“Is that what you’re having?” he replied, and she shook her head.
She sat down in the chair facing his. “This is hard for me, you know,” she said, and Theo barked a loud, mirthless laugh. Angela passed her hand over her eyes. Her smile had become fixed, her expression strained. She was trying not to cry. “I spoke to him,” she said eventually. “To Daniel. I finally got him on the phone. Most of the time he just ignores my calls.” Theo said nothing. “I asked him to leave you alone. I told him that you wouldn’t be giving him any more money.”
“When was this?” Theo asked. He leaned forward to flick his ash into the ashtray, missed.
“A few days ago,” Angela said. “He didn’t say much, but he listened, and I think he . . .”
Slowly, Theo got to his feet. He removed from his inside jacket pocket an envelope, which he handed to Angela. She opened it, extracting the single piece of paper within, took one look at it, and blanched. She closed her eyes, folded the paper, put it back into the envelope. She offered it back to Theo.
“No, that’s all right,” he said coldly. “You keep it.” He didn’t want to see it again, the pencil drawing of his wife, so finely made, perfectly capturing her oddly rapturous expression in sleep. Daniel had sketched her lying on her side, the covers thrown back, her body exposed. “I received that in the post this morning,” Theo said, “so I’m not convinced your little chat did much good.” Angela bent forward, her head in her hands, muttering something under her breath. “What was that?” Theo snapped. “I didn’t hear you.”
“It’s monstrous,” she said, looking up at him, her eyes swimming with tears. “I said it’s monstrous.” She bit her lip, looked away. “Do you think,” she asked, her words catching in her throat. “Do you really think they’ve—”
“They haven’t done anything!” Theo snapped, viciously grinding his cigarette into the ashtray. “This is not about them, it’s about him. It’s all him, it’s his perverted little fantasy. And do you know what?” He was towering over her now, and she was so small, so fragile, like a child. “I can’t even blame him. I mean, you can’t, can you? Look at the life he’s had! Look at the place he grew up! Look at the state of his mother!”
“Theo, please.” She was looking up at him through huge eyes, she was begging, and he raised his hand to strike her, to wipe the self-pity off her face.
He watched her cower, terrified, and then he stepped back, appalled at what Angela provoked in him. “I feel sorry for him,” he said. “I do. Look at the life you made for him. He has no idea of what love is supposed to be, no idea of what a mother’s love is. How could he?”
“I tried,” she sobbed. “I tried . . .”
“You tried!” he roared at her. “Your laziness, your neglect cost my child his life. And then you neglected your own, too, sent him away because he got in the way of your drinking. Is it any wonder he ended up a sociopath?”
“He didn’t end up a—”
“He did, Angela. That’s what he is. He is grasping, calculating, and manipulative. That’s what you’ve done to him.”
She fell silent for a few moments, and then, unsteadily, rose to her feet. Hands trembling, she picked up the copy of Theo’s book and tucked the envelope he had given her inside it, before replacing it on the bookshelf. She turned to face him again, drawing in her breath, as though summoning her energy for some onerous task. “I need . . . ,” she said, wringing her hands together in front of her chest. “I want to tell you something.”
Theo spread his hands, eyebrows raised. “I’m listening.” Angela swallowed hard; she seemed to be wrestling with something. “Well?” He’d no patience for this, for her amateur dramatics.
“I think it’s best if I show you,” she said quietly. “Would you . . . would you just come upstairs?”
TWENTY-THREE
Laura found herself fixating on all the things she’d done wrong, but not necessarily the obvious things. She didn’t wake up in a cold sweat thinking about Daniel Sutherland lying dead on his boat, she didn’t fixate on the guy with the fork sticking out of his hand. No, the thing that kept coming to her, the thing that made her cringe, made all the blood rush to her face, made her insides squeeze up like a fist, was the incident on the bus, that time she’d shouted at that woman, calling her a stupid fat cow. She couldn’t stop seeing the expression on the woman’s face, her hurt and her embarrassment; every time Laura thought of it, it brought tears to her eyes.