The detective scrunched his face into a frown. “So you lied to us, to the police, during a murder investigation, just because you didn’t want your ex-husband to know you’d seen your nephew?” He opened his palms to her, his fingers spread wide. “That seems extraordinary to me; it seems . . .” He raised his eyebrows. “Are you frightened of your ex-husband, Mrs. Myerson?”
“No.” Carla gave a brief shake of her head. “No, I just . . . I didn’t want to upset him,” she said quietly. “I try my best not to upset Theo, and me having a relationship with Daniel would upset him.”
“Does Mr. Myerson have a temper?”
Carla shook her head again. “No,” she insisted, exasperated. “It’s not . . . it’s not like that.”
“What is it like?” Barker asked. He’d the air of someone genuinely interested; he was looking at her as though she were a specimen, a curiosity. “Did Mr. Myerson think you were trying to replace your lost child? With your nephew? Is that why your relationship with Daniel upset him?” he asked.
Carla shook her head again but said nothing. She turned her face from the detective and stared at the sad, paved backyard, with its padlocked shed, its blackened plants, dead in their pots.
* * *
The shed was empty save for a little red tricycle, bright blue tassels still attached to the handlebars. It was a present, for Ben’s third birthday. They’d had a party at their home on Noel Road, just family—Theo’s parents, Angela and Daniel, Theo’s older brother and his wife, their kids. After the cake, after the candles, they took the tricycle out on the towpath, Carla’s chest aching with tenderness as she watched Ben try it out, his chubby legs pumping up and down as he pedaled as fast as he could. Theo’s face! His pride. “He’s a natural, see that?” And Angela, smoking, one eyebrow arched. “It’s a tricycle, Theo. Everyone can ride a tricycle.” And on the way home, dusk falling, the crowds thinning, Daniel pushing Ben along. Theo’s mother saying, “Careful, Daniel, not too fast,” while Ben and Daniel ignored her completely, the pair of them shrieking with laughter as they careened around a corner, almost toppling over.
When Ben was gone, when the funeral was over and the god-awful mourners finally banished, Carla went to bed and stayed there. Theo rarely came to bed at all. He remained fiercely, angrily awake; through her medicated haze Carla used to hear him pacing in his study off the landing, stomping down the stairs and through the kitchen to the garden to smoke and then stomping back again. She heard him turning the radio on and off, flicking through the channels on the television, playing half a track of a record before sending the needle skittering across the vinyl.
Sometimes he came upstairs and stood in the doorway, not watching her but staring out the window opposite, his hand across his face, fingers working at his stubble. Sometimes he said things, statements that seemed to lead toward questions at which they never quite arrived. Sometimes he talked about Angela, about how she had been as a child. “You said she had a temper,” he’d say, or: “You always talked about her crazy imagination. Bloodthirsty, you said. She had a bloodthirsty imagination.”
Occasionally, he asked direct questions. “Was she jealous, do you think? Of the way Ben was?”
It was discussed between them, when Ben was alive, how difficult it must be for Angela not to draw comparisons between their son and her own. Ben hit all his milestones early; he was talkative and agile, empathetic and numerate before his third birthday. He’ll be reading before his fourth, Theo liked to tell people. Carla had to tell him not to boast.
Daniel hadn’t been like that. He was a fussy baby, a poor sleeper, he’d taken forever just to crawl, he was two and a half before he started to talk. He was a clumsy, frustrated little boy, prone to epic tantrums.
“Do you think it bothered her,” Theo asked, “how special Ben was? Because Dan’s a bit of a weird kid, isn’t he? I know I’m not objective—no one is, not about their children—but even so, in this case, I think, objectively speaking, Ben was just the most wonderful little boy, he was—”
“What are you saying?” Carla’s voice sounded like it belonged to someone else, to an old woman. “What are you trying to say?”
He drew closer to the bed, his eyes wide, face flushed. “I’m asking you whether you think Angela was jealous. If, on some level, if she . . .”
Carla clutched at the bedsheets and drew herself painfully up to a sitting position. “You’re asking if I think my sister left that door open on purpose? Because she thought our son was more special than hers? You’re asking if I think she wanted Ben to die?”