Chapter 2

Two

"Y our son?" the stranger asked. "I don't know where he is now, but forty minutes ago, he was throwing red paint over my front door."

What?

"Are you crazy? Harry would never—" I started, but then I stopped. A year ago, I'd have been confident in that assertion, but since the separation, my older son had changed. I did my best to avoid arguing with Steven in front of the boys, but they picked up on the animosity between us, especially Harry. He was more sensitive than Alfie. A born worrier. Mum said he needed stability, and I'd struggled to provide that these past few months.

And Steven's idea of parenting was to bribe the kids into behaving, so now when they didn't get their own way, they'd begun acting out. The days after Steven had taken them for the weekend were always particularly challenging. Would Harry have done something dumb in a quest for attention? I couldn't entirely rule it out.

But I couldn't rule it in either. He was at Shawn's house. Shawn's mother was supposed to be supervising him.

And then there was the fact that the man on the phone was a total stranger. This could be a wind-up. What if he'd found the phone, and now he was trying to extort money out of me?

"He dropped the phone as he ran off," the man said, and his voice wouldn't have been entirely unpleasant under different circumstances. "You want me to send you the video?"

There was a video? Fantastic. But what if Harry's phone had been stolen prior to the paint incident? Bullies had been a problem at school, and Harry was small for his age, so it wouldn't have been difficult for one of the little monsters in his class to take it. Maybe this was all a case of mistaken identity?

The doctor pulled back the cubicle curtain. "Mrs. Osman?"

"I'm going to have to call you back," I told the paint-scammer guy.

"Are you kidding?—"

I disconnected the call and forced myself to take a steadying breath as I decided whether to scream, cry, or throw up. You know the exploding-head emoji? Well, it was like looking into a mirror.

"Do I get a cast?" Alfie asked. "Mason James had a cast, and we all wrote our names on it."

"Well, you get a partial cast," the doctor said. "Not so good for writing names, but you can take it off in the bath."

"Our bathroom broke. We have to go to Grandma's if we want a shower."

"Just a little water leak." I tried to make light of the situation. "We're waiting for the plumber to come."

The good plumber. I'd already tried one idiot, and he'd made the problem worse, not better. Mariusz, the guy everyone recommended, couldn't fit us in until four weeks from Tuesday, which meant shuttling back and forth between Marigold Lodge and my parents' place with sleepy boys and bottles of shampoo.

"Oh dear."

"Does Alfie have a break? Or is it just a sprain?"

"We call it a buckle fracture. Young bones are quite flexible, so rather than cracking straight through, they tend to bend instead." The doctor put Alfie's X-ray on a lightbox to show us. "See this small bulge here?"

I did. "How long will it take to heal?"

"Three weeks or so. He can take ibuprofen for any pain, and if the swelling doesn't go down, pop in to see your GP." The doctor ruffled Alfie's hair. "No more playground shenanigans."

"I'm not going back to school. It sucks."

Oh, please no. The doctor gave me a sympathetic look and backed away.

"School's important, son. Sit tight, and a nurse will come through with a splint shortly."

Alfie watched me carefully, ready for the argument, but I just couldn't. Not here, not now. If Alfie had a meltdown in A&E, I was the one who'd end up hospitalised. Although I couldn't lie—a nice rest in the psychiatric ward did hold a certain appeal. No laundry to do, no homework, no checking that Harry hadn't found his way around the parental controls on the internet again. Steven would have to take care of the boys, and— No, that was a terrible idea. Someone groaned, and I realised it was me.

"We'll talk about this later."

"But—"

"Later."

It was Friday. Which meant I could kick the can down the road for two days, and by Sunday, maybe Alfie would have changed his mind? It wasn't as if he liked being at home much, anyway.

When we moved to Engleby, there had been two properties for sale in the village—a two-bedroom flat above the local funeral home, and Marigold Lodge. At first, Harry had voted for the flat because he thought it would be cool to see dead bodies being wheeled in and out, but then he realised he'd have to share a room with Alfie and changed his mind. Alfie had voted for Marigold Lodge because of the bug potential in the garden. And me? I'd had the idea that by renovating the place, we could increase the value as a way to thank Marissa for bailing us out of the massive hole we'd found ourselves in.

Marigold Lodge was a four-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom cottage set in an acre of brambles. The roof leaked, and the pipes leaked. Only a handful of the rooms were habitable, so Harry had ended up sharing with Alfie after all, a fact that pleased neither of them. And I'd spent the past five months cursing, crying, evicting spiders, and moving buckets around every time it rained.

The weather forecast over the weekend? Sunshine and showers.

Alfie went into a sulk as I tried calling Shawn's mum yet again. This time, she finally answered.

"Where's Harry? Is he there?"

The woman gave a throaty laugh. "Easy, love. Course he's here. Where else would he be? You haven't picked him up yet."

"Sorry. I'm so sorry. It's just that he's not answering his phone, and then you weren't answering either, so I… Sorry."

"I always turn the ringer off when I'm watching Whispers in Willowbrook . You missed a good episode tonight. Detective Cartwright found?—"

"Could I just speak to Harry? Please?"

A sigh. "Hold on a sec. The boys are playing on Shawn's Xbox."

I heard rustling as she walked through the house, cursing as she tripped over something, and finally, the sound of shooting. Dammit, tell me she hasn't let Harry play some eighteen-rated war game.

"Your mam wants to speak to you," she told him, and the game paused.

The next voice was Harry's. "Mum?"

"Why didn't you answer your phone? I was worried about you."

A long pause. "I lost it."

"You lost your phone?"

"Yeah?"

"Where did you lose it?"

I heard a voice in the background. "If he knew that, he wouldn't've lost it, would he?"

Was that Shawn? Should I be discouraging this particular friendship? Harry was developing enough of an attitude under Steven's influence without others egging him on.

"Where did you last see it?" I tried.

"Don't tell her," Alfie yelled. "She's really mad."

Give me strength.

"I'm not mad," I lied. "It's just been a difficult day."

"School, probably," Harry said. "I had it in physics."

I wanted to believe him. I did. Life would be so much easier if he was telling the truth. Harry could survive without a phone for a week or two, and then Steven would give him a half-hearted lecture and buy a new one. Sure, Steven would inevitably whine that I'd disabled the "Find your gadget" app on the missing device, but if he hadn't been using it to spy on us, I wouldn't have had to. We'd fight, I'd slam the door in his face, and things would carry on as normal. The paint-on-door stranger could go and scam somebody else.

There was just one teensy problem with all that.

Harry was lying.