and Ten
Josephine heard the knocking on her door, and she guessed it was Dana – no one else bothered to knock. She plastered a smile on her face, and tried to look relaxed, but she knew that Dana had heard everything that had been said between her and Michael. Dana slipped into the room, and Josephine saw that she was holding a letter.
‘This was in the post box outside the gates, Josephine. It’s handwritten and addressed to you. I thought I should give it to you straight away. You know, just in case . . .’
Josephine took the letter from her warily. ‘Thank you.’
Dana waited a few seconds, expecting Josephine to open it, but she didn’t. Instead, she placed it carefully on the table beside her chair.
Dana smiled easily. ‘Don’t you think you should open it, Josephine? It might be important, with what’s going on at the moment.’
Josephine smiled right back at her. ‘I’ll open it later, if it’s all the same to you. How did Jake get on today?’
Dana shrugged. ‘He had a good day, he’s a good kid. He enjoyed the Mass, he hasn’t stopped going on about it.’
‘Good. Bring him up to me after his tea.’
Dana nodded. ‘Of course. I’d best get on, then.’
She left the room as fast as decently possible. She cared about Josephine very much, but sometimes she could be very creepy.
Dana went back down to the kitchen. Bringing up a tray of tea and biscuits a few hours later, she didn’t ask Josephine if she had finally opened the letter. It was still lying on the table, unopened.
Dana had a feeling that it might be important. She rang Michael, telling him everything she knew and, as she had expected, he was back home within the hour.
Chapter One Hundred
and Eleven
‘I can’t fucking believe you sometimes, Josephine! Why haven’t you even opened the fucking thing?’ Michael snatched the letter off the table.
His annoyance bothered Josephine. He was looking at her as if she had done something wrong. Who the hell did he think he was?
He ripped open the envelope. It had one sheet of paper inside, folded up perfectly. He opened it up slowly, and Josephine realised that, just like her, he was frightened of what it might contain. She watched him as he read the contents.
‘Well? Come on then, what does it say, Michael?’
He bent down, until he was level with his wife’s face. ‘Not fucking too much, Josephine. It just has a number that we were supposed to ring at three thirty this afternoon. Bit late for that now, though, don’t you think? You silly bitch!’
Josephine was stricken with guilt, Michael could see that, but he didn’t care. His wife wouldn’t open a letter if you paid her a million pounds – she couldn’t. She hadn’t opened a letter for years; it was another one of her foibles. He had always accepted her eccentricities, tried his hardest to be supportive, because he loved her so much. Now he wasn’t so sure he had done the right thing. All his support seemed to have achieved was to allow his wife to become more and more reclusive. He had enabled her to give in to her fears.
‘Why didn’t you fucking ring me, Josephine? Or get Dana to? Didn’t it occur to you that this letter might be about your daughter? I mean, when was the last time anyone sent you a fucking letter? I can’t believe that you didn’t care enough about your own child to open it or at least ask someone else to do it for you. Now we’ve missed the chance to talk to whoever might be holding her. Can’t you see how fucking wrong this is? How fucking dangerous you are? Because you still can’t bring yourself to do something as normal as opening a fucking letter!’ He was bellowing at her now, shouting at her with all his might, venting all the anger and frustration that had been brewing inside him for such a long time.