Fragile Minds Page 0,34

to realise that he didn’t want to lay his nightcap anywhere near Julie, ever again. He took a swig of his coffee and steeled himself to leave.

‘All right?’ Julie giggled and sashayed over to the stereo where she put a CD called Lovers’ Ballads on. Silver groaned internally as he watched her pulling her skin-tight skirt down over her voluptuous curves, straightening the folds, before starting to sway on the spot to Marvin Gaye.

‘Cares of the world on your shoulders tonight, lover.’ She began to undulate towards him, kicking her stilettos off. ‘Let me help you forget, babe.’

Silver was dying inside. Forcing a weak smile as Julie undid the top button of her pink shirt, while licking her lips suggestively, he knew he had no one to blame apart from himself.

His phone rang: it was Matty, his middle child. Silver flipped it open with such alacrity he caught his own finger in the fold.

‘How do, kiddo?’ Silver grinned into thin air, ecstatic to hear from his son for not entirely pure reasons. ‘Been to football? How’s that tackle coming along? I must say, those Blackburn—’

‘Dad,’ Matty cut him off. ‘It’s Mum.’

‘What’s Mum?’

‘She’s gone.’

‘Gone where?’ Silver sat up on Julie’s fake leather sofa.

‘I mean, she’s not come home,’ Matty’s normally even tones were distressed; he suddenly sounded very young. ‘Not since this morning.’

‘When did you last see her?’

‘Before school. She didn’t even remember to collect Molly from Gran’s.’

‘Have you called her mobile?’

Julie had stopped dancing and was glowering at him now. He ignored her, sticking his finger in his ear against Marvin’s crooning.

‘’Course,’ Matty was indignant. ‘But it just rings and rings.’

‘Where’s Ben?’

‘He’s took my skateboard and gone down to Chasers. To see if she’s there.’

‘Taken your skateboard,’ Silver said automatically, but his heart missed a beat. He imagined his kids, confused and alone whilst his ex-wife sank Bacardi on a leather-topped stool in the local wine bar, drinking until she could hardly stagger in her three-inch heels. ‘Are you on your own with Molly?’

‘Gran’s here,’ Matty muttered. ‘She made me eat peas.’

‘Can you put her on, mate?’

‘I hate peas.’

‘I know, lad. Squash them down and push ’em under your fork. Always worked for me.’

‘I tried. She sussed me.’

‘Look, Matty,’ Silver was very gentle; he didn’t want to upset his son any more than he already was. ‘Just get your grandma, OK, and then we’ll have another chat in a minute.’

Lana’s mother Anne arrived on the line.

‘Joseph.’ She was curt.

He pictured her now, stiff and proper, beige twin-set beneath beautifully coiffed fair hair, every inch her daughter’s mother. She had still not forgiven Silver for leaving Allana, even though it was indisputable that her daughter had been ruined largely by her own actions, and was temporarily beyond all reach. Anne could not get past the fact that Silver had been the drinker before Lana, that she had followed his path and then stuck steadfastly to it alone, even after he had found sobriety some years ago. In Anne’s eyes, Silver was the arch-villain.

‘Anne. First off, are you all right to stay with the kids?’

‘Of course.’ She dropped her voice. ‘I’m very worried though.’

‘I know you are,’ Silver soothed, his mind ticking furiously, ‘but Allana’s a big girl now, Anne. And it’s not like this is the first time.’

Four years ago, just before their marriage broke down irretrievably, Lana had gone through a stage of disappearing at lunchtime, usually into Leeds, usually to get hammered in one of the big hotel bars. It was only afterwards that Silver had discovered she had also been using the hotels to sleep with his pal Ray Steen from Yorkshire’s Vice Squad. At the point that Lana got back in a car for the first time since the accident and drove herself home, thankfully without passengers this time, taking out half the front garden as she arrived home, Silver had taken compassionate leave. She was lucky not to have been jailed for Jaime’s death anyway, and in exchange for Silver, having battled his conscience for a while, managing to persuade the local force to quietly look the other way, Lana had gone into rehab at the Phoenix Centre in West Yorkshire. Silver struggled to keep the family going – with a little help from his sister Nicky, and later Anne, when she had recovered from the shock of Lana’s ignominy.

‘She hasn’t done it for years,’ her mother said plaintively. ‘She’s been so much better. So why now?’

Silver thought with sinking heart of the phone call he’d