‘You’re knocking it back tonight, sweetheart,’ says Mark, gently.
A wave of something close to hatred washes over Melissa. Look at him, she thinks, sitting there in his neat pink polo shirt, so innocent and uncomplicated. Everything has come easy to him, all his life. His parents live in Staffordshire in a nice Victorian house. They play golf and garden and gently bicker with each other in a way that reveals how besotted they remain after forty years of marriage. Nothing has ever come easy to Melissa. Nothing …
But she can’t concentrate on any one train of thought right now. Questions crowd in, demanding attention. How long before the police come back? Maybe she should just come clean. Tell them all about Hester’s role in things. But will they believe her?
Tilly clears her throat. ‘That was … great, Mum. Is it okay if I go and watch telly? Or shall I wash up?’
Her plate is still half-full and she has rearranged the meat and vegetables as she did as a small child, trying to hide the gaps. Tilly almost never offers to wash up. It’s funny. Almost.
‘Fine,’ says Melissa wearily.
Tilly hurries from the table with her plate, projecting relief from every pore, before emptying the contents into the bin. Each scrape of the fork echoes inside Melissa’s skull like a bright blow.
She takes another deep pull of the wine. It’s sharp and good, despite the sickly headache forming over her right eye. Maybe she is getting the hangover early, before she has even been allowed to get properly drunk. The wine isn’t working tonight. And both Tilly and Mark know something is seriously wrong and she can’t seem to do anything about it.
Images keep flashing across the surface of her mind but she can’t remember any real light that morning. Hester’s face turning to her and saying, ‘I bet it’s a lovely spot in the daytime.’ The silver peaks of the churning water and the dead pallor of Jamie’s skin. All of it in shadow.
She is barely aware of Mark’s presence until his voice cuts into her thoughts.
‘How much longer, Melissa?’ His voice is hoarse and when she turns, bewildered, to look at him, she sees her husband’s eyes shine with emotion.
‘How much longer, what?’ she says. ‘What are you talking about?’
Mark screeches his chair back over the tiles, making Melissa wince, then rests his elbows on the table. He presses his face into his hands so that his words are muffled when they come.
‘How much longer will you go on punishing me?’
His shoulders start to shake and it seems to take a disproportionate amount of time for Melissa to understand that he is … crying?
She has only seen him cry once before, when Tilly was tiny and had to go to hospital with a serious attack of croup. All medical training deserted him as their baby daughter barked and struggled for breath and it struck Melissa, as it would many times over the years, that he simply wasn’t as tough as she was. He was somehow made of weaker materials.
She can’t think of what she should say or do now and simply watches him until he gets up to hunt for kitchen roll. Tearing off two sheets, he blows his nose loudly and blinks at her. His eyes are puffy and his nose crimson around the nostrils.
She swallows.
‘I’m not punishing you,’ she says quietly, moving to the kitchen door and pressing it closed in an attempt to seal this conversation inside the room, away from Tilly’s ears. ‘Why do you think that?’
Mark laughs humourlessly.
‘Oh come on, Melissa,’ he says. ‘For fuck’s sake! You’re like a walking zombie. Look at you! You’ve cut all your hair off. You barely look at me. Tilly might as well be a lodger for all the attention you pay her.’ He pauses. ‘And I know all about that ex-boyfriend. I’ve got a pretty good idea what happened at that party.’
Frigid shock explodes in her stomach and her hands start to shake so hard she has to press them to the table as she sits down.
Mark regards her and then laughs again, equally without mirth.
‘Tilly told me all about him staying the night. And your reaction now pretty much confirms everything I thought.’
Melissa stares at the table. She clenches her hands together until her knuckles whiten. The weight of Mark’s gaze upon her feels intolerably heavy.
‘I get it, okay?’ he says and his voice cracks again.
She looks up at him, sharply. It is only now that she notices the puffiness of his face. His hair needs a cut and he looks his age for the first time she can remember. ‘I don’t blame you, after what I did. I just don’t want you to leave me. To leave us.’
He bends his head and he starts to cry again. Melissa stares at him and feels something rupture inside her. She loves this man. He used to make her laugh so hard she couldn’t breathe. He felt like the only home she’d ever had once. He didn’t know everything about her, but he knew enough and he still loved her.
He looks up now, his face twisted by grief. ‘I promise you, it was the only time I’ve ever done anything like that. It’s the last too. I’m going to leave the programme. I’ve had enough of it. All I do is work and work and in the meantime my family is—’ He gives a sob and doesn’t finish his sentence.
Melissa is up and around the table, where she takes hold of his hands and pulls him until they are standing. They clutch each other, both crying now until they hear the kitchen door open and then close again, softly.
‘Mark,’ says Melissa thickly after a few moments. ‘There’s something I have to tell you. Something else.’
She can’t tell him everything. Not about the biggest thing. But keeping the toxic burden of her past inside is what started it all.
It’s time to let it out.
***
She’d had a stupid, jealous tantrum. That was the worst thing. The temper constantly smouldering inside during her years in care was largely under control these days.
But she hadn’t slept properly for a while and her nerve endings were zinging with the wrong kind of energy.
Sticky summer heat and a constant topping up of vodka and weed over the weekend had muddied her thoughts and spiked her mood. When Jez suggested going to the party in Holloway, she should have said no. But she never said no anymore. And she was starting to trust him. He had been all over her when he first moved into the squat, this private school boy who liked to party and whose hands and body had made her finally get the whole sex thing.
So they’d gone to the party, and as she drank and then took the E offered by God knows who, the evening started to take on a sinister feel. Flashcards of scenes made her head spin and her stomach roil:
Jez dancing with a tiny blonde-haired girl dressed in a striped dress.
Jez kissing the girl, her arms wrapped around his neck, and their faces grinding together.
Music, so loud, and everyone laughing.
There was no air.
She’d stumbled outside and seen the car parked there, keys in the ignition. It felt like a sign. A benediction.
Later, she discovered that the owner was simply helping his elderly mother through her front door. But Melanie had so badly wanted to go home. To get to the squat and pull her duvet over her head until it all went away.
As she had roared down the road and turned into the next one, she had been aware of the thump of something against the car. When the police car pulled her over, less than ten minutes later, she had pitifully pretended she didn’t know she’d hit someone. But it was a lie.
He didn’t die. But for a time, it looked as though he might.
‘He’s called Thomas Pinkerton,’ she says now, keeping her head dipped and her voice low. ‘He was a student on his way back from the pub. He lost … lost a leg and was in a coma, but he survived.’ She sucks in a drag of air audibly and then begins to speak too fast. ‘I sometimes look him up online and I see that he has a good life now. He has kids! He works for a charity. He hasn’t made his Facebook profile private. They were on holiday in the Seychelles the last time I checked.’