“Pete, I’ve got more bad news,” I begin, just as he says, “Maddie…”
We both stop. “You go first,” he says.
“The CAFCASS woman phoned. Lyn. They’re claiming that because you’re now the subject of a child abduction investigation, Theo isn’t safe. I’m so sorry, Pete. She wants you to stay somewhere else until the hearing. And you can’t be alone with Theo.”
“Jesus. Jesus.” He closes his eyes.
“I thought maybe you could go to Greg and Kate’s.”
“I guess.” He looks around our downstairs room, as if for the last time. “Jesus.”
“What did you want to say?”
He takes a deep breath. When he starts speaking I know immediately this is something he’s prepared, that he’s been rehearsing it on the long walk home. “There’s something I need to tell you. About my laptop. When the police look at it, they’re going to know…” He stops, then continues. “They’ll be able to tell I’ve been looking at porn.”
I stare at him.
“Not illegal porn, obviously,” he adds quickly. “But Mark—the solicitor—said if they interview you, it’s something they might raise. To try to catch you off guard.”
“When?” I say.
“When will they interview you? It’s not even certain—”
“When do you look at porn?”
He makes a small, defeated gesture. “I don’t know. Does it matter? When Theo was at nursery, I guess.”
That nursery cost nearly two hundred pounds a week, paid for from my salary. But it was worth it, we’d agreed, if it allowed Pete some time to pitch and write articles. “How long has this been going on?”
He only shrugs. “A while.”
I’d had no idea. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, given the other problems in our relationship, but it never even occurred to me. It’s so contrary to my image of him—to Pete’s image of himself, for that matter. Generally, he’s so respectful to women, so principled. I think of some of the images I’ve stumbled across online, and wince. Is that who he is, deep down? And, if I’d never known that about him, what else might I not know?
Who is he, really?
He’s always said he needed to password-protect his laptop to prevent Theo from playing with it—“No screen time at all until he’s two, and no more than thirty minutes a day fully supervised after that. I read an article—in Silicon Valley, the people who really know about this stuff don’t even let their five-year-olds play with iPads unsupervised.” But had it actually been to protect Theo from coming across his browsing history? Or indeed, to stop me from doing the same?
If he could lie about that so easily, what other lies has he told? Could he even have lied about the most important thing of all?
“I’ll go and pack a suitcase,” he says when I don’t respond. He waits for me to say something. But I can’t.
Only as he starts trudging up the stairs do I manage to add, “What else happened at the interview?”
“Oh…” He shrugs wearily. “I said ‘no comment’ to every question. And I could see the detective getting more and more convinced I must have something to hide. So now it’s a trade-off—has he gotten so frustrated he’ll decide to investigate anyway, or will he think it’s a waste of resources when they have so little to go on?”
It seems inevitable to me now that there’ll be a full investigation, not least because so far, everything that possibly could go wrong for us has. And because, behind it all, guiding events with a push here and a nod there, I can feel the invisible, irresistible force of Miles Lambert, who’ll stop at nothing to get his son.
Perhaps if we’d handled it better, he’d have had less to work with. But now the tiny lie Pete told about seeing the security tag on Theo’s leg is the hairline crack that, when more pressure is applied, could shatter our family apart. Theo could be taken away. Pete could go to prison. And what will happen to me in that situation? If they decide I knew all along, my leave to remain in the UK could be revoked as well.
An abyss has opened up, and we’re teetering right on the edge.
“I’ll call Greg,” Pete says. Automatically, his hand reaches into his pocket for his phone. It comes out empty. “Shit,” he says, furious at his own stupidity. “Shit.” He takes a deep breath, and I know he’s trying to hold himself together.