Ellie thought she’d seen something.

  She reached out to his hand on the zip. ‘What’s that?’

  He brushed her hand away, but she put it back a second time and he didn’t resist. His eyes looked around for something to distract himself.

  She peeled his fingers away and pulled the zip down, pushed the material aside. His blue T-shirt underneath had marks spattered across it. Dark stains.

  ‘Is that blood?’

  His breathing was erratic again, his body shaking.

  She tried to unzip the hoodie the whole way. ‘What is it, Sam? Are you hurt?’

  He knocked her hand away, hard this time, and pulled the zip up.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said, through stuttering breaths.

  ‘Then . . .’

  She heard a noise. A car pulling into the driveway.

  Ben was home. Ellie looked at Sam. She didn’t want to share him, not yet. It was their little secret, Sam and Ellie. And there was the bloodstain to think about.

  She heard the car engine switch off.

  ‘Come on.’ She took Sam’s hand and yanked him out of his seat.

  She pulled him up the stairs and into Logan’s room as she heard the front door open.

  ‘Hi, honey.’ Ben in the hallway.

  She pushed Sam on to Logan’s bed. ‘Stay in here and keep quiet.’

  She heard footsteps coming upstairs. She backed out of the room, closed the door and turned.

  Ben was halfway up.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, keeping her voice level.

  ‘Hey.’ Ben looked at her, then beyond at Logan’s bedroom door. ‘What were you doing in there?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She walked downstairs past him. ‘Just putting something away.’

  He followed her into the kitchen.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Who’s that for?’

  She turned. ‘What?’

  He was pointing at the two mugs of green tea on the table.

  ‘You,’ she said. ‘The kettle boiled just as I heard you pull up.’

  He frowned at her for a moment. She examined him. He hadn’t shaved in a week, the stubble greyer than it used to be, a white patch on the side of his chin that was never there before. He needed a haircut, messy at the sides, too long at the back. He looked tired, dark pouches under his eyes, hollow cheeks, and he seemed to be squinting into the light all the time. His checked shirt and jeans needed washed. She caught a little of his scent, the smell of nervous sweat. He always seemed to be nervous now, nervous about what shit life would deliver next. She knew that feeling well enough.

  ‘I can’t really stop,’ he said. He picked up Sam’s mug and took a sip. ‘I don’t know why you try to get me to drink this stuff, you know I can’t stand it.’

  ‘It’s supposed to relax you. Clean the system.’

  ‘I know what it’s supposed to do.’

  She looked at him for a moment. ‘What are you up to?’

  He patted at the satchel over his shoulder. ‘More flyering.’ He pulled a leaflet out, handed it to her.

  This was how Ben filled the void since Logan. While Ellie had resorted to physical routine to blot out the blackness, Ben had jumped straight down the conspiracy-theory rabbit hole. It wasn’t Logan’s fault according to Ben, it couldn’t be, he was under some kind of external influence, something made him do it, no son of mine could ever think about taking his own life. Denial, obviously. He wasn’t stupid, though, deep down he must realise it was ridiculous, just as her swimming and running and walking to the bridge was a coping mechanism, nothing else.

  So he buried himself deep into suicide conspiracies. He became an expert on cluster points, where you got a spate of suicides in one place, very often teenagers who all knew each other. There was a small town in Wales where dozens had done it within months of each other, and Ben knew all the stats for that place, comparing them to the numbers for South Queensferry. He spent countless hours on websites and online chatrooms, dabbling in stuff that even David Icke might baulk at. Satanic cults, mind-altering drugs, school vaccinations, food additives, computer games, side effects of prescription medication, washing powder, the signal from mobile-telephone masts causing depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

  She looked at the leaflet in her hand. This was his latest crusade, the Queensferry Crossing, as it had been named. The new road bridge across the Forth was being built just to the west of the current one, hitting land right next to the marina where Ben had worked until recently. He’d stumbled across the idea on some crackpot website that either something in their internal communication network was sending signals into the ether that changed the wiring of kids’ brains, or there was something in the building materials giving off a gas that poisoned everyone’s minds. It was ridiculous, of course, and she’d told him so umpteen times, but he never heard. She understood, it was hard to hear the truth, that Logan just killed himself and there was no answer, no resolution. No comfort. Easier to believe that the government or building contractors or phone companies were to blame.

  Ben’s leaflet had quotes from building trade ‘insiders’ confirming that dangerous, cheap non-EU chemicals were being used, and that there had been other clusters of suicides at major building projects using the same method in the Far East.

  Ellie closed her eyes and tried to remember their wedding day. Tight-skinned and happy, the two of them waltzing in a small marquee, their lives ahead of them, Logan not even an idea then, let alone a dead one. All she could see was Sam standing on the bridge, his hands tight on the railing, his body swaying back and forth. Her eyes went to the ceiling. Logan’s room was directly above them, if Sam walked around they would likely hear him.

  Ben took another sip of tea and made a face at the taste. ‘I really need to get going, deliver these.’

  Ellie wondered what the neighbours thought of Ben’s steady stream of lunatic leaflets through their letterboxes. To begin with maybe there was some sympathy, he’d lost his son after all. But now, six months later, wasn’t it time to move on? But it was never time to move on, that’s what she’d come to realise.

  ‘Stay a minute.’ She went over to him and touched his arm. ‘Sit down. I feel like we haven’t talked in ages.’

  ‘If you’re going to go on about the leaflets, I don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  He sat down, the same chair Sam had been in a few minutes before. Ellie listened for noise from upstairs, but there was nothing. The washing machine chugged away in the corner of the kitchen, throwing Sam’s trousers and pants around.

  She knew she should tell Ben. Keeping it to herself could only push them apart. But she had to figure out what it all meant, had to understand the gift she’d been given first, before she could share it.

  ‘Remember when we saw that porpoise, when Logan was little,’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘I remember.’

  ‘He was three, I think?’

  Ben nodded. ‘Three and a half.’

  ‘He kept saying “dolphink”, “dolphink”.’

  ‘Then you said, “No, it’s a porpoise”.’

  Ellie laughed. ‘And then he wouldn’t stop saying “purpose”, “purpose”.’

  They were both smiling now. Their little purpose. Ellie tried to think when she’d last seen Ben smile.

  ‘Our little porpoise,’ she said.

  Ben sighed, the smile gone. ‘Yeah.’

  Ellie looked up at the ceiling, then out at the Forth. ‘What if we got a second chance?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Imagine we got to live our lives over,’ Ellie said. ‘What would you do different?’

  ‘Don’t, Ellie.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I can’t do this. I don’t want to hear you talk like this.’

  ‘But if we got a second chance?’

  Ben stood up, knuckles on the table. ‘There are no second chances. You know that. Stop talking this way, please.’

  She got up too, hands out, pleading. ‘What are we going to do, Ben? There’s no end to this, is there?’

  He shrugged and headed for the door.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It never ends.’

  She heard the front door open and close.

  She breathed in and out a few times, trying to get the hang of it, then looked at the ceiling.

  She went upstairs and opened the door to Logan’s room, careful not to make any sound.

  Sam was sleeping on top of Logan’s bed, hands under his cheek, face slack. Ellie went to a drawer and took out a blanket, draped it over him. She pushed his fringe away from his face, tucked a stray strand of hair behind his ear. She let the backs of her fingers rest on his cheek for a while, feeling the movement of his breathing, watching his chest rise and fall, peaceful for now.

  There are no second chances.

  6

  Inchcolm Terrace was a suburban cul-de-sac like any other. Fifties-built detached houses, pebbledash, steep roofs, garages. Family homes with trampolines and scooters in the small gardens.

  Ellie walked along, checking the numbers. She stopped at number 23, Sam’s place, same as all the rest. It had taken ten minutes to walk here from her house at the shore, up The Loan then nipping in to the right, easy enough to find. She’d never been up this street before, but then you wouldn’t unless you knew someone who lived here, it wasn’t a road to anywhere.

  She’d checked the phone book, only one McKenna in South Queensferry. She thought about phoning but didn’t, this felt like a conversation that needed to be face to face. She wasn’t even sure what she was going to tell them about Sam, if anything. Where do you start? But she wanted to see their faces, see the family he’d come from, the people who had created and shaped him. Were they worried about him? Had he shown any of the signs of mental-health problems? Where did they think he was right now?

  She dragged a hand down her face, felt the slackness of her skin, then walked through the gate and up the path. She rang the doorbell and waited. Nothing. Rang again. Silence. She looked at the neighbouring houses, wondered about curtains twitching but didn’t see any movement. She rang a third time.

  She tried the front door. It opened and she leaned in.

  ‘Hello?’

  She stepped inside. Coats were piled on the end of the banister, shoes on a low shelf unit by the door. Looked like four people, including a girl. Perfect little family unit – mum, dad, son and daughter.

  She closed the door behind her.

  ‘Hello?’

  A bowl on the hall table with car keys, small change, golf balls, Post-its, a phone charger. The stuff of life. She couldn’t picture Sam as the golfer, it must be his dad. Sanded wooden floor, an IKEA runner rug on top, she recognised it from last year’s catalogue.

  She looked up the stairs. Thought about going up there, wondered which room was Sam’s, if it looked anything like Logan’s. What about the sister, was she a chintzy pink princess or old enough to be a moody emo by now?

  She heard a noise, maybe a voice, from the direction of the kitchen.

  ‘Hello, the door was open. Is someone there?’

  She crept down the hall, listening. That noise again, a grunt. She got to the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Holy shit.’

  Lying slumped against the fridge was a man with a kitchen knife in his gut. Stocky, receding hairline, in his forties. His eyes were closed and his forehead creased with deep furrows. Blood was soaked into his white shirt and black trousers, and had pooled around him on the tiled floor. He let out a pained breath.

  Ellie took two steps forward. ‘Can you hear me?’

  He didn’t move or speak. His chest rose and fell, small movements.

  She took another step.

  The fingers on his right hand twitched. His hand lifted off the bloody floor for a moment, as if he was trying to reach for the knife, then it dropped back down with a little splash of blood.

  She looked around the kitchen. No sign of any other disturbance, nothing smashed or broken. Sliding glass doors led into the back garden. They were closed, no obvious sign of a break-in.

  She looked at the man. He didn’t look like a burglar. She thought about the bloodstains on Sam’s T-shirt. Looked at the knife in the man’s belly. It had a serrated edge, wooden handle, she had one similar at home.

  ‘Mr McKenna?’

  He gave out a breathy moan.

  She stood absolutely still, trying to think.

  The man’s fingers twitched again and one eye opened. He looked at her, but his gaze was unfocussed. She didn’t know how conscious he was, how aware. He grunted again then his eye closed and he gave a heavy sigh, as if the effort was all too much.

  Ellie heard another noise. The scrape of a key in a lock, then the front door opening, a bag being dropped on the floor.

  ‘I’m home.’ A woman’s voice, shouting up the stairs. ‘You lazy gits up yet?’

  The man on the floor wheezed.

  Ellie stepped over him, careful not to stand in the blood, and ran to the patio doors. She slid the snib up then pushed the door open just enough to squeeze through, gliding it shut behind her.

  She ran to the side of the house, out of view, then climbed over a low fence of wooden slats into the neighbours’ garden. At the bottom of the garden were a couple of cooking-apple trees. She sprinted down to them and launched herself at the stone wall behind, scrambling up and over. She dropped down without looking, desperate to get away. She hoped no one was in the neighbours’ kitchen or she was spotted for sure.

  She glanced around as she got her breath back. She recognised where she was, Ferrymuir Gait. Over the embankment across the road was the A90, heading to the bridge. Further round the road she was standing on were the visitor centre and the offices for the new bridge. Back the other way was the cemetery where Logan would’ve been buried if they hadn’t decided to have him cremated and scattered in the Forth. Everything so close by, everyone in the Ferry living in each other’s pockets, the road and the railway and the bridges slicing through it all.

  She waited and listened. After a few minutes she heard a siren, and imagined the ambulance arriving.

  Now she had her bearings she knew there was a quicker way home, past the visitor centre and down the access road, the same road she’d walked with Sam earlier today. She headed in that direction.

  7

  She let herself in the back door and went through the rooms, checking Ben wasn’t there. She hadn’t come directly back to the house, instead ducking left off Hopetoun Road on to Shore Road, then cutting down to the beach, avoiding the police station two minutes away from the front of her house.

  The house was silent. She listened for sirens from the cop shop. Nothing. You hardly heard them here, the Ferry wasn’t exactly a hotbed of crime. No sound from upstairs either. She went up and stopped outside the door to Logan’s room. Rested her fingers against the chunky wooden letters that spelled out his name. She ran her hand from the L to the O and slowly onwards, stopping with her fingers pressed against the N. The sign had been on Logan’s door for ten years, and he’d moaned about it being childish when he hit his teens, but he never took it down and neither did she.

  There was a rough splinter of wood at the end of the N, it had been like that for as long as Ellie could remember. She deliberately snagged her thumb on it, feeling the skelf push against her skin. She remembered for the hundredth time that day that her son was dead, that she would never see him again, then she breathed and pushed the door open.

  Sam was still asleep, blanket pulled over him. Ellie sat on the edge of the bed and ran her hands through his hair, brushing against his ear.

  He moaned in his sleep.

  She moved up the bed, still stroking his hairline along his forehead, behind his ear, letting her hand linger on the nape of his neck for a moment, before starting again. She breathed in through her nose, caught the smell of Lynx and urine and something underneath, his unique scent.

  He was coming round. She didn’t want to disturb him, but she had a stronger urge to hear him speak, to hear his voice and reassure him. He looked like he was having a good dream, and she wondered how that was possible. She tried to remember when she’d last had a good dream.

  His eyes fluttered open and he looked at her, confused.

  ‘Shhh,’ she said. ‘You’re safe.’

  She saw it on his face as he began to recognise where he was and who he was with, as he remembered what had happened. The confusion turning to distress, panic.

  She was still stroking his head, but he pushed her hand away and tried to sit up.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said. Her hand lay limp on the bedclothes where it had landed. She looked at it as if it wasn’t part of her.

  Sam seemed more together than he’d been earlier, more aware of his situation. He went into the pocket of his hoodie and pulled out his phone. Checked for messages with a trembling hand, then pushed call and held it to his ear.

  Ellie could hear it from where she sat. She prayed for it to go to voicemail. Five rings, then it did. Sam hung up without leaving a message.

  ‘Who are you trying to get hold of?’ she said.

  He shook his head, trying to drive the sleep away.

  ‘Is it your little sister?’ Ellie said, thinking about the coats and shoes in the hallway earlier.

  He stared at her. ‘How do you know I have a little sister?’

  She tried to put her hand on his, but he slipped away from her touch.

  ‘I just want to make sure you’re OK,’ she said.

  ‘How do you know about Libby?’

  ‘Libby, that’s a lovely name. How old is she?’

  ‘I asked you a question.’ He shuffled back against the headboard. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘You know who I am,’ Ellie said. ‘Do you remember being on the bridge earlier?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I found you. Brought you back here to get you sorted out.’

  He glanced at his phone then rubbed his face. ‘How do you know about my sister?’

  She looked at him, held his gaze. ‘I’ve been to your house.’

 

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