‘We’ll make it work.’
‘Anna, all his friends are here, he’s happy at Waverly, we can’t just …’
‘Then for once in your life, Eddy, support me! The petition will get rid of him, everyone will sign it – trust me. We’ll get a new head and then we won’t have to move Blake.’
‘But Seb’s his godfather …’ Eddy replies meekly and Anna reaches for his hand, squeezes, like she’s full of regret about that choice they made fifteen years ago, too. He can’t say out loud what he’s really thinking, the feeling that crowds out almost everything else. The panic that he’ll lose Seb. His best friend and perhaps, he realizes now, the truth sinking within him, his only real friend. Anna will tell him he’s being selfish, thinking only about himself again, like always. So instead, Eddy asks, ‘And what about Abi and her girls, the repercussions for Rosie? It’s not just Seb who’ll be impacted by this.’
Anna just nods, sadly. ‘I know. I’m going to try and talk to Rosie today, let her know that we’ll be there for her …’
‘She can’t possibly think this is a good idea.’
Anna breathes out gently, tries to keep herself calm, reminding Eddy that she’s an expert in this particular kind of heartbreak. ‘Look, Ed, Rosie’s in the denial stage now. I remember it myself. She can’t think straight about anything, but when she’s processed some of her own feelings, I think she’ll understand where I’m coming from with the petition.’
‘And Abi? What about Abi?’ Eddy asks, clutching for the thing that will make Anna stop or at least pause, but he hasn’t found it yet because Anna replies, ‘I don’t name her; I don’t even mention exactly what he did.’
Eddy tries to ignore the strange slippery feeling in his stomach. He noticed the way Blake blushed and looked away when he mentioned Lily’s name the other day. Blake has a crush on Lily, which Anna doesn’t know about and which only serves to complicate everything even more.
‘Yes, but it will come out, won’t it? She’ll be implicated …’
‘Well,’ Anna sniffs, ‘excuse the pun, but she made her bed, didn’t she? I’m afraid I can’t protect everyone.’
He can’t help it. He has to say something about the cost to his own life.
‘And what about my thirty-year friendship?’
Anna breathes out; Eddy’s exasperating her now. ‘I don’t know, Ed. That’ll be up to you guys to figure out.’
Eddy’s head feels like an untethered balloon, bobbing around; he knows he should say something, but he can’t find any thoughts, just air where thoughts should be, so he pleads, ‘Can you just let me talk to him first, please, before posting this?’
Anna props herself up on her elbows a little, considering, and says, ‘I tried that already, didn’t I, Eddy?’ Her eyebrows slant together which means she’s about to say something difficult. ‘Look, Ed, I didn’t want to tell you this, but when I spoke to Seb he compared what he’s done with what you did, in Singapore. He said it was the same thing.’
Eddy wilts. ‘What?’
Anna nods. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s not, of course. You didn’t plan to be unfaithful, you didn’t pay a poor, desperate woman for sex and you came home and told me straight away about what you’d done, so …’
Eddy can feel her eyes on him, anxious for his reaction. Anna’s quiet for a moment, staring at him, before she glances at the laptop balanced on his knees and her face lifts with excitement. ‘Oh my God, Ed!’
‘What?’ Eddy says, nervous again.
‘You remember when you and Blake saw Seb at school and he slammed his laptop shut and you started that whole stupid “Seb’s a spy” gag – can you remember whether it was his school computer?’
Where feelings should be, Eddy’s mind is completely blank. He looks at his wife, mystified, shakes his head, blows out to show that he has no idea, absolutely none.
‘It probably was? He uses it for everything, I’m pretty sure. What difference does it make?’
‘What difference? Ed, if he was looking for sex workers, literally shopping for women to abuse and using school property to do it, then he really is a danger to kids …’
‘What? How?’
Anna rolls her eyes at his slowness. ‘Imagine if a child came into his office, if they’d seen those images …’
‘Anna, come on, that’s pretty unlikely …’
But Anna doesn’t care what Eddy thinks because she keeps talking, ‘He’s being paid by the taxpayer, literally funded by us, the hard-working public, and he’s using that time on school property to look up women to abuse.’
Anna’s talking herself into a rage and Eddy knows that the thrill of it is too alluring for her, he won’t be able to reason with her now, so it’s a relief when a small voice from downstairs calls up, ‘Dad … Daddy?’
He clears his throat and calls back, ‘Coming.’
‘You OK, Eddy?’ Anna asks, clasping his hand briefly, as he stands up, readjusts the tie on his dressing gown to go to their son, while Anna stares at him, her eyebrows lifted in concern.
Eddy nods to show that yes, of course he’s fine, when they both know he’s not. He’s really not fine at all.
Eddy has a lunch meeting with a client in London and while he’s standing in front of the open wardrobe trying to choose a shirt for the day, Anna comes in and immediately hands him the light-blue shirt he’d been looking for. ‘I’ll drive you to the station.’
Eddy frowns; the station is just a short walk away.
‘I’ve got something I want to show you on the way. Come on.’
‘But my train isn’t for an hour, and I’ve got a couple of …’
‘You can send emails while I drive. Please, Eddy. It’s important.’
Ruston is only five miles south of Waverly, but as Anna’s parents moved almost twenty years ago to a more salubrious village in Hampshire, they have no reason to visit. Eddy has come once or twice to buy paint in one of the big industrial estates that seem to be engulfing the small town, but other than that he hardly thinks about the place and Anna almost never mentions it.
Anna is quiet on the drive. Eddy focuses on his phone and does his best to ignore the anxiety nibbling away in his stomach.
Even with the sun shining and autumnal leaves falling soft as snowflakes, Ruston is still an armpit. The centre of town is strangled by a one-way system and many of the shops are boarded up. The only places open are betting shops, takeaways and tired-looking budget supermarkets selling more booze than food. Kids bunking off school and drunks congregate outside, like these grubby places are their church and they’re seeking redemption in a bottle of cheap whisky or energy drink.
A skinny mum pushes a bored-looking toddler and a wall-eyed baby in a pram. She moves like she’s angry, ready for a fight, stopping next to another woman with greasy hair and a pushchair, smoking at a bus stop. It’s jarring thinking about their lives in Waverly occurring at the same time, just five miles down the road.
‘Why are we here?’ Eddy asks nervously.
‘Wait a moment,’ Anna says, keeping her eyes on the road. Eddy notices how tightly she grips the wheel. This is hard for her. She wants to be here even less than Eddy but she’s pushing through her discomfort because whatever this is, it’s important.
They stop outside a row of red-brick houses that doesn’t look so different to their own terrace in Waverly. But these houses have broken kids’ toys in tiny overgrown front gardens, weeds sprouting out of the roof tiles, and one of the windows has been barred up with a metal grate. Anna points to a house in the middle. It has grey net curtains hanging in the window that look like they were once white.
‘That was ours. Number sixteen. And that’ – she points to the scrubby patch of grass opposite the row of houses – ‘is where I used to watch them. They used to call out to my dad asking if he wanted a blowjob for breakfast, laughing at him as he walked me and my sister to school. Dad used to get so angry. When it first started getting bad back in the late nineties, Dad would come out here with a litter picker and a bin bag every weekend to pick up the used condoms, but he stopped after a while.’