The Shadow House(83)

Renee shook with white-hot rage. Good on him? ‘Why … why didn’t you say anything?’

‘I couldn’t! Everything had got so out of hand, and then the police were everywhere, and I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m sorry, Renee. I’m so sorry.’

‘No,’ said Renee, breathing hard. ‘You’re lying. If he’d run away, he would’ve turned up. There would’ve been sightings, some kind of trace. And what about my credit card? It was never used.’

‘Ren, I’m sorry.’ Michael looked wrung out. ‘He just didn’t want to be found.’

‘But, what about your boxes?’ Renee jabbed the axe at Alex, causing her to flinch. ‘The repetition, the pattern. It can’t be loan sharks again. Doesn’t that prove something?’

Ghostly pale, Alex lifted her head. ‘No, I … I don’t think it does,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t think the two are connected the way you think.’

‘I told you,’ Michael said. ‘Someone’s messing with you. Someone who knows what happened.’

‘No.’

‘You have to come to terms with it, Ren, Gabriel chose to leave, he ran—’

‘No,’ Renee yelled. ‘I don’t accept that!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I feel it!’ She slammed a fist against her breastbone. ‘Because I am his mother! Because I know that’s not what happened to him; I know it was something else!’

She gripped the axe, pictured lifting it up and bringing it down onto Michael’s head, imagined the noise it would make, the eggshell splinter of bone, the pulpy ooze of blood and brains.

‘You hurt him! You hurt my son, and I will never, ever forgive you. But you were lying then, and you are lying now. Gabriel did not leave me. He was taken!’

Renee raised the axe and swung.





ALEX





40


I thought she was going to kill him.

I screamed and closed my eyes, expecting to hear … I don’t know what I was expecting. What does it sound like when someone is murdered with a giant farm tool?

But then there was a bang, a dull thunk of metal on wood, and everything went quiet. I opened my eyes to see Jenny standing still in front of Michael, the blade of the axe resting on the floor. She was sobbing. He was cowering in the corner, still very much alive, his arms over his head.

‘Just go,’ she said through her tears. ‘Please. Just leave.’

After a minute or two, he did. Edging slowly backwards, he opened the door and stepped out into the still night air. A minute later, we heard him drive away.

And then it was just us.

Jenny staggered back to the locked bedroom and sank to her knees outside the door, curling herself into a tight ball. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, fresh tears running down the sides of her nose. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

I shuffled close. I put my arm around her, and she laid her head on my shoulder. I held her while she sobbed and shook, and it felt like trying to hold down a boat in a storm – or maybe that was just me. My own hands were trembling, my own stomach roiling with nausea.

Into the eerie hush came a small sound. On the other side of the door, Ollie was softly tapping. ‘Mum?’ I heard him whisper.

‘I’m here,’ I replied, quietly. ‘Everything’s alright. We’re going home now.’

Jenny lifted her head. Her teeth were chattering violently, her skin was ashen. ‘I can’t.’ Her voice was barely audible.

‘Yes, you can,’ I said, as tenderly as I possibly could. ‘Let’s open the door and go home.’

‘No. I can’t.’ She pulled in breath after ragged breath, and I waited quietly, knowing what she meant. She still had no answers. She couldn’t move on.

In the end, I said the only thing that ever did any good. ‘You’re not alone,’ I said. ‘I’m here and I’m not leaving. Come on, we’ll do this together.’

Jenny cried some more. Then she wiped her eyes and put down the axe. She looked at me; I nodded, and together we stood up.

For one heart-stopping moment when she unlocked the door, I imagined it swinging open to reveal a hole in the world where my son had been. But inch by precious inch, the room revealed itself – though not in the order I expected: the desk had been dragged over to the window, the bed pulled out from the wall, and the mattress lay half on and half off the frame. Then there he was, my boy, sitting cross-legged on the floor with his head bowed, idly tearing strips from a piece of yellowing paper.

‘About time,’ he said, screwing the paper into a ball and looking up. ‘I really need to pee.’

With a smile so big it made my face ache, I held him and my body felt too small, too poorly designed for all the feelings contained within it. Blood and bone, I thought, were not enough. Surely we should all be made of rock, of steel, of titanium, to withstand the crushing weight of love.

Outside, the moon was high and bright, and the sky sparkled with a thick spread of stars. We walked slowly, the three of us: Ollie at my side, Jenny trailing behind. Halfway down the hill, I stopped to hold my son again, wrapping my arms all the way around his back and marvelling at how just one person can mean the whole world.