That Night

by Gillian McAllister

‘She hit a man with her car. It was an accident,’ Joe says, and she’s so glad he’s there with her, her brother, to try to bend the story, as tough and unyielding as metal, into what it really was. Into love and loyalty and – anyway – into the only viable option that they had. Wasn’t that the case? They’re not wrong, are they?

  Evan has brought his hand down to wipe at his forehead, which is now covered in sweat. ‘I mean …’ he says. ‘I didn’t think …’

  His expression changes as he looks at Cathy. She must not have the words for anything, at the moment, because she can’t name his expression. All she knows is that his face has changed. From something to something else.

  Suddenly, she’s frightened. Here, she and Joe, alone with this man.

  ‘How … how could you?’ Evan says.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Cathy says. Can she ever explain it to anybody? The dead-of-the-night phone call. The blood. Her fear for her sister, greater than her fear would be for herself. Their long, shared history, Rosie … everything in Cathy’s life led up to that moment, or that’s how she feels anyway.

  She meets Evan’s eyes. ‘You just – what? You just … you what, you hid a body?’ He directs his questions to her, and Cathy can understand why. She has shocked him more than Joe ever could.

  ‘We didn’t have a choice,’ she says.

  ‘I just –’

  ‘You can’t tell anyone,’ Joe says loudly.

  Evan still says nothing. A hand over his mouth, thumb rubbing at his chin.

  ‘Frannie rang me,’ Cathy says, jumping to explain. ‘It was after one o’clock in the morning. She’d hit somebody. She was so frightened she’d go to prison – she was on the wrong side of the road, she just forgot, she just forgot they drive on the right.’

  Evan nods, hands still over his mouth, skin in greyscale.

  ‘She needed me. We didn’t know what else to do … we – the blood … we had no choice.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you – wouldn’t you do the same? If it were your sister – your brother?’

  Evan looks at her for a long moment. There’s sweat along the very top of his hairline. The sheen catches the overhead lamps. ‘I’m an only child,’ he says eventually.

  ‘We’ll all go to prison,’ Joe says. Cathy glances at him. It won’t help, this aggressive line, but she understands why Joe takes it.

  Suddenly, Cathy is not glad he’s there with her, after all. That she is on that side, and not on Evan’s. They are monsters, they must be. She wishes fervently that she weren’t here, trying to make a murder, a body burial, and the rest, sound necessary, and that she was there, with Evan. In shock. Aghast. The Cathy from before the phone call.

  ‘It’s … this is …’ he says.

  ‘I know,’ Cathy whispers, trying to breathe deeply. ‘I know.’

  ‘How …’ Evan starts to say, but the pieces are falling into place around him, clearly. Evan is a total news junkie. He will know all about that case.

  ‘He was a cop,’ Evan says and for just a second Cathy feels almost proud that she was able to call his reaction, to know him. ‘Who decided to cover it up?’

  ‘I mean. Everyone. No one.’

  She stares across the room, thinking. Trying to employ the skills she’s been using all her life: logic, reasoning. But it’s impossible when it’s personal. When she’s involved.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with this information?’ he says. He looks at Cathy. He’s in profile in the dimness, turned sideways on to her.

  ‘I mean –’

  ‘We’ll all go to prison,’ Joe says again. ‘We will all go to prison if you say anything. Paul won’t have a mum. He already doesn’t have a dad.’

  Evan says nothing at that, his mouth twisting up on one side in some sort of ironic smile. Cathy thinks of him delivering those pizzas and winces. Something about the situation feels more precarious because of that, because of who he is, because of what they know about him and witnessed him doing.

  ‘Okay, great,’ Evan says, with an edge Cathy’s not sure she’s ever heard in his voice. Joe’s never liked him, but Cathy doesn’t mind him. He isn’t especially interesting to Cathy, doesn’t incense her the way he does Joe. But interesting is overrated. Interesting is having had sex only twice, aged thirty-five.

  ‘You weren’t there,’ Joe says.

  ‘No, I wasn’t!’ Evan says. ‘How can I not tell anybody this? This is – I mean … it’s actually mad. I’m committing a crime, aren’t I, in covering up your crime?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Cathy says earnestly. ‘But – for someone you love. If they rang and …’ she starts, but it’s no use, not really. Nobody understands the dilemma until they face it. Cathy wouldn’t.

  ‘Would I shovel soil on a human being?’ Evan says.

  ‘There’s no one you’d do it for?’ Cathy asks tentatively, knowing exactly who he would do it for. The same person he works a second job for. The same person he pays child maintenance for.

  He drops his eyes to the floor, evidently thinking. ‘God,’ he says, maybe finally comprehending it.

  Evan leaves shortly after that. Joe too leaves her alone with her work, the way it’s always been.

  The urge to end it strikes her, as she checks on the post-op Frenchie. To end it in the easiest, simplest way, before it ends them: for the person with the least to lose to take it on the chin.

  She could confess, say it was her. Take the blame for her sister.

  She’d lose Tom, but what even is that? A stupid fling.

  After all, Cathy thinks, in the dark of the practice at night, another life saved, what difference does it make? It would be the punishment Cathy ought to have received twenty years ago. If she came out and said that it was her, then this whole thing would be over, without her having lost anything at all. Not really. Not compared to everybody else.

  45.

  Lydia

  Lydia finds the photo she took of the call Joe received and dials the number. She is at work, where she knows she won’t be disturbed. It’s an Italian number, and she recognizes immediately the international flat dialling tone. She almost hangs up, there on her lunch hour in one of the back meeting rooms at the law firm, losing her nerve, not wanting to know, but she doesn’t.

  ‘I’m Joe’s wife,’ she says simply to the woman who answers. It’s a technique she’s seen the lawyers use here at work: play a straight bat but provide as little information as possible. People usually fill in the gaps with their assumptions.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ the woman says to Lydia. Lydia doesn’t recognize her voice. Her palms are hot and slick with sweat, not only at what she might find out but because of the invasion of it. Joe will sometimes wave a hand rather than explain his siblings’ in-jokes. Almost like he’s decided she can’t possibly understand. ‘I spoke to Joe the other night,’ the woman adds.

  ‘Yes …’ Lydia says. ‘And you’re in Verona?’

  ‘That’s right.’ A puzzled note enters the woman’s voice. A pause while she waits for an explanation, which Lydia is supposed to provide.

  ‘I just wondered – sorry – but would you mind filling me in on what you discussed?’ Lydia says. Affairs circle in her mind. And the lies people tell to cover them up.

  ‘He was asking about the location of the new development – near the villa,’ the woman says. Lydia’s chest feels alive with relief, like a dam somewhere has burst and allowed only good feelings to rush in.

  ‘Oh, yes, he said about this – so sorry,’ Lydia says. ‘I was trying to find somebody else.’

  She cups her face in her hands, allowing a smile to spread. No affairs. No bankruptcy. Just a woman in Verona that Joe spoke to because he was worried about their villa.

  ‘No problem,’ the woman says. ‘He wanted to know when we’re starting and what the area looked like, how it would affect the value of his villa. I have been meaning to call back – it’s been postponed because of the police investigation. They have a particular area of
concern just off the track road. They’re searching everywhere around there, it’s such a pain … there is not an inch of Verona untouched, it seems.’

  Lydia thanks her and rings off. Well, she can’t tell Joe that, can she? He’ll just have to find out for himself. It’s only a development. Nothing sinister.

  She spends the rest of the day smiling.

  46.

  Joe

  ‘Emergency,’ Joe says, rubbing at his forehead. Even though he has washed his hands, his wrist still carries the metallic tang of blood on it. At least, he thinks it does. He smells it sometimes, the blood from that night. It’s a memory, a phantom. He sniffs again, just checking.

  ‘Yeah?’ Lydia says, her eyes tracking the movement of his arm. She’s sitting on their blue sofa, her socked feet poking out from underneath a white throw. Her body language is easy.

  ‘What?’ Joe says. He sits down next to her. Even his legs ache. What’s the matter with him?

  Fucking hell, he is thinking. They’re searching a specific area. What does that mean? Evan now knows. The ship is sinking, water pouring in faster than they can stop it.

  Joe unclenches his jaw and looks at her properly. ‘What’s with you?’ he says.

  ‘I owe you an apology.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I’m sorry I was suspicious. I know what the Verona thing is.’

  Joe’s heart rolls over in his chest. ‘What?’

  ‘I know you’re only worried about the development. So – what? Have you tried to stop it? In some illegal way?’

  God, Joe thinks, raking his hair back from his forehead. The guilt. The fucking guilt of this. He can’t cope with it. At every turn there is no right thing to do. Everyone else has aces and kings, and he has a dummy hand.

  Joe scoots closer to her on the sofa, small compensation for shutting her out. ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘Oh, just Google.’

  ‘You don’t owe me an apology. Yes, I was trying to stop the development.’

  ‘Of the woods?’ Lydia asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Just wrote letters …’ Joe says feebly.

  ‘And you rang a woman? Didn’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I know you did,’ Lydia says. ‘You’re still lying, Joe. But I thought this was just about –’

  ‘I’ve said I can’t tell you.’

  And then she gets up and walks away from him like a skittish animal. She goes upstairs and slams the door to the bathroom. He hears a bath start running, one that she probably doesn’t want. Lydia is prickly about her role in the family. Won’t accept she will always be once removed.

  Joe stares up at the ceiling, where she’s likely sitting in that way that she does, perched on the side of the bath, toes in their bathmat that she launders religiously once a week, and puts his head in his hands, wondering what to do. Wondering if there’s a possible solution he could think of that doesn’t hurt anyone. That keeps Frannie safe. That keeps Lydia safe but not excluded. But there isn’t. He sits back down again, his eyes closed, tears budding, listening to the sound of the bath filling up, the water rising and rising but not yet spilling over.

  He can’t tell her. It’ll break her. That he has done something illegal, something connected to violence. Her father hit her and her mother. The first time, he held her wrists so tightly they left marks, Lydia says. The second was a punch to her stomach. Lydia told a teacher only after the twentieth time. She’d lived through all that violence.

  She would leave him. He lifts up his head. But is that the right thing to do – to take that choice away from her? Or is the right thing to do to continue to protect her from the knowledge?

  He climbs into bed next to her later that evening. She is sleeping, he can tell. Deep breathing. She’s on her front, the way she always sleeps. It’s hot in the bedroom, and she’s thrown the covers off herself, the soles of her feet exposed to the air. He sits, looking at those feet, that bum, the limbs of his wife that he promised to love forever, to honour, to forsake all others for. So what is he doing?

  But it isn’t that simple. Nothing is. Frannie – in some ways – means as much to him as Lydia. Which is the right choice?

  Lydia must feel his eyes on her, because she stirs. ‘Spare room,’ she mumbles into the pillow. It has a small wet patch on it, a drool patch. Joe loves the intimacy of marriage, that he is allowed to see these things about another person. But it no longer seems to be something he is allowed. He must throw it away, to save his sister. Can that be true?

  ‘I want to talk,’ he says gently to her, not wanting to startle her, to scare her away.

  Lydia sits up, saying nothing. She’s naked, but she draws the duvet up her body, covering her breasts.

  ‘Let’s say that I’m helping somebody who’s done something illegal. Something really illegal.’

  ‘How illegal?’ Lydia says immediately.

  Joe lowers his gaze to the bedspread, to that patch of drool on her pillow case. ‘It would get life in prison,’ he says softly.

  Lydia blinks, looking at him. ‘What?’ she whispers. And then she moves her foot away from his, that beautiful, round heel of her foot that looks exactly like a peach, and asks him one question only: ‘Why are you doing that?’

  ‘Love,’ Joe says.

  Lydia stares straight ahead and nods slowly, appearing to think. And then she says: ‘Why are you telling me now?’

  ‘I want you to be able to decide what to do.’

  ‘Then you’d better tell me the whole story,’ she says, turning to him, her hair still mussed from sleep.

  He pauses for a second, thinking. Evan already knows. Doesn’t he owe it to her?

  ‘Okay,’ he says, slowly, painfully.

  And so he tells her. The whole thing. Frannie, Verona, the blood, the body.

  At first there is recognition when he says his sister’s name, but then, after that, Lydia’s face seems to fade, like a message written in sand being slowly, slowly, slowly erased by the tide. By the end of the story, there is nothing left. And that’s when he knows. Lydia is easy to predict, lives her life by rules she’s had to construct to make sense of what happened to her. And this will breach one of those rules, Joe is sure.

  Nevertheless, his heart full of hope, he stares at her and says, ‘I hope I’ve done the right thing in telling you.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispers, looking at him, eyes huge and sad, basset-hound eyes. ‘Joe. How could you do this?’ Still, she doesn’t raise her voice.

  ‘No – I … she … what could I do?’

  Lydia wraps the duvet more tightly around herself and shivers. ‘Joe.’

  ‘What?’ he says.

  ‘Nothing,’ she says softly, looking beyond him, somewhere, in another room. Thinking, he supposes, in that way that she does.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asks plainly.

  She meets his eyes and tries to form her face into a smile, but it’s a hopeless imitation. ‘I get it,’ she says thickly, sadly. ‘Yeah. I get it. It’s family, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Joe says quietly, not sure what to think, what to make of her expression, of her rigid body language, of her eyes.

  ‘Joe?’ she says, a few minutes later.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Is the body in the woods that they’re developing?’

  Evan’s hands are shaking in surgery the next day, though Joe thinks it ought to be his. The police are searching the woods where Will is. They know, they know, they know. They’re going to find the body, covered in his and his siblings’ DNA, unless he does something. But what?

  Lydia was still strange this morning, like somebody with a hangover or morning sickness. Removed from him. Existing mostly in her head, making coffee in silence, taking ages to answer him. Joe went in early, told Cathy what she’d told him. Cathy’s skin turned the colour of off milk.

  It’s eleven o’clock. A joint effort to X-ray a Labrador’s leg
. An easy procedure. Nothing Joe would ever think about.

  Evan is trying to keep the Labrador still, but his hands …

  Joe stares and stares at the movement. Tremulous fingers. His short, neat, little nails.

  Joe is fascinated by them. Is Evan afraid of him? Or nervous? Or what?

  The thoughts keep coming. Will Lydia leave him? He cannot, he cannot think of that. He will be sick.

  Will they find the body? Will his phone ring at any moment? What the fuck are they supposed to do – go on the run?

  Evan looks up at him, sensing Joe’s stillness.

  ‘I’ll position him,’ Joe says. He gets the Labrador lying still. ‘Just X-ray him with me here,’ Joe adds.

  ‘Er, no,’ Evan says. ‘I will not irradiate you.’

  Joe stares at the wall. What’s the point of safety procedures when he’s doomed? But he obeys Evan, says, ‘Stay,’ to the dog, then absents himself while the X-ray clicks. He rewards the dog with a bit of sausage.

  Evan says nothing, turning away from him. He sighs and turns off the X-ray machine, still looking at Joe. Another puff of air escapes his lips, but no words.

  He takes the dog out front, then comes back and starts to wipe up.

  ‘Does anyone else know? Maria?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you lie to the police?’ he says, his back to Joe.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wow.’ He turns to him, expression unreadable. ‘What was it like?’

  Joe shrugs, not so much trying to convey the feeling but trying to remove an uneasy weight from across his shoulders, as though an uncomfortable arm has been placed across them. ‘It was horrible.’

  ‘And you … you buried a body,’ he says flatly.

  ‘We tried to revive him,’ Joe says. ‘He was dead, but we still did the CPR.’ His voice catches as he says it. ‘It was –’

  ‘What?’ Evan says, but his tone is more gentle.

  ‘He just … I don’t know.’

  ‘Was it awful?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I always hate how people assume vets will be good at CPR,’ Evan says conversationally. ‘I can’t imagine.’