Fucking cancer, stealing the kid’s mum away from him five days before his eleventh birthday. If cancer were a person he’d have beaten the shit out of it and smashed its face to a pulp.
The house is quiet now. So bloody quiet it makes him want to turn on every stereo and sound system in the place and scream at the top of his voice. That’s the worst thing about death, the silence it leaves behind. But not in Steve’s head, there’s no peace there. Some days he feels as though he’s going mad, all those thoughts, buzzing around like wasps. He kept them quiet for a bit – planning the funeral and preparing for the trial – but they started up again afterwards, louder and angrier than ever. It’s the powerlessness he can’t cope with. He couldn’t save Freddy. He couldn’t grab hold of the surgeon’s knife, plunge his hand into his son’s chest and massage his heart back to life. He couldn’t speed up the police investigation. He couldn’t talk to the CPS and, other than a prepared statement, he couldn’t speak to the judge or jury. His son had been taken from him and he couldn’t do a fucking thing about it. ‘Trust us,’ the police told him. ‘Let us do our job.’ But they hadn’t had they, not really? Not them, not the CPS and not the fucking judge.
He traces a finger over his son’s birth and death dates. Twenty-four. Just twenty-four. At the funeral the vicar had said something about an ‘everlasting sleep’ that had really riled him. Death wasn’t like sleep. It wasn’t relaxing. You didn’t dream and you couldn’t be woken up. A dark cloud of despair had descended when the last of the mourners left Freddy’s grave. For most of them it would be the only time they’d visit it. They’d miss him, course they would, but they’d get back on with their lives, whereas Steve felt his had been indefinitely paused.
It was his mate Jim who’d thrown him a lifeline. ‘If you feel that justice hasn’t been done, mate, then maybe you need to mete it out yourself. If you know where she is I can send someone after her. She won’t even see them coming. If that’s what you want.’
Steve wasn’t sure if it was. He prided himself on being a gentleman. He’d never once lifted his hand to a woman. But it was different if a woman was a murderer, wasn’t it? He’d have had no qualms about hurting Myra Hindley or Rose West. And that’s what this woman was, wasn’t it? A murderer. She’d taken the lives of two young people and crippled another. She hadn’t looked him in the eye at the trial. Hadn’t even acknowledged he was there. But she will. She’ll know who Steve Laing is, and she’ll remember his son. He’ll make sure of that.
Wednesday 2nd May
Our flat is a very different place at four o’clock in the morning. Unusually for London, the air is cool and still, the bedroom wrapped in shadows, the darkness punctuated only by the glow of streetlamps slipping through the gap in the curtains. Alex is asleep, curled up on his side, hugging the duvet. He came back from work yesterday evening to find me wrapped in a blanket on the sofa, staring dully at the TV. He stood in the doorway, watching me, waiting for an acknowledgement.
‘Hi,’ I said, then let my gaze return to the TV. A single glance was enough to assess his mood: rigid posture, tight jaw, cold eyes. He was angling for a fight. Again.
‘What this?’ He picked up the empty mug from the side table.
‘A mug.’
‘And this?’ He picked up a plate.
I looked at him. ‘What are you doing?’
‘What are you doing?’
He stalked out of the living room, mug and plate in hand. I heard them crash into the sink then the sound of the fridge door opening and closing and a curt fucking hell.
‘Anna.’ He was back in the doorway again. ‘There’s no food in the house. You said you’d go to the supermarket.’
‘I did.’
‘And?’
‘Someone followed me.’
‘Not again.’ He rested his head against the white glossed wood of the door frame. ‘Anna. You need to let this go. Steve Laing is not out to get you. The person who was responsible – the lorry driver, not you – has been charged and sent to prison. The Coroner’s court case has been dismissed. It’s finished. Over.’
He didn’t understand. How could he? I hadn’t got any proof that someone had been following me. I hadn’t confronted them or taken their photo. I didn’t even know what they looked like, but I’d felt them watching me. I’d been fine leaving the house. I’d made it all the way to Tesco without feeling a horrible prickling sensation from the base of my skull to midway down my spine. The sun was shining and I was in a good mood because I’d just binge-watched three episodes of Catastrophe. Steve Laing hadn’t crossed my mind once and then it happened, the absolute certainty that someone was standing behind me, watching me as I bent down to take a loaf off the shelf. When I turned around there were five other people in the aisle – a man in a suit, an older woman, a woman about my age and another woman, slightly older than me with a toddler in a buggy. The child stared me out, his blue eyes wide and anxious. His mother looked down at him, at me, and then wheeled the buggy around and disappeared back down the aisle. Irritated with myself for overreacting, I headed straight to the tills with my basket. It wasn’t until I got home that I realised I’d forgotten half the things Alex had asked me to buy.
‘Did you ring Tim today?’ He crossed his arms over his chest.
‘Yeah.’
‘And?’
‘I gave my notice.’
He raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘I’m struggling to pay the bills as it is. If this is a permanent situation then …’ he sighed heavily. ‘I really don’t think I can deal with this, Anna. I knew you’d be a bit … upset … for a while but I can’t live like this. If you’re not thrashing around in bed because you can’t sleep you’re sitting around in jogging bottoms watching reruns of Friends. Have you even had a shower today?’
In another life, the life I lived before my world was shattered, I would have bit back at Alex and told him that maybe he should be a bit more sympathetic. Instead I looked at him and said,
‘It’s not working, is it? Between us?’
‘It’s …’ He looked down at the grubby beige carpet and shook his head. ‘No, it’s not.’
I’d imagined this conversation in my head a hundred times since the accident, but actually having it was surreal. I’d expected to burst into tears or feel a jagged pain in my chest. Instead I felt detached, as though I were watching the break-up scene happen to two other people. We’d been drifting apart for a long time, way before the accident, but you’d have to be a cruel kind of bastard to leave someone when they needed you most. We didn’t dislike each other, we hadn’t had blazing rows or shagged someone else or been cruel, but we were living separate lives. We weren’t even sharing the same bed any more, not really. There might be an hour or two – between my insomnia and Alex getting up for work – when we lay on the same sheet but we rarely touched. I couldn’t remember
