“I said there was a chance of it. But you haven’t told me anything that’s convinced me not to phone them.”
“I…I-” Desperation made Neil’s voice break. He cleared his throat, before blurting out, “If you tell the police about me, I’ll tell them about you and Jones.”
A hint of a crooked smile crept across Harlan’s lips. The cracks in Neil’s mask of timidity were rapidly growing. It wouldn’t take much more pulling and prodding to reveal his true face. “If you knew me, you’d know that wasn’t a threat to me.”
Neil’s eyes dropped apologetically from Harlan’s. “I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it.” He breathed a sigh of shame and despair. “I know you’re only doing what you have to do. But that’s all I’m doing too. You see, the thing is, Susan’s the first, the only woman who’s ever looked twice at me. She means more to me than anything. If she leaves me I…I don’t know what I might do. So I’m asking you, begging you, please don’t tell the police.”
There was no lie Harlan could detect in Neil’s voice. All he heard was a pleading, almost pathetic desire to love and be loved. Again, in spite of himself, he felt a stirring of sympathy. He knew what it was like to lose everything that meant anything. He knew what it was like to feel that life is too painful to live. The thought of inflicting that on someone, anyone, else was a torment to him. Again, he slammed a door in his mind, shutting the emotion out. As much as he wanted to believe Neil, he couldn’t risk doing as he asked. “I’ve got to.”
Neil’s features crumpled like a cardboard box left out in the rain. “Okay, tell the police.” His voice was crushed by hopelessness to a whisper. “But before you do, please will you let me tell Susan myself?”
Harlan considered this a moment, then nodded. He took out Neil’s phone and scrolled through its contact’s list for Susan’s number. “Tell her you want to meet at the hospital.”
“Can’t I just go to her house?”
“No. I can’t risk going to her house.”
“You mean you’re going to be there when I tell her.” When Harlan nodded, Neil continued, “I’m not sure I can do it with you there.”
“You’ve got no other choice.”
Harlan pressed the dial button. When Susan picked up, he put the phone on loud-speaker. Her voice came down the line with urgency. She sounded different to how he’d ever heard before — unguarded, less angry, more fragile. “I’ve been trying to ring you. Why haven’t you been answering your phone?” Before Neil had chance to reply, Susan continued, “I rang Detective Greenwood and he said he didn’t have time to talk. He wouldn’t say why. I got the feeling something’s going on.”
“You get that feeling every time you talk to the police,” said Neil.
“I know, but this time I’m certain of it. Something’s not right. It’s like I keep saying, the police know more than they’re telling us. Oh Christ, Neil, what if…what if they’ve…” Susan’s voice quivered breathlessly as she tried to bring herself to say what she barely dared think.
“Calm down, Susie.” Neil’s voice was soft, reassuring. “Remember what the doctor said to do when you feel like this, take a couple of deep breaths and count to five.” As Susan sucked in her breath, he counted slowly, “One…two…three…four…five… That’s it. Now exhale and say after me, if there were any important developments they’d have told me.”
“If there were any important developments they’d have told me.” Susan sounded calmer, but unconvinced. Harlan wasn’t convinced either. Thinking about how Jim hadn’t answered his phone, he suspected Susan’s instincts were right. Something might well be going on. But what? Was it possible they’d found Ethan alive? No. If that were the case, they’d have told Susan. More likely they’d found a body and were waiting for positive identification. Or perhaps they had a new lead on Ethan’s kidnapper. Whatever it was, it obviously didn’t involve Neil, unless…It occurred to Harlan with a jolt that maybe he was the development. Maybe the police were surveilling them right now. His eyes scoured the street for potential unmarked police vehicles. There were none. He cut off his line of thinking, reminding himself that in all his days of tailing Neil he’d seen nothing to make him suspect the police were doing likewise. Stop speculating on what you don’t know, he told himself sharply. Focus on what you do know. The facts, only the facts.
“There. Now don’t you feel better?” said Neil.
“I suppose so. Thanks, babe. You know, I don’t know what I’d have done without you these past few weeks.”
“You’d have got through it. You’re stronger than you think.”
“No I’m not.”
Neil looked meaningfully at Harlan, who was astonished to find himself questioning whether he was doing the right thing. Neil was Susan’s main support. If he was pulled away from under her, there was no telling how far she might fall. Do you really have to do that to her, after everything else you’ve done? agonised Harlan. Almost the instant he asked the question, some other part of his brain shot back the answer: yes.
“Tell her you need to see her,” Harlan mouthed silently at Neil.
Neil’s Adam’s apple bobbed. His words came hesitatingly. “Listen, Susie, I…we need to talk.”
“I thought that’s what we were doing.”
“No, well, yes we are, but I need to see you.”
“What? Now?”
Wringing his hands, his voice nearly disappearing within the folds of its reluctance, Neil said, “Yes. I’ve…err…got something to say to you.”
“So say it.”
“I can’t. Not over the phone. It’s too important.”
“What’s so important you can’t say it over the phone?” Harlan heard the frown in Susan’s voice. He winced inwardly as, a note of panic creeping back in, she continued, “Is it about Ethan?”
“No,” Neil said quickly. “It’s about me. Look, just meet me outside A amp;E as soon as you can, will you.”
“Can’t you come here?”
“I can’t be off the wards for that long.”
“What about Kane? I can’t just leave him here on his own.”
“So drop him off at one of his friends’ houses.”
“I don’t know. It’s getting a bit late for that and I…Look, can’t you just tell me what you’ve got to tell me?”
Neil sighed. “Will you come or not?”
Susan was silent a moment, then, sighing too, she said, “Okay, but you’d better have something big to tell me.”
Harlan hung up and returned Neil’s phone to him. He turned the car and accelerated back the way they’d come. Neil sat slumped down in his seat, his expression swaying between misery and resignation. When the hospital came into view, he turned to Harlan suddenly. “There must be something I can say to convince you this is unnecessary.”
“Maybe there is,” said Harlan, although there wasn’t.
“I’m taking every extra shift I can to pay off Dawson. I’ve upped my repayments to two hundred a week. He says if I keep it up my debt will be cleared in a year-and-a-half. Then I’ll be able to apply for a mortgage, and me, Susan, Kane and-” Neil caught himself on the verge of saying ‘Ethan’. “We can live together in our own place. And maybe me and Susan can get married and have kids. We can have a real life together. Don’t take that away from us.”
A real life. At these words, an image came into Harlan’s mind of Tom playing with his toys on the hearth-rug while he and Susan chatted and read the Sunday newspapers. A real life. A life that’d been taken from him through no fault or action of his own. Anger suddenly surged up in him. “I’m not taking anything away from you,” he snapped. “You’ve done that to yourself.”
“I only did it to save Susan from-”
Harlan shot Neil a glance that silenced him. As they parked, Neil sagged back down into his seat, his eyes wet and glistening in the bright yellow light of A amp;E’s ambulance bay.
They sat in silence for twenty or so minutes, until a taxi pulled up and Susan got out. “Call her over,” said Harlan. When Neil didn’t make a move to do so, he added, “Call her over, or I will.”
Neil opened his window and shouted to Susan. When she saw Harlan’s car, the lines etched into her features by the weeks of worry deepened. “What’s he doing here?” she demanded to know, the openness that Harlan had heard on the phone replaced by her familiar guardedness.