“It’s all right, Lisa,” he said, reaching at random for some phrase to calm the waters. “It’ll all come out in the wash.” And she nodded, relieved. She stood up.
Short-term memory. How could he recognize a voice through a door in the dark in the night, and yet not be able to place the speaker? A change of tack was needed, one should not try too hard to remember, that way blankness lay.
“The consultant’s doing his rounds,” Lisa said comfortably, nodding toward the sound of hearty, able-bodied voices from along the corridor. “He’ll be along shortly.” The male consultant, this time. His heart dipped, just a little.
Coming around to check on him. For a moment Victor thought of the caravan, its ricketiness, the condensation on the tiny windows in the mornings, the effort to light the little gas stove with its blocked ducts, the effort of being alone, and his certainty wavered. Was it safer here? Hard to maintain the illusion of immortality in a hospital, but that wasn’t all. The voice was here.
Lisa was turning to go. “Lisa, would you do something for me?”
Warily, she eyed him. “Yes?” she said uncertainly.
“You remember those police officers I spoke to—was it yesterday?” Victor felt warm suddenly, the panic nibbling at the edges, and brought a hand slowly up to rest the back of it against a temple. “I would really … I think I need to talk to them again, if … could that be managed?”
She put a hand to his wrist, felt his forehead. “Yes, yes of course, Victor.” She was distracted, though.
CCTV was all over the place here. They would be able to see the man he had heard in the corridor last night.
I don’t want to die in the hospital, thought Victor.
* * *
Stiff after a night on the sofa, Nat was woken by Rufus clattering down the stairs. He was talking loudly as he came, a commentary on everything—breakfast, birds, sunshine, garden—and Sophie’s soft anxious murmur behind him, “Watch out, darling, it’s so … hold on to the banister.”
The house felt quite different with a kid in it. Nat yawned. He was staring at her with interest and she put up a hand to feel her hair, stiff and sticking out to one side.
Shit. It hadn’t been a dream. Or had some of it been a dream? Jim had come over, he had, they had … She sat up on the sofa, her hands on her abdomen, feeling sick. Ah, shit.
Sophie was watching her and she felt a sudden pulse of longing for him to still be there. No. That would be a mistake.
They’d had a conversation, a muttered conversation, somewhere between sex and sleep, or had that been a dream? She had been pressed against him on the sofa, her face in his armpit, the familiar smell of him but with an extra sour note, the smell of someone stressed, the smell of growing up and having to deal with shit. With lies and hiding stuff from each other. What had they said?
Sophie had led Rufus to the kitchen and they were peering into cupboards. Nat shoved it all out of her mind and got up. “There’s eggs,” she said uncertainly, and Rufus’s face turned up to hers, bright. “And … pita bread?”
She had been expecting stroppiness after the late night, but Rufus seemed excited by everything, said yes to everything. He ate boiled eggs and pita bread soldiers and a yogurt one day past its sell-by and drank some hot milk. He kept hopping off his chair to look out of the back door at the garden, then hopping back again. Nat watched Sophie deal with him: she saw how gentle she was, how anxious, how patient; she saw her intense happiness with her kid.
Of course, Sophie had Victor for a dad. And it came to Nat that her own mum had been like this too, Patty had, at moments, when she had been allowed. When he’d gone.
For so long all Nat could remember was the feeling of panic at home, Patty’s stress at trying to hold it together, losing it regularly, If you don’t, I’m going to. But as she watched Sophie, some of it was familiar, after all. Things came back to her. Mum behind her when she was very small, bending without complaint to pick up something she’d dropped. Rabbie? The filthy cotton rabbit, Jesus, where did that come from? It had been a long time since she’d thought about Rabbie. She’d left him behind somewhere one time, some field where they’d had a picnic, and Mum had driven back to get him and it had taken her an hour to find the field and then him in the dark, Nat sitting quiet in the car, not daring to say anything for fear she’d lost him.
It was like light getting through a crack in a door: her own childhood. Not so fucked up, then, not always, not forever.
Setting down his milk with a clatter, Rufus ran out through the door, arms pumping. Sophie began to clear his things from the table and Nat came to help.
She’d been a parole officer before she had Rufus, Nat knew that from Victor. So she hadn’t been sheltered, she can’t have been naive. But she’d married Richard: could it be that easy, to make such a big mistake?
Rufus, though. What was the opposite of a mistake? She must have been almost fifty when she had him. Something stirred, a question, but it wouldn’t come into focus.
“Your dad’s worried about you,” said Nat.
Turning from the sink, Sophie smiled unhappily. “He’s the one in hospital,” she said, trying to laugh. “I’m fine. You can see. Nothing wrong with us.”
“There’s the wrist,” said Nat reluctantly. “That wasn’t an accident, was it?” Sophie turned back to the sink. “Did your husband do it?”
“Does … my father … has he…” Sophie stopped, swallowed something. “We can manage,” she said, her voice low. “Marriages go through difficult … Richard has a very demanding job. He has to provide for us, there are … he loves me. Us.”
“My dad hit my mother,” said Nat levelly. “I know what that looks like. Is that how your wrist got broken?”
Sophie’s head was very still, then she turned it just a fraction, Nat could see the curve of her cheek. “What did she do?” she said. “What did your mother do?”
“What do you mean?” said Nat, and for a moment she really didn’t understand. “What did she do to deserve it?”
And Sophie’s head turned fully then, she began to say, “No—I … no—”
But then Rufus called from outside, a high squeal, although it wasn’t clear if it was excitement or something else, and Sophie was moving, round and awkward, toward the door, dropping a tea towel as she hurried out into the garden.
Nat stood, looking at the crumpled cloth lying there in the empty doorway, and it came back to her. Jim had talked to her: it hadn’t been a dream. Muttering his confession into her ear, that slight sourness on his breath that hadn’t been there before. Perhaps he was drinking, perhaps he wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t eating. Perhaps all three.
“Funny thing was,” he’d said, and Nat had been half asleep by then, inclined to forgive, to think, all right, all right, whatever, Jim. “Funny thing was, I had this feeling, this feeling.”
“What feeling?” She had made an effort, but the words had drifted from her in a mumble.
He shifted beside her, up on an elbow in the dark. “That there was someone else there. I was in the garden, I was watching, but there were no lights on in the house. I wondered if there was someone inside hiding, then I thought he—it—was in the garden with me, only watching me, watching me watching you.”
“A feeling.” It had arrested her, on the brink of sleep. Jim had sighed then, as if he had done the confessing and this was him being forgiven, and sank back down beside her. “Am I losing it?” he said sadly, murmuring into her hair. “I never … I didn’t see anyone. I just … perhaps I heard something, perhaps I heard something.”
“It was you, though,” she had said to him, and she had heard her own sadness. “It was you who got inside and laid the table. There wasn’t anyone else in here.” And his arms had tightened around her from behind, spooning as they always had done afterward, two hands on her breasts and his breath warm on her neck, and eventually they had gone to sleep like that.
On the kitchen table now a mobile shivered, not Nat’s. She
saw the screen light up, Richard, it said. She picked it up and took it outside, holding it out and away from her like something that had caught fire, and Sophie, kneeling and with an arm around Rufus, looked up and Nat saw she was afraid. Just at the sight of his name on a screen, her face turned white. She stood abruptly and took the phone from Nat. Then turning, edging away, she said in a low voice, “Hello, darling.”
Nat saw Rufus hunch tighter on the ground, keeping still.
She could hear Richard’s voice herself, not pausing, a level monotone that didn’t let Sophie get a word in, though she did nod. Nat saw her catch her lower lip between her teeth. “Yes, darling,” she said in the end. “Yes, I will, I will. I will.” Silence, and then Sophie thrust the phone into her pocket.
“I expect you’ve got to get to work,” she said to Nat, still pale, so pale her eyes stood out green. “We’ll pack up our things.”
“You can stay here,” she said. “Do you … did he—” but Sophie just gave a tight little shake of her head. Her eyes were on Rufus still crouched there, unmoving, staring down between his knees.
* * *
He knew he had to be careful: he was capable of being careful. His hands looked gentle.
Having to work was an annoyance: he would have rather been able to concentrate on her. There were times when there had to be geographical space between them, when her whereabouts were unknown. Natalie. Nat. Natalie.
He felt, though, that there was a connection, a wire between them, he only needed to tug on it gently.
The old man, of course. The old man was safe enough, gaga or close to it. That place would shut him down, he would die in there and no one would pay any attention to what he said. A shock to see his bed empty, all the same. Hospitals—he knows there is surveillance. Where to walk, how to walk.
Now he had the feel of it in his fingers, he felt it draw him, each knuckle, each sinew. A lovely peace descended at the thought of it, something flooded his system at the thought of the body dying—“ecstasy” was the word that came to mind. His hands that did it, charging his body up, pumping him up.
He had to be careful, though. He had to keep the tugging gentle, give her nothing concrete to take to the police, not yet, not until he could spread it in front of her, what he had done—and stop her ever telling anyone. A clever balance because he liked to watch her, looking this way then that way, thinking she was after him, when really it was the other way around. He wanted to draw her closer, closer, until when she turned, his breath was in her face.
He needed to wind it around and around her, get her where he wanted her, helpless, immobilized. Between his hands.
Work. Someone called him, and he had to turn and not show what he felt.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Owen Wilkins’s office in a mobile unit on the caravan site was hot and untidy. There was a filing cabinet, a shelf full of box files, another with books of various sizes. Wilkins was standing behind a desk with a battered computer on it, his head almost knocking on the low ceiling. Sophie and Nat had been herded the other side of the desk: they’d left Rufus outside, sorting through the pebbles arranged in a border around the unit.
“My main concern is that Mr. Powell’s caravan should be adequately maintained,” said Wilkins, frowning down at his desk, his big, square-knuckled hands. He seemed ill at ease with them in his crowded space. Nat wished he would sit down.
“The place needs to look cared for,” he went on, staring sternly past them. “If … well, kids are kids. If they see there’s no one there they’ll try to get in, pinch things, make a mess.”
Covertly Nat looked at the books on his shelf: one had a bird on the spine, the word calculus on another, and a fat history book about Russia. His gaze shifted in her direction, irritable, and she stopped looking.
He had seen them come in through the site gates and marched over to them.
Now Sophie launched a charm offensive. She was good at that, Nat observed, not least because it seemed to come naturally, not servile, but apology hedged with willingness, all of it humble and tentative. Yes, yes, of course, it’s so kind of you. Would it drive you mad after a while?
Nat checked her out: she looked quite different this morning, her cheeks were pink, her candyfloss hair had blown about on the walk up. She was wearing a loose blue dress to her knees, and sandals, but she didn’t look frumpy, more like a kid on the first day of holidays.
It didn’t seem to drive Owen Wilkins mad: he went still, stopped fiddling with his big hairy hands. He didn’t quite smile, but something about him shifted down a gear and Nat marveled.
“Yes, well,” he said, clearing his throat.
Sophie bobbed her head, darting a look out to check on Rufus. It was mostly nerves, Nat could see—underneath there was a version of Victor, sharp-eyed Victor, brave Victor, managing the beast with kindness. How far did that get you?
“I’ve visited him once or twice,” the site manager said stiffly. Nat had forgotten that Owen Wilkins was the one who had come in to the hospital with Victor. “He’s … well. He’s under my care, if you like.”
Sophie with a handkerchief up to her mouth. “Really, that’s so…,” she said, “so kind. I didn’t know you were such friends.”
Wilkins waved a hand, looking away. “I wouldn’t say friends,” he said, clearing his throat. “He’s a good tenant. He keeps himself to himself. And of course, he’s an intelligent man.”
Warily Nat examined him. How old? Forty, maybe. Funny job for a man who liked math and Russian history—or maybe not. The kind of job that would get you called a loser in some circles, not that she could talk. Wilkins was a loner, for sure. He’d hardly been in the pub, but she’d seen his type before, abrupt, impatient, the odd inappropriate laugh. They wouldn’t chat while you pulled their pint, not because they were shy but because they thought everyone else was stupid.
“What did you do before you came here, Owen?” she asked, blunt, wishing briefly for one or two of Sophie’s soft skills when he stared at her. She probably should have called him Mr. Wilkins.
He stared at her. “I was a teacher, as a matter of fact,” he said eventually. Mr. Wilkins, for sure. Then with a flash of arrogance, “Five years, then I couldn’t stand it any longer. Stand them. The other teachers.” Scornful. “The staff room.”
Then he glared at her, as if she’d forced it out of him. “Let me know, anyway, if there’s anything more I can do. Clearly Mr. Powell can keep his pitch as long as,” and now he was arrogant, that laugh, “as long as he pays for it. But if you don’t mind…”
Pale now, Sophie bobbed and murmured, and then he did turn away from her—from both of them, with irritation. “Sorry,” he said, blunt to the point of rudeness, and Nat and Sophie reversed out of the door into the warm morning.
Rufus ran after them headlong, weaving and stumbling between guy ropes and tow bars as they walked down the green slope toward the estuary. The tide was halfway up, soft gray glittering in the sun, and there was the fresh smell of the water in from out to sea. Rufus dodged and ran out in front of them. As he tripped and righted himself immediately, down up, you could see how recently he’d been a baby, his body still learning stuff like balance.
“Patrick said would I like to bring Rufus down to his little boat,” said Sophie. “He said he might take us out for a row or something, after I’ve seen Dad.”
“Patrick?” For a moment Nat didn’t know who she was talking about. She stopped, and Sophie stopped too. “Paddy. Sure, yes. He must have liked you.”
Ahead of them Rufus had come to a halt as well, because he’d spotted a black and white cat. He squatted, head on one side, at a level with it.
Sophie darted a look at her and the pink in her cheeks deepened. “I—I mean, you wouldn’t … Richard wouldn’t … he was being kind. I think Patrick was being kind.”
“He is very kind,” said Nat. “He lets me have his boat whenever I want to go for a sail. Chickadee, she’s called.”
“Oh,
well, I wouldn’t … if you need to use the boat.”
“Stop it,” said Nat impatiently. “Paddy’s just being a friend, of course no one’s going to say anything to Richard, but even if they did—” Sophie’s head jerked around in panic, the pink all gone from her face. “No one will say anything, people mind their own business and they know Paddy, what he’s like. Hardly the predatory type, is he?”
Even as the words came out of her mouth she wondered, though. What was the predatory type, did you always know? Not Paddy, with his shambles of a shed and his dusty hair and his soft quiet voice? Not prickly Owen Wilkins? Friendly Bill? None of them really looked like predators. Stalkers, maybe? Jim, climbing through her window to lay the table so they could be a couple again.
Sophie stared and Nat sighed. “It’s a natural thing to do round here, it’s for Rufus, anyway. And I’ll get plenty of sailing, don’t worry about me, there’s still a month of summer left.”
Although she wasn’t so sure, suddenly. There was a change in the air, or had it been coming a while? It was humid, a heat haze hung over the water, but under it, when the wind shifted, you could feel cooler air coming in from somewhere. The feeling—and the thought that came with it—made her anxious. Get Victor back, before. Before Richard came. Before something happened to him. People died in hospital.
They were at the caravan now, and Sophie had extracted the keys from her big battered handbag that seemed to hold any number of things: a water bottle, half a chocolate bar, a book. “Rufie?” she called, and Nat heard consternation in her voice.
Find him, before he finds you.
Then Rufus’s little shaggy red head appeared from around a caravan a couple down the hill, clutching the cat against his body, its legs splayed. “Up here, Rufie,” Sophie said and the cat wriggled in his arms and got free, escaping light-footed back behind the caravan. Rufus hesitated a moment, torn, but then began to plod up toward them.
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