Outside, afterwards, Lauren had tilted her face to the sun and said that it didn’t matter. That it was over. A quick sweep of fear had travelled up Aidan’s back, though he didn’t know why.
He reaches for his phone now. Four thirty-two in the morning. On Facebook, he sees that a distant friend of his, somebody he met at a party – a friend of Lauren’s? – has made a charitable donation. His heart sinks when he sees the cause it is for.
He needs to steel himself, so he gets out of bed and puts a dressing gown on. Before he leaves, he glances across at Lauren, duvet thrown off her, bottom completely exposed to the air, round and taboo.
He stands in the hallway and peers out of the window. Their Islington street is foggy – big balls of moisture dyed amber by the street lights. Aidan goes into Poppy’s room. He wants to be alone. It’s empty right now and he gets into her bed. It’s a double. She chose sheets from The White Company – if it’s not a brand name, Poppy isn’t interested – and Aidan has to admit they’re very soft. He folds the bottom of the duvet over on itself, creating a kind of envelope, and puts his cold feet inside it.
He bought the bedding after Poppy’s mother Natalie’s diagnosis. Multiple sclerosis. The post-divorce world they lived in became even more complicated when those words were spoken by the consultant. Poppy’s shopping trip was no compensation for it, but he’d taken her anyway. She’d picked out so much stuff. Silk pillows – ‘So my hair won’t curl so much’ – and a brushed cotton sheet. The lot. One hundred and eighty pounds. He’d mentally added up how many hours’ work that was on their walk back to his car, a habit he’s had since the 2008 recession.
He looks at Facebook now, still lit up on his phone, and back at the donation. It’s a Kickstarter. Help Luke Taylor back on his feet after Girl A’s lies.
Donated £10. Disgraceful, is all his friend’s comment says.
He sits up in bed, silk fucking pillows falling around him.
In the half-light of Poppy’s empty bedroom, he puts Girl A into Google. He doesn’t even have to click the ‘news’ tab. The internet is awash with his family.
INNOCENT! WRONGED FOOTBALLER WAS ATTACKED BY HOMELESS MAN AND SERVED A YEAR IN A HIGH SECURITY PRISON
SUSPECTED KILLER FOOTBALLER WAS ACTUALLY ACTING IN SELF-DEFENCE – COURTROOM SHOCKER
WHO IS GIRL A? WHAT WE KNOW
YET ANOTHER WOMAN LIES IN THE WITNESS BOX – WHEN WILL THESE FALSE ALLEGATIONS END?
WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF HOLLOWAY FC? LUKE TAYLOR ACCUSED, NOW FREED, BUT WITH HIS CAREER IN TATTERS
Aidan blinks, looking at the headlines about his family. About his stepdaughter’s lies.
Aidan cannot understand how this has happened. How they are here.
He clicks on a BBC News article with an accompanying video. It is Luke and Mal, on the court steps of the Old Bailey. He presses ‘play’, turns the volume down low, and watches.
A news presenter narrates over the footage as the defendants stand posing for photographs.
‘Luke Taylor, up-and-coming striker for Holloway FC, was today acquitted at the Old Bailey on a charge of murder, alongside his accomplice, Malcolm Henderson,’ the undulating news reporter’s voice says. ‘While the police suspected Taylor and Henderson of murder, the truth emerged in the courtroom during the dramatic questioning of an anonymous witness known only as Girl A.’
Aidan shudders as the narrator says it. How the fuck has this happened?
‘Taylor and Henderson were, in fact, acting in self-defence against an attack by the deceased,’ the news presenter says. ‘The truth only came to light under fierce cross-examination from Neil Thorne QC. Taylor was released today, free to return to his life, and his career – what is left of it.’
Henderson’s representative was contacted for comment, but declined. Taylor’s father has told the local news that his son has been robbed of his career.
Aidan lies back in the bed, rubbing his hair back from his forehead with the palm of his hand. Bloody hell. Fucking, fucking hell. He knows this is just the beginning.
Aidan wants Lauren’s sunny positivity. Her laughter. A wave of her hand. ‘Tomorrow’s chip paper!’ she will say, and he will love her for it. And so, when she arrives downstairs, he knows that he will tell her what he’s seen on the internet.
She’s wearing leggings, a dressing gown and slippers. She wears odd combinations around the house, adding layers as the day goes on. A T-shirt, a jumper of his, a cardigan. Bed socks and a woolly hat. By the end of the day, she is layered up like a Russian doll.
It’s seven o’clock in the morning. The kitchen is half lit by a grey sky and nothing else.
Their dog, Bill, stands solemnly by his bowl. Lauren blows him an unselfconscious kiss as she arrives in the kitchen, as she does most mornings. She refers to him as her ‘son’ to strangers, and has a photograph of him in her purse, right next to Zara and Poppy.
Lauren falls in love with things. It’s a lesson Aidan learnt early on. Bill was a guide dog puppy. Lauren applied to foster him five years ago, without telling Aidan. That was Lauren all over, zany schemes. He wishes he could be more that way. Less uptight. But he can’t – not since his father died when Aidan was fifteen, anyway, and he became a man. And so he did the next best thing: he married someone fun.
She said she would be paid to maintain the puppy’s training at home and to drop him off at school every day. ‘Substitute second baby,’ she had said glibly. She’d just turned forty. The baby-making window had closed. And they’d wanted it to, mostly, ready to move on with their blended family: no pushchairs, no nappies, no kids’ club holidays.
‘I have to hand him over when he’s two, though, when he becomes a proper dog,’ she’d explained when she sent the form off. ‘When he graduates.’
Bill went everywhere with Lauren. He rode upright in the passenger seat of her car to parks on the outskirts of London – ‘Should I put a seat belt on him?’ – and slept at her feet while she watched television. Lauren would use ‘we’ whenever she spoke about him. ‘We’ve been to Hyde Park.’ ‘We’ve been playing tug of war all afternoon.’
Aidan could see what was going to happen before Lauren could.
The week before Bill was due to be eligible for guide dog applications, Lauren turned to Aidan and said, ‘You know what?’
‘What?’ Aidan said.
‘If I could run away with this dog and not give him back, I would. Be a fugitive on the run from Guide Dogs UK.’ And then she gave a laugh, a sort of maniacal laugh that told him she meant every word.
‘You want to keep him,’ he said flatly.
Lauren shrugged. ‘I love him,’ she’d said. She self-consciously moved a strand of hair out of her eyes. ‘I’m fucking forty,’ she’d said with a laugh. ‘But I love this stupid dog.’
‘But a blind person needs him.’
‘I know.’
The next day, while he was working, a text had come through.
Guide Dogs UK said some people do buy back the dog they trained.
That was all it said. Sent exactly at 1.00 p.m. Not a minute earlier or later. Lauren had likely waited all morning for his lunch hour.
What’s their price? Aidan had asked, his blood pressure rising.