Three Hours(36)

He thinks he hears a scrabble in the darkness. ‘Ratty?’ he says quietly, in case the man is listening outside. ‘The man can’t hurt us. I’ve bolted the door.’

He turns on his phone and shines his screen around the shed but he can’t see a rat; he’s probably shy and hiding. He has 7% charge. His phone animals haven’t been fed for ages and they’ll be really hungry so he’ll just quickly feed them, it’ll only take a tiny bit of charge. And then he must turn off his phone and be brave as a Barbary lion, as a Bengal tiger, as Sir Lancelot and the little mouse in The Gruffalo.

*

In the leisure centre cafeteria, Beth Alton has texted Zac five times but he hasn’t heard from Jamie. Her phone keeps ringing and each time she jolts with hope but it’s Mike or Theo or her parents, and she quickly answers because leaving it ringing means it’s engaged for Jamie; she speaks for just a few seconds then hangs up. She holds her phone tightly, as if it is Jamie’s hand.

The smell of old coffee and burgers is getting stronger as the room heats up. She wishes there was a window. She doesn’t even know if it’s still snowing; totally separated from Jamie.

More parents of the trapped children have joined them, but the noise level remains almost mute. Two journalists tried to blend in with arriving parents but were spotted immediately by the police officers; although the right age, the journalists’ bodies were too relaxed, their walk too easy, their faces too healthy. They were hustled out and since then a police officer has stood guard by the doors.

At the tables, the parents are isolated units; a brief exchange of information or sympathy, that’s all; even couples, pressed against one another, seem locked into this separateness.

The stillness in the large room, the terrible inertia, is broken by the young man – Steve, Beth has discovered, the fiancé of a junior school teacher, Chloe Price – who’s pacing fast up and down between the tables. She thinks of Jamie hiding on his own, and wishes there was someone who loved him and he could think of her and feel less alone, less afraid. And it can’t be her; she’s not enough, just his mum. He needs magical teenage romantic love and he had that once, but lost it, and that will make this even harder for him. And she shouldn’t even know about it; she has no right to know about it.

There’s something I have to tell you, Jamie.

Sounds ominous …

I found your diary.

You must have looked pretty hard.

I was changing your bedclothes.

Under the mattress?

I lift the mattress up so that the bottom sheet is good and tight, more comfy.

For God’s sake, Mum. I told you to leave my room alone, that I can change my own bedding. Did you read it?

I’m sorry.

You had no right.

I know.

Fucking hell, Mum.

I know, there’s no excuse, I know that, but I could tell you were unhappy. And I kept asking you but you kept just saying you were okay.

She’d thought if she just knew what was making Jamie unhappy she could lead the conversation into the right area and he’d confide in her.

In his diary, she’d read about his romance with Antonella, pages covered in beautiful drawings of a girl’s face, often just her blue eyes with long black lashes, and poems written alongside the drawings. He’s always loved to draw, not cars and dinosaurs like other little boys, but multicoloured intricate flowers and randomly coloured rainbows and then a girl’s beautiful blue eyes. And then, after three months of drawings, ‘It’s over’ in biro, his anguish clear in the jerky writing.

Theo hadn’t talked to her about girlfriends but he wasn’t vulnerable like Jamie, probably treating the girls badly rather than the other way round. And a little part of her was glad that she could help Jamie.

But whenever she attempted to talk about relationships his head had just bent lower, shoulders hunching towards her, and he’d found an excuse to leave the room.

Once she’d been able to make it better for him – giving a hug, reading a story and witch-hazel on bruises. But the terrible thing about your teenager being unhappy was that he doesn’t want your help and however much you love him, show him you love him, it just doesn’t make that much difference.

Can you say something? Jamie?

You’ve already read all about it so what’s there to say?

I really am sorry.

All those hinty conversations about girls.

Yes.

She hears him give a quiet laugh, resigned, and she’s forgiven.

He’d use the word hinty, would laugh like that, would forgive her. She’s known him since he was a few moments old, the time it took the midwife to hand him to her, and she knows what he would say to her.

Around her, parents are starting to talk to one another; tendrils of conversation branch outwards, so that groups at a table are talking and now a subject is seized upon – Who’s doing this?

Beth can’t think who would do this, but people are pitching in, some searching on their phones and iPads and laptops.

‘News sites are saying it might be a terrorist attack.’

Maybe they think if they understand what’s happening they are somehow less powerless to help their children.

‘Islamic State.’

‘That’s what they’re saying on Twitter too; that it’s an Islamist terror attack. Thousands of people are tweeting that.’