6 Two telephone calls
His father called on Friday after school.
Danny, alone in the flat, took the call. Oma was out in the greenhouses, Val was leading a meditation session in the old chapel and Josh was with one of the other Hope Springs parents.
He picked up the phone and said, “Yuh?” He wandered through to the living room and sat with his feet over the side of the chair.
“Danny, it’s me.”
Danny froze, then gathered himself. “Dad,” he said. “How’s it going?”
“As ever,” said his father. “Well, no, actually. That’s not quite true. I have some news.”
At these words, Danny tensed as if a pulse of static electricity had buzzed across his skin, his scalp. News. His father never had news. He felt as if he were in a crowded room, everyone waiting for the next words.
“Hmm?”
“That book you found. The journal. Mr Peters got it on Wednesday. Thanks for that. He came to see me today. He says it throws everything into a new light. He says that if they’d had that as evidence when they were assessing me things would have gone differently. He thinks it might be enough evidence to appeal on the grounds that I was never in a fit state to be tried in the first place.”
“You mean... he’s going to get you out?”
“No, not get me out.”
He did it, after all. Danny’s father had killed five people, three of them simply because they had been in the way. There had never been any question of that.
“But I might go to a hospital instead. They might be able to treat me for... for whatever it is that went wrong.”
Danny was silent. This was the closest his father had ever come to talking about what had happened to him that night, and in the weeks leading up to it. He wasn’t sure if that was good or not. Some things might be best left un-probed.
“You still there, Danny?”
“I’m still here.”
“You’re not pleased?”
“I’m not anything.” It was all going to be stirred up again. Wounds re-opened.
If only they had left those boxes undisturbed. If they had not found the journal there could be no chance of an appeal.
“Listen, Danny. Hold on in there. Do you hear? There’s not much time left on my phonecard. I’ll call again when I get another one. Are you okay, Danny?”
“I’m okay.” But by then he was talking to a dead line, his father’s card having run out.
~
He had to say something, but he wasn’t sure how.
“Dad called,” he said finally. The simple option.
Val looked up from her salad, then back down again. Oma watched him carefully.
“He says Mr Peters thinks he has grounds for appeal.”
Val speared a slice of boiled egg, then let it drop.
Oma was beaming, clasping her hands together as if giving thanks to the heavens. “Is happy day,” she said. “Ja?”
Nobody said anything.
“You get your wish, Danny,” Oma continued. “You wish things could be how they were. You remember? Like old times. The family together. All happy. Ja?”
Things could never be how they were. Was she blind to that? Couldn’t she understand what her son had done? Danny was about to point out that his father wasn’t going to be set free, just like that, but Val got in first.
She gave a kind of strangled grunt as she stood from the table, knocking her chair back against the sideboard. Startled by the sudden loud noise, she looked to the doorway in case it had woken Josh. Then she put her hands to her face and gasped, “No.”
Tears ran through her fingers, and across the backs of her hands. “No,” she said again. “Can’t you see? How could we ever be happy families again?”
Oma rose and went across to her. She made a little beckoning gesture and held her arms wide. When Val didn’t move, she went to her, and took her in her arms. She started to hum one of her German folk tunes, and instantly the atmosphere grew calmer.
She looked at Danny and winked, as if they two shared a secret. She really seemed to think that this was the start of a new start, that things could somehow get back to how they were.
Danny went to his room and opened his envelope to remind himself why that could never ever be so.
~
Saturday mid-morning and the phone went again. They didn’t get many calls here. Their friends were mostly within Hope Springs, and they didn’t need to use the telephone to talk to them.
Danny answered. He half-expected it to be his father again, with the latest developments, although it was unlikely anything would have happened at the weekend.
“Yuh?”
“Hello, could I speak to Danny Smith, please?”
“Speaking.”
“Danny. You sound different on the phone. It’s me, Cassie Lomax.”
Danny’s mother was mouthing Who is it? He put a hand over the phone and said, “A friend.” She raised an eyebrow, and returned to cleaning Josh.
Danny went into the living room with the phone. “What was that?” he said, as Cassie had carried on talking during his exchange with Val.
“I said, I’m out in the village right now and it’s lovely and sunny and I’m like, let’s call Danny and see what he’s doing. You want to come out? I mean, not go out. I’m not asking you on a date or anything. I mean, it’s nice and I thought you might want some fresh air, and I can talk too much and you can do your strong silent bit and all that. A right pair, we are. I’m down in the church car park right now. What do you reckon?”
He was smiling. He’d held the phone away from his ear while she talked, listening to her from a distance. He’d never known anyone like Cassie Lomax.
“Okay,” he said. “Five minutes.”
“Okay. Five minutes.”
He pressed the disconnect button on the phone’s handset, and leaned back in his chair. A few minutes later he was heading out down the main driveway, under the lime trees, the bluebells now fully out in bloom.