‘Like what?’

‘Normal police crap. Backhanders from criminals, payoffs from drug dealers, a protection racket. I don’t know. Could be anything. Word is he has a big gambling problem. Some are saying he’s had affairs, so it could be tied up with that.’

Ellie let out a breath. ‘The internet is such a scurrilous bastard.’

Ben smiled. ‘You get a lot of bullshit, but that’s the price you pay for the truth to come out as well.’

Ellie looked at him. ‘You believe that, don’t you?’

He turned to her. ‘Of course.’

She put out a hand and touched the rough stubble of his cheek. So different from Logan’s soft skin, from Sam’s. She tried to remember what Ben’s skin had felt like the first time she touched it. She sometimes thought the two of them were aliens inhabiting these worn out bodies they had become. In just a blink of time they’d gone from tight-skinned, giggling sex maniacs to saggy, toughened bags of bones.

Ben looked confused at her touch, as if the very idea of his wife stroking his cheek was weird. She pulled his head towards her and kissed him on the mouth, thinking how different it was from the touch of Sam’s lips earlier. This was the man she loved, she still loved him, they just had to find a way back to that.

She kept kissing him, felt his surprise as her tongue explored his mouth. This is what kids did, not a couple in their forties eroded by life. She pulled him close, stroked her hands along his arms and chest. This was her man, still. She felt his hand on her breast and leaned into it. She reached inside the duvet and pushed against his body, rubbed at the crotch of his shorts and felt him harden. She pushed the laptop to the side and wriggled out her jeans and pants, then pulled the covers off and sat on top of him. She was already wet and he slid in. Years of practice, knowing exactly which movements got them there quickest. She moved up and down as he whispered under his breath, looking up at her. She liked that, the look in his eyes, still hungry for her after all these years. She closed her eyes and focussed on the feeling in her groin, but Sam’s face appeared in her mind, his skinny cheekbones, his lithe body as he got changed earlier in Logan’s room. She opened her eyes again, felt Ben push into her and come inside her, then felt a swell through her own body, spreading through her as she ground her pelvis against his, her legs trembling as she slumped forward and hugged Ben, running her hands through his hair, reminding herself all the time that this was her husband, this was the man she’d promised to love and honour forever.

‘It’s been a while,’ he whispered in her ear, breathless.

‘Shhh.’

‘That’s the first time since . . .’

She kissed him. She didn’t want him to end that sentence.

14

Back at the Binks. She cradled a black coffee in her hands, shoulders hunched against the breeze. The sun was crawling into the sky behind the rail bridge, columns of light stretching upriver. Traffic was still light on the road bridge but the noise was there all the same, the never-ending rush of it.

She’d dreamed of Logan again. She knew dreams meant nothing, and she hated hearing other people talk about their own, people’s subconscious activities were never as profound as they thought they were. In fact, the subconscious was a pretty blunt instrument. So she dreamed of Logan, big deal, what did that tell you? That she was heartbroken about her dead son. How did that help her in everyday life?

She looked down at her bare feet. She’d come out here to put her feet in the water, wanted to feel her body intermingle with it, feel the force of the waves, the tidal power, the immense connectivity of it all.

She climbed down to the beach, careful not to spill her coffee. Tensed her toes against the tiny stones and shells under her feet. She walked into the water lapping at the shore, held her breath for a moment against the cold. Wiggled her ankles and kicked a stone at the water’s edge. A few more steps, nothing crazy, just up to her pyjama shorts. But as she moved deeper into the water she felt the urge to throw her coffee mug away and dive under the surface. She poured the coffee into the sea, watched the brown liquid swirl and disappear as it was diluted. Then she dropped the mug and watched it weave its way to the bottom then nestle in the sand.

She looked out over the Forth to North Queensferry. People over there just waking up, getting ready for work, hurrying the kids along so they weren’t late for school. The stuff of life.

She stretched her arms in front of her, put her hands together and dived into the wash, kicking with her legs, pushing the water away with every stroke of her hands, feeling the tension and stretch of the muscles in her arms and legs. The cold hammered at her chest, tried to push the air from her lungs with the shock, but she resisted. A few strokes underwater, shoulder blades flexing, breath held, then she surfaced, already some distance from the shore.

A line from a song came into her head, like it did every time she swam in the firth. That band Logan liked, Frightened Rabbit, Scottish guys singing in their own accents. That had been unthinkable when she was a teenager, there were no Scottish voices in rock music. The line was ‘swim until you can’t see land’. A lovely idea. Impossible here, though, surrounded on both sides, you’d have to go a dozen miles out into open sea. Suicidal.

She breathed deeply and ducked under the surface. A few long strokes, enjoying the purity of the movement, at one with the ocean and the currents, the seals and the crabs, gliding through this world as if she belonged.

She came up for air. Treaded water as she looked back to shore.

She was not suicidal, not today. Today she had things to do, people to help.

She took a mouthful of seawater and swallowed, the saltiness burning her throat, and imagined grains of Logan’s ashes slipping silently through her stomach lining into her bloodstream.

She looked at her house, small from here, like something made of Lego. She turned to the road bridge. The same feeling. She imagined a giant child building all this in their playroom, the town, the bridge, the boats in the marina, all of it. A three-year-old god in charge of their lives. But she knew that wasn’t true. No fate, no destiny. We were all in charge of our own lives, for better or worse.

She swam back to shore.

*

Ellie checked her watch as she stepped on to the bridge. Still only quarter past eight. Ben wouldn’t surface for a couple of hours yet, he always stayed up into the small hours with his little gang of internet-conspiracy buddies.

She’d gone back to the house to strip, towel off and change, throwing her sodden jammies in the machine. She thought about Sam’s clothes, the jeans she’d washed but then dumped in the sea along with the bloodstained top and hoodie. The forensic trails that we left behind all the time, a frightening concept, no chance of living on earth without trace thanks to modern science. Was it so hard to just disappear? The trick was to have no one looking for you, at least not in the right place, then it was easy.

The rumble of trucks and vans as they thudded past was like a hug to her. The shudder of the walkway under her feet was as comforting as old slippers. She strode along the bridge, immersed in the noise, revelling in the anonymity, the wind flicking at her hair. She walked past the first security camera and wondered about the footage from yesterday. Did they have anything of Sam and her? Had anyone in the control room put together the boy on the bridge and the missing boy from the police officer’s house? The trick was to have no one looking for you, that’s how you disappear.

She was close to the middle of the bridge now. She’d walked along the east side, the same as yesterday, the same as every day, the side Logan jumped from. That meant she couldn’t see the marina from here, over to the west. She presumed Sam was still asleep, two of those pills were usually good for twelve hours, she knew from experience.