Ed’s eyes bolt open and he sits up so suddenly he nearly head-butts her. ‘W-what?’
‘He’s gone, Ed.’ She tries to keep her voice low so as not to alarm Harry. It isn’t the first time Jacob’s done this. Oh, God, it’s her fault, all her fault …
Ed jumps out of bed, pulling on yesterday’s clothes from where he’d flung them last night on the armchair. She follows him into Jacob’s room. It’s how she’d left it yesterday: his desk with his revision books piled high, his headphones in the corner, his guitar that he stopped playing years ago propped up against the far wall gathering dust.
‘Did you check on him last night before you went to bed?’ She rounds on Ed, trying to keep the accusation out of her voice.
‘Yes, of course,’ he says, looking about him frantically as though he’s expecting Jacob to pop up from behind the door with a ‘Boo!’ like he did when he was little. Ed looks flummoxed. Even more so than usual, with his jumper on back to front.
‘Do …’ She tries to quell the panic. ‘Do you think he left in the middle of the night? What if he’s run away?’ She pulls open his wardrobe but his clothes are still there, hanging tidily, neatly ironed as she’d left them.
Ed puts his big red hands to his face. ‘He can’t keep doing this.’
‘I know.’
‘He’s just a kid.’
Ed sounds like he’s on the point of hysteria. She can’t have that. He needs to be his usual dependable, slightly dull, but reliable self. That was why she’d married him. He provided the stability, the calm she’s always needed but never had. He can’t fall apart.
‘He’s got his GCSEs coming up. He’s going to ruin his life.’ He straightens, as if remembering the role he needs to play in their relationship. ‘You stay here with Harry. I’ll go and search the estates, like before …’
Her heart falls. In the last six months, apart from the odd blip, he’d seemed to settle down. No running away to join those – those yobs to get drunk and, later, stoned. He’d been shocked into sobering up, to getting himself sorted. To knuckling down and revising. She and Ed no longer had to drive the streets looking for their fifteen-year-old son. He’ll be sixteen next month. She’d hoped it would be the new beginning he needed.
It had started a year ago. First he’d pilfered from the drinks cabinet, topping up the booze with water. They’d only noticed it when they’d had Ed’s work colleagues around one evening and Ed had nearly spat out the gin when he’d realized it was mostly water. When it kept happening they were forced to lock the cabinet and hide the key. And then the wandering began. Coming home past his curfew, sneaking out in the middle of the night. Making friends with older boys from an estate in Shirehampton. Once, they didn’t find him for two nights while he kipped on a ‘friend’s’ floor. When Kathryn found him he’d been drinking, and was surrounded by empty cider bottles. Then she began to suspect drugs. He’d come home smelling of pot, or with enlarged pupils and a manic smile. She’d threatened him with the police, but as quickly as it had started, it stopped. He’d promised her he’d learnt his lesson and would never do it again. That was seven months ago and, apart from the odd time when she was sure she could smell booze on him, she believed he’d kept his promise.
But now they’re back to where they started. She can feel it in her bones.
How did her son, her beautiful boy, end up this way? She’d given him all the things she’d never had until she went to live with Elspeth, and more besides: he had love. Pure, unconditional love. Not the kind of love with rules attached, like Kathryn felt Elspeth gave – still gives – her. She’d never told Elspeth of her troubles with Jacob. She knows what she’d say. She’d point the finger, accuse Kathryn’s biological mother, and say, in her posh, judgemental voice, that the apple never fell far from the tree.
She kneels on the floor next to Harry’s bed, smoothing his dark hair away from his sleeping face. Her, as yet, untarnished son. Why can’t she keep him like this for ever? Away from the disappointments and the heartaches, from finding out your parents aren’t as perfect as you’d always thought. And then she hears the front door slam and she rushes downstairs to see Ed, Jacob trailing behind him, a newspaper tucked under his arm.
Ed is smiling and ruffling Jacob’s hair. ‘I found this one walking back from the newsagent’s. He’d just gone to get a paper.’