Playing Nice
We rarely talk about Miles. Sometimes Lucy feels the need to say something, and then I simply listen while whatever’s on her mind spills out in a rush. Then, just as suddenly, she’ll stop, shake her head as if clearing it of the memory, and talk about something else.
But I can see her confidence growing day by day. It’ll take years, I imagine. But already she’s a different person than the nervous, jumpy creature we sat opposite in the café almost a year ago.
I suspect she would never have helped us on her own account, though. It took Pete telling her what Miles was threatening to do to the children to do that. She let out a cry, and her hand flew to her mouth. Some of the other mothers in the café glanced at her briefly, then went on with their chatting.
From that moment, her resolve never wavered. It was her who tracked down the address of the storage unit, her who stole the key from Miles’s desk. When we went to look, it was just as she’d said—an old Volkswagen station wagon, the tax many years out of date. There were dents on the bonnet, and a crack in the windscreen where it might have been hit by a flying, tumbling skull.
But it was me, not her or Pete, who drove it to Haydon Gardens the next morning. In my mind, there was never any question about that. Pete had been shocked when I first told him what I was planning. Then he said that, if it had to be done, it should be him. But I knew something like that would have eaten away at him afterward. For me, it’s different.
It was when I was researching Miles’s personality that I began to realize something about myself, something important. Psychopathy is a spectrum, Annette told me: These are traits most people have none of, a few have in abundance, but some have a scattering of—just enough to make them fearless, or lacking in squeamishness, or clearheaded in a crisis. Just enough to make them ruthless, too. When I found the psychopath test online I filled it in out of curiosity, but even before I calculated my score I knew I’d be on a very different part of that spectrum from Pete.
I drove up behind Miles as he got home from his run. The sound, or perhaps some sixth sense, must have alerted him, because he half turned and glimpsed me over his shoulder. For a moment, he kept going—speeded up, in fact, as if he meant to try to outrun me. Then he’d slowed and turned. Facing me. Staring me down, as if his gaze alone might be enough to make me stop.
When I kept on coming, and he saw I meant to hit him, he grinned. There’d been no fear in his eyes, only a kind of alert, exultant excitement.
And a nod. Whether that was a gesture of acceptance, or something else—of recognition; welcome, even—I couldn’t have said.
* * *
—
I ALMOST DIDN’T TELL Pete it was done. I felt no guilt, no inner need to confess, and in many ways the less he knew the better. But I had to go home anyway, to get my phone, and I decided that, on balance, he should know our children were now safe.
He sat very quietly, his head bowed. He was torn, I knew—both horrified at the thought I’d actually done it, and relieved our nightmare was over.
“By the way,” I added when I’d finished. “I think you should tell me what happened with you and Bronagh now.”
He stared at me. “How do you know anything did?”
“Well, for one thing your account didn’t quite tally with hers. For another, you told a stupid lie. You said you came back from York on the Friday morning. You were right, of course, that I had no idea what planet I was on by then, let alone what day of the week it was. But it’s all there in my medical notes—the date and time I was sectioned and admitted. You got back on the Saturday.”
“Oh God.” Pete took a deep breath. “It’s been eating me up, not telling you. I was going to tell you—I spent the whole time on that train working out what I was going to say. And then—well, obviously I couldn’t say anything when I found you in the state you were in. Or when you first came back from hospital. So I just kind of left it and then it became harder and harder.”
So, hesitantly, he told me. How Bronagh had dropped a heavy hint or two when they were all drinking at the Vudu Lounge—“This is my first big night out in six months, Pete. If I don’t find a ride tonight, I think I’ll go crazy.” A dance. An arm—his—around a waist—hers, pulling her close. And then she’d looked him in the eye and said softly, “You do know a blow job wouldn’t count, Pete Riley, don’t you? What with you not even being married?”
He stopped, shamefaced.
“And?” I said.
“But that was just the point. Of course it would count. And once she’d said it out loud like that…I suddenly realized where this was heading. How squalid it was. And I—I was just letting it happen. So I went and packed my bag and got on the first train to London.”
Now it was my turn to stare. “You mean—nothing happened?”
He frowned. “That happened. It was hardly nothing. I’d realized I’d almost risked everything—you, Theo, everything I care about—for some stupid, momentary ego boost. And then of course I came back and found you ill, so I felt even worse. I think that’s why I threw myself into looking after Theo—to try to make it up to you. And I realized that I loved it. I mean, I loved him already, but it was more than that. I loved caring for him. Being his dad. I’d finally found what I was good at.” He looked at me. “Can you forgive me? It’s the only time I’ve even come close to doing something like that, I promise.”
“Of course I forgive you,” I said. “I love you, stupid.”
* * *
—
CAN PEOPLE LIKE ME love? Really love, the way Pete so clearly loves me and Theo, from the very bottom of his heart? Opinions on that are divided, I gather. But then, I’m only marginally on the spectrum—the way I reacted to the NICU confirms that. And when I look at Theo, soaking up the emotional literacy Pete’s teaching him, I know that change is possible.
Pete will be my conscience. He’s already persuaded me to drop our legal action against the NHS. It’s right that David receive a payout to help Lucy look after him, he argued, particularly as Miles left her nothing but debts. But we, and Theo, don’t need it. So we settled for getting our costs paid, to get Justin Watts off our backs, and with the police investigation effectively closed, NHS Resolution was only too eager to accept.
As for my own slipups, I don’t see any need to confess those to Pete. I guessed that was what Miles was telling him, of course, when we collected Theo after the hearing. I was waiting for Pete to say something to me, or for Miles to follow it up with some evidence—a witness statement through the letterbox, an affidavit pinging into Pete’s inbox—but he never did.