Good Girl Bad (40)

And he stalks out of the room and out the front door.

On the veranda, Leroy paces up and down, calling Tabby’s number, but it goes straight to voicemail, and he curses, shutting his phone, opening it again. He searches for the bridge in his map app, then goes back inside, slamming the door behind him.

He tries to wake Genevieve, but she’s dead to the world, and he’s torn.

Can he leave her here, with Rebecca?

But Rebecca’s never fought with Gen, he reasons to himself. And Gen won’t even stir before he’s back.

He stands at her bedroom door, stepping away, hesitating. Rebecca appears behind him.

“I’m going to find Tabby,” he hisses at her, disgust on his face. “If you hurt that child, I will bloody kill you, do you understand?” And he stalks away from her, out of the house.

He doesn’t notice that the door doesn’t shut properly behind him, and slowly creaks open as he strides furiously to his car, and tears off into the night.





37





Thursday

After the flurry of phone calls, Nate and Cheryl sit at the kitchen table, facing each other awkwardly.

“Detective Casey is going to interview Fred.” Nate feels constantly nauseous. He wants to go round there and beat the man to a pulp. His hands have not stopped shaking.

He can’t get on to Rebecca. Her phone is on the table beside them, in fact. He can’t understand how she could just go walking without her phone while their child is missing.

He wants to blame her for Tabby and Fred, he wants to shout at her and throw things, but he also can barely think through the roar in his ears.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

He had Leroy all wrong. Leroy was the only one trying to help Tabby. He stands up suddenly and rushes to the sink, but just leans over it, saliva dripping from his mouth. No vomit comes.

When he’s sure he’s not going to be sick, he drinks some water, then goes and sits opposite Cheryl. She’s twisting a scarf around and around in her fingers.

“Casey asked us to wait here. She’ll call when she’s spoken to Fred. She wants to talk to Rebecca.”

They’ve left Genevieve on the couch with a blanket and a DVD. Nate doesn’t even know where to start. How do you talk about the elephant in the room? He’s so agitated, he just wants something to fill the gaping hole where understanding and common sense prevail.

Why is Rebecca like this?

Why is Fred?

Can he even count all the ways in which he has failed?

“What happened to you guys? Why don’t you talk?”

Tears slide down Cheryl’s face, relentless.

They haven’t stopped since Genevieve told them about Fred, and that she’d told Freddy about the affair.

She’d handed him the burner phone. “It was in my room. I don’t know how it got there.”

“After Moira died—” Cheryl starts, now, and Nate holds up a hand.

“Start there,” he says. “I don’t know what happened. Only how devastated Rebecca was.”

Cheryl starts to sob harder.

“She was only six. Rebecca was ten. Rob and I had had a bad year. I’d had an affair.” Nate startles, but Cheryl’s eyes are distant, unfocused.

“We were fighting a lot. We put a lot of pressure on Rebecca. She did a lot of the caring for Moira. God, she loved her sister.” At this point, Cheryl leans over until her forehead is resting against the table. Her shoulders shake violently.

Nate stares at her, a lump forming in his throat. Everything seems like it is happening in slow motion.

“We were shit parents, I admit that. All we did was fight, and ignore them. I was so lost. Rob was so angry. I don’t know how we survived, to be honest.” Cheryl is still talking to the table, her voice muffled through her tears. Nate can’t see her face.

“It was only a year, I swear. We just weren’t paying attention. And I’d told Rebecca she would teach Moira to swim. I didn’t mean for her to take her somewhere. I meant, in the local pool, some time later, after Rebecca learnt. She’d only just started lessons herself.” Cheryl sits up suddenly, her mouth gaping, her eyes pleading for Nate to understand. “But we didn’t explain properly. We didn’t. I don’t even remember that year, I drank too much, I just wished the kids would leave me alone. I was lost myself. My marriage was falling apart. I didn’t know how to fix anything. I thought the kids would just…always be there. That I could get back to mothering later, when I’d sorted out the rest of my life. But of course you can’t stop. You can’t take time out of parenting. You’re there, or you’re not.”

Cheryl raises her eyes here, looks at Nate directly. He thinks that she thinks she’s taking responsibility for herself, her own actions. Not trying to hide, not trying to deflect blame. But he feels her words like little stabs into his flesh.

“Rebecca took her to the river. She was just trying to please me. She was trying to be a good girl. She was always such a good girl. She always tried so hard, at everything. And then. Well. She wouldn’t talk about it. All she ever said was that she was teaching her to swim. But I know why she was doing it. She was trying to please me. She was trying to be good.”

Cheryl’s head sags again. Tears slide silently down her cheeks. Nate gets the sense that they are infinite; that she will never be done crying about this.