How small our son looked, and how perfect, arms thrown outwards, pyjamaed legs kicking away the covers: bare-chested, brave and very small.
‘I don’t want to have this discussion here,’ I said.
‘Sure.’ She closed Max’s door; we went back into our own room and pulled the door shut behind us.
‘Sorry,’ said Millicent. ‘Super-strung out.’
‘Yeah.’
‘But you know, Alex, the last description he wrote was the day before you guys found Bryce. How come he didn’t write any description of finding him?’
‘The pictures are the description,’ I said. ‘And he was dead, so he didn’t make any noise.’
‘Then how come he didn’t date the last two pictures?’
‘He’s eleven,’ I said.
‘You keep saying that. You’d think he would draw the erection.’
‘He’s an eleven-year-old boy who’s trying to understand your affair, and Bryce’s suicide, and why everything in his life got turned over by that. He’s like someone who’s read the instruction manual but has never actually seen a car.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I guess.’ She was not convinced. ‘He lifted the rest of the pages out. Look.’
It was true. The last four or five sheets of paper had been cut from the book with a scalpel. Almost invisible.
‘What do you think?’ she said.
‘I think Max has a sense of drama. Anything he wrote or drew after this would be an anti-climax.’
‘I guess,’ she said. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’
At six fifteen Millicent mailed Dr Å from her phone asking for an appointment. The cat appeared from nowhere, lay beside us on the bed, purring musically. Eventually the purring stopped and the cat slept.
At seven thirty Millicent woke me in panic. Dr Å had sent an SMS. She would see us at eight thirty.
We arrived seven minutes late for our appointment. The door to Dr Å’s consulting room was open. She had placed coffee cups on the floor by two of the chairs, and on the floor beside Max’s chair was a glass of water.
Some slight imbalance as I sat down. I ran my hand across the top of my right thigh. Something about my wallet was wrong, I thought. The weight, perhaps. Strange that you even notice.
‘Can I have juice, Dr No?’ said Max.
‘You have water, Max,’ she said simply.
‘OK,’ he said. He sat on his chair and smiled. I was surprised at how lightly he took being summoned to see the shrink, how willingly he deferred to her.
‘You asked to see me urgently,’ said Dr Å. ‘And here we are.’
‘Yes,’ said Millicent. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to see us so soon.’
‘Max, did you feel the same sense of urgency about this session?’
‘Not really.’
‘So,’ said Dr Å brightly, ‘something couldn’t wait.’ She looked at me. I looked at Millicent. Millicent looked at Dr Å, then at Max, then at me.
The clock marked time: almost ten minutes down, and nothing to show for it. Max picked up his glass and blew bubbles into his water.
‘Max, don’t,’ I said.
‘I can do what I like in here,’ said Max. He put down his water. ‘Can’t I, Dr No?’
All three of us looked at Dr Å.
‘And I would only say that such behaviour is unusual from you in my experience, Max. Are you trying to provoke a reaction in your parents?’
‘Sorry, Dr Å.’
‘We’re all a little frazzled,’ said Millicent.
‘I’m not,’ said Max. ‘Not really.’
‘Perhaps I can ask you, Millicent,’ said Dr Å. ‘Why are we here?’
‘Max has a notebook,’ she said.
‘His diary?’
‘He told you about it?’ she said.
‘I am familiar with it. He left it with me at the start of his course of therapy.’
Of course, I thought. That’s why the police didn’t find it.
‘Well, I don’t think I understood how much my son hates me until I read it.’
‘It’s not about you,’ said Max. ‘It’s about him. The neighbour.’
Millicent got up; she drew her chair across the floor away from Max and towards Dr Å.
‘So,’ said Dr Å, ‘what is it about Max’s diary that brings you all here?’
Millicent carried on speaking very quietly. ‘There’s such hatred in those drawings. They’re like a sort of revenge fantasy of all the things that Max wanted to happen to Bryce. I never thought my son would be capable of such hate.’
‘You interpret this as hate,’ said Dr Å simply. ‘I’m not certain that it is.’
‘It is a little bit, though,’ said Max. ‘Because it’s like, when you’re at school, and someone says “your mother” and there’s a fight, because it means your mum lets other men do her. Can I go in the garden?’
‘I’m agreeable to that,’ said Dr Å. ‘If your parents are. Perhaps Max could come back in twenty minutes?’
Millicent nodded. Dr Å looked at me. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Fine.’
Max got to his feet and went out, leaving the door open.
‘Millicent,’ said Dr Å, ‘Max needs to be enabled to express his legitimate anger.’
‘Well, wow, you sure enabled him.’
‘You did not see the pain in what Max just said?’ Millicent gave a sad little grimace. ‘First he expresses anger, then he cries. In this room, that is permitted. The crying is the second half of the equation, if you will. Your son is a very sensitive little boy. In this room he cries a lot. Perhaps he does not feel he can do this at home?’
I said nothing. Maybe she was right.
‘So how do I stop him hating me?’ said Millicent.
‘Show him that things can be repaired.’
‘That’s it?’
‘It takes time and hard work.’ She turned to me. ‘Alex, it’s your job to show Max what a man can be. And Millicent, it’s your job to show him that what Alex is, what Max will become – that that is completely acceptable. To be a man is something good, something to be accepted, and to be cherished.’
Millicent rolled her eyes. She did not return my smile.
Dr Å turned to me. ‘It’s also Alex’s job to show Max where he’s wrong. You have both experienced, I think, how harshly boys judge their mothers for what they see as their sexual failings?’ I nodded. Millicent nodded. ‘That can seem very unfair, Millicent, I know, but it seems to be a fundamental part of how small boys are wired. The Madonna/whore complex is very real to them. It’s something I expect adult men to have got past.’ She smiled at me. A joke, I thought, I really hope that’s a joke. ‘So in this case it’s Alex’s job to show that bad things can be forgiven, no matter how raw they feel. For you to split up would be a cataclysm for Max, however angry he is. Your son needs to learn how to forgive.’ She paused, clearly expecting me to say something.
‘I’ve already told Max that,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t want me to forgive Millicent.’
‘It’s not what you say, Alex. It’s what you do. He will take his cues from you. There is, I think, a lot of unresolved anger in your little family.’
‘You think I preach forgiveness and practise wrath?’
‘It isn’t what I think that’s important, Alex,’ she said simply. ‘And you are not the only one whose anger is unresolved.’ She flashed Millicent a significant look.
‘What?’ said Millicent. Dr Å simply smiled.
‘Do you think we need therapy?’ I asked her.
‘Again, that really isn’t for me to decide. But I don’t think I need to see Max again. Unless he wants to see me.’
Millicent and I got up to go. Max had not returned. He would be waiting for us outside, I thought. We paid Dr Å, and agreed that we would contact her if any of us felt the need.
Max wasn’t outside. He wasn’t at the bus stop, and he wasn’t in any of the shops near the bus stop.
‘Should we be worried by this?’ said Millicent.
&nbs
p; ‘It’s nine thirty,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he’s been kidnapped.’
‘Yeah, he probably went home,’ she said.
She texted Arla:
Max with you?
Shortly after, Arla replied:
Yep.
We walked home along the bus route, hardly speaking. North London was already unbearably hot, and I could feel the threat of a headache behind my eyes, a gentle throbbing in my left temple.
The neighbour’s front door was open. A woman in a suit was attaching an estate agent’s board to the pillar by the front door. She went inside, leaving the door ajar.
We paused at the front door, looking at each other.
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Knock.’
‘You’d be OK with that?’
‘I’d like to see it again too.’
Millicent opened the door. ‘Hello?’ she called.
The estate agent was shockingly young. But there was a firmness in her handshake, and a confidence in her bearing: all direct eye contact and good posture, bright teeth and immaculate shoes.
‘We live next door,’ said Millicent. ‘Could we take a look around?’
‘Of course,’ said the agent. ‘It’s a beautiful property, really nicely presented. Although really, to achieve the best price, they should have left the furniture in it.’
I wondered if Mr Ashani had sold Bryce’s furniture.
We looked around the living room. Those perfect walls, that perfect wooden floor. There was no sign of damage to the ceiling, and I guessed from the smell that the room had been repainted. No trace here of Millicent’s affair. Except, of course, for that stain on the floor. There was a slight darkening where the sofa had been, where the water that had dripped through the ceiling had gathered.
‘You aren’t thinking of selling, are you?’ said the agent.
‘No,’ said Millicent.
‘We’d be more than happy to advise you if you do. These houses are doing really well at the moment. Especially if you’ve extended into the loft.’
‘We have not extended into the loft,’ said Millicent, a little sharply, I thought. ‘But that’s good to know.’
We hovered at the foot of the stairs. Millicent looked shaky. I put my hand on the crook of her arm. ‘It’s OK,’ I said under my breath. ‘This is OK.’ She nodded, uncertain. I went upstairs; she followed.
There was a plain new bath in the bathroom, and Mr Ashani’s workmen seemed to have tiled over the old tiles and touched up the paintwork. Everything was crisp and white; no trace of blood on porous ceramic, no reminder of Bryce’s violent end. Simple and cost-effective.
I turned and knocked into Millicent, who had been standing behind me. I held her shoulders, turned her slightly as I squeezed past her, left her standing illuminated by the light that streamed in through the window. How far away she seemed.
Let her have this moment.
As I watched, Millicent sat stiffly on the edge of the bathtub. She raised her hand, pinched the bridge of her nose. She doesn’t want me to see her crying, I thought. She doesn’t want me to know that she’s mourning him.
Be the bigger man.
I stood alone in the middle of Bryce’s bedroom. There were four light patches on the dark wooden floor where the legs of the bed had stood. I wondered how much the bed had rocked under Bryce and Millicent; how much of the scraped varnish was down to my wife’s infidelity? Enough for Max to have heard, that much was sure.
I walked across the floor to the window. A board creaked underfoot. I looked out at the garden. Mr Ashani had razed Bryce’s love bower. He had removed the trellises and unmercifully cut the rose plants back to their roots. There was nothing left of the scene of Millicent’s seduction.
‘Hey,’ said Millicent from the doorway.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘You OK?’
Millicent nodded. ‘Pretty much.’
She walked hesitantly towards me across the wooden floor. Again a board creaked.
‘Look,’ I said as Millicent reached the window. ‘It’s all gone.’
‘Huh,’ said Millicent.
I left her looking out of the window and located the loose floorboard with my foot. It was small, no more than ten centimetres wide and fifty long. I crouched down beside the board. When I placed the tip of my shoe on it, I could slide it slightly from right to left. I pulled out my keys.
‘What are you doing, Alex?’ said Millicent.
‘It’s OK,’ I said quietly. ‘She’s downstairs.’
I selected a key that was long and flat, and slid it into the gap at the side. The board lifted easily.
The money was arranged in five rolls, each one fifteen centimetres in diameter. The rolls were held together with thick rubber bands. None of the notes on the outside was bigger than a twenty, yet I was sure this was far more than £70,000.
‘Millicent,’ I said, under my breath. ‘Millicent.’
Then she was at my side, crouching down beside me, looking into the floor space. I could feel her breath on my ear, an uneven staccato.
I kept expecting to hear feet on the stairs.
I looked at Millicent. We can’t, can we?
No, she thought back at me. No, we can not.
We stayed there for a moment, both shaking our heads.
No. No, absolutely not.
There was nothing to see in the second bedroom, nothing in the tiny featureless study. I went down the kitchen. Bryce’s expensive stove was still there, but the room had been stripped of the little soul it had once had.
‘Funny,’ I said to the agent, who was standing in the open back door. ‘Seeing it like this.’
‘People say they want character,’ she said, ‘but what they really want is smooth walls and stripped floors. It’s a slightly depressing lesson, I suppose. These houses were never supposed to be turned into white boxes.’
‘It’s like seeing ours with the life drained from it.’
‘The market’s insane at the moment,’ said the agent. ‘We’ve valued this place twice in the last month. Once for the owner, and once for his lawyers. It’s jumped up twenty thousand in four weeks. Four weeks. And it’ll sell like that. Whoever buys it can move right in.’
I thought of Mr Ashani scheduling a meeting, carefully selecting a time when his tenant was at work, and cheerfully escorting a valuer through the house: the embodiment of moral certainty.
‘We’re incredibly untidy. We’re not very saleable,’ I said.
She tilted her head at me, amused. ‘I’m sure yours is much nicer.’
I smiled at her, and went out into the garden. The lawn had been cut short again. I looked around, positioned myself between the roots of the rose bushes, and stopped there. I thought I could see indented earth where Millicent and Bryce had lain, heard but not seen inside the bower. A flash of self-pity, an imagined moan, and for a moment I could feel Millicent’s betrayal: the presence of Bryce, and the absence of me. I took three deep breaths and pushed the thought aside.
I found Millicent in the kitchen talking to the estate agent.
‘Want to see any more?’ I said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No … It’s … I’m done.’
We thanked the agent, and took her card.
We rested against the low wall in front of our house, neither of us wanting to go in. I was aware again of my wallet, of something not quite right.
‘Scary,’ said Millicent.
‘What?’ I said.
‘That girl. So young, so smart, and so fricking confident.’
‘It’s an immoral profession,’ I said.
‘Is it?’ she said. ‘What do we do that’s so much better than that? What do I do? I’m not exactly a force for good.’
‘You help people.’ I slid an arm around her waist.
‘Do I?’ she said.
‘You get letters,’ I said.
‘Doesn’t everybody?’ she said.
‘Do you know what my mother said? When I told her that we didn’t make each other happ
y?’
‘What?’
‘She said, “see to it that you do”.’
She weighed this for a moment. ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘Not necessarily wrong.’
‘So let’s cut each other some slack. And try to be good to each other. And wait for life to get better, because it will.’
‘So for you it all boils down to that?’ she said.
‘It does.’
‘You’ve got to admit it’s kind of a passive philosophy. Maybe you need to stop just letting things happen to you.’
I kept noticing my wallet: it felt a fraction too thick, a fraction too heavy against my thigh. Something isn’t right.
I trailed my right hand across the top of my thigh. There was something very wrong about the feel of my pocket. I hooked my thumb inside and felt. Smooth, slick almost, jammed in under my wallet. I stood up slightly, slid in my hand. Drew it out again. Alex Mercer Esquire. Copperplate handwriting. A tiny square envelope. I turned it distractedly over and over in my hand.
My unconscious mind understood what my conscious mind did not. I felt the blood pounding in my ears, though I did not yet know why.
‘Not from you, I’m guessing?’ I said at last, holding it up to Millicent.
‘Nope.’
Max, then. Obviously. ‘What does he think he can tell me that’s going to stop me from forgiving you?’
Millicent shook her head. Surely there’s nothing more.
‘You should open it,’ I said, giving her the envelope. ‘I’m the passive one.’
I’m calm, I thought. This is over. This is done. Breathe.
She ran her thumbnail along the gummed edge of the envelope, breaking the seal. Five sheets of paper, each with a pencil drawing on one side: the missing pages from Max’s book. She handed them to me, one by one.
On the first was a radio very like Bryce’s, drawn with great accuracy, as if from life. In red ink Max had drawn a heavy forward-sloping line over the radio. On the next page was an old-fashioned electric fire. Max had coloured the heating element of the fire in red ink. The fire, like the radio, was obliterated by a red slash.
I could taste blood in my mouth now. I knew before I saw it what was coming.
A Line of Blood Page 69