Rosamund Lupton - Afterwards

‘Unbelievably lucky.’

For a moment she looks happy and proud.

‘Going back, Rowena,’ Sarah says. ‘You said he’d never touched you in a bad way?’

She nods.

‘Has he ever hurt you? Maybe accidentally? Or…?’

Rowena turns away.

‘Rowena?’

She doesn’t reply.

‘You said to me that someone can have the angel and the devil inside them?’ Sarah says, coaxing. ‘And that your job is to get rid of the devil?’

Rowena turns to face her.

‘It sounds medieval, I know. You could put it a different way, go twenty-first century and talk about multiple personalities, but the cure’s the same, I think. Just love. Loving someone can cast out the devil or make a person mentally well again. If you love them enough.’

‘Has Silas been to visit you here?’ Mohsin asks.

‘No. It’s over between us. A while ago, actually. But even if we were still together, well, he wouldn’t want Mum to see him with me.’

‘Your mum doesn’t like him?’ Sarah asks.

‘No. She wanted me to break it off.’

‘And did you?’

‘Yes. I mean, I didn’t want to upset Mum so much. I don’t think he understood though.’

‘Was it your parents who told the Richmond Post about Silas, after the playground accident?’ Mohsin asks.

‘It was just Mum. Daddy said it wasn’t fair to try and get someone the sack. Not for personal reasons. Said it wasn’t right. But Mummy hates Silas. So she phoned the paper.’

Good for Maisie. Vestiges of the friend I used to know remain intact when it counts. She might not have left Donald but she stood up for her daughter with Silas.

I’m not sure if she knew that her phone call would lead to the bankruptcy of her family. But I think even if she did, she would still have gone ahead.

‘How old were you last summer, when it started?’ Sarah asks.

‘Sixteen. But my birthday’s in August, so I was almost seventeen.’

‘You must have missed him, after you had to break it off?’

Rowena nods, upset.

‘Did he try and get in touch with you again?’

She nods, tears spilling now.

‘Did he ever ask you to do something for him? Something that you knew was wrong?’

‘No, of course not. I mean, Silas wouldn’t do something like that to me. He’s always been kind to me.’

She’s a terrible liar.

A nurse comes in. ‘I need to change her dressings and give her her antibiotics.’

Mohsin stands up. ‘We’ll see you a little later, Rowena, OK?’

Mohsin and Sarah leave.

‘So it’s textbook – abused child goes for abusive partner?’ Mohsin asks.

‘Could stick it up on PowerPoint at the next domestic violence seminar,’ Sarah replies. ‘Some experts think it’s because the abused girl hopes that she can make the abusive partner love her and be kind to her. And that will somehow make amends for her father. She’ll be making her father love her by proxy.’

‘Sounds like bullshit to me,’ Mohsin says. ‘I’ll call the station and get someone down here with the recording equipment. We’ll do it all by Baker’s bloody book .’

Sarah nods.

‘Do you think Silas Hyman asked her to start the fire?’ Mohsin asks.

‘I don’t know. It’s possible but I think it’s more likely that she enabled him to do it. She’s clearly vulnerable to him and I think he’d exploit that. But the same is true of her father. I think both Silas Hyman and Donald White would exploit Rowena for their own ends.’

Penny is hurrying down the corridor towards them.

‘Donald White has been released without charge,’ she says. She sees Sarah’s expression. ‘He has an alibi and a good lawyer. There was nothing we could do to legitimately keep him any longer.’

‘Do you know where he’s gone?’ Sarah asks.

‘No.’

‘And Silas Hyman?’

‘We’re looking at the building sites. Nothing yet.’

So both Donald White and Silas Hyman could be here in the hospital.

I follow Sarah along a glassed-in walkway towards ICU. As I look down to the parched, too-hot garden beneath, I can see Jenny’s blonde head and, beside her, Ivo. From above I watch him move closer towards her. She bends her body towards his.

You are in the corridor of ICU with Sarah, keeping watch on Jenny through the glass.

‘But there must be some way they can find him?’ you say, incredulous; furious.

‘We don’t even know if he’s actually working on a building site, or if that’s a line he spun his wife. We’ll keep looking for him. And Donald White.’

‘I only spoke to Donald at school things. And it was years ago. But I don’t think he’s the type of bloke to do this.’

‘There isn’t really a type,’ Sarah says. ‘Have you spoken to Ads?’

Emotion tenses your face. You shake your head. ‘I’ll go and see him as soon as you’ve found them both.’

Sarah nods. ‘Maybe when the arsonist is locked up it’ll be different for Addie,’ she says.

Will he speak then? Surely he will.

Ivo walks past you and into Jenny’s ward. But only I see that Jenny is with him. They go up to her bed.

This is the first time she has seen herself since right after the fire. Her face looks worse than it did then, more swollen and blistered. Even though she knows she won’t be scarred, I dread what she must feel as she sees her burnt face; her plastic-encased body.

I make myself look at her.

Her tears are falling onto Ivo’s face and he wipes them away as his own.

I think she was afraid of his rejection before and she was protecting herself. And now she doesn’t have to. It’s his love that gives her the strength to look at herself.

Sarah comes up to Ivo, moved by his distress.

‘She’s not going to scar,’ she says to him.

‘Yes, her dad said.’

But I know it’s not her appearance that distresses him. It’s what she must have suffered.

You tell Sarah and Ivo that you need to see me for a little while. Sarah wants to catch up with the police, but there’s now Ivo as a member of the guard rota at her bedside. And I trust him, as you do.

Jenny and Ivo stay at her bedside together.

I join her.

‘Dad’s got Ivo guarding me now?’

‘Yes.’

For the first time she doesn’t argue that there’s no need for a guard; doesn’t say it’s ridiculous . Maybe now Ivo’s here she can face this fear, as she’s facing her body.

You reach my bed and hold my hand. My fingers look pale after being out of the sun for nearly four days; my ring mark is disappearing. But your fingers, with the dark hairs and square-cut nails, still look strongly capable.

‘Ivo’s with Jenny, darling,’ you say to me. ‘I think that’s what she wants.’

‘Yes.’

Because I was right about Jenny after all – she does love him. But I was right too when I said I don’t know her; not all of her. Just as I can’t physically pick her up any more, she is no longer entirely knowable by me.

‘You think she’s too young for something to be so serious,’ you say. ‘But…’

‘She’s nearly grown up now,’ I finish off. ‘And I ought to see that.’

She’s become an adult; a young adult, yes, but still an adult with spaces that are hers alone.

‘I know she’ll always be little Jen too, to us,’ you say.

‘Yes.’

‘But we have to kind of disguise that. For her sake.’

You understand.

‘I don’t think any parent really ever lets go,’ I say to you.

‘Some parents are just better at pretending,’ you say.

As we talk, with only me hearing both of us, but you intuiting my words, I remember, again, that we have spoken every day since we first met. Nineteen years of talking to each other.