Page 5 of The Bodies

FOUR

Joseph puts down the phone.

‘You hit someone?’ he asks. ‘In a fight?’

Max rubs his hands together, as if he’s washing them beneath a tap. There’s no damage to his knuckles, no scuffing of the skin. His fists can’t be responsible for the spilled blood.

Joseph touches his abdomen. He recalls the knife blade flashing in the dark. And suddenly he’s very frightened indeed.

The face opposite seems to cycle through different identities: Max the child; Max the teenager; a person who’s barely Max at all. ‘Not a fight,’ says one of them.

Joseph runs his tongue around his mouth, tries to work up some moisture. ‘What, then?’

Max holds his father’s gaze a while longer. Then he hangs his head. When he speaks next, his voice cracks with emotion. ‘Once I say, everything changes. And I’m not ready. Because afterwards we can never go back.’

Joseph reaches across the table, takes Max’s hands, squeezes them. ‘Between you and me,’ he says, ‘nothing changes. Nothing ever changes. I’m your dad. That’s for ever. Whatever this is, let me help you.’

Max lifts his chin. He looks past Joseph to the wall clock as if he, too, has started to sense time running inexorably down. Again, his head drops.

‘I was driving,’ the boy whispers – because eighteen years old or not, to Joseph he’s still very much a boy. ‘Next thing I know, someone’s in the road. There was …’ He shudders. ‘There was nothing I could do.’

In the ensuing silence, the refrigerator’s soft buzzing is the only sound. Joseph cannot breathe, cannot speak. He gets up from the table, shakes his head – as if by dislodging his son’s words he can cancel their meaning. ‘Nothing you could do to avoid them?’

When Max lifts his gaze to his father, his eyes are wet with tears. ‘Nothing I could do to save them.’

The overhead LEDs brighten. The refrigerator’s buzzing increases in pitch. It’s as if a power surge has just hit the house, but Joseph suspects it’s a dump of adrenalin sharpening his senses. ‘You’re saying you … that they’re dead ?’

Max wipes his eyes, nods.

‘No. That can’t be. Maybe that’s what it looked like. You knocked them unconscious, or—’

‘Dad,’ he says. ‘I’m telling you.’

Joseph crosses the kitchen, comes back, sits down again. He can’t make sense of what he’s hearing. Its sheer enormity. ‘You called the police?’ he asks, knowing the futility of the question, knowing that Max wouldn’t be here, in this kitchen, if he had.

‘I was going too fast. Uninsured, in a car that isn’t road legal. That probably means prison time. It definitely means a record.’

Joseph puffs his cheeks, blows air. And can’t help voicing what he’s thinking, brutal though it is. ‘You’re meant to be starting medical school in a month.’

‘I know.’

‘They’ll run an enhanced DBS check before you start.’

‘Yeah. And if anything comes up, out of the door you go. No second chances.’

Joseph rocks back in his seat. Max’s childhood passion for medicine grew exponentially after his mother’s death.

In recent years he’s volunteered in hospitals and surgeries, attended conferences.

He’s grilled countless doctors and specialists, has thrown himself into his studies with a commitment bordering on obsessional, all in the hope of ensuring other families avoid the same devastating loss.

How could he possibly have caused the very thing he’s been working so hard to prevent? How could the universe have permitted such brutal irony?

‘What was your plan?’

‘I came back here to clean myself up, think it over.’

Joseph recalls the bottle of whisky, the empty snifter.

He closes his eyes, recalling his earlier promise: This conversation – everything we talk about – remains strictly between me and you.

And I mean for ever. No one else will ever know, not even Erin.

I give you my word on that. From there, if it’s bad, we figure a way out. Together.

When he opens his eyes, he sees Max watching him. That same cornered-animal expression. ‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘Jesus.’

He goes around the table, puts his arms around his son, squeezes him so tightly it becomes something more than an embrace. He smells the boy’s hair, his sweat. ‘As if we needed this,’ he whispers. ‘As if we needed it.’

‘I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry.’

‘Did anyone else see?’

‘No.’

‘You’re absolutely sure?’

‘Hundred per cent.’

Joseph takes a breath, sighs it out. He’s still holding Max far too tightly, but his son seems immune to the discomfort. At last, he forces himself to disentangle. When he stands, he feels fresh blood seep from his abdomen and winces.

‘Dad, we really should take a look at that. It may need stitches or glue.’

‘It’s fine. The person you hit. Did you recognize them?’

Max shakes his head. And Joseph wonders if he just spotted the first flicker of dishonesty in his son’s eyes.

‘A stranger?’ he presses.

‘I guess.’

‘You guess?’

The boy grimaces, as if he just swallowed a mouthful of bile. ‘It was pretty bad. It could have been Tilly and I doubt I’d have recognized her.’

Joseph puts out a hand to the worktop. That Max would choose his stepsister for the comparison is more than a little chilling, particularly as they’re so close. ‘It was a woman?’

‘A guy.’

‘Where did this happen?’

‘One of the roads that cuts through Jack-O’-Lantern Woods.’

‘What were you doing out there?’

‘Taking a short-cut.’

‘To?’

‘A friend’s.’

Again, that tell-tale flicker. Dishonesty, or something else?

‘Which friend?’ Joseph asks. He’s played taxi service often enough to know where most of Max’s friends live. He doesn’t recall ever taking that route.

‘Just a girl.’

‘Someone I know?’

‘Dad – it was just a girl.’

‘Was she expecting you?’

‘Why does that—’

‘It matters. Everything matters. Was this girl expecting you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you didn’t turn up.’

‘No.’

‘So who was it?’

‘Dad, I …’

‘Max, for God’s sake. If someone died in those woods tonight, and someone else knows you were driving through them, and then you never turned up to see them afterwards – it matters.’

The boy goes still. His eyes flare, as if he’s just grasped the danger his father has highlighted.

‘So tell me, Max. What’s her name?’

‘Drew,’ his son replies.

‘ Drew? As in Tilly’s best friend?’

‘We’ve been keeping it quiet.’

‘Have you spoken to her since?’

‘No.’

‘Does Tilly know? About you and Drew, I mean.’

Again, Max shakes his head. ‘We’ve been figuring out how to tell her.’

‘OK,’ Joseph says. ‘OK.’ He drums his fingers. ‘So, right now, where’s the …’ he begins, and finds he can’t bring himself to say body . He pauses, unsticks his brain, tries again. ‘This guy you hit. Where is he?’

Max’s jaw bulges. Then he says, ‘In the boot of my car.’