‘Neither did I. Pathetic as that sounds.’
We picked at our salads. The whisky obliterated the flavour of the goat’s cheese, made it flat and lifeless. We talked a little about our lives. She worked for a charity, and was often out of the country. She did not talk about men, except to say that she was single, by choice. She had never considered having children. Her parents were very understanding about the life she lived. She was their only child. Without a son they already knew, she said, that the line would not continue. ‘Their little failure, not mine.’
‘Strange,’ I said. ‘In my family we only produce boys. One a generation. Max, my son, is the only son of an only son of an only son.’ She smiled at this, and for a moment I saw myself married to her, posed formally in the walled garden of her brick-built country house, boy-child in arms, smiling out at the world. Lord of the Manor; almost but not quite.
When we had finished eating she said to me, ‘Alex, I have long since destroyed any record of what you did. If the police did contact me I should be obliged to say what happened between us, but I should also feel an obligation to say that it is clear you have changed. For what that’s worth. My old solicitor died years ago. I should be surprised if the firm kept a carbon copy – even more so if the police ever found out about the letter.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. I took her hand.
‘No,’ she said, drawing away. ‘Alex, I would like you to stay away from me in future.’
She meant it.
‘I’m confused, Caroline.’
‘I forgive you, Alex. But I don’t want you near me.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘this is humiliating.’ I took a slug of wine. After the whisky it tasted thin, sharp, as nauseating as mould on bread.
Her voice softened. ‘I can see that you’re trying hard to be good; I think you are a better man now. A good man. But you still have that strange broken quality to you, and that makes you dangerous to women like me, who like to fix things.’ She gave an embarrassed little gesture. ‘There’s a stupid little piece of me that still wants to fix you, Alex.’
‘I’m sorry for what I did to you,’ I said.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘perhaps we should bring this to an end.’
‘OK.’
‘I do think you’re right, Alex, by the way. I think you have inherited something of your father’s shell shock. That anger doesn’t just disappear. It gets handed down, father to son.’
‘I wasn’t claiming that,’ I said.
‘You wouldn’t be the first man it happened to,’ she said. ‘It’s very widespread. You don’t experience combat. You don’t see your friends killed. You don’t take part in atrocities. But you inherit the psyche of a man who has.’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘Actually, it does. It’s called transgenerational trauma.’
‘And you know about that from one of your little charities, do you?’
‘I work with refugees, if that’s what you mean, Alex.’ She said it quietly, and without anger. ‘Their children, the ones born in the safety of London hospitals, develop the same scars as their parents. Same symptoms – outbursts of anger, panic attacks, a sense of something being permanently broken – but without the flashbacks to the traumatic trigger.’
She left an enquiring pause. I decided to say nothing.
‘Most of them don’t understand why they’re traumatised, Alex, because they have never experienced the trauma that their parents lived through. But they live with their parents, whose disorder is untreated, and they inherit the disorder. Just being around someone with PTSD is enough.’
‘You think I’m like them?’ I know I’m not like them.
‘At least your father knew the cause of his suffering. I don’t think you do. And a part of you feels compelled to strike out at other people. Although I believe you when you say you’re getting better.’
‘I don’t want your pity,’ I said.
‘I don’t pity you, Alex.’
There was a warmth in her eyes. Empathy perhaps. Not pity. ‘But now that you know what it might be, you could seek help.’
‘I’m coping,’ I said, ‘but I’m going to go now.’
I thought for a while about trying to find work, but found myself watching television instead. I watched an early-afternoon programme about a maximum-security prison in Michigan for women. Everybody shouted. Not one of the women in the prison claimed to be innocent. Two of the inmates had smothered their children, one had poisoned her husband, and another had burned down an entire city block in downtown Detroit. ‘Sure,’ said the firebrand, ‘sure I have some regrets.’ It was the narcotics that had made her do it. The programme showed an image of her, skeletal and out of hope. She looked better now; she worked in the prison library. But really it was all over for her: she was never getting out.
Once, in the days before Millicent, when I wasn’t sleeping, a psychiatrist suggested I could have transgenerational trauma; he called it War-Related Intergenerational Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, though.
It seems to be a real thing, passed from returning soldiers to their families, from fathers to their sons. I looked it up.
I don’t have it.
Rose rang. She wanted to know why I had missed Bryce’s funeral. I told her that I had been in hospital over the weekend, that I had wanted to come. I didn’t tell her about Millicent and the bottle.
‘He was a better guy than I realised,’ I said.
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean, he was a good guy. He had it tough.’
‘How do you mean?’ she said again.
‘The lost child. That must have been very hard for him.’
The line went very quiet.
‘What do you mean by the lost child?’ she said at last. ‘What did he say to you, Alex?’
‘He didn’t say anything to me. But he told my wife about his little girl. About Lana.’
Again, Rose said nothing.
‘Rose,’ I said. ‘You still there?’
‘Yeah. I’m here.’
‘He did well to rebuild his life after that.’
‘Did he?’ she said. ‘Did he really?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Alex,’ she said, ‘I think we should meet.’
‘It’s complicated,’ I said. ‘There’s a lot on.’
I ended the call. I didn’t tell her about the arrest.
When Max got home I tried to talk to him. How did he feel about Millicent being arrested? Fine, he said.
‘Fine?’ I asked. ‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
How did he feel about what he’d heard, about what he’d seen of the affair? Fine, and again fine.
‘Max,’ I said, ‘are you sure you’re OK?’
‘Yeah.’
‘When are you next seeing Dr Å?’
‘I go three times a week.’
The reproach in his voice, in his eyes: you should know that.
I rang my mother and asked her about the arrangements for the funeral. ‘Oh, son,’ she said, ‘it’s all in hand.’
My mother was in no mood to speak about practicalities for once. Instead we spoke for a long time about my father. She had washed the last of his clothes now, although really she could see that there was no need; she had filled the house with pictures and music, had been playing his Serge Gainsbourg records – ‘the boulevardier ones, mind, not the sexy ones’ – over and over. She found herself talking to my father though she knew he was not there.
‘Foolish, Alexander, is it not?’
‘No, Mum, there’s nothing foolish about that. I miss him too.’
‘Right enough, son,’ she said. ‘Aye. Thank you,’ as though there were something to thank me for.
When at last she asked after Millicent, as I knew she would, I told her that Millicent was OK. Busy, though. And sent her love.
‘Send her my love back, will you not? Tell her that I miss our little chats.’
Arla came home at eigh
t and we ate pizza and drank wine in the kitchen as if nothing was wrong. Max took himself off to bed early, and Arla and I carried on drinking. Anyone looking in through the back door would have thought we were man and wife.
22
‘Dad! Dad!’
‘Max.’ No light through the curtains. ‘Max, are you OK?’
‘I’m fine, Dad.’
I switched on the light. ‘What time is it?’
‘Half past two.’ He was dressed. Red t-shirt, dark blue jeans. ‘Dad, can you find the neighbour’s key?’
‘Max, what’s going on?’
‘Can you, though?’
‘No, Max, get back to bed.’
Max left the bedroom. I turned off the light. I wondered if Millicent was awake, lying on a bed in a police holding cell, thinking about the fact that she wasn’t being released. I had spoken to the lawyer she had chosen from the list, a young woman who sounded far too delicate to be a criminal defence solicitor.
Millicent’s solicitor had confirmed what the detective had told me, that the police would hold Millicent for another twelve hours. Surely they couldn’t do that, I had asked. Yes, she was afraid the police could extend Millicent’s custody, as long as the request was approved by an inspector. If it was of any comfort, she didn’t think they had very much on Millicent; she suspected they were simply trying to frighten her into a confession. She expected Millicent to be released without charge.
Sound of a footstep on a loose board. Someone downstairs.
I pulled on a pair of pants and a t-shirt. Max’s room was empty. As I stood on the landing I heard the back door open. I went back into Max’s bedroom, pulled the curtain away from the window, looked down.
There in the garden was Max. He looked up at me, then turned and walked deliberately towards the love seat by the wall.
No!
I pulled on a pair of trousers, slipped on a pair of trainers and headed downstairs.
As I reached the kitchen I saw Max disappear over the wall into the neighbour’s garden.
Please God, no!
I looked around. There was no light in any of the houses except ours. What was he up to? What the hell was he up to?
As soon as I stepped on to the love seat I saw him, standing at the neighbour’s back door.
‘Max, come back here.’ My voice was quiet, but he must have heard me. ‘Max.’ Still he paid me no attention. I jumped up on to the wall, and down into the neighbour’s garden. I listened. Distant traffic. The slam of a car door. An engine starting.
Max had the neighbour’s back door open now, had pulled it as far back as the hinges would let it go. Then he crouched down, seemed to be waiting for something. I saw a faint beam of light fall on to the varnished floor. Car headlights in the street, I thought. The door to the neighbour’s front room must be open. I could hear the change of gear, see the beam from the headlights pass across the floor.
Panic like a hand across my throat. If someone sees us now …
‘Max,’ I said, ‘close the door.’ But he stayed crouched where he was, looking into the house, listening. What was he doing? What was he waiting for?
I went to him and stood behind him for a while, looking in. I could see nothing.
‘What is this, Max?’
‘Shh, Dad, wait.’
‘We’re going home, Max.’
But Max simply shook his head.
‘Max,’ I said. ‘Max.’ Don’t let him take charge.
At the sound of a car engine in the street Max tensed. As the light from the car swung through the room the edges of the furniture lit up, eerily familiar. That better, cleaner version of our kitchen, the lines sharper and straighter somehow, the paintwork immaculate, every gap in the floor filled.
The light intensified, and Max crouched lower, his head almost level with the floor.
‘Max,’ I said, ‘Max, what are you looking at?’
‘You’re too high up, Dad,’ he said, as if speaking to a cretin. ‘You’re going to have to wait for the next one.’
‘For the next car?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What am I looking for, Max?’
‘You have to see it, Dad. But you have to get down.’ I looked around. I was fairly certain no one was watching. Somewhere nearby I could hear a helicopter; somewhere, a siren. In the street beyond a couple was arguing, voices raised. The woman’s voice chided; the man’s pleaded. On the main road a dustcart collected refuse from the chickenshops: paper and card, bones and fat. A night like any other night in our part of town.
The voices grew distant. A car engine approached.
Max looked up at me. ‘Dad, you’re too high up.’
‘What am I looking for?’
‘You’ll see.’
I crouched down beside him, stared across the floor. And then I saw it. There in the light of the car headlights was a layer of dust as thin as the bloom on a new plum. And as the light swept across the floor I saw what Max had seen.
Two sets of footprints. One led through the door and into the front room, and the other led from the front room towards the back door.
‘Did you see it, Dad?’
‘Yes, Max, yes, I saw it.’
I didn’t need to see it a second time, but I waited with Max anyway, afraid perhaps that what I had seen was a trick, the product of fatigue and of fear. And the next passing car confirmed it. Two sets of footprints. The same women’s shoes. The strange, hour-glass shape of them. Wedged soles, I guessed. How could Millicent have been so stupid?
We drank milk and ate biscuits in our own kitchen, me at the table, Max on the worktop.
‘Dad, were those the shoes that Mum has?’
I looked at Max. I didn’t want to have this discussion.
‘I don’t know. And how did you open the door, Max?’
He picked something from the ticket pocket of his trousers. ‘Catch.’
A slick metallic parabola. I fumbled the catch, and something fell to the floor near the foot of my chair. I reached down and picked up a key. It looked like one of Bryce’s. We sat there, the two of us, staring at it, and at each other.
‘The neighbour thought Mum lost it. I heard him shouting at her for a very long time. He said he wouldn’t give her another one, even though he did. He was really shouting. When do you think she went in there?’
‘Max,’ I said, ‘we don’t know that it was Mum.’
‘But when do you think it was?’
‘I don’t know.’
I did know, of course. It had happened the night I was in Edinburgh. That night Millicent had abandoned Max. It had to have happened then. I believed what she had told me: that she had sat in the park, in the rain; that the mud had ruined her shoes. That much was probably true. Although, I wondered now, had she actually told me she had sat in the rain in the middle of the park, or had she simply implied it? In any case, she was in the neighbour’s house before her shoes were covered in mud.
Those shoes were in our bin.
‘Are those footprints why the police arrested Mum?’
‘I don’t think they can be, Max.’
‘Why not?’
Because the police searched the bin and didn’t take the shoes.
‘I don’t know.’
‘But what do you think, Dad?’
‘Back to bed.’
‘But it’s almost time to get up.’
‘It’s four o’clock, Max.’
I was sure that the footprints weren’t the reason, that the police had been acting on a hunch. Unless there had been another forensic team in the house, shining lights at low angles across the floor, the police could not have seen Millicent’s footprints in daylight.
When Max was asleep I went to the front door. There was light in the sky now. I brought in the grey composite dustbin that stood jammed in front of the bay window, stood it in the middle of the floor in the front room.
I began to take out the bags one by one. I wasn’t completely sure what I was looking for.
The smell of rot was over-powering, and it was all I could do to keep from retching. Serve us right for mixing food waste in with the recyclables. Everything was covered in a fine blue-green powder. I forced myself not to gag, tried to hold my breath.
Near the bottom of the bin I found what I was looking for: a tied Sainsbury’s bag through which I could feel Millicent’s shoes. I put the other bags carefully back into the bin, and wheeled it outside again.
I untied the bag. Inside were two more bags. In one were Millicent’s dress, bra and pants, the ones the rain had ruined on the night she abandoned Max. In the other were the shoes she had worn when she had returned to Bryce’s house. If she had been telling me the truth, if she had thrown her clothes away that night, she had gone to the trouble of removing them from the bin again before the police had searched the house. Otherwise, surely – surely – the police would have found these bags, and when they had found them they would have wanted to know what they were doing there. My wife had waited until after the police search to dispose of her evidence.
Then I found something else: inside one of the shoes was a small pair of soft leather gloves; inside one of the gloves was a small piece of heavy black adhesive tape, compressed into a ball.
23
Back in the white windowless room I waited, staring at the gunmetal door. The room was airless, and the dying fluorescent tube flicked uselessly on and off, waking some animal instinct in me for flight. There was nothing to look at, so I took out my phone. 11.06. No signal.
Millicent arrived, flanked by two officers I didn’t recognise. She was wearing the same clothes as yesterday; the tendons in her neck were drawn tight, and the corners of her mouth were dry and cracked.
‘Hey,’ she said.
She sat down, tried to smile, reached out for my hand.
I let her hold it for a moment, then drew away from her.
Your footprints in the neighbour’s house.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘everybody’s still really polite, but this was a long night. It got so I started wishing I had something I could confess to. Kind of like you said. But I think they started to realise I don’t.’
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