see it happen?’
- but Laurel was drawn to the room, its lamp-lit contrast to the darkened hall, its strange tableau, the aura of importance that her father’s tense voice, his stance, projected. There was a streak inside her, there always had been, that demanded inclusion, that sought to help when help had not been asked for, that loathed to sleep for fear of missing out.
She was in shock. She needed company. She couldn’t help herself. Whatever the case—
Laurel stepped from the wings and into the middle of the scene. ‘I was there,’ she said. ‘I saw him.’
Daddy looked up, surprised. He glanced quickly at his wife and then back to Laurel. His voice sounded different when he spoke, husky and hurried and almost like a hiss. ‘Laurel, that’s enough.’
All eyes were upon her: Ma’s, Daddy’s, those of both the other men. The next lines, Laurel knew, were very important. She avoided her father’s gaze and started. ‘The man came round the house. He tried to grab the baby.’ He had, hadn’t he? She was sure that’s what she’d seen. Daddy frowned. ‘Laurel—’
She went faster now, determinedly. (And why not? She wasn’t a child, slinking off to her bedroom and waiting for the adults to patch things up: she was one of them; she had a part to play; she was important.) The spotlight brightened and Laurel met the older man’s eyes.
‘There was a struggle. I saw it. The man attacked my mother and then … and then, he fell down.’
Nobody spoke for a minute. Laurel looked at her mother, who was no longer whispering to the baby, but staring over his head at some point beyond Laurel’s shoulder. Someone had made tea. Laurel would remember that detail through all the years to follow. Someone had made tea but no one had drunk it. The cups sat untouched on tables around the room, one on the windowsill too. The hall clock ticked.
Finally, the balding man shifted on the sofa and cleared his throat. ‘Laurel, is it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Daddy breathed out, a great stream of air, the sound of a deflating balloon. His hand gestured in Laurel’s direction and he said, ‘My daughter.’ He sounded defeated. ‘My eldest.’
The man on the sofa regarded her, then his lips pulled into a smile that was a duty and didn’t reach his eyes. He said, ‘I think you’d better come in, Laurel. Sit down and start from the beginning. Tell us everything you saw.’
Five
LAUREL TOLD the policeman the truth. She sat down cautiously on the other end of the sofa, waited for her father’s reluctant encouragement, and then she began to recount her afternoon. Everything she’d seen, just as it had happened. She’d been reading in the tree house and then she’d stopped to watch the man’s approach.
Why were you watching him? Was there something unusual about him? The policeman’s tone and expression gave no hint as to his expectation.
Laurel frowned, anxious to remember every detail and prove herself a worthy witness. Yes, she thought perhaps there was. It wasn’t that he’d run or shouted or behaved in an otherwise obvious way, but he’d nonetheless been … she glanced at the ceiling, trying to conjure just the right word … he’d been sinister. She said it again, pleased by the word’s aptness. He’d been sinister and she’d been frightened. No, she couldn’t have said why, precisely, she just was.
Did she think what happened later might have shaded her first impression? Made something ordinary seem more dangerous than it really was?
No, she was sure. There’d definitely been something scary about him.
The younger policeman scribbled in his notebook. Laurel exhaled. She didn’t dare look sideways at her parents for fear she’d lose her nerve.
And when he reached the house? What happened next?
He crept around the corner, much more carefully than an ordinary visitor would—sneakily—and then my mother came out with the baby.
Was she carrying him?
Yes.
Was she carrying anything else?
Yes.
What was it?
Laurel bit the inside of her cheek, remembering the flash of silver. She was carrying the birthday knife.
You recognised the knife?
We use it for special occasions. It has a red ribbon tied around the handle.
Still no change in the policeman’s demeanour, though he waited a beat before continuing. And then what happened?
Laurel was ready. Then the man attacked them.
A small niggling doubt surfaced, like a shimmer of sunlight obscuring the detail in a photograph, as Laurel described the man lurching towards the baby. She hesitated a moment, gazing at her knees as she struggled to see the action