arms reaching for a hug, a huge smile on her face. ‘I’m sorry for going off the deep end but I was worried, OK, for you and Elise.’
‘I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to scare you. Honestly, Max. When I woke up and realised what had happened I …’ She pauses. ‘Can I talk to Elise? Please. I need to hear her voice.’
‘Sure.’ He places the phone against his daughter’s ear. ‘Elise, sweetie. It’s Mummy. Say hello.’
He listens as his daughter has a garbled conversation with her mother then he wrangles the phone away from her again.
‘I need to go. There’s a Tesco down the road and I need to grab some overnight things for Elise and some clean clothes for nursery tomorrow.’
‘You could come home. There are clothes here,’ Jo says, but the fight has gone out of her voice. She’s accepted that they won’t be coming home tonight.
‘Sleep well, sweetheart,’ Max says. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow evening.’
‘OK. Bye.’
The line goes dead and Max slumps against the bathroom doorway, completely spent. His daughter, still standing beside him, reaches out her arms to be picked up and he swoops her up. He presses his face into her blonde curls and closes his eyes as her tiny hands wind their way around his neck.
I saw you, Jo. I watched as you slept, flat on your back, your hands folded on your stomach like a corpse. A nice sleep, was it? Restful? You need to stay awake, Jo. You need to watch what’s happening around you because, if you don’t, if you close your eyes for one second, you’ll lose everything that’s ever mattered to you. Oh wait, too late. That’s already happening.
Max leaves the Bristol News building through the revolving glass front door, his laptop bag swinging from his shoulder, his mobile phone in his hand. He’s running late for his interview with an elderly woman who is the most recent victim of a con by two men masquerading as council drain inspectors. One of them ransacked her house while the other one kept her talking in the living room. He’s keen to run a story to warn the public about the scam but, whenever he mentally runs through the questions he needs to ask, he’s distracted by other thoughts: a niggling worry about his conversation with Jo the night before.
He’d dropped Elise off at nursery in the morning, as planned, then gone to work. When he went home afterwards, Elise threw herself at him the second he walked through the door but Jo barely reacted. She didn’t stand up from the sofa when he walked into the living room, and stiffened when he bent to kiss her hello. He wasn’t sure if she felt bad for leaving Elise at nursery the night before or if she was angry with him for the way he’d reacted, but he didn’t force a conversation. Instead he waited until they’d put Elise to bed then he reached into his messenger bag and handed Jo a bottle of her favourite wine.
‘Peace offering.’
‘Thank you.’
He followed his wife into the kitchen and watched as she opened the bottle, poured the wine and handed him a glass.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said as they settled themselves on the sofa. ‘For everything. For losing my shit when I saw you’d been looking for houses in Chester. That was out of order. So was my reaction when you said you’d taken your dad’s medication.
‘It’s the investigation,’ he went on. ‘It’s left me feeling wired and jumpy. And I know that’s no excuse but, after spending six months with low-life scum, I assume the worst about people. I overreacted. I’m really sorry, Jo. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.’
Jo maintained eye contact with him throughout his apology but there was a strange, distant look in her eyes. It didn’t fade once, not even when he offered to move to Chester with her and Elise. He’d expected her to be excited. He’d imagined her face lighting up. But, instead of throwing her arms around his neck and squealing, she leaned away from him and said, ‘I think we both need some space after everything that’s happened.’
His instinct was to panic, to tell her that was the last thing they needed. But he didn’t. He kept calm and told her he understood. It was fine, he’d stay at the hotel for a couple of nights. Only it wasn’t fine, was it? He didn’t want to be apart from his family.
‘Hello, Martin.’
He is vaguely aware of a woman’s voice as he turns right outside the Bristol News building and heads towards the multi-storey car park where his car is, but he ignores it.
‘Or should that be Max?’
He turns sharply. A woman with bleached blonde hair, a black Puffa jacket and plastered-on make-up smiles tightly.
‘You look surprised to see me, Max.’
‘Do I know you?’
‘Nice, I see what you did there.’ The woman makes a big show of looking to the left, then the right, as though she’s checking who’s listening. ‘Or was that for your wife’s benefit? Is she here? It would be lovely to see her again.’
Max grabs her by the shoulders. ‘Stay away from my wife.’
Paula doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t squeal. Instead she looks him straight in the eyes. ‘What did you expect me to do when you’ve been ignoring my calls?’
‘Leave her alone.’
‘Take your hands off me. Now,’ she adds as a middle-aged couple overtake them on the pavement. The man glances back, a concerned look on his face.
‘I’ll make this very simple for you,’ Paula says in a low voice. ‘You give me what you stole and neither of us ever have to see each other again.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Is that what you told your wife?’
‘Are you mentally ill?’ Max glances back at the glass doors of the Bristol News building. Amy is behind the desk at reception but there’s no sign of Scott, the heavily tattooed security guard. He’s probably secretly eating pizza in the back office or watching porn on his phone while he takes an extended shit.
‘You can play this game all you want,’ Paula says softly from behind him. ‘Claiming not to know who I am or what I want, but you don’t know the first thing about me, Max. You don’t even know my last name.’
‘But the police will.’ He turns to face her. ‘Jo’s filed a complaint. Go anywhere near her again and you’ll be arrested.’
It’s a lie, but he’s not about to admit that. God knows why Jo didn’t call the police. Any sane person would have. But Jo’s not well. She starts at shadows. She overreacts. She sees danger where there isn’t any.
‘The police?’ Paula tilts her head to one side and smiles. Beneath her plump red lips are tobacco-stained teeth. Straight, but yellow. ‘That was a gutsy move, Max, considering they’ll arrest you too once they see the CCTV footage.’
‘CCTV footage? Really? Do the characters on EastEnders give you messages from God too? Perhaps I should give your carer a call? Or a doctor? See you, Paula.’ He raises a hand as he walks away.
She may have scared his wife but she doesn’t scare him. Delusional or not, she can’t be more than five foot three and nine stone whilst he’s six foot two and thirteen stone.
‘You’ll regret ignoring me,’ Paula shouts after him as he steps into the car park.