37.
Jess
Norman came home. Mr Adamson gave them a discount because, he said, the case had been ‘fascinating’. Jess had thought he was referring to Norman’s injuries, but it turned out one of the veterinary nurses had read Nicky’s blog after Tanzie had mentioned it, and the vet had meant he was fascinated that Norman had, against all expectations and his normal characteristics, roused himself to try to protect Tanzie.
‘And we have to help a hero, don’t we, old chap?’ he said, patting Norman’s side. The way the vet spoke to him, and the way that Norman immediately flopped to the ground for a tummy scratch, made Jess think this was not the first time he’d done it. As the vet dropped right down onto the floor she caught a glimpse of the man beyond the careful professional manner. His broad smile, the way his eyes crinkled when he looked at the dog. And she heard Nicky’s phrase running through her head, as it had done for days: the kindness of strangers.
‘I’m glad you made the decision you did, Mrs Thomas,’ he said, pushing himself back onto his feet while they diplomatically ignored the pistol crack of his knees. Norman stayed on his back, his tongue lolling, ever hopeful. Or perhaps just too fat to get up. ‘He deserved his chance. If I’d known how his injuries had come about I would have been a bit less reticent about proceeding.’
Jess paid with her pre-loaded credit card. She put twenty pounds in the animal charity box. Yes, it could probably have been usefully spent elsewhere, but it felt like the right thing to do.
Tanzie stayed pressed close to Norman’s enormous black body as they lumbered home, clutching his lead like a lifeline. The walk from the vet’s was the first time she had been outside in three weeks and hadn’t insisted on holding Jess’s hand.
Jess had hoped that having him back would lift her daughter’s spirits. But Tanzie was still a little shadow, tailing her silently around the house, peering around corners, waiting anxiously beside her form teacher at the end of the day for Jess’s arrival at the school gates. At home she read in her room, or lay silently on the sofa watching cartoons, one hand resting on the dog beside her. Mr Tsvangarai had been off since term restarted – some family emergency – and Jess felt a reflexive sadness when she pictured him discovering Tanzie’s determination to push mathematics from her life, the disappearance of the singular, quirky little girl she’d been. Sometimes she felt as if she had simply traded one unhappy, silent child for another.
St Anne’s rang to discuss Tanzie’s orientation day at the school, and Jess had to tell them that she wasn’t coming. The words were a squat dry frog in her throat.
‘Well, we do recommend it, Mrs Thomas. We find the children settle a lot better if they’ve familiarized themselves a little. It’s good for her to meet a few fellow pupils as well. Is it a problem with getting time off from her current school?’
‘No. I mean she – she’s not coming.’
‘At all?’
‘No.’
A short silence.
‘Oh,’ said the registrar. Jess heard her flicking through papers. ‘But this is the little girl with the ninety per cent scholarship, yes? Costanza?’
She felt herself colour. ‘Yes.’
‘Is she going to Petersfield Academy instead? Did they offer her a scholarship too?’
‘No. That’s not it,’ Jess replied. She closed her eyes as she spoke. ‘Look, I don’t suppose … Is there any way you could … increase the scholarship any further?’
‘Further?’ She sounded taken aback. ‘Mrs Thomas, it was already the most generous scholarship we’ve ever offered. I’m sorry, but there’s no question.’
Jess pressed on, glad that nobody could see her shame. ‘If I could get the money together by next year would you consider deferring her place?’
‘I’m not sure whether that would be possible. Or even if it would be fair to the other candidates.’ She hesitated, perhaps suddenly conscious of Jess’s silence. ‘But of course we’d certainly look at her favourably if ever she did want to reapply.’
Jess stared at the spot on the carpet where Marty had brought a motorbike into the front room and it had leaked oil. A huge lump had risen into her throat. ‘Well, thank you for letting me know.’
‘Look, Mrs Thomas,’ the woman said, her voice suddenly conciliatory, ‘there’s still another week to go before we have to close the place. We’ll hold it for you until the last possible minute.’
‘Thank you. That’s very kind of you. But, really, there’s no point.’
Jess knew it and the woman knew it. It wasn’t going to happen for them. Some leaps were just too big to make.
She asked Jess to pass on her best wishes to Tanzie for her new school. As she put the phone down Jess could hear her already scanning her lists for the next suitable candidate.
She didn’t tell Tanzie. She suspected she already knew. Two nights previously she discovered Tanzie had removed all her maths books from her cupboard and stacked them with Jess’s remaining books on the upstairs landing, inserting them carefully between thrillers and a historical romance so that she wouldn’t notice. Jess removed them carefully and put them in a neat pile in her wardrobe, where they couldn’t be seen. She wasn’t sure if this was saving Tanzie’s feelings or her own.
Marty received the solicitor’s letter and rang, protesting and blustering about why he couldn’t pay. She told him it was out of her hands. She said she hoped they could be civil about it. She told him his children needed shoes. He didn’t mention coming down at half-term.
She got her job back at the pub. The girl from the City of Paris had apparently disappeared to the Texas Rib Shack three shifts after she’d started. Tips were better and there was no Stewart Pringle making random grabs at your backside.
‘No loss. She didn’t know not to talk during the guitar solo of “Layla”,’ Des mused. ‘What kind of barmaid doesn’t know to keep quiet during the guitar solo of “Layla”?’
She cleaned four days a week with Nathalie, and avoided number two Beachfront. She preferred jobs like scrubbing ovens, where she was unlikely to accidentally look through the window and catch sight of it, with its jaunty blue and white for-sale placard. If Nathalie thought she was behaving a little oddly, she didn’t say anything.
She put an advert in the local newsagent’s offering her services as a handy-woman. No Job Too Small. Her first job came in less than twenty-four hours later: putting up a bathroom cabinet for a pensioner in Aden Crescent. The old woman was so happy with the result that she gave Jess a five-pound tip. She said she didn’t like having men in her house and that in the forty-two years she had been married to her husband he had only ever seen her with her good wool vest on. She recommended Jess to a friend in the sheltered housing who had a washer needed replacing and a carpet gripper. Two other jobs followed, also pensioners. Jess sent a second instalment of cash to number two Beachfront. Nathalie dropped it in. The for-sale sign was still up.
Nicky was the only one in the family who seemed genuinely cheerful. It was as if the blog had given him a new sense of purpose. He wrote it most evenings, posting about Norman’s progress, chatting with new friends. He met up with one of them IRL, he said, translating that for Jess: ‘In Real Life’. He was all right, he said. And, no, not like that. He wanted to go to open days at two different colleges. He was speaking to his form tutor about how to apply for a hardship grant. He’d looked it up. He smiled, often several times a day and without being bribed, dropped to his knees with pleasure when he saw Norman wagging his tail in the kitchen, waved unselfconsciously at Lola, the girl from number forty-seven, who, Jess noticed, had dyed her hair the exact same shade as his, and played an air-guitar solo in the front room. He walked into town frequently, his skinny legs seeming to gain a longer stride, his shoulders not exactly back, but not slumped, defeated, as they had been weeks earlier. Once he wore a yellow T-shirt.
‘Where’s the laptop gone?’ Jess said, when she went into his room one afternoon and found him working away on their old computer.
‘I took it back.’ He shrugged. ‘Nathalie let me in.’
‘Did you see him?’ she said, before she could stop herself.
Nicky’s eyes slid away. ‘Sorry. His stuff’s there but it’s all boxed up. I’m not sure he stays there any more.’
It shouldn’t have been a surprise but as Jess made her way downstairs she found herself holding her stomach with both hands, as if she had been winded.