Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22
Beau was sneaking around. He was in his mother’s office, going through her things. It was making him feel dirty, but he had to find his father’s phone. He knew she had it, but where would she put something like that? Somewhere she could find it easily – or somewhere she wouldn’t come across it too often and get upset?
It wasn’t in her desk drawers or in any of the cardboard file boxes she used to store stuff. She hadn’t hidden it among her stationery or in the row of ring binders.
He patted his fingers against his jaw, pursing his lips and trying to think. Then Tamar made a noise in the kitchen, getting something out of a cupboard, and he jumped, looking over his shoulder. He knew Sophie was safely up in London, but he couldn’t help feeling on edge.
He sat in her chair and turned all the way round in it, scanning the room. He’d looked everywhere. It wasn’t in here. He’d have to go deeper.
Feeling weirdly self-conscious, he walked – casual like – into the kitchen.
‘Something smells good,’ he said, over brightly.
‘Just testing a recipe that will also be our dinner,’ said Tamar, as she stirred a pot on the stove.
‘I’ll keenly look forward to it,’ said Scout Leader Beau, continuing on to the dining room – the opposite direction from where he was actually going. Why was he trying to put Tamar off the scent? She’d have no idea what he was up to.
He rolled his eyes at himself as he walked round into the sitting room and then back out to the hall. Then he ran up the stairs two at a time and forced himself to go into his mother’s bedroom.
He stopped just over the threshold and looked at the bed. It wasn’t his parents’ bed, the one where he’d snuggled in for so many stories and cuddles and Christmas mornings. It was a weird new bed, with a pink velvet headboard. What was it with his mother and all this pink cringe these days? And why had she got rid of the lovely bed he’d known all his life?
She must have her reasons – perhaps the association was just too sad? – and she didn’t need to feel judged. He added it to his mental list of things not to mention to her and looked round the room, wondering where to start.
It was no good. He had to face it – he was going to have to go through her underwear. Feeling more creepy than ever, he quietly closed the door in case Tamar psychically knew what he was doing and came up the stairs.
Half-closing his eyes and feeling for the phone rather than looking, he opened the first drawer. There was nothing in either of the top drawers except what felt like knickers, bras and socks. The lower drawers were jumpers and t-shirts but still no phone.
He went through the wardrobe and bedside cabinet, finding nothing, and was just about to shift his attention to the bathroom when he noticed the hatbox on top of the cupboard. Reaching on tiptoes, he was able to knock it off and as he caught it, he heard a distinct clunk as something small and hard hit the side of the cardboard box. It sounded a lot like a phone and when he lifted the lid off, there it was, his father’s mobile in its custom case, with one of Matt’s most famous paintings reproduced on it. Beau’s stomach lurched as he sat down on the bed, holding it in his hand.
He plugged the phone into the charger next to the bed and watched as it came to life. If only he could do the same with his father. He stared down at it for a moment, feeling slightly queasy, then got it to open on the first try. The old man had always used his own birthday, claiming it was the only number he would never forget.
Then he hesitated, wondering where to look at first. He started scrolling through the contacts, but what did he expect to find? An entry under B for ‘bit on the side’? There were hundreds of names in there and it could have been anyone female.
Then he tapped open the photographs, which were meticulously filed into folders, just like the filing drawers in his father’s studio. Beau couldn’t help himself looking and, yes, there was a folder for him.
He scrolled through a few of the pictures, but soon had to stop. He could remember when all of them were taken and the flood of memories was too much. He flopped back on to the mattress, still holding the phone with one hand, the other over his eyes. He didn’t want to do this. But he had to. In case it came out in some other way and blindsided them all.
He sat up smartly and kept scrolling through the folders, but there was nothing that looked incriminating. He wasn’t sure whether to feel disappointed or relieved.
There was nothing unexpected in the emails and the WhatsApps and texts were completely predictable too. Exchanges with his mum about what to have for dinner, Uncle Seb, him, Jack, Joe at Goldsmiths and a load of other people Beau knew. The messages to people he didn’t know were all perfectly innocent. Dull, really. He even checked Facebook Messenger and Instagram messages. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Then he went to the call history and right at the top of it were about ten missed calls from a number with no contact name attached. He picked up his own phone and – his heart beating fast – dialled the number. It didn’t connect. He tried again and it was the same.
That was odd, especially as they were the last calls made to his dad on this phone – and they were all in the days after he died. Like someone who didn’t know Matt was dead was trying to call him. Repeatedly.
Wondering where else he could look, he tapped open the diary section and scrolled back through the months. Again, there was nothing surprising, but as he got a bit further in, he noticed a pattern. There were quite a few entries that were just one letter: G. A time and ‘G’. Mostly evenings, some weekends. The further back he went, the more there were, until suddenly, about five years back, there were none.
Beau felt slightly nauseous as the possibility sank in. Her name must begin with G and that was when it had started. He flipped back to the contacts but there weren’t many women’s names under G. There was a Gail and a Gemma, but he knew who they both were. One was in her seventies and the other one had a wife.
Even if he had found a woman starting with G he didn’t know – Gillian Jones, or Gigi Faffy-Doo-Dah – how would Beau know it was her, the mystery woman at the funeral? It could be a dentist. If only he’d heard a name when he was eavesdropping on Rey and that woman, it would be so much easier.
Going back to the photograph albums, there were no women’s names apart from one: Sophie.
He looked down at his father’s painting on the back of the phone. He felt dirty for what he’d done. Violating the privacy of both his parents and all he had for it were the diary entries for G. Perhaps he’d be able to put that together with something he’d find in Joe’s boxes. When he went back to London, he’d get onto it. Ugh. For now he was going to see if Tamar needed help in the kitchen. That would cheer him up.
But then, idly flicking over the screens on the phone he noticed something surprising on the very last one. The Snapchat icon. That was weird. As a teenager Beau had been obsessed with keeping up his ‘streaks’, but he didn’t use it anymore and he didn’t know anyone who did. What on earth had his dad been doing with it?
He tapped on the icon and as it opened, message after message arrived, all from the same contact, with no name or jolly avatar, just a circle – and all saying versions of the same thing, getting increasingly urgent with capitals and exclamation marks as they went on: ‘Call me.’
They had all been sent after his father’s death – the same days those phone calls had been made. So it definitely seemed as though the person trying to contact his father hadn’t known he was dead.
He stared down at the phone, feeling as though his brain was throbbing, when something else occurred to him. Snapchat messages disappear after they’ve been read, making it the perfect platform for exchanges you want to keep private. So that must have been how his father had stayed in touch with his bit on the side.
Smart thinking, Pops, but it didn’t help his quest much. Was this mysterious G the woman in the drawing in his father’s studio? And, if so, where did that leave the one at the funeral? Because clearly she’d known he was dead.
He felt more confused than ever.