7

Adrian couldn’t sleep. It was the heat or the cold or the hardness of the sofa. It was the weight of the blankets, of himself. Ruth had taken her anger out on Agnes, blaming her for whatever had happened to Christie. She had to put her anger somewhere, he supposed. Easier to blame Agnes than admit she had a gutless husband who couldn’t keep his own kids safe. He pushed his fingers at his eyes, driving out the pictures before they could turn into Barry’s family. Felix and Chloe in the pool shrieking until Ruth said, ‘You’re going to have to say something,’ and Adrian taking round a six-pack of beer as an apology, explaining to Barry about her work, conference calls to London, ‘You know how it is, mate,’ and Barry shrugging back at him, ‘I’ll ask Janis to take them out for a bit,’ and always this shame like a rash hot up his neck, pulling his scalp tighter and tighter until he thought it would tear. The caravan brought it all closer, the pictures splitting into pixels; he could no longer see Barry’s kids, just the pink of their sunburnt faces, yellow heads of hair. Ruth wanted him to stop seeing, stop thinking, stop hearing – voices and whispers and the distant drone of police sirens. Adrian knew they were coming, no matter what she said. Any day now a knock on the door would deliver him from this waiting, this pretence of life going on when six people were dead, three of them little, little kids. He wanted it to come, needed it. He’d never get better like this, waiting.

He stood, fumbling his way along the tops of chairs to the kitchen where he filled a glass from the tap and drank without tasting. He was thirsty all the time. The night they’d arrived here, he gulped down three glasses of water before realizing how bad it tasted. Ruth took charge of everything that night, making up beds, filling cupboards, fetching fish and chips to convince Christie it was an adventure and not a nightmare made by his own father. In one sense, Barry had it easy. You couldn’t lose your family twice. But you could fear losing them for ever. That kind of fear never went away. His hand shook as he upturned the glass on the draining rack.

He should get out of here, walk across the fields to where Trevor was camped with cold beers in the fridge, a fire pit to keep them warm. Trevor would have a version of this horror story that was bearable, spinning it until Adrian could see a silver lining. That might be better than cringing in here pretending he’d nothing to feel guilty about, nothing to fear from a visit from the police. Trevor wouldn’t let him feel guilty, not for long.

‘I don’t do guilt.’ He could hear Trevor saying it. ‘Too many ways it can come back to bite you.’

Adrian missed Trevor like he’d miss his own arm if he woke to find it gone. They’d worked on Blackthorn Ashes together, from the first brick up. The thought lit a fuse in his head, the heat of his shame building into rage. He wanted to smash something, to shout and smash his way out of the silence that’d been strangling him since the evacuation.

Trevor was wrong. ‘I don’t do guilt,’ but he should. They all should. Even Agnes, who should’ve stayed in London. Then at least one of his kids would be safe.

His hands shook. He stared at their empty palms in the dim light of the caravan’s kitchen, thinking of everything they’d held. Agnes and Christie as babies. The urn of his father’s ashes. His mother’s hand when he was a child. Ruth’s shoulders when they slow-danced, leaving Trevor alone at the bar. His hands had held the first brick laid at Blackthorn Ashes, and the last.

A siren sounded from the main road, or out at sea, trailing off before he could process the prick of panic beneath his ribs. His whole life was like that now, poised on the brink of panic. Afraid to tip too far in either direction, towards or away.

As long as they stayed away, Ruth said, as long as none of them ever went back, it would be okay. As if Blackthorn Ashes had a perimeter, a way of containing its poison and its death. As if they weren’t Blackthorn Ashes.

The siren had died now, gone in the night.

Adrian stood for a long time, listening for the sounds of his family sleeping, hearing water refilling the tank, a gulping sound like a drowning man.