Afterwards

‘Ads?’ you say.

No response.

‘Addie, open the door, please.’

Silence.

I see your hurt.

‘He hates me,’ you say quietly, and I think Mum must be there, but it’s just me. Did you really say it? Or do I just know you so well that I know what you are thinking?

It’s not just the thing with Silas Hyman, is it?

It’s the fire.

You think that as a father you should have stopped it from happening. A father doesn’t let your mother and sister be horrifically injured. A father protects your family.

Do you think this is why he hates you?

Why he’s not opening his door to you?

The other side of the closed door, Adam is curled up on top of his bed, as if unable to move as well as speak.

For God’s sake, Mike, just go in there right now and tell him you know he didn’t start the fire.

But you say nothing.

You think he already knows.

The closed door between you, with its peeling white paint on one side and Peter Pan cut-out on the other, shuts off my vista of hope.

We drive back to the hospital and I don’t think about bringing Adam home, but the journey ten hours earlier, with each contraction pushing me beyond the perimeter of normal and imaginable and bearable.

When we arrive back, I think I see Jenny amongst the tawdry group of smokers outside the hospital, but when I look again I can’t see her. I must have been wrong.

Outside the ICU, Sarah is on her mobile. I go closer to listen. She’s finishing a conversation with Roger, sounding snappy and disappointed. She hangs up, then phones Mohsin straight afterwards,

‘Hi, me. I’ve got five minutes while Jenny’s having some tests done. Dr Sandhu promised he wouldn’t leave her for a second.’

‘Her boyfriend’s giving a statement to Davies, right now,’ Mohsin says. ‘Jesus, honey, why didn’t they tell anyone?’

‘They didn’t want to worry us. What’s happening with the hate-mail investigation?’

‘It’s turned into stalking and assault, so the enquiry’s upped several gears. Penny’s going to widen the DNA search and she’s got people sweating blood over the CCTV footage. She’d already narrowed it down to a three-hour time frame when the letter must have been posted. Her team’s weeding out anyone over sixty or under fifteen and then she’ll get stills of those remaining. From those mugshots she’s hoping to get an ID.’

‘Is anyone connecting it to the arson attack?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You?’

She tenses as she waits for his reply.

‘I think that knowing someone must have been tracking Jenny, and then physically assaulting her, changes how we should look at the fire. I think that a stalker means it’s far more likely the fire was aimed at her. I think that it’s more than possible now that the witness, whoever they are, was lying.’

‘And the attack in the hospital?’

‘I just don’t know.’

She waits a moment but he doesn’t say anything else.

‘I think you must have been right about Donald White,’ she says. ‘It must be a separate thing.’ She pauses a moment. ‘Has Ivo told you about his missing text?’

‘Lord Byron? Thank God there wasn’t texting when I was a teenager.’

‘If he really sent his poem at just after three, the fire had already taken hold. She wouldn’t have been deleting poems. Can we get the techno guys to check it out?’

‘Sure. Though I don’t know what we’re checking for.’

‘I have to get back to Jenny now.’

You come to my bed and pull the curtains around and we are surrounded by ugly brown geometric squares.

‘He doesn’t want to see me.’

‘Of course he does. He loves you. And he needs you. And-’

‘I don’t blame him. I’ve been a bloody useless father. Not just this. Just… Christ. But before, bloody useless before too.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘No wonder he turned to Silas Hyman. I was never there, was I?’

‘You were earning the money so-’

‘But even when I was with him I got it wrong. He’s never wanted me in a crisis. Always you. And now…’

‘I’ve just been there. That’s all. And he’s never actually had a crisis before this; just unhappy times. If he had it would have been you he turned to, because look at you – being so bloody strong for everyone.’

‘You do this, not me, and I don’t know how.’

‘Of course you do! You just need to be with him, that’s all. Talk to him.’

But you can’t hear me. Your insecurity about Adam blocks out what I am telling you as much as my lack of a voice.

And your loss of confidence with Addie is my fault.

I was always putting you straight and telling you off and pointing out what you should be doing with Adam, never letting you just do it your way, never trusting you as a father to want the best for him too. So many small things – what kind of birthday present; what to write in his homework diary if he hadn’t finished his Maths so that he wouldn’t get into trouble. ‘Let him get into trouble,’ you’d said and I’d thought you cruel. But maybe if he had got into trouble, he’d have realised it wasn’t so awful. Maybe other kids would have liked him more too. And perhaps I should have risked being late to school with him, as you wanted and I’d thought insensitive. He might have seen that the world didn’t collapse when he was late and then maybe he’d have stopped worrying.

And even if you were wrong, what right had I to say I knew better? Knew Adam better?

And I’m sorry that I said you didn’t stand up for him at the prize-giving, weren’t proud of him, as if you were always that way. Because a few months later, you demanded a meeting with Mrs Healey and you made sure Robert Fleming wouldn’t come back the next academic year. And it was nothing to do with you being a man or your celebrity status causing ‘a smellier stink’. I think Mrs Healey just realised that she was no match for you when you were protecting your son. And I remember that later that night, when I quizzed you, you told me she’d got Robert Fleming and his parents in too, probably hoping to outnumber you. But instead you’d been glad to publicly say that it was all down to Robert, nothing to do with Adam; and you told them you were proud of the way Adam is. What did they make of you, this big, tough man, famous for presenting a macho survival series, having pride in his small bullied son?

But the memory faded too fast; maybe because we didn’t speak about it again. You didn’t want Adam to find out about your meeting, worried about him feeling even more powerless, while I was anxious he might feel guilty for Robert being made to leave. But I think you should tell him now; so he knows that you’ll always look out for him; protect him. That you’re there for him when it counts. That you’re proud of him.

You are still silent.

‘You can do this, Mike.’

Dr Bailstrom pulls the curtains back.

‘It’s important to observe your wife at all times,’ she says curtly.

‘To prove that you’re right and there’s fuck all to observe?’ you snap back at her as you leave, and only I see the falter in your step.

You arrive at Jenny’s bedside, where Sarah is sitting guard. She has Elizabeth’s contract open.

‘Is there anything you can remember about when Elizabeth Fisher left?’ she asks you.