Текст книги "When Will There Be Good News?"

Автор книги: Kate Atkinson

Соавторы: Kate Atkinson,Kate Atkinson
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Of course she didn't need to drive all the way out to Musselburgh and back in rush-hour traffic. 'It's out ofyour way,' Reggie said. It was, but she didn't care. Not out of any real consideration for the girl, it was just a time-spinner, an avoidance of the inevitable return home. She'd been on the move all day, her own personal hejira, and the idea ofcoming to a stop was unsettling. Unable to stay put, she had spent half the day in her car going places and the other half making up places to go to. (Sorry I'm going to be late, something came up. Who had insisted that Bridget and Tim stay five whole days?

Louise, that was who.) 'What's Dr Hunter like?' she asked Reggie Chase on the drive to Musselburgh and the girl said, 'Well .. .' It seemed Joanna Hunter liked Chopin and Beth Nielsen Chapman and Emily Dickinson and Henry James and had a remarkable tolerance for the Tweenies. She could play the piano -'really well', according to Reggie -and agreed with William Morris that you should have nothing in your house that you didn't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. She loved coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon and had a surprisingly sweet tooth and said that it was a medical fact that you had a separate 'pudding stomach' which was why when you'd eaten a big meal you could always 'find room for dessert'. She didn't believe in God, her favourite book was Little Women because it was about 'girls and women discovering their strengths' and her favourite film was La RegIe du Jeu which she had lent Reggie a copy of and which Reggie liked a lot although not as much as The Railway Children which was her favourite film. If Dr Hunter had to rescue three things from a burning building they would be the baby and the dog but Reggie hadn't been sure what the third thing would be -Louise suggested Mr Hunter but Reggie said she thought he would probably manage to rescue himself. Of course, if Reggie was in the building then Dr Hunter would rescue her, Reggie said.

And she loved the baby. Gabriel -of course, Gabriel, Gabrielle. The baby was named for Joanna Hunter's dead mother. Louise hadn't made the connection, probably because neither Joanna Hunter nor Reggie Chase called him by his name. He was 'the baby' to both of them. The only baby, the light of the world.

'Chase and Hunter' -what was that about? It sounded like a bad seventies sitcom about amateur detectives. Or 'Hunter and Chase', upmarket country estate agents. Reggie. Regina. You didn't meet many girls called Regina.

'I found this in the man's pocket,' the girl said, shyly handing over a filthy postcard.

'What man?' Louise asked, taking the postcard reluctantly between her thumb and forefinger. Like the baby's blanket, the postcard was a bio-hazard of mud and blood and looked as if it had been trampled by a herd of horses.

'The man whose life I saved.'

Oh, that man, Louise thought. That imaginary man. The postcard was a picture of somewhere European. Louise struggled to make it out beneath the muck.

'Bruges,' the girl said. 'In Belgium. His name and address is on the other side. I didn't imagine him.' 'I didn't say you did.' She turned the postcard over and read the message. Read the name and address. 'Jackson Brodie,' the girl said hopefully. 'I don't know if he's alive or dead though. Maybe you could have a wee look for him?' Louise handed the postcard back and said, 'I'm very busy at the moment.'

She didn't come off the A1 on to the bypass. Instead of taking the road home she turned at Newcraighall and headed to the hospital, as obedient as a dog to a shepherd calling her home.

Nada y Pues Nada NO WAY WAS SHE GOING BACK TO GORGIE SO IT WAS JUST AS WELL SHE had the keys to Ms MacDonald's house. And on the plus side, Musselburgh was currently the focus of national media attention. Reggie couldn't imagine that the would-be terminators would go looking for 'a guy called Reggie' in Ms MacDonald's dull street, especially when it was still crawling with police. The more time that had passed since this morning the more unlikely it seemed that the idiots, rechristened 'Ginger' and 'Blondie' in her mind now, were actually looking for her. They were looking for Billy. She should just have given them his address in the Inch, he'd obviously given her address to them. She should return the favour.

'This is where you live?' Inspector Monroe said, peering through the windscreen at Ms MacDonald's house.

'Yes,' Reggie said. 'My mother's not here at the moment.' One lie, one truth. They cancelled each other out and left the world unchanged. It seemed so much simpler not to go into any kind of detail whatsoever.

Inspector Monroe had at least listened to her, even if she clearly didn't believe her, but if Reggie had added, 'And in an entirely unrelated incident two men trashed my flat and threatened to kill me this morning, and oh, yeah, they gave me a copy of the Iliad,' at that point Inspector Monroe would probably have made a swift exit from Starbucks. She didn't really look like a policewoman, beneath her winter coat she was dressed in jeans and a soft sweater, the same offduty clothes as Dr Hunter. Her hair was scraped back into a ponytail that it wasn't quite long enough for and she had to keep tucking a wayward strand behind her ear. 'I'm still growing it,' she said. 'I had it cut really short but it didn't suit me.' Mum used to say that women had drastic haircuts at the end of unsuccessful relationships. Mum's friends were always appearing with shorn heads but Reggie's mother knew her hair was an asset to be valued. She was so besotted with Gary though that she might have cut her hair if he had asked her to. She would have done just about anything to keep Gary although a lot of his attraction was simply that he wasn't the Man-Who-CameBefore-Him. Imagine if he'd said to Mum, 'I'd love to see you with short hair,Jackie.' It was difficult to put words into Gary's mouth, he was so tongue-tied. (,You're very articulate, Reggie,' Dr Hunter had said to her once, which she had taken as a great compliment. 'Oh, she's a talker, our Reggie,' Mum used to say.) And then Mum might have gone to her hairdresser (Philip -'camp but married', according to Mum) and said, 'Cut it all off, Philip, it's time for a change,' and Philip would have given her a nice short bob, just below her ears or, even safer, an urchin cut like Kylie after the cancer and -ta-daa Mum would at this moment be stirring a pan of mince in the kitchen in Gorgie and looking forward to EastEnders.

Reggie wondered if Inspector Monroe had ever suffered a broken heart. She didn't look the type somehow.

Sadie had been a bit of a problem but in the end Inspector Monroe had put her in the back seat of her car (along with the burdensome Topshop bag) from where the dog had watched them walk away along George Street with such intensity that she might have been trying to burn them on to her retinas. Inspector Monroe didn't seem like a pet sort ofperson but then she said, 'I had a cat,' as if it had meant something.

Reggie was grateful for the muffin, she was ravenous -apart from Mr Hussain's Tic Tacs and the Mars bar (hardly a balanced diet) she hadn't eaten all day, the morning's toast having been *ejected before it was digested. She wanted to concentrate on eating the muffin so she got the words out quickly -the car, the phone, the piece of moss-green blanket, the shoes, the suit, the whole unlikely notbeing-thereness ofDr Hunter, as ifaliens had descended and whisked her away. She made a point of not mentioning alien abduction to Inspector Monroe. When she reached the end of her story, Inspector Monroe yawned and said, 'Excuse me. I'm very tired, I was up all night.'

'At the train crash?' Reggie guessed.

'Yes.'

'Me too,' Reggie said.

'Really?' Inspector Monroe gave her a doubtful look as if she was considering putting her in the fantasizing psycho box after all.

'I gave a man CPR,' Reggie said, climbing deeper into the box. 'I tried to save his life.' The lid of the box banged shut.

This was the first time she had mentioned the man to anyone. She had carried him around all day like a secret and it felt good to get it out of her head and into the world even though, once spoken, the idea seemed unlikely. The events of last night already seemed more unreal by the hour, then she remembered looking at the body of Ms MacDonald this morning and the events of last night seemed less unreal.

'Oh?' Inspector Monroe said. Reggie might as well have played the alien abduction card because Inspector Monroe couldn't have looked more sceptical if she'd tried.

'How did you get that bruise?' she had said, peering closely at Reggie's forehead.

Reggie tugged her fringe down and said, 'It's nothing, I wasn't looking where I was going.'

'Sure that's all it was?'

She looked concerned. Reggie knew what she was thinking, domestic violence, etcetera. She wasn't thinking 'slipped and fell in a shower when threatened by two idiots'.

'Sweartogod,' Reggie said.

She could have told Inspector Monroe about Ginger and Blondie but it wasn't going to help find Dr Hunter (and fantasizing psycho etcetera). And anyway perhaps their threats were real (Don't go to the police about this wee visit or, guess what?). What if they were watching her? What if they had seen her in Starbucks drinking coffee with a detective chief inspector, not even a humble uniformed constable. They would never believe it wasn't about them. It was only when Reggie said, 'Just here, please,' at Ms MacDonald's front door that Inspector Monroe said, 'Oh, I see, it was right on your doorstep,' as if she finally might believe that Reggie was not lying about the train crash.

'Well, nearly,' Reggie said.

'Right then,' Inspector Monroe said, 'best be getting off, things to do, you know.'

'Tell me about it,' Reggie said.

She waved goodbye to Inspector Monroe who was frowning not waving when she drove away.

Reggie pushed the reluctant sash of the bedroom window as far up as it would go to welcome in some fresh air. There were men working under arc-lights on the track, accompanied by the constant clatter and whine of the heavy machinery. A huge crane was lifting a carriage from the track. The carriage swung in the air like a toy. A massive, bone-white moon was rising in the sky, shining indifferently on the unnatural scene below.

It was too noisy to sleep in the neglected back bedroom, even with the window closed, and there was no way that Reggie would contemplate sleeping in Ms MacDonald's own bedroom at the front, awash with the stale scents of dirty laundry and half-used medicines.

She caught sight of herselfin the mirror on the dressing table. The bruise on her forehead was turning black.

Sadie had spent the last hour tracking the ghostly scent of Banjo around the house but now was flopped miserably in the living room. Reggie supposed that when someone went away it must seem to their pets that they'd simply disappeared off the face of the earth. Here one minute, gone the next. Dr Hunter said Sadie was lucky because she didn't know that she was going to die one day but Reggie said she wanted to know when she was going to die because then she could avoid it. No one could avoid death, ofcourse, but you could avoid a premature death at the hands of idiots. (,Not always,' Dr Hunter said.)

After foraging in Ms MacDonald's bare cupboards Reggie came up with half a packet ofstale Ritz crackers but struck gold when she discovered the Cash 'n' Carry-sized stash of Tunnock's Caramel Wafers that Ms MacDonald kept for her supper. She shared the Ritz crackers with Sadie and ate a caramel wafer.

Would Chief Inspector Monroe really look for Dr Hunter? It seemed doubtful somehow. Why had she come to Dr Hunter's house on Tuesday? 'Oh, something and nothing,' she said. 'To do with a patient.' She was a good liar but then so was Reggie. It took one to know one.

Something and nothing. This and that. Here and there. People certainly were very evasive around Reggie.

Reggie decided to sleep on the sofa. Sadie jumped into an armchair and turned round and round until she was satisfied with it and then settled down with a huge sigh as if she was getting rid of the day from her body. The sofa Reggie was sleeping on still bore the faint imprint of Banjo's body but there was a kind of comfort in that. It had been an unbelievably difficult day. Hard times, indeed.

Some time in the night, Sadie left the chair and joined Reggie on the sofa. Reggie supposed she needed comfort too. She put her arm round the dog and listened to the strong heartbeat in her big chest. The dog didn't smell of anything much but dog. It had never occurred to Reggie before but usually Sadie smelled of Dr Hunter's perfume. Dr Hunter must spend quite a lot of time hugging Sadie for that to happen. If Dr Hunter was OK she would have phoned, if not to speak to Reggie then to Sadie (Hello, puppy, how's my gorgeous girl?).

Where was Dr Hunter? Elle revient. What if she didn't?

Why had Dr Hunter stepped out of her shoes and walked out of her life? There were so many questions and no answers. Someone had to hunt for Dr Hunter. Ha.

Ad Lucem JACKSON FELT A PANG OF SOMETHING VERY LIKE LONELINESS. HE wanted someone he knew to know he was here. Josie, for example. (Any wife in a storm.) No, not Josie (Now what have you done, Jackson?). Julia, perhaps. She would be sympathetic (Oh, sweetie) but probably not in a way that would make him feel better.

'What time is it?'

'Six o'clock,' Nurse Fuzzy said. ('My name's actually Marian.')

'In the morning?'

'No.'

'In the evening?'

'Yes.'

He had to check, just in case there was another time ofday where six o'clock could park. Everything else had been turned upside down, why not time itself. 'Can I have the phone?'

'No. You will rest if it kills you,' the nurse said. She was Irish. That figured, she sounded like his mother. 'Ifit's your wife you're worried about then I'm sure we'll manage to get in touch with her tomorrow. There's always a lot of confusion in the wake of an accident, so there is.'

'I know. 1 used to be a policeman,' Jackson said. 'Did you now? Then you'll do what you're told and go back to sleep.'

He wondered when the gratitude would kick in. The 'I almost died but I've been given a second chance' thing. Wasn't that what you were supposed to feel after a near-death experience? A sudden falling away of fear, a resolution to make the most of every day from now on. A new Jackson to step out of the hull of the old one and be reborn into the rest of his life. He didn't feel any of that. He felt sore and tired.

'Are you going to stand there and glare at me until 1 fall asleep?'

'Yes,' Nurse Fuzzy said. Nurse Marian Fuzzy.

He was woken by something brushing his cheek, a butterfly wing, or a kiss. More likely a kiss than a butterfly wing.

'Hello, stranger,' a familiar voice said.

'Fuzzy,' he mumbled.

He opened his eyes and she was there. Of course. He had a moment of supernatural clarity. He was with the wrong woman. He had been going the wrong way. This was the right way. The right woman.

'Hello, you,' he said. He had been mute for decades and now suddenly he'd been given a voice. 'I was thinking about you,' Jackson said. 'I just didn't know it.'

Her eyes were black pools of exhaustion. She was prettier than he remembered. She put a finger on his lips and said, 'Shh. You had me at fuzzy.' She laughed. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen her laugh before.

Everything suddenly shifted into place.

'I love you,' he said.

Fiat Lux THANK GOD, THERE WAS NO ONE SITTING AT THE DINING TABLE WHEN she came in. There was a note from Patrick instead, propped up against an arrangement ofhot-house lilies that hadn't been there this morning. She hated lilies. She was sure their perfume had been specially bred to disguise the smell ofrotting flesh, that was why they always pitched up at funerals. Eating at Lazio's biforehand, Patrick's note said. Come and join us if you get in on time. 'Beforehand' -before what?

The idea of more eating and drinking with Bridget and Tim was enough to make Louise vomit. And anyway she had eaten already. She had gone from the hospital to a drive-thru' McDonald's and picked up Happy Meals for the Needlers. The kids didn't get to go to burger joints any more, too public. They had eaten round the TV watching the DVD of Shrek the Third. Louise had picked at some fries. She hadn't been able to eat meat in days, couldn't stomach the idea of putting dead flesh inside her live flesh.

'Happy Meal,' Alison said with her thin-lipped smile, not a smile at all. 'Not had many of them.'

'Don't you have a home to go to?' Alison said halfWay through the mOVIe.

'Well .. .' Louise said. Which she could see wasn't really the right answer.

*

She realized that she had left Decker's driving licence at the hospital. She had meant to bring it away with her. It had felt like evidence but she couldn't think of what exactly.

Of course she had forgotten the licence, she had forgotten everything. She had forgotten herself for a moment.

She had flashed her warrant card and got on to the wards. Access all areas. They would have to tear that warrant card out of her hands when she left the police force. Then she had walked through wards full of train crash survivors until she found him.

He wasn't dead, although he looked all broken up. An Australian doctor she spoke to said it wasn't as bad as it seemed. Louise stroked the back of his hand, there was a black bruise where the IV went in. The doctor said he had been 'out for the count' (a medical term, apparently) but was OK now.

She stayed and watched over him for a while.

When she stood up to leave she had bent down and kissed him on the cheek and he opened his eyes as if he'd been waiting for her. 'Hello, stranger,' she said and he said, 'I love you,' and she felt completely disorientated, as if she had been burled around in an eightsome reel and then let go and flung across the dance floor. She was trying to compose the right response to this declaration of his feelings when the Irish nurse swooped back in and said, 'He won't stop asking for his wife, you wouldn't have any idea how to get hold of her would you, Chief Inspector?' and the spell was broken.

When Reggie had showed her the postcard of Bruges and said, 'I don't know whether he's alive or dead,' her heart had done the kind offlip-flap offear with which it would have greeted bad news about Archie. And right in that micro-second of the mis-beat, the thought had come to her that she wouldn't have reacted that way if it had been Patrick. She had made a terrible mistake, hadn't she? She had married the wrong man. No, no, she had married the right man, it was just that she was the wrong woman.

'We've only just identified him,' the nurse said. 'We thought he was called Andrew Decker.'

, Mo?'

*

She found Sandy Mathieson covering the night shift, 'Swapped so I could go to the wee one's football.'

'Decker's driving licence turned up at the scene of the train crash. So presumably he's in the area, I don't see how else it could have got there. Get someone to put out an All Ports Alert for him.'

'Of all the gin joints in all the towns, etcetera, seems too much of a coincidence,' Sandy said. 'You think he was coming to find Joanna Hunter? Finish the job he started thirty years ago? Surely that only happens in TV crime shows, not real life?'

'Well if he did, he's out of luck,' Louise said. 'She's down in England. I think. I hope.' Because if she wasn't then where was she? 'Taken,' the girl said. What if the girl was right? What if something had happened to Joanna Hunter? Something bad. Again. No, the girl's paranoia had got under her skin. Joanna Hunter was with her elderly, sick aunt. End of story.

'McLellen left stuff for you on your desk,' Sandy said. 'Copies of documentation from what's his name.'

'Neil Hunter?'

'Think so.'

She checked her phone messages after she'd read the note. 'On our way to the theatre now,' Patrick's recorded voice informed her. So that was the 'beforehand'. She was sure her husband's affable Irish tones would be very soothing if you were about to be cut open by him on the operating table. My husband. The words were stones in her mouth, a noun and an adjective that belonged to someone else, not Louise. She was continually astonished at the ease with which Patrick said my wife. He'd had years of practice, of course. How did the other wife feel? The one shut in a wooden box beneath the earth in the Grange Cemetery. Ten years on she'd be a skeleton. Her car crash had been on Christmas Eve, the Mistletoe Bride.

He's been askingfor his wife. Not only had Jackson managed to get his identity muddled with a psycho killer, the bastard had got married as well.

'We'll have a drink in the bar first,' Patrick's message continued. 'If you haven't turned up by the time we go in I'll leave your ticket at the box office. See you soon, don't work too hard, love you.' The theatre? No one had mentioned the theatre. Had they? Perhaps they had discussed it this morning at breakfast after she turned off her brain when Tim was giving out his tips on how to graft roses (Make use (if the whole blade

She checked her watch, nine thirty. Far too late for the theatre now. Anyway he didn't say which theatre -the Lyceum? The King's? Obviously she was supposed to know. She checked the second message, sent on the heels of the first, 'Afterwards we're going to Bennet's Bar,join us there ifyou can.' Beforehand, afterwards, he sure was eager for her to join him. Bennet's Bar probably meant they had gone to the King's. She could make it if she tried.

She didn't. Instead, she opened a bottle of Bordeaux that was sitting on the kitchen counter and carried it through to the living room where she poured it into one of Patrick and Samantha's crystal goblets, put her feet up on the sofa, and caught a rerun of an old CSI on Living TV. She could feel the day beginning to seep out of her bones. It was like being single again. It felt good.

In CSI, Stokes was in the process of being buried alive. Louise retrieved the remains of the ice-cream from the freezer and dug into the tub. She didn't even like ice-cream but at least it didn't count as it was going into her pudding-stomach (thank you, Dr Hunter). Red wine and Cherry Garcia, a reckless combination if ever there was one. Louise could feel the hangover starting already.

Grissom was holding up his badge and shouting 'Las Vegas Crime Lab' at someone. All that had been on her desk were copies of insurance policies, no accounts, nothing to do with Neil Hunter's business at all. She liked the way Grissom walked, like a bear with a nappy on. 'Let's look at the facts,' Louise said to him. 'Neil Hunter has insurance policies, not just on his businesses but on his wife as well, worth a cool half-million.' (Not bad, all Patrick had got was a chip of glittering carbon to pay for another wife.) Half a million would go a long way to cushioning Neil Hunter's problems. They already suspected him ofdestroying a property for money, what if he was capable of disposing of his wife for the same reason? But he'd need a body to trade for the policy, wouldn't he? And a body was what there most certainly wasn't. Because Joanna Hunter u'as with a sick aunt, she reminded herself. Nothing suspicious at all except for Neil Hunter's jangled nerves and a wilfully imaginative girl.

The last time she saw Joanna Hunter, Reggie said, she was wearing a black suit and a white T-shirt and black court shoes, the uniform, in varying degrees of chic, of the professional woman the world over. Louise's own outfit. Sisters under the suit. Joanna Hunter was still wearing her suit, Reggie said. Why wouldn't she have changed? How much ofa medical emergency could an old aunt be having that you wouldn't throw on something casual to drive in. She came home from work, she saw Reggie offon the doorstep, then she went upstairs and got as far as taking off her shoes and tights and then what?

The suspect that Grissom was talking to suddenly blew himself up.

CSI was a two-parter and ended on a cliff-hanger, Stokes still buried alive and running out of air. Louise poured herself another glass of wine that was the colour of old blood.

She was woken a couple of hours later when the theatregoers returned. They spilled noisily into the living room and Louise closed her eyes again and feigned sleep.

'She's asleep,' Patrick said, without lowering his voice.

Louise heard the crystal glass chink against the empty bottle of Bordeaux as he picked them both up from the carpet. She wondered ifhe would kiss her, or cover her with a blanket, or perhaps wake her up and encourage her up to bed, but all she heard was the door closing and Bridget's heavy tread on the stair.

Of course, the right response was 'I love you too,' and it was only by the merest whisker that she had escaped saying it to Jackson.

Grave Danger AND THEN NOTHING. TIME THAT WAS LOST FOR EVER IN SOME terrible dark chasm of the brain that Joanna never wanted to descend into again. She presumed that the missing time had been more than filled by tens, ifnot hundreds, ofpeople with jobs to do -people asking her to describe events, showing her photographs, making drawings. Question after question, gently and relentlessly probing an open wound.

The first thing she remembered afterwards was waking up one morning, alone in a strange bed, in a strange room, and being convinced that everyone else in the world was dead. The light coming through the curtains was unusual, bright and alien, and it was only when Martina entered the bedroom and pulled the curtains open and said, 'Hello, darling, look it's snowed. Isn't it lovely?' that Joanna understood that everyone was alive except for the people she cared about the most. And it was winter. The bleak midwinter.

'Why don't you come downstairs and have some breakfast with me?' Martina said, smiling encouragingly at her. 'Some oatmeal? Or some eggs? You like eggs, darling.' And so Joanna climbed obediently out of bed and allowed the rest of her life to begin.

Martina was brought up in Surrey but her mother was Swedish, from a small town near the Finnish border, and Martina carried a northern gloom in her blood. She fought it as best she could but whereas Joanna's mother's down-turned smile had signalled happiness, Martina's cheerful upturned one often meant the opposite. Martina the poet. (Bitch-cunt-whore-poet.) Martina, with her straight fair hair and broad features, her burden ofpenitence. Martina who longed for a child of her own and who was persuaded into two terminations by the great Howard Mason. 'My Scandinavian muse,' he called her, but not in a way that was kind.

Nothing left of Martina now. Her one Faber volume of poems, Blood Sacrifice, long forgotten (The ghosts at the table, their pale Jaces lighting our Jeast/ We will not be put out, they say. No, not ever.). It was only a long time afterwards that Joanna realized that the poems were about her lost family. For years, she had owned a dog-eared copy but it disappeared at some point, the way things do. Written on water. Martina had lain down with two bottles, one of sleeping tablets and one of brandy. My bottle oj salvation. That was Sir Walter Ralegh, wasn't it? 'The Passionate Pilgrim'. Give me my scallop-shell ifquiet, my something something something. Martina had given her poetry but poetry had failed them all in the end. Sing, sing, what shall I sing? The eat's run ciff with the pudding string.

They had caught the man during the month that followed the murders. He was young, not yet twenty, and his name was Andrew Decker and he was an apprentice draughtsman. Martina called him 'the bad man' and when Joanna had one of her sudden hysterical fits she would hold her and murmur into her hair, 'The bad man is locked away for ever, darling.' Not for ever, it turned out, just thirty years.

Decker came to trial the following spring and pleaded guilty. 'At least she'll be spared the trial,' her father said to Martina. Joanna was always 'she' to her father, not said in a malicious way, he just seemed to find the naming of her difficult. She had been his least favourite of the three of them, and now she was the only one and she still wasn't the favourite.

Decker was given a life sentence and ordered to serve the whole of it. He was considered fit to plead, as if there was nothing insane about slaughtering three complete strangers for no apparent reason.

Nothing the least deranged about felling a mother and her two children in cold blood. When asked in court why he had done it he shrugged and said he didn't know 'what had come over him'. Joanna's father had been there to bear witness to this brief and unsatisfYing conclusion.

Looking back now,Joanna could see that she had not been spared a trial but cheated of her day in court. Even now she imagined herself standing in the witness box, in her best red velvet dress, the one with the white lace Peter-Pan collar that was a hand-me-down from Jessica, and pointing dramatically at Andrew Decker and saying, in her high, innocent child's voice, 'That's him! That's the man!'

And now he was out. Out and free. 'I have to tell you that Andrew Decker was released last week,' Louise Monroe said.

Andrew Decker was fifty years old and he was free. Joseph would have been thirty-one, Jessica would have been thirty-eight, their mother sixty-four. When I'm sixtyjour. Never. Nevermore, nevermore.

Sometimes she felt like a spy, a sleeper who had been left in a foreign country and forgotten about. Had forgotten about herself. She had a pain in her chest, an ache, sharp and sore. Her heart was thudding. Knock, knock, knocking. Rapping, rapping at my chamber door–

The baby woke with a squawk and she held him tightly to her chest and shushed him, cradling the back of his head with her hand. There were no limits to what you would do to protect your child. But what if you couldn't protect him, no matter how much you tried?