“Jesus, Melissa!” I didn’t care about keeping my voice down any more, let Hugo wake up, fuck it all— “I thought you’d be pleased. A few months ago, I wouldn’t have given a damn if I got thrown in jail. I thought you’d be delighted that I’ve got my head together enough to want to fight this. Would you rather I was still sitting on my arse trying to work up enough motivation to make toast?”
That got to her, just like I’d known it would. Her voice softening, the iron note gone out of it: “You feeling more like yourself, that’s wonderful. And yes, I’m delighted. But can’t you put that into something else? Ring Richard, see if you can do bits and pieces from here—or you always said you wanted to learn scuba diving—”
“Or basket-weaving, or pottery? I’m not disabled. I’m not a mental patient.” I saw Melissa flinch at my tone, but I kept going. I had never been angry at her before, not once, and it made me even more furious at Rafferty and Kerr and at Leon and even obscurely at Dominic—three years of easy harmony through thick and thin, and now this— “I don’t need a hobby. I don’t need to keep busy. I need to find out why the fuck I just got accused of murder.”
“I didn’t, Toby, I never said—” I’d picked my angle well: the air went out of her and she slumped back against the wardrobe door. “I just want you to be happy.”
“I know. Me too. I want us to be happy. That’s exactly why I’m doing this.” The look of defeat on her face—I would have given anything to show her what I was seeing, how this could transform everything— “Baby, please, just trust me. I can do this. I’m not going to make a balls of it.”
“I know you’re not. That’s not—” She shook her head, eyes squeezed tight. “Just don’t do things that’ll make everything worse. Please.”
“I won’t,” I said, going to her. “I wasn’t planning on cornering gangsters in dark laneways with my Colt forty-five. I’m just going to talk to people, and see if they say anything interesting. That’s all.” And when she didn’t answer, or lean into me: “I promise. OK?”
Melissa took a deep breath and put a hand up to my cheek. “I suppose,” she said. And, moving away when I bent to kiss her: “Let’s go to bed. I’m exhausted.”
“Sure,” I said. “Me too.” Which I should have been, after the day I had had. But long after Melissa’s breathing had slowed into the familiar rhythm of sleep, I was wide awake. Not twitching at random noises and adding up the hours since my last Xanax, this time; just watching the subtle gradations of darkness shift across the ceiling, and thinking, and planning.
Nine
And so, once Melissa was off to work the next morning, I rang Susanna and Leon and invited them over for dinner and a few drinks—stressed out by all this crap, need to blow off some steam, yada yada. None of us mentioned garrotes or hoodies or detectives, which strengthened all my suspicions another notch: Rafferty had made it clear that he’d talked to both of them about that fucking hoodie, and I felt like that was something they should have told me more or less the moment he left, if they were anything like on my side.
Even over the phone their voices sounded different to me that day; they had a glittery, fractured quality that reminded me of the couple of times I’d tried acid. It took me a while to put my finger on what it was: danger. I had always thought of Leon and Susanna as fundamentally harmless. Not in a bad way—mostly it was out of love, we might bicker and bitch but deep down I knew they were good stuff; and also, if I was honest, it had always been hard to take them seriously enough for anything as weighty as danger. With what I knew now, every word and breath hummed with undercurrents and subtexts I couldn’t catch. They could be anything; they could be lethal, and I had never noticed.
I had a good feeling about that night, though. It sparkled tantalizingly in front of me like a fourth date, a final interview, the big one with the prize waiting at the end and I was all pumped up and ready to ace it. It wasn’t that I was expecting Leon to break down and spill out some lurid confession—although never say never, I could get lucky, who was to say? But if he was holding some grudge against me, I couldn’t wait to hear all about it. A couple of drinks and a bit of needling, and I was positive I could get him there; maybe, if I played my cards just right, get him to the break-in.
The big question, of course, was what I was going to do with all that if I got it. It was Leon, for God’s sake. One of my first memories was of the two of us sitting in a puddle in this garden, pouring mud on each other’s head. I couldn’t imagine doing anything that would get him thrown in jail, even if he had been trying to do exactly that to me.
Unless: if he really had been behind the break-in, then all bets were off. I could give him a pass on murder, and on trying to frame me, but the thought of him deliberately or even semi-deliberately turning me into this hit me like a Taser every time. I knew that was probably some terrible indictment of my character, but—running up the stairs to tell Hugo the cousins were coming for dinner, mouthful of chocolate biscuit, spring in my step that almost got rid of the limp—I didn’t really care.
When Melissa got home I had my clothes laid out on the bed—blue linen chinos and a really nice shirt, soft cream with a tiny blue geometric print, Melissa must have packed it for some reason and it had been months since I’d dressed up for anything and why not?—and I was singing some cheesy Robbie Williams song at the top of my lungs, in snatches, while I shaved. “Hello, you,” Melissa said, poking her head around the bathroom door. “How’s Hugo been?”
“Fine. Nothing scary. He found out Haskins—the diary guy, Mrs. Wozniak’s cousins’ great-great-whatever?—he hates dogs and fired his maid because she smelled funny.”
“I saw your clothes. What’s the occasion?”
“I’m in a good mood. Come here.”
She tiptoed to kiss me around the shaving foam; I grabbed her and rubbed my foamy cheek on her nose, and she squealed and laughed—“Silly!”—and wiped her nose on my bare chest. “You’re going to be all gorgeous. I’d better dress up too.”
“I seriously need a haircut,” I said, peering into the mirror. “I look like I should be hanging around a crappy pub in Galway trying to convince tourist chicks that I’m a surfer.”
“Will I trim it for you? I don’t know how to do a proper cut, but I could tidy it up a bit, just to hold you till you get to the barber’s.”
“Would you? That’d be great.”
“Course. Let me find some scissors.”
“Oh,” I said, when she was halfway out the door. “Su and Leon are coming for dinner. Do we have enough food? Or will we get takeaway?”
Melissa turned quickly, but she said readily enough, “Let’s order from that Indian place. Hugo loves it, and it’s easy for his hand.”
“Lovely. I’m starving; curry sounds great.” Tilting my head to get under the angle of my jaw, not looking at her: “Listen, about last night. I know it sounds like I’m obsessing over what happened to Dominic. But it’s not just that.”
I could see her in the mirror, watching me from the doorway. “What, then?”
I needed to be careful here. I actually needed a hand from Melissa to make the night go smoothly, and I knew she wasn’t going to be crazy about that idea. “It’s tough to explain,” I said. “I feel like a lot of things are a mess—OK, let’s face it, things have been a mess for months, but I was in too bad shape to do anything about it. Now, I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting better or what, but I feel like I need to clear things up. Dominic, yeah, but not only that.”
She was listening carefully, one fingernail scraping at a stain on the door. “What else?”
“All the stuff Sean and Dec said, about what Dominic did to Leon. You were right: that’s bothering me.”
“It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know.”
“Well. That’s the question. I honest-to-God don’t remember anything like that, but with my memory the way it is . . . yeah. Who knows what that’s worth.” I flashed her a crooked half smile, in the mirror. “I mean, I seriously don’t think I would’ve let Dominic beat the crap out of Leon, but it’d be nice to be sure.”