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So much love has been lost. There was so bloody much of it that day, here in this garden. Love between couples, between families, between friends – it didn’t seem like so much then, but now… now of course the simple fact of them being together like that is everything. Abi squealing,No, NeeNee, no!as Neil spun her around, giggling when afterwards she couldn’t stand up without falling down, Neil catching her when she fell, tickling her to the ground.
‘Neil,’ Ava said, breaking off her conversation with Bella. ‘She’s saying no. She’s telling you to stop.’
He carried on.No, NeeNee, no!
And Ava rose from her chair. ‘Neil, seriously. If she says no, you have to stop, OK?’
Only then did he stop, blowing at his hair, his face red with the exertion.
Abi ran away giggling, fell over, got up, ran back to her mum. Ava smiled and pulled her up onto her knee, made her drink some water in the shade.
Jasmine recognised Abi’s toy. Ava had never seen Jasmine until the night of the party. Jasmine associated the toy with Neil. Did Neil see Abi that morning? Is it possible that he saw her, played a game, chase, maybe, meaning only to make her laugh but—
‘Mate?’ Neil’s one-word question sails up to him, making his cheeks burn.
‘Sorry,’ he shouts, pulling himself away from the window. ‘I’m coming now.’
Thirty-Three
Ava
The front door closes with a dull click. The sigh that leaves me is long and heavy. I feel tired. Tired and unfathomably sad.
Fred wakes and begins to cry. I lift him, put him to my breast and feel myself drift. More memories of the party come back to me in flashes: Jen’s kind eyes, her naturalness, her sympathy. She has been the only stable point, outside family – standing at a distance, a point on the horizon. When the press receded, when the investigation was scaled back, when the lasagnas and casseroles and lemon drizzles ceased, she was still there, always with hand-tied flowers or a small wrap of posh chocolates, sometimes staying for coffee, sometimes not – knowing which to do out of some empathic sixth sense. She has never hidden from asking how things were, has never shied away from the bottomless dreadfulness of it all. More than once she has sat with me and held my hand, in silence, for long minutes until the depthless sadness became its own kind of peace.
I think of her and Johnnie standing together. A power couple, I suppose you’d call them. I can’t put her together with him at all, but then I suppose, other people’s relationships are always mysteries to those outside them.
In my silent house, Johnnie’s words return to me:Always there bright and early before we even left for work, wasn’t he, Jen?
But he wasn’t. The day, theone daymy daughter disappeared, he wasn’t. He went for building supplies. Did he? It’s possible. Hewasat home. I banged on his door. That morning. That ticking metronome morning. That accelerating crescendo of panic. I run out onto the street. I run about, hysterical, my chest a banging drum. Abi. Abi, Abi, Abi. Did I ring on the Lovegoods’ door? I might have done. Then or later. I can’t remember. I wish I’d known Jen then. She would have helped. She would have known what to do.
Abi’s toy. Mr Sloth.
Could Jasmine have seen it another day? Would one of her school friends have one? Is it like Matt said, she calls all her toys Mr or Mrs?
Ava, stop. You’re desperate, reading signs where there are none. Neil is your friend. He is Matt’s childhood friend, his best friend.
Neil is solid. Neil is a safe pair of hands. Neil fixes problems.
I try to focus on the soft black sweep of Fred’s eyelashes, the barely perceptible rhythm of him sucking. I try to keep the moment pure, but still the sense of something more presses in. How difficult that Sunday must have been for them both. Then the next morning,thatmorning, Neil’s panic-stricken face when he answered the door. As if he already knew.
Ava, stop.
I lift Fred from my breast and push my face into his soft Babygro. Stop. Stop. There is nothing here, nothing at all. Look away. Neil and Bella had their own troubles that day, troubles you now know about, troubles they’re still dealing with. Come on. Ofcoursehe looked concerned when he answered the door. You were battering on it, for God’s sake, shouting through the letter box. He answered it withpreciselythe expression you would wear if someone was banging on your front door and shouting for help.
He found her toy.
Stop.
He was out all night.
Stop it, Ava.
Would Jasmine even know the word for sloth?
Stop, stop, stop.
What would Barbara say? Stay logical. It isn’t about you. How others behave is rarely about you.
