to a certain police station. I didn’t think Ben Cooper would be there but it was possible and I felt I should move as quickly as I could. I was in luck, I suppose. He was there.
Ben Cooper. We first met when we were both instructors on a motorbike road safety course – he as a young cop, me in one of many attempts to prove myself normal, fit, helpful, a credit to the community and in steady employment. Ben Cooper the Bent Copper.
‘Hello, stranger,’ he said when he came on the line. He always said that. It was his little joke. In fact we saw each other occasionally. Not by design, but just because he made a point of never letting anyone go, just in case. I’d been trying to let go of him because I don’t like the guy, and in fact I don’t think I’d seen him to talk to since Janie died.
I didn’t want to ask him, but I honestly thought it was the right thing to do. Perhaps my thinking was screwed. Perhaps the cold light of dawn that you see things clearly by is meant to come with sobriety after a good night’s sleep, not still half-drunk after a night of fretting. Whatever.
‘Ben,’ I said. ‘Can we meet?’
‘Mmm,’ he said.
‘Slight problem,’ I said.
‘Want to cry on my shoulder?’ he said.
‘Mmm,’ I said.
‘Professional shoulder?’ he said.
‘Mmm,’ I said.
‘Anything you want to tell me now?’ he said.
‘Can I?’ I said.
‘I’ll call you right back,’ he said.
Two minutes later he had the gist. He took the arresting officer’s number and my registration number and the case number and a load of other numbers and I took the number 500, which was how many quid his professional advice cost these days. Cheap at the price if he could do it.
‘Oh, I can do it,’ he said. ‘You get some sleep. You sound terrible.’ I didn’t tell him Lily was due at nursery in an hour and a half.
I took Lily into nursery on the bus. It seemed years since I’d been on one. It smelt the same; grimy London Transport smell, like coins. The day was getting ready to be warm. The clippie gave Lily the dog-end of the ticket roll and told her it was toilet paper for her dolly. Lily went bug-eyed with delight and the clippie crooned at her. I was impressed. A nice old-fashioned bit of London-ness on the Uxbridge Road.
I left Lily with the hamsters and wax crayons and went up west to fetch the car (yes I know the West End is east of west London but the West End is Up West, it has to be). My blood alcohol level was probably not much lower than it had been when they pulled me, but no one was counting at nine in the morning. I drove back to Shepherd’s Bush and slept for two hours.
The phone woke me. Usually I’d just roll over and let the machine take it but I was nervous and so I found that I had answered it before I was even awake. It was Jim.
‘I want to see my daughter,’ he said.
‘Fuck off,’ I said.
‘Angie, listen,’ he said. Arrgghhh! Don’t want to listen won’t listen why should I listen?
He went into a speech. He must have prepared it carefully but its niceties were wasted on me, drowned in hangover, sleeplessness and anger. I could hardly hear his voice for the NO NO NO ringing in my head.
Then I woke up. Woke up too to the fact that he was being reasonable and I wasn’t; he was being civil and I wasn’t; that everything from here on in can be taken and used in evidence.
‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Hello? Who is that?’
‘Angie? It’s Jim.’
‘Jim! God – hello. Oh …’ I tried to convey double confusion: natural confusion at it being him, and further confusion to give the impression that I had thought that it wasn’t him.
‘Jim, I’m sorry, you woke me up …’ Shite, should I admit that? Bad mother sleeps late in morning, answers phone when incompetent, what if it had been an emergency call from the school?
‘What? Er … did you hear what I was saying?’
‘No. I mean. Jim – why are you calling? What do you want?’
He relaunched. He sounded nervous – not surprisingly – and somehow well-intentioned. He was breathing as if he was reminding himself to.
‘Angie. Um. I know it’s been a long time and I know this is going to come as a shock to you but as you know I never intended that my separation from my daughter should be permanent and the time has now come when I think it would be the right thing for … for us to meet. I want to meet her. To see her. Meet her …’ His voice fizzled out. He’s as nervous as me, I thought. He really wants this.
Fear took my heart in both its hands and squeezed.
‘I don’t think I can say anything about this until I’ve had some advice,’ I said finally.
‘Please don’t make things difficult,’ he said quickly.
‘Things are difficult,’ I said. ‘Um. Thank you for telling me what you want, it’s registered, I’m going to have to think about it. You understand I can’t just say “Yes of course” or “No way”. I have to think about this. I’ll try and think how it can be done. If it can be done. You must think too. This is a big upset, Jim …’
‘I only want to see her, for God’s sake …’
Immediately I knew that that was not all he wanted. This was a first step. This was a softening up. I don’t know how I knew. Because I knew him, I suppose, and knew the way he would apply first sweetly and charmingly and then the moment he was crossed in the tiniest things he would become petulant, stamp his tiny feet, sulk. Then hit out. His nerves did not make him any the less dangerous.
‘I’ll ring in the next few days, Jim,’ I said, making it cordial. ‘I have to speak to some people. I’m not saying it’s not possible—’
‘That’s not actually for you to say, you know.’
‘I’m not saying it, Jim. Just that it needs some thought. You think too. Think on this, for example: she doesn’t know that you are her father. She has only just realized that other children have fathers, and she hasn’t yet registered that she might have one …’
‘All the more reason,’ he said.
‘Perhaps. Perhaps. But let’s take it slowly. I’ll call you.’ I was placing my words carefully. ‘Very soon. And we will talk. But this is right out of the blue, Jim. Give a little time please. We’ll speak.’
He seemed not to disagree. I hung up. He knows nothing about children, I thought. Well, that’s probably to my advantage.
*
At lunchtime I went up to the Three Johns in Islington to meet Cooper. I’d always fancied arranging to meet three guys called John there and having a cheap laugh. Anyway. No Johns, just one Ben.
He looked much the same as he always had, plump and benevolent with a very clean neck. He wasn’t in uniform. His idea of plain clothes were the kind that shriek ‘plain clothes’ at you. ‘Slacks’, ‘Sports Jacket’, that kind of thing. At least I assume that’s what they are. Not really my kind of wardrobe. He was there at a tiny round table in the corner, looking almost actively innocuous. ‘Oh, no, don’t look at me,’ his posture cried out, ‘I’m really not interesting at all.’ It makes you wonder how he got as far as he has.
‘Well, hel-lo,’ he said,