Give Me the Child: the most gripping psychological thriller of the year. Mel McGrath

next door, an impromptu shrine had appeared. Bunches of cheap flowers lay scattered around a central core of lit candles and someone had glued a photo of a young, heartbreakingly open-faced boy to a piece of card and nailed it to the wall. Beneath the photo the word ‘warrior’ was misspelled in red ink.

      ‘What is happening to this city?’ I said, while Jamal was ringing up my purchases. ‘Since when did dead kids become warriors?’

      ‘I blame designer trainers and computer games.’ From his jovial tone I knew Jamal didn’t quite mean this. He was aware of what Tom did for a living. They’d talked many times about playing FIFA together.

      ‘I blame us,’ I said.

      Tom and I were twenty-five when we met. I’d just finished my PhD and was giving a paper on the use of psychological games to develop empathy in kids with antisocial personality disorder at a gaming conference in London. In the lunch break this lean, rangy games developer with chocolate curls and a dazzling smile appeared at my side. We talked about the paper for a while. Then, in a voice like a week on a beach, Tom said, ‘Has anyone ever told you that the left side of your mouth turns upwards when you’re thinking hard?’

      I laughed. ‘Not till now.’

      ‘So, what are you thinking about?’

      I laughed again. ‘I’m going to assume you’re being ironically suggestive.’

      He met my eye then and our smiles faded. At that point in my life, I’d never been to a forest but there was something about his gaze that was redolent of the thick silence of trees at dusk. It had a specific stillness and a density which you only found in the forest.

      Tom winked at me. ‘Well, whatever you were thinking about, I know what you’re thinking about now.’ Then, with perfect cool, he added, ‘So, lunch?’

      We went to an Italian place around the corner and ate whatever. I don’t remember what we talked about because it didn’t matter. I think we might have shared a tiramisu. But then again it could have been something else.

      ‘How’s about we go somewhere and play grown-up games?’ he said, after we’d finished coffee.

      ‘Do you ever stop?’ I said. He’d been flirting with me throughout the meal.

      He looked at me. ‘Would you like me to?’ Then, and as if it was the most natural thing in the world, his hand went to my waist. His touch was so light but so absolute it was like being webbed in spider silk. I heard myself laughing. The question was so cheesy but at the same time so hot that no was the only possible answer. I didn’t want him to stop. Not then. And not for a long time after.

      We went to the first hotel we could find and played grown-up games. Later, drinking room-service whisky, I asked Tom what he thought made a great gamer.

      He propped himself up on one elbow and, running the fingers of his other hand along my belly, said, ‘Perfect hand–eye coordination, precision, responsiveness and the ability to focus completely on the game to the exclusion of everything else.’

      Basically, I thought, the exact same stuff that makes a man great at sex – and I decided there and then that I wanted Tom Walsh in my life.

      Jamal handed me my change. I thanked him and went out of the shop. At the shrine I stopped a moment and read some of the messages, absent-mindedly pouring a sachet of popping candy down my throat and waiting for the miniature explosion. I wasn’t looking forward to going home. I wished I could sit Tom down and say, ‘You know what? Let’s just draw a line under this, make a fresh start.’ But I wasn’t big enough to allow that to be the end of it.

      I broke back into a run. I wanted it to work between us but I wasn’t about to be a martyr to my marriage. I had my pride. I also had Freya to think about. I didn’t want her growing up thinking that the long-suffering wife was any kind of role to aspire to. At the same time, things were delicate. I needed to be strategic about this. Like many men of his class and upbringing, Tom couldn’t deal with any kind of direct confrontation, especially not from a woman. I wanted to make life uncomfortable enough for Tom that he would never be tempted to stray again but I knew if I tried to box him in, he’d do whatever it took to game his way out and I’d lose the upper hand.

      The girls were in the garden. Ruby, a thin, sallow-skinned, befreckled creature with an enormous shock of red hair in whose delicate blue frame I couldn’t see anyone I had ever loved, was sitting beside my daughter and pulling at the grass, the two of them building something with Lego. A brief, fleeting moment of relief came over me then, followed by an odd sense that the girl with the orange hair wasn’t real and any minute now she would vanish, leaving the three of us alone once more.

      ‘Hey, girls!’

      Freya jumped up and came running.

      ‘I’m showing Ruby our magic castle, only she doesn’t believe me,’ she said, clasping me around the waist and burying her head in my belly.

      At eleven, Freya still occupied a world of childish possibility. She was young for her age, emotionally, and I was happy with that. I knew what growing up too fast in the city was like and I didn’t want that for my kid.

      ‘Well, you can show it to me later.’ I took my daughter’s sweet, small, ‘not quite white’ hand and we walked up the garden to where Ruby was sitting.

      ‘Hi, Ruby, how was your day?’

      ‘Hello,’ the girl said, regarding me with a level gaze. Her eyes were the colour of the late summer sun catching in a mirror. Amber beads with pupils trapped inside, like something very old which had never found a name. She reached for a brick and, pressing it into her hand, said, ‘My mum died, so now I’m living here.’

      ‘I’m very sorry about what happened to your mother.’

      The girl nodded without looking up so I couldn’t properly read her face. She didn’t look as though she’d been crying but maybe it hadn’t hit her yet. Or maybe it had but she didn’t feel like crying. Or maybe she was all cried out? Ruby Winter was a mystery to us. Probably even to herself.

      ‘You didn’t return my call.’ I felt Tom’s presence and swung round. His hands were on his hips and there was a little tic playing on his jawline. I remembered then that he’d called me back and left a message.

      ‘The day ran away from me.’

      He eyed me questioningly as if waiting for me to thank him for the roses, which I was in no mood to do. It was Freya who lightened the atmosphere.

      ‘Mum, Ruby likes pizza and ice cream. Isn’t that cool?’ Our daughter was sitting beside her half-sister now, idly picking at the grass.

      ‘Well, good, that’s our tea sorted, then.’ It was a relief, suddenly, to be talking about the everyday. ‘How was the bed in the spare room, Ruby? Did you sleep OK?’

      ‘She likes my room better,’ Freya said, handing her half-sister a frogged brick.

      Pudge the cat wandered over. On any normal day, Freya would have held Pudge in the air and kissed his paws, but I saw Ruby pull up her hands like a drawbridge, a look of mild distaste on her face, and my daughter, ever in tune with other people’s feelings, reached over, picked him up and gently deposited him over on the other side of the garden before returning to her spot.

      ‘Ruby prefers Harry to Pudge, don’t you?’ Freya had been allowed to take the school hamster home to look after in the holidays.

      ‘Sort of,’ Ruby said.

      Tom had sat down on the grass beside his daughter and was now rifling through the Lego bricks.

      ‘We can fix up your room any way you want it,’ he said casually. ‘For when you come and visit.’

      A