‘The collapse of your family,’ Ellie said.
Alison stared at her across the table. ‘You don’t know anything about my family.’
‘I know that Libby and Sam are back home. And Jack’s gone.’
‘How?’
‘The police came to see me. They said Sam had confirmed I was never in touch with him.’
‘He’s lying.’
Ellie looked Alison in the eye. ‘Of course he is. And of course you can tell. No one knows a boy like his mum.’
‘I should tell the police.’
‘If you send the police to me again, I’ll deny I was here,’ Ellie said. ‘And I’ll come back for you. I have keys.’
‘How do you have keys?’
Ellie waved a hand, as if that was of no importance.
‘I’ll change the locks,’ Alison said.
‘It won’t matter.’ Ellie took a sip of wine. ‘You really shouldn’t get the police involved.’
‘Why not? They need to find my husband.’
Ellie shook her head. ‘No, they don’t. Jack isn’t coming back.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He told me.’
‘When did you see him?’
‘He picked me up after my first police interview. Told me he was leaving.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘You know why.’
Alison drained her wine. She poured the last of the bottle into her glass, her hand trembling.
‘Not this again,’ she said. ‘Jack never did anything to Libby.’
Ellie grabbed Alison’s hand and pulled it towards her. Alison jumped at the sudden movement, her chair scuffing the floor.
‘You knew what he was doing,’ Ellie said.
‘I didn’t.’
Ellie leaned across the table and touched Alison’s temple. ‘Maybe not up here.’ She moved her finger to the woman’s chest. ‘But you knew it in here.’
Alison shook her head as tears came to her eyes. She lowered her face and her shoulders shook. Ellie was still gripping her hand in her fingers, like a buzzard with its prey.
‘Why do you think Sam stabbed him?’ Ellie said.
Alison was snivelling now, trying to pull her hand away.
‘My boy would never do that,’ she said.
‘Look at me.’ Ellie yanked Alison’s arm. Alison’s head came up.
‘Sam was trying to protect his sister. Your daughter. Do you understand? He’s a good boy, the son you’ve raised. He was protecting his family from harm.’
Alison’s tears landed on the table. ‘No, someone broke in.’
Ellie dropped Alison’s hand then slammed her fist down.
‘No one broke in, you know that. It was Sam. Because of what Jack was doing to Libby.’
Alison covered her face with her hands as she sobbed, elbows skidding on the table, her body shaking.
‘I swear I didn’t know . . . I couldn’t . . . how could he . . . ?’
Ellie watched her. She tried to put herself in Alison’s position. It was something the counsellor had said about empathy, trying to imagine what life was like for someone else. But that was useless in Ellie’s case, how could you possibly put yourself inside the head of someone suicidal? How could you empathise with that? And yet she did. Ironically, the very thing Logan had done put her in the same mindset. She wanted to die, she had wanted to die every day since he killed himself. She had all the empathy in the world. If she’d had any kind of religious belief she would’ve done it by now. If she had even the slightest feeling in her heart that she would see him again in some kind of afterlife, she would run over and grab a knife from the worktop right now and plunge it into her belly as deep as she could, right up to the handle, and she would feel good about it. But the truth was, she knew she would never see him again. She knew he wasn’t waiting for her with the angels, in a better place, all the clichés that get trotted out when someone young dies. They just die, end of story. They just create an unimaginably huge hole in the lives of everyone they left behind. That was the reality, and it was only once you embraced that and owned it that you had any chance of carrying on.
Alison was still crying, her sobs racking her body. She knew about what her husband had done, had admitted it to herself for the first time. What must that be like? A betrayal, of course, and massive guilt. Ellie understood both those things so well.
She couldn’t help herself from speaking. ‘How could you not do anything?’
Alison looked up, her face a crumpled mess. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘You did know, and you did nothing.’
Alison shook her head.
‘Libby tried to tell you,’ Ellie said. ‘She told me. She said you kept avoiding it.’
‘I don’t know about that. No . . .’
Ellie felt her anger rise. ‘Yes.’
She landed a fist on the table that made Alison jump. She looked scared. She should. Ellie thought about those knives in the block, a few feet away. She breathed, tried to control her body. Her fist ached.
‘I did something about it,’ Ellie said.
Alison narrowed her eyes. ‘What did you do?’
‘I made Jack go away.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just that. I made your husband go away.’
‘How?’
Ellie laid her hands in front of her, held Alison’s gaze. ‘I persuaded him. I can be very persuasive when I need to be. I told him I would take Libby to the police. I said I had evidence. He understood it was over.’
She pictured him pleading with her in his car, saying it was all a mistake, that he hadn’t been doing anything. She saw Libby sticking the scissors into her dad’s stomach, then Sam planting them in his neck. Then herself strangling him as he tried to escape.
‘He said he was sorry,’ Ellie said.
Alison was crying again. ‘How could he?’
‘He won’t come back. Ever.’
‘Where did he go?’
Ellie shook her head.
‘He must’ve said something.’
‘Forget about Jack,’ Ellie said.
Alison stared at her. ‘After what you’ve just told me?’ Something hardened in her face. ‘Why should I trust you, who the fuck are you anyway? Why are you even in our lives?’
Ellie sighed and ran her fingers down her neck. She leaned in towards the middle of the table and lowered her voice, like a conspiracy.
‘I found your son on the bridge.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sam. I met him the morning he stabbed Jack. He was on the Forth Road Bridge. He was going to jump.’
‘No.’
Ellie nodded. ‘He was over the railing, looking down. He was about to step off when I stopped him. I spoke to him. If I hadn’t been there, your son would be dead. Just like mine.’
Alison lifted her wine glass and finished the dregs in the bottom. Both her hands shook on the glass. She looked like a drowning woman clutching at a piece of driftwood.
Ellie pushed her chair back and stood up.
‘You’re lucky,’ she said.
Alison shook her head. ‘I don’t feel lucky.’
‘You’ve got a second chance. Both your children are tucked up in bed and you’ve got a chance to live a new life with them. You’ve got a chance to make their lives better, make it up to them. To talk to them, and listen to them when they want to talk. Don’t you know how precious that is? I would give anything to have that. Anything.’
Alison stared at Ellie, her head nodding as she tried to get her crying under control.
‘Don’t waste it,’ Ellie said.
44
Ellie stood at her kitchen window watching the sunrise. From here you could see the light bleeding over the water before you saw the sun, hidden by the rocky outcrop to the east. The rays splayed up the Forth, diffracted through the criss-cross grid of the rail bridge, reaching across the amber surface of the firth to the road bridge. Cars and vans glinted as they caught the light, bouncing the energy outwards, dispersing the power of the sun to everyone.