Stepping off the path, Michael put down his fencing bag and slid down the trunk. He pressed the heels of his palms against the sockets of his eyes and tried to think clearly. Because of the dirt on his hands he’d touched nothing. Or had he? He couldn’t be sure. What about when he’d tried to catch her, or when he’d closed the door? But even if he had, what crime had he committed? He hadn’t broken an entry. He was a regular visitor, so had he trespassed at all? His fingerprints were always on that door handle. And Lucy. He hadn’t touched her, either. He’d just seen her, witnessed her fall. But would she have fallen had he not been there? Would she have even woken? Perhaps. There had been that scooter, after all, its sudden whining. And the ice-cream van, too. But where had Josh been? Had he, in fact, been in the house after all? And if not, then why had he left Lucy alone?
Michael opened his eyes. He couldn’t leave. He had to return. He had to tell them, explain. He had to explain, to try, impossible though it seemed, to answer their questions. He had, now that his head was clear again, to undo his first panicked leaving, his first running away. Pushing himself up, he shouldered his bag, his blades shuffling against each other, and continued his slow drift south.
Emerging from the woods, Michael found himself walking into the full glow of the evening. The tall grasses, swayed by a breeze, were lit like the summer hairs on a woman’s arm. Parliament Hill, where he’d sat so many times with Josh, was ahead of him to his left. The day’s scattered crowds had gathered there to witness the last minutes of light. A jogger rose on the path towards the crest of the hill. A dog bounded through the dry grass in pursuit of a ball. Life, in the final moments of the day, had been coaxed to the surface in all its complex, simple beauty. As if to say, through the coming hours of darkness, do not forget this. This is what you wait for, what you work for, what you love for. This is what we are given and what we shape. This, one day, is what we will lose or have taken from us, whichever may come first.
Michael turned away from the hill and walked on, the grasses brushing his bare legs and his hands. Parliament Hill’s view was not for him this evening. And nor was the company of its crowds. His destination was a house a couple of streets away. It had to be, he saw that now. The house in which he had seen his dead wife and where, with no intention or malice, he’d caused the death of his neighbours’ daughter.
He took the longest route possible, remaining on the Heath for a couple more hours until he could no longer avoid the surrounding pavements and streets. Instinctively, he felt as if while he was on its sandy soil, among its plants and trees, he would be safe, suspended. A colonnade of London plane trees led him down towards the shops of South End Green. As he approached their lit windows, a waiter laying tables outside the Italian restaurant, Michael steeled himself for what would meet him on South Hill Drive. Any minute now, he thought, the blue pulse of a police car or ambulance would beat across the street before him, like the swing of a lighthouse, warning of what he’d done.
But when Michael neared the corner of the street there was no pulsing light. Just summer drinkers and smokers spilling into the garden of The Magdalena. A TV inside was showing a football game. Waitresses carried swaying towers of pint glasses. A tethered dog at the entrance lapped at a steel bowl of water.
Michael walked past the pub, listening for snatches of conversation and watching for expressions that might betray the news of what had happened on the street today. But there were none. Just as, when he reached the Nelsons’ house, there was no squad car or ambulance. No police tape cordoning off the area. No stern-faced officer at the door. The house was dark and as silent as when he’d entered it that afternoon, just one of many in the street’s grand curve, each as implacable and settled as the other.
For a moment, as Michael walked past its front door, he thought perhaps it had all been a vision. Caroline in the bath, Lucy appearing and then falling. Perhaps his wish it hadn’t happened wasn’t a wish at all, but reality. Reaching his front door, he felt a rush of excitement at the possibility. Had his mind conjured not just Caroline, but everything else he’d seen in the house, too?
He climbed his staircase, listening to his own footsteps, and for any other sound he might pick up from the staircase next door. As he reached the second floor another thought reached him. What if it had happened, exactly as he remembered, but no one had found her yet? What if Lucy was still lying there, alone, on that darkening staircase, waiting for her discoverer? Michael could still be that person. He could still be the one to find her, to call the ambulance, the police.
He let himself into his flat, dropped his bag in the hallway, and went on into the living room. As had become his habit ever since the first night he’d moved in, without turning on the lights Michael went towards the windows at the end of the room. He wanted to pause, think. Make sure he was making the right choice. He was no longer certain of what was fact or the creation of his imagination. And he had to be certain before he acted. Closing upon his reflection, on reaching the windows Michael placed his hands against their coolness and leant his forehead against their glass. Which is when he saw Josh.
From the windows of his flat Michael had only ever been able to see the far end of the Nelsons’ garden. Their pear tree, mature and tall, obscured his view of the rest of it. But above the reach of its crown, even in spring and summer, he’d always been able to make out the last few tapering metres of lawn, the fence at its end and the willow tree beyond, draping its branches into the pond. It was a long garden, so at night the light from the kitchen or the conservatory only travelled so far down its slope. But far enough, with a clear sky and a moon, for him to sometimes see Josh down there, smoking a cigarette before bed, its tip glowing with his inhalations in the dark. Which is where Josh was again this evening, standing by the fence where Michael had first told him about Caroline. Only this evening Josh wasn’t smoking, but was holding the fence with both hands instead, gripping its wood, his head bowed between his arms as he wept.
From his vantage point in his flat Michael watched from above as Josh’s broad back shook and heaved. Balling one hand into a fist he began to beat it against the wood, not with force, but softly, steadily. Eventually, as if this effort had drained the last of his will, Josh slipped to his knees, which is where he remained, his face sunk in his hands and his back still shaking, coursing with the voltage of his daughter’s death.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WITHIN MINUTES OF Michael’s leaving that afternoon, Josh had returned home. He’d walked back to South Hill Drive quickly, so although Tony and Maddy’s house was just a few streets away, when he’d come into the hall his T-shirt was already patched with sweat. Closing the front door behind him, he’d held on to the handle, keeping the tongue of the latch from clicking so as not to wake Lucy, then gone straight into the kitchen for a drink. Taking a glass from the cupboard, he’d filled it with ice from the fridge, and then water. As he’d drunk, one hand resting on the tap, Josh had listened for his daughter upstairs. She’d been irritable since she’d woken that morning, fractious and running a temperature. At first he’d thought it was just the heat, but when she’d asked him if she could go back to sleep he knew she must have been sick. Ever since she was a baby, sleep was how Lucy’s body had tackled illness. So Josh had said yes, and put her to bed.