‘The students at school are younger – but, yes, to a degree, we do try to let them make their own errors.’
I don’t know enough about that to argue back – and we both know the truth anyway. I don’t want Olivia to make the same mistakes I did. I don’t want her to waste years fawning over someone with no job and no prospects, who spends all day lying around smoking weed.
I say nothing and Dan opens his hands wide.
‘Stop doing that,’ I snap.
‘Doing what?’
‘I’m not one of your students.’
Dan does this thing sometimes where he tilts his head to the side, narrows his eyes to a squint, and then snaps his neck back again. It’s dismissive and makes me wither pathetically.
From nowhere, there’s a tiny stab in my chest. I run my fingers across the pain, which makes it sting even more. I broke my ribs a long time ago and there are times when, regardless of what the X-rays say, I’m not sure it’s completely healed.
Dan finally turns away, focusing back on his phone. ‘So where is Tyler?’
‘I told you – he’s missing.’
‘Does Liv have any idea where he might be?’
‘If she did, I don’t think she’d be so upset at him being gone.’
Dan lets it lie, perhaps sensing that I’m ready for a full-on row if that’s what he wants. We sit in awkward silence for a bit: each of us on our phones. I’m not even doing anything, simply avoiding having to talk to my husband.
‘I saw him earlier, by the way…’
Dan speaks airily, as if it’s unimportant. At first, I think he means Tyler – but then the reality sinks in.
‘Jason?’ I reply.
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘He was walking past when I was leaving the house this morning.’
I continue staring at my phone’s screen, not wanting to get into this. I know Jason and I will run into one another sooner or later but I didn’t expect that he’d be outside the house.
‘He walked past twice,’ Dan adds. ‘I parked along the street and watched. He got to the corner and then came back.’
‘I didn’t know,’ I say quietly. ‘I knew he was due to be paroled last week; I didn’t know he’d be back here…’
There’s a silence and it feels like I’m being accused of something, as if I’m sitting in a dock while a smart lawyer waits on an answer. I can’t stop myself from filling it.
‘How did you even recognise him?’ I ask. ‘It’s been twenty-odd years.’
‘He hasn’t changed that much.’
There’s a tension in the room that’s so thick I can feel the tightness of breath returning once more. Dan is flexing his arm muscles, perhaps on purpose but probably not. He can’t help himself.
I push myself up from the sofa and tell him I’m going out.
Chapter Eleven
It’s dark as I stomp along the street, silently seething. I’m not even sure who I’m angry at: Dan or myself. We’ve known each other since school, even though we weren’t together then. It wasn’t long after, though. We’ve been married for nineteen years. Almost two decades of seeing each other more or less every day is such a long time. There are times where I can predict everything Dan is going to do or say – and I’d bet the same is true for him. It gets to the point where the individual has been replaced by the couple.
Familiarity does breed contempt and it’s there for both of us. It didn’t used to be like this but we got set in our ways. Growing older does that to people.
A dim orange glows from the street lights, shrouding the street in a gloomy, shadowed wash. There’s no traffic at this time of the evening, so I cross the road at the corner with barely a glance in each direction. Our road becomes another but there’s little between them, both sides lined with identikit houses and parked cars.
I stop when I reach number sixty-three, knocking on the dust-peppered white door, rather than using the adjacent bell. There’s a scuffing of feet from inside and then the door swings open, leaving me staring at a man I’ve not seen in a very long time.
His features are silhouetted by the light behind him but everything Dan said is true: he hasn’t changed that much. His nose is flat, his eyes round and far apart. There are wrinkles on his forehead, close to his temples and around his mouth – but it makes him look more rugged. I remember a boy but this is unquestionably a man.
‘Jason,’ I say.
‘Aye…’
He stands to the side, opening the door wider for me to enter. I feel him watching me as I do and, when I get into the hallway, he speaks softly.
‘Rose McNulty.’
‘That’s not my name any more.’
‘Oh.’
‘It hasn’t been for a long time.’
I step around him, unbuckling my coat in the familiarity of my surroundings.
‘Where’s Ell?’ I ask.
Jason nods towards the kitchen at the back of the house and I don’t wait for him, moving along the darkened hall and hearing the front door close.
Ellie is sitting at her kitchen table staring at the disjointed pieces of a barely started jigsaw. She looks up when I enter and then glances towards the hallway. Jason hasn’t followed and we wait, listening as his footsteps clump up the stairs.
‘I meant to tell you,’ Ellie says as I slot into the chair opposite her.
She doesn’t get up but there’s nothing unusual about that. She’s in a set of fleecy leopard-print pyjamas; the type of cosy, warm outfit in which an entire day can be spent. In Ellie’s case, it often is. Her hair is unwashed and tied back loosely into a ponytail. I doubt she’s left the house today.
‘It was all a bit last-minute,’ she adds as Jason’s footsteps become silent. ‘He needs somewhere to stay for his parole and the friend he was going to live with had a few issues. It was either here or an awkward conversation with the probation officer. I didn’t want to risk him having to stay inside, so…’
She tails off but it’s not as if she has to explain herself to me. Not really.
‘It’s fine,’ I reply.
‘Is it really?’
‘Dan said he’d seen Jason around earlier, so it’s not a complete surprise. Why would I mind?’
Ellie pouts her bottom lip and then nods. She knows why I’m here. Why I’m really here.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asks.
I hold both hands out, palms up to the sky. ‘You name it.’
She snorts in amusement but there’s nothing mean about it. Comrades on a battlefield. When all else is collapsing, what else is there to do but laugh?
‘Has Olivia said anything to you?’ I ask.
‘About what?’
‘Anything… everything. She didn’t come home last night and only texted Dan late on about it. She says Tyler is missing – but it’s not the first time. You know what they’re like. They argue, break up, make up…’ A sigh. ‘She seems happy enough doing the accounting classes with you and I wondered if she ever says anything.’
Ellie’s lips are pressed together and she doesn’t have to say anything. I hold up a hand.
‘Sorry… I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t put you in that position. It’s not fair.’
Ellie pounces on a piece of the puzzle and slots it into place with a satisfying click. I can’t remember the last time I tried a jigsaw. It must be decades.
‘She always tries hard when she’s here,’ Ellie says without looking up. ‘She’s a good kid.’
‘Are the classes going well?’
‘Well enough. She was talking about enrolling in college to do something more advanced.’
Ellie smirks as she looks up to see my wide-eyed expression.
‘She’s never said anything like that to me,’ I reply.
‘I’m sure she will in her own time.’
There’s some relief in that and, after a long day, it feels like at least some of the weight has been lifted. ‘It’s good she’s thinking of the future,’ I say.
Ellie raises her eyebrows. ‘We never did.’
‘…And look at us!’
She acknowledges the point – though she’s right, of course. We’ve known each other our entire lives. We grew up a couple of streets away from each other, went to the same schools, hung out with the same people. Here we are, in our early forties, and little has changed.
Ellie must be in the same mindset as me because she suddenly sits up rigidly. ‘Did you hear about the watermill?’ she asks.