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‘Little brown mouse?’ he echoed. ‘With that blazing auburn hair?’
She was taken aback. She was used to thinking of her hair as sandy, or at most ‘reddish’ certainly at the dull end of the red spectrum. Nobody had ever suggested before that it was at the glamorous end.
All the way back to the house Joey watched the two of them closely, aware of their tension. Once inside he began to pull on Gina’s hand, urging her to the stairs.
‘Please, go with him,’ Carson said.
She wasn’t sure what to expect from Joey’s room, but the reality made her stop and stare. It wasn’t that the walls were covered with posters—it was the content of the posters that astonished her. Not a footballer in sight.
Everywhere she looked there were whales, penguins, sharks, sea lions, fish, coral, shells. The bookshelves took up the same theme, and beyond them were more shelves of videos.
‘You must know a great deal,’ Gina told Joey.
He nodded.
‘Have you always been interested in marine life?’
She had to spell marine, but then he understood and nodded again.
He showed her around, and she found that he had all that money could buy, including a computer through which he could pursue his interest on the Internet. His father had even provided a credit card with which he could purchase whatever he pleased from an on-line bookshop.
In fact, the room had everything except some sign of warm, adult interest. This child lived in a vacuum, Gina thought with a shiver. On the evidence of his books he was highly intelligent, but he had nobody to share it with.
And then she found something that struck a curious note. A large framed photograph stood by Joey’s bed. It showed a young woman in her early twenties. Her face was heavily made up, but even without that she would have been beautiful. Her rich blonde hair tumbled over her shoulders and her mouth was curved provocatively at the camera.
Gina recognised the woman. She was a young actress called Angelica Duvaine who was fast making a name for herself in films. Gina had seen her playing second lead in a recent blockbuster. She had a limited talent but her beauty and glamour were stunning. It was a strange picture to find in the room of such a young child.
Joey saw her looking and beamed with pride.
‘My mother,’ he spelled.
‘But—’ Gina realised she was entering a minefield. A child, cruelly deprived of his own mother, had set up this fantasy to comfort himself. How could she snatch it from him?
‘She’s very pretty,’ Gina agreed.
Joey nodded and pointed to the picture. ‘Eeee—aye—eeee,’ he said.
Gina understood this as She gave me. A fan picture, sent through the post, and the child thought he’d been selected for special favour.
‘She gave it to you?’ she echoed. ‘That was nice of her.’
Joey fought for speech. The result was garbled but Gina understood. She loves me.
‘Yes,’ she said heavily. ‘Of course she does.’
Carson looked in. ‘There’s something to eat downstairs.’
Supper was laid in the elegant dining room, full of polished rosewood, with expensive pictures on the wall. Gina reflected that she would have hated to be a child in such a room, and Joey seemed to feel the same, because he was subdued.
The meal was excellent, and she complimented Carson on it.
‘I can’t take the credit,’ he admitted. ‘Mrs Saunders left everything ready and I just microwaved it.’ He regarded his son, staring unenthusiastically at his plate. ‘What?’ He touched Joey’s shoulder to get his attention. ‘What’s the matter with it?’ he asked, raising his voice.
‘Does Joey have any hearing at all?’ Gina asked.
‘No, none.’
‘Then why do you shout? Speaking clearly is what he needs, so that he can follow your lips. Anyway, there’s nothing the matter with the food. But if Joey’s like me at that age he’d prefer a burger.’
‘Junk food,’ Carson said disparagingly. ‘This is better for him.’
She saw Joey looking from one to the other with the bewildered look of the excluded, and took his hand in hers for a moment. At once the look of strain vanished from his face.
‘But who wants to have what’s better for them all the time?’ she persisted. ‘Junk is more fun. Have you ever asked him what he prefers?’
‘That isn’t easy.’
‘Yes, it is,’ she insisted. ‘You look into his face so that he can see your lips.’
‘Do you think I don’t try that? He doesn’t understand me. Or he chooses not to, for reasons of his own.’
Gina was about to dispute this but a memory of her childhood got in the way.
‘That depends how you talk to him,’ she mused. ‘If you let him see you’re impatient, he’s bound to get upset.’
‘I do not—well, I try not to—are you saying he is doing it deliberately?’
‘I don’t know, but it’s what I used to do. When you’re faced with a really unsympathetic adult who’s obviously just doing his duty, and would rather be anywhere but with you—you don’t tend to make it easy for him.’
‘And I am the unsympathetic adult, I take it?’
‘Are you?’
He let out a long, slow breath. ‘I’m doing my best.’
‘How good a best is it?’
‘It’s damnable,’ he flashed. ‘All right? That’s what you think, isn’t it? And it’s the truth. I’m a lousy father, I don’t know what I’m doing and he’s suffering for it.’
‘At least you’re honest.’
‘But where does honesty get us?’ he asked bleakly. ‘Do you have the answer any more than I do?’
The weight of despair in his voice checked her condemnation. He too was suffering, and he coped less well than the child.
Last night, the word ‘deaf’ had made a change come over him and she’d judged him severely, assuming that he’d reacted with repulsion, as so many people did. But the truth was that deafness confronted him with problems he couldn’t cope with, and a miserable awareness of his own failure.
‘What should I do?’ he said wearily. ‘For God’s sake, tell me if you know!’
‘I can tell you what it’s like for Joey,’ she said. ‘If you understood that, you might find things easier for both of you.’ She saw Joey looking at them and said, ‘Not now,’ quietly to Carson.
For the rest of the meal she concentrated on the child, making him feel included. Carson ate very little, but he watched them, his eyes moving from one to the other as though he was afraid to miss anything.
‘May I use your telephone?’ Gina asked after a while. She’d remembered that Dan was due to call her.
‘There’s one in that room through there,’ Carson said.
She called Dan’s mobile and found him slightly tetchy.
‘You didn’t say you were going to be out tonight,’ he complained.
‘I didn’t know. Something came up suddenly.’
‘My boss invited me to his house and said to bring you, too. It didn’t look good when I turned up without you.’
‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t know.’
‘You’ve still got time to get here if you hurry.’
‘All right, I’ll try to—’
Then she saw Joey watching her from the doorway.
His face told her that he understood. He couldn’t hear the words, but when you were deaf you always knew when people were preparing to desert you.
Desert? Nonsense! She didn’t owe Joey anything.
But she did. Because he was trapped in the dreadful silent world from which she had escaped. And the deaf always owed each other, because they knew terrible secrets that nobody else knew.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ she said hurriedly.
‘Gina, this is important.’
‘And my job is important to me,’ she said, seizing an excuse that Dan would understand. ‘I blotted my copy-book with a client this afternoon, and I’m trying to put it right.’ Hurriedly she explained about the accident, and about Joey. She could sense Dan becoming interested.
‘Carson Page? The man you were talking to last night?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re at his home?’
‘Yes.’
‘That posh place in Belmere Avenue?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmm. All right. I’ll be in touch.’
He hung up.
Carson had come to the door to urge Joey back to the table. It was clear he’d heard part of the conversation. He looked at her wryly.
‘Did I force you to break a date?’ he asked.
‘No, there’s no problem.’ She spoke to Joey. ‘I’m not going yet.’
His brilliant smile was her reward.
After the meal Joey, at a nod from his father, switched on the television to watch his favourite soap, with the aid of subtitles. The two of them cleared the plates into the kitchen. Carson poured her a glass of wine, and pulled out a chair at the table.
‘I haven’t told you properly how grateful I am,’ he said. ‘I should never have taken Joey to that place, but I didn’t know what else to do. He broke up from school today and, without Mrs Saunders, I had to take him with me. I got absorbed in business and didn’t see him wander off. But for you, I might have lost him.’ He added quietly. ‘And I couldn’t bear that. He’s all I have.’
‘I wish you’d asked me to look after him at the office this afternoon,’ Gina said.
‘I thought of it, but I didn’t know how, without breaking my word and admitting that we’d met before.’
‘You should have broken it,’ she said at once.
‘Also, I wasn’t sure if your employers knew about you. I didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag, precisely because there are people like Philip Hale in the world.’
‘I thought you were like him,’ she admitted. ‘Last night—’
‘I didn’t react very well, I know. But it’s like floundering in a sea of confusion. I try to remind myself that it’s worse for Joey.’
‘Yes, poor little soul. Outsiders can’t imagine—the sheer frustration when the words are building up inside you and you can’t get them out—and people look at you as if you’re crazy—’
‘If that’s meant for me, don’t bother. We’ve already agreed that I’m a hopeless father with no idea what his son needs.’
‘Surely you know one thing that he needs? His mother. Even if you and she have fallen out, she’s the person with the best chance of understanding him. If he had her, he wouldn’t have to indulge in fairy tales about film stars.’
‘What makes you think he’s indulging in fairy tales?’ Carson asked wryly.
‘Oh, please! I’ve seen Angelica Duvaine’s picture by his bed. She looks about twenty.’
‘She’d be thrilled to hear you say so. She’s twenty-eight. That picture’s been cleverly touched up. Mind you, even the reality looks much younger than the fact. She’s worked on her appearance—diet, massage, exercise. The next thing was going to be plastic surgery to lift her breasts. It was the row over that that made her finally move out. Not that she was here much anyway, by that time.’
‘Are you telling me that Angelica Duvaine really is Joey’s mother?’ Gina asked, only half believing.
‘In a sense. Her real name is Brenda Page but it’s years since she answered to it. When our divorce is finalised in a few weeks she won’t even be that any more.
‘I know I look like the monster separating mother and child, but I wouldn’t be doing it if she showed any interest in him. You should read some of Brenda’s press interviews. She’s never once told the world she has a son. From the moment she realised Joey had a problem with his hearing, he ceased to exist as far as she was concerned. He was a blot, something to be ashamed of. My wife, you see, values physical perfection above everything.’
He waited a moment, to see if she had any answer for this.
‘Oh, dear God!’ Gina whispered at last. ‘That poor little boy.’
‘Joey adores her. God knows why, when she treats him so carelessly. She goes away, ignores him, comes back for five minutes, then goes away and breaks his heart again. But he never holds it against her, no matter how badly she behaves.’
