“I don’t know, you might not want to,” she said. “But it’s crazy. I mean, you renting that place next door and us with all this space. I just wanted you to know.” She got up, suddenly more businesslike, nervous. “If you wanted to,” she said, taking their glasses over to the sink, “you could rent here instead.” She turned and leant against the counter, looking back at him. “The top floor. There’s a study, a bedroom.”
Michael stood and went over to her. “Thank you,” he said, taking her by both shoulders. She looked vulnerable, exposed. “That’s such a kind offer. But…”
She broke away from him, turning to the sink and running a tap to wash the glasses. “Christ, Michael,” she said, sounding cross. “I didn’t mean like that. I just thought it would make sense, that’s all.”
“I know,” he said. “And I mean it. It is a kind offer. And good to know, too. Really, thank you.”
“Well, it’s there if you want it. That’s all.” As she took off her watch, Samantha looked at its face. “Jesus,” she said. “Is that the time?”
Michael looked at his own. It was nearly two o’clock. “Sign of a good night, I guess,” he said.
Samantha turned from the sink to face him again. She was frowning, as if trying to work out how they’d got here, to this late hour, this position. Michael could see she was coming down from the night’s excitement. A brief cloud of longing passed through her expression. For what? he wondered. For before all this? For her previous life, however imperfect, before she’d had to create this one in the wake of her daughter’s death?
“I should get to bed,” she said eventually, crossing the kitchen to turn off the lamps in the conservatory. “Rachel’s got a hockey match tomorrow. Christ, no, today. All the way over in bloody Ealing.”
“Well,” Michael said, picking his jacket off the back of a chair. “Congratulations again. You did really well tonight.”
“Thanks,” Samantha said, looking out at the darkness beyond the glass. When she turned back to him, her expression had softened. “And for all your help, too,” she said, smiling. “Really. Thank you, Michael.”
―
As Michael got undressed for bed that night, he knew he had to tell Samantha. At some point, she would have to know. It couldn’t be avoided. For her as well as for him. Walking down her hallway to the front door, after her offer, passing Lucy’s portrait of him, it had almost crushed Michael completely. As if he’d been walking, with every step, into a deeper and deeper depth. Whatever the damage it would do, to the opening of her new life, to his, to Rachel, he had to tell Samantha the truth. If he didn’t, his knowledge of those minutes he’d spent in her house before Lucy died would continue to suck the goodness from every second they spent together.
But then, once she knew, there would be no more seconds together. This he also had to acknowledge. Another plank of Samantha’s life would have been swept from under her. Once the true minutes of that Saturday afternoon were exposed, she’d never want to see him again. He would have perverted the course of justice. She would tell the police. He would have to leave. But still, as he got into bed, the lamplight from the Heath thrown faint against the walls of his bedroom, Michael knew it was only a matter of time. He couldn’t keep those minutes to himself much longer. He had to cut them out, like a tumour, and the only way to do that was in their telling.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE VIDEOCASSETTE WAS on a high shelf in the groundsman’s office, wedged with a pile of others between a stack of Top Gear magazines and a tool box filled with screws, nuts, and bolts. A manual for a power drill was resting on top of it. With all the other boxes and tools in the room it was unlikely Josh would have found it so easily, had it not been for a date on its spine written in black marker. 07/06/08. Seeing those numbers, in that order, was like hearing his name rise clear above the hum of a bar for Josh, or seeing your child’s face in a crowded station. Even among the clutter of that small office, it was a date that sang out to him. A date he’d never forget, branded as it was within him as the date of Lucy’s death. The date on which, for all of them, everything had changed.
Josh had been working with the Heath conservation and maintenance team since the start of the year. There were usually just three of them, sometimes more on the bigger jobs, coasting their pickup along the Heath’s paths, its hazard lights blinking and its wire cage filled with branches, off-cuts and sacks of leaves. When he could, Josh started as early as possible, and it was often he who’d unlock their storage shed, or who could be seen, an hour before the shift, drinking a coffee on one of the benches on Parliament Hill. The work had opened him up. He’d come to learn the touch of different winds and breezes, to see oncoming rain in a texture of light. Standing from his bench to start his day, Josh would glance over at the distant city towers as he dropped his empty coffee cup into a bin and feel like he’d escaped. As if he were a survivor who’d been thrown a lifeline on which he was only just now gaining a firmer grip.
During his working week on the Heath, Josh was able to observe his family from afar. And then again at closer quarters when he saw them on the weekends. He’d become more comfortable with the silences he shared with Rachel, and calmer, too, about the woman he was witnessing Samantha become. But hanging over it all was still the question of Michael. The question of who he was and of what he wanted; of the soil on the landing and of where he’d been during those few minutes on the Seventh of June 2008.
More than once Josh had considered telling Samantha the truth, confessing to her that he hadn’t been in the house when Lucy fell. But if he ever hoped to get her and his daughter back, then he knew this was impossible. And, he told himself, that person had been another Josh, anyway, another man, and he couldn’t let him ruin the chances of who he was now, of who he wanted to become.
But Josh couldn’t let Michael ruin his chances either. As long as he was close to Samantha and Rachel, as long as he was there, living next to them, Josh knew there’d never be space to make them his again, and him theirs. Not while there was still so much he didn’t know about Michael and what had happened that day. He’d told Slater he’d been at his fencing lesson. That’s what she’d told Josh when she’d talked him through all his neighbours’ statements. At the time he’d listened with only his own self-interest in mind. Had any of them seen him leave the house? Had any of them seen him return? But none, according to Slater, had. So Josh just felt relief when Michael’s statement had been added to those of the others on the street.
But now he felt only suspicion. How did Slater know Michael was at his lesson when Lucy fell? Had she checked with his instructor? Had he been seen walking there across the Heath? Josh had wanted to find the card she’d left him and call her and ask her. But he knew he couldn’t. The way she’d questioned him, the manner in which they’d all treated him. He knew she suspected him, sensed his lies at the edges of his story. So he couldn’t provoke her to look any closer than she already had.
No, if Josh wanted to corroborate Michael’s story, then he would have to do so himself. If it was true, then he could let go of his suspicion. But if it was not, then — then he didn’t know what he would do. But at least he would know. At least he’d be able to extinguish the agonies of his uncertainty, defuse some of the unforgiving questions that still haunted him about what had happened to his daughter.