‘I see,’ he says and as he lifts his eyes from where they have been raking the carpet, he catches sight of someone on the threshold of the room, standing in the doorway, listening. His daughter, Bella.
52
Lottie finds herself drifting up from a dreamless sleep. She was so exhausted when she finally closed her eyes, wanting to shut out the whole nightmare of the house fire. She wipes a dribble of saliva that has leaked from her mouth.
Tim is gently shaking her awake, saying her name softly like a prayer. She moans in complaint, turns over onto her other side, determined to sink back into the comfort and anaesthesia of sleep.
‘Lottie, wake up. I’ve just had a call from the police. They want to speak to us again.’
This information settles into her consciousness like a bothersome fly she would casually flick away and forget if she could. But then it returns to her again and again until the reality of it cannot be ignored.
‘What?’ she manages to say through a voice thick and dry from sleep. She swallows. Her throat is still sore and she reaches for a stale bottle of water beside the bed. Everything looks strange and unfamiliar and then she remembers, they are in a cheap little flat, not their previous holiday apartment. She sits up and looks for Josh who is curled up asleep between them. They have never really co-slept as a family but they had little choice and all three of them were so tired they had dossed down together. The blinds are still firmly closed from when they had blocked out the day earlier but the quality of the light feels to have changed now.
‘What time is it?’ she asks, her voice rising.
She hears Tim sigh as he checks his phone.
‘It’s just gone half five. It’s nearly tea time,’ he answers, clearly thinking of his stomach as usual. ‘I can’t believe it’s still Sunday,’ he adds with a shake of his head.
‘No, it can’t be,’ she says in disbelief. She could have sworn that they had slept all day and night. She was faintly hoping it was Monday. The start of a new week when they might be able to go home and return to some semblance of normality, their previous lives.
‘What do the police want?’ she says as she tries to gulp down the water. She still feels hungover though surely that’s not possible. But then she remembers how much she had to drink, how uncommonly strong it was, how long it takes her to process alcohol these days. Had she even accepted a couple of tokes on a spliff from one of the locals she got chatting to? She remembers seeing some familiar faces from around the town; Jan, the shopkeeper and her friends, Ted Stark and the B & B owners. She even wonders if she saw that swanky architect who works for the Woolfs moving through the crowds like a sleek jaguar among the herds. Who was he with that night? The mother or the daughter, she can’t be sure now.
Last night. It feels like a lifetime ago. How had she let herself go so? But it had felt like a release to let her hair down and enjoy herself after such a stressful week. After such a stressful couple of years, let’s be honest. Their first proper holiday since they became parents.
‘They just said that new information had come to light and they needed us to answer some more questions. Just standard practice apparently but I don’t know, Lotts, it all feels a bit weird to me.’
He has stood up now and started to pace around the hot stuffy little room, as much as you can pace in such a small, cramped space.
‘Why are you stressing?’ she asks, though she knows why. It is exactly how she feels though she is trying to hide it, to keep a tapon her fears. The residual sense of shame and panic encroaching. It would threaten to overwhelm her if she let it.
Tim stops turning circles on the dingy carpet and starts to pull on the new supermarket T-shirt and shorts they bought for him to wear. They don’t suit him. He looks a bit odd. Like it is her Tim, her husband, but not quite. He is a facsimile of himself.
‘Come on, you’d better get dressed. Apparently they’re sending someone to collect us.’
Lottie tries a grim laugh.
‘Well I know one person who would be thrilled to have another ride in a panda car,’ she says, looking fondly at her sleeping son.
Tim takes a couple of steps towards her, forcing her to meet his gaze. He looks sad and angry and desperate all at the same time. Looking into his face has always been like looking through an open window; always so much to see there, nothing hidden.
‘This is serious, Lottie. I’m not sure you realise how serious this is. I think we’re in trouble.’
She struggles to sit up, pushing herself further up the bed while still covering her nakedness with the sheet.
‘Why?’
But she knows why. Her husband has always been so moral, so straight, so public-minded and upstanding. The one to stop and help, to give money to a homeless person, let others out at a junction. But he is also the one to call in something suspicious, check on his neighbours, hand in the money to lost-and-found. Just as you would imagine a teacher might be; caring, responsible, dutiful. It is unlike him to be so scared and unsettled yet it is true to form that he would be worried about being on the wrong side of the law.
‘You tell me, Lottie.’ He rounds on her. He has never been like this with her before. He never loses his temper or raises his voice. What has happened to him? Where is her endlessly patient husband, the doting father of her child?
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she says falteringly.
‘Don’t you?’ he says, skewering her with a look that makes her feel as though he has ripped the sheet from her, exposing her for all to see.
‘No, I don’t,’ she says, hurt and anger simmering to the boil.
Josh is waking up now, roused by his parents’ turbulent voices, instinctively aware that all is not quite right in his little world.
