dumped in his stew and dumplings. None of the little kids was interested in tripping him up or spitting on his chips.
He’d never paid much attention to the dinner ladies. Tony was used to keeping his head down and hoping the adults wouldn’t notice him. So he was taken aback one day when one of the dinner ladies spoke as he approached the hot table. ‘What’s matter wi’ thee?’ the woman said, her strong local accent making the question a challenge.
He’d looked over his shoulder, panicked that one of the bullies had crept up behind him. Then startled, he’d realised she was looking at him. ‘Aye, thee, tha big daft lad.’
He shook his head, his upper lip rising in fear, showing his teeth like a nervous terrier. ‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘You’re a liar,’ she said, ladling an extra-large portion of macaroni cheese on to his plate. ‘Come round the back here.’ She gestured with her head to the side passage that led to the serving kitchen.
Truly terrified by now, Tony made sure nobody was looking and slid sideways into the passage. Clutching his tray to his chest like a horizontal shield he stood in the kitchen entrance. The woman came towards him, then led him round the corner to the back kitchen where the real work happened. Four women were washing huge pots in deep sinks amid clouds of steam. A fifth was leaning against the back-door jamb, smoking. ‘Sit thysel’ down and eat,’ the woman said, pointing to a high stool by a counter.
‘Another bloody rescue pup, Joan?’ the smoking woman said.
Tony’s hunger overcame his anxiety and he shovelled his food into his mouth. The woman, Joan, watched him with satisfaction, her arms folded across her chest. ‘You’re always last in the queue,’ she said, her voice kindly. ‘They pick on you, don’t they?’
He’d felt tears well up in his eyes and nearly choked on the slippery macaroni. He looked down at his plate and said nothing.
‘I keep dogs,’ she said. ‘I could do with a hand walking them after school. Would that be something you might fancy?’
He didn’t fancy the dogs. He just wanted to be with somebody who spoke to him the way Joan did. He nodded, still not looking up.
‘That’s settled, then. I’ll see you at the back gate when the bell goes. Do you need to let them know at home?’
Tony shook his head. ‘My nan won’t mind,’ he said. ‘And my mum never gets back before seven.’
And that had been the start of it. Joan never asked him about his home life. She listened once he understood he could trust her, but she never probed, never judged. She had five dogs, each with a distinct personality, and while he never came to care for the dogs the way Joan did, he learned how to fake it. Not in a disrespectful way, but because he didn’t want to let Joan down. She didn’t try to be a mother to him or to bribe him into investing her with more significance in his life. She was a kind, childless woman who had been drawn by his pain in the same way that she’d been drawn to her dogs down at the animal rescue. ‘I always know the ones with the good temperaments,’ she would boast to him and to the other dog walkers she’d stop and chat to.
And she encouraged him. Joan wasn’t a clever woman herself, but she recognised intelligence when she saw it. She told him the way to escape whatever ailed him was to educate himself so that he had choices. She hugged him when he passed his exams and told him he could do it when he grew discouraged. He was sixteen when she told him he had to stop coming round.
They’d been sitting in her kitchen at the formica-topped table, drinking tea. ‘I can’t have you coming round any more,’ she said. ‘I’ve got cancer, Tony lad. Apparently I’m bloody riddled with it. They say I’ve only a matter of weeks to live. I’m taking the dogs to the vet tomorrow to have them put down. They’re all too old to adapt to some other bugger, and I doubt your nan would give them houseroom.’ She’d patted his hand. ‘I want you to remember me as I am. As I have been. So we’ll say our goodbyes now.’
He’d been horrified. He’d protested at her decision, declaring his willingness to be by her side till the end. But she’d been adamant. ‘It’s all arranged, lad. I’m putting everything in order then I’m taking myself off to the hospice. I hear they couldn’t be nicer in there.’
Then they’d both cried. It had been hard, but he’d respected her wishes. Five weeks later, one of the dinner ladies had called him over and told him Joan had died. ‘Very peaceful, it were,’ she said. ‘But she’s left a bloody big hole round here.’
He’d nodded, not trusting himself to speak. But he’d already discovered that Joan had taught him how to negotiate that bloody big hole for himself. He wasn’t the same boy she’d befriended.
It was years later, when he was doing postgraduate work on personality disorders and psychopathic behaviour, that he understood the power of what Joan had done for him. It wasn’t overstating the case to say that Joan had saved him from what lay in prospect when she had snatched him out of the dinner line. She’d been the first person to show him love. A brusque, unsentimental love, it was true. But it had been love and even though he’d had no experience of it, he’d recognised it.
In spite of Joan’s intervention, though, he’d never quite mastered the art of making easy connections with others. He’d learned to pretend – ‘passing for human’, he called it. He didn’t have a raft of mates like most of the men he’d worked with. He didn’t have a backlist of girlfriends and lovers like them. So the few people he cared about were all the more valuable to him. And the thought of losing Carol Jordan gave him a physical pain in his chest. Was this what the precursor to a heart attack felt like?
There was more than one way to lose her. There was the obvious – the fact that she’d made it clear that she didn’t care if she never saw him again. But there was always hope that he could change her mind. Other ways were more final. In the state she was in, she would place little value on her life. He could imagine her deciding to go it alone against Vance, and he feared that would only have one outcome.
Then it dawned on him that he might not be the only person capable of saving Carol from herself. He reached for his phone and called Alvin Ambrose. ‘I’m a bit busy just now,’ the sergeant said when he answered.
‘I’ll keep it brief, then,’ Tony said. ‘Carol Jordan’s on her way to confront Jacko Vance.’
50
Paula looked at her watch, feeling glum. She was inches away from giving up on Vice and going home. Right now, she should have been sitting in her kitchen, drinking red wine and watching Dr Elinor Blessing applying her surgical skills to carving a leg of lamb. She hoped there would be some left over after their dinner guests had eaten their fill. She yawned and laid her head on her folded arms on the desk. She’d give them five more minutes, then to
