During the commercials, Marcus sat back into the sofa and went over what they’d agreed, partly to remind himself but also because doing so systematically appeared to relax Tom. A second beer and Tom was almost back to his old self. Only as the game ended did Marcus dare to touch on a topic he had been avoiding all evening.
“Tom. At the funeral—”
“Christ, Marcus. I’m sorry. I should have called you before now, believe me—”
“But do you really believe that Raine was seeing someone?”
“No,” said Tom. Marcus regretted having brought the topic up then, but after Tom scrubbed his face with his hands a few times, he carried on. “I honestly didn’t know what to believe. At the time, the police wouldn’t tell me anything. Just the name of the other person who died in the car along with her.”
“Damian Stone.”
“You remembered?”
“Not something I could easily forget. I’ve been racking my brains to think if she’d ever mentioned him before. But the truth is she hadn’t. Ask any of my staff—I have a bloody good head for the names.”
“Turns out they did yoga together. Lesson was even up on her board still, morning session. And now that I think about it, she used to laugh about some bloke called Stoner—remember thinking what an odd nickname that was.”
“Stoner? The other passenger was Stoner?”
Even Marcus had heard Raine laugh about a guy called Stoner, who cracked jokes and made inappropriate noises during sometimes overserious yoga sessions.
“So they were on the way to yoga when it happened? I thought you said something about the accident happening on the M25.”
“Yes, the accident happened afterwards.”
“So where were they heading?”
“No idea. They’d been talking about joining a different outfit. They both found their existing one a bit stuck-up. Maybe they were headed there. But to be honest, Marcus, it doesn’t matter now anyway. Nothing’s going to bring her back.”
“If you say so,” said Marcus, a trace of doubt in his voice.
“What are you doing here, Uncle Marc?” came a young voice from the stairs. Katie stood there in her SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas, bleary-eyed, her auburn hair sticking up in all the wrong places.
“Go back to bed, princess. Me and Uncle Marcus are having a grown-up conversation.”
“What are you doing with Mummy’s Play Planner?” she asked, folding her arms adorably.
“Her what, Katie?” asked Marcus.
“It’s what Raine used to call the organizer,” said Tom. “Uncle Marc and I have been planning out the next few weeks’ activities. Figuring out who will pick you girls up and drop you off. So that you can still attend all your activities.”
“Is Uncle Marcus going to be coming to see us more often now?”
Although he remained silent then, Marcus could sense Tom turn his way. The words, the pledge, needed to come from him.
“Yes, Katie,” said Marcus, noticing a very faint wheeze from the little girl. “I’m going to be here lots, as long as you, Charlotte, and Daddy want me here. Did you need your inhaler? I think I saw it on the table.”
She smiled then and plodded into the living room.
“How’s the maths coming along?” he asked, which got him a roll of the eyes reminiscent of her late mother.
“Numbers. And I hate numbers. They don’t seem to make sense.”
“Well, then,” said Marcus, “mission number one. We’re just going to have to make them make sense to you, aren’t we?”
“If you say so,” she said, going over and getting the small blue L-shaped inhaler. She turned and smiled at him then, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes, telling him that he wasn’t forgiven yet. “Charlotte will be happy to see you, to get things back to normal.”
Well, not normal, perhaps, thought Marcus, but maybe a new kind of normal.
