a lot of blood,’ the paramedic explained between breaths.
They went over a speed bump and Melissa gripped on to the side to keep steady. Patrick’s face was a deathly blue.
Oh God, was she about to become a widow?
How could she cope, her husband and her son dying in the space of eleven years?
But then Patrick started breathing again.
‘Is he going to be okay?’ Melissa asked.
‘Sooner we get him to hospital, the better,’ the paramedic replied.
When they got to the hospital, Patrick was rushed into the emergency room and it all became a blur of doctors shouting orders and nurses grabbing equipment.
Melissa was aware of Patrick’s parents, Bill and Rosemary, turning up at some point, watching in horror as their son was worked on, Rosemary scrunching up tissues to her nose, her short grey hair awry. Bill tried his best to maintain his strong, calm demeanour but failed, stifling a sob as a nurse lifted Patrick’s shirt to reveal the stab wound, another nurse carefully examining the bloody gash on his head.
‘Oh God,’ Rosemary said, putting her hand to her mouth. ‘My boy, my perfect boy.’
A nurse came over and ushered them out. Another steered them towards a family room, telling them they’d be updated as soon as there was any news.
News. What kind of news? The bad kind?
‘What the hell happened?’ Bill asked as the nurse left the room and closed the door.
‘The kids found him like that,’ Melissa said. ‘It’s – it’s madness.’
‘Who would do that to him?’ Rosemary asked Melissa.
‘I don’t know,’ Melissa replied.
Rosemary’s eyes snagged on Melissa’s T-shirt and the blood on there. She pursed her lips and turned away.
They all fell silent, eyes on the small window in the room’s door. Melissa found her thoughts flitting between the two halves of her torn mind. First, the brutal fear she felt at the idea of Patrick dying. Then confusion over what on earth had happened. Melissa imagined the kids all sitting on her duck-egg-blue sofa, where she’d left them, as Jackie Shillingford, a family friend, looked after them. They’d been quiet, shocked . . . and hiding something deep inside them.
But what?
They’d all looked so relieved when Melissa told the detective she hadn’t seen the knife. She wasn’t even sure why she’d said it. She’d had to make a decision in a split second and it was all down to gut instinct. She was hoping one of the kids would just say something, anything, to make the disappearance of the knife appear completely normal. But they said nothing, Lewis staring at his fists in an anguished way, Lilly sobbing quietly into her hands, her immaculately applied mascara dribbling down her cheeks. Then Grace, blinking in shock. Melissa had wanted to grab them, shake them, ask them what the hell happened to the knife? But she was scared. What would that say about the kids, if they had hidden the knife? So instead, she’d lied, and that meant she was part of it now.
Part of what, though? Part of bloody what?
The fact was, only the kids could have hidden the knife. That meant they had a reason to hide it, a reason with possibilities that made her sick to her stomach. Either they were covering for someone who had done this to their dad . . . or worst of all, one of them had done it.
She shook her head. No, how could she even think that? It simply wasn’t possible. Only that morning, they’d been laughing and joking. Patrick had taken a couple of days off work to be with the kids during Easter half term, giving his parents a break from their usual childcare duties when the kids were off school. They’d discussed whether the twins were old enough to be alone with Grace but had eventually come to the conclusion it wasn’t quite time yet, so they were dividing their time between their grandparents, and Patrick and Melissa whenever they could take days off.
They had been planning a lazy day, according to Patrick. When she’d left them, Patrick was joking about Lilly’s carefully sculpted ‘messy bun’ while Lewis slurped up his cereal, still in his PJs. Grace, as usual, had her face stuck in a book, oblivious to it all. What could have happened in just a few hours to tilt their world on its axis so completely it led to Patrick being critically injured by one of them?
No, it had all been perfectly normal.
So that left the possibility that the kids were covering for