Copyright

Harper

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London SE1 9GF

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Copyright © Ben McPherson 2015

Ben McPherson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover layout design © HarperColl‌insPublishers 2015

Cover photograph © Henry Steadman

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780007569595

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780007569588

Version 2020-05-21

Praise for A Line of Blood

‘Ben McPherson has a very distinctive voice, and A Line of Blood is cleverly put together’ Val McDermid

‘Realistically flawed characters, and the ending is shocking’ Guardian

‘Ben McPherson drew me into the life of an ordinary family and gave me a ringside seat to watch the fracturing of those relationships beneath the weight of a murder investigation. Gripping from the get-go’ Tami Hoag, New York Times bestselling author

‘Fascinating. From the first page, I was hooked. I couldn’t put it down!’

Lisa Jackson, New York Times bestselling author

Dedication

For Charlotte

Crappy is the name given by North Londoners to the very worst parts of Finsbury Park. People start using the name ironically, but it very quickly sticks.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for A Line of Blood

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One: The Man Next Door

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Part Two: Secrets, Shared With Another Girl

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Part Three: Manifest Destiny

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

PART ONE

1

The precarious thinness of his white arms, all angles against the dark foliage.

‘Max.’

Nothing. No response. He was half-hidden, straddling the wall, his body turned away from me. Listening, I thought. Waiting, perhaps.

‘Max.’

He turned now to look at me, then at once looked away, back at the next-door neighbour’s house.

‘Foxxa,’ he said quietly.

‘Max-Man. Bed time. Down.’

‘But Dad, Foxxa …’

‘Bed.’

Max shook his head without turning around. I approached the wall, my hand at the level of his thigh, and reached out to touch his arm. ‘She’ll come home, Max-Man. She always comes home.’

Max looked down at me, caught my gaze, then looked back towards the house next door.

‘What, Max?’

No response.

‘Max?’

Max lifted his leg over the wall and disappeared. I stood for a moment, unnerved.

In the early days of our life in Crappy we had bought a garden bench. A love seat, Millicent had called it, with room only for two. But Finsbury Park wasn’t the area for love seats. We’d long since decided it was too small, that the stiff-backed intimacy it forced upon us was unwelcome and oppressive, something very unlike love.

The love seat stood now, partly concealed by an ugly bush, further along the wall. Standing on it, I could see most of the next-door neighbour’s garden. It was as pitifully small as ours, but immaculate in its straight lines, its clearly delineated zones. A Japanese path led from the pond by the end wall to a structure that I’d once heard Millicent refer to as a bower, shaped out of what I guessed were rose bushes.

Max was standing on the path. He saw me and turned away, walking very deliberately into the bower.

‘Max.’

Nothing.

I stood on the arm of the love seat, and put my hands on top of the wall, pushing down hard as I jumped upwards. My left knee struck the head of a nail, and the pain almost lost me my balance.

I panted hard, then swung my leg over the wall and sat there as Max had, looking towards the neighbour’s house. Seen side by side, they were identical in every detail, except that the neighbour had washed his windows and freshened the paint on his back door.

A Japanese willow obscured the rest of the neighbour’s ground floor. A tree, a pond, a bower. Who builds a bower in Finsbury Park?

Max reappeared.

‘Dad, come and see.’

I looked about me. Was this trespass? I wasn’t sure.

Max disappeared again. No one in any of the other houses seemed to be looking. The only house that could see into the garden was ours. And I needed to retrieve my son.

I jumped down, landing badly and compounding the pain in my knee.

‘You aren’t supposed to say fuck, Dad.’

‘I didn’t say it.’ Did I?

‘You did.’

He had reappeared, and was looking down at me again, as I massaged the back of my knee, wondering if it would stiffen up.

‘And I’m allowed to say it. You are the one who isn’t.’

He smiled.

‘You’ve got a hole in your trousers.’

I nodded and stood up, ruffled his hair.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘Not much. A bit.’

He stared at me for a long moment.

‘All right,’ I said, ‘it hurts like fuck. Maybe I did say it.’

‘Thought so.’

‘Want to tell me what we’re doing here? Max-Man?’

He held out his hand. I took it, surprised, and he led me into the bower.

The neighbour had been busy here. Four metal trellises had been joined to make a loose arch, and up these trellises he had teased his climbing roses, if that’s what they were. Two people could have lain down in here, completely hidden from view. Perhaps they had. The grass was flattened, as if by cushions.

Now I noticed birdsong, distant-sounding, wrong, somehow.

Max crouched down, rubbed his right forefinger against his thumb.

From a place unseen, a small dark shadow, winding around his legs. Tortoiseshell, red and black. Max rubbed finger and thumb together again, and the cat greeted him, stood for a moment on two legs, teetering as she arched upwards towards his fingers, then fell forwards and on to her side, offering him her belly.

‘Foxxa.’

It was Max who had named the cat. He had spent hours with her, when she first arrived, whispering to her from across the room: F, K, Ks, S, Sh. He had watched how she responded to each sound, was certain he had found the perfect name.

‘Foxxa.’

The cat chirruped. Max held out his hand, and she rolled on to her back, cupped her paws over his knuckles, bumped her head gently into his hand.

‘Crazy little tortie,’ he whispered.

She tripped out of the bower. Crazy little tortie was right. We hadn’t seen her in days.

Max walked out of the bower and towards the patio. I followed him. The cat was not there.

From the patio, the pretentious absurdity of the bower was even more striking. The whole garden was no more than five metres long, four metres wide. The bower swallowed at least a third of the usable space, making the garden even more cramped than it must have been when the neighbour moved in.

The cat appeared from under a bush, darted across the patio. Too late I saw that the back door was ajar. She paused for a moment, looking back at us.

‘Foxxa, no!’ said Max.

Her tail curled around the edge of the door, then she had disappeared inside.

Max was staring at the back door. I wondered if the neighbour was there behind its wired glass panels, just out of view. Max approached the door, pushing it fully open.

‘Max!’

I lunged towards him, but he slipped into the kitchen, leaving me alone in the garden.

‘Hello?’ I shouted. I waited at the door but there was no reply.

‘Come on, Dad,’ said Max.

I found him in the middle of the kitchen, the cat at his feet.

‘Max, we can’t be in here. Pick her up. Let’s go.’

Max walked to the light switch and turned on the light. Thrill of the illicit. We shouldn’t be in here.

‘Max,’ I said, ‘out. Now.’

He turned, rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, and the cat jumped easily up on to the work surface, blinking back at us.

‘She likes it here.’

‘Max … Max, pick her up.’

Max showed no sign of having heard me. I could read nothing in his gestures but a certain stiff-limbed determination. He had never disobeyed me so openly before.

Light flooded the white worktops, the ash cupboard fronts, the terracotta floor tiles. It was all so clean, so bright, so without blemish. I thought of our kitchen, with its identical dimensions. How alike, yet how different. On the table was a pile of clean clothes, still in their wrappers. Two suits, a stack of shirts, all fresh from the cleaners. No two-day-old saucepans stood unwashed in the sink. No food rotted here, no cat litter cracked underfoot, no spider plants went short of water.

From the middle of the kitchen you could see the front door. The neighbour had moved a wall; or perhaps he hadn’t moved a wall; perhaps he had simply moved the door to the middle of his kitchen wall. Natural light from both sides. Clever.

Max left the room. I looked back to where the cat had been standing, but she was no longer there. I could hear him calling to her, a gentle clicking noise at the back of his throat.

I followed him into the living room. Max was already at the central light switch. Our neighbour had added a plaster ceiling rose, and an antique crystal chandelier, which hung too low, dominating the little room. The neighbour had used low-energy bulbs in the chandelier, and they flicked into life, sending ugly ovoids of light up the seamless walls. What was this? And where was the cat?

Max found a second switch, and the bottom half of the room was lit by bulbs in the floor and skirting.

‘Pick up the cat, Max-Man. Time to go.’

He made a gesture. Arms open, palm up. Then he held up his hand. Listen, he seemed to be saying, and listen I did. A dog; traffic; a rooftop crow. People walked past, voices low, their shoes scuffing the pavement.

These houses should have front yards, Millicent would say: it’s like people walking through your living room. You could hear them so clearly, all those bad kids and badder adults: the change in their pockets, the phlegm in their throats, the half-whispered street deals and the Coke-can football matches. It was all so unbearably close.

But there was something else too, a dull, rhythmic tapping that I couldn’t place, couldn’t decipher. Max had located it, though. He pointed to the brown leather sofa. A dark stain was spreading out across the central cushion.

I looked at Max. Max looked at me.

‘Water,’ said Max.

Water dripping on to the leather sofa. Yes, that was the sound. Max looked up. I looked up. The plaster of the ceiling was bowing. No crack was visible, but at the lowest point water was gathering: gathering and falling in metronomic drops, beating out time on the wet leather below.

Now I could see that cat. She was halfway up the staircase, watching the tracks of the water through the air.

Max and I looked at each other. I could read nothing in my son’s expression beyond a certain patient expectancy.

‘Maybe you should shout up to him, Dad. Case he’s here.’

Maybe I should. Maybe I should have shouted louder as I’d skulked by the back door, because standing here in his living room, looking up his stairs towards the first floor, it felt a little late to be alerting him to our presence.

‘Hello?’

Nothing.

‘It’s Alex. From next door.’

‘And Max,’ said Max quietly. ‘And Foxxa.’

‘Alex and Max,’ I shouted up. ‘We’ve come to get our cat.’

Nothing. Water falling against leather. Another street-dog. I looked again at Max.

‘You go first, Dad.’

He was right. I couldn’t send him upstairs in front of me. I had always suspected overly tidy men of having dark secrets in the bedroom.

‘Maybe he left a tap on,’ I said quietly.

‘Maybe.’ Max wrinkled his nose.

‘All right. Stay there.’

I saw the cat’s tail curl around a banister. I headed slowly up the stairs.

A click, and the landing light came on. Max had found that switch too.

Two rooms at the back, two at the front: just like ours. At the back the bathroom and the master bedroom, at the front the second bedroom and a tiny room that only estate agents called a bedroom. The cat was gone. The bathroom door was open.

The neighbour was in the bathtub, on his back, his legs and arms thrown out at discordant angles, as if something in his body was broken and couldn’t be repaired. His mouth was open, his lips were pulled back.

His eyes seemed held open by an unseen force; the left eye was shot through with blood. Blood was gathering around his nostrils too.

I did not retch, or cover my eyes, or cry, or any of the thousand things you’re supposed to do. Instead, and I say this with some shame, I heard and felt myself laugh. Perhaps it was the indignity of the half-erection standing proud from his lifeless body; perhaps it was simply my confusion.

I looked away from his penis, then back, and saw what prudishness had prevented me from seeing before. Lying calmly in the gap between the neighbour’s thighs was an iron. A Black and Decker iron. Fancy. Expensive. There were burn-marks around the top of his left thigh. The iron had been on when he had tipped it into the bath.

Did people really do this? The electric iron? The bath? Wasn’t it a teenage myth? Surely, you would think, surely the fuse would save you? Surely a breaker would have tripped?

Apparently not.

The bath had cracked. The neighbour must have kicked out so hard that he’d broken it. Some sort of fancy plastic composite. The bath would have drained quickly after that, but not quickly enough to save the neighbour from electrocution. Poor man.

‘Dad.’

Max. He was standing in the doorway, the cat in his arms. I hadn’t heard him climb the stairs. Oh please, no.

‘Is he dead?’

‘Out, Max.’ Surely this needs some sort of lie.

‘But Dad.’

‘Out. Downstairs. Now.’

‘But Dad. Dad.’

I turned to look at him.

‘What, Max?’

‘Are you OK, Dad?’ said Max, stepping out on to the landing. I looked at him again, his thin shoulders, his floppy hair, that unreadable look in his eyes. You’re eleven, I thought. When did you get so old?

‘Dad. Dad? Are you going to call the police?’

I nodded.

‘His phone’s downstairs in the living room.’

He was taking charge. My eleven-year-old son was taking charge. This had to stop. This couldn’t be good.

‘No, Max,’ I said, as gently as I could. ‘We’re going to go back to our place. I’ll call from there.’

‘OK.’ He turned and went downstairs.

I took a last look at the neighbour and wondered just what Max had understood. The erection was subsiding now; the penis lay flaccid on his pale thigh.

I heard Max open the front door. ‘You coming, Dad?’

I went home and rang the police and told them what we had found. Then I rang Millicent, though I knew she would not pick up.

Max and I sat at opposite sides of the table in our tired little kitchen, watching each other in silence.

After I had called the police I had made cheese sandwiches with Branston pickle. Max had done what he always did, opening his sandwiches, picking up the cheese and thoughtfully sucking off the pickle, stacking the cheese on his plate and the bread beside it. He had then eaten the cheese, stuffing it into his mouth, chewing noisily and swallowing before he could possibly be ready to. Normally I would have said something, and Max would have ignored it, and I would have shouted at him. Then, if Millicent had been with us, she would have shot me a furious glance, refused to speak to me until Max had gone to bed, then said, simply, ‘Why pick that fight, Alex, honey? You never win it anyway. You’re just turning food into a thing. Food doesn’t have to be a thing.’

Tonight I simply watched Max, wondering what to do, and what to tell Millicent when she came home.

A father leads his son from the world of the boy into the world of the man. A father takes charge, and does not without careful preparation expose his son to the cold realities of death. A father – more specifically – does not expose his son to the corpse of the next-door neighbour, and – most especially – not when that corpse displays an erection brought on by suicide through electrocution.

The tension in the limbs, that rictus smile, they were not easily erased. What did Max know about suicide? What could an eleven-year-old boy know about despair? I had to talk to him, but had no idea what to say. This was bad. Wasn’t this the stuff of full-blown trauma, of sexual dysfunction in the teenage years, and nervous breakdown in early adulthood? And though I hadn’t actively shown Max the neighbour, I had failed to prevent him from seeing him in all his semi-priapic squalor. What do you say? Maybe Millicent would know.

‘Can I have some more cheese, Dad?’

I said nothing.

Maybe I should ring Millicent again. The phone would go to voicemail, but there was comfort in hearing her voice.

Max went to the fridge and fetched a large block of cheddar, then took the bread knife from the breadboard. He sat back down at the table and looked directly at me, wondering perhaps why I’d done nothing to stop him. Then he cut off a large chunk. I noticed the bread knife cut into the surface of the table, but said nothing.

The cat was at the sink. She looked at Max, eyes large, then blinked.

Max went to the sink and turned on the tap. The cat drank, her tongue flicking in and out, curling around the stream of water.

‘Can I watch Netflix?’

I looked at my computer, at the light that pulsed gently on and off. No. Seventy hours of footage to watch, and a week to do it. I have to work. I really should say no.

‘Dad?’ said Max.

I nodded. Work seemed very distant now. Max stared.

‘I’m not taking a plate,’ he said at last.

‘OK.’

At eleven thirty I heard Millicent’s key in the lock. I was sitting where Max had left me at the kitchen table, my own sandwich untouched; the tap was still running.

I heard Millicent drop her bag at the foot of the stair. For the first time I noticed the sound of the programme on the computer: helicopters and gunfire; screaming and explosions. Millicent and Max exchanged soft words. The gunfire and the screaming stopped.

‘Night, Max.’

‘Night, Mum.’

The sound of Max going upstairs; the sound of Millicent dropping her shoes beside her bag.

‘So, Max is up kind of late.’ Millicent came into the kitchen. She stopped in the doorway for a moment, and I saw her notice Max’s plate, the stack of uneaten bread, the bread-knife cut in the table surface. She turned off the tap, then sat down opposite me. She made to say something, then frowned.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Hey.’ Her voice drew out the word, all honey and smoke.

When Millicent first came to London it had felt like our word. The long Californian vowel, the gently falling cadence at the end, were for me, and for me alone. Hey. There was such warmth in her voice, such love. In time I realised hey was how she greeted friends, that she had no friends in London but me at the start; the first time she said hey to another man the betrayal stung me. Don’t laugh at me for this. I didn’t know.

‘So,’ said Millicent. ‘I didn’t stink.’

I don’t know what you mean.

‘In fact, I think I did OK. I mean, I guess I talked a little too much, but it went good for a first time. Look.’

A bag. A bottle and some flowers. There’s a dead man in the next-door house.

I looked up at a dark mark in the wall near the ceiling. Round, like a target. Draw a straight line from me through that mark, and you’d hit the neighbour. Seven metres, I guessed. Maybe less.

Millicent looked at me, then reached out and took my hand in hers, turning it over and unclenching my fist.

‘You are super-tense.’

‘It’s OK.’

‘You’re OK?’

No. I was as far from OK as I could imagine but the words I needed wouldn’t form. ‘Yes,’ I said at last.

‘You forgot.’ It took a lot to hurt Millicent, but I could feel the edge of disappointment in her voice. The interview, on the radio. Of course.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Radio.’ Why can’t I find the words?

‘OK,’ she said. She looked at me as if I had run over a deer. ‘But you didn’t listen to it. I mean, it’s also a download, so I get that maybe it’s not time-critical, but I guess I was kind of hoping, Alex …’

I breathed deep, trying to decide how to say what I had to say. From the look of Millicent, Max had told her nothing of what we’d seen. I wondered where the police were. Maybe bathroom suicides were a common event around here. What do you say?

‘What is it, Alex?’

From upstairs I heard Max flush the toilet. I thought of the bathroom in the house next door, of the bath five metres from where he was now.

‘Alex?’

‘OK.’ I took Millicent’s hand in mine, looked her in the eye. ‘OK.’

‘You’re scaring me a little, Alex. What’s going on?’

Three sentences, I thought. Anything can be said in three sentences. You need to find three sentences.

‘OK. This is what I need to tell you.’

‘Yes?’

‘The neighbour killed himself. I found him. Max saw.’ Nine words. Not bad.

‘No,’ she said. Very quiet, almost matter-of-fact, as if refuting a badly phrased proposition. ‘No, Alex, he isn’t. He can’t be.’

‘I found him. Max saw.’ Five words.

She stared at me. Said nothing.

‘I should have stopped him from seeing. I didn’t.’

Still she stared at me. She brought her right hand up to her face, rubbing the bridge of her nose in the way she does when she’s buying time in an argument.

‘I haven’t talked to him yet about what he saw. I know I have to, but I wanted to talk to you first.’ Because you’re better at this than me. Because I don’t know what to say.

Still Millicent said nothing.

The doorbell rang. Millicent did not move. I did not move. It rang again. We sat there, staring at each other. Only when I heard footsteps on the stairs did I stand up and go to the front room. Max had the door open. He stood there in his lion pyjamas, looking up at the two policemen.

‘Upstairs, Max,’ I said, trying to smile at the policemen, aware suddenly of the papers strewn across the floor, of Millicent’s pizza carton and my beer cans on the side table. ‘I’ll be up in a minute, Max,’ I said, guiding him towards the stair.

‘It’s OK. Night, Dad.’ He kissed me and slipped away from my hand and up the stairs. I nodded at the policemen and was surprised by the warmth of their smiles.

We agreed that it would be easiest for them to enter the neighbour’s property through our back garden. Save breaking down the front door and causing unnecessary drama. Better to keep the other neighbours in the dark for the time being.

The policemen weren’t interested in explanations; they didn’t care what Max and I had been doing in the neighbour’s house, seemed completely unconcerned with what we had seen. That would come later, I guessed. They said no to a cup of tea, nodded politely to Millicent, who still hadn’t moved from her chair, and disappeared into our back garden. I went upstairs, and found Max in the bathroom, standing on the bath and looking out of the window as the policemen scaled the wall.

‘Bed, Max.’

‘OK, Dad.’

When he was tucked up, I drew up a chair beside the bed.

‘What are you doing, Dad?’

‘I thought I’d sit here while you go to sleep.’

‘I’m fine, Dad. Really.’

Three heavy knocks at the front door. A dream, perhaps?

2

Millicent’s side of the bed was empty. We had lain for hours without speaking, neither of us finding sleep. Then she had reached across for my hand, encircled my legs with hers, and held me very tightly. I had felt her breasts against my back, her pubic bone against the base of my spine, and I’d wondered why we rarely lay like this any more.

After some time, Millicent’s breathing had slowed and her grip loosened into a subtler embrace. I became more and more aware of her pubic bone, still gently pressing against me. But at the first stirring in my penis I remembered the neighbour’s half-erection in the bath. I stretched away from her, and she went back to her side of the bed.

‘Millicent?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Can we talk?’

‘Tomorrow,’ she had said.

Now I got up and dressed in yesterday’s clothes. I opened the door to Max’s room for long enough to see the calm rise and fall of his chest. Asleep. Clothes folded. Toys in their place. I watched him for a while, then went downstairs. Three minutes past six.

The cat tripped into the living room, tail high, limbs taut. She danced around my feet, and I reached down to her.

‘Hello, Foxxa.’ She sniffed approvingly at the tips of my fingers; then she pushed on to her hind legs, running her back upwards against the palm of my hand, forcing me to stroke her. For a moment she stood, unsteady, looking up, eyes bright and wide, as if surprised to find herself on two feet. Then she lowered herself on to all fours and wove a figure-of-eight around my calves, catlike again.

A mug on the living-room table: Millicent had drunk coffee in front of the television. I saw that the front door was unlocked, and found the kitchen empty. The cat followed me in, ate dried food from her bowl.

Millicent had left a folded note.

Alex,

We need to

talk Max (3)

talk school (1)

talk shrink (2)

talk police (?)

But please, none of this before we speak.

M

The coffee-maker was on the stove, still half-full. I checked the temperature with my hand. Warm enough to drink. I stood on the countertop and felt around on top of the cupboard, just below the plaster of the ceiling. Marlboro ten-pack. I took one and replaced the packet.

We had started hiding cigarettes from Max. He didn’t smoke them, as far as we could tell, but a pack left lying on the kitchen table would disappear. Millicent was certain that he sold them, but Max disapproved of our smoking with such puritanical disdain that I was sure he destroyed them.

In the garden I pulled the love seat away from the wall and drank my coffee, smoked my cigarette. On a morning like this, Crappy wasn’t so bad. No dogs barked, no one shouted in the street, no police helicopters watched from above. We should sort out the garden though. The garden was a state.

I stood on the love seat, looked back over the wall. Poor man, with his trimmed lawn, his verdant bower and his successful suicide attempt. From here there was nothing – nothing – that betrayed our neighbour’s sad, lonely death.

I pushed the love seat back against the wall and stood up, finished my cigarette, tried to plan the day. Quiet word with the teacher. Phone calls to the shrink. The police, I imagined, would make contact with us.

What had Max seen? When he had climbed the stairs behind me, what had he seen? That jolt, that first image, that’s what stays with you, isn’t it? Contorted face or pitiful erection? Rictus or dick? Which would be more traumatic for a boy of his age?

I flicked my cigarette butt over the wall and went back into the house. Max was in the kitchen, all pyjamas and tousled hair, rubbing sleep from his eyes. I bent down to hug him. He sniffed dramatically.

‘You’ve been smoking.’ But he threw his arms around my neck and hung there for a moment, then sat down at the table. I searched his face for some sign of something broken in him, but found nothing.

‘Max.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m going to be coming with you to school today. I need to tell your teacher what you saw.’

‘His name’s Mr Sharpe.’

‘… to tell Mr Sharpe what you saw.’

‘You forgot his name, didn’t you?’

‘Max. Can you listen?’

‘What? And why do you have to tell him?’

‘Because what you saw was very upsetting.’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘You might be upset later.’

He shrugged. ‘Can I be there when you tell him?’

‘Sure. OK. Why not.’

I kept expecting the police to knock on the door. Typical of Millicent to be out at a time like this.

I made a cooked breakfast to fill the time before we left. I let Max fry the eggs, which surprised him. It surprised me too. We ate in silence, then shared Millicent’s portion, enjoying our guilty intimacy. Max went upstairs. I put the plates and pans in the dishwasher and set it running. Millicent didn’t need to know.

Max came downstairs, dressed and ready to go. I texted Millicent to say I was taking him to school.

There was a man standing outside our house. He was casually dressed – leather jacket, distressed jeans – but there was nothing casual about his stance. Perhaps he had been about to knock, because the open door seemed to throw his balance slightly off. Max had flung it wide, and there stood the man in front of us, swaying, unsure of what to say.

‘Who are you?’ said Max. ‘Are you a policeman?’

The man nodded, ran the back of his hand across his mouth. He carried a briefcase that was far too smart for his clothes.

‘I could tell you were,’ said Max. ‘Are you going to arrest someone?’

The policeman ignored the question. ‘Mr Mercer?’ he said. I nodded, and he nodded at me again. He told me his name, and his rank. I immediately forgot both.

‘You got a minute?’

‘I was going to take Max to school.’

‘It’s OK,’ said Max. ‘I can just go.’

‘I’d like to speak to your son actually, if that’s all right. With your permission, and in your presence.’

No.

‘My name’s Max,’ said Max.

I looked at Max. You want to do this? He nodded at me.

‘OK,’ I said.

‘You’re giving your consent?’

‘I am,’ I said, ‘yes.’

‘Me too,’ said Max.

The policeman explained that this was not an interview, although he had recently been certified in interviewing children. He gave me a sheet of paper about what we could expect from the police and how to make a complaint if we were unhappy. Then he took out a notebook. I handed the paper to Max, who read it carefully.

First sign, I thought. First sign that this is taking a wrong turn and I end it and ask him to leave. He’s eleven.

I brought a chair in from the kitchen for the policeman. Max and I sat on the sofa. The policeman asked me where Millicent was, and I told him she was out. He asked me where she worked, and I said that she worked from home. He asked me where she was again. I said I wasn’t sure.

He made a note in his notebook.

‘She often goes out,’ said Max. ‘Dad never knows where she is.’

‘Max,’ I said.

‘Well, you don’t.’

The policeman made a note of this too.

‘Mum values her freedom.’

The policeman made yet another note. Then he took out a small pile of printed forms on to which he began to write.

‘How old are you, Max?’

‘Eleven.’

‘And is Max Mercer your full name?’

‘Yes. I don’t have a middle name.’

‘And you’re a boy, obviously.’

‘Obviously.’

They exchanged a smile; I realised that the policeman was simply nervous.

‘Can I sit beside you?’ said Max. ‘Just while you’re doing the form?’

The policeman looked at me.

‘If that’s OK with your dad.’

‘Sure,’ I said. I asked him if he wanted a coffee; he asked for a glass of water instead. I went through to the kitchen. Was he nervous, I wondered. Or are you playing nice cop?

‘I’m white British,’ I heard Max say, ‘even though British isn’t a race but the human race is. We’re not religious or anything. And my first language is English, so I don’t need an interpreter.’

He was reading from the form, I guessed, checking off the categories: so proud, so anxious to show how grown-up he could be. ‘For my orientation you can put straight.’

‘That’s really for older children,’ I heard the policeman say.

‘But can’t you just put straight?’

‘All right, Max. Straight.’

I came back in with the water. The policeman got up and sat opposite us again in the kitchen chair, writing careful notes as his telephone recorded Max’s words.

‘What were you doing before you found the neighbour, Max?’

‘Not much. Like reading and homework and stuff. I’m not allowed an Xbox or anything. And Mum was out, and Dad was working. He lets me borrow his phone, though.’

The policeman sent me an enquiring look. Then he made another note. I was wrong. It wasn’t nervousness; it was something else. There was a shrewdness to him that I hadn’t noticed at first, and that I didn’t much like. ‘We’re good parents,’ I wanted to say to him. ‘We love him unconditionally. We set boundaries.’ Don’t judge us.

He was good at speaking to children, though: I had to give him that. Max told him everything. That we had been looking for our cat, that the cat had led us into the neighbour’s house, that the back door had been open, and that the cat had disappeared up the stairs.

‘Is it better to say erection, or can I say boner?’ said Max.

‘Just say whichever you feel more comfortable saying,’ said the policeman.

‘But what should I say in court?’

‘I don’t think you’re going to have to speak in court,’ said the policeman. ‘That’s very unlikely.’

‘What would you say, though?’

The policeman laughed gently. ‘Probably erection. It’s the official word.’

‘OK.’ Max smiled a wide smile. ‘Erection.’ Then he became serious again; he made himself taller and stiffer, an adult in miniature. ‘Anyway, even though Dad tried to stop me seeing, I saw that the neighbour had an erection.’

I hadn’t tried to stop Max from seeing, though. At least I didn’t think I had. I was suddenly unsure. Perhaps I had.

‘I’m sorry, Max,’ said the policeman. ‘That must have been upsetting for you.’

‘You don’t mean the erection. You mean the dead body.’

‘Yes,’ said the policeman.

‘It was OK,’ said Max. ‘I mean, it wasn’t nice, but it was OK. Have you seen a dead body before?’

‘No,’ said the policeman, ‘only pictures.’

‘Isn’t it your job?’

‘We all have slightly different jobs,’ he said.

‘How long have you been a policeman?’

‘Couple of years,’ he said.

I had been wondering whether to send Max upstairs to his bedroom, or to ask whether I could drop Max at school and then come back. Of course, Max could have walked to school by himself, but I wanted to walk by my son’s side, to see him safely there, to make sure he was OK after the questions from the police.

The policeman didn’t need to speak to me. He had other children he had to speak to. Formal interviews.

‘Dark stuff,’ he said, and a troubled look clouded his features.

‘What dark stuff?’ said Max.

The policeman checked himself again. He stood up, put the forms in his briefcase, and handed me a card, told me his colleagues would be in touch to speak to me.

‘What dark stuff?’ said Max again.

‘Not all parents love their children the way your dad loves you, Max.’

As we left the house Max slipped his fingers through mine. Little Max, my only-begotten son. He hardly ever held my hand these days.

‘Dad,’ said Max, ‘Dad, Ravion Stamp had to go to the police station, and they filmed it and everything. And his dad wasn’t allowed to be there.’

‘That isn’t going to happen to you,’ I said.

‘But what if they arrest you?’

‘Why would they do that?’

‘But Ravion’s dad …’

Jason Stamp had violently assaulted his son. Ravion had testified by video link. I wasn’t sure how much Max knew about the case.

‘That won’t happen to us, Max. I promise you.’

‘But how could that man know that you love me?’ he said.

‘He could see it.’

‘How?’

‘OK, he was just guessing.’

‘You are so annoying, Dad,’ he said. But he leaned in to me and wrapped his arms around me for a moment. My beautiful, clever son. My only-begotten. Whose first word was cat and whose seventh was fuck; whose forty-fourth word was a close approximation of motherfucker.

Forget the swearing, though. We fed Max, we clothed him, we sang him to sleep at night. We set clear boundaries, and applied rules as fairly as we could. Our house was full of love. We are the classic good-enough parents.

Millicent and Max would bath together; I would hear their shrieks of laughter from halfway down the street. Listen to that: that’s the sound of my little tribe. Listen to that and tell me it’s not real.

Yes, we swore in front of Max, and yes, we smoked behind his back. That doesn’t matter. What matters is this – my wife, my son, the water and the laughter.

My little tribe.

Max let me hold his hand until we neared the school, then slipped his fingers from mine, walked beside me. On the final approach, he half-ran, putting ground between himself and me, anxious not to be seen arriving with a parent.

Millicent rang. I cradled the phone to my ear. Screams and shouts of morning break, six hundred London children giving voice.

‘I was worried.’

‘Hey. Sorry.’ Her voice was strained.

‘Where are you?’

‘On my way. You at the school?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wait for me?’

‘I’d hoped to speak to him before they go in again.’

‘You’ve forgotten his name again, haven’t you?’ Her voice softened.

‘I know. Bad Dad.’

‘So, you going to wait for me, Bad Dad?’

‘OK. All right.’

I saw Max in a dissolute huddle of boys, all oversized shirts and falling-down trousers. I caught his eye and pointed to the school building. ‘See you in there,’ I mouthed. He nodded and turned away.

Millicent arrived five minutes after the school bell. She was pale, the contours of her face shifted by lack of sleep. She reached up and kissed me.

Even in heels, Millicent was short. When we’d first met, it had made me want to protect her. Now I hardly noticed. I held her, grateful that she was there. She held me just as tightly. Then she ended the embrace by tapping me on the back.

‘Where’ve you been?’ I said.

‘Out. Thinking. Sorry.’

It’s been like this since we lost Sarah. Millicent’s reaction – her ultimate reaction, after she had fallen apart – was to do the opposite of falling apart. She reconstructed herself. She became supercompetent. Make your play, she writes, then move on. Play and move on.

The classroom looked like a post-war public information film, but with more black and brown faces. Didactic posters covered the walls. The children sat in orderly rows, working in twos from textbooks. Three rows back sat Max with his friend Tarek. He looked up when we entered, but didn’t acknowledge us.

Mr Sharpe too looked like a man from another age. Dark-skinned, and with close-cropped hair, dressed in a faultlessly pressed suit: like a black country schoolmaster from a time when no country schoolmaster was black. His hair was brilliantine slick, his moustache pencil thin, his hands delicate and agile.

‘May we speak with you?’ Millicent said. ‘We’re Max’s parents. We wanted to explain the reason for his lateness.’

‘Of course.’

‘In private.’ She turned towards the corridor.

‘Actually, that isn’t really appropriate.’ He gestured towards the class. I looked around, and found Tarek and Max looking directly at me. Tarek whispered something to Max; they looked at the teacher and at us, and laughed.

‘Unless, of course, you can wait until lunch break. Twelve fifteen. Here.’

‘We’d like Max to be present.’

Mr Sharpe nodded, waved us from the room and closed the door behind us.

3

‘Uh huh,’ said Millicent. ‘That sure went well.’

We bought bad coffee from a bad café, drank it from bad Styrofoam cups on a low wall on the baddest of Crappy’s bad streets. I lit a cigarette, and we shared it like the bad boy and bad girl we weren’t and never would be.

Millicent inhaled deeply, holding back some of the smoke inside her mouth, catching it as it started to wisp upwards, then sucking it hungrily down into her primed lungs. Two hits in one draw: proper film noir smoking. Even after thirteen years of marriage it suggested something unknowable, some glamorous secret that I was never quite party to.

‘What is it, Alex?’

‘You. Smoking in the sun. Hello.’

That same image – Millicent, backlight and smoke. It repeats itself sometimes, and it catches me off guard. It’s no more than a sliver of who she is, a reminder of a moment before we began to share our imperfections with each other. The American girl I met in the pub.

‘So,’ said Millicent, ‘the radio thing.’

‘I’m sorry. I should have listened to it.’

‘No, I kind of get why you couldn’t do that, Alex.’ She laughed gently. ‘I really did not see that one coming.’

I laughed too, then stopped, brought up short by the flash frame of the neighbour that cut hard into my thoughts: the broken body in its broken bathtub, the blooded eye cold against the London heat. Water falling through space.

Three frames of the wrong kind of reality.

‘What is it, Alex, honey?’

Erase. Breathe.

‘Alex, are you OK?’

‘Yes,’ I said. Breathe.

Millicent looked concerned, put a hand on my arm.

‘I’m fine.’ I breathed.

‘You’re fine?’

‘I’m fine.’ I breathed again. ‘You said you didn’t suck, Millicent.’

‘No, I sucked a little, but I didn’t stink.’

‘They gave you flowers.’

‘It was an evening transmission. I guess they already bought them before the show.’

‘But they liked you. Come on.’

‘Yes.’ Her eyes shone. ‘Yes, I guess they did like me. Because also they gave me this. Look.’ From her bag she produced an envelope.

I took it from her.

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘A contract.’

‘A letter of engagement. They emailed it to me. At four thirty this morning.’

‘You can’t have sucked at all, Millicent.’

‘They’re on summer schedule. They need cover. Tuesdays eight to ten. Four weeks.’

‘Wow,’ I said again.

‘Yeah, wow,’ she said. ‘That’s good, right?’

‘It’s brilliant, and you know it.’

My America.

We sat grinning at each other on our low wall.

Manifest destiny.

The meeting with Mr Sharpe lasted ten minutes. Max spent the first five looking out of the classroom window. When I described my fear that what he had seen might have traumatised him, must have traumatised him, Max looked round at me, then at Mr Sharpe. Then he yawned and went back to looking out of the window.

Mr Sharpe listened closely. When I had nothing more to say, he sat, drumming his fingers lightly on his desk, looking from Millicent to me, and back again. He opened a notebook that had been lying on the desk.

‘So, Mrs … I’m sorry, Ms Weitzman.’

‘Millicent.’

‘Hmm. Quite so. You asked that Max be present at this meeting. May I ask why?’

‘You wanted to be here,’ I said, ‘didn’t you, Max-Man?’

‘Yes,’ said Max, still looking out of the window.

‘And why was that, Max?’ asked Mr Sharpe, closing his notebook and placing it carefully back on the desk.

‘I don’t know, Mr Sharpe.’

‘Do you have anything to add to what your father has told me?’

‘No, Mr Sharpe.’

‘All right, Max. Run along and join your friends, then.’

Max left the room, closing the classroom door with exaggerated care. Millicent and I exchanged a look. Run along? Still, there was something strangely comforting about this odd little man with his easy paternalism and his brilliantined hair.

Through the wired glass I saw Max linger for a moment, then he disappeared down the corridor.

‘So, Millicent and …’

‘Alex.’

‘Millicent and Alex. Quite. Max seems well-adjusted, well-parented, if I may use that expression. You may be sure that I shall keep an eye open for any sign of the trauma that concerns you.’

‘That’s most kind of you, Mr Sharpe,’ said Millicent.

‘Yes, thank you,’ I found myself saying. ‘Really very kind indeed.’ The man’s formality was catching.

Mr Sharpe smiled a benign smile. ‘Of course, it’s summer break soon, and Max will be leaving us in a few short weeks. Was there anything else?’

‘Not unless there’s anything you would like us to address at home,’ I said, surprised that he hadn’t mentioned Max’s swearing.

‘No, as I said, a well-brought-up boy. Nice circle of friends, never in trouble. Studious, but not a prig. Neither a victim nor a bully. He listens in class, he does his homework, he reads well. He will settle well into secondary school life; I have no doubt of it. I’m not really sure what more I can say.’

‘Well parented, you said?’ asked Millicent.

‘Yes, a credit to you and your husband.’

‘He doesn’t seem in any way odd to you?’

‘Dear me, no. Why?’

We didn’t see Max as we left the school.

‘Shouldn’t that man be a country schoolmaster somewhere in the middle of the 1950s?’ I said.

‘I kind of liked him,’ said Millicent.

‘Me too. Strange that Max likes him so much, though.’

‘Kids don’t like teachers who want to hang out; they don’t like for adults to talk about hip hop and social networking. They want to know where the line is, and what will happen when they cross that line. Especially boys. They’re kind of hardwired conservative at that age.’

‘But how does that work here in Crappy?’

‘So many questions, Alex. Aren’t you tired?’

Seventy hours of footage sitting on my computer. Five days to view it.

4

Across the road from the neighbour’s house an ambulance stood parked. Three police cars boxed in the parked cars on our side of the street.

The door of the house on the other side of ours opened. Mr Ashani, all flower baskets and civic pride. His house was freshly painted, his cream slacks smartly pleated; his smile had God on its side.

‘Mr and Mrs Mercer,’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘We see too little of each other.’

‘Hey, how are you, Mr Ashani?’ said Millicent, offering up her cheek.

‘French style,’ said Mr Ashani. ‘Nice.’ He kissed her briskly, once on each cheek, then held out his hand to me. I tried to grip it as firmly as he gripped mine. ‘Nice,’ he said again. His right eye had the first faint suggestion of cataract clouding its surface, but his skin was flawless. I had once asked him his age, and he had laughed. ‘Oh, you mean the old black-don’t-crack thing, sir?’ I should have asked him again, but I was afraid of appearing rude, or worse.

‘Waiting for the dead man?’ said Mr Ashani.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No, not at all.’

Mr Ashani laughed, coughed a little, and laughed again.

‘Not you, Mr Mercer.’ He nodded towards the ambulance. The crew had the doors open in the London heat, listening to the radio, drinking water from aluminium bottles.

‘I asked them, you see, but they told me nothing. The police have been there two hours. I saw men with metal cases and there were flashes coming from the house. They would not do this if this man were still alive, surely?’

‘You think they’re taking photographs?’ I said.

‘Can you think of any other reason for the flashes, sir?’ he said. ‘We must pray that this is not the beginning of a wave of crime.’

‘No crime was committed, Mr Ashani.’

‘No, my dear?’

‘It appears to be a suicide,’ said Millicent, her voice quiet.

‘No,’ he said. A look of horror passed across his face. ‘What a vile and cowardly thing that would be. We must hope that you are mistaken. We must hope that this is a murder.’

‘Mr Ashani, I can’t believe you would say that.’

‘It is not my wish to offend you, Mrs Mercer.’

‘A man is lying dead in there, Mr Ashani. Surely he deserves our sympathy – your sympathy – however he died.’

Mr Ashani considered this. ‘No, Mrs Mercer,’ he said. ‘No, suicide is the greatest of crimes. To turn one’s back on redemption, to despair in such a way … It is … That you cannot see this … I am at a loss …’

He began to walk back towards his house.

Millicent made to walk after him. ‘Mr Ashani. Please.’

He turned, then very deliberately walked back towards us.

‘I do not wish you to think me cruel,’ he said, ‘but the word on this is very precise, my dear. And besides, this man was not a moral man.’

I tried to move into Millicent’s line of sight. I wanted her to change the subject.

‘Mr Ashani,’ said Millicent, ‘I respect your view, of course I do, but we disagree.’

Mr Ashani began to speak very quietly, his voice grave. ‘With murder there is at least the hope of salvation. The soul of the victim may ascend to heaven, and the murderer may reflect on his crime and repent.’ He turned to me, smiled the most reasonable of smiles. ‘You see this, sir, do you not?’

I gave what I hope was a smile of respect. Mr Ashani nodded, as if I had confirmed his point, turned back to Millicent. ‘With suicide, Mrs Mercer, a soul is forever lost to God. Forever. To choose suicide is to mark your card for damnation. No, Mrs Mercer, no, we must pray that this is a murder.’

I looked at Millicent. Change the subject …

OK. Millicent looked back at me. All right.

‘Mr Ashani,’ she said, ‘my husband and I have been arguing over how old you are.’

He smiled. ‘How old do you think I am?’

‘So our guess was somewhere between fifty …’

‘Fifty? Excellent.’ He laughed.

‘And I guess, and I hope you won’t be offended, but we really didn’t know …’ She screwed up her eyes slightly, touched his hand to show that she meant no harm. ‘Well, we thought upper limit seventy.’

‘Upper limit? That’s your upper limit?’

Millicent nodded. ‘Maybe sixty-seven?’

‘I’m seventy-seven,’ he said, clearly delighted. ‘Fit as the day is young.’

‘My husband worries, you know, Mr Ashani. He thinks maybe you’ll think badly of us for not being able to guess. You have such perfect skin.’

‘No, my dear. No, I am not offended. Other things offend me, perhaps, but not that.’

‘You see,’ she said as I closed the front door behind us, ‘he doesn’t think you’re a racist for not knowing his age.’

‘What did he mean by other things?’

‘Well, I guess maybe he could think that you are a little racist because you don’t engage with his ideas … I mean with anyone else you would just jump right in there, but Mr Ashani gets to believe what he wants about God and suicide and murder, unchallenged by you.’

‘He’s old.’

‘Right … I’m sure that’s why you don’t engage with his views. And why you never invite him round. The guy likes an argument. You can see that.’

‘You think I’m racist?’ And suddenly I could see that she was laughing. ‘So now racism is funny?’

A dull thud, as if someone in the dead neighbour’s house had dropped a sledge hammer. Time stopped. Millicent winced. The air in the room was all dust and heat. Millicent laughed, as if embarrassed by her reaction. Time restarted.

‘No, Alex, no. That isn’t it at all. It’s just … He’s our neighbour, we have nothing in common; you don’t have to invite him round to drink mineral water and talk Nigerian politics.’

Something scraped across the dead neighbour’s upper floor. Millicent’s eyes darted. ‘Whoah,’ she said. ‘That was a little …’

‘… unexpected,’ I said.

‘Unexpected.’ She composed herself. ‘Yeah.’

‘He’s from Ghana,’ I said, ‘and he’s a nice guy.’

‘Only since he found out we were married. Before that he kind of sucked. And by the way, he has strong opinions about Nigeria.’

‘Love,’ I said, and took her hand. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Why would you think I wouldn’t be?’

I drew her to me, and she smiled weakly up at me. Because suicide terrifies you, I thought. Because you hate the idea that someone’s pain might be unreachable. Because you once told me someone you knew …

Voices from the neighbour’s house. Millicent’s eyes crossed to the wall.

‘So … This is all a little freaky,’ she said. ‘Why would they not take the body last night?’

‘Being thorough,’ I said. ‘I mean, that would be my guess. I don’t know.’

‘Gross. Maybe I’m not completely OK with it.’ She ran her tongue along the inside of her lips.

Why would you be, I thought? How could anybody be OK with this? I put my hand on her cheek and she held it there for a moment and looked me in the eye. Then she looked away and a shiver seemed to pass through her body.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘I’m here. You can tell me what you’re feeling.’

‘I think I just did.’

You didn’t, I thought. Not really.

‘The guy was OK. A little buttoned-up, but OK. I guess I liked him.’ A troubled look clouded her eyes. ‘I guess I’m a little freaked out also. That he would still be in there.’

‘You knew him?’

‘Kind of an over-the-fence thing …’

A shadow across the curtain in the front window; three knocks at the front door.

I looked at Millicent. She was shaking her head at me. Police, she mouthed. She looked small again, hunched. No, she mouthed. Not now, Alex. Defensive eyes, like an animal that was past the fight-or-flight stage. I’d almost forgotten that look.

‘What else are we going to do?’ I said, under my breath. ‘They must have heard us in here.’ I walked towards the front door; Millicent slipped into the kitchen.

The man was small and thin, in white t-shirt and long shorts, and covered in a light dust. Muscular though. A builder, I thought. A builder carrying a clipboard.

‘Mr Bryce?’ he said. ‘Hello. Continent Containers.’

He looked at me as if I should know what he meant. I didn’t.

‘Skip-hire provider.’ He extended a hand. His smile was warm, professional.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Not Mr Bryce.’

‘Could I speak to Mr Bryce?’

‘There’s no Mr Bryce,’ I said. ‘I’m Alex Mercer. And I’ve never hired a skip in my life.’

‘Strange,’ said the man. He looked down at his clipboard. ‘All right.’ He took out a mobile phone.

‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ I said. ‘We’ve a lot on.’

‘OK, sir. Thanks, anyway.’

I closed the door. Millicent returned from the kitchen.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I get that you’re being brave for me, and for Max. And I hate that you guys had to see what you saw.’

‘I could have stopped him from seeing and I didn’t.’

‘I know, honey, but I’m guessing you were in shock.’

‘I laughed. I actually laughed.’

‘That would be a classic shock reaction, right there. You’re a good father, Alex. Your instinct is to protect. I know it. Max knows it.’

‘I failed. Max saw everything.’

‘OK, Alex. Yes, we do need to discuss that.’ She breathed out heavily.

‘My honest guess? Max is going to fall apart a little.’

I sat on the sofa, bit hard into my knuckle.

What have I done?

‘Alex, honey, he’s going to need to do this. It isn’t the end of the world. We have the summer.’ Millicent sat down beside me.

‘To let our son fall apart? We sit and watch while our son has a breakdown? Have him back on his feet and ready for school by September?’

‘We break his fall, Alex. There’s a logic to these things. We listen to him when he needs to talk, and we help him to pick up the pieces when – if – he falls apart. It’s a process. He’ll be OK. We’re good parents. We’ll find him a good shrink.’

‘That’s our summer?’

‘That’s our summer.’

‘What about work?’

Seventy hours of footage on my laptop. Another shoot to plan.

‘You can still go,’ she said.

‘I can’t. You’re going to need me here.’

Two weeks in America. An eight-week edit. How was that going to work?

‘Sure you can, Alex. Max and I always manage.’

Voices through the wall again. I could see the sinews in Millicent’s neck stiffen. ‘Huh,’ she said. ‘I thought they left already. I guess I’m still a little jumpy.’

‘Who wouldn’t be?’

‘Why are you so sweet to me?’ she said, her eyes searching my face.

‘I’m not,’ I said.

‘You are.’ She pushed me gently backwards and down on to the sofa. Then she lay down and folded herself into me, her back to my chest, legs entangling mine.

‘Max will be OK, Alex. With the right support he’s going to be just fine.’

‘How can you know?’

‘Children are resilient.’

‘I should be here,’ I said.

She turned, arching her back, and found my mouth with hers. Her eyes didn’t flick away as she kissed me: none of that reticence now. I lay on my side and she moved to accommodate me, my body cradling hers. She lifted my hand across her breasts, pushed her thighs gently back against mine. I could feel the weight in my limbs now, feel the tension easing from her body.

We lay like this for some time. I pushed gently back against her, not wanting to break the moment.

‘Millicent?’ I said at last. ‘Love?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Will this be anything like Sarah?’

‘No,’ said Millicent, her voice heavy with the promise of sleep. ‘No, Alex, this will be nothing like Sarah.’

I woke in the middle of the afternoon, stiff of neck and leg. I had been lying on my left arm, and could hardly feel it. I flexed the hand underneath me, felt it move slightly; an alien thing, a part of me that wasn’t.

When I raised my head I saw that Max was lying in front of Millicent. Her arms were tightly wound around him, and he too was asleep. He must have let himself in and climbed on to the sofa to join us. Millicent had rearranged my right arm so that I was cradling both of them. Or perhaps Max had done it himself. The three of us on our cramped little sofa. My little tribe. How had he managed to sleep without falling off?

I raised my feet so they were on top of the sofa back, then gently freed my arm from around Max. I pushed my back as gently as I could away from Millicent. She murmured something that I didn’t understand. Sleep talk, I guessed. Probably nothing.

With my right arm I pulled the rest of my body up so that I was balanced sideways on the sofa back. I brought my left leg down to the floor behind the sofa, then my right.

I heard voices through the wall again. Were they really not finished?

I stood up too quickly, saw stars falling past my eyes, felt my left arm tingle as the blood returned. I stood, massaging my arm in the space behind the sofa, glad that no one could see the strangeness of the scene. Then I held my breath and slid out along the wall behind the sofa.

I brought my head down to Millicent’s. ‘Love?’

‘Mmm? Hey.’

‘You have room now.’

‘Mmm,’ she said, and relaxed backwards into the space I had made for her, pulling Max gently with her. Max’s eyes flickered open and for a moment I thought he was awake, but he screwed himself even tighter, pulled Millicent’s arm firmly about him, and slept on.

Little Max-Man, I thought. Catch you when you fall.

A knock at the door. The police, I thought. It could only be the police. I wondered for a moment about not answering. What would happen then? How long would they knock for before they let us alone? But this had to be faced.

Another police officer. She wore a neat two-piece suit, and carried a leather briefcase exactly like the officer who had spoken to Max.

‘Mr Mercer?’ she said, and held out her hand. I’m fairly certain that she told me her name, but I have no memory of what it was.

‘You want to speak to me about finding the neighbour?’

‘That’s right. I do.’

‘And in principle yes,’ I said.

She looked puzzled.

‘Now isn’t good. Could we please schedule this?’ I kept my voice as level as I could. ‘That really would be much more convenient.’

‘Schedule?’ she said. ‘I’m not really sure I understand.’

I opened the door wide so that she could see Max and Millicent asleep on the sofa.

‘Oh,’ she mouthed.

‘He’s exhausted,’ I said.

‘I can see that,’ she said, ‘but it’s you I want to speak to.’

‘Do you have children yourself?’

She shook her head.

‘He’s asleep. It’s a small house. And he’s already told your colleague everything.’

‘We do need your side of the story, Mr Mercer.’

‘And I don’t want to add to his burden. He’s experienced a major trauma. I’d be grateful if we could do this tomorrow during school hours.’

‘It’s not that I don’t see,’ she said. ‘But you’re making this difficult for me, Mr Mercer.’

‘Please,’ I said. ‘It’s stability he needs.’

She blew out her cheeks a few times, then she said, ‘I’ll make a call.’

She took a small Bluetooth headset from the breast pocket of her jacket and crossed to the other side of the street. I stood, watching her from the threshold. Children shouted in back yards, and the traffic on the main road was loud, but I could hear most of what she said. She reported the conversation we had had, in the words that I had used. She spoke of my concern for my son. She kept looking across at me as she spoke, one hand on her briefcase, the other on her headset.

‘Mr Mercer thinks … Mr Mercer feels … Mr Mercer suggests.’ If she was irritated with me she didn’t let it show. Her words made me sound reasonable and adult, and I was grateful to her.

I smiled at her; she smiled weakly back.

‘Eleven o’clock tomorrow morning,’ she said when she had crossed back over. ‘Best I could do. Ensure you’re in, please.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Sorry to waste your time. But he’s only eleven.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do understand.’

‘I don’t have much to say anyway. Max has told you pretty much everything.’

Millicent woke at six and gently extricated herself from Max. We ate linguine in front of the television. Millicent sat on the sofa with Max’s legs in her lap, balancing the plate in one hand, her white shirt flecked red-orange from the sauce. I sat on the floor, my back to the sofa, with Millicent’s legs on each side of me.

Max hardly stirred. At nine I carried him up to bed.

5

That first night the sex was drunken and good-natured. Millicent allowed me to believe I had charmed her into bed.

Later we had sat side by side and eaten breakfast at an all-night café in Holborn. I was surprised to find she was nervous. She spilled orange juice in my lap, was mortified, apologised like an English girl. I offered her my last cigarette – she’d long since finished her own pack – and she gulped the smoke down with obvious relief, her spine lengthening, her shoulders descending, balance and poise returning to her body. She took another of her double drags and handed the cigarette back to me. She liked me, I realised, and I liked her. Even when sober. So I told her.

‘Why? What do you like about me?’

Why did I like her? I knew next to nothing about her, had told her next to nothing about myself. But something had made me say it.

‘You’re good at smoking. You slept with me on the second date. You have slightly inverted nipples. And you’re foreign. What’s not to like?’

‘Don’t try to charm your way past the question, Alex.’

‘OK. Sorry.’

‘Do you? Like me? I kind of need to know.’

‘Yes, I like you.’

On the fourth day she flew back to the States without much explanation. She came back ten days later. She had broken up with her boyfriend. Moved out of their rented apartment. Sold her things and come to Europe.

‘Your boyfriend? Your apartment?’

‘It wasn’t working out.’

A bolter, friends said. Watch yourself. But I was younger then, and I was flattered by the impulsiveness of her choices. The girl I met in the pub.

When I asked her where her luggage was, she pointed at her bag. She had taken a courier flight from LAX. One large leather handbag. She really had sold everything. She had a week’s worth of underwear. Two t-shirts. Two skirts. One pair of trousers. She had £1,500 in cash. She would work, she said. You can’t, I said, you need a permit.

‘About that,’ she said. ‘I had a couple of thoughts.’

So we entered lightly into marriage; so, at least, it seemed to me then.

I lay still in our tiny double bed, listening. I had a memory of her sliding from the bed at first light, of her whispering something to me, tender and loving.

Birds and traffic. A family shouting on a back patio. And computer keys.

I got up and pulled on a clean pair of pants. Max’s door was open, his room empty. I opened the door to Millicent’s office. A desk, a chair, a computer and Millicent in her kimono dressing gown. A spare bedroom without room for a bed. Millicent didn’t look round.

‘That bad?’ I said.

‘What?’ she said, typing, her fingers floating elegantly across the keys, fast and precise. Her feet twitched reflexively.

‘You’re typing with your feet. You’re nervous. What are you worrying about?’

She turned, gave me a look of mock irritation, then turned back to her screen.

‘I’m preparing a little. For this evening.’

‘I thought it was unscripted.’

‘It pretty much is.’

‘Looks scripted to me, Millicent.’

‘So kill me, I’m nervous,’ she said. ‘Also, a guy with a drill just fitted a lock to the neighbour’s front door. Which is more than a little disconcerting. Why would they feel the need to do that, Alex?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘He just … I can’t believe he just … went like that.’ Her eyes clouded, and for a moment I wondered if she was going to cry.

‘London,’ I said.

‘Maybe so,’ she said. ‘Yeah. Maybe it’s London.’ She sighed. Then she drew herself together again and the sadness was gone. ‘How many words is two hours, Alex?’

‘Three words a second,’ I said. ‘Makes 180 words a minute, 10,800 words an hour. Call it 21,000 words. Minus commercial breaks, which are about a quarter of the programme. So 15,000 words.’

‘Huh,’ she said. ‘That is a lot of words.’

‘It isn’t,’ I said. ‘Not really. Where’s Max?’

‘He fixed his own breakfast and went to school.’

‘He seem OK to you?’

‘So far. And yeah, I’m watching him for signs.’

She went back to typing. My wife at her desk.

I tried to distract her by cupping her breasts in my hands. She looked up at me and smiled, continued typing while she held my gaze.

‘How do you do that?’ I said. ‘Without looking?’

‘Neat, huh?’ she said, and turned back to the screen, carried on typing. I kept my hands on her breasts.

‘It’s a conversation,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to prepare. They ring, they tell you their problem, you answer their questions.’

‘So I’m talking, what, half the time?’

‘Less,’ I said.

‘So, that’s what, 6,000 words?’

‘Forget the word count, Millicent. You can’t script this. And you can’t write 6,000 words in a day.’

‘I never did this before, and I am super-nervous. Also, it’s forbidden to swear. And to smoke in the studio.’

‘You’re allowed to be nervous. You won’t swear. People will call. The station will filter out the hostile callers. You will help people who need help. The station will pay you. You can smoke outside during the commercial breaks.’

‘You think? You really think all of that?’

‘And as soon as you’re in it, you’ll remember what you know.’

Self-Help for Cynics. Millicent’s books had no truck with self-pity. They didn’t propose chanting, or detoxes, or relentless positivity as solutions to relationship breakdowns and bereavement. They were tough and funny, but had at their core an understanding of real emotional pain.

Make your play and move on. Books for people like us, a generation of people who layer themselves in irony, people who would never be seen buying a self-help book because that would be absurd. Then, suddenly, the same eternal question: what to do? Or, as Millicent put it:

‘Which version of you are you planning to be, when you climb out the well you just filled with your shit? Sooner or later you’re going to have to swim to the top and drag yourself out. Make your play, and move on.’

Millicent’s cynicism, of course, was a well-constructed front. She could speak the language of the cynic, but she knew – and I know she still knows – that she’s an idealist to the core. She believes in love, and she believes that people are redeemed through loving each other. She could never allow herself to say as much – Millicent knows it would destroy the brand if she did – but Self-Help for Cynics worked because it was one bruised romantic talking to other bruised romantics, using the language of the disaffected.

People began to write to Millicent. ‘I don’t know why they’re thanking me,’ she said to me when the first letters had begun to arrive. ‘It’s pretty obvious. Get some sleep for Chrissakes. Consider not taking drugs. Go for a walk. Try to remember sex.’

Millicent had followed Self-Help for Cynics with Adulthood for Cynics and Parenthood for Cynics. Bereavement for Cynics won a minor award and got her invited to the Hay Festival; Marriage for Cynics had won a major award and was sold at the checkouts of upmarket supermarkets.

I took my hands from Millicent’s breasts, leaned against her chair. ‘I’m married to a brand,’ I said. ‘What more could a modern man want?’

‘I’m a moderately successful author. Of self-help books.’

‘You’re a brand,’ I said. ‘We can move to Crouch End.’

‘I make forty pence a copy. I’m on probation at the radio station. We can’t afford to move any time soon.’

She stood up from her chair, turned around, stretched, stood on the balls of her feet, yawned and kissed me.

I turned her around again, crossed my arms across her chest and slid a hand into her dressing gown, holding her very close. She leaned into me, asked me why I was so sweet to her.

‘I’m not,’ I said.

‘And yet somehow you are.’

You see, I thought, she needs you too.

I sat at my computer. I logged four hours of city landscapes in ninety minutes. Maybe my workload was manageable. Maybe my work was just another logistical brick in our plan for Max. Maybe Millicent was right. Maybe this was no more than a scheduling problem.

At ten to eleven two police officers appeared on the other side of the street, watching our house. I put the man at around fifty, and the woman at thirty, maybe thirty-five. Dark suits, but definitely police. They looked different from the other officers we had met, but I couldn’t immediately say why. Something about their bearing.

I pulled on yesterday’s jeans and t-shirt. Millicent splashed water across her face, came downstairs in a white linen dress that came halfway down her thigh.

‘Interesting choice,’ I said.

‘Too short?’

‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘How do you dress for the police?’

She beckoned me downwards, reached up and did something to my hair.

‘I guess this is pretty much who we are,’ she said.

‘You ready?’

‘You’d better believe it, you handsome fuck.’ She held my hand in hers, and I could feel that she was trembling. She was trying to build me up. She was as nervous for me as I was.

I could hear the officers’ voices outside the front door now.

‘Are they, like … hovering creepily?’ Millicent’s voice was hushed now.

‘Looks like it,’ I said.

‘Do you think they …’

‘No,’ I said. ‘They heard nothing. You’re beautiful and poised, and they’re here to talk to me. And we have nothing – nothing – to hide.’

The man said something to the woman, and both laughed. How relaxed they sounded. How unlike us.

‘Yeah,’ said Millicent. ‘Easy to forget. I don’t like this at all, and it hasn’t even started.’

I opened the door barefoot: this is us at home, as we always are. But as soon as the door was open it felt like a mistake.

The two officers were as neat as we were wild of hair. Their eyes scanned us up and down, this straight-backed man and this straight-backed woman in their exquisitely tailored plain clothes. They were a little older than I had realised. She was forty perhaps; he was sixty. They were different in other ways, too, from the police we had met so far: their clothes were expensive and they carried themselves with a confidence that comes with high rank. I looked past them out into the street. Probably an unmarked car. Almost certainly something fancy and German. If Mr Ashani had seen them he would have guessed what they were about.

How did we read to them? Me in t-shirt and jeans; Millicent blowsy in her short linen dress. Both of us barefoot. Parents. It was eleven o’clock.

Could they come in, did I think? No. I looked round at Millicent. No. I turned back to them, looked down at my feet, laughed a self-conscious laugh.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, of course.’ No.

‘We could give you five minutes.’

‘No need,’ I said.

‘Right then.’

‘We don’t wear shoes in the house. But you are welcome to, of course.’

No reaction.

‘You have to understand,’ I said, ‘that we’re under quite a lot of stress.’

They handed me their business cards. They were detectives of some sort. I glanced at the cards and handed them to Millicent, instantly forgetting their ranks. Millicent would remember if necessary. Derek and June.

Now that I had gathered myself I was angry at the intrusion.

‘Coffee?’ I said. The woman shook her head.

‘No, thank you, Mr Mercer,’ said the man. Derek.

‘Coffee, Millicent?’ I asked.

‘Coffee, Alex.’

In the kitchen I unscrewed the coffee-maker. Tapped the old grounds into the sink. Filled the reservoir with water from the tap. The detectives stood awkwardly, looking around, taking in the disarray of our lives. I put coffee into the little funnel, and screwed the coffee-maker back together. I lit the gas and set it on the hob.

Millicent sat down at the table, produced a packet of Marlboro and offered me one. I watched the she-detective, enjoyed her irritation as I nodded yes. June, she was called. I was short on sleep and long on caffeine and nicotine, in no mood to apologise for the mess. Let them wait.

Millicent took a cigarette for herself and tossed the pack to me. I caught it, removed a cigarette, and lit it from the hob. Millicent lit hers from a lighter she’d found on the table, and we smoked silently as we waited for the coffee, owning the kitchen.

‘So,’ I said, ‘any idea how long this is likely to take?’

‘An hour. Possibly two,’ said the woman. ‘It depends what you tell me, Mr Mercer.’

‘I really should be working.’

‘I suggest you ring your employer.’

‘I’m working from home this week.’

‘Well, then.’

‘So,’ said Millicent. ‘You guys don’t need to speak to me, right?’

There was a long pause, and the detectives exchanged a look.

‘Actually, Ms Weitzman, there is something I’d like to discuss with you,’ said the man. Derek.

‘OK.’

‘We can talk about it while my colleague is speaking to your husband.’

Millicent put out her cigarette, put her hand to her face, rubbed the bridge of her nose with her forefinger.

‘Sure.’ She gave a stiff little smile. ‘Shall we speak in the garden?’

‘That would be fine, Ms Weitzman.’

Millicent stood up and opened the back door.

‘Your coffee, Millicent,’ I said.

‘Oh. Sure. Thanks.’ She sent me that same stiff little smile.

I poured her a cup, poured one for myself. Millicent and Derek went out into the garden. She shut the door with great care. She didn’t once look at me.

‘What’s that about?’ I asked.

‘Just something we need to clear up with your wife, Mr Mercer.’

‘Alex.’

‘As you wish.’

‘But what do you have to clear up with Millicent?’

‘Your wife is at liberty to share the content of the discussion with you, Mr Mercer. As of course you are to share the content of this discussion with her. Now, perhaps we should both sit down.’

We sat facing each other across the kitchen table. I felt a sudden urge to apologise for our mess, to make some excuse for the rudeness we had just shown. It’s not you, I wanted to say. We’re all just a little freaked out at the moment.

We’re not bad people.

We’re good parents.

But that would only make me look weak now, and besides, it would change nothing.

‘So, Mr Mercer, you understand why we’re here?’

‘The suicide of our next-door neighbour.’

‘It certainly could be a suicide.’

‘Could be?’

‘We’re keeping an open mind, Mr Mercer. Now, before we go any further, I should say that we are aware that the experience of finding a body can be a traumatic one. We can arrange counselling if you should at any time find it necessary.’

‘It’s my son I’m worried about. This is tough on him.’

A patient smile. ‘I understand. But I’m also required to say that should you at any point require help in regard to what you have experienced, then we can assist you in arranging that help, either without cost or for a nominal fee. These things are tough on adults too.’

Since when were the police all pinstripes and counselling? I looked out of the window, but couldn’t see Millicent and the he-detective. Probably sitting down. On the love seat, I thought, and found the thought darkly funny. Millicent would be suffering spasms of social agony. She hated encounters with authority figures, especially authority figures with English accents.

‘Now then.’ The detective produced a small voice recorder and placed it on the table. ‘May I?’ Yellow-grey eyes, keen and unyielding.

I nodded. She pressed the record button, and told the machine where she was, and who she was talking to. Then she turned to look at me.

‘I should just say here at the start that you are by no means a suspect at the current time.’

‘At the current time? What are you saying?’

‘That you are not a suspect.’

‘You had me worried.’

This time there was more understanding in her smile.

‘We appreciate that the form of wording we use can seem vague. I hope you understand why we have to speak in these terms.’

‘Sure. Sorry.’

‘I need to start by asking you a little about your professional life, Mr Mercer.’

‘I’m a TV producer.’

‘And you work for?’

‘Myself.’

‘And what does that involve?’

‘It used to be said that you employed everyone else on set.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Now I pretty much just do what I’m told,’ I said.

These were her warm-up questions; my answers didn’t matter. She was establishing a pattern of question-and-answer, she was making it clear that she was in control.

‘I interview people on camera, so I know how this bit of your job feels.’ I smiled, but she didn’t smile back. She wasn’t trying to establish a rapport with me.

‘Do you have any imminent travel plans?’

‘I plan the shooting, and the editing. I have responsibility for the budget.’

‘Thank you. Duly noted. Your travel plans?’

‘There’s a whole lot of other stuff too. I also direct.’

‘All right, Mr Mercer,’ she said. ‘And do you plan to work outside the country in the next twelve weeks?’

‘New York. Next week. And Chicago. And LA. And San Francisco.’

‘Hmm. OK.’

‘Series with Dee Effingham. Her twelve favourite men in comedy.’

‘Duly noted.’ If she was impressed, she didn’t show it.

The real questions began. She asked me to tell her about finding the dead neighbour. She was patient and very thorough. She asked open-ended questions, never trying to antici-pate my answer. From time to time she would produce a small notebook from her inside pocket, write single words in block capitals. WATER. CRACK. ERECTION. If I started to interpret what I had seen, she would gently lead me back to the facts. All the while, the voice recorder sat at her side, bearing witness to my testimony.

Twenty minutes into our conversation, Millicent and Derek came in from the garden. Millicent was guarded, on edge. I tried to catch her eye, but she looked away, her attention focused on the detective, who nodded to his colleague but didn’t look at me.

I reached for Millicent’s hand, and she let it rest in mine for a moment. Then she was seeing the detective out of the room and to the front door.

As June and I talked, I heard water running in the bathroom upstairs, heard Millicent’s footfalls on our bedroom floor. Then I heard her coming down the stairs and quietly letting herself out of the house.

‘I’d really like to know what that was about now, please, if you don’t mind.’

‘And I’ve explained to you that I can’t discuss that with you, Mr Mercer. I’m sorry, I really am.’ She meant it, the sorry part. For the first time the professional distance dropped away; I could see something like sympathy in her eyes.

‘Would you mind if I had a cigarette? I could leave the back door open.’ She smiled. ‘And can I make some more coffee?’

‘Of course. I’ll have a cup too, if I may.’

This was worse. I didn’t want her pity, didn’t want there to be a reason for her to feel sorry for me. My hands shook as I made the coffee, shook as I lit my cigarette, shook as I handed her a cup.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Lack of sleep. And the fags probably don’t help. We both know we need to stop. For our son if nothing else.’

She gave me her sympathetic smile again, left her coffee cup untouched. I drank my own coffee and smoked in silence. I wondered where Millicent was.

‘Are you all right, Mr Mercer?’

‘Yeah, can we get this finished now?’

We were at it for another hour. The same patience, the same open-ended questions, the same absolute professionalism. But that edge of concern in her voice, the knowledge that she now felt sorry for me – that was unbearable.

‘You haven’t really asked me about Max,’ I said, as I realised the discussion was ending.

‘No.’

‘Are you planning to question him again? Because I don’t think he could take that.’

‘Mr Mercer, that would be a very different kind of investigation, and I don’t anticipate that.’

‘Meaning?’

‘You can draw your own conclusions.’ She smiled, that expression of concern again.

‘OK, so what happens now?’

‘We’ll be in touch. Unless of course you or Max wish to access any of the support services we have spoken about.’

‘No. Thank you.’

‘And I must ask you to remain in the country. You will need to reconsider your American trip.’

‘What?’

‘We’d like you to remain in the country.’

‘But you just said, or heavily implied that I, or rather that the investigation wasn’t …’

She cut across me. ‘Mr Mercer, you are helping us with our enquiries.’

‘But I’m not a suspect.’

‘Not at this stage.’

We ended the meeting, and she left me at the kitchen table, paralysed by my thoughts.

There was a thing, then. Some thing has happened.

It was the water that stirred me. For a moment I was sure I was wrong, that the tap in the neighbour’s kitchen could not be running. Then I knew that it was, and wondered why the sound troubled me.

I shook myself from my trance, became aware of my legs, rose slowly, trying to rub the sleep from them as I moved towards the wall that divided our house from the neighbour’s.

Water. Definitely water.

I put my right ear to the wall. Short percussive bumps. In pairs. And the water was still running.

I moved slowly to the sink, tipped wine from yesterday’s glass, shook out the last drops, and returned to the wall that divided our house from the neighbour’s. I placed the base of the glass against the wall, and put my ear in the bowl of the glass. Again those short percussive bumps. The sound was no clearer than before. I moved my head away, looked at the glass. Wasn’t this the way it was done? I turned the glass around, put my ear to the base of it; the sound was still no clearer. Pairs of percussive bumps. Still the sound of the water through the pipes.

I put the glass down on the table, and returned to the wall, cupped my ear to its smooth white surface with my hands.

A bump. A metallic crash. No second bump this time.

A woman’s voice. A cry of frustration.

I thought for a moment of Millicent, but why would Millicent be in the neighbour’s house?

I opened the front door and went out into the street.

‘Look, sir, look.’

Mr Ashani was standing on the pavement outside our house. He nodded towards the dead man’s house and made to speak, but I smiled and tapped him on the elbow, walked past him to the neighbour’s front door. Then I saw what Mr Ashani had meant me to see.

A locksmith had fitted two small steel plates, one to the door, one to the frame. They had buckled slightly, as if under force, and the padlock that had held them had given. Someone had placed the lock on the low wall in front of the house, as if meaning to replace it.

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘Indeed,’ said Mr Ashani.

‘No yellow tape, though.’ Perhaps the police weren’t thinking murder after all.

‘In this country, sir, police tape is blue and white.’

‘Well,’ I said, and folded my arms.

Mr Ashani shot me an uncertain half-smile and went back into his house.

I rang the dead neighbour’s bell. The door opened. I guessed at once that she was his sister. She was tall, and a little too slight for her frame. Her skin was very pale, and her brown hair hung crisply at her shoulders: the kind of woman my mother would describe as willowy. The kind of daughter my mother’s friends had. Pretty, in other circumstances.

‘Alex,’ I said. ‘I live next door.’

I looked past her. From here I could not see the sink, though I could hear the tap running in the kitchen. I could see the source of the crash, though. She had pulled a drawer out of its mount, and the sides had come away from the base as it landed. Impractical slivers of stainless steel were strewn across the kitchen floor. I guessed that the flat ones were knives, the curved ones spoons. The forks seemed to have only two prongs.

The words Crime Scene flashed across my mind. She doesn’t know.

‘I was making a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘Trying to. Would you like one?’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I can’t.’

She stood, uncertain, as if waiting for me to say more.

Don’t go in.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry to ask you this, but you have spoken to the police?’

She nodded, and pushed the corners of her mouth inwards. ‘But not since the night. Not been feeling very sociable. Haven’t been charging my phone.’ There was a glassy look to her eyes, and I could see she badly wanted not to cry.

‘I don’t think you should be in there just now,’ I said. ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Why not?’

Because the police think I might, just possibly, have killed your brother.

‘Did you force the lock?’

She nodded. Etiolated, I thought. You wouldn’t think there was enough strength in those narrow shoulders.

‘I think the police fitted it,’ I said.

‘I slightly realised after I’d done it,’ she said. ‘Stupid, isn’t it, what grief makes you do?’

She looked at me and smiled, as if that explained it.

‘I think you need to turn off the tap and leave.’

‘Couldn’t you just come in while I get myself sorted out?’

‘I’m sorry, no. Is that your bag?’

‘What are you saying?’

‘You can come and sit with me, if you like.’

Mr Ashani must have been watching. He sprang from his house, and had his hand on my arm before I reached my front door.

‘Mr Ashani.’

‘Mr Mercer, I must speak with you.’

‘I’m a little busy just now, Mr Ashani.’

‘I wish to discuss with you what kind of man this was.’

Leave us alone.

‘I’m expecting his sister for tea. Perhaps we could talk later?’

‘This is a discussion we must have, Mr Mercer.’

For a while I didn’t think she would come. I made coffee and tidied up a little. I could still hear the tap running through the wall, and I guessed from the tiny scraping sounds that she was picking up the cutlery and trying to replace the drawer. Eventually she turned off the tap, and a minute after that she was sitting at our kitchen table.

Her name was Rose, and her hands shook as she drank her coffee. Her lower left arm was covered in silver bracelets, which glinted as she moved: a soft metallic sound, like breath. Why hadn’t I noticed before?

I suggested she speak to the police. I hoped they wouldn’t reveal that I was under suspicion, because there was something genuine about her, and I wanted her to like me. Even in her grief she was sweet and self-deprecating and funny.

‘Was it you who found him?’ she asked after a while.

‘Yes. And my son. We were looking for the cat.’

She nodded as if that explained it.

‘Thanks.’

We sat and drank coffee in silence. Then she asked if I minded if she smoked. ‘In the garden, I mean. Would that be OK?’

‘You don’t need to go in the garden.’

She produced a packet of Kensitas Club and offered me one. She took out a silver lighter and tried to light my cigarette, hand shaking.

‘You’re not really a smoker, are you?’ I said.

‘It’s that obvious?’

‘Girls like you don’t smoke Kensitas Club.’ I sniffed the cigarette in my hand. ‘And these are stale. You nick them from a party?’

The sadness lifted from her, and she smiled, making light.

‘Busted.’ A glint in her eye. More than just a nice English girl, then.

‘Want a proper cigarette?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

I lit two cigarettes at the stove, handed her one. She gripped the cigarette like a pen, took a drag, watched the smoke as it curled upwards. She was nothing like Millicent but she had something of the same underlying strength, some quality that made me feel I could trust her, almost as if we shared a secret, though if you had asked me to define what I liked about her I would have struggled, would have worried that you thought I was attracted to her.

‘Was it awful for you?’ The aching sadness was back. ‘Did it look as if he was suffering? I mean, of course he was suffering. He had to be to do that. But how did he seem?’ I could feel her struggling for the words. ‘Did he look all right?’

‘I think it was OK. He looked OK.’ I thought again about that rictus smile. Of course it was awful. The erection. The violence of it. Of course he didn’t look all right. But the poor man was someone’s brother. He was Rose’s brother.

‘He looked dignified. He looked peaceful.’

He looked murdered.

‘You’re a good man, aren’t you? Was it really not awful?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not good. Other people are good. And it wasn’t awful.’ I was lying to soften the blow.

‘You are good, you know,’ she said. ‘There’s kindness in your voice.’

She got up, asked if she could use the lavatory. Of course, I said, of course. I hoped we had shut the bedroom door.

When she came downstairs I could tell she had been crying.

‘He really wasn’t a bad man,’ she said. ‘It’s important you understand that.’

‘Why would I think he was a bad man?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You might. For what he did.’

I told her I understood, although in truth I did not.

‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘Thank you for the coffee, and for the cigarette.’

‘Coffee and cigarettes is pretty much all I’m good at.’

‘Don’t forget kindness.’ She took my hand in hers, then stopped as if embarrassed. ‘Will you come to the funeral, Alex? He didn’t know so many people. Bit of a loner.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Sure.’

Then she kissed me on the cheek and was gone.

I sat down at my computer at the kitchen table.

Max came home at four. He commented on the smell of cigarette smoke, made his own sandwich, and went up to his room. Then he came back down and asked me for five pounds.

‘What do you want five pounds for?’

‘We don’t have any milk.’

‘Milk doesn’t cost five pounds.’

‘OK, two pounds then.’

‘All right, Max. Here’s two pounds.’

‘Thanks, Scots Dad.’

‘There’s nothing mean about me giving you two pounds to buy milk.’

‘Do you want the change?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, Dad. You’re not mean at all.’

I ruffled his hair.

‘Want me to come to the shop with you, Max?’

‘No, it’s OK.’

I rang Millicent again. Left the same message again. Added that I missed her and wanted her to come home, then felt foolish and tried to rerecord the message. The answering service cut me off.

Max came home with a small carton of milk and a packet of Maltesers.

‘I don’t remember saying you could buy those, Max.’

‘You didn’t say I couldn’t.’

‘I said I wanted the change.’

‘Here.’ He handed me seven pence. ‘Do you want some Maltesers?’

‘Yeah. All right.’

I pushed my computer to one side. We sat at the table drinking milk and dividing up the Maltesers. Max got a kitchen knife and cut his Maltesers into halves, and then into quarters. He sat dissolving them on his tongue, then sticking out his tongue to show me.

‘What do you want for supper?’

‘It’s Mum’s turn to make dinner.’

‘I’m making it tonight.’

‘Fish and chips. From the fish and chip shop, not home made.’

‘OK.’

‘Can you give me the money, and I can buy it?’

‘Later, OK?’

‘OK, Dad. Dad?’

‘Max?’

‘Aren’t you going to eat your Maltesers?’

‘You have them, Max.’

‘OK. Dad?’

‘Max?’

‘Tarek said you’re going to send me to a psychiatrist.’

‘Why did he say that?’

‘I told him what I saw.’

‘Well, what you saw was pretty upsetting, wasn’t it?’

Max said nothing.

‘Max,’ I said, ‘Max, if you ever feel the need to talk about what you saw, doesn’t matter where or when, we can talk about it, OK?’

‘Is it because of the boner?’

‘What do you mean, Max?’

‘Tarek said that if you see a grown-up’s willy and it’s a boner then all the other grown-ups go spectrum, and you have to go to see a psychiatrist.’

I sat, trying to find an answer to this. Tarek had covered a lot of angles in one sentence.

‘So do I have to go and see a psychiatrist?’

‘I don’t know, I think it might be a good idea.’

‘Do you have to go and see a psychiatrist too?’

‘No, Max, I don’t think so. But Mum and I will be coming with you when you go for the first time.’

He bristled at the injustice of this.

‘You saw the boner too, Dad.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘So why don’t you have to go?’

‘Max, you’re eleven.’

Max rolled his eyes in that way only eleven-year-olds do.

‘In the next few years you’re going to be discovering a lot about your body. And about other people’s bodies. And Mum and I want to make sure that you don’t find that scary.’

‘I know about sex, Dad.’

‘I know you do, Max. But Mum and I want to make sure you’re OK.’

I tried to take his hand but he pushed me away.

‘Are you going to tell Mr Sharpe about the psychiatrist?’ There was humiliation in his eyes; his voice was very small.

‘Yes, probably. But he won’t tell anyone else. And if you go for a few times and Mum and I decide it’s not really necessary, then you can stop. OK?’

He picked up the rest of the Maltesers and went upstairs to his room. I sat, feeling worse than ever. I’d be angry with me too if I were him.

Max and I ate our fish and chips.

The doorbell rang. My first thought was Millicent without her key, and my second thought was the police.

It was Fab5.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘All right, Alex,’ said Fab5. He went through to the kitchen and sat in my chair, stole a large chip from Max.

‘Hey,’ said Max.

‘Good to see you too, wee guy.’

I had hoped Millicent would love Fab5. She never did.

‘Fab5? Like, we’re cool and we’re black and it’s 1979? Guy needs to accept his reality.’

Fab5 thought Millicent lacked a sense of irony; she thought the same about him. If you forced me I would side with Millicent; she saw from the start what I did not: that he had slipped his moorings, that he was adrift.

Fab5 was my oldest friend, though. True, there was something a little faded about him now, a little stretched around the edges. It was getting harder to laugh at the stories about women and cocaine. He partied a little too hard and his hair had taken on a warm red-brown sheen that doesn’t exist in nature. He knew this, though, and that’s why we were still friends. Behind the laughter there was a wistfulness for a time when he and I were young together, and London, it seemed, lay at our feet: a time before Millicent, in other words. I wondered sometimes if Millicent disliked Fab5 for that reason too – he was a reminder of a younger, less faithful me.

My wife worries that I might revert to type.

Fab5 helped himself to one of my cigarettes. ‘You going out like that, Lex? She’ll not be pleased.’

‘What?’

‘Dee, you incorrigible twat.’

Dee Effingham. The Sacred Cock at seven.

‘What time is it? And don’t say twat in front of Max.’

Max pushed his tongue hard against his cheek and made a two-tone mm-mm sound.

‘See, you’re corrupting my wee boy, Fab5.’ Twat was the right word, though.

‘It’s six twenty-five, Dad,’ said Max.

‘Run, Alex,’ said Fab5. ‘Run like the wind.’

It wasn’t till I was on Drayton Park that I saw the scarves and the hamburger boxes, and realised it was match day at the Arsenal. Even weaving through the side streets, I couldn’t avoid the football completely. I made the Sacred Cock at five to, but I’d half-run the last five hundred metres.

I ordered a pint of Flemish.

‘Hello, Gorgeous. What’s got you so hot and bothered?’

‘Oh, Dee. Hi.’

‘See, I blend in. Let me get that for you, hmm? Have you been running?’ She chucked a fifty at the barman.

‘Yes. You got me.’

‘You’ve got that freshly fucked man-of-the-city thing going on. Didn’t pull you out of bed, did I?’

‘I wish.’

‘So do I, Gorgeous. So do I.’

‘Do you kiss Middle England with that mouth, Dee?’

‘No, Gorgeous. First rule is never swear on the telly. And it’s all of England, you know. And Wales, and Northern Ireland. And, oh you know, those funny little people up north.’

‘Yeah, my mum loves you.’

‘Not your dad?’ She mimed a hurt little pout, shaking her shoulders, and for a moment her breasts had me in their forcefield: the dangerous ravine of cleavage, the smooth milk-white vastness. She made a show of following my gaze and gave a mock-seductive sigh. ‘Bad boy, Gorgeous. Caught looking.’

‘I was just wondering …’

‘Yes …’

‘… whether that was part of your clothing range?’

‘Nice recovery, Gorgeous. Sure that’s what you were thinking?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Because I could have sworn …’

‘I’m happily married, Dee, but if I wake up single tomorrow, you’re first on my list.’

‘And you think that choice lies with you. That’s so sweet, Gorgeous. So terribly tousled and sweet. And you would absolutely be second on my list …’

She insisted I match her drink-for-drink. We got quietly drunk in a corner, forgot to go upstairs to watch the comedy. I didn’t want to sleep with her any more than she wanted to sleep with me, but there was something so charismatic and so pretty and so direct about her that I started to understand why Middle England loved her so much. And I was flattered that she was flirting with me over her large glass of Chenin Blanc. Flattered, too, that she wanted to work with me. It would have been bad manners not to flirt back.

On my third pint of Flemish she got me on to Max. I pulled a photo from my wallet.

‘Ooh,’ she said. ‘Gorgeous begets gorgeous. Is his mother very beautiful?’

‘I think so.’

‘I’ll bet. Call your hot wife. Get her down here. And your son, if he’s still up.’

‘He goes to bed at nine.’

‘Not a showbiz kid, then?’

‘No.’

‘How very wise.’

And anyway, I thought, Millicent wouldn’t like this. Whatever this is. However innocent this is, Millicent wouldn’t like it at all. She doesn’t mind, she says, the arms across the shoulders, the drinks after work, and the nuzzling goodbyes. But she’s stopped coming out with me, and lies, instead, reading into the small hours. She’s always awake when I come home.

‘It’s the industry,’ I say, ‘it’s just what we do. No one’s screwing. Not since the 90s.’

‘Sure,’ she says. ‘I get that. Did I even say I mind? I don’t mind, Alex.’ But maybe this is my equivalent of out, thinking. Maybe it’s that part of me that’s unreachable to Millicent. Because she minds. I know she minds.

At half past eight I tried to decide what to do about Millicent’s radio programme. If I left at nine thirty I could hear the end of it, and be in for when Millicent got home. Perhaps I could catch the beginning of it on the download. I could check that Max was safely asleep.

At ten past nine I explained that I had to go.

‘But Gorgeous,’ she said, ‘we’re getting to know each other. Don’t you want us to know each other, Alex?’

‘Of course I do, Dee. Of course.’

‘That smile of yours,’ she said. ‘It’s terribly beguiling. Your wife is a lucky woman. Can she really not share you with me just a little more? Bit harsh of her, don’t you think?’

‘It’s not her,’ I said, ‘it’s me.’

We’re under such strain.

I had to be there.

‘And after all, Alex,’ said Dee. ‘After all I am technically your employer. Am I not? Because no me, no show.’ She put her right hand on her breastbone, and gave an ironic little pout. I laughed, but her words had a strained quality that told me I would be unwise to leave.

Over Dee’s fifth glass of wine, and my fifth pint of Flemish, she asked me, ‘So I’m wondering a little about your approach to fidelity, Gorgeous. How absolute is it?’

‘It’s very absolute. Absolutely absolute since I met Millicent. Thirteen years so far.’

‘And yet you make it sound like some twelve-step programme. Each day a new day in your struggle with the demon pussy. Were you always such a gorgeous absolutist?’

‘Maybe not.’

‘Do you know what?’ she said. ‘You’re going to tell me all about what a naughty boy you used to be.’

I have a memory of Dee’s hand on my knee, and of five Flemishes becoming eight. I spoke of my lapses as a younger man, and of my regrets. Dee was a good listener, and I was glad to be talking about something that wasn’t the neighbour. She teased, probed and massaged the information from me. I’m certain that I didn’t make a pass at her, nor she at me, but I don’t remember much more than the hand, the smile, and her boundless, limitless breasts. Fecund, fecund, fecund.

I did not tell Dee that I couldn’t go to the States with her. I had decided that I was going. Did June arrest me? No. Did June caution me? No. Did she politely but firmly ask me not to go? Yes, and I would let June down just as gently. I was going to America.

I got home at twelve, offended Fab5 by trying to pay him, checked that Max was asleep, and vomited three times into the bath.

Where was Millicent?

I sat, scooping chunks from the bath into the toilet. Then I blasted the bath with the shower attachment. The smell grew worse, and I realised I had transformed my gastric fluids into an easily absorbed aerosol suspension, shrouding the bathroom in a delicate mist of puke. But at least the bath looked clean now.

I lay down fully clothed on the bed, got my phone from my pocket. I dialled her number, got voicemail, was just smart enough to remember not to leave a Flemish-amplified message. I tried to picture her; I missed her; I wanted her body beside me, around me. But the Flemish in my veins kept distorting the signal, sending me Rose’s narrow shoulders and Dee’s endless breasts: I couldn’t find Millicent’s face through the electric fog of shash, ache for her as I might.

In a small metal box in a drawer on my side of the wardrobe I keep letters from the women in my past: the letters serve as a warning; I read them when I am tempted.

6

Max was standing in the bedroom with coffee. He had chosen my favourite mug. He was dressed, he had tucked in his shirt, and he had combed his hair with water.

‘Morning, Dad.’

‘Morning, Max.’

‘I made you some coffee because it’s eight o’clock.’

‘Thanks.’ He handed me the cup.

I sniffed the coffee. It smelled wrong. Boiled. I put the cup down on the bedside table.

‘Dad, is it true that Fab5 has a friend called Faecal Dave?’

‘No, Max, no, I don’t think that can be true. Can you get me some sugar?’

‘You don’t take sugar. And he told me what faecal meant.’

‘I’d like some today, please, Max.’

Max rolled his eyes and went downstairs.

Two messages on my phone.

Gorgeous, you were and are the perfect gentleman. Are you as turned on – creatively(!) – as I am?

DEff xx

I hadn’t alienated the Talent. That was something.

Twice I tried to wake you, you beautiful lame-assed drunken fool. And yes, I know we have to speak, and yes, you should call me when you wake up.

I realised that I was naked, that Millicent must have undressed me, and rolled me and slipped me under the duvet. That’s love, I thought, in that one tiny action: my nakedness is proof of Millicent’s love. I wondered whether she had slept.

Max came back in with the sugar. I put four spoonfuls into the cup and stirred.

‘Want me to open the blind?’

‘No.’

‘No what, Dad?’

‘No thanks, Max. And thank you for making coffee for me.’

‘That’s OK. Mum said you might want some.’

‘She out?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Say where she was going?’

‘No. Do you like the coffee?’

‘I love the fact that you made it for me.’

Max left the room.

I rang Millicent. She sounded lousy from lack of sleep.

‘You get my SMS, Alex?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Meet me at the Swedish?’

‘OK.’

Max and I left the house at the same time and walked the first couple of blocks together. He hugged me when we parted, then set off towards school at a dog-trot.

The Swedish didn’t make sense in an area like ours. It was all untreated oak and lightbulbs with complicated orange filaments that hovered in front of your eyes. But the coffee was good and they left you alone to drink it. Where else were people like us supposed to go in a place like Crappy?

Millicent was sitting with her head in her hands, tiny against the vast communal table. I sat down beside her; it seemed at first as if she hadn’t seen me, as if she were somewhere very private; then she sat up, looked me in the eye, and began to speak.

‘I need you to understand that I have never and never would betray you, Alex.’

She hadn’t slept. I could see the blood pulsing in her neck, smell the sourness on her breath.

‘So I probably need to start with the really bad stuff, and then I can explain – and I hope, I really hope you’re going to listen and to understand – how it isn’t what it looks like. Because I know it doesn’t look so good.’

She reached into her bag and produced a small white envelope; she looked at it for a moment, then handed it to me.

‘So this is what the police wanted to discuss with me.’

Inside was a single photograph. An elegant metal band, very thin at the bottom, slightly thicker on the top. Soft white gold. A line of three square-cut sapphires. My grandmother’s bracelet. My mother had given it to Millicent to welcome her to the family. It was so small that my mother could barely wear it, but was a perfect fit for Millicent’s left wrist. On the inside of the clasp I had had it engraved. MW.

Millicent Weitzman. My wife.

‘Alex, they found it in his bedroom.’ The tiny safety chain was broken.

‘His bedroom?’

‘This is the bit I can’t explain. The weird thing, not the bad thing. They found it between the wall and the headboard, on the floor.’

‘Between the wall and the headboard?’

‘That’s what they said.’

‘OK …’

I could think of nothing else to do, so I drank coffee. It was tepid, must have been standing for some time.

‘Alex, I was never in his bedroom.’

‘But you were in his house? Is that what you’re telling me?’

Millicent looked past me and over my shoulder. I followed her gaze and realised I must have spoken more sharply than I’d thought. A tall Swedish girl was staring at us from behind the coffee machine. She looked away, and Millicent and I looked back towards each other.

‘Christ, Millicent, what’s going on?’

‘Nothing, Alex. Please believe that.’

‘Right. Can’t be. Of course. He’s dead now.’

‘Sure. I probably deserve that, Alex.’

She was going to cry. That small-child voice. The redness of her eyes.

She swallowed hard. Pinched the bridge of her nose. Breathed out purposefully. Perhaps she wasn’t going to cry.

‘I lied to you. That’s the way you’re going to interpret it, and I guess it’s a reasonable interpretation. It is a lie of omission; I didn’t tell you.’

‘Didn’t tell me what?’

‘That I knew Bryce.’

‘I thought Bryce was his last name?’

Millicent gave a tiny flinch.

‘You called him by his last name? Stylish.’

‘I didn’t betray you, Alex.’ She was looking at me very directly now. I held her gaze, trying to find the lie.

‘There was no sex. Just so that thought has been spoken. But I did know him. Better than I said.’

‘Do you mean there was no sex in the American understanding of the term? You know, the Bill Clinton defence?’

‘I mean there was no sex of any sort.’

‘So we’re talking British no sex. Just to be clear, in this country that does preclude oral.’

‘I really hope you can understand that this is not what it looks like.’

‘Funny, Millicent, because it still looks to me like what it looks like.’

‘You have a right to be angry, Alex.’

‘Who says I’m angry?’

‘OK,’ she said, uncertain.

‘I’m not angry.’

‘Most people would be in this situation, Alex.’

‘Oh, so now you’re some sort of objective voice. Instead of a wife admitting to sleeping with the next-door neighbour.’

‘I did not admit to sleeping with him.’

‘No. No, you didn’t admit to that.’ I looked around, felt eyes on me from behind the coffee machine, and for a moment caught the gaze of the Swedish girl. I tried to smile, but she looked away.

‘Don’t try to enlist help, Alex. We have to deal with this as a couple.’

‘I’m enlisting help? Because I smiled at that pretty Swedish girl?’

‘Yeah. You played that one to the gallery.’

I was shaking now. I kept my voice as quiet as I could.

‘No, Millicent, I am not angry, and no, I am not trying to enlist help, and no, I was not playing to the fucking gallery. I just want to find out what you’ve done.’

‘OK, sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have said that. This isn’t easy for me.’

‘We’re talking about infidelity – your infidelity – and you accuse me of flirting with the girl who makes the coffee?’

I made to laugh, but it came out too much like a sigh. Millicent took my hand then, and there was something so wounded and so vulnerable about her gaze that I wanted to draw her towards me and comfort her, as if she were the wronged party. Her eyes flicked towards the coffee machine, then back towards me.

‘It’s only because she’s tall that she’s even in my line of sight,’ I said.

‘Tall, blonde, taut and twenty,’ she said. ‘The antithesis of me.’

‘How is twenty the opposite of thirty-five?’ I said.

‘So the rest of that you’re not arguing with? Motherfuck.’

The laughter froze on my lips. ‘Promise me on your life that you didn’t sleep with the neighbour,’ I was about to say, but the manager appeared at our side and quietly asked us if there was anything the matter. When I said no, and asked if he would mind leaving us to continue our discussion, he became very Swedish. He said that it was clear that our conversation was of a highly personal nature, that we were both highly emotional people, that this was obviously a matter about which we both felt strongly, and that once we had resolved the issue we would be welcome back any time.

At this point I became abusive. I told him that I would never again besmirch the clean white bloody linen of his bloody Swedish bloody cake shop.

That at least is how I remember the conversation: my use of language may have been less precise, and it’s possible I used a stronger word than bloody.

‘Great,’ said Millicent, as we began walking home.

‘What? It’s a cake shop.’

‘He did nothing wrong, Alex.’

‘And I did? Are you trying to tell me that getting us thrown out of a café in Crappy is, like, real bad? Or are you telling me that what you did is real bad, y’all. Because right now I’m a little confused, Millicent.’

‘Y’all is Texas, and it’s a plural form, and you’re being sophomoric. I’m going home. You can join me or not join me. Your choice.’

I watched her go, the anger of the righteous man coursing through me, dangerously electric. I looked down at my right hand, and saw that I’d been clenching it so tightly that the nail of my index finger had cut into the nail bed of the thumb. I brought the thumb to my mouth, and sucked at the welling blood. It too tasted electric, metallic: the air before a lightning storm.

A pair of young Somali girls walked past, staring at me, giggling. It was only when they’d gone that I realised what they’d seen: a grown man standing on the pavement sucking his thumb.

My mother called. This really wasn’t the time. I rejected the call and headed home.

Pride, I thought, that’s my cardinal vice; not wrath. Pride: the one sin from which all others stem. Oh, I could be the greedy man and the mean man, the envious and the enraged man, the licentious and the lazy man, but it all came down to pride; to the mortal sin of playing God, of being a complete arse, of standing in the street and passing judgment on my wife.

I married Millicent eight weeks after she moved in. A registry office, a few of my friends, and a wedding breakfast at the Rat and Pipe that flowed seamlessly into Bloody-Mary lunch and tequila supper. Neither of us had told our parents, though Millicent’s younger sister Arla flew in from San Diego, got spectacularly drunk, slept with a stranger at the Troy Club, and flew back again the next day.

‘Did that just happen?’ I asked, as we left Arla at Heathrow.

‘Like a bad version of me, right?’ said Millicent.

‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Just don’t.’

So began our marriage of convenience.

For a time nothing changed. We ate, we smoked, we drank as lovers do. I would lick her to orgasm, slowly, timing the strokes of my tongue to her breathing. She would sit astride me until long after I had come, kissing and caressing me until I grew hard inside her again. We revelled in the carpet burns, the subtle bruisings, the twists and the strains that we casually inflicted upon each other. Edge of worktop, rim of bath, tiled floor and wood-chipped wall – all left their imprint upon her, upon me.

In cafés we compared our wounds: the grazes on her left wrist; on my right knee. In dark-lit restaurants she would draw my hand to her inner thigh, ask me if I could feel what she felt, that she was tender and abraded. In the aftermath of sex we found the precursor to sex. I liked her as I’d never liked anyone else.

‘You like me? You like me?’

‘I really, really like you.’

At this she became serious, almost formal. She took my hand and placed it in my lap.

‘No, no, I think it’s more than that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You love me, Alex. I actually think you love me.’

Her words lay heavy in the air: an accusation. I looked at her, made to speak, stopped myself.

‘What, Alex?’

‘Isn’t it for me to say that I love you?’

‘Well, by convention, yes, but you haven’t so far. And I really think you do. You can tell me you don’t, and then, of course, I won’t have to tell you that I love you, which would probably be easier for both of us. But you’re really very sweet to me, and although that doesn’t in itself mean anything, we kind of established that being sweet to women is really not in your nature.’

‘Therefore I love you.’

‘Would you please drop the word therefore?’

I lit a cigarette. Tried to think. Offered her the cigarette. She snatched it from me, angry now, dropped it into the ashtray.

‘You are so uptight. What’s so hard about saying it?’

‘Wait, please. Wait. Wait. Yes. You’re right. I am uptight.’

‘That’s it?’

‘And I do. I really do.’

‘Then say it.’

‘I thought I just did.’

She gave a little shake of the head. ‘No. You didn’t.’

‘You said something just now about having to say that you loved me. Do you?’

‘Love you? Yes. Yes, Alex, I really do love you. And it kind of scares me. Because I’m in your country, in your apartment – sorry, your flat – living on your terms, and pretty much on your money. The only friends I have here are your friends. I know no one my own age. I have nowhere to go if this screws up. Which of your friends is going to want me sleeping on their floors? Can you name just one person who’d want that? And I know you’ll think I’m being unfair but I kind of wish you’d said it first, because I’m in the weaker position here.’

‘I love you.’

‘Say it again.’

‘I love you, Millicent.’

She reached for my hand. ‘And now I feel stupid again. I should not have made you say it.’

‘Millicent. I love you.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Stop apologising.’

‘Kind of English, right? I fit right in …’

‘I love you.’

‘I love you. Are we good?’

‘We’re good.’

At first I saw no change in Millicent, nor in myself, but other people must have seen something shift. They began to invite us out as a couple, to the pub at first, but then to parties and to weekends away.

Those friends I hadn’t dropped seemed genuinely delighted when we celebrated our first anniversary with no sign of a break-up. My female friends began to make room for Millicent, to invite her to bars or to the cinema, to seek out her opinion of books. Slowly, over time, Millicent eased up. There were small changes to her wardrobe. Her breasts jutted a little less, her heels dropped slightly. She was still sharp, but the brittle quality she had had at the start was gone. I no longer had to carry her through London life, to police conversations for slurs on her age or her nationality. I didn’t have to defend her against a hostile world. Millicent got life in London, and it suited her.

I loved her all the more.

Millicent handed me a cup of coffee as I entered the kitchen. I put it down by the sink, and held her in my arms. She wrapped herself around me and we clung to each other, rocking gently back and forth.

‘I know you have more to tell me, Millicent.’

‘I need for you to believe that I would never betray you, Alex.’

‘I’m trying. I’m not finding it easy.’

‘I know. And I did a bad thing. But I hope when I’ve finished you will see that the worst thing I have done is not to tell you about that bad thing, and that I didn’t betray you. Can you let me get to the end of this?’

I took a half-step back, took her head in my hands, my palms on her cheeks, my fingers in her hair. I stared into her eyes, trying to find a sign of something – what? But she just looked strung out, a little sad.

I opened the back door and went out into the garden, sat on the patchy grass. Millicent came out with the coffee cups and sat down beside me. We drank our coffee, saying nothing, not daring to look at each other.

In the grass beside me a line of ants was dismembering a ladybird. The workers streamed back and forwards along a bare patch in the turf, carrying body parts to an unseen nest. I looked at the cigarette in my hand. My teenage self would have intervened, bringing death by fire. I flicked the ash from the cigarette, and brought the tip close to the stream of ants. It stopped. Ants stood, antennae and forelegs waving in the air, poised as if to attack. Then, perfectly synchronised, the flow of ants began again, making a small detour around the cigarette tip, paying it no mind.

My telephone rang. Work. I switched it off and put it back in my pocket.

‘What are you thinking, Alex?’

‘That we really should stop smoking.’

‘Really? That’s it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘OK, so the day I lost the bracelet was about six weeks ago when you were away. Bryce came round and said he’d been expecting company and been let down, and he had an open bottle of wine, and some cold cuts that needed to be eaten. And I told him that I already ate, and that Max was in bed, and that I had to be there in the house.

‘And he said the wine was too good to waste, that he paid £65 for it, and he could bring the meat over, and we could eat it here in our garden, and that way I wouldn’t have to leave Max; and I said sure; I mean, why not? Guy got stood up, I thought. He’s lonely. He doesn’t do women. He bought a $100 bottle of wine. Where’s the harm?’

I turned over and lay on my back, looked up at our bedroom window. Even from here you could see the paint was peeling from the frame. Other people – my father – would notice that window and do something about it. Me, I noticed it and forgot it again. We would do nothing about it, and in five years we would have to replace the whole thing.

‘So,’ said Millicent, ‘so we drank the wine and ate the food, and then he said he had a heater in his garden, and it was getting a little cold, so why didn’t we go there and drink some more wine. And I said no, but he was really persistent. And I guess I kind of thought maybe he wanted more than company, but I was just a little drunk and I was missing you and he was kind of funny and sharp, and I still pretty much thought he was gay. And I figured if I left Max’s door open, and opened the bathroom window that I would pretty much hear if anything was wrong.’

‘You left Max on his own?’

‘Please, Alex. Let me get to the end, and then if you want to hate me you can.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Deal.’

‘So I was sitting there in his garden, and he starts to say some nice things to me, about how he thinks I’m pretty and kind, and about the way I dress, and how he’s always liked Americans more than English people, and how I seem like so much more to him than just a wife and mother; and I still haven’t figured out that he’s interested, which makes me a klutz, I know. Because as soon as I say it out loud I can see it’s a pretty obvious come-on.

‘And then he goes indoors and comes out with a bottle of Calvados and I ask him why he hasn’t brought glasses and he says we can drink it from the bottle, and I know then that it’s really time to leave. And I get up, and he tries to kiss me, and I step back, and I trip over, and he puts his hand out and grabs my wrist, and pulls me back to my feet. And then he tries to kiss me again, and I let him.’

I turned to look at her. She uprooted a small handful of grass. She didn’t want to look at me, but I could tell she expected me to say something. I watched her pull up another handful of grass, then I turned away.

‘I kissed him. Not for long. But I kissed him. That’s the bad thing that I did, and for that I’m so very sorry, Alex. But I did no more. I did nothing more than kiss him. And then he touched me and I broke away from him.’

‘So what sort of signal was he getting from you before this happened?’

‘Alex, I don’t know what sort of signal he was getting from me. I was drunk, and confused, and he was drunk too. If I told you nothing happened, I’d be lying to you.’

I went upstairs and peed. Washed and dried my hands very precisely, trying to still the thoughts that arced across my mind. I looked out through the open bathroom window.

Bryce’s bedroom and bathroom faced the back too. If he’d wanted to, he could have seen a lot of Millicent from his freshly painted windows. I wondered darkly if he had coveted his neighbour’s wife, or more specifically his neighbour’s wife’s ass.

When I came down Millicent was sitting in exactly the same position. It looked for all the world as if nothing was wrong. She was telling me the truth: I saw that now. I wanted to take her in my arms, hold her and tell her just how much I loved her. We could get through this. A drunken kiss and a flash of flesh on flesh were tiny pricks of light in the cosmic chart of infidelity.

After some time, I said, ‘You have an alibi.’

‘I mean, I was at the radio station. Is that an alibi? Why would they even be thinking that way, Alex? They never once used the word alibi.’

‘They asked me not to leave the country.’

‘You’re not serious.’

I took out the police photograph of the bracelet.

‘Right there. Look. A little tag with a number on it. Looks to me like an evidence tag. I’m guessing the reason they gave you the picture and not the bracelet itself is that the bracelet is evidence in case they decide that they want to bring someone to trial. And given that they’ve asked me not to leave the country, I suspect the person they would be thinking of bringing to trial would be me.’

‘Oh Jesus, Alex.’

‘Isn’t that what they call reasonable suspicion or just cause in American TV series? What do they call it here?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘No, neither do I. So, what are you thinking right now, Millicent? Because right now I’m thinking things aren’t good. Because I seem to be implicated in our next-door neighbour’s suicide. How did your bracelet get there?’

She shook her head. That same sad look again.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I need to get a lawyer, don’t I?’

‘Seems weird that you can’t leave the country. I guess a lawyer would be a good idea.’

I searched the bare patch in the grass. The ladybird had disappeared, and a few ants could be seen ambling around.

She moved towards me, took my hand and placed it on her thigh. I let it rest there. ‘The truth is,’ she said, ‘the truth is I get lonely when you go away, Alex.’ I let her put her head on my shoulder, reached up and rubbed the nape of her neck. ‘It’s like since Sarah you sublimated something,’ she said, ‘like your energy’s all in your work.’

We went inside, climbed the stairs, failed to fuck. Millicent fell asleep nestled against my chest. I lay on my back and cradled her to me like a child, but knew that I would not find sleep.

Sarah, the little girl we almost had; Millicent, the wife who would not discuss losing Sarah.

At three fifteen someone rang the doorbell and knocked on the door. I stayed where I was; I didn’t want to disturb Millicent.

We love each other: of that there is no doubt. It isn’t love that’s the problem here.

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