The Things You Didn't See(51)

‘Cass! It’s okay. You were dreaming.’

Daniel. Pale yellow light is cast from the morning sun and I can make out his face, I smell him. He’s fully dressed, but dishevelled, and then I remember: he left me last night, he went with Dad to the police station.

‘What’s happened, Dan?’

‘You need to be strong, love. Your dad won’t be coming home.’

It was just a bad dream. No, it was a memory.

And then Daniel tells me what’s happened. What Dad has told the police, that he’s been locked up.

I am awake and the nightmare isn’t over after all.





24

Holly

Holly was woken by an insistent rapping on her front door. She reached for her alarm clock and saw it was midday, she had only slept for four hours. She pulled herself from the warmth of her bed and padded to the front door. Leif stood there, in his police uniform.

‘I know who shot Maya,’ he said, before he’d even got inside her flat. ‘I’ve just done a morning’s shift and it’s all anyone is talking about.’

She needed to breathe, space to think through all that Janet had told her, but here was Leif with more news, any fears he’d had of breaching confidentiality gone with his enthusiasm.

‘He confessed. It’ll be in the evening papers so I don’t tell you anything that you won’t know in a few hours.’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Tell me.’

Late yesterday evening Hector and Daniel had arrived at the police station, determined to see the officer in charge. Bedraggled and bowed, his left hand nursing his right, Hector had waited patiently for the police detective to find him and lead him down to an interview room. Gone, Leif said, was the farmer’s physical toughness. Without his bluster, he simply looked like a man out of his mind with worry.

Leif said that the room had been crowded, everyone watching the screen as the interview played out.

‘Would you like to speak with a solicitor, Mr Hawke?’ he was asked.

‘Nope. You can just listen.’

‘First, I’m going to read you your rights.’

As he was cautioned, Hector seemed to straighten up, to push his shoulders back, as though preparing himself for battle.

‘Okay, Mr Hawke,’ the detective asked. ‘What is it you’d like to say?’

Hector crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward, pushing his bad hand into his chest as if hiding it. Leif said Hector hadn’t looked like he’d had much sleep recently.

‘You interviewed my boy and you’ve had Janet in here too – you think one of ’em shot Maya. But you’re wrong. Janet keeps the farmhouse goin’, as she allus has, especially back when the kids were babies. The blood on the gun is Janet’s. But not because she’s guilty.’

‘How did it get there, then?’ the detective asked.

‘Janet and Ash, they both held the rifle that mornin’. There was a struggle and Janet got scratched. That’s how she came to bleed. But she was protectin’ Maya from me. I pushed Maya down the stairs, then I got the rifle from the cupboard, which was already open on account of me not lockin’ it after the shoot. I went down the stairs, loadin’ the gun as I did. Then I put the muzzle under her chin and I shot her. And I didn’t know what I’d done until Daniel woke me.’

The detective, Leif said, was puzzled. So was everyone watching. ‘Until he woke you?’

‘I was sleepwalkin’, see. I shot Maya, but I was asleep.’

Having told her his burning news, Leif moved into her kitchen like it was his own. ‘Shall I make us some lunch?’ he asked, then noticed her pyjamas. ‘Or, in your case, breakfast?’

‘That’d be great,’ she said, trying to sound normal, though her thoughts were reeling. Hector shot Maya, but in his sleep. She certainly hadn’t seen that coming, but her instincts with Janet had been right: she and Ash had worked together to protect someone they loved. It was over then, the mystery was solved.

Relief made her giddy, lack of sleep made her impulsive. As Leif stood at the hob scrambling eggs, she wrapped her arms around him, wanting to lose herself in the moment, relying on only her most basic human senses and forgetting all else.

Later, physical appetites sated, they lay together on the bed, arms and legs entwined in the relaxing aftermath of sex, Holly felt contentment calm her senses like balm. She stroked the side of Leif ’s face and snuggled closer to kiss him. It was his acceptance of her, the ease she felt with him, that made her open up in a way she never had before.

‘Leif, there’s something I need to tell you, something that’s wrong with me. You might want to run a mile . . .’ she began, as his eyes registered alarm.

He sat up, so he could see her face, and said so tenderly she wanted to cry, ‘Are you ill, S?tnos?’

‘No, nothing like that. It’s more a way I have of seeing things.’

She told him, as well as she could, of how the world seemed to her; how he was the colour yellow. She felt lighter, as if a burden had been removed from her shoulders.

‘For certain you’re lucky!’ he said. ‘Your senses are completely attuned – this is what I try to do with films. I try and engage all my senses, but often I fail.’

Although she knew her synaesthesia could sometimes be a gift, she was still surprised at how positively Leif viewed it. ‘It’s not all roses, Leif. I sometimes can’t stand it . . . I avoid the news, and TV. Some days all I want to do is sit in this flat and stare at a blank wall.’