22
HARRISON
I confess that what Sergeant Carter says about my wife knocks me for six.
I manage to keep it together until he leaves my house.
Then I fall apart.
I make myself drink some coffee—I need something to steady my nerves —but then I see Eden standing in the corner of the kitchen staring at me and drop my cup. My wife isn’t really there—it’s just my imagination—but the white porcelain has smashed into a hundred tiny pieces and there is spilled coffee all over the floor. I stand and stare at it as though I don’t know what to do. I am too used to other people clearing up my mess.
And what a mess this is.
The police think my wife has killed herself.
My mind pivots from my wife to my PA. I need to call her, get her to cancel my meetings and rearrange my day. This could not have come at a worse time for the company. I should be in London, not here, but I’m guessing it would look bad if I left Hope Falls now. That’s probably not what a grieving husband would do.
I step on a shard of porcelain and my foot bleeds onto the floor. Fuck. I need to keep my shit together. The boy cop asked a lot of questions before he left and I’m worried I shouldn’t have answered them. But I am not a suspect. There is no suggestion that a crime has taken place. They think Eden killed herself and it would be strange if I didn’t cooperate. But I do feel strange. A little dizzy. Discombobulated. As though none of this is real.
Not that I could ever say that out loud.
I am not the kind of man who gets broken, even when I lose everything I love most. I know this about myself because I’ve had practice. We all just play the parts life gives us but I seem to have forgotten my lines. I don’t have a script for this. There is no preprepared media-friendly statement that someone else has written for me to read. I’m struggling to remember how to be the man people expect me to be, the person they all think I am: Harrison Woolf, CEO. Fearless. Powerful. Honest.
Then I sink down onto the floor because right now I am none of those things.
I need to understand what happened. But I can’t think straight, the walls are closing in. I have to know the truth. But it feels like I can’t breathe.
Is my wife really dead?
I have a word with myself—several in fact—then pull myself up. I shower and shave and put on my favorite suit; it feels like my armor and I need it today. Then I see my wife’s wedding and engagement rings left abandoned on the bedside table. As soon as I have composed myself I head to the police station in the village. Sergeant Carter said if I thought of anything that might help them find out what happened to Eden I should tell him straight away. So that’s what I’ll do.
Even though I would rather nobody ever finds out what she did, I do want them to find her.
