Page 50 of The New House

‘They’re taking him to the Princess Eugenie,’ I tell Stacey. ‘That’s my hospital. I’ve texted Lisa Kacer in the ED. She’ll make sure whoever takes care of Archie communicates properly with you.’

‘I’m afraid only one of you can come in the ambulance,’ the paramedic says.

‘I’ll go,’ Stacey tells Felix. ‘You can meet me there.’

Someone throws another thick towel around Harper’s shoulders as the medics wheel the stretcher back towards the clubhouse. Her wet dress flaps around her legs and she shivers uncontrollably: as much from shock as from the cold.

‘Is he going to be OK?’ she asks me quietly.

‘He should be,’ I say. ‘He wasn’t in the water long. You saved his life acting as quickly as you did.’

‘But he wasn’t breathing, Millie. Will he have – you know,brain damage?’ she whispers.

‘He’s going to be fine,’ I say, because it’s what she needs to hear.

Tyler and Lucas cling to her, their faces white and frightened.

‘Did you see what happened to Archie, boys?’ Harper asks. ‘Why was he even in the deep end? I didn’t think he liked going out of his depth.’

The boys shake their heads, lower lips trembling as they stare at the ground.

She turns to my son. ‘What about you, Peter? Did you see?’

His tawny gaze is clear and untroubled as he looks from Harper to me. ‘I don’t know what happened,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t watching Archie. I was teaching Tyler and Lucas how to do cannonballs and Archie didn’t want to play with us. I didn’t see anything.’

Together Harper and I pack up ourthings. The two Conway boys are shaken and quiet, but Peter makes a play out of cheering them up with funny faces and jokes.

‘Whathappened?’ Harper asks me as I roll up a wet towel.

‘Archie must have just got out of his depth—’

‘With you andFelix,’ she says.

I glance at Stacey’s husband. He’s still standing by the edge of the pool, gazing blankly towards the clubhouse as if transfixed.

‘You saw what happened,’ I say tightly.

I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to dwell on what just happened, because I’m more shaken by what I did than Felix himself.

Harper drops the towel from her shoulders and hitches her beach bag onto her shoulder as Felix finally breaks out of his trance and strides away.

‘You’re lucky you just saved his son’s life,’ she says. ‘I know he shouldn’t have grabbed Stacey like that, but he could’ve had you arrested for assault. I honestly thought you were going to kill him.’

‘Yes,’ I say, watching Felix. ‘For a while there, I thought so, too.’

chapter 32

millie

I know better than to discuss what happened at the pool yesterday with Tom, beyond the basic fact of Archie’s ‘accident’. He’s made it clear he doesn’t want to hear anypsycho shitabout our son.

Peter is lying on his stomach in front of the television drawing pictures of R2-D2 – we’re on a retroStar Warsjag – and as I watch him colour, my imagination drifts towards what should be unthinkable. I picture the hands now holding a couple of coloured pencils – hands that still haven’t quite lost their baby fat – closing around the throat of a toddler. Pushing a child into the road.

Holding a boy’s head beneath the water.

There’s something oddly cathartic about letting myself go to the darkest places and considering what it would feel like if my worst fears came true. What I would do. What Icoulddo.

I should have stopped him yesterday. I knew he was spoiling for trouble – I could see it in his eyes as we set off for the pool. It’s why I ran ahead with the children to keep a watchful eye on him. But I let myself be distracted by Felix, and those few minutes were all it took.

---