were lined up considerately along the back wall, in case we had plans for them. In one corner of the terrace was a neat pile of stuff the cops had apparently found along the way: shards of old china glazed in pretty blue and white patterns, a dirt-caked Barbie, a plastic seaside spade, an ornately whorled iron bracket thick with rust. The smell of turned earth was overwhelming, almost too rich and wild to breathe. In the furrows, tiny movement everywhere: worms curling, woodlice scurrying, ants clambering. At a safe distance from us, a couple of blackbirds and a robin darted and pecked.
“We’ll replant the bushes tomorrow,” Melissa said. “And I can ring the garden center and have them come and put in grass, the sod or whatever they—”
“No,” Hugo said gently. “Leave it.”
“Toby and I will look after it, you won’t have to—”
He reached out and put a hand on her head, lightly. “Shhh. We’ve had enough comings and goings.”
After a moment she took a breath and nodded. “We’ll do the bushes. And get some new plants.”
“Thank you, my dear. That would be wonderful.”
We stood there for a long time, while the birds and the insects went about their business and the leftover raindrops ticked in the trees. The air was thin and chilly and the light was turning gray, but none of us could seem to find a reason to move.
Seven
Halfway through the next morning Leon showed up, and Susanna not long after. Hugo had gone for a nap and I had been wandering around the house picking up knickknacks and putting them down again, unable to settle to work or anything else, so I was relieved to see them, but that didn’t last. Rafferty and Kerr had been to see Susanna that morning and Leon the night before; they were both on edge, in their different ways, and for some reason I couldn’t work out Leon was in a bad mood with Susanna. “I rang you,” Susanna said to him, slinging her jacket over the back of a kitchen chair. “Like five times. I was going to give you a lift here.”
Leon was unloading the dishwasher, banging plates down on the counter with unnecessary force, and didn’t look up. “I got the bus.”
“I thought you wanted to talk to me.”
“I did. Last night. So I could tell you what the cops asked me.”
“Sallie had had a nightmare. I was dealing with that. And I didn’t need to know what they’d asked you. It wouldn’t have made a difference.”
“It would have made a difference to me. I wanted to talk to you.”
“Well, we can talk now,” Susanna said coolly. “Outside, though. I want a smoke. Is that coffee still hot?”
“Yeah,” I said, passing her a cup from the cupboard where I was putting the dishes away. “Jesus, Leon, keep it down. You’ll wake Hugo.”
“No I won’t. He’s miles away.” But he toned down the banging. “What does Tom think about all this?” he asked Susanna. “Is he having fun?”
Susanna poured herself coffee from the pot on the stove and headed to the fridge for milk. “He’s fine with it.”
“I bet he’s going out of his tiny mind. This is probably the scariest thing that’s ever happened to him, isn’t it, except for the time he went wild and went an extra stop on the bus without paying and the inspector got on and he nearly shat himself—”
“You,” Susanna said crisply, without turning from the fridge, “don’t have the faintest clue about Tom. It would take a whole lot more than this to make him lose his mind. Unlike some people.”
“Ooo,” Leon said, into the chilly silence that followed.
“How’s Carsten doing?” I asked. Whatever this was, I didn’t feel like dealing with it. Between the bad nights and the Xanax I was exhausted, a thick leaden exhaustion that I’d thought I’d left behind in my apartment, and my head hurt in a petty nagging way that wasn’t quite worth a painkiller.
Leon grimaced. “He keeps wanting to come over. I keep saying no, because I’m not having him anywhere near this mess. He’d go all overprotective and get stroppy with the cops.” A snide look under his lashes at Susanna, who was unlikely to suffer from spousal overprotectiveness and who ignored him. “I’ve never gone this long without seeing him. Not since the day we met. I hate it.”
“You can just go home, you know,” Susanna pointed out. “Any time you want.”