33
Joe
Joe, Jake and Ellie have dinner at his mother’s house, as they often do on Sunday evenings. All three of them relax around Delilah. He loves his kids, of course, and needs them in his life, but this once-a-week intensity is tough. When you live with your children, and see them every day, there is natural downtime, when you can co-exist in the same house for hours without paying each other any particular attention. On the other hand, when interaction is restricted to a few hours a week, the pressure to make those hours count becomes enormous.
After dinner, both kids pull out their iPhones and take themselves off to the lounge. Joe’s suggestion that they help with the clearing away and then play catch in the garden falls on deaf ears. Including those of his mother.
‘You’re trying too hard.’ Delilah throws him a tea towel.
‘They have all week to play on their phones,’ he grumbles. ‘Jake’s too young for an iPhone anyway. I’m surprised he’s allowed it at school.’
‘He isn’t,’ Delilah says. ‘And Ellie has to keep hers in her locker. Sarah didn’t want to buy them, but they kept on at her for months, claiming all their friends had them.’
‘Which probably isn’t true.’
Delilah bends to close the dishwasher. ‘She knows that. But she feels guilty.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘She talks to me. I listen.’
Joe hears the rebuke in his mother’s voice and wonders whether to acknowledge it. She’s right that he keeps conversation with his ex-wife to a minimum. It’s too easy to slip into bitterness and blame. For the first time he realises that his relationship with his former partner is mirroring that of his parents. His mother, as far as he knows, hasn’t spoken to his dad in over a decade.
From the next room, they can hear the low buzz as one of the kids watches a YouTube video.
‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ his mother says and Joe braces himself for bad news about Sarah, even the kids, and is a little surprised when Delilah continues, ‘It’s about Bella Barnes.’
The murdered rough sleeper. The immediate relief Joe feels is followed quickly by the guilt that always accompanies any thoughts he has about Bella.
‘What about her?’ he asks.
‘We did an appeal for information, especially any sightings during that last week.’
‘And?’
‘We got a few. Mostly not significant, but a couple that worried me.’
Joe knows that look on his mother’s face. ‘Spit it out, Mum.’
‘She was seen, by more than one witness, hanging around your flat.’
Inside Joe, something twists. ‘Seriously?’ he says.
‘Joe, did she ever come into your flat?’
He knows she has to ask him this. ‘No.’ Doesn’t mean he has to like it.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m bloody sure.’
‘Did you ever meet her in private?’
His mum is doing her job. ‘I saw her on the street, occasionally in one of the parks, mostly at the church hall. That’s it.’
‘Did you know she was hanging around your flat?’
He hadn’t, but he isn’t entirely surprised. He’d suspected Bella had a crush on him. Coming after what happened with Ezzy, this could be bad for him.
‘You may be asked to come in and say all that officially,’ Delilah says.
Bella and Ezzy. Two young, vulnerable women hanging around his home, trying to make the relationship personal? One time, anyone would put down to bad luck, but twice?
‘Joe, don’t worry about it. We already know you knew each other. I had to ask, you know that.’
He does. Work always comes first with Delilah. They are silent for several minutes and then she says, ‘So what’s really bothering you?’
He picks up a pan lid and envelopes it with the towel. ‘Something happened. It might be nothing, but—’
His mother stops moving. ‘What? What happened?’
‘Someone may have broken into the flat last Sunday. During the night.’
Instantly, he has his mother’s full attention. ‘When you were asleep?’
He lets his head nod.
‘Was anything taken?’
‘Nothing that I can see. The only sign someone had been in at all was the back-door key on the mat by the fire escape rather than in the lock.’
‘Could have fallen out,’ she says.
‘Yeah.’
She knows him too well. ‘What else?’
‘A knife,’ he says. ‘Mine. I found it on the kitchen worktop and I know for a fact I put it away the night before. Or I’m going mad.’
‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell me before?’
Joe has no answer to give her.
‘Please tell me you haven’t washed the knife.’
‘I put rubber gloves on and wrapped it in clingfilm,’ he says.
‘I’ll have a team round tomorrow. For heaven’s sake, Joe, what were you thinking? After what happened with—’
‘It wasn’t Ezzy Sheeran, Mum. It can’t have been. One way or another, at her own hand or someone else’s, she’s dead.’
‘We’d better bloody hope so. Get the locks changed tomorrow. And you’re sleeping here tonight.’
Joe doesn’t argue. He might be pushing forty but – there’s no getting away from it – being with his mum makes him feel safe.
34
Felicity
Felicity does not find her car. She combs the nearby streets, checks every town-centre car park and even jumps on a bus out to the west campus to make sure it isn’t at work. Her missing car, though, feels like the least of her worries. If anything, it pales into insignificance beside her missing husband.
She tries to look through the wedding album for clues but finds she can’t see Freddie’s smiling, handsome face without wanting to be sick. After several attempts she gives up. The photograph of the two of them at the altar, along with the dress and the jewellery is proof enough. Before locking the trunk, she searches beneath the wedding-dress box but finds nothing else. Certainly nothing to indicate when the wedding took place or how long she has been married. She finds nothing to suggest where Freddie might be now. Alive or dead, in the UK or on the opposite side of the planet.
Closer than you think, whispers a voice in her head in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Getting up soon afterwards, she brings the wedding photograph and the trinket box downstairs, locking the trunk behind her and tucking the keys at the back of a drawer in the kitchen that she rarely uses. The two retrieved items are in the bedside cabinet now, the one furthest away from where she sleeps. She has yet to bring herself to look at either again, but finds their very presence is staining her thoughts.
She wanders her house, opening cupboard doors, checking everything is in its proper place. As she does so, she knows that lurking at the back of her mind is the dangerous thought that she may not, after all, have been responsible for the disorder in her home. Remembering Joe’s advice about changing the locks, she finds the number for local locksmiths and determines to contact them first thing on Monday. She tells herself that it is a sensible precaution, but the question she asked of Joe keeps coming back to haunt her.