The scar was a thin line that ran round the base of my throat from my voice box to just below my right ear, crossed by fading stitch lines like something from a horror flick. Too uneven to be surgical, too precise to be accidental, it looked like what it was. An attempt to murder me that had very nearly succeeded.
Simone nodded, just a single jerk of her head, still looking embarrassed. ‘And she wants to know if it hurts,” she said, speaking like her lips were numb.
I shook my head. “Not really,” I said. “It happened a long time ago.” Not quite two years, but to Ella that would be half a lifetime.
Ella whispered again. Simone’s discomfort deepened. Ella tugged insistently She was hiding her face behind her hair now, peeping out at me from underneath it.
“She wants to know if she can kiss it better,” Simone said, flushing. There was a pleading message in her eyes, but I couldn’t tell if she was desperate for me to refuse or comply.
Ella snuck another coy glance through her lashes and suddenly I found myself saying, “Of course she can,” in a disconnected voice I didn’t entirely recognize.
The right choice, obviously. Simone’s answering look was one of relief. She half picked Ella up so she could lean up towards me across her mother’s lap.
I found my feet moving me forwards. I bent and dragged the collar down and felt the lightest touch of Ella’s lips on the side of my neck before I stepped back quickly, yanking my shirt back into place.
“There,” Ella said with satisfaction, pulling back, smiling. “All better now?”
I dredged a smile from somewhere even though my mouth tasted of ashes. “Yes, Ella,” I said, my voice hollow. ‘All better now.”
I waited by the doorway while Simone settled Ella down and switched on the portable TV on the shelf at the foot of her bed, tuning it to the cartoons. On the screen a pair of pink hippos in what appeared to be ballet dancing outfits were hitting each other over the head with frying pans, each blow accompanied by the sound effect of a hammer hitting a cast-iron rivet.
I wondered at the wisdom of letting Ella watch something like that, all things considered. I had visions of wild and uncontrollable nightmares. But, after her eyes had blankly followed the action for a few moments, she began to giggle. Good job I’m not a parent.
Simone ushered me out of the room and pulled the door almost closed behind her.
“Don’t shut it, Mummy,” Ella called.
“Don’t worry, sweetie. I won’t.”
I led the way back downstairs. Simone followed me into the kitchen and I offered to make coffee just so I had something to do with my hands. I noted the way Simone’s shoulders came down a fraction, seemingly thankful for the distraction.
“Actually, I’d rather have tea,” she said with a hesitant smile. “My English half coming out, I guess.”
I filled the kettle from the kitchen tap and plugged it in, half-waiting for Simone to start asking questions about the scar. When I glanced at her she seemed to be waiting for me to offer an explanation without prompting. No way.
“I’ve spoken to Sean,” I said instead. “He’s arranging flights to Boston for you as soon as possible.”
“Oh. Great.” She looked so relieved I shied away from telling her that there was a possibility I might not be going with them. “Thank you for doing that before-for Ella, I mean.”
“It’s no big deal,” I lied, then switched to the truth. “She’s a nice kid.”
Simone smiled. “She is,” she agreed softly. Her eyes slid to the blind that still covered the kitchen window and her next words seemed almost to be to herself. “I’d do anything to protect her.”
I said nothing. The kettle clicked off and I poured the boiling water onto teabags and mashed them with a spoon. I was more of a coffee drinker myself but Simone only had cheap instant, so tea seemed the lesser evil.
“Do you think it’s wrong to take a child away from its father?” she asked abruptly, as I was opening the fridge door.
I paused, milk bottle in hand. “That depends on why you’re taking them away,” I said. I shut the door and poured milk into the tea until it seemed about the right color, then put one cup on the worktop in front of her. She hardly seemed to notice it.
“I don’t really remember my father,” she said abruptly “He left when I was about the same age as Ella is now. My mother went back to her maiden name-Kerse. God, I’ve always hated that name.” She glanced at me and managed a tired smile. “The other kids at school always used to call me Curse. Can you imagine?”
“Children can be very cruel,” I said.
She nodded, distracted. “Mom would never talk about him. I suppose, the less she’d say, the more I wanted to know-just awkward, I guess.”
“I think that’s a natural reaction.”
“Not knowing why their marriage broke up-that’s the worst thing. Wondering if, somehow, I might have been to blame, you know? When we went over to Chicago just before my mom died, I hoped she’d tell me then, but she never did. She must have had her reasons, but she took them with her.”
“And you’re hoping-if you do find your father-that he might be able to give you his side of it?”
She nodded again, then gave a nervous laugh. “Maybe Matt’s right, and I should leave things as they are, but I’ve reached a stage in my life where I can’t move forwards without knowing who and what he is. And if he’s a monster, well-” She shrugged, with more bravado than nonchalance. “I’ll just have to deal with that one when I get to it. At least I’ll have you to protect me, won’t I?”
She lifted her cup, drank absently, oblivous to the way my face must have frozen. “It’s made me decide that I won’t ever try and keep Ella away from Matt,” she went on. “Not unless he does something really awful. If I thought for a moment he’d ever try to hurt her-”
My mobile started shrilling at that moment. I put my drink down and flipped the phone open. I hardly needed to glance at the display to know who was on the other end of the line.
“Hi, Sean.”
“Madeleine’s got seats reserved for Simone and Ella on tomorrow’s Virgin Atlantic flight to Boston out of Heathrow,” he said without preamble. “Whose name do you want me to give her for the third ticket?”
I remembered the look of stark terror on Ella’s face in the kitchen and then the delicate touch of her lips on the side of my throat.
I glanced across the room to where Simone stood now, wrapped in turmoil and memories, clutching her cup with both hands like it was some kind of lifeline.
What were my own fears compared to theirs?
“Mine,” I said.
Five
The private investigator’s dead,” Sean said. Whatever else he added to that was drowned out by the PA system above me, announcing a final boarding call for all passengers for some charter flight to Malaga.
With scant regard for the possibility of brain tumors, I jammed my mobile phone hard up against the side of my head and stuck my finger into the other ear. It was only partially successful at damping down the outside noise.
“What?”
“The private investigator Simone hired to trace her father-guy called O’Halloran,” Sean explained, raising his voice beyond the tolerances of the phone’s tinny speaker, which buzzed painfully in my ear. “He died in a car accident last week.”
“When you say ‘accident,’ I assume that’s what it was?”
“As far as we know, yes,” Sean said. “I’ve spoken to his partner. They’re arranging for someone to collect the guy’s files and brief you. They’ll meet you when you land.”