of the officer currently standing on their threshold.
Of course there wasn’t. Jack had been ticked off and sent on his way five years ago, he wasn’t the boss of a notorious organised crime conglomerate.
‘No, I wasn’t expecting him. I’m meant to be picking him up from uni tomorrow,’ said Erin.
She turned to Jack, mortification and delight at seeing her son jostling for precedence.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home early? ’
‘I thought I had.’ He took his phone from his pocket and opened Messages, then grimaced. ‘It didn’t send. Sorry. I did think it was weird you hadn’t replied, but I knew you were at book club, so … sorry. My bad.’
‘Huh,’ said the first constable, tucking his baton into its holder on his belt. ‘Next time, maybe give your mum a ring, eh?’
‘Yeah, will do,’ said Jack, shaking his head, a smile creeping onto his face. ‘You never did like surprises, did you?’
‘No I bloody well don’t,’ said Erin. There were few things she liked less.
Despite that, she moved past the officers and took Jack in her arms. She gave him a fierce hug, then turned back to the police.
‘I’m so, so sorry for wasting your time.
Can I get you a cup of tea, or something, by way of an apology? ’
‘You’re all right,’ said the bigger man, his expression thawing as he viewed mother and son together. ‘We’d best get off and catch some actual intruders.’
‘Sorry again,’ said Jack. ‘That’s not a mistake I’ll make twice.’
‘And if you’re in the village, pop into The Bookmark, the café on Brigade Street, set back from Royal Parade. I own it, and there’ll be coffee and cake on the house.’
‘Might well take you up on that. Night then. Keep out of trouble.’
‘We’ll try. Thanks again. Bye.’ Erin waited until the two men reached the stairs before shutting the door and playfully walloping Jack on the arm. ‘You nearly gave me a conniption, you muppet.’
‘Sorry.’ He rubbed his arm, pretending to be hurt.
‘I should have made sure you knew I was on my way.’ He pulled her close and kissed the top of her head.
‘A girl from my course was heading this way home. Her dad hired a van, so there was room for my stuff. It seemed like a no-brainer to accept a lift to save you coming up in the car to get me tomorrow. I got over-excited at the idea of seeing your face when you found me here when you got back from book club and forgot you hadn’t messaged back.
’ He let her go and peered down at her face. ‘I didn’t think you’d call the feds.’
‘The feds? What are you like? We’re in London, not LA.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Although, it looks like I might have to call them again.’
His brow furrowed. ‘Why?’
Erin lifted a finger to touch the soft dark hair above her son’s top lip. ‘To arrest you for a crime against good taste. What’s that? It’s not the seventies, you know.’
‘Rude.’ Jack smoothed down his moustache with his hand. ‘I’ll have you know this is the height of fashion.’
Erin laughed. ‘The only man who ever suited a moustache is Tom Selleck.’
‘Who?’ said Jack.
‘Urgh, never mind, you’re too young to get it.’ Erin glanced past Jack at the piles of black bin liners stacked in the narrow hallway. ‘How much of that is washing?’
Jack grinned. ‘Only about fifty per cent.’
Erin huffed, but in truth, she didn’t care if the whole lot was a fetid pile of unwashed sheets. It might not have been the most relaxing of evenings, all told, but her lovely boy was home and that was the only thing that mattered.