‘I haven’t even seen the place. And my job’s risky at the moment. I could be out of work any day now—’
‘It’s got a spare room and a garden.’
He misunderstood her. ‘You’re right, we’ll need somewhere for the baby.’ He raised his glass. ‘That’s another reason to celebrate, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, that’s a reason to celebrate.’
‘Then let’s have a toast.’ He studied her carefully. ‘To the baby.’
‘The baby.’ Kallie raised her glass, and tried not to catch his eye.
‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’
Her eyes held his. ‘No.’
‘Why did you tell me you were?’
He didn’t seem angry, and she found herself resenting his obvious relief. ‘I don’t—I wasn’t trying to—’ The words dried in her mouth.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He reached across the table and cupped her hands in his. He seemed to have finally made up his mind about something. ‘Do you understand? It doesn’t matter.’
‘Paul—’
The waiter had arrived with the starter, but discreetly stood to one side. The other diners watched them kiss, but being British, pretended not to notice. Outside, the first heavy squalls of rain prickled the river.
7
* * *
HOME AND DRY
‘You don’t understand what it’s like, and I have no way of explaining to you,’ said April. Hands trembling faintly, she relit her cigarette. Her purloined Michelin ashtray had filled with Silk Cut in the last half-hour. It was the only untidied thing in a room filled with carefully arranged mementoes from a happier life. ‘I know Arthur meant well, but I just can’t do it.’
‘I’m trying to understand,’ said John May. ‘Please, let me help you.’
She shook out her hair as though the idea was preposterous. ‘How? What can you do? You have no idea.’ Her pale fringe fell forward, hiding her face. She appeared healthier than he had expected, but the off-kilter body language that had so long hinted at some unspecified disquiet had become habit, so that she appeared hunched. She had been living in the shadow of the past for so long that it seemed any emergence into daylight might melt her away.
‘April, I’ve been in the police force all my life, I’ve dealt with every kind of situation imaginable. In my experience—’
‘That’s the problem, this isn’t in your experience. It’s not something that can be cured by making an arrest.’ Her voice was as thin and cracked as spring ice. ‘You’ve had a lifetime of good health, you think you’re invincible, you come from a generation that doesn’t understand why people can’t just pull themselves together, but it’s not that simple.’
‘I know it’s been tough for you—’
‘Why do you talk as if it’s in the past? It’s still tough for me. I want to work. I want to stand outside, beneath a vast blue sky. I want to be able to pass a stranger in the street without feeling terrified. But I open the front door and the world comes in like a tidal wave.’ She hid her eyes behind her hand. He recalled the fierce methylene blue of her irises as a child. It seemed that the colour had faded from them since.
Agoraphobia was the latest spectre to haunt April in her battle to cope with her mother’s death. John May’s granddaughter had grown ill soon after Elizabeth died. Years of therapy had made little difference to her. John loved her with the desperation of someone who had seen too many others fall, but saw a damaging blankness inside her heart that no one could fill. Lost siblings, dead parents, the whispered cruelties of children drawn too close—May’s family had been so unlucky that it was hard not to believe that some dark star trailed them, bringing harm and hardship in its wake.
Three months earlier, following signs of improvement and a positive report from her doctor, Arthur Bryant had put April forward as a candidate for a new law-enforcement training initiative. The Chief Association of Police Officers had invited non-professionals to train alongside detectives in an exercise designed to bridge the widening gulf between police and public. It had seemed an ideal opportunity to protect April while allowing her to rediscover some independence, but now she had suffered a relapse, retreating further back into the shadows of her bleakly pristine flat.
‘You know none of us like you living here by yourself, April.’ The Holloway Road was a railed-off corridor of run-down pubs and short-lease shops selling a curious mixture of plastic bins and mobile-phone covers, an area where too many lives were lived at discount rates.