“What is this, Jane?” Brendan went to stand, but she put out her hand to stop him. “Jane?”
“I’m sorry. I know I should’ve told you about this, but once I’d started keeping it a secret, it was easier to keep on going. I’m not even sure why I started collecting this stuff in the first place — initially, I think it was a way of keeping Simon in the loop, or maybe making sure he never forgot us.” She glanced at Simon.
Brendan looked at him too, across the table.
“So it was you? It was you all along?”
Jane nodded.
Brendan felt the anger surging through him. He didn’t understand what was happening, but it seemed that his wife and her old boyfriend had secrets between them after all. He’d been right to be paranoid. It was true, all of it. They’d been running around behind his back… Somehow, they’d managed to keep some kind of long distance affair going without him noticing.
“Brendan… Look at me, Brendan.”
He turned to face his wife. She was shaking her head.
“What is this?” His voice sounded whiny; thin and reedy and childlike.
“Ever since Simon left, I’ve been sending him reminders of what he left behind. Reminders of you, and the hell he left you to carry on your own. That’s how it started, I suppose: as a form of revenge. I might as well admit that now. Then, as time passed, it turned into a habit. I just kept sending them. Whenever he moved, I did a little research and located a new address. I wasn’t even sure if they were correct, those addresses — not until now, anyway.”
“Oh, yes.” Simon exhaled a long breath. “Yes, I’ve been getting this stuff for years. Emails, too.”
“Emails?” Brendan leaned back in his chair, pushing it away from the table. He felt a little better about the situation, yet still he knew that somehow he had been betrayed. He just could not figure out how, or why.
“The emails were a lot easier,” said Jane. “Google is your friend.” She smiled, nervously. “I’m just glad you never replied.”
“Shit, mate, remember I told you about this? I thought it was Marty, sending me all that stuff. But it was Jane.” He turned to face her. “It was you!”
“Should I be angry about this?” Brendan grabbed his wine glass and gripped the stem. “I mean, you’ve been keeping secrets from me. Both of you.”
“No,” said Jane, walking around the table and sitting on his knee. She stroked his face with the palm of her hand. She tilted her head close to his. “Just me: me and nobody else. And I’m sorry. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. I think at the start it was because I didn’t want to upset you. Remember, it took you a long time before you could actually talk about your feelings, how you felt deserted by your old friends.” She kissed the side of his face. “I would never do anything to hurt you.” Her smile was warm; her words were like fire.
“I know,” he said. “I know you wouldn’t, but this feels strange. As if I should feel hurt.” He kissed the tip of her nose.
“Okay,” said Simon, pouring more wine. “So you’re not going to punch me?”
“I should. But I won’t.” Brendan picked up Jane’s glass and handed it to her.
“Let’s call this a clean slate,” said Jane, standing. “No more secrets. You two need to work together to get Marty involved in all this, and then the three of you need to sit down and talk — really talk, about everything. All of it.”
“Yes,” said Simon, raising his glass.
“Aye,” said Brendan, mimicking the gesture.
“And I’ll stop interfering. I shouldn’t have done that.” Jane lifted her own glass high into the air.
“It worked, though,” said Simon. “I could never forget. The Grove was always in my mind. No matter how hard I tried, I could never get this place, or all of you, out of my mind.” He paused, nodded. “Hell, yes, it worked.”
“Daddy…”
They all looked over towards the door. Isobel was standing in the open doorway, in her white nightdress. Her face was damp with tears. “Daddy… something’s wrong, Daddy.”
Brendan got to his feet and ran across the room, scooping her up in his arms. She was cold. Her body was shaking. “What is it, baby? What’s wrong? Are you poorly?”
The little girl shook her head. Her blonde hair was moist. “It’s Harry. There’s something wrong with Harry. He’s being sick.”
He handed Isobel to Jane and headed for the stairs, taking them two at a time. When he reached the first floor, he moved quickly to the kids’ room. He pushed open the door and saw Harry kneeling on the floor at the end of the bed, his arms ramrod straight, his shoulders hunched. He was retching, dry-heaving, his little body jerking and spasming as his stomach muscles worked overtime.
“Oh, God… Harry. What is it, son?”
“Daddy!” Harry screamed the word and then went into another convulsion. There was dull yellow vomit on the floor, inches from his face. He turned his head to the side, and in that moment Brendan saw that his son’s throat was swollen. His neck was actually bulging, already twice its normal size; his cheeks were puffed out, as if they were filled with hot air. He tried to speak again, but his voice could no longer get past the constriction.
“Harry!” He went down on his knees and grabbed the boy’s shoulders. Harry’s skin was hot and his pyjamas were soaking wet. “Oh, God…”
“What is it?” Jane was behind him, standing in the doorway. He looked back and saw Simon there, too, holding Isobel’s hand. His daughter’s face was pale, almost white. She looked like a ghost.
“Harry!” He turned back to his boy just in time to witness another convulsion, and this time Harry was bringing something up, a small, lumpen mass that Brendan could make out rising in his throat. The boy’s neck fluttered; his eyes rolled back in his head, and his mouth opened, opened…
The soggy object was forced out between his wet lips, and dropped onto the floor, right into the pile of fresh vomit. Harry slumped sideways, possibly in a faint. The small lump began to twitch. Brendan thought it was a giant moth, ready to break out of its sticky pupa.
Nobody moved. For a moment — and that was all it took — none of the three adults could even speak. They all remained locked into position, bound by their fears.
The object rolled on the floor, and then it began to transform. Tiny wings twitched outwards, unfolding from the body, and a tiny head emerged from beneath one of them. The thing made no sound; it just started flapping its wings, slowly at first, and then fast, faster, until they were nothing but a blur of motion. And the hummingbird floated up from the floor, soundless and graceful and totally out of place, an alien object in Harry and Isobel’s bedroom.
Brendan turned his head to follow the bird’s progress, and watched as it flew past Simon and Jane — both of them stepping back from the doorway to allow it out of the room — and into the rest of the house. The sight of the thing triggered a chain of detonations, submerged memories exploding at random inside Brendan’s head, but they went up in smoke before he could grab them.
Then, snapping back into the moment, he bent down and cradled Harry in his arms, moaning and stroking the boy’s sweat-damp head. “Call an ambulance,” he said. “Do it, quickly.”
Outside the bedroom, on the cramped landing, Isobel began to weep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SIMON SAT DOWN on the bed and tried to make sense of everything that had taken place this evening. He was tired and his head throbbed, yet he still felt drunk. Things were changing so fast. Everything was fluid; he could not lock his thoughts in place, not even long enough to examine what they meant.
When he’d first arrived at the Cole house, things had been tense. He had been unable to settle down after the violence he’d perpetrated upon the kid in the burnt-out building, and it seemed to him that Brendan had something of an attitude — which was understandable, really, the way that Simon had been pushing the man.