The Marriage Act(11)

Roxi considered climbing off the bed to comfort her daughter but changed her mind. That wasn’t the nature of their relationship. Instead, Owen brought Darcy into his chest and kissed the top of her head. He was better at this kind of thing than she was. But it didn’t stop Roxi from feeling a small stab of envy at their closeness. And there was no remorse for having reported her daughter’s accounts to their service providers. If she was going to become Jem’s replacement, how could she be taken seriously with a twelve-year-old daughter who had more followers than her?





8


Corrine




Corrine poked her head out of the door and cocked it to one side. She couldn’t hear the kids in their bedrooms or her husband in his office at the end of the landing. She returned to her room, closed the door and removed from her handbag a burner mobile phone she’d purchased from a twenty-four-hour convenience store the previous night. She dialled Old Northampton’s accident and emergency department and, several voice-activated options later, she finally reached a human.

‘Hello,’ she began quietly. ‘I’d like an update on a young man who was admitted in the early hours of yesterday morning?’

The reply was curt. ‘Name?’

‘Nathan.’

‘Surname?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Your relationship to him?’

‘A . . . colleague.’

A moment’s silence followed and, when Corrine thought the woman had hung up, a ringing tone sounded.

‘Who am I speaking to?’ a male voice began.

‘Hello, I’m trying to get an update—’

‘Your name?’

There was something about his authoritative timbre that warned Corrine not to continue. She pressed the end call button and promptly dropped the phone. She bent to pick it up and spotted the scarf she had worn when she had left the boy’s unconscious body by the hospital’s entrance. She threw it into a drawer and made a mental note to add it to the log burner later.

She had barely slept that night worrying about Nathan’s condition and how their plan had gone so awry. Over and over, she’d wracked her brains as to how they could have done things differently. But she kept reaching the same conclusion: they had been blindsided.

Corrine picked up her regular phone and typed MP Eleanor Harrison’s name. ‘MP remains in critical condition with head injury,’ read the first of many news stories. Corrine bit her index finger. Even though she despised the woman, she hoped for her own sake that Harrison would make a full recovery.

She studied her reflection in the bedroom mirror. Dark bruising had risen to the surface overnight, framing her mouth in blues and blacks from where the fist had landed. Concealer would hide it. Her swollen lips, however, would be harder to disguise. She picked up a towel from the sink and held it to her mouth. She’d tell anyone who commented that it had been an allergic reaction to shellfish, her first in years.

Corrine gently applied her make-up, ran her fingers through her brown-and-grey-flecked hair, then slipped into a comfortable pair of trousers. She flinched; muscles she had strained last night tugged as she pulled her arms into a loose-fitting blouse.

She gave herself a final once-over in the mirror before clearing her throat and making her way downstairs. Through a window adjacent to the staircase, she spotted her neighbour Derek and his new wife climbing into their car. It had been almost two years since she had last spoken a word to the man she had once considered a friend. Corrine rarely bore grudges but she’d made an exception for him.

She passed the utility room and bid the housekeeper Elena a good morning. Outside, she heard the quiet hum of the lawnmower as Elena’s husband Florin tended the garden.

Gathered around the television in the reception room were Corrine’s husband Mitchell and two of their three children. She corrected herself: they weren’t children any more, they were young adults. Twins Nora and Spencer were eighteen and would soon be following in their older sister Freya’s footsteps and heading to university. Once, Corrine thought she’d be dreading the moment they flew the nest. But not now that she had a plan in place.

Corrine’s eyes rested on Mitchell. Sitting on one of the sofas, he rested his folded arms on a belly that strained the fabric of his t-shirt. Dark hairs protruded from his ears like the legs of a hermit crab poking out from a seashell. She assumed the birthday vouchers she had given him for a male grooming spa treatment remained unused.

‘Have you heard who’s dead?’ asked Spencer. ‘Jem Jones.’

‘The girl from the internet?’ Corrine replied. She recalled hearing the news headline on the radio as she drove back from the hospital but had been too preoccupied to pay the story any attention.

‘Uhuh. She killed herself while livestreaming. Gun to the head. Boom.’ He mimicked placing a weapon to his temple and pulling the trigger.

‘Oh, that’s awful.’

‘Do you want to watch it?’

‘No, why would I? And neither should you.’

‘I’ve already seen it, like, a dozen times this morning. It’s all over the internet.’

Mitchell turned, taking in her appearance, and her mouth in particular. ‘Given into peer pressure and had your lips done?’ he mocked.

‘Woah, Mum!’ Nora added. ‘You know less is more, right?’