Now he knew why it seemed familiar, this rough-and-ready space, so stark and practical, and so neglected: it was like all the places he had rented when he first left home, places he had shared with strangers, or else lived in by himself.
“I love my wife and daughter most,” he said.
He was silent for a moment, his fingers still touching the damaged door-frame.
“My daughter,” he said.
“Well,” she said, and her voice was rasping and dismissive, “I suppose you got there in the end.”
33
Three months ago, in August, there had been a night when he had woken suddenly. Not sure what had disturbed him — a noise? a dream? — he went to the bedroom window and looked out. Darkness filled the garden. To his right was the cornfield, its contours barely visible. He could see how it sloped upwards from right to left, though, and how it curved down again as it approached the woods. How, like a wave, it gathered itself and then appeared to break. But why had he woken? As he peered out into the field, something glinted, and he knew at once that Emma was there. She must have turned her head, the lenses of her glasses catching what little light there was. She had wandered out of her bedroom before, many times, but she’d never left the house. They were always careful to lock up at night. This time they must have forgotten, or else she had managed to open one of the doors herself — and yet she wasn’t usually capable of such initiative. Should he call out? No, that might startle her. He should go down, though — and quickly. If she went beyond the confines of the field, it could be dangerous. In the woods, he would never find her — and then there was the road. It was very straight, and people always drove too fast. He turned from the window.
“Who’s that?” Sue called out from the bed.
“It’s only me, love,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”
He hurried out of the room and down the stairs, stopping by the back door to pull on a pair of wellingtons. At the side of the house, he paused again. The night smelt musty, thrilling. Cow parsley, fox fur. The breath of owls.
Pushing through the long grass at the far edge of the track, he stumbled into the remnants of a wire fence. His T-shirt snagged on a post as he climbed over. He freed it and then stood still. There she was, about fifty yards away, the dark shape of her head and shoulders showing above the corn.
He began to walk through the field. “Emma?”
She swung round, her head at an angle. She seemed curious, or even sceptical, as if he were a second-rate magician and she was intent on seeing through his tricks.
“Daddy,” she said, “what are you doing?” She sounded surprised, but also disapproving.
He came to a halt a few feet from her. At times she appeared so sure of herself that she completely wrongfooted him. He had imagined that she might feel disorientated, even scared, and that he would lead her back to the safe haven of her bedroom. As often happened, though, she saw things differently. In her eyes, he was the hopeless one, the one who was out of place. He was the one who needed help.
“I came to look for you.” He didn’t sound very convincing, even to himself. He had already taken on the character she’d given him.
She extended an arm in front of her and drew it in a slow, majestic semicircle through the air. “Night,” she said, as if she owned it. As if, without her to tell him, he might not have known what it was called.
“It’s very late,” he said. “You should be asleep.”
She muttered a few rebellious words, which he didn’t quite make out, then steered a look towards the woods, her jaw jutting and determined, like an explorer preparing to strike out into uncharted territory. Billy glanced back at the house, but there was no sign of Sue. He would have to do this alone.
“Where’s Parsons?” Emma said.
“He’s at home in bed,” Billy said, “like everybody else.”
He looked away in case she noticed he was grinning. He was just thankful that she was there, that she was all right, that she was herself — so indisputably, uniquely, herself. What if he hadn’t woken? Who knows where she might have ended up? She didn’t realise that bad things could happen. She had no fear. He had to feel it for her. In the last days of 1999, when he climbed up on to that deserted moor, he had imagined a man leading a boy along a shallow gully. He had been able to see it all, almost as if it were happening in front of him — two figures walking away, hand in hand, one in a dark coat, the other in shorts — and in that moment he had thought of Emma and how vulnerable she was. She was even more trusting. She knew even less. She wouldn’t have had the first idea. That was what he had thought, and then he’d felt awful, because Emma was still alive…
After several failed attempts, he finally managed to lure her back into the house with the promise of a midnight feast. Once she had devoured her biscuits and chocolate milk, he tucked her in and kissed her on the forehead. She had to go to sleep, he told her. He would see her in the morning.
“Sing,” she said.
Though tired, his grin returned. Not for nothing did he call her “Captain”—or even, sometimes, “Chief Inspector.”
He sang a few numbers from musicals to start with—Mary Poppins and West Side Story—and he followed those with a medley of his all-time favourites, including “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “Waterloo Sunset,” “Massachusetts” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” He even sang songs he didn’t know he knew, songs they used to play in tacky Greek and Spanish discos when he was young: “Una Paloma Blanca,” “Sweet Caroline” and “Lady in Red.” He went on singing long after Emma had fallen asleep. He was singing because he was worried. He was singing because he was relieved. He sang until his voice hurt, then he kissed Emma one last time and crept back across the landing. As he pulled off his wellingtons, he noticed that Sue was awake. He could see a glint on the pillow where her eyes were.
“You’re a dark horse,” she said.
His heart beat high in his throat. Had he let something slip? What had she found out?
“All these years we’ve been together,” she said, “and you never told me you liked Neil Diamond.”
She could still make him laugh, even at half-three in the morning.
“I don’t like Neil Diamond actually,” he said as he slid beneath the duvet.
“Liar,” she said.
He held on to that fragment of conversation. He would go back over it when he was parked down by the river, setting it against all their anxieties and disagreements, wanting it to weigh more.
You’re a dark horse, he would say to himself as he turned the car around and started for home.
Or, Liar.
34
Venetia, though. Nothing had prepared him for the effect that she would have on him. Even her name. It was unlikely, expensive — the sort of name one of Raymond’s girlfriends might have. Born to a Scottish father and an Indian mother, she had spent most of her childhood in Glasgow, only moving to Liverpool when she was fourteen, and her voice had something of both cities in it, with the lilt or rhythm of Bombay underneath. Three ports, one voice. Was it the sound of her that he fell in love with? Perhaps. But the sight of her, on Lacey Street, was enough to bring him to a standstill. For a few seconds, he forgot to breathe. Her hair so black and shiny that he could almost see himself in it. Her eyes as well. Her skin was dark too, but also lemony, somehow, as if yellow had been overlaid with a patina of translucent black.