As I drive, Archie chatters incessantly, his words falling out in a rush. ‘Mum, a policeman came to visit today.’
‘Why?’ I ask sharply, already fearing the worst as I grip the steering wheel. A child has gone missing. There’s been a stranger hanging round the nursery gates. That happened last term and I kept Archie home for a week. George says I have to loosen my hold on him as he gets older but I don’t think there’s anything wrong in trying to protect him. An image flashes into my mind of my mum at the police station when we were finally reunited. ‘I’ll never stop blaming myself.’ She had wiped tears from her cheeks. It’s a big responsibility having a child, isn’t it? As joyous as it is watching them grow, it’s also equally terrifying.
‘The policeman taught us about being safe when we cross the road,’ Archie says. ‘We have to hold our grown-up’s hand. That would be you or Daddy. And then look left and right and not step off the pavement until the green man says it is okay but I said I’ve never seen a green man and the policeman said he’s not actually a man at all so it’s silly he’s called one, isn’t it, Mummy?’
‘Yes.’ I take one hand off the wheel and use my glove to mop my damp brow. A routine visit, that’s all. Nothing is wrong.
‘And we can only cross the road when it’s straight and not on a corner because we are little and the cars can’t see us but, Mummy, cars can’t see us because they don’t have eyes. I think the policeman was a bit bonkers bananas, don’t you?’ He screams with laughter.
I think policemen are many things: brave, resourceful but also sometimes painfully slow. There’s a process they have to follow, rules. I get that, but sometimes the wait for justice can seem endless and sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. I feel sick as I meet Archie’s innocent eyes in the rear-view mirror.
We drive past the cemetery. I don’t look. I can’t look.
George’s car is already on the driveway. The knot in my stomach tightens, along with my chest.
I lift a wriggling Archie from his seat and carry him in front of me like a shield. He kicks his legs, desperate to get down and walk.
‘Hello!’ I shout down the hallway that smells of strawberries thanks to the diffuser on the windowsill. ‘We’re home.’ My shoulders are concrete but I keep my voice bright and breezy. I’m not sure whether George knows so I brazen it out.
‘I’ll fix us some lunch…’ I trail off as I enter the kitchen. See the brown box on the worktop.
The open brown box on the worktop.
George stands next to it, a knife in his hand. I can tell from the set of his jaw that he’s angry.
He’s angry again.
Chapter Nine
George
Now
George is furious with himself. He knows it’s guilt that drives him home at lunchtimes as well as a desire to see Archie. He isn’t treating his wife well, and it pricks at his conscience each time he sees her, and yet when he does spend time with her, he can’t help snapping at her as if everything wrong is down to her and her alone. And there’s such a lot wrong, it seems impossible to think he can ever put it right. Does he even want to? He loves his son, he really does. And his wife? He thinks he must still – that’s why he still hasn’t made a final decision – but it’s a question he asks himself endlessly.
George is home earlier than usual. On the street is a car he knows belongs to a reporter. He stalks over to it and tells him again to piss off before he calls the police.
He shouts, ‘Hello,’ as he steps through the front door although he knows nobody will answer and not just because Leah’s car isn’t on the driveway – there’s something different about the atmosphere when Archie’s not present. Even if he’s asleep the space somehow feels lighter. Happier.
George hasn’t been happy for a long time. He hopes he and Leah will be able to talk calmly later. He had tried so hard to repress his anger last night but nevertheless it had spilled out anyway. He needs to apologize. Throughout their marriage it seems he is always saying sorry. It’s Leah’s day off but he can’t remember if she said she had plans today. They only half listen to each other nowadays. Hear what they want to hear.
He tosses his keys onto the worktop, his eyes skimming the kitchen. It’s tidy. Clean. At first glance you wouldn’t guess a lively four-year-old lives here. There are no Lego bricks strewn across the floor. No stick-man pictures clinging to the fridge with magnets. George frowns. He was sure there were displays of Archies ‘art’ on the baby-blue Smeg a few weeks ago. The only reason Leah would have taken them down would be to make the fridge easier to wipe clean and the thought of this makes his stomach plummet.
He can’t go through it all again.
George pops a cappuccino tab in the Tassimo machine and while the coffee bubbles into his mug he gazes at the photo of them all at Drayton Manor. He remembers it well. It was a couple of years ago and Leah was going through a good patch, which meant they were going through a good patch. After the event they never talk about – just before she fell pregnant with Archie – he had thought they’d never have any sort of normality again. That the woman he fell in love with had vanished for good, but then she had started seeing Francesca and everything changed. She’d visited so many therapists before but Francesca had been different. She hadn’t looked at them with sympathy in her eyes. Or with the horror he had seen before as Leah began to roll out the story of her childhood. Instead, she had said she wanted to focus on the future. To help them all move forward as a family. And she had. For a time.
The click of the machine pulls George’s eyes away from the photo but the image is forever imprinted on his mind. The three of them crammed on a tiny caterpillar rollercoaster. Archie’s arms thrust high in the air. George’s arm looped around his wife and son’s shoulders. But it’s Leah’s hands he remembers the most. Skin bare on the safety bar that rested against their laps. Her eyes clear and bright, no hint of concern about germs. No distress at touching the place other hands had touched. He remembers how proud he was that she hadn’t pulled out one of the antibacterial wipes she carries in her handbag and wiped the metal down. He remembers how much he loved her then, and now? His heart is torn in two.
George isn’t proud of himself. He never thought he would be that man. The one in four who supposedly have affairs. But she had caught him at a vulnerable time. Leah had turned him away once too often; her fear of becoming pregnant immense. Archie was an accident, although ultimately a happy one, but Leah spent the pregnancy is a state of constant anxiety about giving birth in a hospital. The germs. The risk of infection. Although they had hired a birthing pool and set it up in their lounge, Leah had known there was a risk that medical intervention might be needed, and she had been right. Archie was breech. The midwife wasn’t happy with the way Leah’s labour was progressing. George had had to drive them to the hospital, Leah sobbing all the way. Screaming when they entered the ward because he hadn’t brought the kit she’d assembled containing her antibacterial spray and hand sanitizer. Her gloves. It took Leah months to recover from the trauma. She kept Archie away from mums-and-tots’ groups because of the risk of illness and became so distressed when George had taken him anyway, that he had never tried again. Gradually, though, she’d relaxed into her role.