Chapters (61)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Imagine a girl
- Prologue
- The Foreigner
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- The Skeptic
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- The Spectator
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- The Assassin
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- The Hunter
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Imagine a girl
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Also by Ben McPherson
- About the Publisher
His eyes searched mine. He looked away. “Maybe you can understand that I worry about you guys.”
“Do you think she’s faithful to me?”
He took a long slug of his pint. He put the glass carefully down on the table. “Cal, mate, no one comes easily through losing a child.”
“So that’s a no?”
He ignored me and carried on. “People become strangers in their own home and they fuck other, easier strangers in bars.” He took another long swig. “But I really don’t think that’s Elsa. She’s completely devoted to you.”
“I always thought that.”
“So what’s changed? Have you and Elsa stopped having sex?”
“Well, I can’t speak for my wife . . .”
Jo was looking out at the snow, orange in the light of the streetlamp. “I’m not an audience. Don’t turn this into a joke.”
“I don’t seek an audience.”
He was right, though. He was my closest friend here; he had known Elsa since they were children. I wanted to tell him that our marriage was eroding, that I had lost a daughter and now I was losing my wife. But Jo was Elsa’s friend before he was mine, so instead I said, “You were about to tell me about Edvard.”
“Okay. Let’s do me instead.” He made a bridge of his hands, fingertips pressed together. “I am coming to the conclusion that the man I love actually hates me.”
I laughed.
Jo stared at me for a moment. The look in his eyes told me he was serious. “Since Garden Island, Edvard works stupid hours, and last Friday he called me and asked if I could bring his uniform and his shaving kit to him on my way to work, because he’d been up all night and had to be at a press conference. And I was running late, but I said sure. And then my train was delayed, and I didn’t think . . .” He was looking down at his feet, shaking his head. “And you’re going to find this ridiculous, Cal, because it is utterly ridiculous, but I left the uniform in his rucksack behind the counter at the café opposite the station, because I’ve done it a million times. But that was before Garden Island. Everything’s changed now, hasn’t it?”
I thought of the Andersen brothers in their police uniforms, the badges torn by briars. “Yes,” I said. “I guess it has.”