Now she was quite simply exhausted. A night without sleep. Twenty-four hours without food. Grief and fear an almost impossible double burden. Lucas had to be her focus now. She knew that. He had none of the mental and emotional resources to fall back on that she had. And, God knows, she had little enough of either herself.
The officer stationed in the street outside the apartment was long gone, and she dragged herself wearily up the stairs, Lucas trotting at her side, his hand still clutching hers. He had been braver than she could possibly have believed. A day without tears. Few words, and a stoic smile for all the fussing neighbours.
She paused for a moment with her hand on the door handle, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This was their nest. How empty would it be without the man who had helped her build it? The first of many trials that lay ahead.
As soon as she let herself in she knew there was someone in the apartment. Fear and shock stung the skin of her face and she quickly insinuated herself between Lucas and the living room as she stepped out of the hall to confront whoever might be there.
The glass door to the balcony had been slid aside, and Mackenzie stood with his back to the rail, leaning against it and tapping on the screen of his mobile phone. He looked up, startled, as he heard her come in, and was immediately embarrassed, a physical intruder on her grief.
‘Who the hell let you in?’ she barked.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘There’s an officer posted downstairs. Did he not tell you?’
‘There was no one there when I got here.’
‘Oh.’ He scratched his head. ‘I don’t know why they thought they needed one in the first place.’ He slipped his phone back in his pocket. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘How could you let that bastard get away with Ana?’
Mackenzie reddened. Embarrassment and now guilt. ‘I didn’t...’ But there were no excuses. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.
‘Yes. So am I. Sorry I ever did a colleague a favour. Sorry I ever went to that breakin at La Paloma. Sorry I ever had to set eyes on you.’
Mackenzie lowered his head and wished that the ground would swallow him up. When eventually he raised his eyes again, she was standing in the living room with hers closed. Lucas stood at her side still clutching her hand, gazing at him with unglazed misery, his lower lip quivering. But still he held back his tears.
Finally Cristina opened her eyes and drew a deep trembling breath. ‘I’m sorry. None of this is your fault.’ She paused. ‘What are you doing here?’
He didn’t think that this was the moment to discuss the phone message, or the CCTV footage. And again heard Susan’s silent commendation for his uncommon discretion. He said, ‘I didn’t think it would be right for me to go to the funeral. I hardly knew...’ Now he felt Susan’s metaphorical pinch on the arm.
But Cristina had turned her attentions to Lucas. ‘Shall I put on the TV?’
The boy shrugged, which she took as assent, and crossed the room to turn it on. There was an animated film playing, and cartoon voices filled the room to displace the awful silence. But Lucas wasn’t interested. He disentangled his hand from his mother’s, went out to the hall and into the room with his name on it. He shut the door behind him.
Cristina stood for a moment. Helpless. Hopeless. Wondering what to do or say now. She glanced at the phone. All night she had wanted to hear the telephone message she had allegedly left. Now she couldn’t bear to listen to it. Maybe tomorrow...
Mackenzie said, ‘I should go.’
And suddenly she didn’t want him to. ‘Are you hungry?’
He had not thought about it, but hadn’t eaten all day. ‘I suppose I am.’
‘They’ve been trying to make me eat for hours and I just haven’t felt like it. But I do now. And Lucas will need something.’ She tipped her head towards the kitchen. ‘I’ll see what I can rustle up.’ And she went through to rattle pans and forage in the fridge.
Left on his own now, Mackenzie had no idea what to do. He pushed off from the railing and went into the living room, where he began gathering the toys and items of clothing that lay on chairs or scattered across the floor, and piled them on to the table. He found the remote for the TV and turned down the volume. Which is when he heard the faint sound of sobbing from Lucas’s room. He glanced towards the kitchen where Cristina was noisily busying herself to avoid thinking, and thought that he should probably do something. He would, if Lucas had been one of his.
He went out into the hall and knocked softly on the door. The sobbing stopped almost at once. He knocked again, and a tiny voice told him to come in.
Lucas was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands folded in his lap, tears shining on his cheeks. He glanced at Mackenzie then away again. Machismo dictated that Spanish boys didn’t cry. Mackenzie went and sat on the bed beside him. What to say? He had never really known how to comfort his own children in distress. Susan had been good at that. Finally he said, ‘My father committed suicide.’
Lucas brought his head sharply round to stare up at Mackenzie with big dark curious eyes. Mackenzie had no idea why he’d said it. It was something he had not confided in anyone. Not even Susan. Preferring to perpetuate the myth he had grown up with that his father had died a hero.
‘He was a police officer. Tried to rescue a woman being held hostage, but only got her killed. He couldn’t live with that and hanged himself.’ There was an extraordinary sense of relief in saying it aloud for the first time in his life.
Lucas blinked at him. ‘What age were you?’
‘Oh, I was just two. I didn’t know anything about it at the time. I didn’t learn about it until later.’
‘So it was just you and your mum?’
‘Well, no. They took me away from my mother. I was brought up by my aunt and uncle.’
‘Like Paco and Nuri?’
‘Yes. But no one’s going to take you away from your mum. She’ll always be here for you.’ He was scared now that he had frightened the boy and looked around the room for something to change the subject. His eyes lit on Lucas’s school jotter on the desk below the window. ‘Still having trouble with your maths?’
Lucas nodded. And then a sad little smile. ‘Dad was hopeless at it, too. Maybe I take after him.’
Mackenzie reached for the jotter and opened it up. ‘What are they teaching you?’
‘Percentages.’
Mackenzie looked at him in surprise. ‘So what’s difficult about that?’
‘You’re kidding, right? I mean, it’s easy if its 10, or 100...’
Mackenzie said, ‘But if they ask you what is 17.5 per cent of some number that’s not a hundred, and you don’t have a calculator your brain freezes. Is that what happens?’
Lucas nodded. ‘Yeah. Freezes is right. I just can’t think.’
Mackenzie smiled. ‘I’ll teach you a little trick, then. It’ll unfreeze your brain and your teacher will think you’re a genius.’
Lucas eyed him with naked scepticism. ‘How?’
‘Well, like you said, it’s easy to multiply or divide by 10 or 100. But if you were asked to find 17.5 per cent of say, 416, that would seem really hard.’
‘Yeah, it would.’
‘Because 17.5 is a really unfriendly number, right?’
Lucas nodded enthusiastic agreement.
‘But any unfriendly number is just made up of friendly numbers, numbers that are easy for you to work with. So all you have to do is find friendly numbers that add or subtract to make 17.5. For example 10 plus 5 plus 2.5 make 17.5, right?’