Crying in the Dark (20 page)

‘So I see.'

‘Then, he left. Just like that. I haven't seen or heard from him since.'

‘D'you think he's gone? I mean, has he left you for prolonged periods before?'

She shook her head. ‘Never. I'd be fuckin' thrilled except that I've no money, and we're out of food and Gloria needs nappies and formula. We're pretty screwed, to be honest. I woulda gone out to work anyways, except the woman downstairs won't take the baby. Daddy told her not to.'

‘Well, I can help you there. I'll pop down the shops and get some groceries and stuff for the baby. Why don't I cook us dinner? I haven't eaten yet. What do you say?'

‘Kitchen's a bit of a mess,' she said sheepishly, sounding every bit the thirteen-year-old she was.

‘Well, it's nothing a little cleaning and tidying won't fix. Where's Gloria now?'

‘Asleep in her cot.'

‘Will she be okay while I pop out and you hop in the shower?'

‘Yeah. I can leave the door open in case she wakes up.'

‘Good. Get yourself cleaned up. Put on some fresh clothes. I'll be about half an hour. Is there anything in particular you'd like to eat?'

‘Anything?'

‘Sure. Whatever you like.'

She thought for a second.

‘In the centre, they used to make us sausage and mash on a Monday. Today's Monday, isn't it?'

‘All day.'

‘Can you make that?'

‘I think my culinary abilities can stretch that far. Go on. Get yourself looking human again. I'll see you in a bit.'

I felt as if I had beaten her myself. I couldn't believe I had been so stupid, that my macho need to protect her had clouded my judgement so badly. There was nothing to be gained from dwelling on it just then, so I did my waste-paper basket exercise again, and went to the car. I decided to focus on the mundane, on shopping, cleaning and cooking for her. I thought that, if I could immerse myself in the nuts-and-bolts of everyday living, I could get through the evening without becoming so consumed by guilt that I ceased to be functional.

There was a supermarket ten minutes up the road. I got a trolley and did a week's worth of a shop, getting basics like bread, milk and butter, as well as some fresh fruit and vegetables, tins of beans, peas and soup, dried pasta and rice. I threw in some frozen meals, unsure of how competent a cook Sylvie was, and plenty of baby products: nappies, formula, lotion, talcum-powder, as well as some of those jars of baby-food. I planned to check back in on her regularly anyway, and would need to talk to her about her financial situation. There were allowances she was entitled to, but the authorities would ask questions about her age and ability to care for Gloria. We had some serious conversations ahead of us, and Sylvie wasn't going to like any of them.

I stopped off at a chemist on the way back and bought painkillers and antiseptic cream, plasters and bandages. The cuts and bruises looked painful, and it didn't seem that she had made any effort to tend to them.

She let me in, dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, flip-flops on her feet. Her short hair was tousled and she had a towel draped round her shoulders. I dumped the groceries in the centre of the living-room floor and handed the bag from the chemist to her.

‘I want you to take care of those bruises,' I said, ‘while I clean up the kitchen and get dinner on. Then we'll tackle the rest of this place. If we get stuck in, it'll be done by the time the food's ready.'

She nodded. Now that she'd washed, her face didn't look so bad. I guessed that she hadn't bothered with personal hygiene since he'd given her the beating, and the blood had congealed, making it look worse than it actually was.

The kitchen, on the other hand, was every bit as bad as it looked. I stacked dishes, scraping the contents into one of the plastic bags from the groceries, and ran some hot water into the sink, leaving the crockery to steep for a few minutes as I tidied up jars and sauce-bottles that had been left sitting among the crumbs and sticky knives and forks on the small kitchen table. I had bought detergent and dishcloths, and gave all the surfaces a good scrubbing, then went to work on the contents of the sink.

When the kitchen was reasonably clean and tidy, I packed away the groceries I had bought, then peeled potatoes and put them on to boil. As I was chopping an onion for the gravy, Sylvie stuck her head in the door. She looked even better, having cleaned out the cut on her lip and stuck a plaster on the grazing on her cheekbone.

‘Anything I can do?'

I pointed to the pile of empty plastic bags.

‘I've got things under control in here. Why don't you make a start on the living room? I've been using those as rubbish bags.'

She smiled, took a couple and ducked out. Seconds later I heard her opening the curtains. She seemed more upbeat, and I reasoned that she was as happy to be doing something – anything – as I was. I like to cook, and the simple rhythms of making a meal acted as a kind of non-chemical anaesthetic.

I heated a frying pan, drizzled in a little olive oil and put on the sausages. When they had browned, I removed them, putting them on a plate and leaving them in the warmed oven. I threw the chopped onions onto the pan, letting them soften in the remaining oil and then tossing in some butter, salt and black pepper. I left them to simmer.

‘D'you have a vacuum cleaner?' I called to Sylvie.

‘Yeah. It's in the press there in the kitchen.'

I brought it into the living room and plugged it into the wall socket.

‘Will this wake Gloria?'

‘Probably, but it's time she woke anyway. Our routine's all shot to shit these past few days. I haven't known which way was up. If she wakes, she wakes.'

I nodded, and switched on the power with my foot. Sylvie had a duster and was cleaning the screen of the TV.

When the place was liveable in again, I put the vacuum cleaner back in its place, and checked the potatoes. They were done. I poured off the water, retaining it in a bowl to use for the gravy. I made the mash with butter, salt, nutmeg and milk. Sylvie laid the table as I added the stock to the onions, deglazed the pan, then added some flour and mustard to make the gravy.

‘Jesus, that smells great,' she said, looking over my shoulder.

‘Hungry?'

‘Fuckin' starvin'. The cupboard's been bare for a while.'

‘Well, hand me those plates. Watch out, they're hot.'

Just as we were setting the food on the table, Gloria began to make waking noises from the bedroom, and Sylvie went in and got her. I put some potato into a bowl for the baby, cooling it with some milk, and added a little of the gravy for flavour. Sylvie changed her nappy, gave her a quick wash, and we sat to eat.

Sylvie didn't say much during the meal, but she ate two helpings, allowing me to feed Gloria, who seemed to enjoy it almost as much as her mother. She was a happy, smiling child, gurgling merrily to herself, and, despite my best efforts, she managed to get food pretty much all over herself and no small amount on me. I had bought some Ben and Jerry's cookie-dough ice-cream for dessert, and we took it into the living room. The sound of the street came in through the open windows, and Sylvie put a CD into a small player she had.

‘The Carpenters?' I said in surprise as the first chords of
Close to You
played.

‘Shut up. I like 'em.'

‘Not a damn thing wrong with the Carpenters.'

‘Me 'n' Gloria love this song. Don't we, Gloria?'

The baby, who was sitting on the floor playing with a stuffed bear almost as big as herself, looked up at the sound of her name and smiled, burbling something at us.

‘I never would have seen you as a Carpenters' kind of girl.'

‘And what kind of girl would you have seen me as?'

‘I dunno. Chart stuff. Britney Spears, Beyoncé; West-life, maybe.'

‘Well now, you're wrong as can be. I don't like any of that shit. I like the Carpenters and I
love
Simon and Garfunkel. And Elvis, of course.'

‘You're full of surprises.'

She sat in an armchair and attacked her ice-cream.

‘So how'd you get into the Carpenters? They don't exactly get blanket airplay on the radio. At least not lately anyway.'

‘D'you remember Yolanda? At the centre?'

‘Yolanda Frears? Yeah.'

‘Yolanda was my key-worker for a few years. She used to listen to the Carpenters and Simon and Garfunkel. And my daddy likes Elvis.'

‘I see.'

She gazed off into space as Karen Carpenter sang about how the angels came together and decided to create a dream come true.

‘It's a happy song, I think,' she said, ‘but she still sounds sort of sad. It doesn't matter what she's singing about. She always sounds that way.'

‘She wasn't a very happy person, Sylvie. She died very young. Starved herself to death. Anorexia, y'know? Happy people don't do that.'

‘I didn't know.'

‘It doesn't make the music any less beautiful.'

‘More, maybe. Poor Mrs Carpenter. I wonder what she was sad about.'

‘I don't know. I haven't read a whole lot about them, to be honest. Saw a movie about them when I was a teenager, but I don't remember much about it.'

‘That's okay.'

The food had made Sylvie drowsy. I left her sitting with her eyes partially closed, listening to the music, and did the washing up. When I'd dried up and put the crockery and cutlery away, I came back into the living room to find her fast asleep. I looked at Gloria, who was still engrossed by the bear.

‘Well, it's just you and me, kiddo,' I said in a whisper.

I played quietly with the child for an hour or so. The quality of light coming in through the windows changed slowly to golden and then a deep red. Gloria began to yawn too, and I made her up a bottle and changed her nappy. She fell asleep on my knee finishing her formula and I brought her into the cot in one of the small bedrooms and covered her over.

I went over to the CD player. She seemed to have only three albums: greatest hits from the Carpenters, Elvis, and Simon and Garfunkel. I put Simon and Garfunkel on, and went to the open window to smoke a cigarette.

Sylvie stirred into wakefulness as Art Garfunkel was singing
For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her.

‘What do you think he's singing about?' she asked, her voice still thick with sleep.

‘I always thought he was singing about a girl he loved. I don't think the words make much sense really. They're pretty, though.'

‘Do you have a girl?'

‘Yes.'

‘Do you love her?'

‘I do.'

‘Does she love you?'

‘Yeah, I think she does.'

‘Why aren't you with her now?'

‘She doesn't live in the city. She has a job somewhere else.'

‘D'you miss her?'

‘Sometimes.'

The sun was sinking over the rooftops outside, the room dark, now. I felt tired suddenly.
How could I help this child? Was I fooling myself into thinking I could save her when she was so very far gone?
I pushed the feeling aside and flicked the butt out of the window. We needed to talk about the future. The conversation could wait no longer.

‘Enjoy your sleep?'

She nodded. ‘Where's Gloria?'

‘In her cot. I gave her a bottle and changed her, and she conked out. She was no bother.'

‘She never is.'

‘Sylvie, we need to talk about what you're going to do.'

‘I know.'

‘Have you thought about it, at all?'

‘Of course I have.'

‘And?'

‘Can't I stay here? I don't think he's comin' back. He kept sayin' how you'd messed it all up for him. How he'd never have any peace here now. I could sign on the dole, or somethin'.'

‘You're too young to get the dole, pet. You'd get Lone Parent's Allowance, I think, but even then questions would be asked. We're going to have to bring in the Health Services, I'm afraid. Look, I know some people. I promise you that I will not allow them to take Gloria away. There are places where you can both live and where you'll get support.'

‘I can do it myself, Shane. I don't want to go back into care. I can manage.'

‘No, you can't. Look at the condition you were in when I got here. And you would have gone back out to the street. That temptation will always be there, and you need to learn other ways of coping. Your father
may
come back, and what then? We have to make sure that you're completely safe.'

‘Shane.' She was crying now. I couldn't see the tears in the half-light, but I could hear them. ‘I've been fucked by the system before. I know that I can't live like this, and I don't want to. But I can't go back into care either. I just can't. I don't know what to do.'

I went over to her and took her hands in mine. ‘I left you before, Sylvie, and I'm sorry. I won't again. I give you my word that I will not let anything happen to you. I'm going to get you a phone, with my number on speed-dial, and you can call me at any time and I will be there. I work with a man who can help us to find somewhere that's just right for you and Gloria. I'll talk to him tomorrow and we'll start looking. It'll work out, I swear.'

She lost control of the tears. ‘Oh God, help me. Please help me. I can't do this any more.'

I put my arms around her and let her cry. The sobs racked her small frame as nearly fourteen years of pain and loss finally bubbled to the surface. There was nothing I could do but let her pour it all out, and I knelt there on the tatty carpet in the darkness and held her.

It seemed to go on for a long time. Finally she said: ‘Sorry.'

‘What for?'

‘Being such a dork.'

‘That's okay. It's nothing to be ashamed of.'

‘I'll go where you tell me to go. I don't have much other choice, do I?'