She took me into the conservatory—there was frost starting in the corners of the windowpanes, but the heating was on and the room was snug and warm—and went back to the kitchen to make the coffee. The lights were low; I took off Shay’s baseball cap and shoved it into my jacket pocket. It smelled of blood.
Liv brought out the coffee on a tray, with the good cups and even a little jug of cream. She said, settling into her chair, “You look like you’ve had quite a weekend.”
I couldn’t make myself do it. “Family,” I said. “How about you? How’s Dermo?”
There was a silence, while Olivia stirred her coffee and decided how to answer that. Finally she sighed, a tiny sound I wasn’t meant to hear. She said, “I told him I didn’t think we should see each other any more.”
“Ah,” I said. The quick sweet shot of happiness, straight through all the dark layers that were wrapped tight around my mind, took me by surprise. “Any particular reason?”
Elegant little shrug. “I didn’t think we were well suited.”
“And did Dermo agree with that?”
“He would have, soon enough. If we’d been on a few more dates. I just got there a bit faster.”
“As usual,” I said. I wasn’t being bitchy, and Liv smiled a little, down at her cup. “Sorry it didn’t work out.”
“Ah, well. You win some . . . What about you? Have you been seeing anyone?”
“Not recently. Not so you’d notice.” Olivia dumping Dermot was the best present life had given me in a while—small, but perfectly formed; you take what you can get—and I knew if I pushed my luck I would probably smash it to pieces, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Some evening, maybe, if you’re free and we can get a babysitter, would you fancy going for dinner? I’m not sure I can swing the Coterie, but I can probably find somewhere better than Burger King.”
Liv’s eyebrows went up and her face turned towards me. “Do you mean . . . What do you mean? As in, a date?”
“Well,” I said. “Yeah, I guess so. Very much as in a date.”
A long silence, while things moved behind her eyes. I said, “I did listen to what you said the other night, you know. About people wrecking each other’s heads. I still don’t know if I agree with you, but I’m trying to act like you’re right. I’m trying bloody hard, Olivia.”
Liv leaned her head back and watched the moon moving past the windows. “The first time you took Holly for the weekend,” she said, “I was terrified. I didn’t sleep a wink the whole time she was gone. I know you thought I’d been fighting you for the weekends out of sheer spite, but it had nothing to do with that. I was positive you were going to take her and get on a plane, and I’d never see either one of you again.”
I said, “The thought had crossed my mind.”
I saw the shudder go across her shoulders, but her voice stayed steady. “I know. But you didn’t go through with it. I don’t fool myself that that was for my sake; partly it was because leaving would have meant giving up your job, but mainly it was because it would have hurt Holly, and you wouldn’t do that. So you stayed here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well. I do my best.” I was less convinced than Liv that staying put had turned out to be in Holly’s best interests. The kid could have been helping me run a beach bar in Corfu, turning brown and getting spoilt rotten by the locals, instead of having her head cluster-bombed by her entire extended family.
“That’s what I meant, the other day. People don’t have to hurt each other just because they love each other. You and I made each other miserable because we decided to, not because it was some kind of inevitable fate.”
“Liv,” I said. “I need to tell you something.”
I had spent most of the car ride trying to find the low-drama way to do this. It turned out there was no such thing. I left out everything I could and toned down the rest, but by the time I finished Olivia was staring at me, huge-eyed, with trembling fingertips pressed to her mouth. “Sweet Lord,” she said. “Oh, sweet Lord. Holly.”
I said, with all the conviction I could find, “She’s going to be all right.”
“On her own with a—God, Frank, we have to—What do we—”
It had been so long since Liv had let me see her in any mode but poised and glossy, perfectly armored. Like this, raw and shaking and wild to find a way to protect her baby, she cracked me wide open. I knew better than to put my arms around her, but I leaned across and folded my fingers around hers. “Shh, hon. Shh. It’ll be OK.”
“Did he threaten her? Frighten her?”
“No, honey. He had her worried and confused and uncomfortable, but I’m pretty sure she never felt like she was in any danger. I don’t think she was, either. In his own incredibly fucked-up way, he does care about her.”
Liv’s mind was already zipping ahead. “How strong is the case? Will she have to testify?”
“I’m not sure.” We both knew the list of ifs: if the DPP decided to prosecute, if Shay didn’t plead guilty, if the judge figured Holly was capable of giving an accurate account of events . . . “If I had to put money on it, though, then yeah. I’d bet she will.”
Olivia said, again, “Sweet Lord.”
“It won’t be for a while.”
“That’s beside the point. I’ve seen what a good barrister can do to a witness. I’ve done it. I don’t want it done to Holly.”
I said gently, “You know there’s nothing we can do about it. We’ll just have to trust her to be OK. She’s a strong kid. She always has been.” For a needle-stab second I remembered sitting in that conservatory on spring evenings, watching something fierce and tiny bounce off the inside of Olivia’s belly, ready to take on the world.
“She is, yes, she’s strong. That doesn’t matter. No child in the world is strong enough for this.”
“Holly will be, because she doesn’t have a choice. And Liv . . . you already know this, too, but you can’t talk about the case with her.”
Olivia’s hand whipped out of mine and her head went up, ready to defend her young. “She’s going to need to talk about it, Frank. I can’t begin to imagine what this has been like for her, I’m not having her bottling it all up—”
“Right, but you can’t be the one she talks to, and neither can I. As far as a jury’s concerned, you’re still a prosecutor: you’re biased. One hint that you’ve been coaching her, and the whole case goes out the window.”
“I don’t give a damn about the case. Who else is she supposed to talk to? You know perfectly well she won’t talk to a counselor, when we separated she wouldn’t say a single word to that woman—I won’t have this damaging her for life. I won’t have it.”
The optimism of her, the faith that the job hadn’t already been done, reached right inside my rib cage and squeezed. “No,” I said. “I know you won’t. Tell you what: you get Holly to talk as much as she needs to. Just make sure no one ever finds out about it. Including me. OK?”
Olivia’s lips tightened, but she said nothing. I said, “I know it’s not ideal.”
“I thought you were so passionately against her keeping secrets.”
“I am. But it’s a little late for that to be top priority now, so what the hell.”
Liv said, and there was a grating note of exhaustion at the bottom of her voice, “I suppose that translates as, ‘I told you so.’”
“No,” I said, and meant it. I caught the surprise in the quick turn of her head towards me. “Absolutely not. It means that we both fucked up here, you and me, and now the best thing we can do is concentrate on damage limitation. And I trust you to do a pretty impressive job of that.”
Her face was still wary and tired, waiting for the twist. I said, “No hidden meaning this time. I promise. I’m just glad the kid has you for a mother, right now.”
I had taken Liv off guard; her eyes flickered away from mine, and she shifted restlessly in her chair. “You should have told me as soon as you got here. You let me put her to bed as if everything was normal—”
“I know I did. I figured she could do with a bit of normality tonight.”
She moved again, sharply. “I need to check on her.”
“If she wakes up, she’ll call us. Or come down.”
“She mightn’t. I’ll only be a moment—”
And she was gone, hurrying up the stairs as quietly as a cat. There was something weirdly comforting about this little routine. We used to go through it a dozen times a night, back when Holly was a baby: one squeak on the monitor and Olivia would need to go make sure she was still asleep, no matter how often I tried to reassure her that the kid had a fine set of lungs and was well able to let us know if she wanted us. Liv was never afraid of cot death or of Holly falling out of bed and hitting her head or any of the standard-issue parental boogeymen. All she worried about was that Holly might wake up, in the middle of the night, and think she was all alone.
Olivia said, coming back in, “Fast asleep.”
“Good.”