“Dom . . .” My voice dies as I realize that the knife between us has sunk deep into flesh. A short, sharp jerk and then it slides in easily, deeply, fatally. I feel myself sway and I start to black out as a gush of hot blood drenches me, spattering loudly on to the wood floor.
I look down and see Dom’s big hands still wrapped around mine between our two bodies, my fingers gripping the steak knife I now recognize from the kitchen set Max gave us as a wedding gift ten years ago. The black wooden handle presses painfully into the palm of my right hand; the long blade is hidden, pointing away from me, lodged deep inside my husband’s chest.
FORTY-SEVEN
The curtains are drawn and the short driveway is empty. I peer out of the car window, looking up and down the street, and I can see that all the neighbors’ curtains are also closed against the autumn dusk. A typically quiet Monday evening on our peaceful, tree-lined road. I expected it to feel different, but it’s only me that’s changed.
And the season. I left this house, this street, on the morning of the twins’ birthday at the end of May, the threshold of English summertime; it’s September now and the leaves are golden, glowing like embers in the street lamps. We are parked in a circle of light beneath the one outside our house, and I wish DCI Watkins had chosen a darker spot further along so as to keep our presence low-key. But I suppose all the neighbors will know by now; DI Baxter will have knocked on every door.
At least there was no need for flashing blue lights. We crawled through the Twickenham traffic, along Hampton Hill past Bushy Park and onwards to Hampton village, with no siren wailing out a distress signal, nothing to draw attention to our progress or force the traffic to yield before us: no emergency, but a powerful, breath-stealing urgency that made me grind my teeth and grip the seatbelt until my knuckles turned white.
The detective turns off the engine and as the purr of the motor quietens, the only sounds I hear are the occasional crackles of the police radio and the hoarse rattle of my own breathing. I watch from the back seat as DCI Watkins glances in his wing mirror, checks his watch, hooks his notebook out of his pocket and finally turns to look at Michelle sitting next to him in the passenger seat. I try to interpret their silent exchange; I don’t want to ask them what they’re thinking. I don’t want to hear platitudes—or the truth.
I press my hands together to stop them shaking and jump when Professor Hernandez leans across the leather seat to take hold of them both, squeezing them between his own. I flinch as I’m reminded of Dom’s touch, but the doctor’s gentleness is a world away from my husband’s death grip. I squeeze back and the physical contact brings me some comfort, but it can’t stop the trembles rippling through my body.
I’m shaking uncontrollably, but I’m not cold. It’s warm in the police car, the windows are beginning to steam up, and Michelle loaned me fresh clothes to change into after showering back at the police station: clean, loose black lounge pants and a soft long-line maroon sweatshirt. With my hair washed and tidied into a fresh ponytail, I feel slightly more human. Michelle also brought me a flask of hot, sweet tea, a bottle of water and some fruit and sandwiches, which I ate and drank automatically, tasting little but knowing I needed to refuel my weakened body. I swallowed the medicine the doctor brought me, too, hoping it would revive me after what I’d just endured—and give me further strength for what lay ahead.
I’d been in the police station less than an hour before Lucy and the twins were officially reported missing.
* * *
“There still hasn’t been any answer at the house,” DCI Watkins said, leaning one elbow on the desk and rubbing his eyes with his other hand. I wondered how long he’d been on duty. “We forced entry this morning, of course, and found all the rooms in a real state. I’ve got the SOCO guys all over it. But there was no sign of the children. Or your friend. We’ve checked with staff at her deli in Teddington and she hasn’t been seen for a couple of days.” He reached for his notebook before confirming: “Last there on Friday morning, the girl said.”
The day Dom collected me from the hospital and said he just needed to nip home, to take care of a couple of things . . .
“And she didn’t think that was odd? Didn’t it occur to her to report Lucy missing when she didn’t show up all weekend?” I said, irritable with shock, frustration and fear for my children. I leaned over and threw the remains of my sandwich in the detective’s wastepaper basket, unable to stomach any more.
“She’s only new. Just started working there, didn’t you say, boss?” Michelle chipped in.
“Brilliant timing,” I said bitterly, frowning at him as I remember the conversation about the deli I overheard between Dom and Lucy in the bright-dark. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be . . . I’m just so . . .”
“It’s perfectly OK. You have absolutely nothing to apologize for. We’ll find them, Maddie. We will.”
He tried to hold eye contact with me but I could tell he didn’t want to. I’d seen the sideways glances from the other officers we’d passed as Michelle ushered me into this office; I knew what everyone was thinking. I’d been thinking it myself almost since the first moment Dom carried me up the stairs of Max’s house and locked the door.
I’m finally back—and my children are gone. Missing. Presumed dead.
“The girl also said she understood Lucy had been moving house. So when she didn’t show up, she put it down to her being busy and thought no more of it. Shame, really. Had she panicked and tried to get hold of Lucy, we might have been alerted earlier to the fact that she was missing.” DCI Watkins sat back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest.
I wondered if Lucy had genuinely believed Dom had been changed by tragedy and had offered to move in with him to help with the children, or if he’d forced her, and then when he didn’t need her any more . . . I wished I knew which was the truth, but either way it didn’t help explain where my friend was now, or why she’d gone missing—along with Annabel, Aidan and Jasper.
“Your husband’s business colleagues have also spoken highly of him. It seems he’s been acting quite out of character. But you’ll know better than us,” Michelle said. “Friends and colleagues generally only see what they’re allowed to see, not the whole truth.”
“The whole truth. Or something our unconscious mind rewrites for us,” I said, thinking of the doctor’s words.
“Sorry?” Michelle and the detective exchanged glances.
“Doesn’t matter. Have the children been in school?” I asked, my eyes darting around the office as if clues to their whereabouts might somehow pop out from the posters and notices pinned across the walls of the high-ceilinged room. I stared blankly at a map of the UK stretched across two noticeboards, colored pins dotted here and there. Was that a record of my movements, Dom’s—or another case entirely? My eyes roamed across the colored tangle of roads, up and down the country and then lingering on the south coast, my heart pounding as the word “Brighton” seemed to leap out at me.
“Up until Friday. Subdued but present was their teacher’s comment. They’ve been keeping a special eye on them, she told me. Under the circumstances of your being in a coma—which is what everyone still thinks,” DCI Watkins said, glancing at Michelle for confirmation. She nodded, continuing to chew her pencil to a woody pulp. I watched her discreetly pick a soggy, flaky shard from between her teeth.
“And today? Were they at school today?” I said, my mind still turning over the road map, grasping at a thought that kept drifting away. “If they were at school, perhaps they’re just round at a friend’s house now for a playdate. New friends I’ve never met.” I’d already given them every name and number I could remember, and they’d checked them all, finding nothing.
“National teachers’ strike.” DCI Watkins checked his notebook again for confirmation.
“Fuck,” Michelle said, aiming the mangled pencil stub at the bin.
“Precisely. So no one has missed Lucy at work this weekend, everyone has presumed she’s just
been busy moving house, and the kids have been at school as normal right up until Friday. Dominic has clearly managed to convince everyone that it’s business as usual. And it was only when he came to see you on Friday and for whatever reason decided to escalate matters that his plans changed.” The detective checked his watch.
It was because I told him I thought Annabel was dead.
That’s what made him ramp up his next step. He’d realized that his plan had been successful—I genuinely believed I’d chosen between my children—and he’d seized his chance to turn the thumbscrews and make me agree to his escape plan, keeping hold of Annabel’s diary in case he ever needed evidence that he’d only acted to protect his family from an abusive monster. Perhaps he even had a line about self-defense already prepared. He was the guilty one, but he’d preyed on my guilt, which I’d handed to him on a plate. As always, I’d given him the upper hand, and he’d punched me with it.
“Brighton.” I stood up suddenly, a light bulb flashing on in my mind. I shuffled quickly towards the map, reaching out to trace the diagonal orange line of the M23 out of London and down to the A23, my finger urgently tracing all the way to the bright blue of the English Channel.
“Sorry?” DCI Watkins and Michelle spoke as one, both turning to look at the point where my finger jabbed at the map.
“Lucy has a holiday cottage in Brighton. It’s a long shot but . . . she might have gone there. Taken the children. I don’t know, but it’s possible?” My heart started to thump even faster as I wondered if it could be true. I wanted it to be; I wanted to go there right now and find them all eating fish and chips on the pebble beach, watching the sunset and talking of the day I would come home to them.
“Give me the address,” DCI Watkins said brusquely, handing me his notepad and pen. I wrote it down and watched breathlessly as he picked up the receiver of his desk phone. “On it,” he said shortly, after disconnecting the call.
“So what’s the plan now, boss?” Michelle asked, coming to stand next to me, resting a gentle hand on my arm and urging me back to my chair. “Try to keep the weight off your feet, Maddie. The doctor said you must take it really easy. He’s gone out for more meds, but in the meantime, sit,” she said, her smile softening the bossy command.
“Officer on his way to this address, and we’ve put out notices to police stations nationwide,” DCI Watkins said. “Closer to home, I’ve arranged to meet DI Baxter back at the house in an hour. He’s there as we speak, knocking on neighbors’ doors, seeing if anyone has seen or heard anything that might give us a lead. I’m going to head over shortly; I want to take another look round the place myself. And after that, we’ll—”
“I want to be there,” I cut in firmly.
“Well, I’m not sure if—” The detective looked shocked at the suggestion, his hands lifting in a gesture of refusal.
“I want to be there,” I repeated. I looked him straight in the eye, making him stare my agony in the face. “You’re going back to search the back garden, aren’t you? That’s what you’re planning to do. There’s no trace of them in the house or at Lucy’s deli. None of their school friends have seen them. Your detective is knocking on doors. If they’re not in Brighton, that leaves only one possibility I can think of. And you’re thinking it too, aren’t you?” I said, my chest tightening with sobs that turned into a hacking cough.
I felt like I was burning up. Michelle was right: I really needed to be in bed, probably back in hospital. But there was no way I was going to let the detectives return to my home without me being there.
“It might be better if the guys call us afterwards, don’t you think?” Michelle said, grabbing a blanket from a cupboard and draping it over my shoulders. “I’ll stay here with you. Get some rest, let them search. You’re not in the best state to be out there, and they’ll call us the second they find anything.”
“No! I lost my family once and I’ve just watched my husband die right in front of me. He accused me of being a freeloader, some kind of passenger in my family, a useless—”
“Your husband clearly wasn’t in his right mind, Maddie. You mustn’t hold on to—”
“I’m not going to sit here drinking tea while I lose my children a second time!” I said, only just managing to stop myself stamping a foot in temper.
“Well, I think that settles it, then,” Michelle said, raising her eyebrows at DCI Watkins. “Back in a tick. I just need a—”
“You can smoke on the way, Michelle. Let’s go,” the detective said firmly.
FORTY-EIGHT
“I think it’s time.” DCI Watkins turns to look over his shoulder at me. “As you requested, we’ll let you go ahead first and we’ll follow after. Are you ready, Maddie?”
Am I ready?
I’m still grappling with what that even means when I hear the clunk of the car door and look up to see Michelle stretching out a hand to me. She helps me out of the car and my legs wobble almost uncontrollably, but I feel the doctor close behind me and know he’s ready to catch me if I fall.
My first few steps are so shaky that I wonder if I should have accepted the offer of a wheelchair after all, and I only make it halfway up the short drive before I need to stop. I take a deep breath as I stand looking up at the modest white-painted semidetached house that has been my home for ten years, where Dom first carried me over the threshold as an excited new bride. So many promises—some kept, many broken. Our marriage began and ended with a dance and a love song; I know that tune will haunt me for ever.
“Thanks for coming all this way to be with me, Doctor. Thank you for everything,” I say without turning round. “No matter what happens now.”
I can sense his support, his quiet strength, and I try to take courage from it. It was strange at first to see him without his white coat; somehow he still looked like a doctor, though: discreet, professional, trustworthy. It wasn’t just the medical garb and stethoscope that gave him such presence as a consultant, I think, remembering how he’d teased me. It was just him; he inspires confidence in others through the sheer power of his kindness and honesty. He heals not just with his hands and mind, his medical experience and expertise, but simply by being.
“Call me Sebastiàn,” he says. “We are friends now, not doctor and patient, yes?”
“Yes,” I agree. “Friends. But I still need your help. I’m not sure I can do this. I’m so frightened. I don’t want to lose . . . I wish I could be as strong as you . . .” My voice trails away. I stare at the front door, willing it to swing open and for the twins to come bundling out, saying it has all been some kind of terrible mistake and they’ve just been playing happily in their bedrooms.
“There are different kinds of strength, Maddie. You managed to pull yourself out of a dark place once. You can do it again. Very few people come back from the depths of coma you endured. I remember our sessions all too vividly. You went on an immense journey, locked inside your unconscious mind, and there must have been an extraordinarily powerful force drawing you back to life.”
“My children,” I say simply. “And without them I . . .”
Biting back the thought I force myself to move, to continue walking slowly towards the house, my boots crunching on the gravel. As I approach the familiar glass-paneled front door I notice empty milk bottles underneath the step; a green recycling box sits to one side and a pair of Aidan’s muddy football boots stands propped up against the wall, waiting to be cleaned. Signs of ordinary family life; I can’t pull my gaze away from them, and my eyes fill with tears as I look closer and notice Aidan’s name scrawled inside his left boot.
I feel drawn by a sudden need I can’t explain to retrace my steps from the last day I spent in this house. Perhaps that was in Dom’s mind too, I wonder, as he re-enacted our wedding dance moments before impaling himself on the knife: one last chance to remember before all is lost. Was he recalling those happy moments from our wedding to comfort himself? Or was he reminding me as one final punishment for my supposed betrayal? He t
ook his own life, but he made me complicit. If I die, you die. And a little part of me did die with him.
I glance over towards the corner of the house, the narrow footpath that leads round the side, and I turn away from the front door; I know there will be no answer anyway if I press the buzzer. I start walking again, my head pounding with the thought that this might be my last ever chance to walk in my children’s footsteps. I can hardly bear it but it feels like all I have left of the twins: the memory of those final moments before I lost them.
Slowly I make my way along the rough concrete path towards the back garden, every step bringing me closer to my memories of that terrible morning. I trail my fingers along the pebble-dashed side of the house and feel as though I’m walking through a time-tunnel; it’s like crossing over into a parallel universe and I half expect Dom to come charging up the path with the twins clutched in his arms.
But there is no one; not a sound. The garden is quiet, dark, sheltered from the street lamps that light up the front of the house. The grass is long and unkempt and I see that the rose bushes are almost completely bare now, their spindly, woody arms pointing in random directions as if to misdirect me in my search for clues, evidence, any sign that my children might be hiding—or their bodies hidden—in this place that Dom knew I loved. He’s done his best to take everything and everyone else from me; I’m trying hard not to believe he would really have executed his final punishment and taken the lives of the two little people who matter more to me than everything else put together.
I look up at the stars and then down at the ground, seeing the echo of the night sky in a scattering of white petals fluttering confetti-like across the right-hand side of the lawn. It looks as though a wedding party is about to take place—or a wake. A sweet-sour taste fills my mouth and I have to swallow the impulse to be sick.
The Perfect Family Page 27