‘I remember exactly what she said. “Did Vinnie say the parachute was through?” God knows what that meant. Parachute? Were they going paragliding or something? There’s quite a bit of that in Sidmouth.’
‘Did Vinnie … say … the parachute … was through.’ Kim turned the phrase over as she repeated it slowly. ‘Through what? What does a parachute go through?’
‘A letterbox?’
She roared with laughter, surprising him.
‘Can you refuse to sell it to them?’
‘We can just be useless,’ she said, her attention snappingback to the present. ‘We’re quite good at that.’ The business was Kim’s, and she occasionally complained about two of the youngest staff members. ‘I’ll pass them onto our Gen Z secretariat, tell them to do it quickly, and they’ll still be waiting for the Acceptance of Offer letter in December.’
‘Rude.’
‘About Gen Z? I don’t mean to be. They have to clean up the planet, after all.’
‘Poor bastards,’ he said.
When he awoke on Saturday morning, Kim was rolling her body across his.
‘This is not amorous,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to stop your phone going. Twice now.’
Bleary-eyed, he grabbed it and cancelled the alert. Then he saw it was from a name he knew.
Wendy Wrigley had typed:
I’m outside your house.
And then, ten minutes later:
I’ll stay in case you’ve overslept.
And finally, as if in frustration:
The forest!
Chapter Twelve
Just before she awoke on Saturday morning, Andrea Lopez had had a strange dream about her daughter’s hands. They were like the work of an artist, she had always thought that: delicate and perfect. But in the dream they came to her in a vision that was not always comfortable. Making the silhouette of a dove, then a horror movie claw. Shadows on the wall. First a rabbit, then reaching out for help, fingers outstretched.
She opened her eyes to a thick headache. She turned to kiss her husband’s shoulder, then rolled heavily to see the bedside clock. Okay, the weekend. But still. Lie-ins? No chance. A normal waking time was before six, with their child not yet five years old. She wondered if that was how it worked. The two-year-old got you up at two, the five-year-old at five, and then by the time they were teenagers they were having to be poked and prodded awake in the afternoon.
But no Nina yet. Not this morning. What was it, seven already? Perhaps she was giving them a break after what happened yesterday. In a minute their little darling would busy herself into the room as if she had never slept. She would shake her curls and drop her fists on the edge of the duvet and claim the emergency of a lost dinosaur or a broken handle on a toy saucepan.
Andrea shut her eyes, opened them again. The clock said eight thirty. Wait … how could it be that late?
The young parents had moved to Sidmouth for a better life soon after Nina was born. They had had four rounds of IVF and three miscarriages and were both emotionally exhausted. After years in a flat in Exeter, where property was madly expensive, they cashed in for a semi with a garden. A mile back from the seafront, their house even had room for a dining table. Now parents, they were almost obscenely happy. They had put down roots quickly, finding friends in the local Labour Party branch. Gabriel had even started giving Spanish night classes at Sidmouth Tech, a side hustle to his job as a planning inspector. And now Nina would have a sister. Her ever-curious Nina would have a sibling to poke and prod.
Andrea felt the baby in her womb as she blinked at the time. The blinking brought the clock into focus but also the events of, what, less than eighteen hours ago?
It was incredible. The whole thing. She placed her right palm on the bump below her breasts. Her husband spoke quietly.
‘Are you awake?’
‘I’m thinking about it.’
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said. ‘Thank God. Sweet Jesus, our Nina. Protected by angels.’ His voice was muffled by the pillow, but Andrea thought she could hear his throat narrow, tears coming. ‘Today I will go to church to thank Him. That motorbike could have—’
‘Sweet, don’t,’ she cut in. She had glimpsed the dead motorbiker. Nina had not seen him. But she had been out of her mother’s sight for an instant in the chaos.
