are you doing?’ Kenny called out from the living room.
‘Just looking for a tea towel,’ James replied brightly.
‘They’re not in there.’ Now Kenny had appeared in the hallway and was glaring at James, his small gold hoop earring glinting in the dim overhead light.
‘No – I can see that.’ James moved away from the open cupboard as if he’d been caught prying amongst his father’s personal possessions. ‘Um, Dad,’ he ventured, ‘I think you might’ve forgotten about these sandwiches. Look – there are way more than you need here …’ In fact, you actually need none of these, as they are in various stages of decay and would no doubt poison you.
Kenny frowned. ‘They’re for the winter. You know I can get cut off up here.’
‘Yes, but there’s an awful lot, and I think some of them might have been hanging about for a quite a while, like, um, maybe longer than they should have, ideally …’ James sensed himself growing clammy and wished any kind of confrontation with his dad didn’t reduce him to this nervous, sweating state. He was forty-one years old, for goodness’ sake, not four.
‘I don’t believe in all that use-by date stuff,’ Kenny retorted.
‘But these are sandwiches, Dad. They’re bread—’
‘I know what sandwiches are made of,’ he snapped.
‘And they’re all egg and cress,’ James added as Horace, the larger of the cats – Christ, what did his father feed them? – wandered into the hallway and mewled fretfully around Kenny’s ankles. The animal’s close proximity seemed to placate his father, and he scooped up the cat, holding him close to his chest. With a sharp kick, Kenny shut the cupboard door on the sandwiches and stalked back into the living room, muttering, ‘They’re not all egg and cress, are they, Horace? Some are cheese.’
Five bedtime stories, Lucy had read. At a quarter to eleven, she rubbed at her scratchy eyes and shut the last book firmly. ‘Okay, that’s it for tonight,’ she said wearily, kissing Sam and tucking him in, then coaxing Marnie through to her own room.
‘I wanted Dad to see my costume,’ she announced, radiating disappointment. Marnie wasn’t a moany girl usually; she was cheerful and sunny, if a little bossy at times, brimming with energy and ideas.
‘You can show him tomorrow,’ Lucy reasoned.
‘But it’s wet. It got rained on.’
‘Yes, sweetheart – but if I put it on the radiator it’ll be dry for the morning.’
‘I’m not tired yet, Mummy.’
‘Love, it’s so late. You really do need some sleep …’
Where’s Dad?’ Sam yelled from his own room.
‘He’ll be on his way,’ Lucy called back, trying to keep her voice light despite underlying worry that had been niggling her since they’d come home. At least the bedtime routine had been useful in keeping her occupied: bath, pyjamas, drink and biscuit, teeth, stories … the whole rigmarole she had been through zillions of times. But now there was nothing left to do but worry – and wait.
She had called Ivan yet again, but his phone still kept going to voicemail. Surely he hadn’t decided to go out with colleagues in Manchester tonight, without letting her know? No – that wasn’t Ivan at all. He loved his working life, the thrill of being in the midst of a huge project again, but he was also a caring husband and father, keeping in touch with daily calls while he was away. He’d never failed to show up as expected at the end of the week – and this was no ordinary Friday night either. It was the start of his holiday. Lucy was aware of a sharp pang of missing him as she tucked in Marnie and kissed her before padding quietly out to the landing and going to check on Sam.
‘I don’t want to go to sleep,’ Sam muttered from his bed.
‘Darling, it’s really late now. I’m going to bed soon—’
‘I feel sick, Mummy.’
‘Oh, Sam. It’ll be all those sweets. I did say don’t eat so many.’ She hurried towards him just in time to see him sit up abruptly and throw up all down his front. ‘Sam, honey!’ Lucy exclaimed. He started crying and scrambled out of bed. Splattered PJs were stripped off, and a naked Sam was ushered through to the bathroom where he was showered, then wrapped up in his favourite dressing gown – the cream one with teddy bear ears, which was far too babyish for him really, but which he needed to wear now, very much.
Back in his bedroom, Lucy bent to cuddle him as he slumped on his bean bag, then stripped his bed and made it up with fresh linen. ‘Marnie, please go back to bed,’ she muttered as, naturally, his sister had come through to observe the spectacle.
‘This room stinks.’
‘It’ll fade away in a minute,’ Lucy fibbed, aware of tiredness pressing down on her now. She was no longer conjuring up images of red wine, but of her own bed, freshly made up as was her custom on Friday nights, with candles ready to be lit on her bedside table. Not that there would be anything terribly thrilling going on in bed tonight, she thought irritably – not after Ivan had worried her so much.
Finally, the children were back in bed. There was a noise at the front door, and she hurried through from the kitchen towards it. But it wasn’t Ivan; in fact there was no one there. The wind had got up, and the door was rattling, that was all. Lucy freed her long hair from its ponytail as she strode back to the living room and checked her phone in case she had missed a call.
When she heard a knock, ten minutes later, she wondered if she might ignore it, as who could it be at this time of night? It was near midnight, and no one local would dream of calling. Something clenched inside her as she made her way through to the hallway to see who it was.
Lucy’s breath caught in her throat as she opened the door. Two police officers – one man, one woman – were standing there, and that was the moment when Lucy’s whole life changed.
Ivan never saw Marnie’s elf costume, or Sam in his reindeer onesie. He never saw his wife or children again because, on his drive home from Manchester on that dark, wet night, Ivan had been killed in a head-on collision twelve miles from Burley Bridge. He hadn’t been on the motorway but a winding B-road, which was unusual. It wasn’t his normal route at all. The other car’s driver survived, with serious spinal injuries; Ivan had seemingly skidded on the wet surface and ended up on the wrong side of the road.
It was no one’s fault. That was the official conclusion that came out months after the event. It was the fact that water had pooled there on the road surface. But Lucy couldn’t stop thinking that perhaps she was to blame for being so insistent about making a new life here in Burley Bridge.
You and me will always be a team, Ivan had said.
As the days and weeks somehow continued without him, Lucy would find herself playing his words over and over as if some terrible loop tape had wedged itself in her brain. And although she knew it was crazy, she couldn’t help feeling furious that he had left her this way.
He
