Free Second Life by S. J. Watson Page A

see it, as clearly as if it were happening
in front of me. A fist in the face, a booted foot. Why didn’t I know, somehow? That
psychic connection I always thought we had; why did it let us down, when it really
mattered? Was it severed when we took Connor? I’d see her blood, spilled on to the
concrete. I’d see her nose, broken. I’d hear her cry out. I’d wonder if she knew,
if she sensed this was it. I’d wonder how much pain there was. I’d wonder if she
thought about me, and if so whether it was with love. I’d wonder if, at the end,
she forgave me.
    I go downstairs. ‘Hugh?’
    He’s sitting in the living room with a glass of whisky. I sit down opposite him.
    ‘You should go to bed.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    He looks at me, for the first time since I came into the room. He sighs, sips his
whisky.
    ‘It hurts.’
    ‘I know.’
    There’s nothing else to say. We go to bed.
    In the morning I talk to Connor.
    ‘I don’t know what you heard last night,’ I say. ‘But your father and I love you
very much.’
    He’s sloshing milk into his cereal bowl and some spills on the table. I resist the
urge to dab it dry. ‘I just heard you arguing.’
    It feels like a slap. It’s the very opposite of what I want for my son, of what I
promised Kate. Stability. Loving parents. A home free of conflict.
    ‘All couples argue. It’s normal.’
    ‘Are you going to split up?’
    ‘No! No, of course not.’
    He goes back to his cereal. ‘What were you arguing about?’
    I don’t want to tell him.
    ‘It’s difficult. The last few months have been tough. On all of us. With Auntie Kate,
and everything.’ I know I’m stating the obvious, but it feels true, and necessary.
A shadow crosses his face and for an instant I see how he’ll look when he’s much
older, but then it passes, leaving a kind of sadness. I think he’s going to say something,
but he doesn’t.
    ‘Do you miss her?’
    He freezes, his spoon midway between the bowl and his mouth. He puts it back. Again
he looks thoughtful, much older. For some reason he reminds me of Marcus – it’s the
same expression he had when on those rare occasions he was worried or pensive – but
then he speaks and becomes a teenager once again.
    ‘I don’t know.’ His face collapses, tears come. It’s unexpected and I’m swept to
my feet in an urge to soothe and comfort.
    ‘It’s okay. Whatever you feel, or even if you don’t know, it’s okay.’
    He hesitates. ‘I suppose I do miss her. A bit. Do you?’
    ‘Yes. Every day.’
    ‘I mean,’ he goes on, ‘we didn’t see her that often, but still . . .’
    ‘It’s different, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yes. When someone is alive you might not see them very much, but you know you can.
If you want.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And now I can’t.’
    I remain silent. I want to give him the time to speak, but also I’m wondering whether
he really had felt that he could see his mother. Hugh and I may have given him permission
if he’d asked – to do that, to go and stay with her – but we had never really encouraged
it. Maybe I was too frightened that she wouldn’t let him come back.
    ‘You know,’ I say eventually, ‘whatever you’re feeling, you can ask me about anything.
Anything at all.’
    Even though I mean it, my words sound hollow. Because the truth is, there are secrets,
things I won’t tell him, even if he asks.
    There’s a long pause, then he asks, ‘Do you think they’ll get them? The people who
killed Kate.’
    It stops me in my tracks. He hasn’t called her Auntie. I wonder if it’s the first
step on the path to calling her Mum. The air between us crackles.
    ‘I hope so, darling. But it’s difficult.’
    There’s a silence between us.
    ‘Dad says she was a nice person who fell in with a bad crowd.’
    I press some bread down into the toaster and look up. I smile. That’s exactly what
Hugh used to think of me. A nice person, over-influenced by those around me. He would
tell me, while I was in Berlin,