She left the park and headed along the road, closing in on home. Joe had gone on to clarify what she knew already, that a charge of ‘careless’ rather than ‘dangerous’ driving carried a lesser tariff. Less punishment. Less censure. Less justice. This was Dom’s lawyers at work. Throwing money at the problem. It was Dom’s answer to everything, and this was no different. But it was different. It was Jess. If she hadn’t got into that car with Harry, she would be alive.
Fran fumbled for her door keys. She let herself into the house, full of indignation. She needed to speak to Marcus immediately. She needed him to share in her rage, formulate a response, sanction her plans to appeal. They must fight for the more serious charge, insist that Harry was prosecuted properly. They had to.
But Marcus wasn’t there. She looked in all the downstairs rooms. She yanked open the back door and looked out at the garden – he spent hours out there most days – but there was no sign of him. His car was parked outside. Where was he? Upstairs. She took the stairs at a lick. He would be as shocked as she was.
‘Careless!’
She saw him before she made it up onto the landing. He was in the bathroom, sitting on the floor, his legs outstretched, his head bent, inert. The sight stopped Fran in her tracks. The shimmering bubble of bitter words in her head popped. He looked wrong. As she reached the top stair, Marcus looked up and stared, without seeing her. She walked slowly into the bathroom and crouched down beside him. His trousers were wet. He was holding something in his hands. Her brain was scrambling to decode what she was seeing. Marcus was crying, softly, steadily, unceasingly.
‘Marcus?’
Beside him on the floor was his tool box. The lid open. The top tray was ‘Marcus standard’ neat: the various screws and nails all appropriately stowed in their different compartments, his tools lined up precisely, his secateurs, a collection of different-sized screwdrivers, a Stanley knife. A pulse of panic went through her. But there wasn’t any sign of injury. No blood on the tiled floor. His colour was okay. His breathing was shallow, but he was obviously getting enough oxygen. Besides, Marcus would never do anything like that. Never. He wouldn’t ever leave her – even if he wanted to.
‘Marcus?’
He seemed finally to register her presence. ‘It wasn’t draining properly.’ He meant the shower. It hadn’t been. The water had been taking ages to empty. Now she could see that he had unscrewed the drain cover. The grubby trap was lying on the floor near his hip. She knew, before he opened his hands, what he was holding; knew what was soaking into his trousers, what had broken down his defences.
Jess’s hair.
His hands were full of clumps of their daughter’s hair.
Fran slid down on the floor next to him and leant into his shoulder. She didn’t try and take the sodden clump out of his hands. She couldn’t bring herself to touch it, and she knew that he wasn’t ready to let it go. Jess’s hair. Shiny after a shower. A bird’s nest in the mornings. Hair that drank conditioner. The bottle in the shower was always empty. Hair that stuck in winding strands to tiles and got clogged in the drain. Jess’s lovely, long blonde hair – reduced to a handful of grey, gunky matter.
She leant her head on Marcus’s shoulder and listened to him cry.
Chapter 44
THEY HAD taken Harley for a walk. It was grey and damp, not like late-May weather at all, but their evening walks had become something of a habit. A nice one. Mo wasn’t going be put off by a bit of drizzle. Harley had ‘made friends’ with a cocker spaniel. The two dogs were excitedly chasing each other across the playing fields, ears flapping, tongues lolling. Mo and Tish watched, easy in other’s company.
Her face was looking a lot better, the skin healing. She was using the oil Shazia had sent her; she claimed it was helping. And, to her delight, the doctors had finally given Tish permission to start using make-up again. It made a difference. But the change was not just in her appearance; it was also in her mood. Her confidence was coming back and, with it, her willingness to go out. There was talk of her coming back to college for the last few days of term before the summer break began – not to take any of her exams, but simply to see people, and to make the thought of returning in September to redo her upper-sixth year more palatable.
Mo was pleased for her. He knew how much being able to hide the worst of the scars meant to her, but it was also making him feel anxious. Tish was beginning to look and sound like the old Tish again. Which was good. It was what he wanted for her. How could he not? How could any reasonable person not want that for her, after all she’d been through? But at the same time he was very aware that the more Tish starting feeling and behaving like her old self, the less of a role he would have in her life. They’d never really been close before. They’d hung around together, but Mo had always been on the edge of things. It was the accident that opened a door for him to squeeze through. Tish getting better would narrow that tiny gap. Mo heading off to uni in September might very well slam it shut. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose her. No, that wasn’t right. He could imagine it, and that was what was worrying him.
She touched his arm. ‘You’re quiet.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You don’t have to be.’ She pulled her jacket collar up around her neck. ‘Is something up?’
‘Nah.’ He gave himself a metaphorical shake. ‘I’m just getting wet.’
‘You wuss! Come on, let’s walk over to the basketball cages.’ She slid her hand through his arm and set off.
His mood immediately lifted. It was stupidly old fashioned, but having Tish next to him, touching him, was as good as it got for Mo. It was the rightest feeling in the world. He felt proud, though there was hardly anyone else around to see them. That didn’t matter; wherever they were, he felt proud to be with her. He admired her strength and her sense of humour and her loveliness. She was beautiful.
Harley spotted that they were on the move and pelted over, his new best buddy hot on his paws. The dogs raced around them three times, then shot off again, boomeranging across the grass.
Tish talked and Mo listened, and the street lights came on and Mo wished they could keep circling the playing fields in the drizzle for the rest of their lives.
Chapter 45
THE THEME tune caught Marcus unawares – a trailer for a series they used to watch together, a cringey comedy that had made them all laugh. He glanced across at Fran, but couldn’t tell whether she’d registered the relevance of the music, connected it with Jess and felt the same swoop of fresh sorrow as himself. That was the problem. Not knowing at what level each other’s grief was set, at any given time. And it seemed to be getting harder, not easier, with time.
The screen changed and they were back to the detective drama. He wasn’t sure he could remember if it was the one with the Albanian drugs cartel trafficking girls or the one with the Deep South sadist who was killing young women in alphabetical order. Saturday nights in: brutality and cruelty in beautifully shot, grimy locations. Fran wasn’t paying attention to the TV. She was sitting on the floor on the far side of the room, looking at her laptop. In Jess’s spot.
The ‘floor sitting’ was a new development. It made Marcus uncomfortable, but he knew he couldn’t say anything. There were so many off-limits topics between them now. The only time they actually talked about the accident, and Jess, and the impending court proceedings, was with professionals in harshly lit rooms, with strict protocols and written agendas. Agendas that were designed to keep emotions in check. The recent victim impact statement session they’d attended had been excruciating. Never before had Marcus had his life so ruthlessly eviscerated in front of strangers. Never again did he want the differences between his own and his wife’s feelings so brutally explored, recorded, annotated and circulated for ‘approval and sign off’. Better not to go there – though he knew that was no answer, either. The date for Harry’s sentencing was approaching. Marcus wished it over. Perhaps then Fran would be able to let some of the anger go; perhaps then his wife would resurface from beneath the dark waters that were drowning her.