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Gabriel closes the door.
As he contemplates the wrecked console table and the shards of broken porcelain, his urge for violence recedes. Back in the kitchen, he searches Angus’s cupboards for a broom.
THIRTY
To his stepsister, Max says, ‘I’ve been seeing Drew.’
Joseph, who just moments ago was fearing an even more damning revelation, sinks into himself like a punctured inflatable mattress.
Across the table, Tilly recoils, then laughs in astonishment. ‘What? No, you haven’t. Since when?’
‘A few weeks. We were going to tell you.’
She looks at him stonily. ‘Bullshit. I don’t even know why you’d say that.’
‘Because it’s true.’
‘No, Max, it’s bollocks. Drew’s seeing an older guy, not a younger one. Andcertainlynot you.’
‘I’m not saying she hasn’t been seeing someone else too. In fact, I think she may well have been.’ The boy glances at his father. Then his gaze returns to his stepsister, his expression pleading. ‘I know we should have told you, Tilly. We just didn’t know how. We didn’t want you to feel you were somehow being edged out.’
Max pauses. Then he adds, ‘Whatever you might be thinking, this doesn’t change anything else, anything at all. It certainly doesn’t change anything between us. I swear to you.’
Holding his breath, Joseph studies Tilly’s reaction. She sits there a while, blank-faced, and he wonders if she’s recalling – and reframing – all her recent interactions with her stepbrother and her best friend. Finally, reaching across the table, she squeezes Max’s hand. ‘You should have told me,’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t have felt edged out, far from it. But I get why you didn’t. Maybe Drew went out last night to split up with this older guy.’
Erin’s hand is still encircling Max’s wrist. Now, though, she removes it. ‘When was the last time you saw Drew?’
‘In the garden, yesterday afternoon,’ the boy says.
‘And last night?’
‘Last night?’
‘Max, if Drew’s disappeared, and the police find out you’ve been seeing her, they’ll want to know your whereabouts last night.’
‘He was here, Mum. With me. We heated some microwave meals and watchedOppenheimer, just the two of us.’ When Erin looks at Joseph for confirmation, Tilly adds: ‘No point asking him, he left us to it, but it’s the truth, I swear. If something’s happened to Drew, Max has nothing to do with it.’
Erin turns to Joseph. ‘You went out last night, too?’
‘Mum, seriously, stop. I don’t understand why you’re being so suspicious.’
‘I’m just trying to get my head around this. Joe?’
‘I went to the bungalow,’ he says. ‘Like I told you. With you in London, it felt like a good opportunity.’
He feels Tilly’s eyes on him and doesn’t want to meet them. The note he’d written last night, before leaving to bury the dead man, had explained that he was visiting a friend. But if he repeats that lie in front of Erin, she’ll want to know which friend, and to that he has no answer.
Silence, now, around the table. Joseph tries to work outwhat everyone’s thinking. Through Erin, Max has learned that his father broke his promise to keep the relationship with Drew secret. Tilly now knows about the relationship, too. From the strange look Tilly gave Joseph a few minutes ago, he fears she might thinkhe’sthe older guy Drew’s been seeing – and now he’s contradicted himself over his movements. What his wife is thinking, he can’t begin to imagine.
‘OK,’ Erin says, pushing back from the table. ‘There’s no point sitting around talking. Let’s box up all this food and take it over to Enoch’s. Odds-on he hasn’t eaten. Right now, the best way we can help Drew is by helping her dad. So let’s go over there and do that.’
Joseph drives, despite everyone’s protestations about his knee. Erin takes the passenger seat, a cooler bag filled with Chinese food on her lap.
Head-down in her phone, Tilly provides a running commentary of what she’s learned. It’s always bad news. Or possibly good news. Joseph is so dizzy with stress, and so exhausted from lack of sleep, that it’s increasingly difficult to differentiate. What might be good news for him and Max is necessarily terrible for everyone else. He finds himself hoping, beyond rationality, that Tilly’s next update will reveal that Drew’s been found safe and well, that the girl has called Enoch to explain she smoked too much weed and fell asleep, that she got drunk and passed out somewhere, that her blood is pumping, warm, around her body and she’s alive, alive, alive.
He feels Erin’s eyes on him as he negotiates Crompton’s streets. It’s obvious she wants to say something. Perhaps she’s waiting until there’s no chance of anyone else overhearing. Rarely has he met anyone with intuition as keen as hers. Better that he tell her the truth than she figure it out for herself, but he can’t even begin to work out how to havethat conversation – nor where it would likely lead. Joseph has made his choice – he intends to protect Max no matter what – but he doesn’t expect that from Erin. Certainly not once she learns of her stepson’s deeds. And her husband’s.
‘Joe, red light,’ Erin says. Gripping her seat, she shouts, ‘Joe, redlight!’