Gone

29

Nick, the family liaison officer, hung around the house for a while after Caffery had gone. Janice made her tea and talked to her because she liked her company – it diverted Emily, too, and gave Janice an excuse not to have to speak to Cory. He was restless – he kept going into the front bedrooms and peering out of the windows. He’d closed the curtains in the downstairs rooms and for the last hour he’d been in the music room at the front. When Nick left at six Janice didn’t go in to him. Instead she put on her pyjamas and bedsocks, made hot chocolate and joined Emily upstairs on the big double bed.

‘Are we going to bed?’ Emily climbed under the covers.

‘It’s late. CBeebies is over but I’ve got Finding Nemo on DVD. The fish one?’

They sat propped up on pillows with their hot chocolate, Emily’s in a pink sippy cup because Janice knew it soothed her to be a baby again, and stared at the cartoon light rippling through Nemo’s water. Downstairs Cory was moving around, going from room to room, opening and closing curtains, like an animal in a zoo. Janice didn’t want to see him, didn’t think she could bear it, because over the course of the day – no, over the course of years – she’d realized that she would never, could never, love her husband as much as she loved her daughter. She had friends who’d as good as admitted the same thing: that they loved their husband, but the children came first. Maybe this was the great female secret, which men knew on some level but would never properly face. Somewhere in all the punditry in the papers about little Martha Bradley one thing had stuck in Janice’s mind: some expert or other had said that when a family loses a child the couple’s chances of staying together afterwards were nigh on zero. She knew, on some instinctive level, that it would be the woman who did the leaving. Whether she left physically or just in her heart, so that the man eventually gave up and abandoned the marriage, didn’t matter. Janice knew it would be the woman who, faced with a future that included her husband but not their child, would give up on the relationship.

Next to her Emily had fallen asleep, Jasper tucked under her arm, the beaker resting on her chest, a dribble of chocolate coming out on to her nightie. She hadn’t cleaned her teeth. That was two nights in a row. But there was no point in waking her now, not after what she’d been through. Janice tucked her in, went downstairs to the kitchen and put the beaker in the dishwasher. Her glass was gone so she found another, poured some vodka and took it to the music room. The light was off, the room in darkness, and it took her a moment to grasp that Cory was in there too. Something cold crossed her chest. He was standing under the curtains. As if he was wearing them.

‘What are you doing?’

He jumped. The curtains billowed and his face appeared, shocked. ‘Janice, don’t creep up on me.’

‘What’s going on?’ She threw the light switch. He dropped the curtain hurriedly. She just had time to see the twin circles of steam on the pane where he’d had his face pressed to it.

‘Switch the light off.’

She hesitated, then did as she was told. The room fell into darkness again. ‘Cory?’ she said. ‘Don’t be weird. What are you looking for?’

‘Nothing.’ He came away from the window and gave one of his fake smiles. ‘Absolutely nothing. It’s a nice night.’

She licked her lips. ‘What did the detective say to you? He was talking to you in the garden when he left.’

‘Just chit-chat.’

‘Cory. Tell me.’ She couldn’t keep her eyes off the curtain. ‘What did he tell you? What were you looking for?’

‘Don’t get whiney, Janice, please. You know I can’t bear it when you do that.’

‘Please.’ She kept her sharp reply down and instead touched his sleeve, feigning an affectionate smile. ‘Just please tell me.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. You have to know everything, don’t you? Why can’t you just trust me for once? It was about the press. Caffery doesn’t want them finding us.’

Janice frowned. ‘The press?’ It wasn’t like Cory to shy away from attention. And he was genuinely afraid of what was out there in the darkness. She went to the curtain and pulled it back, looked down the long driveway to where the streetlamp shone yellow through the yew trees. Nothing. ‘It’s more than that. What does it matter to him if the press see us?’

‘Because,’ Cory said, with exaggerated patience in his voice, ‘the guy found out where the Bradleys lived and did something silly to them. Caffery doesn’t want it happening to us. Happy now?’

She took a step away from the window. Stared at him.

‘He did something silly to the Bradleys? What did he do?’

‘I don’t know. Made contact or something.’

‘And now Caffery thinks he might do the same to us? Do “something silly” to us? Jesus, Cory, thanks for telling me.’

‘Don’t make a big thing about it.’

‘I’m not making a big thing. But I’m not staying here.’

‘What?’

‘I’m going.’

‘Janice, wait.’

But she’d gone, slamming the door behind her. She dumped the vodka in the kitchen and ran up the stairs. It took her less than ten minutes to assemble Emily’s stuff – her favourite toys, pyjamas, toothbrush, her school things. A couple of changes for herself and some sleeping tablets – she had a feeling she would need them. She was in the kitchen shovelling two bottles of wine into her rucksack when Cory appeared in the doorway.

‘What’s happening?’

‘I’m going to my mother’s.’

‘Well, hold on, let me get some stuff together. I’m coming too.’

Janice put the rucksack on the floor and looked at her husband. She wished she could find a way back to caring about him.

‘What? Don’t look at me like that.’

‘Really, Cory, there’s no other way to look at you.’

‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing.’ She shook her head. ‘But if you’re coming you’ll have to get the suitcase out from under the bed. There’s no room in the rucksack.’