tripped him up,’ he said.
‘He definitely tripped him up. I saw the fucker,’ screeched Lydia Foxton, flexing her hands as if contemplating joining in the fray.
Mrs Musical Prodigy put her hands over the ears of her nearest child. ‘How about some musical entertainment?’ she suggested in her brightest, most encouraging voice. ‘Ophelia, go and get your harp, darling. We’ll pour some oil upon troubled waters.’
The threat was enough to get most guests reaching for their coats and handbags, particularly since the sound of a police siren could be heard only a few streets away.
Long after the last of the guests had departed, Carrie went to draw the curtains across the window in her front room. As she glanced out, she saw Oliver on his doorstep, kissing a dark-haired woman. This was no casual goodnight kiss. He was definitely taking his time about it. Anxious not to be caught staring again, Carrie made a show of closing the curtains with much swishing of fabric, and was almost certain she saw Oliver looking over the shoulder of his latest conquest and straight at her, but of course it was dark outside and she couldn’t be sure. Anyway, she told herself firmly, she wasn’t really all that interested.
Chapter Twelve
After Max had watched SpongeBob for three hours straight, Molly made him go cold turkey and insisted, despite his reluctance, on a brisk walk as far as the village, past the duck pond edged with ice and through the small copse that led to the back of their house. When they got back Molly was struck by how dusty and unloved the place looked and she realised it had been a while since she had given it a proper clean. She set Max up in his room with some toys and started on the living room, clearing out the fireplace and laying it with new kindling and logs, sweeping the slightly sloping wooden floors and shaking the rugs out of the back door. The garden was small and square and almost entirely paved over with flagstones. If it had been her own garden Molly would have taken up the patio, cut down the looming hedge that smelt rotten in wet weather and instead made curving flowerbeds and a patch of lawn. As she stood there on the chilly step she imagined a different garden with a flowering cherry tree and bluebells, and perhaps a white lilac in the corner. This house, situated in the middle of the Fens about five miles from Ely, was not where she would have chosen to live – it was too exposed to the weather and too isolated – but since she had no choice it would have to do for the time being.
Molly went back inside, dragged the hoover from the cupboard, and began to vacuum the stair carpet. After about five minutes she turned the protesting machine off. Like everything in the house it was past its prime and had a tendency to overheat and needed regular rests. She went to the top of the stairs and, not wanting to disturb Max while he was so happily and quietly employed, stood by the half-opened bedroom door and watched him. He was sitting on the floor, with several sheets of paper spread around him. He had a habit of starting to draw something and then deciding it had gone wrong and abandoning it and starting afresh on another piece of paper. He got through masses of the stuff. It didn’t matter how often she told him that he should persist with a particular drawing he would always refuse to continue once doubt had crept into his mind. Now he seemed to be drawing what looked like a castle surrounded by squiggly lines. She was surprised when he spoke and thought at first that he must be addressing her.
‘I’m not exactly sure what you mean,’ Max said. ‘You’ll have to be clearer or I’ll get it wrong again.’
Molly watched as he stopped what he was doing and looked up and across his room in the direction of his bed. It seemed to Molly that he was waiting for a response, because he tilted his head the way he did when she was explaining something to him that he didn’t really understand.
‘Oh, OK. I get you,’ said Max and he bent down over his paper again and started drawing lines with a surer hand. ‘We just have to make sure they are all connected.’
Molly went all the way into the room.
‘Who are you talking to, Max?’ she asked. She was unnerved by the way his eyes were not focused on her but were looking instead at a point just beyond where she was standing. So intent was her son’s gaze that she found herself turning round to see what he was staring at, but there was nothing there. Just his rumpled bed with his pyjamas thrown aside and the usual collection of stuffed animals he insisted on sleeping with.
‘Charlie, of course,’ said Max in his ‘doh, don’t you know’ voice.
Molly sat down next her son and pulled him close to her. She knew that children often had imaginary friends, particularly only children like Max, but she thought it was odd the way her son had fixated on a child he had only met once. She couldn’t help worrying that what had happened with Rupert had damaged him in some way, made him odd and unreachable. Maybe she should try working fewer hours and spend more time with him.
‘Why do you talk to Charlie?’ she asked. ‘You can always come and talk to Mummy if you get lonely.’
‘Charlie knows what I mean,’ said Max, and then, seeing something in his mother’s face, said hastily, ‘You know what I mean too, it’s just that Charlie is the same as me.’
Molly thought back to that day on the beach that had started so happily and ended so terribly. Max had been around five years old. It was during a period with Rupert when, although things were going relatively well, he often needed time away from Max’s chatter, so she had taken him off to the beach. It had been a perfect day until the boy had gone missing. Although Max had played with him, she couldn’t really remember what he had looked like, but his mother’s face was still vivid in her mind. Molly didn’t think she would ever forget the other woman’s expression when she had run up to her on the beach, panting with the effort and with fear. Her eyes had been dark in her white face and her body tight and set, as if readying itself for what was to come. At the time Molly had felt bad that she had not stayed on the beach and helped to look for the boy, but she had had a desperate, uncontrollable desire to get away from there and to take Max somewhere safe. Max himself had seemed to be unaware of what was happening, but a couple of months after the incident she had been astonished when he asked her about it.
‘The mum on the beach didn’t find her boy, did she?’ he asked one night as she was putting him to bed.
‘I don’t know, darling,’ she had said tucking him in tightly, the way he liked. Although she did know. It had been in the paper and on the news for a while and she had followed the story without really wanting to.
Max got up from the floor and stretched. Molly looked up at him.
‘Would you like to talk about what happened with your dad, Max?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Max, and his face had that blank, shut-down look he always got when his father was mentioned. She had tried several times to initiate conversations about Rupert but Max always changed the subject. She didn’t blame him, since she didn’t really want to talk about it either. Just the thought of her husband filled her with a terrible sense of shame.
The first time that Rupert hit Molly she was so astonished that she didn’t feel the pain of the blow. Rupert had been working hard and the little time they had together was dominated by rows and tension. It seemed to Molly that the slightest thing she did would make her husband angry. Everything from leaving a fork in the sink to Molly spending ten minutes longer than the allotted hour at the supermarket provoked raging outbursts, followed by prolonged, punishing periods when he would say nothing to her at all. Max, who had turned four and had just started reception class, was old enough to be puzzled by his father’s erratic behaviour; sometimes smothering him in kisses and bringing home outlandishly expensive
