Justin placed his phone precisely down, lining it up perfectly with the edge of the table, as if that could somehow put his world back in order. Then he paused. He was less puzzled by the tiny screw on top of the hall table than the fine dusting of plaster around it.
Instinctively, Justin glanced towards the alarm box to the side of him, and then reached to open it. It took a second to register what he was looking at; to realise, cold foreboding sweeping the length of his spine, that the two crucial wires were disconnected, meaning there’d been someone in the house. Jesus. Justin’s mouth ran dry. When?
While they were at the funeral?
While they’d been here?
While Sophie had been upstairs…
‘Fuck!’ His gut clenching, his gaze automatically shooting to the far corners of the hall, Justin froze. Images of his sister, her blood bleeding into the hall carpet, his parents, walls and white sheets stained impossibly crimson, emblazoned themselves on his mind. He took a faltering step forwards.
And then, snatching his phone back up, he ran.
Propelling himself into action, he slammed into the front room. Scanning it as he jabbed 999 into his phone, he registered that nothing seemed to be missing, checked the other downstairs rooms and then raced to the back door.
Locked. He noted the key, hanging well out of sight on the hook in the utility.
No broken panes.
They’d come through the front door. Through the fucking front door!
His heart rate escalating, a pulse thrumming rapidly at the base of his neck, Justin grabbed hold of the banister and swung himself upstairs to push the nursery door open. Undisturbed. Everything as still as the grave.
Sophie’s room? It was a mess: dresser drawers open, T-shirts spewing out like hungry tongues. More mess than usual? Taking in the clothes-strewn bed, Justin had no way of knowing.
Backing out, he headed for their own room. His pulse rate slowing, his adrenaline still pumping, he banged the door wide, stepped inside – and stopped dead.
His blood freezing in his veins, he stepped towards the dressing table and closed his eyes. When he opened them, it was still there, scrawled in red lipstick on the mirror, scorched indelibly on his brain.
SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS
Justin tried to breathe, but he couldn’t pull air past the fury lodged like acid in his chest. ‘Bastard,’ he seethed, trying and failing to obliterate the image of the smashed mirror in the house of his parents from his mind. ‘Bastard!’ Slamming his fist into the glass, ignoring the cut from the sharp shard that sliced through his flesh, he turned away, heading for the landing. His anger simmering steadily inside him, he went up to check the third floor.
Having scoured the whole house, including the bathrooms, and checked every window on the basis that the scum who’d broken in might just get it into their fetid minds to come back, he went back into Sophie’s room and sank heavily onto the bed.
They’d refurbished this room together, he recalled obliquely, he and Alicia. Sophie hadn’t wanted prissy pink walls and florals, she’d said. She’d wanted grungy, whatever that meant. Street art style, an industrial theme, Alicia had knowledgeably informed him. He’d come into his own on the DIY front, putting the metal bedframe and wire storage lockers together. And then he’d put his foot in the paint tray, which had had Alicia in hysterics, coaxing the scowl from his face and making him laugh at his own ineptitude. She had a knack for doing that. They’d fallen into bed exhausted that night, taken time to make unhurried love together, despite their exhaustion, falling asleep with bodies and limbs entwined. Had it been less satisfying for her than for him? Had he been inadequate in some way? Had he always been?
His mind went back sixteen years, to the day he’d asked her about the girlfriend she’d supposedly been staying with. She’d stayed three, maybe four times. She hadn’t been well after the first time she’d stayed over. A hangover, she’d said, and maybe a bug of some sort. She’d also been subdued. He remembered that well. That was when the doubts had first surfaced. She’d originally said they were going out. Then she’d said they’d stayed home, preferring girl-talk and a film. He’d asked her what on earth they found to talk about. ‘This and that,’ she’d said vaguely. He’d asked her what film they’d watched. She’d looked panicked for a second, before she’d come up with a title. It was a film he and she had already seen together. It was nothing, he’d told himself. She’d clearly drunk enough to make her recollection hazy. Yet, there was something: her body language had been tense. He’d noticed the slight flush to her cheeks, as she’d turned away from him. He’d found himself watching her and, far from the evasive behaviour he’d expected, he’d found her looking back at him, her eyes wide and uncertain, locked right on his. He’d wondered whether it was because she was uncertain about him, his commitment to a marriage he’d been emotionally absent from.
He should have paid closer attention to his instincts. Maybe then, he wouldn’t be sitting here now, watching his life fall apart. Everything, piece by piece, was disintegrating around him and he had no way to stop it. No one to turn to.
Staying where he was, trying to get a grip, he counted the words repeated on the graffiti-print wallpaper, starting with one strip, reading to the top, and then travelling down the next. His gaze snagged on a notebook lying on the floor, and Justin stopped counting and reached for it.
Idly, he flicked it open, his eyes immediately falling on a poem written in Sophie’s neat handwriting, and his breath hitched painfully in his chest.
I say I’m fine, but I’m crying inside.
I daren’t let you see, the tears that I hide.
I’m hurting.
It’s like he didn’t exist.
Why can’t you talk about him?
Tell him how much he is missed.
* * *
They say time will heal pain.
But time can’t bring you back again.
I’m hurting.
Truly, how I feel is heartbroken,
For your short life stolen.
The words left unspoken.
* * *
I miss you, Luke.
We all do.
Stay safe with the angels, sweetheart.
Until I find you.
Pressing a thumb and forefinger to his eyes, Justin gulped hard. She would be devastated by this. Already broken-hearted at the loss of her brother, Sophie would feel that everything that defined who she was, everything dear to her, had been stolen away from her. She might never recover emotionally. If she couldn’t trust her own mother, her own father – if he wasn’t honest with her, she might never trust anyone again. How would he tell her? How the hell was he going to talk to Alicia? What would he do if she said she was leaving? Would he beg her to stay?
No. Justin dragged an arm across his eyes and got to his feet. He wasn’t going to do that. An affair he might have forgiven, given his own erratic behaviour. But the deceit, the lies she must have told since – he could never forgive that. How could he live with someone who couldn’t possibly have loved him? Alongside the knowledge that Sophie might not be his daughter, that’s what hurt most of all: realising that she probably never had.
Ignoring the rich droplets of blood on the carpet, which were his own, Justin made his way back to the hall. He was halfway down the stairs when he stopped, noting a darkly dressed figure approaching, visible through the opaque glass in the front door.
Twenty
ALICIA
All sorts of scenarios having raced through Alicia’s mind when she’d received Justin’s text, her first terrifying thought that something might have happened to Sophie, she’d accepted Paul Radley’s offer of a lift home. Once on the way, she’d debated the wisdom of arriving with him, but her first instinct had been to get here as soon as she could.