I got held up on the M25. Jack-knifed lorry, apparently, and something toxic all over the show. I fumed in the carbon-belching queue, wishing I had a takeaway coffee.
After about a decade without forward movement, I began to twiddle with the radio; hit the news—bad, all of it—and the weather. According to the very jolly weatherman, we were in for severe gales by the middle of the following week, a mother of a storm. And the odds were shortening on a white Christmas.
As the minutes passed I became increasingly aware of a twisting in my guts. I couldn’t say quite why, but I found myself finger drumming and heel tapping like a hyperactive schoolkid. There was something about the tone of Deborah’s last letter that I hadn’t liked, especially when I remembered Lucy’s recent anxiety. I had an uneasy sense that I needed to get to Coptree immediately. I wanted to see Debs—see them all. In the end I fished out a map and planned a cross country route from the next exit.
I opened the door of the truck and leaned out. Hundreds of red taillights, all arranged in neat, obedient rows. The night was settling into stillness and frost under a clear, city-glow sky. Butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth. The jolly weatherman had to be wrong.
As soon as I spotted the next exit I barged my way across the crawling traffic, getting myself hooted at and not caring, keen to turn towards Suffolk. Once I’d left the motorway it was a convoluted route, and a couple of times I had to stop and check the map. But at least I was moving. And the closer I got, the faster I drove. By the time I reached Coptree Woods, I was flying.
Deborah’s figure appeared at the front door as soon as I pulled up, and Matt was right behind her.
‘Thank God,’ said Deborah, as I jumped out and hugged her. She kissed my cheek. ‘Thank God for you, Jake. We’re going mad here.’
‘Matt,’ I said, clapping a hand on the boy’s broad shoulder. ‘How’s it going?’
He grunted and shoved his hands into his pockets as they led me inside.
Perry appeared in the hall and shook my hand. He came with us into the kitchen and did his best to be a good host, but it seemed an immense effort for him. Deborah was doing a Stepford Wife impersonation over the stove. After ten minutes, the phone rang and Matt went to answer it. It was Lucy, checking in.
Without a word, Perry got up from the table and slumped out into the garden.
‘So—what’s wrong with Perry?’ I asked, watching him through the kitchen window. ‘I’ve never seen him so low.’ I began to twist a corkscrew into a bottle. To thank the Harrisons for their hospitality I’d brought a case of pinot noir, imported from a small producer in Hawke’s Bay. ‘You’d think he’d be doing a jig on the kitchen table. He’s won!’
Deborah turned away from the stove, compulsively winding that same strand of hair around her finger, and peered out into the darkness. We could make out Perry’s thin frame as he dug violently in the mud.
‘He won’t talk to me,’ she said helplessly. ‘The better we do with Grace, the more incapacitated he becomes.’
‘But everything’s going to plan—his plan.’
She continued to gaze out at her husband. ‘My leaving shocked him. He looked into the abyss.’
‘He wasn’t as bad as this last time I was here,’ I said, trying to be matter-of-fact.
‘No, he wasn’t. Perhaps while he had a goal—finding me, getting me back—he continued to function. But now, even though we’re all busy pretending, he’s having to face the fact that I don’t want to be here. And we’re playing this grotesque game of Happy Families.’
Perry had stopped digging. He was resting his forehead on the handle of the spade. He looked defeated.
‘I know he’s suffering,’ said Deborah. ‘I know depression is torture, and it isn’t something you can snap out of. But I have compassion fatigue, Jake. After so many years, it’s hard to carry on caring. He will improve, you know. In a few weeks or months. He always does.’
I took her shoulders and turned her around, drawing her out of sight of the window. ‘And you, Susie?’
She rested her head against me, just for a moment. Then she moved back to the stove and picked up a wooden spoon. ‘I’m managing, Jake, really I am. I’m doing this for Matt.’
I had an image of Matt, dropping out of school, abandoning his future and stacking supermarket shelves into middle age. ‘But . . . what if Matt’s only doing it for Perry? And Perry’s only doing it for . . . well, Perry.’ I considered this idea. ‘And for Grace too, I think.’
She smiled, stirring. ‘It’s no good, you know. Now that I’ve met that little girl, it is unthinkable to pack her up like a parcel and send her off into this . . .’ she searched for a word, ‘. . . this vicious world. How can strangers be trusted to love and cherish her?’
I was silent. I saw her point.
‘I thought I could escape,’ said Deborah, and her spoon whirled crazily, round and round in its saucepan. ‘But I never shall. I’m a life prisoner.’
For the next few days, Deborah rushed frenetically around the place, putting up a tree and lights and Christmas decorations. She spent hours arranging little clothes in drawers and making space for all sorts of plastic paraphernalia that I couldn’t put a name to. She did her very, very best.
But her eyes were blank.
The tanned and freckled girl I’d found, sitting on a piece of driftwood with her feet buried in the warm sands of Kulala Beach, that girl was gone. Susie was gone. I had forced her into exile. This imposter wore pearls, and a frown. And she’d done something awful to her hair. The bleached honey no longer tangled and twisted around her shoulder blades. It was ordered now, smooth and expensive, hanging in a lifeless curtain down her cheeks. She scurried all day, as though she was a robot and someone had wound her up with a key, and she couldn’t stop.
I wanted Susie to come back. I knew she was still alive, still there, hidden under a mask of cashmere and lipstick. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of her in a musical lilt of the voice or a twist of the mouth. I wished I had left her where I found her.
Perry barely emerged from his study. When he appeared, his movements were slow; even his thought processes seemed to be dulled. He’d take a long moment to answer any remark, as if he had to drag his mind back from a land immensely far away. You could feel his lifelessness settling into your bones even when he wasn’t in the same room. It was a paralysing mist that pervaded the house. I couldn’t have stood it for long.
Imogen Christie paid one more visit—tying up loose ends, she said. I made myself very scarce that day; I gather Perry rose to the occasion, as ever.
I made it clear that I’d be leaving for good first thing on Thursday morning. Matt and Deborah were off to court in the afternoon, where a judge would rubber stamp the deal, and I wanted to be well away by then. There was nothing more I could do. This was not my family, not my home. I had to face the wreckage of my own life. And leave them to theirs.