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We’re getting closer to London now: the trees have given way to streetlamps and unlovely buildings, and I’m forced to slow as the traffic snarls.
‘Look,’ I say, keeping my temper on a tight leash. ‘I told you before: we can both still walk away from this. Whatever’s going on with you and Felix, I want no part of it. I just want to be back in my OR where my only concern is keeping my patient alive. What Idon’twant,’ I add sourly, ‘is to be hijacked in my own car. What Idon’twant is to be looking over my shoulder every five minutes, or wondering if my son is going to slide a knife between my ribs on your behalf while I sleep.’
‘OK,’ Stacey says.
‘OK?’
‘A truce. That’s what you want, right? You go your way, I’ll go mine?’
‘Yes,’ I say warily. ‘I’d be happy if I never saw you or your damn house again.’
‘Fine,’ she says. ‘A truce. But it comes with strings attached, Millie.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I thought it might.’
chapter 58
millie
Sunday is a difficult day. I spend most of it watching my son as he guzzles Cheerios, milk dripping down his chin, or lies on his stomach playing with his Lego, wondering what my tousle-haired, clear-eyed, freckle-faced boy is really thinking. The question isn’twhetherhe crept out of the house after he’d been sent to bed and walked half a mile in the dark to Stacey’s: I already know he’s capable of that. His invasion of our neighbour’s house a few weeks ago wasn’t an isolated incident: he was far too slick and confident for it to be a first time offence. He sneaks around in the dark, listening in corners and watching from the shadows. Disappearing in the night to the Glass House would have been – literally – child’s play.
The real question iswhy.
Did he know what Stacey was planning to do when he slipped silently out of the house that night? Was she waiting for him outside in her stolen car? I find it hard to imagine she’d want a ten-year-old boy along for the ride, but the two of them have been drawn to each other from the day they met. It sounds ridiculous: a child and a grown woman, a successful woman, a mother herself. But there’s a darkness between them, a kinship, that makes me fearful. Harper says the intense bond between themcreeps me outand I can’t say I disagree with her. Together, they’re far more dangerous than either of them would bealone.
I think of murderous pairings like Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. They brought out the psychopathic worst in each other, committing vicious, sadistic crimes together that were almost inconceivable in their brutality. Would they have tortured and murdered children had they been acting alone? They recognised something of themselves in each other, something misshapen and ugly and deformed, and drew strength from that black affinity.
Age isn’t a barrier to this sort of evil partnership: the killers of toddler James Bulger, abducted from a shopping centre before being tortured to death and abandoned on a railway line near Liverpool, were just ten years old themselves at the time.
Exactly the same age my son is now.
I cast my mind back to the morning five weeks ago when Stacey came to our house with a black eye, the same day Tom asked her to babysit Peter. It was only a few days after my son had tried to drown hers in the swimming pool at the Hurlingham Club. I remember every instinct warning me ofdanger!but my fear was for Stacey, not Peter. It never occurred to me for a split second that the threat was nottoeither of them, butfrom bothof them.
Two days later, Felix Porter disappeared.
If my son was partly responsible, if he’s kept this dreadful secret for five weeks – and I know better than most people the secrets children are capable of keeping from their parents: they know all of ours, but we know none of theirs – then I have to help him, because sooner or later Stacey will tire of her game of cat and mouse, and then his life won’t be worth spit. Because despite her denials, I’m quite certain Staceyhaskilled Felix. And now I’m equally sure Peter helped her.
Tom knows this too, but he won’t admit it to himself, much less to me. He insists Stacey’s lying: that it can’t have been Peter in the car with her. Which means he doesn’t have to choose between saving our son or saving the world from him: he abdicates that bitter responsibility to me.
I don’t wrestle with the decision. I’ve always lived in the shades of grey that lie somewhere between right and wrong. Peter is my son. It doesn’t matter to me if he isgoodorbad. As long as he is safe.
Tom doesn’t trust Stacey or her truce, but she knows what I will do to protect Peter, and so she knows my protection extends to her now, too. I can’t threaten her without endangering him. And from her point of view I’ve served my purpose: the evidence swirling around me has disturbed enough sediment to muddy the waters for the police. We’ve achieved an unlikely stasis.
On Sunday afternoon, I tell Harper it’s time to go home. She protests because she thinks that morally my house is hers,you can’t send me back to that tiny flat, but I’m done with this now. I’m done with the Glass House. I’m done with it all.
Monday is a much better day. On Monday I’m back in theatre, back where I belong: I’m on my feet for more than nine hours without food or a break performing three complex surgeries back-to-back, but Monday is not a difficult day. When I finish I feel energised and revitalised, and after I’ve checked on my last patient I change into my running clothes, deciding to leave my Audi in the car park overnight and run home.
I’m lacing up my new trainers – they’re still uncomfortably stiff – when my phone beeps with an incoming text from Tom.
Peter wasn’t at pickup. Does he have practice?
It’s forty minutes since school ended. Peter doesn’t have any after-school activities on a Monday: he should have been waiting for Tom to collect him as usual. The first wings of anxiety beat in my chest.
Maybe he got the tube withM?I text back.
She’s home. He isn’t with her.
I call Peter, but it goes straight to voicemail without even ringing. I tell myself his battery is probably dead from watching too many TikTok videos beneath his desk during class.
