Chapter 14

chapter fourteen

Now

‘Did you kill your wife, Mr Delaney?’

‘Eh?’ The old man, huge and hunch-shouldered, with reddish thumbprints under his eyes, lifted his bald head, seemingly bewildered by the question. ‘What’s that?’

The baby-faced journalist in a natty suit and tie shoved a chunky microphone towards his mouth. ‘Did you have anything to do with your wife’s disappearance, Mr Delaney?’

The old man stood on the front lawn of his suburban house, shoulder to shoulder with his four adult children, surrounded by a semicircle of journalists and camera operators. The journalists were all young, in smart-casual brightly coloured clothes, no patterns, solid colours, sharp shoulders, their faces smooth and opaque with make-up. The camera operators were older, all men, with ordinary, impassive faces and weekend hardware shopping clothes: jeans and polo shirts.

‘Mr Delaney?’

‘That is defamatory. Get away from him, you parasite!’ It was one of the old man’s daughters who spoke. She slapped the microphone. A swift, smooth backhand. She was a tennis player, apparently. They all were.

One of her brothers stepped forward, a protective arm in front of his father’s face.

But the other two siblings said and did nothing; they appeared instead to take tiny steps away from their father, and the internet saw.

Minds were made up. Two of his children think he did it.