She returned with a folded sheet in her hands. She unfurled it and draped it over Cobb’s body.
‘Why are you doing that?’ Scott asked.
‘Because I don’t want to stress Daniel out any more than he already is. Let’s get him in here, give him his tea, and then put him to bed, just like we do every night. We have to behave like this is just another normal day.’
‘Gemma, it’s hardly a normal—’
‘I know that! But if we’re going to get through this, we have to keep Daniel in the dark. Get him in here. And try to act casual.’
Acting anything other than terrified seemed one hell of a feat at the moment. Scott took a deep breath before rapping on Daniel’s door and then breezing in. He found his son moping on the bed.
‘Time to eat,’ Scott said. ‘Hungry?’
Daniel lifted large, sad eyes. ‘Dad?’
‘Yes, son?’
‘Who’s that man?’
‘He . . . His name’s Joseph Cobb. He just told me.’
A flicker of brightness. ‘He told you? You mean he’s not dead?’
‘Dead? No, of course not. He was unconscious, that’s all. You knocked him out.’
‘Unconscious?’
‘Yeah. You’ve seen Adam-9 knock people out before, haven’t you?’
Daniel nodded. ‘But now he’s okay?’
‘Kind of. He’s gone back to sleep. He needs to rest for a while. Anyway, food time. Coming?’
Daniel stood. He shambled after his father. As he entered the living area, he stopped and looked down at the sheet-covered mound on the sofa.
‘Why’s he all covered up if he’s not dead?’
‘I told you, he needs to sleep. We had to cover his face because it’s so bright in here. Isn’t that right, Gem? He needs to sleep after Daniel knocked him out.’
‘Y-yes,’ Gemma answered. ‘That’s right. Don’t worry about him. He’ll be fine in a few hours. Come and sit at the table so we can eat.’
Daniel moved towards the dining table near the window, but all the time he kept his eyes on the sofa. He ended up crashing into the table and almost upending it.
‘Careful,’ Scott said, shifting everything back into its rightful place. ‘Come on, lad. Sit down.’
They all took their seats. Gemma began ladling out thick stew onto their plates. She glanced worriedly at Scott and he returned a subtle shake of his head.
‘Help yourself to bread,’ Scott said. ‘You must be starving.’
They ate in near silence. Scott gave up trying to chivvy Daniel along, and instead sank into his own dark contemplation. He guessed that Gemma was doing the same. Every so often, he found his gaze drifting to the corpse at the far side of the room. He did it so frequently that Daniel noticed and turned to look too. When he faced forward, Scott flashed him a fake smile of reassurance and swore to himself not to glance that way again.
Scott struggled to get any food inside him. Each mouthful objected to being forced down his gullet; it just squatted there, filling his cheeks and making him want to heave. He side-eyed Gemma’s plate and saw that her chunks of meat and vegetables were also being herded around in slow circles.
A minute later, Gemma yelped and jumped out of her chair. Scott immediately followed her line of sight to Cobb’s body. One of Cobb’s arms had slipped from the sofa, and his pale hand was now resting on the carpet.
‘Maybe he’s coming round already!’ Scott said, the falsity of the optimism in his voice so pronounced it was embarrassing. ‘I’ll check on him, shall I?’
As he stood up, he gestured to Gemma to retake her seat and stay calm. He went to the sofa, feeling Daniel’s eyes burning into his back. Using his body to block Daniel’s view, he raised the sheet from Cobb’s head and quickly replaced it again, before tucking the man’s arm back into position.
‘Not quite,’ he announced, coming back to the table. ‘Another couple of hours, I think.’
He couldn’t face Daniel as he said this. He didn’t enjoy lying to his son, let alone perpetrating such an immense charade. He had the uneasy feeling that Daniel could see right through him, and that his disappointment in his hero was intensifying with every painful second.
Silence descended again. Scott gave up even the pretence of enjoying his meal. He returned his thoughts to their predicament, and he hunted frantically for solutions. He wanted to pray for a guiding light, while knowing that any appeal to a higher presence would result in advice he didn’t want right now. He needed an escape – a simple and effective means of airbrushing this whole unsavoury episode out of their lives.
And, as time ticked away, he became more and more certain of one thing.
Neither he nor Gemma had any intention of going to the police.
He knew this without even asking his wife. Knew her mind almost as well as his own.
It was as though the passage of time had closed that avenue off to them. It had been a now-or-never moment, a once-in-a-lifetime offer, a ship that had sailed.
So, he thought, the decision is made. We are where we are.
Joseph Cobb must disappear.
7
