His mother crying, ‘Ricky. Please. Please. I want you. I need you. Please. I’ll do anything!’
Her mascara running down her cheeks. One breast loose of the cut-out bra. Drooping. Puckered.
‘Ricky. Please.’
His father picking up his coat in the hallway. Picking up his keys. Leaving.
The man singing about his wicked game.
The front door shutting.
Two weeks later Owen’s father left for good. The house was sold. The flat was bought. His mother died. His father hated him. His father’s wife hated him. His aunt hated him. Girls hated him. He lost his job. He got arrested for killing a girl. He developed a taste for prison food.
Could it be that simple? he wonders. The sight of his mother whoring herself to his father? The rejection by his father of his mother? Was that at the root of everything that had gone wrong since? His fear of women? Of rejection? And if it was that simple, then surely it could be blotted out? Redacted from the story of his life? And then it could start over again. But how? How can he excise that moment? He realises there’s only one way to erase it and that’s to go to the heart of it. To his father.
He goes to the door of his cell and he bangs on it.
Willy opens the window flap. ‘Yes.’
‘I need to make a phone call,’ he says. ‘Please. It’s very urgent.’
Willy blinks slowly. ‘I will have to find out.’
‘Please. I haven’t made a call yet. I’m allowed one call. And I haven’t had one yet.’
Willy lets the window flap close and says, ‘I’ll find out. Wait.’
A moment later Willy is back. He says, ‘Pick up your things.’
‘What things?’
‘Your clothing and your toiletries. Apparently you are being allowed to leave.’
‘What? I don’t …?’
‘I don’t know either; I’m just saying what I’ve been told. Please pack up your things. Now. It’s time to go.’
‘I don’t understand. What’s happened? Have they found her?’
‘Now.’
Owen packs up his things. He looks at the golden shadows on the cell wall, the dent in the mattress, the neatly folded blanket. He looks at the square of blue sky through the cell window. He thinks of the hours he has spent in this room that feels so much like the only place he has ever known. And yet now, somehow, he is free of it.
But he knows one thing with a blinding certainty: he is not going back to the other life. He is not going back to Tessie’s flat with the locked doors. He is not going back to being the sort of person that people would think capable of rape and murder. He’s not going back to the incel forums and seedy drinks with raging women-haters.
Willy opens the door and Owen silently follows him through the corridors, through rooms of people who return things to him and ask him to sign things. Then he is out. On a pavement in Kentish Town. The sun is bright today, a warm sun, a portent of spring, a portent of new beginnings.
He checks his wallet for a debit card and cash, then puts out his arm and hails a taxi.
54
Cate is at Kentish Town police station with Josh. She hasn’t told Roan that they are here. She hasn’t told Georgia. She phoned Josh’s school this morning and told them that he had an emergency medical appointment.
She perches her bag on her lap and clears her throat nervously, watching the swinging doors in front of her open and shut every few seconds, uniformed and non-uniformed police passing through holding files, bags, coffees, phones.
She turns to Josh. ‘Are you OK?’
He nods nervously. He looks like every fibre of his being is resisting the urge to jump to his feet and run.