by Ali Knight
John stays close to me while I sign lots of papers at a very high counter and collect my torch, car keys and mobile phone. We leave the station together through the front door, just as dawn is breaking.
‘I didn’t know you did criminal work.’
‘This is a special case. We want as little publicity about this as possible.’
‘We?’
John assesses me with his grey eyes, his face betraying nothing. ‘Paul, me, the company.’ He pulls out a pack of fags and lights one, looking only momentarily surprised as I take it from his fingers and inhale deeply. He lights another one for himself.
‘Don’t you mean that you always do what Paul asks?’ Now that I’m outside my shame has broken over me with the dawn and my barbs of anger at John are a way of trying to protect myself. ‘Why are you always jumping to his tune?’
He curls his fingers towards his right palm and examines his fingernails, the cigarette pointing skywards. A frown takes up space between his eyebrows. ‘Is that what you think I do?’
John is someone who answers questions with questions, or doesn’t answer at all. Both irritate me. I study my brother-in-law, the gap between what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard about him over the years impossible to bridge. He’s nine years older than Paul, a different generation. He was the lawyer at an advertising agency until the time he entertained his most important clients in Los Angeles and following a thirty-six-hour bender stripped naked by the pool of the hotel where they were staying and dived in, hitting his head in the shallow end and ending up in the ER. When he came round the first thing he asked was whether they’d won the business. I’ve never seen this larger-than-life personality. The image of John standing shouting in Venice Beach, the Forman family jewels swinging as hotel guests dived for cover, is quite alien to me. I don’t like being the centre of attention, I don’t crave all the eyes in the room.
‘What did Paul say when he phoned you?’
‘Kate’s got overexcited.’ Or Kate’s getting nearer to the truth. I imagine Paul’s reassuring chat with Mackenzie. He saved me from a breaking-and-entering charge. Paul covered for me, like I covered for him. Tit for tat. We’re united to the outside world but breaking apart within.
‘What were you looking for, Kate?’ John’s thrown his butt in the gutter and is standing squarely in front of me, one of his wide and gym-honed shoulders is twitching but his voice is quiet and calm.
‘You and Paul were talking at the maze about something Melody never signed. I want to know what it was.’
John frowns. ‘You broke in for that? You have got overexcited.’ He sees my stony face and relents. ‘She never signed the contract for Crime Time.’ He holds up his hands to stop my questions. ‘I know the show’s been running for months. The UK version wasn’t at issue, it was the sale to European countries . . .’ He tails off. ‘It sounds irregular but this does happen. Technically Forwood is free to sell the idea all over the place now. It’s embarrassing because it looks like a motive and it doesn’t leave a good taste.’ John picks a piece of fluff out of his pocket as if he’s disgusted with himself. ‘Why didn’t you just ask Paul all this?’
‘Was he having an affair with Melody?’
John’s face transforms in an instant. He’s come alive. A vein in his temple begins to throb. ‘You think he killed Melody?’
I open my mouth to speak, but then the door to the station swings open and Mackenzie barrels out, a cloud of frustrated fury following him. John and I hurry round a corner. ‘Questions answered with questions.’ I walk away with our conversation hanging.
‘Kate!’ John calls after me, but I march forward on my trainers. I risk a glimpse over my shoulder after about a hundred yards and he’s still standing there, tracking my progress up the street. He doesn’t follow.
I don’t know where to go. I start weaving down the road, delirious with what I have done. When I first dropped to the floor at the office who did I think was coming to get me? Not assailants with faces I don’t recognise but my own husband. I walk for half an hour not noticing where I’m going. A man called and rang off before . . . Mackenzie’s words shorten my breath. Did Paul call the police? Did he know I would go and hunt for clues? Did he lead them to me? These thoughts make me too tired to move and when a cab coasts past I flag it down.
‘Where to, love?’ His fingers drum with impatience on the steering wheel when he gets no reply. I give him Jessie’s address as the idea of going home is unthinkable. Twenty minutes later I get out next to a boarded-up kebab house and ring her doorbell. I pick grit from my eye as a truck thunders past. Jessie is not a morning person and this is a test of how heavily she sleeps. I hope she fails. After more than five minutes the door finally opens a crack and I see the surprise registering on her unmade face. ‘Kate, what are you doing here?’ She opens the door wider. Her bed hair is offset with a beautiful and colourful kimono. She looks tired but happy. ‘You OK?’
A long stairway leads from the ground floor to her rooms above but instead of walking up them she leans on the door frame, blocking my path. ‘Can I come in?’
She pauses for a second too long. ‘Of course.’
I follow her up the stairs into the kitchen and see an empty bottle of wine and two glasses on the table. ‘Oh, am I disturbing you? Is someone here?’ I look around, her reluctance making sense now.
‘Kate, are you all right?’ She’s looking at me strangely as a hysterical giggle escapes and I find I’m clamping a hand across my mouth. Jessie stares at me, bewildered. Her eyes slide to her bedroom door.
‘Someone is here! Is it . . . ?’ I turn to the closed door and feel her hand on my arm.
‘Please, Kate—’
Something about her warm palm on my elbow with its hints of sympathy, the new nightgear, one of her pictures hanging in the hallway that’s the same picture that sits in front of Paul’s computer screen . . . I push the door open at the moment when someone in the bed pulls the duvet over their head. I’ve been mired in subterfuge and riddles for days. I snatch the cloth and yank as if I’m pulling away the layers that separate me from the truth, and come face to face with an astonished and naked bald man. The fact that it is not Paul doesn’t lessen my anger. ‘You should be with your wife,’ I spit.
‘Kate—’
He looks as frightened as if his actual wife has caught him. ‘Well he fucking well should be.’
‘Kate!’ Jessie’s voice is much louder this time and much more insistent. She shoves me back into the kitchen. ‘What are you doing?’
‘What the hell are you doing?’
Her pale face flushes red. She’s angry now, angrier than I’ve ever seen her. ‘Living my life, and if you don’t like it too bloody bad!’ Her words slap me back to my senses. I burst into tears as she folds her arms.
‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean that.’ She just stares at me. ‘Can you forgive me?’ Her silence says ‘no’ louder than any words can. ‘I thought that was Paul!’ She takes a huge intake of breath but before she has a chance to speak I cut her off. ‘Paul’s having an affair, or has had an affair.’ I’m blubbing and weeping, desperate to tell her the rest, unload my real fears and suspicions, but it’s not just the man in the bedroom that prevents me. Sobbing on my best friend’s landing, I wonder whether friendship can stand a secret like the one I’m holding. I don’t know if it’s strong enough. Maybe I’ll never have the relief of this problem shared.
Jessie sighs. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t understand—’
‘You mean, I can’t understand?’
No, I don’t mean that.’
‘Yes you do.’ The antagonism is back, we are going in the wrong direction.
‘I broke into his office looking for clues. I was arrested and I’ve just spent the night in jail.’ My manic giggle is back. The mothers that I know would gasp and gawp at this rather amazing news, but the tempo of Jessie’s life is such that she thinks it unremarkable.
‘Do you love him?�
�� My sobs die away and I stare at her. Do I? Can I love a man who has murdered someone? Should I? Is love unconditional? I open my mouth to speak but don’t know what to say. ‘You seem unsure.’ There is a pause. ‘If you love him, fight for him; if not, walk away.’
‘Walk away!’ I shake my head. ‘It’s more complicated than that.’
‘No it isn’t.’
Jessie is interrupted by the bedroom door opening and Mr Married shuffles out, wrapped in Jessie’s old towelling dressing gown. ‘Adam, this is Kate.’ He nods sheepishly. ‘Kate’s husband is having an affair,’ Jessie adds, explaining why I am here at this odd time in such a state.
I love Jessie completely at this moment. Adam looks at the carpet as if he hopes a hole might miraculously appear in which he can crawl away and die. She hasn’t realised that me being here is far too like the scene he’ll have to have one day with his own wife.
‘You know, Kate, maybe this is a good thing.’
‘How on earth—’
‘It makes Paul human. He’s not perfect, he’s flawed like the rest of us. Don’t take this the wrong way but you’ve put Paul on this pedestal. He was bound to topple off simply with the effort of trying to stand so straight.’
Adam hands me a tissue, a small act of kindness that I’m very grateful for. ‘You don’t even seem surprised.’ I blow my nose and see Jessie shrug a shoulder, the kimono slipping down to her arm. I stop blowing. ‘What?’ She looks at me, taken aback. ‘You know something I don’t.’
Again she hesitates for a second too long. ‘I . . .’
‘Tell me!’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘Yes there is!’
Jessie looks at Adam and back at me. She makes a frustrated gesture with her head. ‘I assumed you knew already.’
‘Knew what?’
‘Jesus, Kate, think about how you met!’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘He was with Eloide when he met you.’ I look at her blankly. ‘Pug told me . . . oh this is all so long ago, it doesn’t matter—’
‘What did Pug tell you?’
Jessie looks awkward, crossing and uncrossing her arms as if she’s trying to find a comfortable place for them. ‘That you were not the first. He’d cheated on Eloide before. More than once.’
20
Eloide sent me a get well card. After I was knocked down by the taxi, taken home by her husband and given my first instructions in mind-blowing sex. I opened an envelope to find the words ‘Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History’ emblazoned across the front of a 1950s-style card. Inside she told me to flirt with the doctors. I limped into my bedroom then and lay down on the crumpled sheets, stained with Paul’s semen, sweat and saliva. He’d already left a T-shirt behind, the start of the migration of clothes and toiletries into my flat, the marking out of territory. I buried my face in it, thrilling to his smell. I almost came right then. Eloide had written that she hoped I’d be up and about soon. My mind was a fizzing picture of me pinned to this bed, Paul corkscrewing inside me as I cried out over and over and over. I should have known that it takes practice to get that good. Lots of practice.
The morning after our first adulterous night together I woke to see him buttoning his shirt and fishing his jacket off the floor. He had the air of someone keen to get on with his day, his body spent and his head full.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To wash away my sins,’ he replied as he pushed a foot into a shoe.
My world tilted as if someone had sat down on the side of my sin-drenched bed. He was going to chuck me, I thought, but when I looked up he was smiling at me. ‘Not really. But I do have to go and tell my wife that our marriage is over.’
It took him a few months, but he did tell her. When he decides on something he always sees it through, right to its end. He’s very determined and focused. He pushed on, not knowing what lay ahead, and he carried me along with him.
Gritty dregs catch on my tongue as I drain my third cup of coffee at Jessie’s small kitchen table. Adam’s dressed now in a suit and a tie. His cheeks are pink from showering and his glasses slightly steamed. He looks like a million suburban commuters and is a world away from the performance artists, acrobats, G8 protestors and students Jessie normally attracts. He catches me assessing him and I look away, embarrassed. Jessie hovers over me awkwardly as if she might need to suddenly catch me. Her table is wobbly and I knock it back and forth with my elbow in a rhythmic dum-doop, dum-doop motion.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘That I’ve been cocooned, living in a bubble. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not.’
‘Give yourself time. Don’t do anything hasty. Try and find some definite evidence, otherwise you’re chasing shadows. Do you want another?’ She picks up my cup as my mobile rings for the eighth time. Paul is calling, over and over again.
I can feel my heart fluttering as it runs fast on too much caffeine and shake my head. ‘I should go.’
She nods. ‘I’ve got some good news. I won that Raiph Spencer commission.’
‘That’s fantastic!’
‘I was in his huge office doing some sketches a few days ago.’
‘What do you think of him?’
‘I found him a bit scary, very formal.’
‘Oh? I met him recently. I thought he seemed a bit of a pussycat. With a sense of humour that doesn’t come across when he’s interviewed on TV.’
‘Blimey. Maybe he’s bought into the artist taking a little part of your soul away with them. He seemed nervous and aloof when I was there.’
‘I had dinner with him not long ago. He talked a lot about his childhood, Ireland, his dad’s shop. You know he told me that one of his earliest memories in the shop was adding up the pennies in the till at the end of the day.’
Jessie shakes her head. ‘I don’t know how you get that kind of stuff out of people. But if I know it’s there, I’m getting it out of him at our next sitting.’
‘Well, good luck with it, Jessie. He’s very high profile and great for your career.’ I pull on my coat as the doorbell rings.
‘Who’s that?’ she asks.
‘I’ll get it on my way out.’
She envelops me in a hug and her familiar musky perfume. ‘Take care.’ She looks closely at my face. ‘Remember, it’s not like anyone’s died or anything.’ She gathers me tighter as I cry. ‘He’s still a good man, you know.’
‘Goodbye, Adam. I’m sorry I barged in on you like that.’ He gives me a salute as I leave.
I come down the stairs and open the door to find Paul standing outside. He’s in a dark suit and a black coat and, contrary to what I might have expected, he seems well rested, clean-shaven and, as my mother would say – dashing. He looks at me kindly as he waves up the stairs to Jessie. She can’t resist and waves back, smiling.
‘How did you know—?’
‘She’s your best friend, it was an obvious place to start. You weren’t answering your phone after all.’ He’s calm and if he’s being sarcastic I can’t detect it. We start to walk to the car. ‘I went in early to pick it up before it got towed.’ He paused before adding, ‘The children were asking where you were.’
At the mention of Josh and Ava a tear starts to brim but I fight it back. A blonde in high heels turns her head as we pass, checking out my husband. He doesn’t notice. Or maybe she’s checking out what on earth I’m doing with him. Paul’s wearing his best suit and looks like a master of the universe and I’m made aware of the drab, black clothes I threw on in the middle of last night. After a night in the cells, the smell of desperation and failure cling to me in the briskness and energy of a commuter’s morning. She’s probably wondering what routine he’s using to dump me.
‘Where shall I take you?’ His kindness is worse than anger. This must be how the mad are treated. I bet even Mr Rochester did a fair bit of tiptoeing around his raving wife.
‘To the Tube. I can get home from there.’
He nods as he indicates and pulls out. ‘What did you tell Jessie?’
Here it comes, the casual inquiry to see how far my suspicions have leaked. He’s probably pretty sure I haven’t told anyone else. ‘It was more interesting what she told me.’
‘Which was?’
‘That you were never faithful to Eloide.’ He swears under his breath. ‘I think you might be a very different person from the one I—’
‘Of course I’m different! I’m thirty-nine! It was more than ten years ago.’ His hands are off the wheel as he gesticulates. ‘I’m not proud of what I did, OK. If you want me to say sorry then fine, that’s what I’ll say. But affairs happen for a reason. And I don’t have those reasons with you!’
‘How can I believe you when you’ve never told me this before?’
‘Because it’s not important. It’s not about you, it concerns someone else.’ The old feeling of being kept out resurfaces in me. His pact with his ex-wife, the connection I can never break. Feelings of betrayal reawaken. ‘Stop looking at me like that!’ He turns sharply at a corner and accelerates so that I am pressed back against the seat. ‘You know your problem? I think you’ve got an inability to be happy. You look for problems to cling to.’
‘What?’
‘It’s because of your mum—’
‘Oh please—’
‘She’s broken and so you think you must be too.’
‘This sounds like cod psychology from I know exactly who!’
‘See, there you go again, raking over the past, which you can never change!’
I shake my head. ‘It’s not my mum and her broken marriage or my unhappy sister that’s filling my thoughts, it’s the blood you had on your hands that night, your raving—’
‘No. It’s not that at all. You could believe my explanation but your background won’t let you.’
We’re about to launch verbal assaults into domestic territory that has been fought over too many times already and I’m in the kind of mood where I’ll launch the atomic bomb and start criticising his mother, when an advertising hoarding catches my eye. ‘Oh, it’s Gerry.’ We both stare at a giant photo of a serious-looking Gerry Bonacorsi, glowering at us from across the street. ‘Good decision? Watch and make up your own mind. Inside-Out. Every night from 9.00, online 24 hours a day.’
