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Clumsily, he’d ordered more coffee. Even more clumsily, he’d started to ask her questions.
After ten minutes, their conversation had grown less awkward. Twenty minutes after that, it wasn’t awkward at all. Tilly clearly shared her mother’s ability to form quick and meaningful connections. The effect was like sliding into a warm bath.
Despite the girl’s confidence, Joseph had felt he was talking to someone whose road had perhaps been even rockier than Max’s; someone in desperate need of a father; someone who needed stability and protection – all the things love could bring. She’d suffered her parents’ divorce, her stepfather’s suicide, the fallout from his gambling debts, difficult situations at school.
In Tilly he’d perceived what he’d often perceived in his son since Claire’s death: that sense of something tragically broken, albeit better concealed. It had triggered in him an overwhelming desire to repair the damage.
The thought of becoming a protector and a role model toanother child had filled him with foreboding. But – and here was the strange thing, sitting opposite this charismatic and keen-eyed teenager – the thought of side-stepping that role, of refusing it, somehow felt unconscionable.
‘I was terrified that day,’ Erin tells him. ‘It felt like I was rolling the dice on a huge gamble. I was so scared you’d let Tilly down. You had to be perfect, Joe. Rock solid. Because the two men who’d been there before you had failed her horribly.’
Erin stares at the police station, chews her lip. ‘I haven’t told you much about Tilly’s father.’
Joseph keeps his breathing shallow, tries to figure out where this is going. ‘You’ve told me virtually nothing.’
‘It’s not the easiest thing to bring up.’
He waits for her to elaborate. Once a minute has passed, he says, ‘I might be way off, here. But from the few things you’ve said, I got the impression he was abusive.’
‘Unfortunately, your impression was right.’
‘I’m so sorry, Erin.’
She picks up her sunglasses, puts them down. ‘You read all those stories – of women who don’t get out, who let it happen time and again. You grow up thinking you never would because you’re too intelligent, too strong.
‘And then it does happen. And you tell yourself it’s not the same. You’re career people, high-fliers, with all the stresses that brings. Yours was a one-off – an extreme situation. And itdoesn’thappen again, until one day it does, and this time you end up sticking around because for some bizarre reason you need to fix it, because you can’t accept failure, in marriage or anything else.
‘That is, until you find out from your daughter that he’s abusing her, too. And in the worst possible way.’
‘My God,’ Joseph says. ‘What an animal. I don’t know what to say, Erin. I sensed she’d had a rough time, too. But not that.’
‘After the divorce, I’d thought the worst part was over. Then Robson fought me for access and won joint custody. You’d think it could never happen, not with those kinds of accusations flying around. Apparently, it happens all the time. When the court found no evidence of abuse, Robson’s legal team accused me of parental alienation. I nearly lost Tilly completely.’
Joseph sees how much the recollections are costing her; and yet he can’t help wondering why she’s telling him this now, with all these other crises unfolding around them, or why she’s brought him within shouting distance of Crompton’s police station before sharing it.
‘Tilly doesn’t see him any more,’ Erin continues. ‘But back then, thanks to the court order, she didn’t have much choice. Only after she’d gone through puberty did her dad suddenly lose all interest.’
She rubs her arms, hugs herself. ‘After Robson, there was Mark. He seemed a nice enough guy, but he wasn’t much of a dad. Wasn’t much of anything, it turned out. You know most of the story from our bereavement meetings. One night he chased down a handful of pills with a bottle of whisky and climbed into bed with me. When I woke the next morning he was already cold. You could live a thousand lifetimes and not put that memory out of your head.’
Joseph closes his eyes. He’d known that Mark had killed himself but not that Erin had woken up beside him. ‘I cannot even begin to imagine.’
As nightmarish as that moment must have been, he knows the tragedy hadn’t ended there. Mark, a compulsive gambler seemingly devoid of luck or talent, had left behind a trail of loans and maxed-out credit cards, along with a hefty secret remortgage. His life insurance had paid out, but Erin had still been forced to sell the house.
‘And then I met you.’
Joseph turns that sentence over in his mind. He tries to frame it among her revelations about Robson, which he hadn’t heard before, and the details he hadn’t known about Mark.
Bad things come in threes, says a voice inside his head.Don’t you get it? Bad things and bad men: Robson. Mark. You.
He stares at the grey misery of Crompton’s police station. He wonders if PC Hopkins and PC Kenner are inside, reporting on their conversation with the Carvers. He wonders if his photograph is tacked to a whiteboard, a dotted line connecting him to Drew; worse, if Max’s photograph is up there with it.
‘I’m telling you all this,’ Erin continues, ‘because for the last three years, and for the first time in her life, Tilly’s had a proper dad. Someone who keeps his promises when he makes them. Someone prepared to go into bat for her when she needs it. I’d wanted that for Tilly and you delivered. Just like I hope you think I delivered for Max.’
‘I do,’ he says. ‘You know I do.’
Erin sighs. ‘But being a dad isn’t enough, Joe. I need a husband, too.’
A thirty-foot metal pole stands outside the police station. Three CCTV cameras hang from it, pointed in different directions. One of the lenses faces this way.