‘Mr Ellis,’ Matt said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Please … just call me Greg, okay?’ He waited for a long moment then looked up, his face apologetic. ‘Do you want to know the last thing she said to me? Before we went to sleep that night?’
They both nodded.
‘Me and her let Josh in our bed because he’s been having bad dreams. He fell asleep between us and me and her just talked. Just before she drifted off, she took my hand and …’ He stopped. His chin started to twitch. His chest rose in tiny little jerks. ‘She kissed me on the head and said … I was … that I was the best thing that ever happened to her. And that was the last thing she ever said to me.’
‘Greg?’ Matt said, and the children outside immediately stopped laughing. ‘What happened in the morning?’
‘Well, I get up for work at six and I always tiptoe out of there so I don’t wake her. I don’t put lights on. Josh was next to me, I know that. But I didn’t even notice she wasn’t there when I left the house … Josh says when he woke up he thought we’d both just gone to work. So he just spent all day on the model …’
‘He stayed at home all day?’ Larry asked. ‘He didn’t go to school?’
‘It’s too far to walk, so he just sat here confused all day, waiting for his mum to …’ Greg looked down at his hands. They were trembling.
Larry turned to Matt. ‘Give us a second, okay?’
‘Okay,’ Matt stood and headed for the lounge. The conservatory and mini-Innsbruck began filling with the sounds of deep, bitter tears. Just as he went for the door that led to the lounge, he saw something that startled him.
A tiny hand vanished from the glass.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Bless him.
Josh had rushed to the sofa and thrown himself on it, eyes fixed on the Scooby Doo cartoon that was playing on the TV. He was acting like he’d been watching this the entire time, and not lurking, listening to the grown-ups.
Matt walked up and quietly sat next to him. ‘Oh, I’ve seen this one,’ he nodded at the screen. ‘It’s the one when they meet that guy who’s made of fire.’
Josh nodded. ‘Actually it’s electricity. He’s about 10,000 volts.’
‘Zoinks … that’s a lot.’
‘Yeah, he can melt through snow and gates and doors and stuff.’
‘That’s probably pretty handy … I guess.’
They watched the screen for a while. Shaggy and Scooby were tiptoeing through a factory, looking for food. Both were wearing earmuffs. He let it play out for a few moments. ‘I guess you heard us talking then?’
He was silent.
‘Would you like to talk about it? About your mum?’
Josh reached for the remote control and tapped the volume down a few notches. The funky bass lines of the cartoon soundtrack sank into the background. ‘He’s wrong, you know.’
‘Who is?’
‘Daddy.’
Matt looked back at the conservatory. Maybe he should wait until Larry came back—
‘She was scared.’
Matt turned on the sofa. ‘Of what?’
Josh had blonde hair, curled into a tuft at the front. The collar of a white shirt poked out from under his jumper. Smart-looking. As well organised and pruned as the house itself. As ordered as the coloured stacks of Lego bricks. ‘Daddy goes away sometimes.’
‘With work?’
Josh shook his head. ‘With friends, I think. Sometimes he stays over.’
‘I see.’
‘On the nights he isn’t here, Mummy freaks out a bit … like last week.’
‘What happened last week?’
‘He wasn’t home again so she woke me up in the middle of the night. She said we had to hide.’ Josh stared at the TV. The 10,000-volt monster thing was stomping through a corridor, enraged. ‘She’d pulled all of her dresses out of the cupboard. Then she got me and Samson and said we all had to climb in. We shut the door and hid.’
‘Was Samson okay with that?’
Josh nodded, like it was an odd question. ‘He was fine. He just cuddled up.’
‘Do you know who she was hiding from?’
He finally turned to him. ‘She was hiding from the bad thing.’
A pause. ‘What’s the bad thing?’
‘She wouldn’t say. She said she kept seeing it in town. Said the bad thing tried to talk to her once, in the park.’
‘It can speak?’
He nodded.
‘So the bad thing was a person, then?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ he shrugged. ‘She just said the bad thing came back to Menham and that it was in our garden that night and she didn’t want it to know anybody was home. That we were home. So we hid in the cupboard.’
Matt looked back at the conservatory. Larry had his hand on Greg’s quaking shoulders. ‘Did anybody else know about the bad thing?’
‘She said her friends had seen it. A really long time ago.’
‘Which friends?’
‘Dunno,’ he shook his head. ‘She said I didn’t have to be scared but I was because … well, because she was. She was shaking … like this.’ He held out thin, pale hands and trembled them.
‘So …’ Matt said. ‘Did you
