‘Me?’ Alicia asked shakily.
‘Both of you.’ Sophie looked past her mum to her dad, who, clearly having overheard, had appeared on the landing. ‘You’re treating me like a child. Sparing me the details. I don’t want to be spared! I want to know what’s going on. I don’t want you wrapping me up in cotton wool! Don’t you understand?’
‘Sophie…’ Justin stepped in, his face taut, definitely angry. Good! She wanted him to be angry. She wanted him to do something. Shout, swear, throw things. Anything but walk around here like a dead-inside zombie.
‘What?’ Sophie turned on him. ‘Luke was my baby brother. I might have said he did nothing but eat, puke and poo, but I loved him, Dad. I loved him. I miss him, and my heart is hurting so badly, and I can’t talk to you, because we’re all walking around on goddamned eggshells.’
Sophie glared at him, her expression defiant, her shoulders heaving.
Nodding slowly, Justin walked across to sit on the edge of the bed next to Alicia. He hesitated for a second and then reached out to take Alicia’s hand.
Her mum curled her fingers around his, Sophie noticed, relief washing through her.
Pressing his thumb against his forehead, in that way he did, her dad took a breath and then reached for her hand too. ‘There are several stages of grief, Sophie,’ he said, glancing at Alicia. ‘I think we’ve both been in the denial stage. We’re getting there.’ He tried to sound reassuring.
Sophie wasn’t sure she was reassured entirely, but at least they were acknowledging it.
‘I think you might be in the anger stage – with good reason,’ her dad went on. ‘I’m sorry if I… we appear to have been distant. Sometimes, I…’ He hesitated. ‘I find I struggle to say how I feel, because I think it might trigger emotions I’m not sure other people can handle. I suspect that might be true for your mum too, just now.’
Smiling sadly, he squeezed her hand. ‘You’re right, though: we do need to talk. We’re not other people, are we? We’re a family. We need each other.’
Sounding choked, he looked again at Alicia.
Sophie followed his gaze, to where her mum was sitting with her head bowed. Crying. She was crying. Shit! Sophie saw one tear plop from her chin, and then another.
‘Oh God, Mum, I’m sorry.’ She shuffled across to her. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, sliding her arms around her. ‘You can cry on my shoulder. I don’t mind a bit of snot on my T-shirt, honest I don’t.’
Sophie swallowed hard as her mum emitted a strangled laugh.
Eight
JUSTIN
Justin hadn’t been sure why he’d decided to come to the hospital the day before his son’s funeral, but once he’d arrived, he’d realised he needed space, to try and get his emotions under control. He’d worked hard at that over the years, since he’d discovered his murdered family and almost lost his sanity. Whenever his thoughts went there, images like sick movie stills playing through his mind, his moods swinging violently from the same paralysing panic he’d felt then, through despair, to angry disbelief that the bastard responsible – an opportunist thief needing to feed his drugs habit – had never been caught, he employed the coping mechanisms he’d learned: calming deep breaths; counting when he felt himself too close to the edge. Tiles on floors, fluorescent lights on ceilings, he counted until he was able to reach some kind of detachment. But the tidal wave of grief, shot through with sheer fury, that crashed over him every time he thought about Luke, about what kind of person could hit a car, clearly causing serious injury to a family, and then run – Justin stood no chance of detaching from that. From the fact that he was also culpable; driving whilst tired and distracted.
As hard as he tried not to dwell on why he’d been distracted, he couldn’t help himself. Perhaps because of the irony of Radley resurfacing days before the incomprehensible cruelty that had taken Luke from them. Justin knew he needed to let it go. Alicia and he had taken a step forward since the accident, with Alicia, at least, no longer keeping all her grief inside – Justin knew how destructive that could be. She still seemed unable to talk properly to him though, hold eye contact with him, and he badly needed her to. He was assuming it was because he’d been driving, that there was part of her that couldn’t help blaming him. Still, though, his mind would wonder about Radley. He simply wouldn’t go away.
Taking a breath, Justin realised the parents of the six-month-old baby girl brought in with brain trauma would probably wonder what he was doing, staring down at her, and snapped his attention back to her.
He’d performed emergency surgery on this child the day before his own little boy had died. She was alive. A small miracle in the bleak madness his life had become. Untouched, untroubled, untarnished. He couldn’t help recalling what he’d thought when he’d first gazed down in wonder at Sophie. At Lucas. He’d sworn to keep their world safe. To keep them safe. He’d failed. Failed in his most fundamental obligation as a father.
Swallowing hard as a new wave of grief sucked the air from his lungs, Justin tried to breathe through it, focussing on checking the little girl’s vital statistics. And then, satisfied she was doing as well as she could be, he stroked her cheek softly with his finger and was rewarded with a delighted gurgle, which almost broke his heart all over again. ‘She’s going to be a knockout,’ he said, composing himself and turning to offer the parents a reassuring smile.
‘Thanks, Dr Cole.’ The young father smiled awkwardly and then glanced away.
Justin guessed they’d heard the news about his son, which had travelled like wildfire around the hospital. He should go. He hadn’t meant to make them feel uncomfortable, which inevitably they would be, but he’d needed to see for himself that she was thriving. ‘I’ll leave you in the capable hands of the nursing staff,’ he said, smiling again as he turned for the door.
‘Dr Cole,’ the mother said, behind him.
Justin had only half turned back when she launched herself at him, throwing her arms around him, dropping her head to his shoulder and squeezing him hard. ‘Thank you,’ she said emotionally. ‘For everything. For coming to check on her. You’re a very special man.’
Justin didn’t feel very special. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he counted, anger was all he felt. So much anger and guilt stuffed inside him it was fucking choking him. He managed to make it to one of the patients’ toilets along the corridor before he gave vent to his tears.
Nine
ALICIA
Breathing out a sigh of relief, Alicia came from the kitchen to meet Justin as soon as she heard his key in the front door. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked him, almost before he’d stepped through it.
Justin glanced at her confusedly.
‘I was worried,’ Alicia said, trying not to sound accusatory. God knew, that was the last thing she should be. ‘You’ve been gone a while. I rang the hospital. They said you’d left. And when you didn’t come home, I wondered… I thought…’ She trailed hopelessly off, the words she wanted to say to him dying in her throat.
He could talk to her – that was what she wanted to tell him. Should tell him. She was here for him. Every thought she had now was muddled. Everything she said to him would add an insult to the injury that would inevitably be caused when the truth came out. She could feel it, like a guillotine casting a long shadow over them, ready to drop, when Paul Radley chose to let it.
‘Sorry,’ Justin said, with an attempt at a smile. ‘I should have thought. I was out walking, lost track of time. I meant to call.’
‘But you’re all right?’ she asked again, knowing he couldn’t possibly be.