Page 35 of The Bodies

It had taken her words at the party to see how bad he’d let things get: Sometimes it feels like we’re two strangers living in the same house … Being married to you – it’s been lonely at times, particularly these last six months … Are you happy, Joe? With me and with Tilly? Do you still want this?

Strange, really, that while the last seventy-two hours have plunged him into a nightmare, in some ways he feels like he’s waking from a dream.

The guilt that’s eaten at him like a cancer these last five years – guilt at Claire’s death, guilt at embarking on a new relationship, guilt that he’d neglected Max – has achieved nothing but further pain. It shouldn’t have taken the tragedy unfolding around him to realize that.

In hindsight, he’d had so much to be thankful for, chief among them Erin, who’d seen something in him to cherish despite his manifest failures.

And he never could have anticipated, as their two broken families became one, just how close Max would grow to his stepmother, or how close Max and Tilly would grow to each other.

For it to have happened like it had, for all four of them to have knitted together so seamlessly, he should have felt joy.

Instead, he’d felt a mushrooming fear. The knowledge that he couldn’t guarantee his new family’s safety – that he’d failed at that task once before – had begun to obsess him, overwhelm him.

Somewhere along the way, perhaps he’d lost sight of what he’d found: the extraordinary privilege of new love.

Upstairs, to his surprise, he remains fully functional.

With the lights off, Erin pushes him on to the bed and straddles him.

What follows isn’t quiet; nor is it exactly gentle.

He listens to his wife’s gasps, endures the pain of her nails as she braces herself against his chest. In their three years together it might be the best sex they’ve had – and the first time Joseph’s felt no shame.

Soon, they’re so slippery with sweat that Erin’s hands can hardly find purchase. For a while, she seems too lost in sensation to realize something’s wrong, but Joseph does. From there, it’s only a matter of time until his wife notices, too, and how bad it’ll be when she does.

At last she rolls off him and lies there, recovering her breath. Then she reaches out and turns on a lamp – and reveals a scene of carnage. Blood covers Joseph, covers the sheets. Erin’s palms are crimson with it.

With a cry of dismay, she flips on to her knees. Her eyes move from her bloodied fingers, splayed in front of her, to Joseph. The slash wound across his abdomen gapes red and slick, its reopening caused as much by Erin’s gyrations as her nails. ‘What the fuck, Joe?’ she whispers. ‘ What the fuck? ’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I should have warned you.’

Levering himself on to one elbow, he swings his legs out of bed as carefully as he can.

Now that the sex is over, the pain from his wound is hitting harder.

It feels like someone’s dragged a soldering iron across his flesh, smoking his skin.

When he stands, favouring his good knee, the hamstring in that leg feels like it’s been Tasered.

He hobbles to the ensuite and hears Erin stumble to the family bathroom.

It’s quicker to shower than to wash himself at the hand basin. Afterwards, he binds his abdomen with another long strip of Elastoplast. He wraps a towel around his waist, opens the door.

During his absence, Erin has cleaned herself up and changed the sheets. She’s sitting on the mattress, hugging her knees. Joseph wonders if his wife’s nakedness is deliberate. Perhaps, in showing him she has nothing to hide, she hopes to encourage the same honesty in return.

‘You’re really starting to scare me,’ she whispers.

Joseph limps towards the bed. When she recoils he hesitates.

‘How did you get that?’ she asks, indicating his abdomen. ‘It looks fresh.’

‘It isn’t.’

Erin shivers, waits for him to speak.

‘That stupid, damned axe,’ he tells her, after a moment’s pause. ‘When I went downstairs, Friday night, Max scared the hell out of me, and I must have scared the hell out of him right back. It was dark. We had a … a coming together. Just a stupid accident, really. I didn’t want you to worry.’

‘He attacked you?’

‘No. Nothing like that. As I said, it was just a clumsy coming together. My fault, really. Not his.’

His wife is quiet for a while. Then she rests her chin on her knee. ‘Silly question,’ she says. ‘And maybe this is on me for not asking sooner. But why do you have an axe in the wardrobe, Joe?’

At last, she’s asked him something he can answer honestly, with no fear of the consequences.

‘Because I wanted to keep you all safe,’ he tells her, ‘and didn’t feel like I could.

The world’s a dangerous place. A lot of the time it’s a brutal, unforgiving place. And I didn’t want to lose anyone else.’

Joseph fills his lungs. Then he starts to tell Erin about the doorstep seller last winter who wouldn’t leave, and how powerless he’d felt to protect Max and Tilly. And how that single incident had grown in importance in his mind, a microcosm, perhaps, of more fundamental insecurities.

‘So you bought an axe?’

‘It’s actually a tactical tomahawk, but yeah.’ He screws up his face. ‘I bought a crossbow, too – some other stuff. The crossbow’s in the wardrobe, still in its box, if you want to see. Turns out I’m not much of a home defence guy.’

Erin’s gaze moves to the wardrobe as if she’s considering his offer, but then something seems to change her mind. Her attention returns to the Elastoplast stretched across his midriff. ‘These two disappearances,’ she says. ‘Angus Roth, and now Drew. Do you know anything about them, Joe?’

‘What could I possibly know that you don’t?’

‘I guess that’s what I’m asking. Because in the entire time we’ve been together, I’ve never seen you so – I don’t know – so distracted as you’ve been these last few days.

So skittish and erratic. You drove through a red light on the way to Enoch’s, nearly hit another car.

When we were sitting around that table with him, you looked terrified.

Same with Angus’s brother, earlier today. ’

Joseph concentrates on his breathing. Slow in, slow out. ‘I’m not sure what you think I might know,’ he says. ‘As for my behaviour, Tilly’s best friend is missing. Of course I look scared.’

‘Is it something to do with Max?’

‘Max?’

‘I saw the way you were watching him. Not just at Enoch’s but earlier, before we left. I know we talked about this already but something’s not right with him, Joe. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.’

‘What are you saying?’ he asks quietly. ‘Because you need to think very carefully about where you’re going with this.’

Erin hugs her knees tighter. ‘I’m not accusing Max of anything. Obviously, I’m not.’

‘Good, because—’

‘Do you still love me?’

He blinks, surprised by the swerve, unsettled by how intensely she’s watching him. ‘Why would you ask that?’

‘Because it just came into my head. I practically had to drag you to bed tonight. You never seem interested in that. And we never really talk, not like we once did. We’re more like housemates, these days, than husband and wife. Not even good housemates, particularly.’

Joseph doesn’t respond. He’s worried that anything he does say might lead Erin in directions he hasn’t anticipated.

‘And yet,’ she continues, ‘despite your apparent lack of interest in me, you’ve started wearing aftershave, started taking an interest in fashion, started being careful about what you eat.

I’m not the only one to have noticed. Everyone was commenting at the party, complimenting you.

Gemma Robinson seemed a particular fan, based on what I recall. ’

Joseph opens and closes his mouth. Can she possibly think he’s being unfaithful ?

There’s an explanation for every point Erin just listed.

But he can’t tell her he’s started wearing cologne to mask the smell of the dead man; that his clothes purchases were simply the pretext for buying a SIM card to research burial depths; that apart from his gluttonous display at Meghan’s, he hasn’t been eating and has mainly been puking because his son has taken two lives in the last week.

‘What do you think has happened to Drew?’ Erin asks.

Joseph shakes his head, as if a wasp just flew into his ear. His wife’s question, following so closely behind her observations of his behaviour, is very bad news indeed. ‘I think Tilly’s theory is the most likely – that she’s with this new guy and they just went somewhere, spur of the moment.’

Erin watches him, unblinking. ‘What prompted you to go over to the bungalow, yesterday?’

His stomach dives. Because her train of thought is still rattling along the same track, and his attempts to divert it aren’t working.

‘I told you. I thought I’d go through all the furniture – decide what to sell and what to keep.

If we declutter it a bit we might generate more interest. The council tax isn’t huge but it’s starting to add up. I just want to get shot of the place.’

Erin considers that, head tilted. ‘You know what? You’re right. That place is taking far too long to sell. And actually, it’s a good while since I last saw it. I think I’ll make some time tomorrow, go over and take a look around. Maybe I’ll spot something you’ve missed.’

She holds his gaze until he nods. Then she unfolds her legs and rises from the bed. From her drawer she retrieves pyjama shorts and a vest and slips them on. Flicking off the light, she slides under the covers.

Joseph waits a while, standing there in the darkness. Then he shuffles to his side of the bed and climbs in. Erin turns on to her side, away from him. The silence between them is heavier than it’s ever been.

He thinks of Thornecroft, the huge house on Hocombe Hill.

He thinks of Enoch’s miserable two-bed terrace and Drew’s sad little room.

He thinks of his mother’s bungalow, and the isolated spot on Black Down where he buried the dead man.

They’re dots on a map, blinking away like beacons, waiting for someone to join them up.

He can’t let his wife find out from someone else. Nor can he see a future, any longer, where he manages to keep all this quiet.

‘Erin?’ he whispers, in the darkness.

She deserves the truth. If he can’t protect her from it he must, at least, prepare her.

‘ Erin ,’ he whispers again.

His wife doesn’t answer – and Joseph realizes that while he’s been thinking her breathing has slowed in slumber. Perhaps that’s just as well. Because if she’d answered just then, he might have told her everything.

It’s a moment of weakness he can’t afford. Because Max is his North Star. There’s no one he won’t sacrifice for his boy. Putting his back to his wife, just like she did to him, he reaches out for sleep.

Tomorrow will be difficult. Likely the worst day yet. For a few hours, the sleep into which Joseph sinks is so black and luxurious it’s almost indistinguishable from death.