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The strange straitjacket of a single bed. The weirdness of the white plastic origami-style lightshade against the white ceiling. He should not have stayed here. He has been hoping for reconciliation, but it has not come, and last night he should have left. He needs to leave if he is to come back; he knows that now. But, as ever, he has not done what he should have. He has not acted with integrity. He has not acted at all. And now here he is, in the spare room, thinking of his father’s red face, his height, his gut-loosening bellow.
‘Just admit it, lad,’ his father shouts into the troubled ear of his memory – his flat Mancunian twang. ‘Lying will only make it worse. Own up, for God’s sake.’
He is six years old. And at that, Matt’s eyes prickle, his skin heating as his body too remembers. At six, to be shouted at like that, close up, by a grown man. For what? He can’t remember. He can never remember. A bike left out in the rain. A failure to help his mother with the clearing-up. A poor mark at school.
The point is, he can never remember because there is nothing a child of six can do that could possibly warrant that level of fury, the week-long ghosting, the glowering and absolute rejection that would last for days, days when his belly would be knotted in dread until, at last, atlast, his father would give him a kind word or a joke, and Matt would feel his lungs empty, his veins drain of dread, his heart slow with sweet relief that, finally, he was out of trouble.
This is why he told Neil that night. He just wanted to confess it to someone, to share it, and feel some relief. What he was asking for was absolution, he thinks now.
‘I just popped back and grabbed it from the hook,’ he said as they stood there in the moonlight under the pissing rain. ‘I was only in there two or three seconds. A second, literally. I just grabbed it, you know, and then I… I thought Ava would be back downstairs. I didn’t think twice. I thought she’d be two seconds so I didn’t think it was worth cycling all the way back.’
That horrible moment when Neil seemed to consider it, when everything seemed to be in the balance, as if he might pass some shattering final judgement and Matt would be forced to go home to his wife and tell her he was responsible, tell her and watch his entire life collapse around him. All he could do was wait, breath suspended, as his friend blinked away the rain still dripping fatly from his brow. He wanted to scream at him to say something, anything, to make him feel less wretched, but then, finally, oh God, finally, Neil rested his hand on Matt’s shoulder and shook his head.
‘OK, mate,’ he said. ‘It’s OK.’
‘I didn’t think anything of it.’ Matt could barely stop the words flushing out of him. ‘But then when she called and said Abi was missing, I knew. I just knew. But when I got back, she was convinced it was her and I didn’t say anything. I didn’t admit it then, Nee, when I should’ve. I was going to but it was all… it was so… and then the moment was gone. That was my chance. I was going to tell her later, once we found Abi. I thought we’d find her straight away, I genuinely did, but then it all… and now we haven’t found her, have we, we’re not going to find her, and it’s too late. It’s too late to tell her, isn’t it? How can I ever tell her? I can’t lose her – do you know what I’m saying? She’ll leave me. I’ll lose everything. I’ll lose her and the baby.’
‘Baby?’ Confusion wrote itself across Neil’s face before it cleared. ‘Oh, you mean the pregnancy?’
Matt felt his legs buckle. Another second and Neil was holding him up.
‘Listen to me,’ he said, his voice little more than a croak. ‘So you left the front door open. And yes, you should have told her. But shit happens and you didn’t say anything, all right? You didn’t. We all do things without thinking. It’s called being human, yeah? We make mistakes. And you regret it, of course you do. But admitting it won’t get you any further, will it? It won’t change what’s happened. And whoever left that door open isn’t whoever took Abi, so what’s the point?’
‘You think someone’s taken her? Is that what you think? Is it?’
Neil shook his head. ‘That’s not what I’m saying, mate. I’m saying thatyoudidn’t take her,ifshe was taken.Youdidn’t hurt her.Youdidn’t do anything to her. Didn’t you tell Ava not to blame herself?’
‘Yes, but that’s only because I know shedidshut the front door. Because I had to unlock it to get my coat… Oh my God, what am I going to do? I’ve killed our little girl, Neil. I’ve killed her.’
‘OK. OK. Stop. You don’t know that and what you’re saying, what you’re saying is way too strong. Listen to me. You love Ava, yeah? And you’re right – you can’t look after her and the baby if you tell her, not now. She’ll leave, or she might, and what does that solve? Nothing. And it’s worse for her too, yeah? She’d be on her own. She’d be devastated. So don’t. Don’t tell her. Don’t tell her, mate. There’s nothing to be gained. Are you listening? What’s happened has happened and none of us can do anything about it. And when all this is over, you’ll have that baby and you two can get on with being the most loved-up couple on the planet.’ Neil squeezed his arms tight. ‘Look at me. Look at me, mate.’
Matt made himself look up.
‘Listen.’ Neil’s eyes were bright and clear. Focused. ‘You’ve told me now, and that’s it. It ends here. No police, no Ava, no one else. It ends here. Our secret. I’ve got your back. Do you get me?’
Justification. Absolution. The plastic origami light dissolves into the white ceiling. Whatever pact they made that night hasn’t worked. It was wrong and now it has come out anyway and his daughter is still missing, presumed drowned, and on top of that, his marriage is over, and while he doesn’t blame Neil, understands completely why he ended up telling Ava, still an old sense of injustice burns at the core of him.Just admit it, lad. Lying will only make it worse.It’s not, it was never, fair. How, at six, could he have admitted to anything, anything at all, knowing that the punishment would be so great, that it was already upon him? Yes, yes, his father was right – if he had only confessed to… whatever it was, if he had taken responsibility and apologised, promised never to do it again, he would have been out of trouble so much quicker – yes, yes, yes. But he was a child. And, crucially, he was afraid. He panicked, always panicked; the panic rooted itself in habit, became a pattern as instinctive as running from danger. A reflex.
No matter how well Ava has helped him to understand it, he has failed to stop this pattern repeating itself. And finally, at the most crucial moment of his adult life, instinct kicked in; he failed to take responsibility; he repeated the pattern, lying by omission, letting his wife take the blame and keep taking it every day, even when he could see her unravelling. By lying he hoped to avoid Ava’s fury and, ultimately, her rejection of him. By lying he hoped to maintain the life he had worked so hard to build – his castle, as Neil would say. But here, in the dark, he knows that beneath all of that is the lowest possible truth, the real truth, the what-it-all-comes-down-to truth: in the face of punishment, the reflex was to protect, above all others, himself.
Thirty
Matt
He leaves for work early, exchanging a perfunctory goodbye with Ava, who is changing Fred in the nursery. In the afternoon, he calls her on the landline and three times on her mobile, but she doesn’t pick up. He tries again, on the hour, but nothing. Her silence is horrible. The waiting it invokes is horrible, a horrible, anxious limbo state.
At half past four, he has done no work despite no lunch break, no idle chat by the coffee machine. Knowing that Ava must be home, he texts:Hey. Can we talk? Xx
Nothing.
He feels himself fall forward, at the last moment stops his head from crashing into his desk. Supporting himself with his hands, he lowers his forehead onto the hard glass surface. He is glad of his private office. He should stay and finish the sketches for the shop frontage in Aldgate to give to the team first thing tomorrow, but there is little use in him even trying. His brain is squirming like maggots, his heart a mass of crunching shards. Ava has lost her mind and that is on him – he has done this to her. He knows that her heart too will be as shattered as his and that he is responsible for this on top of everything else. It has occurred to him in these long hours that he betrayed her not only that night but every day since. Every time she has struggled, he could have held out his hand. He could have pulled her up from her hill of sand. And he didn’t. He did not act. It is not what he has done but what he has not done that is unforgivable. If he’d thought about it, he would have known this. Neil should never have agreed to it, let alone offered to back him up. Neil, in whose home he will have to sleep tonight.
A buzz. She has replied after all, but the words hit him in the chest.
There is nothing to say. Please don’t make this worse. I’ll be contacting a solicitor. The sooner you accept it, the less painful it will be for both of us.
How quickly they have gone from what they were – two people who loved each other – to whatever this is.
I’m so sorry, he replies.Can I at least come and grab some things? X
