Page 40 of The Bodies

His phone starts buzzing. He pulls it out, sees that Max is calling. Dazed, not knowing what else to do, he puts the phone to his ear.

‘Dad,’ the boy says. ‘Don’t tell her anything. Don’t you—’

Joseph ends the call.

‘Was that him?’ Erin asks. ‘Was that Max?’

‘Yes.’

‘He knows, doesn’t he? Did you tell him? Or did he find out all by himself?’

‘Erin …’ Joseph clenches his teeth. ‘I don’t know what he knows.’

‘Did you use some kind of tracker? Hack my phone? Follow me to the hotel? Look at me, Joe.’

‘I am looking at you!’ he shouts, his voice cracking.

‘I didn’t know any of this!’ He shakes his head in stunned disbelief.

‘Still, what a way to tell me, eh? You park outside the police station for this conversation? What was the plan? Test me out with the truth, and if you got a bad reaction lean on the horn and wait for the cavalry? What did you think – that I’d hit you?

Start slapping you around? Have I ever – ever – given you any reason to suspect I might behave like that?

In the entire time we’ve known each other, I think this is the first time I’ve even raised my voice to you – and based on what I just learned, you might say I had good reason. ’

Not once, during his response, has Erin taken her eyes off him. Now, reaching out, she lays her hand on his. Her fingers are hot, almost like she has a fever.

‘You really didn’t know,’ she says; and Joseph sees, from her expression, that she must have glimpsed the truth of that in his face, or in his reaction, or both.

He snatches away his hand. ‘Did it occur to you that maybe, just maybe , if I’d suspected an affair I’d have come straight out and asked you?’ Again, he shakes his head. ‘Do you love him?’

Erin grimaces. ‘No. God, no. Absolutely not. It isn’t like that at all. Wasn’t like that. It was a horrible, devastating mistake. One that I was in the process of correcting – or at least ending. He was just …’

She pauses, and Joseph can tell that she’s trying to order her thoughts – that she isn’t trying to deceive him, or paint her actions in a more positive light.

‘He was just present, you know? In a way you haven’t been.

We used to be so close, me and you. And then …

I could never figure out why things changed.

I know how selfish it sounds, how awful, but I guess it was just a relief to be away from that for a while. To feel … wanted again.’

Joseph lets that sink in. ‘How long has it been going on?’

‘Not too long.’

‘Weeks? Months?’

‘No more than a few months.’

Erin takes a tissue from her bag. She blots away the mascara running down her cheeks.

Her chin trembles, her neck blotchy and red.

He’s never seen her so distraught. Abruptly, she starts the car, checks her mirror and pulls out into traffic.

‘And now, suddenly, he’s missing,’ she says. ‘And Drew is missing, too.’

Joseph watches, bewildered, as Crompton’s police station slides past on his right.

So – test passed? Is that it? Had she thought her admission of infidelity might wring from him an explanation of Angus Roth’s disappearance?

How ironic that his ignorance of Erin’s affair might have affirmed his innocence in her mind of any wrongdoing.

In the pit of his stomach, a flame of anger ignites. The longer he sits beside his wife, the hotter the fire grows.

Is Erin the key? Suddenly, it seems she must be. He thinks of Max’s claim that he’d hit the dead man by accident; the lack of visible damage to the car; the boy’s subsequent claim that he’d ended the dead man’s life out of mercy. ( It was a kindness, what I did .)

Did Max discover the affair and act to protect his father? Is that what this has been about all along? He recalls his son’s words in the kitchen Friday night, when asked why he hadn’t woken Joseph and sought help.

Because you’ve already been through so much. Because, on top of everything else, you really didn’t deserve this.

In hindsight, perhaps the boy hadn’t been referring to the supposed car accident but to Erin’s affair.

The fire in Joseph’s stomach erupts with fresh fury. It feels like liquid flame is beginning to run through his arteries. His hands make fists. His knuckles crack like gunshots.

He replays once again what Max had said at Claire’s graveside.

I’m not trying to make you feel bad. It’s just … if things keep going the way they are, you’re going to lose her. The only reason I’m telling you is because I don’t want you to end up alone …

I just want you to think about the future and how that looks. Because if Erin is part of it, you need to commit to her, Dad. If she isn’t, you really need to decide now while you still can, while there’s still time to start afresh.

Suddenly, it’s heartbreakingly obvious what his son, in whatever damaged capacity, had been trying to communicate.

Joseph had sought to rebuild his family, had hoped to heal Max of past wounds. And all he’s achieved is this – this monstrous and horrific calamity.

Fire in his arteries, in his head. It feels like he’s burning up, the heat threatening to flash over at any moment.

His rage isn’t directed at Erin. He loves this woman, regardless of what she might have done; and love – in his experience, at least – doesn’t come with an off switch.

Instead, his fury is directed inwards, because what Erin said just now was true.

He hasn’t been present, for any of them.

He’s allowed his fear of losing another loved one to hijack him, threatening the very consequences he’s so desperately tried to avoid.

They’re heading east, Joseph realizes. Out of Crompton. To the north, he can see the green curtain of Jack-O’-Lantern Woods.

It’s growing increasingly obvious where his wife is taking him. Erin slows the car, takes a left. And then they’re gliding around the gentle curve of his mother’s street.

Just like yesterday, Joseph prepares to see a line of police cars, perhaps a white geometric tent pitched on his mother’s front lawn.

‘You know what I think?’ Erin asks. ‘You won’t like it, but I’m worried it might be true.’

If Joseph’s fists clench any harder, he’ll see the white bone of his knuckles burst through the stretched skin. ‘Try me.’

The bungalow reveals itself. Joseph sees no police cars. No forensics tent. Erin pulls on to the empty driveway and kills the engine.

Across the street, an old man in a Hard Rock Cafe baseball cap is shaving a box hedge with electric clippers.

Joseph recognizes him – Dell Stephano. His mother used to take coffee with Dell every Wednesday and complain bitterly about his nosiness for the rest of the week.

She’d stuck to that routine for as long as she lived in Saddle Bank, so Joseph supposes she must have found something about Dell that she liked.

He watches the man through the wing mirror, imagining how glorious it must feel to have no task more pressing than the trimming of a hedge. Then he looks at his mother’s garage and thinks about what lies inside.

Two houses to his left, a sprinkler is flinging jewels of rainbow water into the air. Overhead, an aeroplane is scribing twin white lines across blue sky. The day is idyllic, dreamlike.

Erin slips her sunglasses back on. From her bag she finds a silk headscarf, folds it into a triangle and ties it under her chin. She looks like she’s channelling Audrey Hepburn, or perhaps Susan Sarandon from Thelma and Louise.

‘Well?’ Joseph asks. ‘Are you going to tell me?’

‘Yes, but not out here. Let’s go inside.’

Climbing out of the car, she strides across the driveway to the bungalow’s front entrance.