Stephen was feeling even more pleased with himself than usual. OK, ‘The body in the lake’ was not the most original of headlines, but it was a cracking story, and he was hoping to get enough extra material for at least a double-page spread inside – plus he’d almost certainly be able to eke it out for the rest of the week too. He’d got Maddie straight onto the bloke they’d picked up; she was off now seeing what she could dig up on him.
Maybe today was going to turn out well after all. It had certainly started badly. He and Juliette seemed to be getting on more appallingly than ever, she was so bloody uptight these days, always shouting at the kids, presiding over a pigsty of a house. How on earth could they have so much domestic help and the place still look like that? He felt sorry for the children sometimes, especially Noah, and he was worried about his middle child, he seemed to have become so withdrawn lately. Stephen didn’t know what had happened to Juliette, she certainly hadn’t turned out to be much of a wife and mother, despite her early promise. He’d been so taken in by her beauty, her utter middle-classness, when they’d met at Bristol, and he’d been immediately smitten, had worshipped her like a precious painting, but she’d changed so much over the years, had become so bitter, and it was like she hated him as much as she did her mother now. Even worse, he was convinced she was having an affair these days, and the thought made him want to retch; he hated that she still had such a hold on him. He was annoyed that Terry still hadn’t got back to him with an update from her supposed picnic the other night; he bet he’d lost her, the useless twat.
His phone rang, and it was her. She didn’t usually ring him at work. His heart leaped, despite himself.
‘Yes,’ he said, which he knew didn’t help marital relations, but hostility was their modus operandi these days.
‘I’m at the police station,’ she said carefully.
‘Why?’ he said. Christ, was she all right? Had something happened to the kids?
‘Siobhan’s dead.’
‘What? How?’
‘She drowned, in The Serpentine.’
Stephen felt his breath fall down, away from his chest, as though gravity had just got stronger. He felt a tightness in his throat.
‘Weren’t you with her the other night?’ he said. ‘In Hyde Park?’ He wondered if Terry knew anything about any of this – he bet he did, the sneaky little cunt, no wonder he hadn’t been returning his calls.
‘Yes,’ said Juliette. ‘But the rest of us had left, it must have happened after.’ The lie came out surprisingly easily, and she was ashamed of herself.
‘She was drunk,’ she added, as if an afterthought, and gave a little sob.
‘This is fucking awkward for me,’ he said, thinking of the front page he’d been about to push the button on.
‘Well, I think it’s a bit more awkward for Siobhan, don’t you?’ his wife said softly, and put down the phone.