Chapter 6: Forty-Eight Hours
Keeping a secret on a family holiday is its own kind of endurance sport.
Patrick knew.
Claire knew.
Frank knew.
Nadia and Marcus knew.
The five of us spent the next two days moving around each other with the careful, slightly-too-normal behaviour of people carrying something heavy in a room full of glass.
Nadia was the one I watched most.
She was better than I expected.
She laughed at Timmy's jokes.
She helped Claire with dinner.
She sat beside Marcus on the sand in the evenings and let him put his arm around her and leaned into him without stiffening.
But twice I caught her checking her phone with a particular kind of stillness — the stillness of someone waiting for a message they're dreading — and both times, when she looked up and found me watching, she gave me a small nod that meant *nothing yet* and I gave her one back that meant *good.*
On the second morning, Grace called.
"I've reviewed everything," she said.
"The screenshots establish a clear pattern of harassment and coercive behaviour.
The location message is significant — I've had a colleague look at the metadata and it was sent from a device registered to Daniel Farrow's home address, which means he was tracking her remotely.
That is a criminal matter."
"What does that mean practically?"
"It means I've drafted an urgent application for a non-molestation order.
It means I've also been in contact with a detective constable I work with regularly who handles exactly these cases.
She wants to speak with Nadia today, if Nadia is willing."
I looked across the kitchen at Nadia, who was sitting at the table with Marcus, both of them very still, listening to my half of the conversation.
"She's willing," I said.
"Good.
One more thing." Grace paused.
"Daniel Farrow is a partner at a mid-sized architecture firm in the city.
I ran his background as a matter of course.
This is not the first time a complaint has been made against him."
The kitchen went very quiet.
"What kind of complaint?" I asked.
"A former colleague.
Two years ago.
It didn't proceed — she withdrew the complaint.
But the record exists."
I sat down.
"He's done this before," I said.
"It appears so," Grace said.
"Which is why the detective constable is very interested in speaking with Nadia."
I looked at Nadia across the table.
She had heard enough.
Her face had gone pale, and then something shifted in it — not collapse, but the opposite.
The look of someone who has just been told that the thing they were most afraid of believing is true, and that the truth, finally, is going to be useful.
"He thought she was alone," I said.
"Yes," Grace said.
"They usually do."
That afternoon, Nadia sat in the bedroom she shared with Marcus and spoke to Detective Constable Yemi Adeyemi for an hour and twenty minutes.
Marcus sat beside her the whole time, not speaking, just there.
I stood in the hallway outside and did not move until I heard Nadia's voice steady out, and then steady further, and then, near the end, heard her say clearly and without hesitation: *Yes.
I want to make a formal statement.*
The door was still closed when Marcus opened it and looked at me.
His eyes were red at the edges.
"She did it," he said.
"I know," I said.
"I heard."
He leaned against the door frame.
"Mum.
He was going to be my best man."
"I know."
"I've known him since I was eighteen."
"I know, love."
He looked at the ceiling for a moment.
Then back at me.
"What happens now?"
"Now," I said, "we go home.
And Grace does what Grace does.
And we let Nadia be the one who finishes this."
He nodded slowly.
May you like
Down the hall, Timmy was singing something tuneless and cheerful to himself in the bathroom while Claire ran his bath.
The ordinary world, carrying on.
