Owen Sheers - I Saw a Man

He climbed his staircase, listening to his own footsteps, and for any other sound he might pick up from the staircase next door. As he reached the second floor another thought reached him. What if it had happened, exactly as he remembered, but no one had found her yet? What if Lucy was still lying there, alone, on that darkening staircase, waiting for her discoverer? Michael could still be that person. He could still be the one to find her, to call the ambulance, the police.

He let himself into his flat, dropped his bag in the hallway, and went on into the living room. As had become his habit ever since the first night he’d moved in, without turning on the lights Michael went towards the windows at the end of the room. He wanted to pause, think. Make sure he was making the right choice. He was no longer certain of what was fact or the creation of his imagination. And he had to be certain before he acted. Closing upon his reflection, on reaching the windows Michael placed his hands against their coolness and leant his forehead against their glass. Which is when he saw Josh.

From the windows of his flat Michael had only ever been able to see the far end of the Nelsons’ garden. Their pear tree, mature and tall, obscured his view of the rest of it. But above the reach of its crown, even in spring and summer, he’d always been able to make out the last few tapering metres of lawn, the fence at its end and the willow tree beyond, draping its branches into the pond. It was a long garden, so at night the light from the kitchen or the conservatory only travelled so far down its slope. But far enough, with a clear sky and a moon, for him to sometimes see Josh down there, smoking a cigarette before bed, its tip glowing with his inhalations in the dark. Which is where Josh was again this evening, standing by the fence where Michael had first told him about Caroline. Only this evening Josh wasn’t smoking, but was holding the fence with both hands instead, gripping its wood, his head bowed between his arms as he wept.

From his vantage point in his flat Michael watched from above as Josh’s broad back shook and heaved. Balling one hand into a fist he began to beat it against the wood, not with force, but softly, steadily. Eventually, as if this effort had drained the last of his will, Josh slipped to his knees, which is where he remained, his face sunk in his hands and his back still shaking, coursing with the voltage of his daughter’s death.

WITHIN MINUTES OF Michael’s leaving that afternoon, Josh had returned home. He’d walked back to South Hill Drive quickly, so although Tony and Maddy’s house was just a few streets away, when he’d come into the hall his T-shirt was already patched with sweat. Closing the front door behind him, he’d held on to the handle, keeping the tongue of the latch from clicking so as not to wake Lucy, then gone straight into the kitchen for a drink. Taking a glass from the cupboard, he’d filled it with ice from the fridge, and then water. As he’d drunk, one hand resting on the tap, Josh had listened for his daughter upstairs. She’d been irritable since she’d woken that morning, fractious and running a temperature. At first he’d thought it was just the heat, but when she’d asked him if she could go back to sleep he knew she must have been sick. Ever since she was a baby, sleep was how Lucy’s body had tackled illness. So Josh had said yes, and put her to bed.

Samantha was away for the weekend with her sister, and he’d dropped Rachel off at her friend’s house for a daylong pool party first thing. So, having put Lucy to bed, Josh found himself unexpectedly alone. It was a hot Saturday in June, and for once he had no daughter to occupy. His time was his own. He thought about taking the paper into the garden, or heading up to his study and getting through some of the emails he’d been avoiding for weeks. But the day had seemed too good for either of those and he felt his free hours too much of a gift. Especially falling, as they had, on a weekend when not just Samantha, but also Tony was away.

Perhaps he’d sent Maddy a text then deleted it. Or maybe he hadn’t even risked that, and had just gone around and surprised her. Their house was, after all, so close. However he’d done it, with text, phone call, or on the spur of the moment, Josh had gone. For only a short amount of time, perhaps. For less than an hour, certainly, but still, he’d gone. Leaving Lucy asleep in her room upstairs, and unaware of the hallway’s shifting air drawing the back door open, he’d pulled the front door closed, and gone.

And now he was back, his body evacuated by the urgency of their sex, a boyish thrill of truancy ebbing to a pragmatic efficiency. It had been a risk, but now taken he must restore the day’s rhythm and elide the minutes of his absence. Finishing his water, Josh stripped off his T-shirt, put it in the washing machine, and headed upstairs to take a shower.

He saw Lucy’s hair first, blonde against the red. For a few seconds he didn’t understand. But as each stair revealed more of her — her closed eyes, her ridden-up pyjama top, her pale belly — Josh realised he was looking at his daughter, motionless before him.

For a long time he just held her, rocking her against his chest on the stairs, feeling the warmth leave her skin. The coroner’s report would say this was regrettable. That the body should not have been moved. The police, too, questioned Josh as to why he’d laid Lucy out on the sofa downstairs and hadn’t left her as he’d found her. Although the report stated she’d most likely died instantly — from either the contusion to the back of her head or the break in her neck — there was a chance, however slim, that Lucy, had she not been moved, might have been saved. But Josh knew they were wrong. He’d known, as soon as he’d touched her, that his daughter was dead. Which is why he’d held her like that, tight against his bare chest, so he might harvest the last of her heat, so he might feel the blood and skin he and Samantha had made, that they’d known since she was a baby, cool against his own.

The police were the first to arrive, a squad car with two officers. Soon afterwards the ambulance Josh had called pulled up alongside. A group of shirtless boys on bikes gathered down the street, sucking on brightly coloured ices. Across the road, a woman three floors up, resting her folded arms on a windowsill, called back to her husband to come and look. A few doors down, an elderly man, an ex — classics professor, had been reading his newspaper in the sun at the front of his house. Standing up, paper in hand, he’d watched along with the shirtless boys and the woman at the window as the paramedics had carried out a stretcher, a blanket bunched at its centre. Later that day, the sun having moved on from his garden, he’d looked up again while folding his deckchair and seen police photographers ferrying their equipment into the house.

At the police station a detective sergeant, a young woman still in her twenties, took a statement from Josh. At the same time, down the corridor in a room with two desk fans turning at full speed, an officer from the family protection unit ran background checks on Lucy’s name and the Nelsons’ address. Halfway through his statement, Josh, still numb, had become angry. Why were they questioning him? She’d fallen. It was an accident. Did they really think he’d kill his own daughter? The detective sergeant had let him rant, watching him with tired eyes. Going to the corner of the room, she’d poured him a cup of tea and asked him if he wanted any sugar, and if he wanted to call Lucy’s mother. Or they could send a female constable. It was up to him. As she brought him his tea Josh had nodded silently and then begun crying again.

Samantha was getting ready for dinner when she took the call. She’d just showered and still had her hair in a towel. Martha was already downstairs, waiting for her in the hotel bar. At first Josh wouldn’t tell her why she had to come home. But she’d insisted. His voice was cracked, submerged, and thick. She’d never heard him sound like that before. When he couldn’t finish his sentences for sobbing, she’d simply asked him, “Rachel or Lucy, Josh? Rachel or Lucy?” Which is when he’d told her. Although she didn’t move, Samantha had felt herself fall from a great height. Holding the phone close to her ear, she, too, had begun to cry, as Josh repeated down the line, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”