can’t work out exactly what.’
SATURDAY 22ND JULY CLAUDIE
I let Will stay the night, against my better judgement. He kept on and on about how worried he was about me, and how he wanted to call the police, insistent on taking photos of the graffiti with his iPhone for evidence before I went out and scrubbed it off as best I could, pushing the bookshelves back in front of the faint words. In the end, it seemed the only way to silence him, to stop that 999 call. He slept on the sofa.
There was a single crack of blue in the sky when I woke. It was very early, and I immediately rued the fact that Will was here. I knew he could see into me better than anyone else, and I found it so much easier to be alone these days, shutting myself off from most contact except the necessary. I lay in bed for a while wishing I was back in oblivion, debating my best course of action today. I kept thinking about the man who’d been in the flat last night, and whether it was the same man from St Pancras. For the sake of my friendship with Tessa, I had to make one last-ditch effort to find out the truth – and then I would give up.
I was padding quietly out of the bathroom when Will surprised me in the hall, his hair on end as usual.
‘Morning,’ I said a little stiffly. ‘Sleep all right?’
‘Not bad for a sofa,’ he yawned. ‘St Thomas’s Hospital just rung by the way. Said something about results? The number’s on the side.’ He yawned again, so wide this time I heard his jaw crack. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’
‘Oh, that doesn’t sound good,’ I said, nodding towards his jaw. I vaguely remembered some blood test in A&E on the day of the explosion, but it seemed irrelevant now. ‘Do you want me to have a look?’
‘Maybe later,’ he was distracted.
‘What is it?’ I followed his gaze to the door of the small room. Don’t say it, I prayed.
‘I just wondered – why is the telescope in there?’
‘I don’t use it now,’ I shrugged.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I stopped looking at the stars.’ I walked back into the bathroom to clean my teeth. Will had bought me that telescope for my thirtieth birthday five years ago, when I was pregnant with Ned; it was the best present I’d ever received. Before Ned’s birth.
‘Why?’ He was in the doorway behind me. ‘You love all that stuff.’
‘Just. Because.’
‘Because—’ he pushed.
‘Because there’s nothing up there any more.’ I was impatient.
‘There’s still the same stars. And there’s—’ He stopped. I glanced at him; I thought I saw the glint of tears in his eyes.
‘Don’t, Will.’
‘There’s a star I look at – well. Kind of, you know. Heaven.’
‘Oh, come on! You don’t believe that.’ My anger was immediate and white-hot; I felt it pulse through me. ‘You don’t believe that for a bloody minute. That’s crap.’
‘I have to believe it,’ he whispered. ‘I have to.’
I threw the tube of toothpaste onto the basin so hard it splattered against the tiles.
‘How can you be so hard, Claudia?’ He followed me out of the room. ‘It’s so weird. It’s not you.’
‘Don’t, Will.’ I put my hands over my ears. ‘You didn’t care before.’
‘I did care,’ he mumbled. ‘I just didn’t know how to deal with it. When Ned died – and you knew he was going to die – you knew they said he couldn’t get better—’
‘Don’t,’ boiling tears suffused my eyes. That word; I couldn’t bear it still. His little body: the fat tummy, the chubby limbs: the life all gone. So final, so—
‘Don’t ignore me.’ He pulled me round forcibly. ‘You’ve closed down so much. It scares me.’
‘You didn’t want to know. You went to New York.’
‘I wanted you to come.’
‘No you didn’t, not really. And I couldn’t.’ I couldn’t leave my son. His grave. ‘You knew why.’
‘We could have had another baby.’
‘Will. I could barely function. You could barely look at me, let alone touch me. How would we have managed that?’
‘Well, talk to me now. You don’t look good, Claudie.’
‘I can’t,’ I said miserably, refusing to meet his hazel eyes. I couldn’t bear the hurt I’d see there.
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ I wrenched my hands out of his. ‘Because if I let one single little chink of sorrow in, I will go down again. And if I go down again, Will,’ I was practically shouting, ‘I will never ever