The Dark Winter

CHAPTER 5

It sits to the north of the city, the east of everything else — three left turns and a right from the edge of the new estate; thrown up for first-time buyers by builders following plans that could have been designed by a child with a page of graph paper and a box of Monopoly houses.

Three bedrooms. Chessboard tiles. A back yard, with a nine-slab patio propped up on reclaimed railway sleepers. All decorated to the drab, lifeless taste of a landlord who made the purchase through an agent, and has yet to visit.

Home, thinks McAvoy, bones weary, drowsily parking the people-carrier on the kerb and watching his wife, framed like a film star through the square front window, swaying with his son in her arms, and waving to Daddy.

It’s late. Too late for Fin to still be up. He must have taken his nap around tea-time. He’ll be awake all night, eager to bounce on Mummy and Daddy’s bed, to try on Daddy’s shoes and stomp around on the lino in the kitchen, squashing imaginary monsters.

She’s done this for him. Settled the lad for a nap so that he’ll be awake and fresh and ready to make Daddy feel better when he finally gets home from the station, thoughts made heavy and dull by the relentlessness of the assault with which they have battered his skull.

Roisin opens the door for him and McAvoy doesn’t know who to kiss first. He opens his arms and takes them both in. Feels the hard pressure of Fin’s head on one cheek. Roisin’s lips, soft and warm and perfect, on the other. Holds them both. Feels her hand stroke his back. Takes their warmth inside himself. Senses her breathing him in, in return.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and whether it’s addressed to her or the boy or the universe in general, he would not be able to say.

Eventually he pulls away. Roisin takes a step backwards to allow him into the little lobby at the foot of the stairs. As he pushes the door closed behind him, he turns and knocks the same picture from the wall that he has dislodged almost nightly since they moved into this, their first proper home, two years ago. They giggle, sharing the joke, as he stoops to pick it up, and awkwardly hangs it back on the hook. It’s a pencil sketch of a hillside, done in a shaky hand. It meant a lot to McAvoy once, back when images of his childhood had been the emblem of his happy times. It doesn’t matter so much now. Not since Fin. Not since her.

She’s beautiful, of course. Slim and dark-haired, her skin an almost sand-blown tan that betrays her heritage. Mucky, his dad had said when he first saw her, but he hadn’t meant it in a bad way.

She’s wearing a tracksuit that hugs her figure and her hair tumbles to her shoulders. She’s only wearing a small pair of hoops in her ears today. She used to have row upon row, climbing up both ears, but Fin developed a liking for pulling at them and so she has limited her adornment in recent months. It is the same with the gold that dazzles at her throat. She wears two chains. One bears her name in copperplate: a gift from her father when she turned sixteen. The other is a simple pearl, a captured raindrop, that McAvoy presented her with on their wedding night as an extra present, in case his heart hadn’t been enough.

Without being asked, she hands Fin to his father. The child beams, opens his mouth like a capital O and then begins aping McAvoy’s facial expressions. They frown, grin, pretend to cry, aim monster-like bites at one another, until they are laughing and Fin is wriggling with excitement. McAvoy puts him down and the child runs off with his bow-legged cowboy gait, adorable in his blue jeans, white shirt and tiny waistcoat, chattering to himself in the made-up language that McAvoy wishes he better understood.

‘You waited,’ he says to his wife as he looks around the living room. Roisin had been planning to put up the Christmas decorations today. They have a plastic tree and a box of baubles, half a dozen cards to stretch on a wire over the fake-coal fireplace, but they remain in the cardboard container by the kitchen door.

‘It wouldn’t have been any fun without you,’ she says. ‘We’ll do it another day. As a family.’

McAvoy takes off his coat and throws it over the back of an armchair. Roisin comes forward for another hug, the better to feel his body without the impediment of his bulky waterproof. The top of her head comes up to his chin, and he leans forward to kiss it. Her hair smells of baking. Something sweet and festive. Mince pies, perhaps.

‘I’m sorry I’m later than I said,’ he begins, but she shushes him and pulls his mouth to hers. He tastes cherries and cinnamon in her kisses, and they stand, framed in the window, mouth on mouth, until Fin runs back into the living room and begins whacking his father on the leg with a wooden cow.

‘Grandpa sent it for me,’ says Fin, holding up the toy as his father peers down. ‘Cow. Cow.’

McAvoy takes it from his son’s grip. Examines it. He recognises the workmanship. Can picture his father, wood shavings on his glasses, knife and rock-hammer held by white hands sheathed in fingerless gloves, sitting at the table, mouth ajar, concentrating on every minute detail, breathing life into wooden toys.

‘Was there a letter?’

‘Just the usual,’ says Roisin, not looking up. ‘Hopes he’s getting big and strong. Eating his vegetables. Being a good boy. Hopes to meet him one day soon.’

McAvoy’s father addresses all of his correspondence to the boy. He has not spoken to his only son since a falling out around the time Roisin fell pregnant, and McAvoy knows him to be stubborn enough to go to his grave without ever making amends. Were he to think unkindly of his father, he would wonder who the daft old sod thought was going to read the letters to his four-year-old grandson, but he has trained himself to blink such traitorous thoughts away.

McAvoy feels the toy’s smooth edges. Tries to soak up some of the wisdom and experience of the old man through the things he holds in his hand, but no answers come. He hands it back to his son, who runs away again. McAvoy watches him go, then turns to Roisin, his eyes full of guilt.

‘You went towards the screams, Aector. You did what you would always do.’

‘But what does it say about me? That I would seek out a stranger rather than protect my son?’

‘It says you’re a good man.’

He stares around his living room. It’s all he wants. His wife in his arms, his child playing at his feet. He breathes heavily and slowly, savouring every mouthful of these moments. And then he catches the scent. The tang. Faint. Almost imperceptible among the spices and soap of his family, his home. It’s like a moth fluttering at the very edge of vision. That whiff. Of blood. For an instant he imagines Daphne Cotton. Tries to get an image of what her father will be enduring. Lets his heart reach out. To feel a connection and offer up warmth.

He raises his arm and pulls Roisin back down into an embrace.

Hates himself for the warmth that spreads through him: for being damnably happy, as an innocent girl lies dead on a slab.