Sweetie (3 page)

Grace checked over her shoulder to make sure that neither Sue nor his mum Gill had seen. There had been problems with this sort of thing before. Adam did not like to share and Sue had had words with Grace, telling her she needed to sort it out. Grace, in her usual laidback way, hoped it would sort itself out come September when he started school. He’d soon learn then, he’d have to. The teachers would make him. Anyway, Grace didn’t see it as the big problem Sue liked to make out. His baby brother Luke had 9

only just arrived on the scene after Adam had had four years of his mum all to himself, never having to share before. No wonder he was asserting himself now.

But Sue had very pronounced views on every aspect of motherhood and childcare, and would vehemently scold any child who refused to share its toys or let others join in their play. A mother of four, she was brisk and tough but a loving parent.

Everybody knew where they were with Sue, including her husband Terry. His job was to bring in a wage.

She liked to deal with the rest. Grace was more passive at home, preferring to let John take the lead, make all the decisions.

The beaker of squash she had poured for Adam and left by the doorway had turned warm and so she went to fetch another.

‘For crying out loud, Grace, will you just settle?

You got St Vitus’ Dance or something?’ Sue joined her in the kitchen, putting the kettle on to make another round of teas.

‘I dunno, Sue, I just don’t feel right. I woke up this morning feeling sick, like something really bad was going to happen, do you know what I mean?’

‘Yeah, I do, love. You ain’t up the spout again, mate, are ya?’ Sue started to laugh; Grace had to giggle too.

‘No, course not. You’re such a tease, Sue.’

‘Anyway we’re all feeling a bit dodgy with what’s 10

been going on, and this bloody weather doesn’t help, but the men are gonna sort it.’

‘What do you mean, Sue?’

‘They’re gonna go and pay a little visit to that Steven Archer.’ Sue had a triumphant gleam in her eyes.

‘What, that backward boy?’ asked Grace, alarmed.

‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? None of this happened before he came back from that boarding school for nutty kids,’ Sue said decisively.

Grace laughed nervously then muttered, ‘Christ, even the cold water is bloody warm,’ as she ran the tap. ‘But how can you say that, Sue, when your TJ

has cerebral palsy? And anyway, how do you know it’s Steven?’ she continued. ‘He’s only fourteen and seems a gentle enough soul. I’ve seen him waiting to be asked to play with the other kids, and helping some of the old dears with their bags and stuff.’

‘Because he’s always hanging around, just staring.

He gives me the creeps.’

‘But what proof have you got?’

‘I don’t need proof, I
know
.’ Sue tapped the side of her nose.

Grace knew better than to argue with her when she got an idea into her head. Then they were interrupted by the familiar sound of baby Luke waking up from his nap and crying for his bottle. The thought of a brutish attack on a simple young lad left Grace’s thoughts for a little while.

11

She put the beaker down on the draining board and walked out of the kitchen and over to the push -

chair where she pulled her hot clammy baby out of his resting place. His nappy was wet through and the damp had travelled up his babygro. Grace removed the towelling suit and nappy expertly with him balanced on her lap, the large pin held in her mouth while she fixed a dry terry nappy on to her four-month-old. She pulled a lukewarm bottle of milk out of her bag and placed it in the baby’s wailing mouth, immediately silencing him.

As she fed Luke she walked back over to the open door and called for Adam to come inside. ‘Come on, love, you’ll get sunstroke out there. Come in and have a drink.’

Adam ignored her. Grace tutted to herself and decided to finish feeding the baby before physically dragging her other son back inside to pour the juice down his throat. He was a tough one, her Adam, and seemed able to withstand incredible physical hard -

ship. She still remembered the time she and John took him over to the park when he was tiny, only about eighteen months old. He had been walking since he was about eleven months and already they had to run to keep up with him. It was a freezing cold day in January and all the muddy puddles had frozen over, but that didn’t stop their Adam from lying down in each and every one of them and giving himself an ice-mud bath. They had both laughed with a mixture of 12

horror and pride as he delightedly got himself soaked to the skin, his thick nappy soaking up the dirty water and becoming so heavy that his trousers sank halfway down his legs, revealing his frozen bum.

In the heat, too, he never showed any sign of wilting, his stocky little figure just kept on going. He had a bullish head of dark curls and a perpetual look of sheer determination on his face. Adam just pushed on regardless of any obstacle in his path. Grace and John adored their little first-born and felt sure that he had some special destiny in store for him.

Life with John and her boys was more than Grace had ever hoped for. When she first met John, she was timid, tense, unsure what she felt, but he showed her love and tenderness, and that its physical expression could be a pleasurable thing. It had been a while since Uncle Gary had left her bedroom, but having sex with a man brought back the memories of his brute strength and rough penetration of her.

She had been only twelve when she was first raped by Gary, and could still remember every little detail.

His roughness, his overwhelming smell of Brut aftershave, and the way he’d torn her knickers, yanking them off. Also that dreadful song had been playing over and over again on her small portable record player. Gary would leave the seven-inch single on repeat to cover the noises he made. It had played four times before he had finished with her. How she hated that song! Tommy James and the Shondells, 13

singing ‘Mony Mony’ over and over again, and each time the chorus came to the ‘yeah, yeah’ sequence, Uncle Gary would sing with them as he thrust ever harder into her frail body, cupping his hard hand over her mouth to stifle her screams.

Bruised, battered and tear-stained, Grace was held by the throat until she thought she would die from suffocation. On Uncle Gary’s handsome face above her was a grimace of gratification and triumph. As he held her slender neck in one hand he snarled at her,

‘You’re mine now, little Gracie girl, and we’re gonna

’ave lots of fun, you and me. I’m gonna teach you things you never even imagined, and you will never say nuffink to no one about it ’cause it’s all your fault.

They’ll lock yer mum away because of you, if ya tell.’

Grace had been rigid with fear throughout the ordeal. When he finally released her, she slumped back on the bed and buried her face in the covers until she heard the door shut and realised he had gone. She put one hand to her vulva in an attempt to ease the soreness and bleeding. Blood mixed with a creamy, sticky fluid that seeped through her fingers.

Quietly she left her room and made her way to the bathroom. She could hear Uncle Gary talking to Mum downstairs as normal as she slipped into the bathroom and washed herself, over and over again.

Still reluctantly reliving the events of the past, some -

thing suddenly compelled Grace to hand the baby 14

over to Sue. ‘Hold on to him for a minute, will you?’

The other mums were putting away the puzzles and building bricks and emptying the water trays. Grace wiped her damp hands on the back of her shorts and strode out into the garden where she saw that the little bubble car was parked perfectly parallel to the wire-mesh fence. Adam was not inside it and Benny Jr who had also been playing in the garden was not visible either.

Telling herself they were around the corner of the building playing together, Grace stifled her rising sense of panic and called her son’s name: ‘Adam, time to go, love. Come on.’ Silence. ‘Adam? Come on, love, where are you?’ She checked under the little climbing frame, wondering if he was playing silly buggers and hiding from her. Not there either. ‘Oh, please God,’ she said quietly then ran back into the hall and called, ‘Has anyone seen Adam?’

The other mums looked at each other, waiting for someone to reveal his whereabouts, but nobody spoke up except for Sue who finally said, ‘He must be around somewhere. There’s no way he could have got out. Go and check the toilets.’

Grace ran into the loos, opening each stall and calling louder each time, ‘Adam, come on! Stop mucking about, we have to go now.’ And finally, in anger, ‘I mean it, Adam, I’m going without you if you don’t come out –
right now
.’ But she already knew he wouldn’t answer. She went back outside to check the 15

garden one last time. The other mums had gathered there. A horrible silence hung in the still air as they realised that it had happened again.

Then Grace’s nephew, little Benny Hoare Jr, crawled out from under a large shrub at the back of the garden. ‘Benny, have you seen Adam?’ cried Sue, gripping him by the collar in frustration. ‘Benny, where’s Adam?’

‘Man, Sue, man!’ he cried, pointing to the wire-mesh fence behind him. They could all see that it had been pulled or sheared away for several feet next to one of the metal uprights and bent back. The space was large enough for an adult to crouch down and get into the garden. Or for a small boy to scramble through and out on to the road.

Grace’s sister Gillian, Benny’s mother, ran over to him then and held him so tight he couldn’t breathe.

‘It could have been my Benny!’ she screamed.

The other women just stared at her. Shamefaced after her outburst, she released him and joined the others who had huddled around Grace and were attempting to place steadying arms around her waist and shoulders. But despite their efforts to hold her up she sank to her knees and cried heavenward like a wounded animal, ‘Oh, God, help me, please! Please

. . . my baby, my baby.’

16

Chapter Two

Adam was found alive but unconscious at 6.30 p.m.

that same day, in the alley behind the bookmaker’s on Hackney Road. The bookie, Harold Kowitz, or Harry the Horse as he was known locally, only discovered the boy by chance when he went out to the bins looking for a betting slip carbon he thought he might have inadvertently chucked out. He would normally have shut up shop and left by 5.30 but that night could not get his books to balance. Beset by his perpetual fear that his staff were robbing him blind, he had determined not to leave until he had located the missing carbon. As he rifled through the bins the smell of rotting rubbish made him gag and he cursed the heat, not for the first time that summer.

A small sound, part-whimper, part-gurgle, stopped him in his tracks and he listened for it again. He thought at first it must be a cat, but as he rolled a dustbin away from the wall, he saw a little boy, pale and still as a marble cherub, looking for all the world like he was just taking a nap rather than lying unconscious from shock and pain.

At first Harry assumed this was just a kid who had wandered off from home, plenty of local children 17

roamed in feral packs in the neighbourhood, but this child was too young to be out alone and he was beautifully dressed. He gently nudged the boy and said softly, ‘Come on, little ’un, what you doing down there? Get up.’

But the little boy did not respond and a cold, sick, sinking sensation in his gut told Harry that some -

thing was badly wrong. He saw the grass and blood stains on his expensive clothing, the leaves and twigs stuck in the child’s hair, and most peculiarly of all, a drumstick lolly stuck to his head in a sticky, soggy mess above his right ear. There was a cut just beneath the inside corner of his right eye, with a patch of dry blood on it. That was when he noticed that this child had no eyelashes, just a stumpy line where his long, silky, small child’s lashes should have been.

Harry carried him into the shop where he cradled him in his arms until the police and ambulance arrived and they were able to match the boy’s description to that of a child reported missing that morning.

The grass stains led the police to believe that after the boy had been snatched from the toddlers’ group, he must have been taken to Haggerston Park a quarter of a mile away and wandered away after the assault, looking for his mummy. How nobody spotted a small child walking alone on a busy East End street was a question no one could answer.

*

18

After the relief of their child being found, Grace and John were distressed that they weren’t able to take Adam home. Although he had been roused from his unconscious state by the nurses at the Queen Elizabeth Children’s Hospital before Grace and John arrived, he still would not speak except to whimper, tugging at the lolly still stuck to his hair and skin above his ear, ‘It hurts, Mummy.’

They sat in a hospital side ward with a young police officer, PC Ian Watson, and a nurse in atten -

dance. John was leaning against the windowsill, staring out at the grey skyline, his hands clenched and knuckles white. He was breathing heavily to stop the shaking inside him. The room was close and muggy, and sweat rolled down his back. Grace rocked Adam back and forth on her lap, her eyes gazing into the middle distance but seeing nothing. He cried as his mother held his hand down to stop him pulling at the sweet, sticky mass above his ear.

Suddenly she burst out, ‘Can’t we just cut this bloody lolly out of his hair?’

PC Watson had his orders that nothing should be done until the medical officers arrived, but after a few meaningful glances from the nurse who silently backed up Grace’s request, he said softly, ‘I don’t see why not, we can keep it in a sterile bag.’

The nurse left the room briefly and returned with a stainless steel kidney bowl, scissors, swabs and anti -

septic. She pulled up a chair next to Grace and in a 19

whisper said, ‘If you just hold him still for me for a minute, we’ll get that out of his hair and then he’ll be more comfortable, won’t you, sweetheart?’