Nicole
‘What did they say?’
turns to where Nathaniel is sitting at the kitchen table, thoughts scrambling in her brain.
‘What did the police say? Do they think your car’s been stolen?’
She pours herself a glass of water, drinks it thirstily. ‘They gave me a crime number and said I should give it to the insurance company first thing in the morning.’
‘Is that it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They’re not going to send someone round to investigate or something?’
Pain throbs at ’s temples and she rubs her fingers in concentric circles against it. ‘Like Dad’s been saying, car thefts are two-a-penny these days.’
‘But who’s going to take me for driving practice if your car’s been stolen? My retest is in six weeks, and Dad never has time.’
allows herself a moment before answering. ‘We’ll figure something out, don’t worry.’
From beyond the kitchen, she hears the front door clicking open and shut, familiar footsteps padding down the hall. Glancing at her watch, she sees it is just gone ten-forty: late by any normal person’s standards to arrive home from work on a Friday night, but hedge fund managers, has come to realise over the past nineteen years of marriage, are not like normal people.
Andrew walks into the room, eyes edged by crows’ feet, and yet he could still – on a good day – pass for mid-thirties rather than late forties. Friends of have often commented on how well Andrew has aged, how lucky is that he hasn’t – like so many men approaching fifty – let himself go. But as looks at him now, she finds herself wondering whether Andrew’s relentless drive towards self-improvement, his dogged acquisition of wealth and status, has been right for their family. Whether it might have been better to lead calmer, quieter, less aspirational lives, so that she might have had him at home when she really needed him.
Andrew kisses her cheek. He smells of garlic overlayed with mint, and she does not know if it is his breath or the aftermath of the evening’s events that turns her stomach.
‘Are you okay? You look shattered.’
‘Mum’s car’s been stolen.’
Andrew eyes her quizzically, and it is all can do to nod in response.
‘Have you reported it to the police?’
She nods again, her head unwieldy on her shoulders.
‘Jesus.’ Nathaniel’s voice bleeds shock, and looks over to where he is sitting, sees the distress on his face, feels a knot of pre-emptive fear.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
For a moment, Nathaniel says nothing, just stares silently at the screen of his phone. He looks up at and Andrew, then down at his phone, then back up again. ‘It’s Isla.’
For a split second, assumes it is Isla who has messaged him, wonders if she has already been in contact with Abby, if she is already home. But before the thought has time to settle, Nathaniel is talking again.
‘Elliot’s just messaged me. He says Isla’s been in an accident.’
feels a tightness in her chest, and it is as though the room is hesitating, waiting for whatever Nathaniel is going to say next.
‘He says Isla’s dead .’
There is a rush of blood to ’s head, as though she has been submerged in water, pressure bearing down on her.
‘That’s got to be a prank, surely?’ Andrew’s incredulous gaze pivots between and Nathaniel as if searching for confirmation that it is nothing more than a sick joke.
‘Meera’s messaged me too, saying the same thing. She says there’s loads of police at her house.’ Nathaniel swipes at his phone, reads something, swipes again, and all the while, the ground beneath ’s feet seems to lurch and sway, and she does not know how she is still standing.
‘I’ve got another four messages about it. They’re all saying the same thing.’ He looks up, face ashen. ‘I don’t think it’s a joke.’
‘Where did it happen?’ The words are thick, viscous, in ’s mouth.
‘Outside Meera’s house. At the party. I can’t believe it.’
Next to her, is aware of Andrew grabbing hold of the table’s edge, lowering himself into a chair next to Nathaniel, burying his head in his hands. Nathaniel gapes at his phone as though, perhaps, the words will shape themselves into a different meaning.
stands motionless, watching them both, her brain darting with thoughts she cannot grasp. It is as if she has exited her body, as though she is floating out of reach, beyond this unthinkable reality.
She thinks of Abby’s earlier message, to which she never replied, too preoccupied with Jack and with phoning the police about her car.
She thinks of Abby – of where she might be right now, who might be with her – and guilt sweeps over her that Abby is going through this alone, no husband by her side to help bear the grief; she will have to withstand another, unimaginable loss.
She thinks of Isla, a teenager she has known since the day she was born. Such a beautiful baby. Such a beautiful child.
And now Isla is dead .
’s stomach convulses and she rushes to the sink, feels an inexorable heaving as the contents find their way into the porcelain basin. The retching continues, like the roiling waves of an ocean, and she feels a hand on her back, a rhythmic rubbing, senses Andrew standing behind her.
She thinks of Isla – How can Isla be dead? – and of Abby and Clio, how they can possibly endure this loss. She cannot begin to imagine how Abby must be feeling. She thinks of Jack upstairs in bed, of Nathaniel white with shock at the kitchen table, and it is all she can do not to wrap her boys in a swathe of cotton wool and vow never to let them out of her sight again.