AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Did she?’
‘Pockets,’ Jennifer says, smiling again. ‘He used to hide her toys in one of his overall pockets, and when he saw her, he would pull out her teddy or her doll or whatever it was and say, “What’s this doing in my pocket?” And she would laugh hysterically and repeat it, you know – pockets, pockets, pockets.’ She shakes her head fondly. ‘Sometimes she’d give him the toy and put the two together – doll pockets or teddy pockets. And he understood what she was asking and would repeat the whole thing for her – so sweet.’
That sounds so like Neil, so like the way he would tease Abi. Matt takes a sip of his beer just as one of the neighbours from the other end of the street begins to talk to Jennifer and he realises she’s been waiting for a pause in the conversation. Her hands are gathered at her chest and she looks like she’s queuing to meet her favourite actor. The Lovegoods have this effect on people. They possess something approaching star quality. Suburban star quality. He wonders if, whatever world you inhabit, there are always celebrities, whether it’s just a question of scale.
He taps Jennifer on the arm by way of see you later and pushes through what feels like a thickening throng despite the lateness of the hour. A crowd like this he would have expected to be drifting away by ten, safe home to bed, nothing too wild.
Ava is not in the garden. There’s no sign of Bella either. He doubles back into the house. No Ava, no Bella, no Neil. The rolled steel joists strike him – that they have not been boxed in by plasterboard and have been painted grey to stand out against the paler grey walls does look pretty cool, he has to admit. The edges and bolts give a trendy, urban vibe. The Lovegoods are a little ahead of the curve, and he suspects many of the people here tonight will criticise what they see, only to copy some of these ideas in the years to come.
He rests his hand against the beam and feels the strength of it. Something else too, although it could be his imagination: the rhythm of the music seems to be coming into the palm of his hand, up his wrist. The living pulse of the house. Buildings have a soul, he believes this. They transmit a feeling, almost immediately. He knows it has to do with design, with layout, with colour, and with the people in them, whether or not the guests are truly welcome, whether or not the hosts have had a blazing row five minutes before, but sometimes it feels more mysterious than that, as if the very foundations, bricks and walls are in fact a living body, the plumbing the digestive system, the electrics the veins and arteries. He looks up and only then does he notice an industrial-looking clock fixed with huge bolts to the metal beam. This is what he felt – not the music, but this, the beat of the seconds, like a heart.
And at that, a shiver passes through him. Abi, her tiny heart. Her tiny beating heart, stopped.
His eyes fill. He’s a bit drunk, that’s what it is. No doubt about it. If he can feel Abi with him now, it is because the drink has loosened all the things he has preferred to – has had to – keep tied up.
Twenty-Three
Ava
How blue Neil’s eyes are, darker under this navy sky. He has aged this last year, I think – violently so. I have this thought before the knowledge falls into me, before it lands.
‘What do you mean?’ I say, beginning to understand the words but still unable to grasp their meaning fully. ‘What are you talking about, I didn’t leave the door open? How can it have been Matt? He wasn’t there.’
Neil shakes his head. In his eyes, the passing reflection of the moon.
‘I swore I wouldn’t tell you,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t have told you. But it’s going to kill you. It’s going to kill all of us. You didn’t leave the front door open, babe. None of this is your fault.’
He sits on the wall outside our house and covers his face with his hands. I make to sit beside him, but I can’t. I can’t sit down. I have to pace, two steps away, two steps back, shaking my hands as if to dry them, my fingers spread and stiff.
‘But he went to work,’ I whisper, the horror still peripheral, still arriving. ‘He’d already gone.’
‘Do you remember it was raining? Well, he popped back for his coat.’
‘His coat?’ I try to think. On the corner of the street. Abi taking a tumble. Blood on the pavement. Matt teasing her with Mr Sloth, kissing her, kissing me, cycling away. ‘His red top,’ I say, seeing it, seeing the undulating muscles in his shoulders under the stretchy fabric as he rode away, seeing him later, when he got back, when I found him standing by his bike in front of our house. I try, but I can’t picture him, not then, but later, later I see him clearly, his silhouette in the doorway, phone to his ear.
‘He was in his black rain jacket,’ I say, to myself as much as Neil. ‘When he called the police, he was in black. I didn’t think it—’
‘He just popped back and grabbed his jacket.’ Neil’s shoulders are round and his belly sticks out against his shirt, the fabric splaying between the buttons. ‘He said he called ta-ta but you didn’t hear him. He was running late, he said, so when he realised he’d left the door open, he just carried on to work, but only ’cos he thought you’d be back downstairs by then. He didn’t do it on purpose. It was just one of those things.’
My eyes feel gritty. I blink to clear them. To see. To see, to see, to see. Opposite, the triangular roofs of the houses, so many triangles, all the same, white arrows heading away to the end of the street. Somewhere a mating vixen cries out in pain and confusion.
‘Why didn’t he tell me?’
Neil doesn’t look up. ‘He didn’t tell you because you were hysterical. Everything happened too fast, everyone was panicking. He panicked too. He thought she’d turn up and it would come to nothing. And then later, when she didn’t, I think he thought it was too late. The moment had gone. And he thought telling you would make things worse.’
A group of four neighbours come stumbling out of the party, laughing, making much more noise than they would normally. Seeing us, they shush each other with the theatricality of the very drunk, nod hello and stagger on their way, suppressing giggles.
‘How long have you known?’ I ask.
Neil stares at the ground. Chafes the soles of his brogues back and forth across the paving stones.
‘How long, Neil?’
‘Since that night.’
My heart hammers. My breath comes fast and shallow. ‘That night?’ I punch him in the shoulder, punch him again, again, again.
‘Ava!’ He grabs my wrists. ‘Ava, stop! Ava!’
