Nathan finally replies to Alix’s message at 6 a.m. She hears her phone buzz on the bedside table, yanks down her sleep mask, grabs her phone and squints at it.
Fuck. Sorry. Don’t know what happened. At Giovanni’s. Blacked out. Please don’t kill me.
She lets the phone fall back on to the bedside table and tugs her mask back down over her eyes. She has thirty minutes before her alarm goes off – she’s not wasting it. She didn’t get to sleep until after two in the end and her head is thick with tiredness and despair. She tries to claw back the stolen half-hour, but her adrenaline is pumping again; her husband went somewhere last night and has woken up in his friend’s flat and doesn’t know what happened in between. Her husband, who has a career and a mortgage and two children to think about. Her husband, who is forty-five.
A second later her phone buzzes again. She groans and picks it up.
On my way home now. Please don’t hate me. I love you. I’m sorry. I’m a dick.
Once again she puts the phone down and pulls her sleep mask over her eyes. But now there is even more adrenaline pumping through her. She is enraged. Please don’t hate me . Like a whiny little boy.
She gives up on salvaging the last half-hour of sleep and sits up in bed. She stares for a moment at the messages on her phone and wonders what to do. She decides not to reply, not yet, not until her rage has subsided. But a moment later her phone buzzes again and it’s him with a plaintive: Alix???
Her hands shake slightly with rage as she presses call on his number.
‘Hi.’ His voice is small, and it makes her even angrier.
‘I didn’t get to sleep until two a.m., Nathan. Two a.m., waiting to hear from you. Wondering where the fuck you were. And then you message me at six a.m. and wake me up, and you know my alarm goes off at six thirty yet you couldn’t even wait for half an hour because you’re too fucking selfish. So yes, thanks a lot, Nathan. I’ve had four hours’ sleep and now I have to get our kids up and get them ready for school and then do a full day’s work and you don’t even know where you’ve been.’
‘Alix, I am so sorry. It’s just—’
‘Fuck off, Nathan.’
She turns off her phone and slams it down.
Then she gets out of bed and has an extra-long shower.
By the time she gets the children to school at 8.50, she is calm again. Nathan has messaged three more times, professing his dismay at his own behaviour and promising her that it will never ever happen again. It is Friday and the weather is forecast to be beautiful this weekend and Alix is having lunch with her sisters on Sunday and she doesn’t want to hold on to the terrible dark feelings that had her in their nightmarish grip all of last night and so she forces herself to let them go.
After saying goodbye to the children at the school gates she is about to turn and leave when she remembers that she has a form that needs to be handed into the school office. She goes to the side gate of the school and rings on the bell, is buzzed in a moment later.
‘Hi, Alix!’
It’s Mandy, the office manager.
‘Hi, Mandy. This form is for the Natural History Museum trip tomorrow. I’m really sorry, it’s been in my handbag for weeks and I keep forgetting to drop it in. Sorry, it’s a bit scrunched up.’
She passes the scruffy piece of paper across the desk towards Mandy, who smiles and says, ‘No problem, lovey. I have seen worse, I can assure you.’
And as she says this, Alix looks at her and thinks, Mandy has been working here for twenty years; there was a celebration for her last year to mark the anniversary. The longest-serving member of staff.
‘Oh, Mandy. By the way. I’ve just started talking to a mum whose kids used to be at this school, a long time ago. They’re in their early twenties now. I wonder if you remember them?’
‘Oh. Try me! I always pride myself on never forgetting any of my children.’
‘Roxy and Erin? Fair?’
A strange shadow passes across Mandy’s face. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Yes. I remember Roxy and Erin. They were …’
Alix inhales and waits.
Mandy glances behind her at the door to the headteacher’s office, and then from left to right before leaning towards Alix and lowering her voice. ‘They were a strange family, I suppose you could say. I mean, Roxy was wild. Oppositional, you know. Turned over furniture. Threw things about. Had to suspend her a couple of times. But Erin was the sweetest thing. The total opposite to her sister. So quiet. Had some issues, possibly on the autism spectrum? But wasn’t statemented as far as I can remember. And there was this one time, I think when Erin was in year six, just towards the end of her time here …’ Mandy pauses and looks around herself again before continuing in a semi-whisper, ‘She came in with a broken arm. And there was all this talk about how she’d fallen out of bed and then one day she told a friend that it was Roxy.’
‘Roxy?’
‘Yes. Her younger sister. Said that she’d done it to her. Had to get the social services involved. It was all very messy.’
‘And had she? The younger sister? Had she broken Erin’s arm?’
‘I don’t think it was ever proved. But the parents were livid. There was some horrible scenes. Only time I ever met their dad. Big man. Big temper. And the mother …’
Alix nods, her breath held again.
‘She was really very odd. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Just stood there with this sort of blank look on her face. Let it all play out as if it was nothing to do with her, you know? And then they took Roxy out. Home-schooled her until she went to secondary school, I seem to recall.’
‘Which secondary school did they go to?’
‘Queen’s Park High, I think. But yes. Funny family. Always wondered what happened to them. And you’re friends with the mother now, are you?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say friends. No. Acquaintances.’
‘And the girls? Have you met them?’
‘No. No, not at all.’
‘Would love to know what they’re both up to now. I never had a good feeling for either of them, do you know what I mean?’
Alix nods and smiles.