‘It’s your dad’s writing on the skirting board,’ Mia begins. She says it so quickly it takes a moment for me to register what she means. She is wired, her skin is flushed and her eyes are wide open like she’s been necking espressos.
‘What?’
‘It was your dad who wrote the message in the house warning us what was hidden in the attic.’
‘When?’
‘When he was a boy.’
She’s not making sense and, once again, I’m playing catch-up. Then she seems to recognise that she shouldn’t seem so happy about what she thinks she knows and dials it back a notch. She hands me an old schoolbook and her phone. Online, she has found and saved an image of the words etched into the nursery skirting board. ‘I will save them from the attic.’ I can’t deny that the H and the Es are similar to those in this book, and as I look more closely, so is the S.
‘Every kid writes like that,’ I counter. ‘We all got our letters mixed up and back to front when we were learning.’
She snaps her head back and she looks at me like I’ve just slapped her across the face. ‘Finn,’ she says. ‘Look at it! It’s identical! Every single bloody letter. You need to consider what this means.’
All this proves is that my wife has found another obsession that isn’t our son. After days of giving me the silent treatment, she called me when I was on a job, begging me to come home. When I asked if Sonny was okay, she’d already hung up, so I raced across town, flying through countless speed cameras, only to hear this.
I pretend that I’m considering it but I’m really just trying to find a frame of reference for her behaviour. I honestly don’t know how to handle her. ‘What do you think it means?’ I ask, hoping that when she says it aloud and it’s no longer a conversation in her head, she might get how crazy she sounds.
‘It means Dave wrote that message,’ she repeats. ‘At some point in his childhood, your dad was in that house. I don’t know if it was at the same time Abigail was there or even Precious, but he was definitely there. He knew kids were being locked in the attic.’
‘When did you last sleep?’ I ask. ‘Have you had lunch yet? Let’s go into the kitchen and I can make you something.’ She’s not listening.
‘Why didn’t he tell us he knew those girls?’ she says in the same accusatory way as when we argued about Dad last time.
‘He already explained it to you, remember? He barely went to school for years.’
‘So where did he go instead?’ ‘How would I know?’
‘So he could have spent time at that house. I bet Mark will get it out of him—’
‘Mark Goodwin?’ I interrupt. ‘You want to call the police on my dad?’
‘Unless you want to ask him why he’s been hiding the truth from us?’
I can’t listen to any more of this. ‘For Christ’s sake, Mia!’ I yell and she takes a step back. ‘Listen to yourself. I’m not calling the police on my own dad and neither are you. He
was not in that fucking house, he did not scratch a message in the skirting boards and he didn’t know those girls. The handwriting is a coincidence. You are searching for something that hasn’t happened and you have to stop it.’
Mia looks genuinely hurt by my outburst, but not even her quivering lips and the threat of tears can stop me now. ‘You’re ill, Mia, can’t you see that? Something isn’t right in your head and you need help. Stop this witch hunt against my family.’ I’m pacing the lounge and everything that’s been troubling me since our last row is spilling out. ‘We can’t go on like this. We have been through so much together and survived it, but this, well, I’m scared it’s going to break us. You seem determined to sabotage what we have. And I might be able to deal with all of that if I was convinced that Sonny was your main priority, but he’s not.’ I look around when something dawns on me. I make my way into the bedroom. Sonny’s cot is empty. ‘Where is he?’
Panic spreads across her face.
‘Mia, where is he?’ I repeat as she hurries to the door. ‘He’s in your mum’s kitchen,’ she mutters. I catch her
up and grab her by the shoulder, spinning her around. ‘Alone?’ I shout and she nods. ‘How long for?’
‘I don’t know . . . half an hour?’
As she tries to free herself from my grip I push her then let go. She loses her balance and falls into the wall. I’m too angry with her to check if she is hurt.
‘I’ll get him,’ I snap and turn my back on her. ‘He needs one of us to be a parent.’
