Caleb wouldn’t talk to me. Perhaps he’d talk to Douglas. Instead of taking him home, I drove him into the city.

Douglas himself opened his office door, looking surprised, and waved us in. Leaning towers of manila folders propped up his walls. The window was tightly closed. There was too much loose paper to risk a sudden breeze. Each pile was topped by a coloured and annotated statement, or record of text messages, phone calls, images from CCTV. Further evidence piled in boxes and trays covered his desk, overflowing onto his chairs, leaving no place for us to sit.

‘Tell her she can’t do this,’ Caleb spat his words at Douglas, blue eyes flashing with an anger he’d displayed aged two, when I threw out a Fisher Price truck with cracked plastic. He’d liked to suck and I couldn’t risk a bit breaking off. ‘Tell her she has to do what I want.’

Douglas made a token effort to clear space. ‘I can’t force witnesses to say any particular thing.’

‘No one ever has to listen to me.’ Caleb’s voice was bitter.

‘I’ve been listening,’ I insisted. ‘You wanted to help Sean. You wanted to get the sketchbooks. You still want to be punished. But there’s nothing you can do. Life doesn’t work like that. It’s Sean who’s in a wheelchair, not you!’

‘How can I live, knowing that?’ Could he be paralysed by the impossibility of achieving what he wanted? ‘I hear you, Mum. I’ve heard you before. You’re worse than Dad.’

‘I’m trying to help. This isn’t just about you – I feel everything, too.’

Caleb pushed the files off the nearest seat and slumped into it, defeated. ‘You’ve already done all the damage you can.’

He continued. He called me a liar. He said I’d been dishonest before, that this was as bad as having Genevieve arrange things with her colleagues. He’d never forgiven me for that, and involving Shirley Laskin was even worse. We argued. But Douglas had to defend Caleb. It was his job.

So much had changed and ended. Things would be over with Jack too.

I had done a terrible thing. I understood Caleb now. Being glared at by my neighbours was part of my own atonement. After speaking to Douglas we went home. Of course I didn’t sleep. In his room, I heard Caleb, also awake. What sort of person had I become?

25

25

INVIDIA | Goddess of Retribution and Envy

She could be invoked when justice was denied. In his Metamorphoses, Ovid describes her as having a tongue that dripped venom and as being her own torment.

TUESDAY

Next morning in court, Douglas continued. ‘The defence submits that there is insufficient evidence to support a conviction.’

Nina agreed the court needed to hear more from Captain Laskin.