She said nothing. She merely rolled one of the bottles of fizzy water against her palm. Esme, Mark saw, was heading for the door, no doubt wondering why her gran was so long about fetching the fizzy water. He needed to finish this conversation before she came into the house.
He said, “What was it for? Mum, why did Pete need money? Why would she come to you and not to me?”
The door was opening as Floss Phinney said quickly, “I phoned her. We spoke. I gave it to her. More than that, Pete will have to tell you.”
“Uncle Mark!” Esme cried as she stepped inside. “Come and see what Gran and I are planting. It’s gonna be gor-gee-us in October, isn’t it, Gran?”
“Not if we don’t get it all planted,” her grandmother replied. “Nothing grows where nothing’s planted. Best remember that, Esme.”
DEPTFORD
SOUTH-EAST LONDON
To Tani’s surly, “Where’re we going, then?” Deborah responded with, “Deptford.”
“Wha’s in Deptford? No. Don’t say. I c’n answer. Nothing’s in bloody Deptford.”
Simisola said, “Tani, that’s rude!”
“We need to find Mum,” was his reply.
He wasn’t happy and Deborah couldn’t blame him. Not only did he find himself part of a household of white people, he also didn’t see his remit as swanning about with some white lady in her nearly new Vauxhall Corsa. He saw his remit as finding his mother. Anything short of that rendered him impotent. Deborah would have left him in Chelsea, but Simon had departed for Middle Temple to meet with a silk who was doing duty as the Crown Prosecutor, and her father had gone to do the shop for dinner. She knew it was a fairly sure bet that if Tani had remained in Chelsea with only his promise to stay where he was, he’d vanish five minutes after her departure with Simisola.
Tension was rolling off the boy like steam from a fog machine. Deborah knew she’d made the right decision. She said, “If your mum left with the policeman, Tani, we know she’s safe.”
“If she left with a copper, we know she’s arrested,” he replied.
“Even if she is arrested,” Deborah countered, “she’ll be safer where she is than where she was when she got arrested, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Deb’rah’s right, Tani.” Simisola squirmed round in her seat to look at him. “And anyway, it’s not like she did something bad to get arrested. If Deb’rah says we’ll find her, we will. I think we will, anyway. Or she’ll find us.”
Tani looked at his sister, and in the rearview mirror, Deborah saw his face soften with the beginning of a smile. “At least we’re together, you and me, Squeak,” he acknowledged. “At least we know each other’s safe.”
When they reached Deptford, Deborah parked in Millard Road, where she found not only an available space for her car but also a familiar yellow-and-green Super Soft van standing at the foot of the Pepys Park entrance steps. They clambered out and Deborah headed straight for this, with Simisola hard on her heels. Deborah said, “Ah. Potential indulgence,” and ushered both of the kids to inspect what the van had to offer. She noted that Tani was attempting to look indifferent, surly not having worked as well as he’d hoped. Indifferent wasn’t working much better, however, especially with Simi completely on board with the idea of ice cream. She was chanting “Bunny Ears! Bunny Ears!” to which Deborah said, “And so it shall be, madam. I’m having a single with flake. What about you, Tani?”
He said, “Nothin’，” and turned away.
Deborah said, “Hmmm. You look like a mint Cornetto man to me. What d’you think, Simi?”
“I think yes!”
So Deborah made the purchases. As they waited, she said to Tani, “Simi and I will finish yours up, if you don’t want it, but both of you are sworn to secrecy. Dad’s a proponent of the you’ll-spoil-your-dinner school of thought. So we absolutely cannot tell him.” And as she gathered up the treats, handed them to Tani and Simisola, she said “Let’s have these in the park.”
As they walked up the steps—Simisola at her side and Tani trying to ignore both of them—Deborah sought a way to talk to Tani. The situation he was in was upsetting enough. That he probably also felt powerless to change anything about that situation only made his dilemma worse. It wasn’t permanent, of course: where he was and what he was being made to do just now. But at the moment it was likely that it felt permanent.