Split Second (34 page)

‘Why?’ He couldn’t understand. He needed her here. They had made it this far; they had to stick together now. Rebuild their lives. ‘Is this because of Jason?’

‘No. I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Anger and panic were swirling within him. ‘Don’t go.’ He looked at her, his eyes blurring. She might never come back. Didn’t she love him any more?

‘Oh Val,’ he said. And then they were embracing and weeping and he felt the future trickling through his fingers, evaporating, changing. The course tilting and altered, the route obscured. He kept hugging her – what else was there to do – until their breathing settled and the tears dried, salt on their cheeks.

‘A
nother?’ Louise raised the bottle, and Andrew nodded.

‘Are we getting drunk?’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Louise said as she poured the wine. ‘I can hold my liquor.’ She spilt some, and he laughed.

‘Looks like it.’

A fine May evening and they were on her patio; she had lit citronella torches to keep the midges off, and they cast a yellow glow over the table. The rest of the garden was illuminated by the fat white moon that hung above them.

The anniversary of Jason’s death had come and gone. Andrew knew that Christmas would always be tainted by the memories. Conrad Quinn had been sentenced. The bus driver had been fired. His claim that work-related stress had made him incapable of acting on the night of the attacks had been thrown out. At the cemetery, Jason’s rowan tree was heavy with creamy white flowers. When Andrew had visited at the weekend, there were blue tits flitting among the slender branches, bees buzzing round the blooms.

‘How’s Val?’ Louise said.

He shrugged. ‘Still at Sheena’s; phased return to work.’ But no return to him. Phased withdrawal more like; it felt as though Val was leaving him in stages. Stretching it out, wearing him down. Perhaps she thought it would be too brutal to just put an end to the marriage in one fell swoop. So now they were living apart and he’d had someone come and value the house. He’d asked her about it the last time they had spoken on the phone.

‘If you’re not coming back—’ he’d begun, anger at the prospect simmering beneath his skin, hidden in his voice.

‘Andrew, I don’t know,’ she interrupted.

‘Then we might need to sell.’

Silence. He heard her breath, a sip in, then the sound as she swallowed.

‘I can get a valuation at least.’ He knew part of him was saying this to force a decision from her. He had waited months, giving her time, giving her space. He was frustrated at not being able to reach her. As though he was looking at her through the wrong end of a telescope: remote, miniaturized.

‘Okay,’ she said dully.

His stomach clenched when she agreed. He’d hoped she would protest, argue with him, give him some sign that the house still had a role to play, would be a home for them again. Allow him to dream of a time when she’d be back there with him.

‘I love you,’ he said quickly.

‘I know,’ Val had answered. And said goodbye and hung up.

He had feared for his sanity in the weeks after she left. Times when he got drunk and cursed her and threw things about. Behaving like a child. Still sick with grief for his son, he mourned the marriage. He missed her day and night. It was as if the intimacies they had shared, parenting their lovely boy with his messy ways and his foibles and his sweet smile, had been taken from him. He’d lost access to those joint experiences along with his marriage partner. It made him think that the marriage must have been weakened long before the murder. And the events of that ghastly night had only served to widen the fault lines. But he’d had no inkling. They were his world: Val and Jason.

There would never be enough tears for Jason.

The prospect of permanent separation, of divorce, plagued him. Like an open wound he probed it time and again. Leaving the house would be the final wrench, severing the connection to Jason, to their little family, to the marriage. But he couldn’t hang on there alone if Val wasn’t coming back. Everything that had made it a home, a sanctuary, was gone now. All we have in the end is memory, he thought, his skin tingling. The shrine was no longer there; he had cleared it away, storing the remnants. Perhaps one day he and Val would have to share them out, along with the family photos; apportion the record of their lives together.

Eventually he had decided that if he was to win her back, he needed to stay strong, retain his dignity and self-respect. He threw himself into his work, gaining satisfaction from the small victories there: people rediscovering speech, overcoming the legacies of illness or accident. Smiles and handshakes and the occasional tears of gratitude.

And he started volunteering. Helping on an orienteering course for hard-to-manage teenagers. Showing them that sat nav wasn’t the only system for finding your way. He filled the hours, the long, empty evenings, the wastelands of the weekends. He kept busy. Like Val, the old Val. But he was marking time, too. Treading water. Almost drowning.

Louise lit a cigarette.

‘Thought you’d given up?’

‘I had.’ She shrugged. Her phone chirruped. She picked it up, read the message, smiled. ‘Ruby. They got three standing ovations.’ Her daughter had been scouted and was appearing in a musical in the West End. Andrew smiled.

Louise looked down at the table, sombre now.

‘What is it?’ he asked her.

‘Luke. What if I sign the form and let him go when one day he might have woken up?’

He put his glass down. ‘You know the statistics.’

‘Yeah. And I don’t believe in miracles. Opium of the masses.’

‘Think that’s shopping these days, not religion.’ He took a drink. ‘If you leave Luke alone, ignore the form, and against all the odds he wakes up. What then? The chances are he’ll be locked in, or unable to do more than blink, maybe swallow.’

‘I know he’ll never come back, the Luke I had.’ She groaned and covered her eyes with her hand. ‘I go round and round and round. If only he could tell me what he’d want.’

‘I think you know what he’d want,’ Andrew said.

She looked at him sharply, and he feared he’d gone too far. She turned her face away. ‘He could run so—’ She stopped. ‘And climb,’ she said. ‘We took him out to Alderley Edge once, me and Eddie. Have you been?’

Andrew nodded. He and Jason at the small stone circle. Lifting Jason on to a low branch, promising to hold him tight.

‘Luke was still using a buggy. He’d have been three or so. I was pregnant with Ruby. He went over the edge, the cliff bit, like Spiderman. He met this dog, raced off to play. But how can I starve him? Sit there and watch?’

‘If you want, if it’s any help, I’ll come, I’ll be there.’

‘It’s a big ask,’ she said.

‘What are friends for?’

‘Not that, usually!’ she joked.

He laughed, full-throated. She always made him laugh. He took a drink.

She ran a hand through her hair. ‘Okay. If it comes to that. Thank you.’ She settled back, sat for a few moments, smoking and sipping her wine.

He looked up at the heavens, the pole star flaring phosphorus white. The brilliant orb of the moon, with its tracery of blue from the mountains and craters that sculpted its surface. In a garden close by a cat yowled, and then he heard the spat of a cat fight.

‘I’d better be off,’ he said, and drained his glass.

‘Okay.’

He got up, stretched.

‘Don’t leave it so long next time,’ Louise said.

He nodded. ‘And if you need me . . .’

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Do you want a cab?’

‘No, I’ll walk.’ He looked up at the sky again. ‘It’s such a lovely night.’ He made his way past the sycamore tree and out into the street, and set off among the black shadows and the soft silver light.

She was sitting on the doorstep as he came into the drive, her hair bright in the moonlight. A jolt ran through him.

‘Val?’

She got to her feet, gave a ghostly smile. ‘You’ve been out?’

He tasted the lie, tempted, but swallowed it. He would not lie to her. ‘Louise’s.’

Val blinked, gave a small nod. ‘Just friends?’ she said, the faintest tremor in her voice but no sarcasm that he could discern.

‘Yes,’ he said simply, waiting for her to meet his gaze and judge he was telling the truth. Holding his breath, tensing in anticipation of her reaction.

‘How’s Luke?’

‘The same,’ he said, relieved that she had cared to ask.

‘I want to come home,’ she said, her face crumpling.

He moved to her, his heart kicking in his chest. ‘Val.’

‘I don’t want to sell the house.’

‘No, of course not.’ His arms went round her. She burrowed her head in the crook of his neck.

‘Jason, his whole life was here, we can’t lose that,’ she said.

‘I know.’ Was that the reason she wanted to come back: for Jason, his memory, his history, to keep that close? His fingerprints on every door jamb, his laughter in the paint and plaster. Was that all of it? The house a museum, and Andrew – what, a curator? That wasn’t enough for him. He wanted her love, her passion; he needed her to want him just as deeply. Not to cling together because of what they had shared and lost, but to cleave together for what the future held, tomorrow and the next day and the years to come. To grow.

He placed his hand on the crown of her head, felt her silky hair and the heat beneath.

‘I want you, Val,’ he whispered. ‘I want you back here with me.’ He felt her convulse, a sob in her shoulders. Then she raised her face to look at him. Tear-streaked. She edged closer, closed her eyes. Kissed him. A lover’s kiss. Long and sensuous. Leaving them both breathless.

‘Let’s go in,’ he said, blood singing in his veins. He couldn’t take his eyes from her face, her lips.

‘I love you,’ she said, starting to cry again. ‘Oh Andrew, I love you so much.’

He pulled her close, hushing her, kissing and stroking her hair. He drank in the warm night air and the honeyed scent of wallflowers; he stared up at the luminous disc of the moon, climbing higher now, and felt the peace settle inside him.

Across the street, Jason, arms outstretched, walked along the edge of a tall garden fence to the corner. He stood there, wobbling precariously, and beamed at Andrew. That hundred-watt smile. Then he jumped down and set off along the pavement towards town. Andrew watched until he was out of sight.

Then he took Val’s hand and they went in together.