Authors: Lucy Atkins
The mechanical voice of the sat nav breaks the silence, and she turns again, off this track: blackness.
You have reached your destination
.
But there is nothing here.
She creeps along the track. All she can see is snow-laden branches, but then her headlights round a corner and she is in a circular driveway – and there is Greg’s car in front of a tall wooden house. Its windows are lit up, and snowy steps lead to a garlanded front door. She comes to a halt and turns off the engine, and for a second she just sits, dazed, in the silence as the heater clicks off and her heart thumps against her breastbone. It is almost 10.30. But she is here. She has made it.
She fumbles out of the car and crunches round to the back seat, bundling the sleeping Lily into a blanket. Somewhere, an animal shrieks. The air is bitterly cold and the smell of fresh snow explodes in her head. Snowflakes pat down onto her hair and face as she tucks the blanket tighter around Lily and climbs the slippery steps to the front door.
Before she can raise a hand to knock it opens, and he is there, peering over his reading glasses, wearing a black polo neck, joggers, thick wool socks. For a second she feels relief at the sight of him – she wants to sink into his arms. Then, of course, she doesn’t.
His eyes are wide. ‘Tess? What the – what on earth are you doing here? How did you – oh my God – here, come in, come inside!’ He opens the door wider, spreads his arms, glancing behind her as if checking that nobody else is with her. She pushes past him, clutching Lily tightly against her chest.
‘Where’s Joe?’
‘Joe?’ He stands very still. ‘He’s upstairs, asleep.’
‘Where? Where is he? Which room? I need to see him.’
‘Tess—’
‘Take me to Joe,’ she growls.
‘What is this?’ He sounds less confident.
She shakes his hand off her arm and looks around the large, high-ceilinged, cedar-panelled living room. It smells of woodsmoke. Warmth pulses from a wood-burning stove. There are leather sofas, thick neutral rugs and tartan blankets draped on armchairs. His laptop is open on a coffee table – a glass of whisky by it. Jazz filters from speakers. The windows are black.
‘Where is he?’ Her voice rises.
‘Tess, honey, give me Lily.’
She ignores him and makes for the wooden stairs. Her boots slap as she runs up them. He is behind her.
‘Where is he?’ She feels panic fizzing through her veins as she gets to the landing. He puts his hands on her shoulders but she jerks away.
There are doors leading off the long corridor. She lurches through one: a wood-panelled room with a luxurious bed covered in a rich-blue quilt. There is a painting on one wall of a lake, and a Native American rug across the polished floor.
‘Wrong one,’ he says smoothly. There is a chill to his voice now. ‘He’s here, look, down here.’ He walks ahead and pushes another door open.
There is a nightlight, Joe’s backpack is on the floor by a single bed, and his shape, there, under a striped quilt. She throws herself onto her knees by the bed, pinning Lily to her with one arm. His eyes are closed. He is on his side, hair mussed. He looks pallid. She touches his shoulder but he doesn’t move, he doesn’t even twitch, and she feels a moment of terror as she reaches out her fingers for his cheek.
It is warm.
‘Joey?’ she whispers. ‘Joey? It’s me.’
His eyelids flicker.
‘Sweetheart. It’s me. It’s Mum. Are you OK?’
He blinks and frowns, trying to focus on her face.
‘Love, Joey, are you OK?’
He squints at her, as if he thinks he is dreaming. ‘Mum?’
‘It’s me. I’m here now.’
He struggles to sit up, then folds his arms around her neck, squashing Lily between them, burying his face in her hair. She wraps her one free arm around him, wanting to squeeze him tighter than she ever has in his life, breathing in his sleeping boy smell.
‘Are you OK?’ Her voice wobbles. Lily wriggles her limbs, but doesn’t cry.
Joe nods, his face still in her neck.
‘I’m here.’ She forces herself to sound far, far calmer than she feels. ‘Lily and I missed you so much we decided to come and get you.’
‘Hello, Lily,’ he mutters.
Lily squirms between them. Tess pulls back, gently, and Joe lies down again, putting his head on his pillow, eyelids drooping. She tucks the duvet over his shoulder, pressing it with her hand and feeling sudden, hot tears of relief fill her eyes.
Then she turns. Greg is leaning against the door frame. With the light behind him she can’t see his face but when he speaks his voice is flat, emotionless and somehow mechanical.
‘What is this, Tess?’ he says. ‘What are you doing?’
She has to get out of Joe’s room if she is going to confront him, but he is blocking the door. For a moment she is at a loss. She has been so focused on getting here that she has not thought beyond her arrival. There is no behavioural map that will get her out of this situation.
She presses Lily against her chest, folding both arms over her, swaying softly – she mustn’t wake up. With Greg blocking the doorway, Lily in her arms and Joe asleep behind her, she realizes that she’ll only be able to leave this house if Greg lets her.
She steps forwards. ‘I’m taking Joe home.’
His face is neutral. ‘Why?’
‘You know,’ she says. ‘You know why.’
‘Do I?’
She steps, as assertively as possible, towards him but he doesn’t move. She stops. ‘We can’t talk here.’
He glances at Joe’s bed, then back at her. Then he turns. She follows him out of the room and into the corridor.
There is a floor-to-ceiling window at the end and she can see Greg’s broad back reflected in it. He has taken off his reading glasses and his eyes are fixed on her face. He is unshaven. His shoulders are powerful in the black sweater. Her arms tighten around Lily, whose nose is nestled into her neck.
‘What’s going on?’ he says, in that same oddly detached voice.
‘Downstairs.’ She nods at the stairs behind him. ‘Not here.’
He hesitates, then turns and walks slowly away from her, along the corridor. She follows him down the stairs.
The wood-burner glows deep, fleshy red behind him.
‘I can’t believe you drove all the way up here.’
‘You weren’t answering your phone.’
‘But I’ve emailed you a few times this evening about it, I knew you’d be worried. I dropped it on the mountain today; it’s somewhere out there on a ski slope.’
She shakes her head. Everything he says feels like a lie. But she hasn’t checked her emails all day.
‘I can see why you panicked.’ His voice is mechanical. She remembers him telling her once that the biggest compliment a colleague could pay him after surgery was: ‘You’re a machine, Gallo.’ He sounds like one now. ‘Why don’t you give Lily to me,’ he says. ‘Sit down and I’ll make you something to eat. Did you eat yet?’
She steps away from him. ‘I don’t want anything to eat. I just want to take Joe home.’
‘OK.’ He nods. ‘But it’s a long drive and it’s late. At least have a coffee before you go.’
He turns, stiffly, and goes across the room to the galley kitchen. She watches him fill the kettle and put it on a stove, then reach for a whisky bottle and pour a large measure into a crystal glass. He comes back, holding the whisky out to her. She shakes her head.
He takes a swig from it himself, then walks across the living room to stand with his back to the wood-burner. She wonders whether she could get upstairs, grab Joe and get back down and into the car without him trying to stop her. She has no idea because she cannot fathom what is going on behind his impassive face.
It strikes her, then, how isolated they are in this wooden house, hemmed in by miles of New England forest, muffled by snow. She does not know what he might do if she tries to take the children away in the middle of the night. He cradles the glass, watching her, waiting.
Her arms are weak from holding Lily so tightly. She looks down at her baby. Lily’s cheeks are pink, her mouth slightly open, her dark hair in waves around her cherubic face. She thinks again of Claudia – the sweet little child with dark curls and brown eyes, just like Lily. She feels herself harden.
Greg says, ‘How did you find this place? It’s hard enough to find in daylight.’
‘Sat nav.’
He shakes his head.
She says nothing.
‘Are you angry at me?’ he says. ‘I just assumed you’d check your emails. You always check your emails.’
On the bookshelf next to him she sees a silver framed photo of a family: a handsome, grey-haired man about Greg’s age, with a blonde wife holding a baby, and two small blonde children grinning photogenically. The man looks older than his wife – a second family perhaps. Greg follows her gaze. ‘That’s Ben. This is his house.’
Lily squirms against her neck and then settles again. It is three hours, more, since she last fed. Her nappy is heavy.
‘She must need a change,’ Greg says, as if he is listening to her thoughts. ‘Did you bring a diaper bag? Is it in the car? Give me the keys and I’ll go get it.’
There is no way she’s giving Greg the car key.
‘She’s fine.’
She needs to get the children out of here. She wills Lily not to wake up. She is in her favourite position – nose in the crook of Tess’s neck, belly pressed against her shoulder.
She looks up and realizes that Greg has moved closer. Her legs suddenly feel odd. She is breathing too fast.
‘Actually,’ she says. ‘I would like something to eat. What have you got?’
‘Bread? Brie? Soup?’
‘Yes please. And a coffee.’
He puts his whisky glass down and walks steadily back towards the kitchen.
But the kitchen is not far enough away that she can run upstairs for Joe and get out without Greg stopping her.
The only way to do this is to be direct and calm.
He is getting out bread, opening the cheese, reaching for a knife in the knife block.
‘I’m going to go upstairs and get Joe now,’ she says, loudly. ‘I’m going to take him back to Boston. We can’t do this in front of Lily and Joe.’
He stops what he’s doing and turns to face her, knife in hand. ‘Do what?’
‘You know.’
‘Do I?’ He puts down the knife and steps towards the kitchen doorway. ‘What’s this about, Tess?’
‘You know what this is about.’
‘Tell me anyway.’ He stops.
‘OK.’ She looks him in the eye. ‘You’ve lied to me. You aren’t Greg Gallo. I know who you are.’
He looks back at her, intensely. And then something happens that she wasn’t expecting. The whole structure of his face collapses. It is as if the muscles and tendons and bones have been sliced. He turns and goes back to the sink; he bends over, gags, and she hears the contents of his stomach splatter against the ceramic. She smells bile. He throws up twice more.
Then, still not looking at her, he turns on the tap and opens the back door. She feels a blast of cold air as he steps outside. She sees him take a huge breath, his shoulders rising.
Grabbing Lily with both arms, she runs for the stairs. She takes them two at a time, pressing Lily’s head into her neck, and hurtles along the corridor to Joe’s open door.
‘Joey,’ she shakes him, ‘wake up. Wake up. We’re going to go back home tonight. Right now. We’re going. Get up, love.’
Lily whimpers and wriggles.
‘Joey!’
He sits up, his hair is sticking up. His eyes are startled.
‘Sweetie, you need to get into the car, right now.’ She tugs at his arm. ‘Come on.’ Lily begins a thin, high, panicky cry.
‘Lily’s crying.’ Joe blinks.
‘Joey, get up, love.’
Lily takes a rasping breath in and, in the pause, Tess hears footsteps coming up the stairs.
‘Get up, Joe! Now!’
He gets out of bed. His feet are bone white and bare. She grabs a blanket from the bottom of the bed and wraps it round his shoulders. There is no time for clothes. ‘Come on. The blanket will keep you warm. You can sleep in the car, you and Lily, but we have to go now. OK? Right now.’
Joe’s mouth wobbles and he looks up at her. ‘Why?’
‘It’s OK, love, don’t worry, don’t worry – we just need to go and get in the car, OK? I’ll explain everything when we’re in the car, OK?’
Then she feels his shape behind her, blocking light from the hall.
She puts an arm round Joe and pins Lily to her body.
Greg is watching her. His face is whiter even than Joe’s feet.
She lifts her chin. ‘Get out of my way.’
Very slowly, he steps aside.
She sweeps the children past him and down the corridor.
‘It’s OK,’ she says to Joe. ‘Just come with me and I’ll tell you all about it a minute, but for now we just need to go to the car.’
‘Tess!’ He is coming behind them. ‘Stop. Please—’
Lily starts to cry properly then, her mouth opening, her lungs stretching.
She whisks Joe to the bottom of the stairs without looking back and wrenches the front door open. She can’t think about his bare feet on the snow – she beeps the locks and gets him down the steps and into the car first, then presses his screaming baby sister into her seat next to him. Her hands are shaking as she does Lily’s straps up and grabs Joe’s seat belt.
‘Everything’s OK, sweetie. Do your belt up – I’m just going to say goodbye to . . . to Greg . . . then we’ll be on our way.’
Joe turns to his sister. She hears him say, ‘It’s all right, Lily. I’ll look after you, don’t be scared.’
‘Good boy.’ She touches his head, then slams the door and clicks the locks, securing them both in the car. She is breathing fast.
Greg is standing on the snowy steps. He has not made any attempt to follow her to the car. In the yellowish light his face looks sickly, his eyes hollow. For a moment she almost feels worried about leaving him, but then, of course, she doesn’t.
As she opens the driver’s door, she feels a sudden anger roar through her body. ‘How could you do this?’ she bellows. ‘How could you lie to me like this? Who the hell are you? What sort of a monster are you?’
He covers his face with his hands. She can see his fingers pressing into his eyeballs. She glances down at the car. Joe’s face is at the window. The forest around the house is completely still. Beyond Lily’s cries, she can hear the patter of snow on the Volvo roof and on the branches and mountain slopes that stretch out for miles around them. Greg drops his hands, then, and takes a step down.
She beeps the locks, gets into the car, locks the doors again and turns the engine on, feeling the tyres grip as she moves forwards. As she passes the house her headlights briefly illuminate Greg’s stricken face. He is hollowed out; he looks half-dead.