As he lay on his bed, the dawn light rising up the wall beside him, Michael endlessly turned over combinations of reasoning until he’d convinced himself that this was the only way forward. That from now on all his effort, all his actions, should be directed towards healing, not blame. It was an argument, he decided, as the sun edged higher and the first swimmers arrived in the ponds beyond his window, to which he could hold only if it overwhelmingly became his defining purpose. And yes, his atonement, too, his penance. To carry the knowledge of Lucy’s death alone, while doing all he could to help her parents recover from their grief, just as they’d helped him recover from his.
As Michael made these promises to himself he became painfully aware of the presence of the Nelsons’ home, just the other side of his wall. Its weight seemed improbable and yet painfully tangible. All through the rest of that day, as he forced himself to get out of bed, to dress, eat, he could feel it pressing against his own small rooms. And the thought of Lucy, dead, pressed upon him too. It seemed unthinkable that her vitality could be stilled in such an instant. That all she was, all she had been — all her memories, the imagined lives of her dolls, her favourite toys and colours — had become, the moment she’d hit those stairs, no more than Oliver’s description of a spongy organ, heavy with death inside her skull.
But most terrible of all was the fact that he’d been responsible for that reduction, that grotesque transition from body to corpse. This, beyond his grief, was the cutting edge of her death for Michael, the sickening knowledge he’d carry for the rest of his life. That it was he who’d caused Lucy to fall. He who had killed her.
Although for the rest of the day he kept to his flat, Michael was unable to stop himself constantly checking the windows. But however many times he looked he saw no more of Josh in the garden, and nothing of Samantha either. He kept his phone in his pocket. He listened for sounds from their house, but heard nothing. And yet he knew they were there, just next door, the two of them, scoured by the loss he’d caused, woken like childless newlyweds into their altered lives.
Around mid-morning, as he was filling the kettle at his sink, Michael saw a car pull up in the street. A woman got out, went round to the passenger seat, and opened the door. Rachel, a blue rucksack over her shoulders, stepped onto the pavement. Taking her by the hand the woman, who was short and tanned with a neat grey bob, walked her down the path to her front door. Minutes later the woman reappeared, got back in her car, and left.
Michael wanted to speak to them. He thought about calling, or sending a text. But he could not until he, himself, had somehow been told. These were the rules he’d set himself. Having deleted his minutes in their home, he must now act and react as if his truth was the only truth. As if he’d walked across the Heath to his lesson, and then he’d come back. He had slept and now it was Sunday. A quiet day, a high bank of clouds pressing a humid heat upon the city. A day when families stayed close, until later in the evening, which is when, often, Sam or Josh would call him and ask him to join them for dinner.
He couldn’t work, and he didn’t want to leave the flat, but he had to do something. So he sat at his desk in the study making the movements of work instead: arranging notes, printing out the last chapter he’d written. In it, Michael had described his first meeting with Oliver Blackwood, but had done so while removing himself from the scene. Having filleted their conversation, recalled his observations — Oliver’s silver Mercedes SLK, the brightness of his tie — he’d recounted the action in third person as if he, himself, had not been there.
The occasion had been a friend’s funeral, a novelist who’d died of a sudden brain haemorrhage. Oliver was the surgeon who’d operated on him. He’d failed to save him, but, as he’d told Michael in their first conversation at the wake, when he’d learnt of his patient’s profession a few days later, he hadn’t regretted his failure. “He’d have had no language,” Oliver had said with a doctor’s frankness. “No linguistic facility to speak of at all. A man of words, of letters, of meaning, robbed of all that.” Reaching across Michael he’d picked a canapé from a passing tray, a roll of salmon bedded on a slice of bread. “No,” he’d said, taking a bite from it. “Better like this in many ways. Sometimes it just is.”
Although in the chapter before him Michael had removed his response to Oliver that day, now, sitting at his desk with the weight of the Nelsons’ home beside him, he found himself repeating it from across the years. “Yes,” he heard himself say, as if somehow the vocalised word might strengthen his resolve. “Sometimes it is.”
―
Michael was staring at a pen on his desk when the entry buzzer sounded. His mind, still loosened by recurring images of Lucy, had wandered. A pulsing nausea swilled through him. All morning he’d paced his flat as if about to make an entrance into an auditorium, an uncomfortable nervousness in the pit of his stomach. So at first, on hearing the buzzer, distracted and confused, he’d done nothing. But then it sounded again, for longer, more insistent. Going into the hall Michael picked up the receiver and pressed the intercom.
“Hello?” His voice was hoarse, dry.
“Mr. Turner?” a woman asked.
“Yes,” Michael said.
“Detective Sergeant Slater, CID. I was wondering if I could come up for a quick chat?”
Michael stared at the plastic grid of the speaker, his finger still on the intercom button. “Is everything all right?” he said.
“Just routine,” she replied. “But I’d rather explain in person, if that’s okay.”
“Yes, of course,” Michael said. “Fourth floor, all the way to the top.” He pressed the entry button and heard the front door click open, then the sound of Slater’s footsteps as she entered. There were no others following.
He heard her steps again a few seconds before she reached his flat. Delicate taps echoing in the concrete stairwell. He didn’t wait for her knock but opened the door to meet her, greeting her with a nod.
“Thank you, Mr. Turner,” she said, as he held the door for her and she entered.
She was small, petite, of a similar frame to Caroline. She wore plain clothes: a pair of jeans, a blouse, a navy jacket over her arm. She wiped at her forehead with her hand, hot from the walk up the stairs.
“Would you like some tea?” Michael said, closing the door.
She smiled at him, disarmingly natural. “No, I’m fine, thanks. Some water would be great, though.”
She followed him into the kitchen and living area. As he ran the tap, testing the temperature with the tips of his fingers, she walked the length of the room, ending where Michael had stood watching Josh the night before. “Beautiful view,” she said, looking out at the Heath, and then down at the Nelsons’ garden.
Michael couldn’t take the waiting any longer. He’d already surprised himself with his ability to slip into the stream of his altered yesterday. But he doubted he’d be capable of sustaining it under direct questioning. He had to know if she knew.
“Do you mind,” he said, as he brought her the glass of water, “if I ask what this is about?”
She smiled again as she took the glass. She had close-cut brown hair, tomboyish in style. She looked no older than twenty-eight, twenty-nine. There was, Michael noticed, the scarring of a burn on her neck. “Just some routine enquiries,” she said. She took a sip of the water. “Shall we sit down?” she asked, indicating the sofa.