43

She sat at the kitchen table in the dark.

Alison came in, tying a dressing gown around her waist. She put a light on, a recessed spotlight near the fridge, went to a cupboard and took out two wine glasses then lifted a bottle of Rioja from the worktop. She poured, slid one across to Ellie, then glugged at her own, half of it gone already. She topped it up.

‘Well?’

Ellie examined her. Her skin was crumpled from sleep, but there was more to it than that. The drink was beginning to show on her face, thin red lines under the surface on her cheeks and nose. Her eyelids were puffed and heavy, hanging over her eyes as if trying to keep a secret. Thick lines across her forehead and bags under her eyes from worry and stress. Ellie could see her body relax as the wine began to work, her shoulders slumping, her breathing regular, but she still had her guard up, still ready for combat. This crazy woman had broken into her house in the middle of the night, after all.

‘I want to speak to you,’ Ellie said. ‘One mum to another.’

‘We’re nothing alike,’ Alison said.

‘You think?’

A gulp of wine and a shake of the head. ‘No.’

Ellie took a sip. Just a sip, she wanted to stay in control.

‘You love your kids,’ she said.

‘Of course.’

‘I loved my Logan.’

Alison took another drink.

Ellie stared at her. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

‘What?’

‘How could I love my son the way you love your kids, if I let him kill himself?’

Alison’s head went down for a moment. ‘I wasn’t thinking that.’

‘I don’t blame you,’ Ellie said. ‘Everyone thinks that. I see it in their faces when I walk down the street. Oh sure, there’s pity and sympathy, but underneath is the animal in us, the bad side of humanity. It’s my fault, I did something wrong, that’s why my boy did it.’

Alison took a drink, but a sip this time. ‘I promise, that’s not what I was thinking.’

Ellie sipped too. ‘You’re the exception then.’

Alison lifted the Rioja and filled both glasses. A little splashed out the top of Ellie’s, a dribble down the side of the glass. She thought of Jack lying in the corner of the kitchen, his stomach oozing. She pictured him lying on the ocean floor, blood droplets infinitely diluted by the billions of gallons of water on the planet until there was nothing left of his essence. She thought about Logan’s ashes, dissolved and now part of the sea.

Alison took another big gulp from her glass.

‘Aren’t you going to tell me I’m drinking too much?’ she said.

‘I’m not in a position to have a go at anyone about their coping mechanism.’

‘Who says it’s a coping mechanism?’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘And what do I have to cope with?’

‘The collapse of your family,’ Ellie said.

Alison stared at her across the table. ‘You don’t know anything about my family.’

‘I know that Libby and Sam are back home. And Jack’s gone.’

‘How?’

‘The police came to see me. They said Sam had confirmed I was never in touch with him.’

‘He’s lying.’

Ellie looked Alison in the eye. ‘Of course he is. And of course you can tell. No one knows a boy like his mum.’

‘I should tell the police.’

‘If you send the police to me again, I’ll deny I was here,’ Ellie said. ‘And I’ll come back for you. I have keys.’

‘How do you have keys?’

Ellie waved a hand, as if that was of no importance.

‘I’ll change the locks,’ Alison said.

‘It won’t matter.’ Ellie took a sip of wine. ‘You really shouldn’t get the police involved.’

‘Why not? They need to find my husband.’

Ellie shook her head. ‘No, they don’t. Jack isn’t coming back.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He told me.’

‘When did you see him?’

‘He picked me up after my first police interview. Told me he was leaving.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘You know why.’

Alison drained her wine. She poured the last of the bottle into her glass, her hand trembling.

‘Not this again,’ she said. ‘Jack never did anything to Libby.’

Ellie grabbed Alison’s hand and pulled it towards her. Alison jumped at the sudden movement, her chair scuffing the floor.

‘You knew what he was doing,’ Ellie said.

‘I didn’t.’

Ellie leaned across the table and touched Alison’s temple. ‘Maybe not up here.’ She moved her finger to the woman’s chest. ‘But you knew it in here.’

Alison shook her head as tears came to her eyes. She lowered her face and her shoulders shook. Ellie was still gripping her hand in her fingers, like a buzzard with its prey.

‘Why do you think Sam stabbed him?’ Ellie said.

Alison was snivelling now, trying to pull her hand away.

‘My boy would never do that,’ she said.

‘Look at me.’ Ellie yanked Alison’s arm. Alison’s head came up.

‘Sam was trying to protect his sister. Your daughter. Do you understand? He’s a good boy, the son you’ve raised. He was protecting his family from harm.’

Alison’s tears landed on the table. ‘No, someone broke in.’

Ellie dropped Alison’s hand then slammed her fist down.

‘No one broke in, you know that. It was Sam. Because of what Jack was doing to Libby.’

Alison covered her face with her hands as she sobbed, elbows skidding on the table, her body shaking.

‘I swear I didn’t know . . . I couldn’t . . . how could he . . . ?’

Ellie watched her. She tried to put herself in Alison’s position. It was something the counsellor had said about empathy, trying to imagine what life was like for someone else. But that was useless in Ellie’s case, how could you possibly put yourself inside the head of someone suicidal? How could you empathise with that? And yet she did. Ironically, the very thing Logan had done put her in the same mindset. She wanted to die, she had wanted to die every day since he killed himself. She had all the empathy in the world. If she’d had any kind of religious belief she would’ve done it by now. If she had even the slightest feeling in her heart that she would see him again in some kind of afterlife, she would run over and grab a knife from the worktop right now and plunge it into her belly as deep as she could, right up to the handle, and she would feel good about it. But the truth was, she knew she would never see him again. She knew he wasn’t waiting for her with the angels, in a better place, all the clichés that get trotted out when someone young dies. They just die, end of story. They just create an unimaginably huge hole in the lives of everyone they left behind. That was the reality, and it was only once you embraced that and owned it that you had any chance of carrying on.

Alison was still crying, her sobs racking her body. She knew about what her husband had done, had admitted it to herself for the first time. What must that be like? A betrayal, of course, and massive guilt. Ellie understood both those things so well.

She couldn’t help herself from speaking. ‘How could you not do anything?’

Alison looked up, her face a crumpled mess. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘You did know, and you did nothing.’

Alison shook her head.

‘Libby tried to tell you,’ Ellie said. ‘She told me. She said you kept avoiding it.’

‘I don’t know about that. No . . .’

Ellie felt her anger rise. ‘Yes.’

She landed a fist on the table that made Alison jump. She looked scared. She should. Ellie thought about those knives in the block, a few feet away. She breathed, tried to control her body. Her fist ached.

‘I did something about it,’ Ellie said.

Alison narrowed her eyes. ‘What did you do?’

‘I made Jack go away.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just that. I made your husband go away.’

‘How?’

Ellie laid her hands in front of her, held Alison’s gaze. ‘I persuaded him. I can be very persuasive when I need to be. I told him I would take Libby to the police. I said I had evidence. He understood it was over.’