‘Seven weeks’ gestation. Twins. You didn’t know?’ she says to Jack.
He shakes his head, tears welling in his eyes.
The reverberations from that bombshell echo in the silence that follows. All the futures that might have been. Brothers or sisters or both for Florence; Lizzie pushing a double buggy. The hope and promise of new babies.
Jack gets up abruptly and goes upstairs. We can hear him being sick, a raw, retching sound.
‘What about Broderick Litton?’ Tony says.
‘We’ve not been able to trace him yet.’
‘Why not?’ I say. ‘All the surveillance we have, cameras everywhere, bureaucracy, the internet.’
‘If people want to stay under the radar, it’s possible,’ Kay says.
I think about it: no wages or NI, no GP or car registration, no bank account. You’d have to live on the streets.
‘We are looking,’ she says.
I wonder where you are. Where you can hide. If you have gone on the run, to London, or Spain, or across the globe. Or perhaps you are still here, in Manchester, watching the news updates, relieved as Lizzie’s murder drops off the headlines and the front pages. Do you find an excuse to change channels when it’s on or are you audacious enough to make observations about it? I hope you are paralysed with fear. Unable to eat or sleep or think. Counting the minutes till there’s a knock on the door and they come for you.
Ruth
Monday 14 September 2009
Jack’s parents arrive, Marian and Alan; Jack saw them briefly at their hotel last night. After a tactful few minutes sharing commiserations and expressions of shock and sad disbelief, I leave them to it, ask them to excuse me if I go and lie down. There are too many people in the house as it is, and I think they need some space to talk with their son. I’m also worried that if I don’t stop for a little while, I’ll physically collapse. I’ve never been a fan of melodrama, and me keeling over would only be an added strain for everyone.
My heart is painful in my chest, a dull ache as if it’s swollen, and pounding too fast. I take my slippers off and lie on my back on the bed and try to slow my breathing, to release the knots in my stomach, the slab of tension across my back. It doesn’t work: as soon as I lose concentration, which I do easily, I find myself holding my breath. Dredging up some moves from yoga from years ago, I try those, but it’s hopeless. My body rebels, taut, spastic.
Closing my eyes, I focus on the sounds: birds in the garden, a bus wheezing by, the sound of someone clinking pots from downstairs, the ticking of the central heating radiator, sibilant fragments from Florence’s DVD. There is some tinnitus in my ears, a revolving hum that may be a machine somewhere but is probably just a noise in my head.
