COMMISSIONER JOHN REES WAKES SLOWLY, rising up through what feels like a warm sea. Sounds leak in as he comes to, muffled sounds of low voices, murmurs and whispers, distant and indistinct, and he is aware of his own breathing, the effort of it, like something heavy is pressing down on his chest. Then he feels another pressure, light but firm on his hand, like someone has taken hold of it and is pulling him up and out of the warm ocean.
He opens his eyes and a shape comes slowly into focus, then a face he recognizes—and he smiles.
“Grace!” he croaks, his throat dry and raw.
The face slides away, and he panics for a moment, then he hears water pour from a jug, and a hand reaches behind his head and lifts it slightly. He feels the coolness of the water on his lips, drinks, and looks up at her, blinking to try and force her face into focus, desperate to see it again after so long. The glass is removed and he whispers his wife’s name again, “Grace,” as he starts to remember now—the man in the mask, the knife in his hand, the fear in his daughter’s face.
He had told her to run but can’t remember if she did. He had grabbed him, held him as long as he could with one single thought sharp in his mind even as the knife had stabbed into him again and again.
Not this time, he had repeated, blocking out the pain and clinging to this one thought as tightly as he’d grappled with the man in the hideous mask.
Not this time.
The figure by his bed leans over him again, pressing a tissue to the damp edge of his mouth, and he looks up at her—his Grace, long dead but here again, which means he must be dead too and that’s fine with him, just as long as she got away. As long as Laughton lived he would pay any price, even his own life.
He smiles at his wife as her face comes finally into sharp focus, and then he cries with regret and relief. Regret that it’s not his wife standing over his bed, but relief that Laughton did get away, because it is she who is tipping the water glass to his lips, she who is dabbing the edge of his mouth with a tissue.
Laughton sits in a chair in the doorway between two adjoining rooms.
After her father came back from the emergency surgery she’d asked if he could be put in the same room as Gracie so she could sit by both their beds at once. They’d told her that was not possible for various protocol and infection control reasons, but they could put him in the next room as long as she promised to keep the door between them closed. She had promised, then jammed the door open with the chair the moment they left and now sat on the threshold between the two rooms, neither in nor out of either, looking right at her father, then left at her sleeping daughter, then back again, on and on in a constant vigil.
Once her father had woken briefly. She had given him some water and he had called her by her mother’s name, then cried, before slipping back down into sleep again.
From time to time Laughton gets up to stretch her aching body, walking stiffly around both rooms like an attack dog patrolling a perimeter. The thick bandage on her leg restricts her movement a little and the stitches throb in time with her heartbeat now that the painkillers are wearing off. One of the nurses told her she had almost killed the man who had done this to her. She has thought about that a lot.
Gracie has still not woken. She remains in the chemically induced coma that is helping her heal. Laughton longs for her to wake, but she is frightened of it too. When she wakes Laughton will have to tell her what happened and talk about why she is here. And though she is afraid of that conversation, she is more scared of the lack of talk that resulted in her daughter ending up here in this bed. So when Gracie wakes they will talk, painful though it will be.
They will talk and, this time, Laughton will listen.
But until then she will watch over her. She will watch over her daughter and she will watch over her father and do whatever she can to make sure no further harm comes to either of them.
On the evening following the attack Tannahill appears, bringing her laptop from home, a file box, and some Chinese takeaway that chases away the smell of disinfectant like a garlicky dragon.
They eat the Chinese food in the open door between the two rooms, using the file box as a table, Laughton sitting in Gracie’s room and Tannahill in her father’s, talking about everything and nothing. It feels nice, almost normal, though Laughton never stops glancing over at the two people in the beds.
When the meal is finished Tannahill clears all the rubbish into the bags he brought the food in, then looks at Laughton with a serious expression on his face. “I need to ask you something,” he says. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want, but I have to ask.”
Laughton nods, anxious about what it is he’s about to say.
“How come you’re called Laughton?”
She laughs with relief and points at her father. “His fault,” she says. “Have you ever seen the film Night of the Hunter?” Tannahill shakes his head. “It’s an old black-and-white movie with Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters. Mitchum plays a psycho who disguises himself as a preacher to try and con a widow out of some money. He’s got these tattoos on the fingers of each hand—‘HATE’ on the left hand and ‘LOVE’ on the right—and he does this speech where the right hand is getting beaten by the left but then ends up triumphant, proving that love always conquers hate, or something like that. It’s my dad’s favorite film. You should watch it, it’s pretty good. It’s got murders in it, you’ll like it.
“Anyway, it was the first film my dad ever watched with me, by which I mean he got up in the middle of the night when I was newborn to give my mum a break and watched it while I slept in his arms. Apparently they couldn’t decide what to call me. The director of the film was a guy called Charles Laughton. My dad liked the name, so . . .” She smiles. “That’s the story.”
Tannahill smiles. “It’s a good story.” He glances over at the sleeping form of John Rees. “You’re not a normal family, that’s for sure.”
Laughton follows his gaze. “Is there any such thing?”
Tannahill turns to her, the serious expression back on his face. “So how does all this leave things between you two, do you think?”
“I don’t know. I would say time will tell, but I’m not sure how much time we’ve got. I keep watching him to make sure he’s still breathing, so I guess that tells you something.”
Tannahill nods, then he drums his fingers on the lid of the file box. “This is all the personal stuff from your father’s office. There’s a few things in there you might find interesting. I’ve also emailed you the latest updates to the case file in case you wanted something to read. That’s got murders in it too.”
Laughton smiles, then Tannahill leans in and kisses her, just a soft kiss on the side of her mouth, but it passes through her body like an electric charge.
“Good night, Laughton Rees,” he says, then he heads for the door, the takeaway bag dangling from his hand. He opens the door to leave, then pauses and turns back.
“If you want to call me to talk about anything, anything at all, then call. Doesn’t matter what time it is, OK? Just call.”
Then he nods and steps out of the room, and Laughton watches the door close slowly behind him.