‘You didn’t mess anything up, sweetheart. Really. You did your best. That’s all that matters.’ Jess kept stroking her back, as if that could make it all better.
‘But it’s not, is it? Because I can’t go to St Anne’s without the money.’
‘Well, there must be … Don’t worry, Tanze. I’ll work something out.’
It was her least convincing smile ever. And Tanzie wasn’t stupid. She cried like someone heartbroken.
Nicky had honestly never seen her like that. It actually made him want to cry a bit too. ‘Let’s go home,’ he said, when it became unbearable.
But that made Tanzie cry harder.
Jess looked up at him, her face bleached and completely lost, and it was like she was asking him, Nicky, what shall I do? And the fact that just for once even Jess didn’t know made him feel like something had gone really wrong with the world. And then he thought: I really, really wish Jess hadn’t confiscated my stash. He didn’t think he had ever needed a smoke more in his life.
They waited there in the hallway as the other competitors fell into groups or shared sandwiches or retreated into cars with their parents and just for once Nicky realized he did feel angry. He was angry with the stupid boys who had put his little sister off her stroke. He was angry with the stupid maths competition and its rules that wouldn’t bend a tiny bit for a little girl who couldn’t see. He was angry that they had come all this way across an entire country just to fail again. Like there was nothing this family could do that turned out right. Nothing at all.
When the hallway had emptied finally Jess reached into her back pocket and wrenched out a small rectangular card. She thrust it at him. ‘Call Mr Nicholls.’
‘But he’s halfway home by now. And what can he do?’
Jess bit her lip. She half turned away from him, then back again. ‘He can take us to Marty.’
Nicky stared at her.
‘Please. I know it’s awkward, but I can’t think what else to do. Tanzie needs something to help her up again, Nicky. She needs to see her dad.’
He was back within half an hour. He had just been down the road, he said, having a bite to eat. Nicky thought afterwards that if he had been thinking more clearly he might have wondered why Ed hadn’t gone very far, and why it had taken him so long to get a snack down him. But he was too busy arguing with Jess.
‘I know you don’t want to see your dad but –’
‘I’m not going.’
‘Tanzie needs this.’ Her face had that determined set, where you knew she was making out that she was taking your feelings into account but actually she was just going to make you do what she wanted you to do.
‘This is really not going to make anything better.’
‘For you, maybe. Look, Nicky, I know you have very mixed feelings about your dad right now, and I don’t blame you. I know it’s been a very confusing time –’
‘I’m not confused.’
‘Tanzie is at rock bottom. She needs something to give her a lift. And Marty is not that far away.’ She put out a hand and touched his arm. ‘Look, if you really don’t want to see him when we get there you can just stay in the car, okay? … I’m sorry,’ she said, when he didn’t say anything. ‘To be honest, I’m not exactly desperate to see him either. But we do have to do this.’
What could he tell her? What could he tell her that she would believe? And he supposed there was five per cent of him that still wondered if he was the one who was wrong.
Jess turned to Mr Nicholls, who had been leaning against his car watching silently. ‘Please. Will you give us a lift to Marty’s? His mum’s, I mean. I’m sorry. I know you’ve probably had enough of us and we’ve been a complete pain, but … but I haven’t got anyone else to ask. Tanzie … she needs her dad. Whatever I – we – think of him, she needs to see her dad. It’s only a couple of hours from here.’
He looked at her.
‘Okay, maybe more if we have to go slowly. But please – I need to turn this round. I really need to turn this round.’
Mr Nicholls stepped to one side and opened the passenger door. He stooped a little so that he could smile at Tanzie. ‘Let’s go.’
They all looked relieved. But it was a bad idea. A really bad idea. If only they’d asked him about the wallpaper Nicky could have told them why.
22.
Jess
The last time Jess had seen Maria Costanza was the day she had delivered Marty to her in Liam’s brother’s van. Marty had spent the last hundred miles to Glasgow asleep under a duvet, and as Jess stood in her immaculate front room and tried to explain her son’s breakdown she had looked at her as if Jess had personally tried to kill him.
Maria Costanza had never liked her. She’d thought her son deserved better than a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl with a home-dye and glittery nails, and nothing Jess had ever done since had changed her fundamental low opinion of her. She thought what Jess did with the house was peculiar. She thought the fact that Jess made most of the children’s clothes herself was wilfully eccentric. It never occurred to her to ask why she made their clothes, or why they couldn’t afford to pay someone else to decorate. Or why when the overflow blocked it was Jess who ended up under the sink wrestling with the U-bend.
She had tried. She really had. She was polite, and didn’t swear, or pick at bits of herself in public. She was faithful to Marty. She produced the world’s most amazing baby, and kept her clean, fed and cheerful. It took Jess about five years to grasp that it wasn’t her. Maria Costanza was just one of life’s lemon-suckers. Jess wasn’t sure she had ever seen a smile break spontaneously over her face, unless it was to report some piece of news about one of her friends or neighbours: a slashed tyre or a terminal illness, maybe.
She had tried to ring her twice, on Mr Nicholls’s phone, but got no answer.
‘Granny’s probably still at work,’ she told Tanzie, ringing off. ‘Or perhaps they’ve gone to see the new baby.’
‘You still want me to head over there?’ Mr Nicholls glanced at her.
‘Please. I’m sure they’ll be home by the time we get there. She never goes out in the evening.’
Nicky’s eyes met hers in the mirror and slid away. Jess didn’t blame him for being negative. If Maria Costanza’s reaction to Tanzie had been lukewarm, her discovery that she had a grandson she hadn’t even known about was met with the same enthusiasm as if they had announced a family case of scabies. Jess couldn’t tell if she was offended that he had existed for so long without her knowledge, or whether her inability to explain him without referring to (a) illegitimacy and (b) that her son had been involved with an addict meant that she just found it easier to ignore him altogether. It was one of the reasons why, when Marty had announced, six months after he’d left, that he was feeling a bit better so they should all come up and stay, it had been quite easy to say no on the grounds of cost.