Michael Robotham - Bleed For Me

On the drive home I listen to PM on Radio 4, Eddie Mair analysing the events of the day.

Jury members broke down in tears today as they were shown photographs of a Ukrainian family including three young children who perished in a fire-bomb attack on a Bristol boarding house.

Two of the children, Aneta and Danya Kostin, aged four and six, were found huddled in a second-floor bedroom. Their eleven-year-old sister Vira perished on the first-floor landing, near to where their parents’ bodies were discovered. All were overcome by smoke after petrol was allegedly poured through the letterbox and petrol bombs were thrown through the windows.

Neighbours told Bristol Crown Court of hearing windows breaking and seeing a white Ford transit van leaving the scene moments before flames were spotted on the ground floor of the building. A forensic expert also presented fingerprint evidence linking one of the three accused, Tony Scott, to a petrol container used in the attack . . .

I turn off the radio. Crack the window. The cold air helps me concentrate.

Parking the car outside the terrace, I walk down the hill to the cottage and sit outside on a stone wall in the shadows of low branches. The lights are on downstairs. A TV flickers behind the curtains.

Something pushes me up the path. My finger hovers over the doorbell.

Julianne opens the door a crack. ‘Hello?’

‘Hi.’

‘Is everything OK?’

‘Fine. I just thought I’d drop by. How are you?’

‘I’m good.’

There is a pause that stretches out in my mind, becoming embarrassing.

Julianne opens the door wider. ‘Do you want to come in?’

I step past her and wait for her to close the door. She’s been watching TV, but the sound is now turned down.

‘Where’s Charlie?’ I ask, glancing up the stairs.

‘Babysitting.’

‘Who is she looking after?’

‘A little boy in Emma’s class.’

Julianne curls up in an armchair by the fire. A book lies open on the armrest. A cup of tea is empty on the table next to her.

‘How was your date with Harry?’ I ask.

She holds up her hand and rocks her palm from side to side. ‘So-so. I discovered that he’s rather controlling.’

‘How?’

‘I asked for the dessert menu and he made such a fuss.’

I feel a stab of guilt. ‘That’s very odd.’

Julianne pushes hair back behind her ears. ‘I doubt you came here to talk about Harry.’ She smiles and effortlessly takes repossession of my heart.

‘Sienna was pregnant,’ I say, which is definitely a conversation starter.

Julianne blinks at me. ‘Who?’

‘I don’t know.’

We’re both thinking the same thing. What if it had been Charlie? What would we do?

Julianne grows pensive. ‘I walked past the Hegartys’ house today and I saw the curtains closed and I started thinking about Sienna. She was always here, Joe, staying for dinner, sleeping over, curled up on the sofa with Charlie.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Then I started thinking about how angry I’ve been at you, and some of the things I said.’

She raises her eyes to mine, filling me with a sense that all her remembered anger, grief and impatience are gone.

‘We haven’t lost someone, Joe. We have two wonderful daughters. We’re very lucky.’

‘I know.’

Her ocean-grey eyes are shining. ‘I don’t know if I should tell you this.’

‘What?’

‘There are nights when I miss you so much I cry myself to sleep and other nights when I realise that loving you took every ounce of energy and more. I didn’t have enough . . . I’ll never have enough.’

‘I understand.’

‘Do you?’

‘Let me come back.’

She shakes her head. ‘I’m not strong enough to live with you, Joe. I’m barely strong enough to live without you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re not always going to be here.’

A stray lock of hair falls from behind her ear. She tucks it back again. For a moment I think she might cry. The last time I saw her tears was two years ago, in her hospital room where rain streaked the windows and it felt as if the clouds were crying for me.

‘I don’t love you any more,’ Julianne told me blankly, coldly. ‘Not in the right way - not how I used to.’

‘There isn’t a right way. There’s just love,’ I said.

What do I know?

Now she’s smiling sadly at me. ‘You’re so good at analysing other people, Joe, but not yourself.’

‘Or you.’

‘I hate it when you analyse me.’

‘I try not to. I prefer you to be a magnificent enigma.’

Julianne laughs properly this time.

‘I’m being serious,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to understand you. I don’t want to know what you’ll do next. I want to spend the rest of my life trying to solve the mystery.’

She sighs and shakes her head. ‘You’re a decent man, Joe, but . . .’

I stop her. No statement that begins that way is ever a harbinger for anything good. What if she’s clearing the decks before telling me that she’s going to marry Harry Veitch?

‘Tell me something honest,’ I say.

Julianne presses her lips into narrow unyielding lines. ‘Are you saying I tell lies?’

‘No, that’s not what I meant. I just want to talk about something important.’

‘This isn’t a necessary conversation, Joe.’

‘I like it when we talk about the girls. It makes me feel like we’re still a family.’

‘We can’t live it over again,’ she whispers sadly.

‘I know.’

‘Do you? Sometimes I wonder.’

On Tuesday afternoon I park the Volvo outside a house made of weathered stone with a slate roof. The small square front garden is divided by strips of grass between flowerbeds where gerberas are pushing through the loam searching for sunlight.

Grabbing my overcoat from the passenger seat, I walk up the front path and give the doorbell a short ring, putting on my friendliest professional demeanour. Nobody answers. Ringing the bell again, I press my ear to the wooden door. Canned TV laughter leaks from inside.

Retreating down the steps to the front window, I try to peer through a gap in the curtains into the murky twilight of a living room. The TV is a flickering square. I can just make out a blurred outline of someone sitting on the sofa. Perhaps they didn’t hear the doorbell.

This time I knock loudly and listen for footfalls or muffled voices or the sound of someone breathing on the other side of the door.

Nothing.

I’m about to leave when I hear a voice from the rear garden. Gordon Ellis appears from the side of the house. He’s dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a Harlequins rugby shirt. A fringe of chestnut hair falls across his forehead. He brushes it aside.

‘Hello.’

‘Hi. Were you waiting long? I was out back.’

‘No, not long.’

He looks at me closely. ‘Have we met?’

‘I’m Charlie O’Loughlin’s father.’

‘Of course you are.’ He offers his hand: a killer grip. ‘Call me Gordon.’

‘Joe.’

He’s carrying a hoe, which he rests against his shoulder. ‘Charlie is a great kid.’

‘Thank you.’

I glance at the front door. ‘I don’t want to interrupt . . . if you have a visitor.’

‘Nope, it’s just me. Natasha has gone shopping. I was just doing some chores. Almost finished. Do you mind if we talk out back?’

I follow him along the side path where a rusting bicycle is propped against the fence, alongside recycling bins. The long narrow garden has a sandbox with toys, a vegetable patch and a small greenhouse. At the far end there is an old stable block, now a garage, which backs on to a rear lane.