Thursday 7th December 2023
Alice
There is somebody in Alice’s house.
She sits bolt upright in bed, listening to them moving around downstairs. All night she has dreamed of Leo’s face at her windows, his silhouette in her doorway, and now it’s the morning of his release and there is someone in her house.
She grabs her phone from the bedside table. Where is Beech? Why isn’t he barking wildly at the intruder? She stretches out a foot and feels his warm, sleeping bulk at the end of her bed. He springs up at her touch, sticking close to her side as she edges to the door of her room.
Alice’s heart is thundering. She gets her brother’s number ready on her phone. She should call the police, really, but she still thinks of him as the police. Inching onto the landing, she listens hard. A deep, male voice is speaking very softly. Beech’s ears prick and then he is gone, bounding down the stairs, Alice’s thumb hitting the ‘call’ icon in panic.
User busy. Fear spreads all the way through her. She takes dark comfort in imagining Beech pouncing on Leo, somehow knowing he’s no longer a friend, tearing at his clothes, baring his teeth …
Then something clicks in her brain. The voice. Beech’s lack of frantic barking, even now. She creeps to the top of the stairs and her legs almost fold. It’s her brother. It’s Peter. She leans on the banister, swearing under her breath, then walks unsteadily downstairs.
Through the half-open kitchen door, she sees him on his mobile, pacing back and forth, Beech dithering inquisitively around him.
‘Okay,’ he is saying, quiet and serious. ‘Okay. Just … keep me posted.’
‘Peter?’
He swings around, hanging up the phone. ‘Al! Did I wake you?’
‘I thought someone had broken in!’
‘Shit. Sorry.’ He flushes a little. ‘I slept on the sofa after you went up last night. You seemed so upset, I thought I’d make sure you were okay.’
Alice thinks back to their long evening in her living room, staring at the TV with an awful sense of waiting. She glances at the clock above her cooker: 8.50 a.m. Has it happened? Is Leo free?
‘Who were you talking to?’ she asks.
‘Uh …’ He slips the phone into his pocket. ‘Just an old colleague. Wanted my advice on a case.’
Alice raises an eyebrow. ‘They do know you’re retired?’
He half-smiles. ‘Sometimes, I’m not sure they do.’
She sinks into a chair, clapping a palm to her chest. ‘I thought it was him.’ Adrenaline drains from her body, leaving her hollow and light-headed. ‘God. I thought it was him.’
Peter comes up behind her and touches her shoulders. ‘I’m really sorry.’
She shakes her head, fighting tears.
‘I’ll make tea,’ he says, and she nods, because what else is there to do?
They drink their tea in silence, Alice looking pointlessly at the clock, Peter glancing often at his phone. Then he stands up abruptly. ‘I’ve gotta go, Al.’
‘Have you?’ She’s been longing to be alone, but now she feels another flutter of panic.
‘I’ve … got some things to do. But I’ll come back later.’
There’s no point arguing or questioning. Peter’s movements are mysterious at the best of times, but when he’s upset, he can’t seem to stay in one place for long.
‘Don’t forget you’ve got a session with Nadia this morning,’ he says, gesturing at the Dogs Trust calendar hanging on the wall. ‘Think it would be good for you to go?’
Alice sighs, picturing Nadia’s room full of biscuit-coloured cushions and boxes of luxury tissues. Therapy is the last thing she feels like. All her attempts to move forward, to deal with her grief … none of it has stopped this day from happening.
‘Maybe call in at Ellen’s afterwards for a coffee?’ he continues. ‘She mentioned you’d be welcome …’
He’s trying to keep her busy. Annoyance flares but it doesn’t last long; it never does with Peter. She glances at the photo pinned to her fridge – him and Robbie pulling stupid faces, never able to just ‘smile nicely, please!’ – and she knows that none of the anger writhing under her skin is for her brother.
He hugs her tightly, pausing as if he wants to say more. She sees all her fear and anger mirrored back at her, though his face is almost completely still.
After he’s gone, Alice grips the edges of her kitchen table, wanting to scream. Beech pads over and nudges his snout against her arm, so she wraps her arms around his neck and buries her face in his fur instead.
Lifting her head, she sees her phone lit up on the table in front of her. She picks it up in the anxious, almost suspicious way she checks all her messages these days. It’s a text from Marianne. Her name on the screen, once so familiar, now feels like a curveball from the past.
Of course I’ll come, she says. Thank you for inviting me.
Alice frowns in confusion, then scrolls upwards and remembers. Robbie’s memorial. It’s the day after tomorrow. A flush of shame comes over her as she realises Leo’s release has pushed it out of her head.
The link says RSVP to someone called Georgie. Is that right? Marianne adds. Who is she?
And then: Has Peter said how he feels about me being there?
Alice puts down the phone without replying. She has little idea what happened between Peter and Marianne. It wasn’t just Alice who crumbled after Robbie’s death: within months of that horrific New Year’s Eve, her brother retired abruptly from the police and then announced that he and Marianne were separating. Have you ever thought maybe YOU should see someone? Alice has challenged him more than once, when he’s been nagging her to keep up with her therapy. We’re not talking about me, is always his full-stop of a reply.
Alice doesn’t know what to tell Marianne about Georgie, either. She was touched when she first suggested the memorial, if a little surprised it had come from her, the only person in the village who never knew Robbie. Then when she offered to organise the entire thing, insisting Alice would have nothing to do except be there, she breathed out and thought, yes, let’s do that, let’s make this Christmas about Robbie, not Leo. Now, though, it feels impossible. What if … her whole body clenches … what if Leo turns up? Will she need a bouncer at her son’s memorial service? It’s a ridiculous image, but this is everything she’s feared: Leo stamping on Robbie’s memory with every step he takes through the village.
The thought drives her into her study. She barely uses it anymore, since the university let her hide away on an indefinite sabbatical, but she sits at her desk and opens her laptop. The draft email to Chrissy waits in her outbox. Alice knows she should run it past the pub committee, but her blood is pumping now, her skin prickling as if Leo is breathing down her neck.
Impulsively, she adds a final sentence.
Although we cannot impose any restrictions beyond this, we also ask, on behalf of the village, that you consider the effect of your continued residency here.
She hits ‘send’, then presses her hands against her face. It isn’t enough. Nothing is enough.
Alice takes Beech for a walk in Cromley Woods, trying to expel her tension with long, brisk strides over the frozen ground. Her route home takes her across the village square, past the giant Christmas tree. All her senses are heightened, looking and listening out for Chrissy or Leo. She stalls when she notices lights glowing from inside the pub. Somehow, she didn’t expect Jack to be working on the renovations today, or any of the committee to be there.
She hesitates, then walks over to peer through the front windows. The place looks empty, despite the light bouncing off the dark wooden bar top, casting shadows on the freshly painted walls. She tries the door but it’s locked, and she hasn’t brought the right set of keys. A memory flies at her – Robbie on the floor, Leo standing over him – and she leaps back with an intake of breath. She told herself not to come here today. Calling to Beech, she turns and flees towards home.
Back in her study, she steels herself and checks her email. She isn’t expecting a reply from Chrissy, but she itches for something, a reaction, a sign that she’s been heard. There is nothing. Her hands flex in frustration and she clicks on her web browser instead. When an open tab fills the screen, she rears back, sending the desk chair skidding.
Leo’s face.
Mouth open, gums showing, singing into a mic as if he means to inhale it.
Alice claps a hand over her own mouth, her pulse soaring.
Why is his Facebook page open on her laptop? Had she left it that way? She’s googled his name plenty of times in the last two years – wasn’t she about to do just that? – but she doesn’t remember looking at his Facebook recently; there didn’t seem much point while he was locked up. Tentatively, she draws her chair forward. Perhaps Peter used her laptop. Maybe he had the same idea as her: if they can’t follow Leo’s every movement, at least they can try to keep tabs on him digitally.
There are no posts since 2021. Alice scrolls through his page, but the old photos are like flashes of hurt. Leo and Chrissy in feathered raven costumes at the pub’s annual Hallowe’en Spookfest. Leo and Robbie at their joint twenty-
first birthday party, cutting a guitar-shaped cake with a huge knife as if they were getting married. All four of them, Alice too, crammed into a selfie captioned ‘Cromley Mums ‘n’ Sons’. The pain twists behind her ribcage and she’s about to turn away when something catches her eye.
What’s on your mind, Leo?
The phrase sends a shudder through her. Then another, even stronger, as she realises what it means: the page is inviting her to post as Leo. She is not just viewing his Facebook account. She is logged into it.
She pulls back her hands in alarm. How has this happened? She doesn’t know what to do, whether to close it down, to comb every inch of it. At arm’s length, she checks again and she’s definitely right. She can see it all, even his private messages. There might be things about Robbie in there, conversations between them, insights into that night. But she doesn’t dare look too closely, afraid this is some kind of trick.
Instead, she calls Peter. The phone rings out and she hangs up, forced to stare back at the screen. When he doesn’t pick up on her second or third try, she jumps to her feet.
Her brother will be able to explain this, she tells herself as she hurries out to her car. Driving away, she can’t shake the image of Leo’s face on her screen. Can’t shake the idea of him in her house – just as she feared he was this morning – casually logging into Facebook while she walked in the woods nearby.