I know I won’t get back to sleep now and so I roll onto my side and gently push George onto his. His snoring stops. I wrap my arms around his waist and press my cheek against his back.
When I get up, Archie is still starfished in his racing-car bed. The mountain of cuddly toys he adores have slid onto the floor in the night, as they always do. There’s a panda, a sloth, a tiger. I’ve never bought him a traditional teddy.
I never will.
The belt on my dressing gown hangs loose and I tighten it as I pad down the landing, relishing the thought of a quiet cup of coffee in a house that will soon be filled with noise.
I see it as I soon as I reach the bottom of the stairs. My feet sinking into the pile of the carpet. My heart sinking into my stomach.
A white envelope on the mat. The noise that woke me must have been the letterbox. It’s too early for the postman. I don’t want to pick it up.
I don’t want to open it.
Somehow I know that whatever is in the envelope has the power to shatter my already shaky resolve to be more.
There’s one word written on the outside:
Leah.
I don’t want to open it.
Where I had felt cold moments before, I now feel hot.
My fingers slips under the seal, the paper rips.
I don’t want to open it.
The world shifts beneath my feet as I read what is scrawled on the paper inside.
I’m still standing there when Archie thunders down the stairs demanding Weetabix, orange juice, a kiss.
I’m still standing there when George sidles up behind me, reading over my shoulder, seeing those two words that shift and blur and move in and out of focus.
The innocuous words that sound like a warning.
FOUR DAYS.
Chapter Fifteen
George
Now
It was George who gently removed the letter from Leah’s fingers. George who settled her on the sofa before retreating to the kitchen to fill the ginormous hole Archie declared he had in his tummy, with milk-soft cereal and sweet-sticky toast.
Four days, the letter had said.
Four days until it will all be over. But then there’s next year. The year after. Thirty years. Forty. The milestones stretch out before him, a long path of unhappiness.
Is he doing the right thing?
He has never felt more conflicted. Last night for the first time in ages he’d felt closer to Leah. They were still a long way from being happy but a token bunch of forecourt flowers and taking the time to talk, to listen, was a start. He owed it to her to try, didn’t he? He owed it to his wife to be honest and true. Look at the state one letter had left her in. For all her bravado last night, George knew she wasn’t strong. She’d be easily broken. The thought of having to pick up all the pieces and glue her back together once more made his chest feel tight. He doesn’t know if he can, not again.
But she needs him right now. He should spend more time at home. For Archie’s sake as much as anyone’s.
George understands what Marie wants from him, but he just can’t give it to her. Not yet.
Is it too late to call the whole thing off? Would Marie forgive? Forget?
‘Leah,’ he crouches beside his wife and pushes a coffee into her hands. ‘It’ll be a journalist trying to scare you into talking. Everyone’s looking for a headline. It’ll be okay.’
‘Do you promise?’ she asks him the impossible.
He closes his eyes against the memory.
Arms and legs wrapped around him. Soft breath and warm moans in his ears.
But it wasn’t real. This is his real life. Morning sun gathering strength, shining a halo over the table where Archie is dabbing up crumbs with his fingers. Strawberry jam smeared around his mouth.
This.
Isn’t it?
He doesn’t promise it will be okay.
He can’t.
Chapter Sixteen
Leah
Now
Four days.
I’ve called work and told them I’ll be late. George offers to drop Archie off at nursery on his way to work. He reassures me again that he’ll remind the staff to be mindful of security, to call if anything out of the ordinary happens. I wave them goodbye out of the window, wearing a bright smile that hurts my face to hold. My hands had touched the letter. I’ve washed them repeatedly until my skin is pink and sore but I can’t wash the words away from my mind. They feel dark and dirty.
Four days.
I pace the living room – treading the same path over and over – a zoo animal.
Trapped.
Watched.
Carly rushes up the driveway. I open the door to usher her inside, as she’s trailed by the shouts of a reporter who has been loitering outside our house all morning.
‘Carly! Is it true he’s out? How do you feel?’
Carly says to me, ‘How does he fucking think I feel?’ She slams the door behind her. Her face is pale. Eyes tinged pink. Although I only saw her two days ago, she seems smaller. Thinner. Shrinking under the weight of the past or shrinking away from the present. Perhaps both.
She doesn’t sit or take off her coat. Instead she smooths out an identical letter onto the kitchen table, which is still lemon-cleaner-damp from where George had wiped away the remnants of Archie’s breakfast. Although my fingers are now encased in gloves, I don’t pick the piece of paper up.
‘What do you think it means?’ I ask when what I really want to know is who does she think sent it but I’m scared that her answer will match the one that is marching around my head.
Him.
‘I… I don’t know.’
‘It sounds like a warning.’ A warning of what, I do not know. Nothing could be worse than it was twenty years ago, but as I catch sight of the photo of George, Archie and I at the theme park I know that things can be unimaginably worse. ‘Do you think Marie got one too?’ She must have. ‘I still haven’t managed to catch her on the phone to tell her.’
He’s out.
‘Leah. Breathe.’ I feel Carly rubbing my back. Suddenly the breath that had been stuck in my throat bursts from me. I sink heavily onto a chair.
‘It’s happening again.’ The eight-year-old inside of me begins to cry.
‘It isn’t.’ She falls back into big-sister mode. ‘It’s probably just some crackpot – you know how people get and there’s been extra media coverage this year.’
‘George thinks it’s a journalist trying to create a story.’
‘There you go then.’
‘Do you believe that?’ Her eyes won’t meet mine. I know she doesn’t believe it any more than I do.
We take my car, since Carly’s car is full of parcels and her latest charity-shop finds. I don’t feel entirely safe behind the wheel. I don’t feel entirely safe anywhere.
Marie doesn’t answer the buzzer. I rattle the door handle as though it might suddenly open.
It doesn’t.
The letterbox is striped with duct tape from where it had fallen off last time I came and I can’t open it to peep through.
‘She’s not here,’ Carly says.
‘We can’t just leave. I want to make sure she’s okay.’ Not passed out drunk on the floor.
Carly stamps her feet, her breath billowing a cloud. ‘Right, well…’ I look at her expectantly but before she can come up with a plan, there’s a click. A man with a beanie pulled low over his head rushes past us without acknowledgement. Carly thrusts her foot in the door before it can properly shut.