Free Never Coming Back by Tim Weaver Page A

seventeen years younger than her sister at just eight, but much more like Paul.
    â€œYour girlfriend gone?”
    Healy stood in the doorway closest to me, which led out of the living room to the stairs. He’d showered and changed, but still smelled of booze. I didn’t bother responding.
    He came further in and collapsed on to the sofa opposite me.
    â€œIs she why you won’t speak to Liz?”
    I looked at him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    â€œShe was an ex, though, right?”
    I didn’t reply.
    â€œEmily, I mean.”
    â€œI know who you meant, Healy.”
    â€œSo was she?”
    â€œWas she what?”
    â€œAn ex?”
    â€œWhy do you care?”
    His gaze lingered on me. “You need to tell Liz.”
    I closed the laptop. Said nothing.
    â€œYou owe her,” he said.
    â€œOwe her what?”
    â€œAn explanation.”
    â€œIs that her talking—or you?”
    â€œI don’t know,” he said, leaning back. “I just know I chat with her, and whatever you think’s happened between you, she needs to hear it.” He stopped. Looked at me. Slowly, something changed in his face; something softer, less severe. “It reminds me of . . .”
    â€œOf what?”
    â€œOf a place I’ve been before.”
    He meant his marriage. He meant the terrible mistakes he’d made. And he meant the aftermath, when the case he was on was falling apart, when his wife and kids told him they hated him, and when the last conversationhe ever had with Leanne, his daughter, was a screaming match that ended with her storming out. Ten months later, he found her dead in a room full of so much suffering I sometimes wondered how he slept at night.
    I nodded that I understood and then watched him for a moment, half formed in the dull light of the living room. This version of Healy—this quiet rendering of him—was the one I was always trying to get at because it was the part of him I liked. He didn’t show it often but, when he did, it felt like a call for help; as if, subliminally, he wanted this part of himself to be pulled to the surface.
    â€œI’ll try and call her tomorrow,” I said.
    He nodded. “I think she’d appreciate that.”
    â€œAnd you?”
    â€œWhat about me?”
    â€œYou know what I mean, Healy.”
    He shrugged. “She’s your girlfriend, not mine.”
    And yet, even as he said it, even as he raised his defenses again and began to look more familiar, something of the other Healy remained. Somewhere in his face there was a bleakness, as if the thought of me sorting things out with Liz—or, more likely, me telling her it was definitely over—had shifted things into focus. The calls would stop. She wouldn’t need Healy anymore. And whatever she’d brought to his life would be gone.
    â€œI’m going out,” he said.
    I watched him disappear into the kitchen, listened to him open and close the front door, and then opened the laptop again. The photograph of the Lings popped back into view. Close in on the four faces. Carrie. Paul. Annabel. Olivia. My eyes moved between them, one after the other, back and forth.
    Father. Mother. Daughters.
    Something seemed more obvious this time.
    Paul was Asian. As I’d been walking her back to her car, Emily had mentioned that his parents were from Hong Kong and had moved here two years before he was born. Carrie was Caucasian. Olivia was a good mix of the two: Asian in and around the eyes, the cheeks, in the soft triangle of the chin; Caucasian in the center of her face and her bone structure. But Annabel wasn’t like that at all. She looked exactly like her mum: one hundred percent Caucasian, with no hint of her father.
    Nothing in the cheeks. Nothing in the eyes.
    Nothing of Paul Ling at all.

13
    Early the next day, I got up and found Healy was already awake, sitting next to the open window in a