When Will There Be Good News?

Instead of buying flowers and getting ready for her in-laws’ visit, Louise finds herself parked outside Alison Needler’s house. The phone call she’d gotten was from a hysterical Alison, thinking her husband had returned to finish them off, but it had been a false alarm. It isn’t the first time this has happened. Louise wishes she could introduce Alison Needler to Joanna Hunter, so that she could see it’s possible to survive trauma with grace.

Louise thinks back to yesterday, when she told Joanna that Andrew Decker has been released from prison. Joanna had held herself together. Louise explained that Decker is living with his mother in Doncaster and will be monitored. She warns Joanna that the press will probably make a big deal of Decker’s release and possibly hunt down Joanna as well.

Louise had been vaguely aware of the Mason case as being in the category of “guys who attacked women and children.” These are different from men who attack women alone or children alone. The Needler case is one of these, too. David Needler had shot his mother-in-law and sister-in-law at his seven-year-old daughter’s birthday party, killing a neighbor as well before fleeing. The difference with Andrew Decker was that he didn’t destroy his own family, he destroyed somebody else’s: “Men like Decker were inadequates […] maybe they just couldn’t stand to see people enjoying the lives they never had.”

Louise hopes that if she ever finds herself in a situation like this, she won’t run or hide, but will stand and fight. That’s not possible if you’re trying to protect children, as Gabrielle Mason had found out. Louise wishes for some utopia where women can walk without fear.

Sitting in Joanna Hunter’s tasteful living room, listening to her talk about her home-grown winter flowers, Louise feigns interest and thinks about Patrick. He had shared the gardening with his first wife, Samantha—“the first Mrs. deWinter.” Louise marvels at the loveliness in Joanna’s life. “You can’t get over something like that,” she later tells Patrick. “No, but you can try,” he replies.

Joanna had shown Louise a photo of her mother, her siblings, and herself thirty years ago. Her father, Howard Mason, had remarried four times after the murder, eventually becoming more famous for his dead wives than for his writing. Louise wonders how the later wives had felt about the first. After talking with Joanna, Louise tracks down a secondhand copy of Howard’s first book, The Shopkeeper, and reads it late into the night. The book is an attack on his provincial upbringing and sounds “spiteful” to Louise.

The Mason case keeps bringing up questions for Louise; Joanna in particular “had got under [her] skin. She had stood on the edge of the unknowable […] It gave her a mysterious power that Louise envied.” Andrew Decker had turned out to be a model prisoner and had gotten his university degree in philosophy. He’s only fifty now. Joanna decides to “escape for a bit” until the fuss surrounding his release dies down.

Alison Needler, meanwhile, stays inside her house all day, only emerging to walk her children to school. She has multiple locks on all the doors and windows, a panic button, and an elaborate security system. She’s in a “safe house, but Alison would never be safe.” Louise thinks that Alison should get a big dog and hopes that David Needler comes back during the Christmas season so that the police can finally “shoot the bastard dead.”

Patrick calls, and Louise is shocked to realize it’s six o’clock, and her elaborate dinner plans are foiled. Patrick tells her she’s obsessed with the Needler case. Louise apologizes and promises to be home soon. Louise thinks about Jackson Brodie, who cares about missing girls and wants them all to be found. Louise “didn’t want them to get lost in the first place. There were a lot of ways of getting lost, not all of them involved being missing.” Louise feels a twinge of guilt for thinking about Jackson.

When Louise gets home, she finds that Jackson has ordered Chinese food for her sister-in-law, Bridget, and brother-in-law, Tim. Louise thinks the Chinese food looks particularly sad on Patrick’s dead wife’s wedding china. Next to Samantha’s things, Louise’s things look like they belong to “a refugee who spent a lot of time in IKEA.” As Patrick pours Louise’s wine, she thinks he’s too good for her, and it makes her want to see how far she can push him.

After dinner, Louise goes upstairs and takes her engagement ring out of its safe. She only wears it when they go out somewhere. She thinks of Jackson again, someone she could have imagined being a “comrade in arms,” but “they had been as chaste as protagonists in an Austen novel.” By the time she reluctantly rejoins the family downstairs, Patrick has just gotten a phone call. He cheerfully tells her that there’s been a train crash, and it’ll be “all hands on deck tonight.”