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noticed the marks made by his grubby fingers when they exasperated me, but now they seemed
unbearably precious. I traced over them with my own fingers as I went up.
The house had been in a total state when we moved in. John, who’d viewed it because he was
paying for some of it, advised me not to buy it. Horrible dark colours and tacky plastic cupboards had
put off many people, but I could see that underneath the tat and the tack there were some pretty,
original features and I’d been excited by their potential. I’d tackled Ben’s bedroom first. Ben and I
had spent a brilliant day putting the first coat of paint over the horrible dark maroon colour left by the
previous owners.
‘Go on,’ I’d said to Ben, ‘just slap the paint on.’
‘What, anywhere?’ he’d asked, hardly believing his luck, a wide smile dimpling his cheeks.
‘Anywhere,’ I’d said, and to prove my point I’d dipped my brush in the tub of pristine white
undercoat and written ‘BEN’ in huge capital letters on the wall. He’d loved the forbidden thrill of
painting all over the walls, and he’d quickly got into it. We’d drawn pictures, written silly words and
had much fun until the room was covered in a patchy layer of undercoat.
It had felt good for both of us: we were taking possession of the house. The plan had backfired a bit
because we never quite managed to smooth the wall out afterwards, and even now that there were
two coats of pale blue covering the undercoat it was possible to make out raised areas where some of
our pictures and words had been. Neither of us minded that though. In fact we liked it.
Remembering, I eased my body down into the dent in his mattress that had taken on my shape now,
obliterating his, and I touched the wall, feeling for those raised areas of paint.
I tried to make myself focus, to think through what had happened in the woods, to recover every
detail. I was desperate to discover, somewhere in my mind, something significant, but I remembered
nothing new.
Then I thought about John, driving the streets, desperately searching for Ben, and I thought about
Katrina, and I regretted every moment that I’d let Ben be with them over the past year, and not with
me.
She hadn’t even wanted him in their home at first. That had been clear from what Ben had told me.
‘She doesn’t let me slide on the floor in the hall,’ he’d complained, and I’d been furious, imagining
him tiptoeing through their perfect house, unable to relax in case he did something wrong. I recalled
Ben’s reluctance to spend weekends with them after the break-up, especially at first, when things still
felt raw, and unstable. I came bitterly to my usual conclusion that Katrina didn’t deserve Ben, and I
didn’t deserve to have to go through her to get to John.
My thoughts circulated fruitlessly like this until finally sleep coshed me, knocked me into my
unconscious, where I dreamed of being surrounded by looming trees and by foliage with sharp edges,
and shadows and dark tunnels where you could get lost for ever.
In the small hours I woke up and reached for my phone. I opened the internet browser and Googled
‘News Benedict Finch’. When the results came up I only needed one or two clicks before a feeling of
dread coursed icily through me.