But I suspect you’re thinking them too.
Will any of the coach casualties die? Will any of them be a match for Jenny? How strange that selfless love can make you morally ugly. Wicked even.
‘I’m sure they’ll have the meeting as soon as they can,’ you say.
She nods.
‘Adam’s in the relatives’ room,’ she tells you.
‘I’ll go and see him in a minute. I’d just like a little time with Jen first.’
I go to the relatives’ room. A fan whirrs the heated air.
Addie is huddled close to Mr Hyman, who has his arm around him, reading him a story.
I go cold.
Jenny is on the other side of the room. ‘He saw Granny G and Adam in the café,’ she says calmly. ‘He offered to look after Adam, so that Granny G could be with me.’
And Mum would never suspect anything. She’s heard me and Addie praise Mr Hyman countless times.
Over the whirr of the fan, I listen to him reading. At his feet is a bunch of flowers.
‘He told his wife he was going to work on a building site,’ I tell Jenny.
‘Poor bloke. Is that all the work he can get?’
‘He lied to his wife, Jen.’
‘Probably to get away from her.’
She looks at me, and must catch my expression because I see exasperation in hers.
‘I’ve told you about the hate-mailer now. The red paint. You can’t still think it’s Silas.’
‘Could there be a connection?’ I ask, more thinking aloud.
‘No. There is no way that he is anything to do with the hate mail. Quite apart from the fact that he’s just not that kind of person, why would he?’
I also think it’s very unlikely that Silas Hyman is the hate-mailer turned stalker. Even if he had a reason for hate mail, which he doesn’t, an Oxford-educated, highly articulate man doesn’t fit with hate mail and red paint. I simply can’t imagine him cutting out words from a newspaper or a magazine and sticking them onto A4. He’s far too subtle and intelligent for that.
But the fire might be nothing at all to do with the hate-mailer. It could be, as you are so certain, simply revenge by Silas Hyman.
‘He tried talking to Addie,’ Jenny says. ‘But Addie couldn’t say anything back. That’s when he started reading him the Percy Jackson story. Perfect choice, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
You missed most of Addie’s Percy Jackson phase, but he’s a schoolboy who can vanquish evil monsters against impossible odds. Mr Hyman knows that Adam loves Arthurian legends but knights would be too adult, lacking any childlike vulnerability, for him to relate to them now. They wouldn’t offer him any fantasy escape from what is happening. This is a better choice.
I’m disturbed by how well he knows Addie.
Once I liked his physicality, but now I don’t want his arm around our son, and I want him in smart trousers and a jacket, not shorts and a clinging T-shirt.
Mr Hyman. Silas.
Two names. Two men.
Jenny and I were in the sitting room, the night before her English A-level paper. Jenny was in her pyjamas, her hair still wet from the shower.
‘So do you know what Dryden called Shakespeare?’ I asked her.
She shook her head and water flecked the paper I was holding.
‘A Janus poet,’ I told her. ‘Because…?’
‘He was two-faced?’
‘Wore two faces,’ I corrected as she dangled a slipper on one toe. ‘Janus was also the god of gates and doors, beginnings and endings. January is from Janus, because it’s the month which begins the New Year.’
‘I don’t have to be that informed, Mum, really.’
‘But it’s interesting, isn’t it?’
She smiled at me. ‘I can see why it should be,’ she said. ‘And why you went to Cambridge and I’ll be lucky to scrape into anywhere.’
I watch Silas’s Janus face, so close to Adam’s.
I remember again Maisie’s words at the prize-giving: ‘That man should never have been allowed near our children.’
And I want him to get away from my children. Get away!
Then Mum comes in. She’s again, somehow, forced colour into her cheeks and energy into her voice, that magic smile appearing on her face.
‘Have you had a good story, Addie?’ She turns to Silas Hyman. ‘Thank you for giving me time with my granddaughter.’
‘Of course. It was great to be with Addie.’ He gets up. ‘I’d better be going now.’
Adam looks as if he’ll follow.
‘Daddy will be here in a minute,’ Mum says. ‘So let’s wait here for him, shall we?’
Silas picks up the bunch of flowers and leaves the room. I follow him. The flowers are yellow roses – mean buds that will never open, plastic-wrapped and scentless. He must have got them from the hospital shop because he didn’t have them when Jenny and I followed him earlier.
He presses the button on the door of the ICU ward. A pretty blonde nurse comes to answer it. I see her notice his attractiveness. Or maybe it’s just his vigorous health, which stands out in this place.
The nurse opens the door and explains to him that flowers aren’t allowed because they are an infection risk. There’s a flirtatious tone to her voice but flirting isn’t an infection risk, is it? However inappropriate it seems.
‘For you then,’ he says, smiling at her. She takes the flowers and lets him into ICU.
A smile and flowers.
That simple.
I follow him.
To be fair to the pretty nurse, she’s accompanying him all the time, making him wait while she puts the flowers in the nurses’ station, away from the patients. But are all nurses so cautious?
He follows her towards the section that has Jenny’s bed.
Through the glass wall I see you sitting next to her; Sarah a little distance away.
Silas Hyman doesn’t recognise her. The pretty nurse has to point.
‘That’s Jennifer Covey, there,’ she says.
He no longer looks healthy or handsome, but pale as if he’s about to vomit, his forehead sweaty; stricken by what he sees.
I think I hear him whisper, ‘Oh God.’
He turns away and shakes his head at the nurse. He isn’t going closer.
Or is he pretending this is the first time he’s seen her since the fire? A brilliant performance so that nobody will suspect him of being the person who tampered with her oxygen tube?
Perhaps he feels watched.
Through the glass wall, you see him turning away. You hurry out after him. The ICU doors close behind him and you follow.
You catch up with him in the corridor, your anger skidding on the slippery linoleum and bouncing off the walls.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I saw Adam and his grandmother earlier and-’
‘Your wife said you were at a building site.’
For a moment he is speechless; caught out.
‘A load of crap, wasn’t it? Like your alibi. Lying bastard!’
Yelling now, sound tumbling through the open door of the relatives’ room where Adam is waiting for you.
He and my mother come out, but you don’t see them, rage-focused on Silas Hyman.
‘Who lied for you about my son?’
‘What do you mean?’
My mother tries to be appeasing. ‘Someone lied and said they saw Addie starting the fire,’ she tells him.
‘But that’s ridiculous,’ Mr Hyman says. ‘For goodness sake, of all people to accuse.’ He turns to Adam. ‘I know you wouldn’t do that, Sir Covey.’
He bends towards Adam, perhaps to stroke his hair or give him a hug.
‘Keep away from him!’ you roar, moving towards him, going to hit him.
And then Adam is standing between you and he’s pushing you away from Silas Hyman; protective of him; furious with you. All his strength in those small hands as he pushes you away.