I See You(93)

I remember making him sit down after school one day, before he ran upstairs to join whatever gaming network he was into, impressing upon him the dangers of giving too much away online; that the teens he spent so long chatting to might not be teens at all, but fifty-year-old perverts, salivating over their keyboards.

‘I’m too clever for the paedos,’ he said, laughing. ‘They could never catch me.’

I was impressed, I suppose. Proud my son was so savvy, so much more clued up about technology than I was.

In all those years of worrying that Justin might fall prey to an online attacker, it never once crossed my mind he might be one himself. He can’t be, I think, in the very next beat. I’d know it.

Justin’s bedroom smells of stale smoke and socks. On the bed is a pile of clean laundry I put there yesterday, the neatly folded stack now fallen to one side, where Justin has slept in his bed without bothering to move them or put them away. I open the curtains to let in some light, and find half a dozen mugs, three used as ashtrays. A neatly rolled joint lies next to a lighter.

‘Check his drawers,’ I tell Katie, who is standing in the doorway. She doesn’t move. ‘Now! We don’t know how long we’ve got.’ I sit on the bed and open Justin’s laptop.

‘Mum, this feels wrong.’

‘And running a website selling women’s commutes to men who want to rape or kill them isn’t?’

‘He wouldn’t do that!’

‘I don’t think so either. But we need to be sure. Search his room.’

‘I don’t even know what I’m looking for,’ Katie says, but she pulls open his wardrobe doors and starts rifling through his shelves.

‘More receipts from Espress Oh!,’ I say, trying to think of something incriminating. ‘Photos of women, information about their commutes …’ Justin’s laptop is password protected. I stare at the screen, and his user name, Game8oy_94, looks back at me, beside the tiny avatar of Justin’s palm thrust towards the camera.

‘Money?’ Katie says.

‘Definitely. Anything out of the ordinary. What could Justin’s password be?’ I try his date of birth and ACCESS DENIED: TWO ATTEMPTS REMAINING appears on the screen.

‘Money,’ Katie says again, and I realise it isn’t a question. I look up. She’s holding an envelope, exactly like the one Justin handed me with my rent money. It’s stuffed so full of twenty-and ten-pound notes the flap won’t stay shut. ‘His wages from the cafe, do you think?’

Katie doesn’t know about Melissa’s cash-in-hand tax dodge, and although I doubt she’d care I don’t plan on telling her. The more people who know, the more likelihood there is that HMRC will find out, and that’s trouble neither Melissa nor I need.

‘I guess so,’ I say vaguely. ‘Put it back.’

I take another stab at Justin’s password, this time entering a mash-up of our address and the name of his first pet; a gerbil called Gerald who escaped and lived under the floorboards in our bathroom for several months.

ACCESS DENIED: ONE ATTEMPT REMAINING.

I daren’t risk another try. ‘Is there anything else in the wardrobe?’

‘Not that I can find.’ Katie moves on to the tallboy, pulling out each drawer and running a hand expertly beneath each one, checking to see if anything has been taped there. She feels among his clothes and I close the laptop and leave it on the bed in what I hope is the same position I found it. ‘How about the laptop?’

‘I can’t get in.’

‘Mum …’ Katie doesn’t look at me as she speaks. ‘You know the receipt could be Simon’s.’

My answer is immediate. ‘It isn’t Simon’s.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I do.’ I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. ‘Simon loves me. He would never hurt me.’

Katie slams a drawer shut, making me jump. ‘You’ll point the finger at Isaac, but you won’t even entertain the idea of Simon being involved?’

‘You’ve known Isaac five minutes.’

‘It’s only fair, Mum. If we’re going through Justin’s stuff, and accusing Isaac, then we have to consider Simon, too. We need to search his room.’

‘I’m not searching Simon’s room, Katie! How could I ever expect him to trust me again?’

‘Look, I’m not saying he’s involved, or even that the Espress Oh! receipt is his. But it could be.’ I shake my head and she throws up her hands. ‘Mum, it could be! At least consider it.’

‘We’ll wait until he gets home, and then we can all go up together.’

Katie is unflinching. ‘No, Mum. Now.’

The staircase leading to the attic is narrow, and the door on the first-floor landing gives the impression there is nothing but a cupboard behind; perhaps a bathroom or a small bedroom. Before Simon moved in I used to use it as a sort of escape: it wasn’t properly furnished, but I piled cushions up here and would shut the door and lie down for half an hour, stealing time for myself from the maelstrom of single parenting. I used to love how hidden it felt. Now it feels dangerous, each step up taking me away from the openness of the rest of the house, away from safety.

‘What if Simon comes home?’ I say. Simon and I have nothing to hide from each other, but we’re both adults; we’ve always agreed it’s important to have our own space. Our own lives. I can’t imagine what he’d say if he could see Katie and me now, snooping around his office.