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Alix makes Josie a cappuccino and brings it up to the guest room, with a roll of kitchen towel and a spray cleaner. She places the coffee by the side of Josie’s bed and collects Fred’s droppings into a sheet of paper, puts them in the toilet in the en suite, then sprays and cleans the whole area. She pulls down the sash window, saying, ‘Let’s get some fresh air in here, shall we? I can walk the dog for you, if you like?’
‘Oh. Yes. I’m sure he’d love that. His harness is in the carrier. Over there.’
Alix passes her the harness and Josie straps him into it and then clips on the lead. The moment he sees the lead his demeanour changes and he happily walks off with Alix without a backward glance at Josie.
Alix takes him to the park. It is a grey morning, but with the promise of better weather to come. She allows her head to clear as she walks. She thinks back to her encounter with Walter the previous night, when she’d taken him to look at her recording studio. She thinks of the things he’d said about Josie.
She’s not who she makes out to be. Not at all … Josie just likes to control things.
He’d described her as wanting to be seen as simple, as acting as though there was nothing in her head when really there was too much. He’d described her as having an elastic relationship with the truth. And as with everything that Walter had said last night, it could be taken more than one way. He was either painting her badly to make himself look better, or he was telling the truth. And if he was telling the truth, then what did that mean? What was in Josie’s head? Good things, or bad things? From the very start of the project, Alix had been attracted by Josie’s slight weirdness: the denim, the old husband, the clipped, detached way in which she spoke. It would be easy to assume that all her weirdness was a result of having spent her childhood with a narcissistic mother and her adult life with a man like Walter. But what if the weirdness was innate? What if the weirdness was what had led her into such a strange marriage in the first place? What, she wonders, if Josie was actually mad?
And as she thinks this, she pictures her baby boy, alone in the house with a stranger. She picks up the dog, tucks him into the denim carrier and walks home as fast as she can.
10.30 a.m.
Josie hears the front door click open and then slam closed. She thinks it must be Alix back from the park with the dog, and peers down the stairs. But it’s not Alix. It’s him. Her stupid husband. He looks worse than she feels. His red hair is stuck together in clumps, his suit jacket is slung over his shoulder and he’s wearing sunglasses even though it’s cloudy. She sees Leon run up the hallway and into his dad’s arms.
‘You smell bad,’ says Leon.
‘Thanks, mate,’ says Nathan. And then his gaze heads up the staircase and he spots Josie. She sees him jump slightly, a look of horror passing over his face.
‘Oh my God,’ he says, clutching his heart. ‘Sorry. You made me jump. It’s Josie, yes?’
Josie nods.
‘It was just the, er, the pyjamas. They’re Alix’s, aren’t they? Moment of, er, cognitive dissonance. How are you?’
‘Well,’ says Josie, gesturing at her facial injuries. ‘Not the best.’
‘My God. I hope that didn’t happen here?’
Josie grimaces. Does he really think this is something to be joked about? ‘No,’ she says. ‘Of course not.’
Nathan blinks at her and then turns towards the living room. ‘Any idea where Alix is?’ he asks.
‘She’s taken Fred out to the park. She should be back any minute.’
‘Fred?’
‘My dog.’
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Right. Well. I’ll, er, see you.’
Then he drops his jacket on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs and heads into the kitchen.
Josie goes back to her room and changes into the clothes that Alix gave her this morning: a white T-shirt and some loose blue trousers. She unbraids her hair and brushes it through with her fingers, watches the flakes of dried blood drift to the floor, pushes it back into a ponytail and ties it with a band. She brushes her teeth in the en suite, admiring the lovely tiles that have been arranged in a herringbone style: so simple, yet so effective.
After she’s brushed her teeth, she examines her appearance in the mirror. She looks terrible. The bruises have spread and changed colour overnight. Her bottom lip looks like a split tomato and the blood has dried to a black crust. She smiles and the scab breaks open a little, releasing a tiny droplet of scarlet blood. She dabs it away with the tip of her tongue and then heads downstairs.
‘So,’ says Nathan as she walks into the kitchen. ‘What happened to your, er …?’ He describes her face with his hands.
‘An angry man,’ she says.
‘Seriously?’ He looks up at her through his pale eyelashes, his lips pulled back into a letterbox of disquiet.
‘Yes. My husband did it.’
‘Oh my God. That’s awful.’
