The only noise was the clank of the rigging against the mast, a coded signal beamed into the atmosphere, a proclamation of guilt to the world, like the conspiracy of Ben’s mobile-phone signals, poisoning the minds of locals.

‘I don’t think he would’ve told anyone he was coming here,’ Ellie said. ‘He didn’t want the police involved, for obvious reasons.’

‘So what?’

‘So if no one knows he was here, there’s nothing linking us to him.’

Ben snorted in disbelief. ‘Except the fact he’s lying dead in a pool of his own fucking blood in our boat.’

‘We can clear this up,’ Ellie said. ‘Make it go away.’

‘No chance,’ Ben said. ‘It’s insane.’

‘What’s the alternative?’ Ellie held a hand out to him. ‘We all get done for murder. Libby and Sam would be guilty of killing their own father. God knows what would happen to them. They’ve already suffered enough, I’m not putting them through that.’

Ben nodded towards the cabin door. ‘What about those two?’

Ellie followed his look. ‘What about them?’

‘If we try to cover this up, they would have to go along with it.’

Ellie shook her head. ‘I know.’

Ben stared at the corpse. ‘Self-defence or not, they’ve contributed to the death of their own dad. That’s a lot to handle. Didn’t you find Sam on the bridge?’ He waved his hand around the room. ‘How will he cope with this? And the girl is just a kid.’

‘Maybe we should ask them,’ Ellie said.

A long silence.

‘OK,’ Ben said.

He stepped carefully around the body and up the stairs, Ellie behind him.

Sam and Libby were sitting at the stern, arms around each other, looking out to sea. Gulls dive-bombed the breakwater, splashing at the surface with their beaks.

Ben stood over them as Ellie crouched down to eye level.

‘This is Ben, my husband. We have a decision to make.’

Her voice was level. Ben had always been the calm one with Logan. Ellie used to fly off the handle, shouting upstairs to the boy, but she never heard Ben’s voice raised in anger. Now it was her turn to be calm.

‘What decision?’ Sam said.

‘We need to work out what to do,’ Ellie said.

Libby’s eyes were wide with panic, her breathing erratic. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We have two choices. Either we go to the police and tell them everything, or Ben and I make this go away, but you two would have to play along. This never happened, you were never here, you haven’t seen your dad since the morning he was stabbed at your home.’

Libby scratched at the back of her hand, shot scared glances at her brother. ‘We can’t go to the police,’ she said. ‘We just can’t.’

Ellie put a hand on top of hers. ‘It wouldn’t be easy, but if we told them the truth, all of it, it might be OK.’

Sam shook his head. ‘You don’t believe that.’

Ben looked at Sam. ‘There’s a lot of uncertainty here. It would be rough, and we’d all get in trouble, but at least we’d be telling the truth.’

Their four faces were close now, huddling like conspiring witches.

Libby shook her head, swallowed. ‘No way.’

‘What’s the alternative?’ Sam said.

Ellie looked at him. ‘Ben and I can get rid of the body.’

‘How?’

‘We just will,’ Ellie said, her voice flat. ‘But that’s not the hard bit. The hard bit will be staying quiet about it. Forever. You can never tell anyone what happened here. Especially your mum. We’d need to come up with a story and you’d need to stick to it. That won’t be easy.’

Sam looked at his sister. ‘Lib?’

Libby stared at the cabin hatch. She looked like a fox caught in a snare, ready to gnaw her own leg off. She glanced at her brother, then out to sea. She chewed on her lip and rubbed at her wrist.

‘I can’t go to the police,’ she said.

Sam touched her shoulder and nodded at Ellie.

Ellie stood up. ‘OK.’

Ben took her shoulder and led her away. ‘So that’s it? We’re just going to do this fucked-up thing on the say-so of a frightened girl?’

Ellie stopped and put a hand on his arm. ‘We don’t have any choice. I said I would protect them and I meant it. I will not put them through anything more. This is my second chance and I’m taking it. And I need you, Ben, I can’t do this alone.’

Ben stared at her for a long time, then finally sighed. He got his car key out of his pocket and handed it to her. ‘It’s parked round the back of the boat sheds. Take them to our place, get them settled, then come back.’ He turned to Sam and Libby, who were getting up. ‘Stay at our house until we come and get you.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Sam said.

Ben looked around the boat for an answer.

‘I’m going to work out what to do next,’ he said.

33

Having teenagers in the back of the car, her hands on the steering wheel, made Ellie remember times with Logan, giving him lifts to McDonald’s to meet his mates, to school on rainy days, home from football, the car filling up with the earthy stink of mud and grass.

Ellie’s fingers trembled on the gearstick as she shifted up, leaving the marina and turning left. Under the bridge once more, always back and forth under the damn bridge. She remembered when Logan was little, she and Ben read The Three Billy Goats Gruff to him at bedtime and it became a favourite. Later they got a CD with the story on it. The troll lived under the bridge, trolls always lived under bridges in fairy tales, and that became a running joke. One time with Logan still in a car seat, not yet promoted to a booster, so he must’ve been five or so, they drove under the bridge to the marina to go and meet Daddy from work, and Logan wondered aloud about trolls living under the Forth Road Bridge. Ellie laughed and played along, the in-joke between them escalating every time they passed the same spot. They set up ‘trollwatch’, keeping eyes peeled, Logan in the back making the shape of binoculars round his eyes, peering at the fenced-off area around the bridge legs, the tangle of wire, the slabs of concrete, the diggers and other works vehicles that were always parked there doing nothing. Maybe it was a troll den, a lair where a bunch of hairy, warty creatures slept and ate and farted and picked their ugly noses, feasting on goats and little children.

Ellie thought about Sam and Libby. Did they have in-jokes like that in their family? A million secrets, meaningless stuff, between Libby and Sam, Alison and Jack. Were they a happy family, despite it all, despite what Jack had done? What Ellie, Sam and Libby had done today had destroyed that family forever, no chance of redemption, cursed now, a lie that the kids would have to tell their mum forever. Ellie wondered how they’d cope.

They were already home. She pulled into the drive, felt the gravel crunch under the wheels, then stopped and switched the engine off. She ushered Sam and Libby out the car, opened the front door and pushed them inside.

Libby pulled her cap off and flapped at her mussed-up hair. Sam removed his cap too, ran a hand through his hair and looked around. Ellie wondered how much he remembered from his first visit here, that morning. She remembered him half-naked in Logan’s room and felt ashamed. She’d led them to this, hadn’t protected them like she promised that first day.

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ she said, heading for the kitchen. She nodded at the living room. ‘Make yourselves at home.’

This was ridiculous, no amount of hot tea could make things normal.

Ellie placed her forehead against a kitchen cupboard, one hand on the kettle. She weighed it in her hands, it was half full already, so she switched it on. She placed both hands on the metal surface of the kettle, felt the heat rise quickly, kept her hands there until she couldn’t stand the pain any more.

She looked at her hands. Dried blood caked in the lines on her palm, the joints of her fingers. Burn marks beneath her thumbs from the kill cord, the cut from the scissors across the flesh. She went to the sink and squirted washing-up liquid, rubbed hard, rinsed them off, repeated until they were clean, revelling in the stinging, throbbing pain.