‘Hey,’ Alex said, ‘shush now. Don’t upset yourself.’ All the time thinking, Thank God. She’s not pregnant, she hasn’t got AIDS, she’s not taking drugs. Well at least not that I know of. He almost felt like laughing with the relief of it. ‘It’s not a problem, Clare. If you hate it, stay here. I’m almost as close to the university as the hostel anyway. Stay here with me.’
The girls locked stares.
‘Yes, we know, Dad,’ said Gemma, ‘but the question is, what about Mum?’
‘Yes,’ echoed Clare, ‘what about Mum?’
What about Mum? Exactly. Alex felt his anger towards his ex-wife bubble to the surface. The emotional trauma that lurked beneath the superficial calm of his life. The lives of himself and his two girls shaped and moulded by one tiny woman. One woman who had declared her daughters were going to stay in the university hostel, not with Alex.
‘My dear, the street where you live,’ Bridget had said, ‘it’s not the most salubrious part of town, to say the least. I refuse to have them walking back to your place at night on their own. It would be dangerous. And your job means you can hardly look after them now, can you? Home has never been a priority in your vocabulary, has it?’ In Alex’s view, that was bullshit revisionist history, but he’d let it pass. He always let it pass, but not this time.
‘Why don’t we eat Mr Chan’s meal? Then you two go and organise the bedroom and I’ll deal with your mother. Afterwards we’ll find a movie to watch. How does that sound?’
Gemma gave him a nod and a smile that beamed, ‘Well done, Dad.’
‘I brought a few movies with me on a stick.’ Clare jumped off the sofa so quickly the dog jerked upright, ears pricked. ‘Yes, let’s eat. I’m starving. Mr Chan said one of these meals is a crayfish something. I love crayfish.’
* He didn’t expect it to be an easy phone call and it wasn’t. He’d learned from experience, and he thought it went as well as could be expected. He’d done a course once on dealing with difficult people but it was hard to use the tricks of the trade when you were dealing with your ex-wife and talking about your children. Especially with the knotted complexities of his relationship with Bridget. Nevertheless, he tried to keep to the strategy. Clarity and emotional detachment.
After the initial shock, Bridget let fly. Alex held the phone away from his ear and counted to ten while he patted Dog, who had positioned himself at his feet. He waited for Bridget to run out of steam.
‘This is going to happen, Bridget. The girls have decided. And if Clare doesn’t want to live with a group of wanky dope-smoking students, you should be applauding her common sense. At the very least, listen to what she is saying.’
‘You’re dramatizing again. The Italian in you. A soap opera each day. I’m sure you’re exaggerating. She gets herself riled up. Always has, ever since she was a wee thing. Let me speak to her.’
Alex wondered how he could be an over-emotional Italian one day and an ice-cold Scot the next, but he kept the peace. ‘She’s showering,’ he lied. ‘Come for lunch tomorrow. Let’s talk when she’s calmer.’
‘Now,’ Bridget barked.
‘She is in the shower. Let her be.’
After that, their exchange was brief—frosty. She would come to the city tomorrow to talk to Clare.
Alex ended the call and patted the dog again. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are, mate,’ he said before calling out to Clare.
‘Turn your phone off, honey. You might want to leave talking to your mother until tomorrow.’
‘Way ahead of you, Dad.’
DAY 7
Everyone worked on Saturday. There were two teams scheduled to go to the park after dark. Two sets of young constables who would spend Saturday night sitting in their cars, pretending to be lovers, watching and waiting. Jerry was set to drive the route, leaving the hospital at 12.30 am and Marion had volunteered to go into Parks Pathology during the evening shift. See if they had missed anything.
It was going to be their last big push. If they found nothing, they would be crawling through the records searching for clues, but the pace would slow.
In the middle of all this, Alex had lunch to prepare for his ex-wife. He had been to the hostel with Clare first thing in the morning, talked to the unit manager, who had owned up to a few ‘noise issues’ on the floor. He had a stern word, mentioned the concept of ‘duty of care’. Found himself feeling old and out of date talking to someone who was not much older than his daughter.
It shocked him to discover university hostels had morphed into a free-for-all. A small, frail, shy girl like Clare could be walked over and intimidated. He was angry, thought about taking it further, to the university authorities, but had glanced at his embarrassed daughter by his side and decided to let the matter drop. On the way home, he changed his mind. Everyone deserved a safe haven, a place to call home, free of fear. It was a basic concept of human rights. His anger returned when he recalled the unit manager and his bored smile. Knew the problem was a lot bigger than noise. He was going to enjoy wiping the contemptuous smirk off his face. The next time the two of them met, he wouldn’t be just Alex, Clare’s overprotective dad, he would be Detective Alexander Cameron with whatever weight that carried. He would take Jerry along too. It always surprised him how the bulk, height and barely contained strength of a man like Jerry exuded influence without a word being spoken.
* The lunch was easier than he had expected. By the time Bridget arrived, the fire that had threatened to burn all the
