Disordered Minds

dysfunctional parental relationship made worse by an elderly grandfather whose demands for attention increased the stress within the family. A skinny, fast-growing adolescent with ill-fitting clothes who was targeted by bullies because he wore his timidity too openly. A reinvention of history because lies were less painful than the truth. Repressed emotions, limited social skills, inability to commit to relationships, fear of criticism, fear of failure...

'Andrew told me you had a steady girlfriend until Christmas,' George said. 'What happened to her?'

'You're such a coward, Jon ... it's embarrassing.'

This was not a story Jonathan wanted to narrate, and he wouldn't have done so if George hadn't retreated into a deadening silence which became more insistent the longer it went on. He understood that hers was a far more determined character than his, and he began to wonder if she and Andrew had cooked up this plot to persuade him to talk about Emma.

'Were you lying about wanting this meeting with Roy?' he asked angrily, as if George were party to his thought processes.

And perhaps she was, because she addressed his unspoken question. 'Is it really so hard to tell me about her?'

'There's nothing to tell,' he said harshly. 'It didn't work out so we split up. It happens every day.'

Again the silence drifted, nagging at Jonathan's nerves like a toothache. An interminable number of cars drove past while George sat calmly on, more prepared than he to wait it out. He wanted to despise her for her inquisitiveness, but he couldn't. An inquisitive woman would have pestered for an answer. He wanted to feel angry at her attempts to manipulate him, but he couldn't, for when he finally told the story it was because he wanted to.

*15*

DINGLES DEPARTMENT STORE, BOURNEMOUTH

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23, 2003, 4:30 P.M.

Billy Burton took another look at his watch, then dropped his cigarette butt to the pavement and crushed it underfoot. He'd arrived early and had been standing close to the store entrance for forty-five minutes and, though crowds of shoppers had passed, Louise had not been among them. He was disappointed but not surprised. She'd failed to make several such rendezvous before the family lost touch with her, and the circumstances had been tediously similar.

At first, spurred on by his father, Billy had tracked her down each time she moved-always when her useless husband was given another stretch in prison-made an appointment to meet, only to hang around on a street corner waiting for her to show. In the end he became impatient, and he told his father to let her stew for a while. She'll call you when she's ready, he'd said confidently. But he was wrong. All contact with her had been lost, and they'd been out of touch for more than two decades.

There were no recriminations. Indeed, sometimes he thought they were secretly relieved to be shot of her. His father said he'd always expected it, his mother said Billy had tried his best, and, like a cracked record-never mind a whole river had passed under Lou's bridge-the parents returned to blaming Cill Trevelyan. Louise had never been the same since the 'little tart' had run away. If they'd understood how much influence the beastly girl had wielded over their own naive Lou, they'd have strangled the friendship at birth.

Nevertheless, Billy had always felt guilty. Once in a while-usually under pressure from his wife-he would ask himself why his parents had never gone knocking on doors themselves in search of their errant daughter, but it wasn't an excuse that sat easily with him. Louise's prostitution and heroin addiction had been so inexplicable that on the rare occasions when she paid a visit home the Burtons' initial pleasure at seeing her had invariably degenerated into a blazing row, leaving Billy-no less puzzled by his sister's rapid descent from wife to hooker-as the only conduit of communication. The one thing he'd never told his folks was that among her various aliases was the name Cill.

Their mother was convinced she'd died in Australia, either from drugs or AIDS, and there was endless speculation about children. Had she had any? Where were they? Who was looking after them? Councillor Gardener believed she'd had a baby by Roy Trent in her teens, and, while Billy knew that to be untrue, he was less sure about a marriage. Her name changes had been as hard to keep track of as her changes of address.

He took another look at his watch, toying with the idea of driving back to Sandbanks. Lou hadn't denied it when he suggested she was still on the game, but her remark about having her face smashed in again implied it was Fletcher who'd given her the black eye. God knows she'd had plenty in her time, from either her husband or customers, but what kind of pimp lived on millionaire's row and sent his wife out prostituting?

He lit another cigarette and promised himself he'd leave when it was finished. He couldn't make anymore sense of Lou's situation today than he had twenty years before, but he'd give her another five minutes...

'It was Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, but without the lappy ending,' said Jonathan. 'We lived together for a year before Emma allowed me to meet her parents-she iisisted we wait until we were sure we wanted to get married.' He smiled painfully. 'So we invited them to the flat on Christmas Eve to give them the good news ... and it was worse than anything I'd imagined. She warned me ier father wouldn't like it, but she didn't tell me he'd call me a 'dirty nigger' and then start lamming into her. I left the room when he slapped her ... and she moved out on Christmas Day. She hasn't spoken to me since.'

'Where did you go?'

'I hid in the lavatory.'

'What did Emma say?'

'That I was a coward and I'd embarrassed her-nothing I didn't deserve. She was looking for a man who would stand up to her father, and I couldn't ... so we split up.'

'Is she with anyone else?'

'I don't know.'

'Have you called her?'