Julian turned and looked at you expectantly. After a moment, you realized he wanted you to supply Bridget’s next line.

“But trams are electric, aren’t they?” you said dutifully.

Julian nodded. “They are mostly. But this…this…this is a…” Julian lifted Toby into the air and held him next to his ear as if listening carefully, waiting. There was a long, expectant silence.

“Steam tram,” Danny mumbled.

“Steam! Tram!” Julian echoed triumphantly. He pressed something underneath Toby. There was a little pop, and a plume of cordite-scented smoke drifted out of Toby’s funnel.

Danny laughed.

Danny laughed. The first time you’d heard him laugh in months.

* * *

—

Five minutes later the toys had been swept away again, and Julian was drinking coffee at the kitchen table.

“No point in pushing it,” he said airily. “That’s mission accomplished for today.”

As far as you were concerned, you’d just witnessed a miracle, not a mission. “What was the mission?”

“Today was all about pairing. Making my presence here a reinforcer. So that when we start work for real, Danny will associate me with fun.”

It was the first time you’d heard words like pairing and reinforcer, and you had to get him to explain. Basically, the toys would be used to motivate Danny to learn skills that other kids picked up automatically. The quicker the gratification, the better, since they’d be used as rewards for as little as three seconds of work.

“As you’ll discover soon enough, Mrs. Cullen-Scott, we ABA types do like our jargon. It’s to make what we do sound serious, when actually we’re just having fun.” Julian spoke lightly, but you got a sense that this was someone who knew exactly what he was about.

   “Well, whatever you were doing, I liked it. And please, I’m Abbie.”

64

   When you get home you email Dr. Laurence to ask for an appointment, using a false name and saying he was recommended by a previous client, Abbie Cullen-Scott. The answer comes back within an hour.

I would be happy to offer you a consultation. My waiting list is five months. However, I should inform you I have no record of a client named Abbie Cullen-Scott.

Strange, you think. Strange and frustrating. But perhaps Abbie just heard him speak at a convention.

Or are you chasing up the wrong path altogether? The fact remains that, for whatever reason, Abbie ended up leaving Danny behind.

You spend the rest of the time until Tim gets home making pasta. The repetitive movements are strangely soothing. A simple sauce of anchovies, capers, chili flakes, and tomatoes simmers in the pan while you knead and fold and push. Puttanesca sauce, it’s called, from puttana, meaning “whore.” Nobody knows why it’s called that, the cloud whispers to you silently, though you’re betting it was a man who named it.

   Tim arrives, crackling with energy.

“We’ve been given a time for our court hearing. Or at least, our initial appearance before a judge.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. Don’t worry, it’s only a formality. The judge will read the depositions to make sure they’re acceptable. Then he’ll tell us to go away and try to reach a settlement.”

“Will we? Settle, I mean?”

“In the end, sure. Why not? It’s money for nothing as far as the Cullens are concerned.”

You still doubt that’s how Lisa sees it, but you don’t say so. “Do I need to be there?”

Tim nods vigorously. “Definitely. We should show the judge we’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”

You’d rather spend the time looking for Abbie, but of course you can’t say that. When, over supper, Tim asks if you’ve made any progress, you fob him off with some vague stuff about intuitions that led nowhere.

It’s Tim who brings up the subject of Meadowbank again. It clearly matters to him that he has your endorsement, however retrospective, of the choice he made sending Danny there. But how can you tell him what you really feel, when your very existence depends on him thinking you’re of one mind with him on issues like this? When you don’t voice your reservations, he talks eagerly about stepping up the program, setting new targets. “Soon it’ll be time to stop him flapping his hands. Or playing with those trains. The problem with letting him have an autistic behavior as a reward is that you just reinforce the behavior. Now that you’re on board, it’s time to bite the bullet.”

You try to think how Danny’s going to cope with having his beloved trains taken away, and fail.

   “Today I remembered a therapist Danny had, right at the beginning,” you tell Tim. “A man called Julian. What happened to him? We liked him, didn’t we?”

“You remember Julian, do you?” There’s a strange edge to Tim’s voice.

“A little.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t try to think about him too much.”

“Why not?”

“Julian turned out to be a pain in the ass.”

You frown. “I remembered him as being so nice.”

“Well, that’s not how it was,” Tim says with finality.

* * *

—

After supper you go upstairs, just as you did last night, to remove your skin.

“Tim,” you say, when you’re back downstairs again. “There’s something in particular I need to ask you about.”

“Ask away. You know how I love to fill in the gaps in your knowledge.”

“Did you tell the police that you and Abbie had an open relationship?”

For a long moment he stares at you. “How did you—”

“Detective Tanner told me. So it’s true? You did say that?”

Just for a moment, Tim looks cornered. “It’s true I told them that, yes,” he says with a twisted shrug. “Some bright spark in my legal team came up with it. The police were fixating on the idea Abbie might have been having an affair—that finding out she’d been unfaithful would have given me a reason to kill her. So we told them it was fine by me if she was. I don’t think they believed us, but we knew there was no evidence to contradict it. And just as my lawyers hoped, it was enough to make the prosecution think twice about using it as part of their case.”

“You lied, in other words.”