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‘I know,’ I say.
He doesn’t think I murdered Felix. Butmurderis such an unforgiving word. Itdoesn’t leave room forin the heat of the momentorit was an accident. Tom may not believe ImurderedFelix, but he thinks I might have killed him. He wonders if I lashed out in fury or in a misguided attempt to protect Stacey. But would he really have my back if he found out I’d gone over to the Glass House with malice aforethought and killed Felix in cold blood? Would I evenwanthim to? Someone has to raise our children with some semblance of a moral compass, however lost our son already seems to be.
I call Stacey as I drive to the hospital, but her phone goes straight to voicemail, so I leave an urgent message for her to call me back as soon as she can.
Once I get to work, I’m too busy making my rounds to think about anything else. My transplant patient is doing well, as is Harper, who is already sitting up in bed and demanding to be allowed to upload a vlog from her hospital room.
‘We don’t need the security headache,’ I tell her, taking her phone away. ‘We’ve already got members of your bloody Kyper Nation trying to sneak into the hospital through the staff car park.’
‘Really?’ Harper says, delighted.
‘Behave yourself, and I’ll give your phone back to you tomorrow on condition you don’t mention the hospital by name,’ I say.
She doesn’t remember anything about the accident: the police have already interviewed her, two uniformed beat coppers who are ‘optimistic’ the hit-and-run culprit will be caught. By which I take it the case has already been filed in a folder labelledwhen hell freezes over.
I tell her to stop using her vlog to agitate against Felix and Copper Beech. ‘The man is officially missing,’ I say. ‘The police think something may have happened to him. You pursuing a vendetta against him: it’s not a good look.’
‘You just don’t want me making waves forStacey,’ Harper says.
Once again, I’m surprised by her perceptiveness. This woman is so much smarter than she looks.
By the end of the day I’ve left Stacey four messages.
She doesn’t return a single one of my calls.
chapter 45
millie
Peter’s room is unnaturally tidy for a ten-year-old boy’s. His bed is made, his few toys neatly put away in the correct storage bins: he never showed much interest in traditional playthings like Lego or cars, so eventually Tom and I stopped buying them. He’s always enjoyed taking things apart – breaking them – but he’s never shown the slightest inclination to put them back together. He has a fondness for collecting pieces of junk: circuit boards, mobile phones with broken screens, green knobbly pieces of tempered glass from a car break-in down the street. Everything is arranged in linear order on a shelf above his bed.
In any other child I’d wonder if his obsessive neatness was a symptom of some spectrum disorder, but Peter has weaponised his tidiness: he knows how disturbing his father and I find it.
I turn from the window overlooking our street and see Peter standing in the doorway, watching me.
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ he asks.
‘I wasn’t looking for anything,’ I say.
‘Then why were you in here?’
‘Just getting a feel for you,’ I say evenly.
This seems to satisfy him. He sits down on his bed like a four-year-old on his first day at primary school,criss-cross applesauce. He’s still in his school uniform,which makes him look even younger than his years.
‘Do the police think you murdered Felix?’ he asks conversationally.
I’m too taken aback to correct him:Mr Porter to you. ‘Why would you think that?’ I ask, recovering quickly.
‘They took away your running shoes because they had blood on them,’ Peter says. ‘They must think you killed him. Did you?’
‘Of course not,’ I say, matching his casual tone. ‘How do you know about the police?’
‘I heard you and Dad talking about it last night.’
It was almost midnight when Tom and I slipped out into the back garden so we could talk where neither of the kids could overhear us: sound carries in our house, and the walls are thin. Peter must have followed us and hidden in the shadows: he’s light and stealthy on his feet, like a cat. We’d never have heard him.
I try to remember what else we discussed last night. We talked about Peter, I know that. Tom was angry I let him spend the day at the studio with Stacey on Monday.
