Then She Was Gone(37)

‘How long has it been going on for?’

SJ drops her chin into her chest and mumbles, ‘A few months.’

‘And how often are you seeing him?’

‘Most days,’ she says.

‘Where?’

‘At work. In his office.’ She shrugs. ‘Sometimes at his brother’s place when he’s out of town.’

‘Does he ever take you out anywhere? Drinks? Dinner?’

SJ shakes her head and plucks at the drawstring on her joggers.

‘So it’s just sex?’

SJ lifts her head quickly. ‘No!’ she exclaims. ‘No! It’s much more than that! We talk, all the time. And he draws me. I’m his …’

‘Muse.’

‘Yes. I’m his muse.’

Laurel sighs. Cliché after cliché after cliché.

‘Sara-Jade,’ she starts carefully. ‘You are a very beautiful girl.’

‘Huh.’

‘You are very beautiful and very special. This man – what’s his name?’

‘Simon.’

‘Simon has very good taste. He can clearly see quality when it crosses his path. And I’m sure he’s a wonderful man.’

‘He is,’ says SJ. ‘He really is.’

‘Of course. You wouldn’t be with him if he wasn’t. Has he said he’ll leave his wife?’

‘Partner.’

‘Partner. Wife, it doesn’t matter. They have children. They share a home. Has he said he’ll leave her for you?’

She shakes her head.

‘Do you want him to?’

She nods. And then shakes it again. ‘No. Obviously. I mean, you know, his kids, especially the little one. And I’ve been through it myself. So I know what it feels like.’

‘How old were you when your parents split up?’

‘Six,’ she says. ‘Virtually the same age as Simon’s son. So …’

‘So you don’t want him to leave her for you?’

‘No. Only in an imaginary way, where no one gets hurt.’

‘But what if she finds out? His partner? What if she finds out? And then leaves him anyway?’

‘She won’t find out.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because we’re discreet.’

‘SJ, this is the modern world. There is no privacy any more. Everyone knows everything. All the time. I mean, look how quickly you googled me after we met. Found out about Ellie. Someone, somewhere will find out what’s happening and they might just tell Simon’s partner and then everything will be broken. Irreparably. And the only way you can avoid that happening is by walking away. Making it stop.’

SJ sniffs and ties knots in her drawstring.

‘Do you love him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you love him enough to hurt a lot of people who don’t deserve to be hurt?’

‘How do you expect me to answer that?’

‘It’s a tough question, but you do need to answer it. Not now, but over the next hours and days. I’m not going to tell you that in ten years you’ll look back and wonder what the hell you were thinking, because I remember being twenty-one and thinking that my personality was a solid thing, that me was set in stone, that I would always feel what I felt and believe what I believed. But now I know that me is fluid and shape-changing. So whatever you’re feeling now, it’s temporary. But what will happen to that family if they find out about their father’s betrayal will have repercussions forever. The damage will never heal.’

Fat tears coalesce in the rims of SJ’s eyes and drop heavily on to her cheeks. Laurel thinks she sees her nod but she’s not quite sure.

‘Why did you and your husband split up?’

‘Because of Ellie. Because I didn’t think he was hurting enough. Because he tried to make me believe that things would be OK, and I didn’t want things to be OK.’

‘Did it hurt your children when you split up? Do they hate you?’

The question takes Laurel by surprise. Not did they hate you, but do they hate you. She thinks of last night’s awful phone call from Blue and Jake. She thinks of Hanna’s refusal to engage with her on anything other than a very shallow level of human interaction, and the way both her children keep her at arms’ length. She’s always put it down to their responses to losing their sister when they were both at such a vulnerable age. She can’t even remember how they reacted to Paul moving out. The separation was played out so slowly it was hard to pinpoint the moment it had actually ended. She doesn’t remember tearful recrimination, she doesn’t remember her children hurting, or at least hurting any more than they’d already been hurting.

‘I don’t know,’ she replies. ‘Maybe. But then we were already a broken family.’

SJ nods; then she unfurls her limbs, sits forward in her chair and engages Laurel on a different level entirely. ‘I’ve been reading lots of stuff about it. About Ellie. On the internet.’

‘Have you?’

‘Yes. I mean, I was only a kid in 2005 so I’d never heard of Ellie Mack before. And now, well, it’s sort of weird that you’re here, in my dad’s house, and that this hideous, terrible thing happened to you, a thing that just doesn’t happen to people. And I keep thinking …’ She pauses. ‘Do you believe that she ran away?’