Free The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly Page B

are.”
    A car passing the road outside swishes a beam through the bedroom curtains, a brief illusion of searchlights that sweep over the bed where we lie. The car’s low purr fades into the night. The only noises left are the soft sound of his breathing and the odd rustle from outside the window. Last time I lay with him, the night before it happened, it was like this, only then we had the white noise of the A1 fleshing out the skeleton of silence.
    “Shall we tell her?” he says suddenly.
    We both know that the question is rhetorical. It is when, not if. We have to tell her, and soon. The story she knows is not too far from the truth—that there was a fight and a panic and two people died, and although Daddy isn’t a bad man, he had to go to prison to say sorry. To her credit, she never struggled with accepting the concept of a good person living in prison, and has never questioned Rex’s character. She is young enough now not to ask questions. I sometimes think I have deliberately kept her young for this reason. But next year she will be ten, she will soon leave the tiny village school where she has been cosseted for so long and be thrust into a huge comprehensive where I can’t protect her. Ours is the kind of secret that gathers power the longer it is kept.
    “You know we have to.”
    “But not just yet,” he says. “Can we have a little honeymoon period first? Time to settle in?”
    How long does he need? How much time do we have? What if tomorrow is the day my mystery phone caller decides to play his or her hand? I am still protecting Rex from the calls, feigning frustration when yet another “call center” interrupts a meal or a television program. We are living by a stopwatch, but only I know it.
    “Another week or two won’t hurt,” I concede. “But we must tell her.”
    “What? Everything?”
    “Christ, I don’t know.” I pull away from Rex and prop myself up on my elbows. “I’ve had ten years to think about it and still I don’t know. Edited highlights?”
    “You know her better than I do,” he says nervously. “What parts is she old enough to understand?”
    Now it’s my turn to sigh.
    “I’m not sure it works like that. I still don’t feel old enough to understand it sometimes, and I was there.”
    “Please don’t say that.” His voice rises and his face assumes a familiar expression, one I used to hate. Panic and neediness etch themselves into the crease between his eyebrows. “You have to understand. Who else will? No one else was there. If you don’t understand, then what did I do it all for? What have the last ten years been about?”
    “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. Come here.” I flip onto my back and he curls around me like a baby. His breathing slows to a light snore but I stay wide awake.
    Rex thinks that the talk we must one day have with Alice is the last hurdle he needs to leap before he can relax and resume his life. He thinks it’s the last loose end we need to tie up. Of course, he is wrong. There is another, greater secret that only I keep. The real question is not shall we tell her, but should I tell him?

8
    B IBA DIDN’T COME IN through the front door but emerged from the back garden as the children had. I wondered if she’d been lurking in the underground rooms all this time, but the bag under her arm and the lick of perspiration on her forehead suggested otherwise. I tried not to make my delight too obvious.
    “Karen! I’m glad you’re here,” she said, as though I had kept an appointment. She kissed me hello on the lips, opened the fridge door, and then shut it again without really looking at its contents. “Help yourself to whatever. Mi casa, su casa . . . that’s Spanish, that is,” she said with a wink in her voice before eyeing the pastry that Nina was working on. “What are you making? How many are we for dinner tonight? Me, you, Rex, Karen, the kids . . .” She flicked a finger up with each name so that her hand was