Page 61 of The Bodies

FIFTY-SIX

Suddenly, it feels like every muscle in Joseph’s body is singing with tension – as if he’s become a giant tuning fork struck hard on its tines. He doesn’t want to consider the meaning behind Erin’s words. When he tries to breathe, he can’t pull air into his lungs fast enough.

That strange resonance transmits through him to the earth. And now it feels like everything around him is vibrating at the same frequency: the trees, their branches, the saplings pushing through the leaf litter, the roots plunging into the soil.

Has he just lost his son? That can’t be true.

But he’s felt this resonance once before, when Claire died. Perhaps it’s the sound of the universe rearranging itself around a proscribed event – and unwittingly revealing its workings.

Erin says, ‘He’s waiting for us around the back.’

Joseph blinks, tries to cast off the unworldly sensation that’s stolen over him – of a change to the natural order so perverse that everything around him is trying to reject it. ‘What else did he say? Just tell me. So I know.’

Erin looks bereft, like she’s operating on nothing but fumes. ‘Honestly, Joe, that’s all he said.’

She studies his face, must see the agony in it, just like he sees the agony in hers.

Cursing, she digs out the keys for the cuffs.

Removing one from the fob, she drops it into his breast pocket.

‘I know promises are meaningless at this point, but don’t make me regret that.

I won’t let you put Tilly in danger. Now please – turn around and walk. ’

Joseph complies without further comment, stumbling through the undergrowth to what awaits.

Is the blood-red sky a portent? Perhaps he’s lucky and a meteor has struck, somewhere on the other side of the planet, and at this very moment a blast wave is racing around the earth towards him, obliterating everything in its path.

Because it seems, now, that he’s at the end of things. Likely the very end.

He limps forward regardless, his right leg dragging, his left knee popping each time it flexes.

It’s impossible to move stealthily. Twigs snap beneath his weight. His feet tangle in roots and rip them from the soil. He passes Thornecroft on his left, hears Erin following close behind.

The garden reveals itself in silhouette.

Joseph steps on to a black lawn that climbs towards a black oak spreading its branches across a red sky. Four dining chairs have been arranged around the trunk, all of them facing a sight Joseph’s brain tries its best to reject.

Because Max – his only son, his everything – is hanging by his neck from one of the oak’s boughs.