The Child Who

Megan shivers. She cannot help it and she cannot hide it. Her husband, though, does not notice. He is searching for his voice in his coffee cup.

‘It was the guards,’ he says. ‘Two of them. Allegedly, of course. They haven’t admitted anything and from what I hear each one’s covering for the other, blaming some mysterious inmate. But the guards. Can you believe it?’ Leo smiles and shakes his head.

Megan looks at her hands.

‘He was up for parole,’ Leo said. ‘Or he would have been. Maybe that was why. Huh. I didn’t think of that. Maybe just the thought of them letting him out…’ Leo shakes his head again. ‘Such rage,’ he says, as much to himself. ‘So much rage.’

‘Don’t tell me you can’t understand it, Leo. Not now. Not after everything that… that we…’ Megan’s anger, from nowhere, overwhelms itself.

‘What? No. Meg, please. I didn’t mean…’

She turns her cheek. She presses her lips. Leo, she can tell, is searching for the words that might appease her but she could save him the effort because there are none, not in that moment. Her husband, however, seems to have reached the same conclusion because the silence stretches.

When Megan turns back he avoids her eye.

‘It was the guards,’ Megan says. Her voice is taut but composed. ‘You were saying: it was the prison guards.’

Now Leo looks: a child peeking from beneath the covers. He nods, tentatively. ‘That’s right.’ He clears his throat. ‘That’s what people seem to think.’ He sits straight.

‘What did they…’ Megan, too, adjusts herself in her seat. ‘The guards. How did they…’

Leo does not answer right away. He is staring again. He wants to ask, she can tell: do you really want to know? Probably she does not but she can hardly confess to that now.

‘They stabbed him,’ Leo says and that, Megan thinks, is that – at least now they can move on. Leo, though, is not finished. ‘They stabbed him,’ he says again, ‘and punctured his lung. They locked him in the shower block and they watched through the glass as he drowned in his own blood. Allegedly,’ Leo adds. His smile, on anyone else, would seem dangerous.

Megan shuts her eyes. She makes a motion with her hand, as though Leo had not already stopped talking.

When she recovers herself, he is watching her. There is something in his look that was not there before.

‘He’s dead, Megan. Daniel Blake. He’s dead.’

She shakes her head. What is that supposed to—

‘That’s why you’re here. Right? That’s why you wanted to see me. He’s dead, I promise you. They’ve had their blood.’

And so, his expression seems to say, has she.

‘Leo. Really. Is that what you… Surely you can’t think that I…’

He waits.

‘… that I wanted – ’ she lowers her voice ‘ – this.’ She is shaking her head and Leo seems suddenly uncertain.

Until: ‘The divorce,’ he says and his shoulders wilt. ‘Right? Closure, finally. That’s what this is about?’

Still Megan shakes her head. ‘No. Leo, no.’ She almost laughs. How has she behaved? How has she treated him that he holds her intentions in such base regard?

Leo is searching the tablecloth for direction. He looks at Megan and his eyes draw narrow. Well? he does not say. What, then?

‘The house.’

Coward.

‘The house? What about the house?’

Nothing. Forget the house. This has nothing to do with the house.

‘I’m planning… I’m planning to sell it.’

Leo takes a moment to react. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘That’s up to you.’

‘I saw an agent. You wouldn’t believe how much he said it was worth. I mean, we’d split what was left, obviously. After we pay off the mortgage.’

‘Sure. That’s fine. It’s up to you.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘Why would I mind? It’s your house, Meg. That’s what we agreed.’

‘I live there. That doesn’t make it mine.’

‘No, that’s true but…’

‘It’s a lot of money, Leo. Aren’t you interested in knowing how much?’

So much for the sweetener. So much for softening the blow. But how, really, did she expect him to react, given how much each of their attitudes towards money has changed? After Ellie, it hardly seemed important to either of them. It is the reason – one of them – why their parting was so effortless. There was nothing, no complications even, to bind them together.

‘I earn enough, Meg. I trust you. Sell it for what you can and take what you need.’

Megan nods. She fiddles with the straw in her drink.

‘Meg.’

She looks up.

‘This isn’t about the house,’ Leo says. ‘Is it?’

And the surprise, this time, must surely show on her face. But again, why should it? She knows him; he knows her. After the greater part of twenty years together, there is no escaping that.

Except, if today proves nothing else, it is that Leo does not know Megan as well as he might think. He does not know, for instance, how furious she is, how it feels sometimes like she is choking on hate. He does not know how atrophied her heart has become, how ruthless that allows her to be, how pitiless. He does not know, after twenty years of being together and a decade now of being apart, what his wife is capable of.

‘No,’ Megan says. ‘It’s not.’

And he does not, above all, know what she has done.

20

He was conscious, through it all, of the contradiction. On the one hand he willed an acceleration because everything, it was clear to Leo, was taking far too long. People walked, they did not run. They asked, then asked again, then went away and came back with the same questions. Just to clarify, they would explain, even though Leo – in the first instance; certainly by the third – had been perfectly clear. He knew he had been clear because he knew too the effort it was costing him: to reason when he wanted to rage; to be considered, considerate, when the only consideration he had was finding his missing daughter. Some of those he spoke to suggested he sit. They offered him tea or coffee or water or anything at all and they actually suggested he sit. No one sits! he wanted to scream. No one drinks! No one eats, sleeps, shits until we find my fucking daughter!

As though he were entitled to rage. As though he were entitled to direct his anger anywhere but at himself. More haste. More speed. It seemed, on the one hand, the only prophylactic to insanity.

But on the other. On the other, every minute was a minute lost, every second a second wasted. Each tick, each tock, was a slice stolen from his daughter’s life, another moment of Ellie suffering. It was time, moreover, they needed to be using. Leo knew enough about these things to know that. He knew, or could guess, what every passing hour was costing them; how for each day they lost, so their chances on the next would diminish. And so he checked the time incessantly, to monitor it, scrutinise it, see that it did not snatch. It was like a gluttonous child, he decided, reaching with flabby fingers as soon as Leo turned his back. And it stole, when it stole, by the fistful.