The Marriage

by K. L. Slater

  ‘OK, Mum?’ Tom let his hands fall away. ‘Happy now?’

  ‘No! I’m not happy at all. I don’t believe a single word that comes out of her mouth. She—’

  ‘I hadn’t got around to telling you yet, Tom, because it didn’t seem that important. I saw Audrey, said hello, asked about you, Jill, and that was it.’

  Jill’s face brightened as she sensed a loophole. ‘So why did Audrey leave like that without saying a word? She even left a note asking me to lock up instead of facing me after you’d gone.’

  ‘I think you’ll have to ask Audrey that, Jill,’ I said softly, touching the top of her arm as if I cared about her. ‘I think she’s been a bit worried about you, too.’

  Jill turned then and opened the front door.

  ‘You’re a liar, Bridget Wilson, and you’ve got some kind of hidden agenda that nobody else can see.’ She looked at an aghast Tom, then back at me. ‘But I know you’re up to something, and I will find out what it is.’

  Thirty-Six

  Tom

  He’d watched as his mother huffed off back to her car. The new hairstyle suited her and he felt pleased she was looking after herself a bit more but she’d gone off on one for no reason. In a way she’d done him a favour turning up like that.

  Fortunately for him, Bridget hadn’t had the chance to ask any really awkward questions when Tom had said he’d forgotten his new Chilly’s water bottle and needed to pop back to the gym to get it.

  ‘The gym’s a way off,’ Bridget had remarked. ‘Why don’t you buy another one?’

  ‘It was twenty quid!’ Tom had exclaimed. ‘I earned a tenner max in prison, and that was if I worked all week.’ In HMP Nottingham, he’d worked as a cleaner for a while and then moved on to maintenance jobs. For a moment he was back there with the slamming of doors, the shouting all night and the awful bland food that tasted the same no matter which option you went for. ‘I won’t be long,’ he’d said, bringing the conversation to an end.

  He hadn’t forgotten his water bottle at all, of course, but he’d needed an excuse that would buy him some time away from the house while he sorted out something very important.

  Something that, thanks to his mother, had now gone horribly wrong.

  Thirty-Seven

  Jill

  2006

  After his childhood operation, Tom grew into a stocky, strong child. I’d felt so relieved that his early heart condition had had no detrimental effect on him. He was a good boy, always willing to help and try his best for us.

  Tom adored his father, always clamouring for Robert to include him in anything he was doing. Robert had had a fascination with clocks from his own childhood. He was skilled at repairing the old-fashioned mechanisms, though as time went on and digital clocks became more fashionable, his talent for repairs became a bit of a dying art. It was strictly a hobby – in those days, he was a trained architect and had a good job in a firm that he hoped to make partner in one day – but nevertheless the clock repair requests came in steadily and it was something he enjoyed, got lost in.

  It was natural that Tom would take an interest, and when he was very young – six or seven – it was Robert’s party piece to hand Tom a tiny screwdriver and get him to attach a cog or two whilst our friends sat around nursing glasses of wine and making appropriate impressed noises.

  Tom was top of his class in woodwork lessons. He had an eye for meticulous detail that proved to be an essential requirement for the repair of Robert’s clocks. Over time, I watched as Tom’s rather cute capabilities at seven became an intense irritation to his father as he grew older. I tried hard, I really did, but the more I saw Robert’s jealousy of his own son, the more I felt the keen sting of resentment towards him.

  Robert had always liked getting his own way. That didn’t mean to say I’d been a pushover in my marriage as my mother had been, but I picked my fights. I’d have a go back if it was about something that mattered greatly to me. I found that a good way of keeping anxiety at bay rather than fretting over every last thing in our relationship.

  One event marked out the step change in Robert and Tom’s relationship.

  The grandfather clock came in three days before Christmas the year Tom turned fifteen. Always happy to assist his father, he’d helped carry it into the garage, which Robert had converted years before into a workshop. It stood in the corner and I remember being summoned, together with several of our neighbours, to witness its beauty.

  Robert was in his element, preening like a peacock while we all oohed and aahed at the ornate mahogany piece.

  ‘Made on the east coast of Scotland, circa 1780,’ Robert announced grandly, pointing out various features. ‘It has an eight-day movement, a twelve-inch dial and rococo spandrels.’

  I remembered wishing he still looked at me like he looked at that clock. Like most of our friends’ relationships, the rigours of marriage, work and running a house and family had robbed us of the romantic efforts evident in our early relationship.

  ‘How much is it worth, Dad?’ Tom had asked.

  ‘Good question. Probably around eight thousand pounds.’ There were gasps from his small audience, but Robert held up a finger. ‘If it’s in working order, I should say. The owner would be lucky to get a couple of grand for it in this state, but I shall work my magic and return it to its former glory.’

  The clock had apparently been in the client’s family for generations, and Robert had been the first person he’d trusted enough to repair it. He told everyone that particular detail, too.

  Everything went downhill rather rapidly after that. Despite him spending most of the Christmas break in his workshop, the clock evaded all Robert’s efforts to repair it. From what I remember – he went into great detail explaining it to me, most of which I admit went over my head – it was some sort of complication with the eight-day movement.

  As he’d piqued the interest of the neighbours, several of them popped round to see the finished product and were told that Robert suspected a manufacturing fault was to blame for blighting the piece.

  ‘I’ve repaired enough clocks in my time to know when there’s a bigger problem,’ he told them. ‘I’ve tried everything in my considerable repair arsenal and I’ve finally got to admit I’m beaten.’

  The day after Boxing Day, Robert’s old school buddy turned up at 6 a.m. to pick him up for their annual overnight festive fishing trip. It sounded silly, but Robert looked weathered, physically beaten from his constant battles with the clock.

  ‘I don’t know how I’m going to tell the client,’ he said morosely at the door as I kissed him goodbye. ‘He had such faith in me to repair it ready for his wife’s sixtieth birthday next month.’

  ‘Put it out of your mind and enjoy your break,’ I told him, handing over his sandwiches and flask. ‘If it’s beaten you then nobody else will be able to help him. That you can guarantee.’

  Placated, he left, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I was looking forward to the house being a little calmer, with no more baffling talk of the mechanics of that ruddy clock.

  Mid morning, Tom sauntered into the kitchen dressed in warm clothes.

  ‘I’m going to tidy up the workshop as a surprise for Dad when he gets back,’ he said. ‘Shout me when lunch is ready, Mum.’

  I gave it no more thought, but I remembered being touched that he wanted to do something to help his father. After lunch, he went out again and I had to call him in three times before he appeared for tea. His hands were covered in grease and he went directly over to the sink.

  ‘Whatever have you been doing in there?’ I whipped away the clean hand towel I’d just hung on the rail. ‘Rubbing the floor with your bare hands?’

  He turned to me and grinned. His face was flushed, his eyes bright and sparkling, and I got this feeling in the pit of my stomach. He looked exhilarated, but something told me it was for all the wrong reasons.

  ‘You’re not going to believe it,’ he said, rubbing his hands so vigorously the soap foa
med up between his fingers. ‘Guess what I’ve done?’

  And then I knew. I swallowed down the lump in my throat and said, ‘Have you touched that clock?’

  ‘I’ve done more than touch it, Mum, I’ve mended it. It’s working! It’s running perfectly, Dad’s going to be amazed.’

  But Robert was not amazed at all. When Tom led his father into the garage, Robert’s face turned puce. ‘Who the hell gave you the right to start meddling in here without my permission?’

  He stormed over to the clock, and even through his fury, I saw the shock and amazement that Tom had managed to get it working.

  ‘I thought I’d have a quick look at it, Dad. I know you’ve spent hours on it and I thought if I got it working, you’d be—’

  ‘You had no right. No right!’ Robert grabbed hold of him, but Tom, now nearly as tall as he was, managed to slip free before his father slapped him.

  ‘Robert, please!’ I pleaded. ‘Calm down. This is a good thing, isn’t it? Now your client won’t be disappointed.’

  He turned on me then. ‘You! You’ve encouraged him to humiliate me like this. So you can tell everyone your precious son succeeded where I failed.’ He looked at me with such revulsion, I shrank back outside.

  I hovered around the closed workshop door listening to them screaming at each other.

  ‘Why do you hate me?’ I heard Tom scream. ‘It’s not my fault you’re rubbish at mending clocks!’

  It was the first time I’d heard him answer his father back, but Robert’s misplaced anger had loosened something in him.

  Voices were raised and Nazreen next door called over the fence to ask if everything was OK. I reached for the door handle, and then I heard it. A tremendous crash followed by a terrible banging.

  The sound of a hammer cracking into the precious timepiece. Centuries-old craftsmanship and delicate glass pulverised in a moment of jealous madness.

  Tom cried out and I burst into the workshop to see Robert sitting on the floor, crying, the hammer hanging loosely from his shaking hand.

  Within a month, the company he’d worked at for twenty years had let him go. The official reason given was redundancy due to a restructure but seeing as the irate clock client had taken his business elsewhere and Robert’s job was the only casualty, it didn’t take much to read between the lines as to the real reason behind his dismissal.

  It hit Robert badly. He suffered a period of anxiety and mild depression. Counselling helped with his recovery and inspired him to retrain in the profession himself.

  But things were never the same again between the three of us after that.

  Thirty-Eight

  Nottinghamshire Police

  October 2019

  DI Irma Barrington sighed and pushed away the pile of folders in front of her. She had two members of her team off on long-term sick and a temporary replacement in the DS position, a young woman from London called Tyra Barnes.

  When her boss, DI Marcus Fernwood, had retired last year, Irma had been promoted to detective inspector at the age of thirty-eight. She missed Marcus, had learned a lot from him during her days as a DS. Now she was the senior detective in charge of a team.

  Tyra sauntered over to her desk. As usual, she was dressed stylishly in a navy fitted trouser suit and a white T-shirt. She wore her hair in a full Afro, which she’d flattened on top with colourful hair slides.

  She waved a piece of paper at Irma. ‘New in. We got ourselves a dead body. A woman.’

  ‘Pulled out of the river?’ Irma said distractedly, leafing through the folders she’d sidelined. ‘An overdose?’

  ‘Nope.’ Tyra leaned forward and placed the note squarely in front of her. ‘The deceased is a twenty-eight-year-old local woman, single mother of a nine-year-old son. She was found with a fatal head injury. Uniform said it looks like a possible hit and run.’

  Irma sighed. What a terrible end for this poor woman, and with a young son, too. Though people were always upset by the thought of a hit and run, they tended not to be as shocked as they were by a face-to-face assault or murder. Yet the cruelty of this particular crime always got to Irma.

  Only two years ago, her own dad, an alcoholic, had stumbled in front of a bus and met his end. The bus driver had been inconsolable and completely blameless. But this … to plough into someone knowing at the very least that you were leaving a broken body, abandoning a person who was possibly in tremendous pain and trauma, took a special kind of wickedness in her opinion. Somewhere in the area, a young boy had lost his mother and he didn’t even realise it yet.

  Irma picked up the note with details of the identity of the woman. ‘Coral McKinty,’ she said to herself. Frowning, she rolled the name around on her tongue for a second time, a growing feeling of unease taking hold. ‘Coral McKinty.’ Why did it sound so familiar?

  ‘The body was found in a ditch by a dog walker. It’s the road that skirts the edge of Blidworth Woods. Her car was nearby. She might have been out walking, but officers at the scene said she hadn’t got walking footwear or suitable clothing on.’ Tyra hesitated. ‘They’re checking to see if she’d broken down and was going for help or to get a phone signal.’

  ‘Go on,’ Irma said, sensing Tyra was suppressing something interesting.

  ‘Well, I took the liberty of looking up her details, and we’ve spoken to her before. To be precise, you’ve spoken to her before. Ten years ago, in connection with an assault and eventually manslaughter charge involving her then boyfriend, Jesse Wilson.’

  ‘That’s where I know her name from,’ Irma cried, drawing glances from some of the team working close by. ‘Tom Billinghurst, Jesse’s best friend, threw a fatal punch outside Movers. They were both local boys.’

  ‘Movers?’ Tyra wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Used to be a nightclub in the middle of town,’ Irma said. ‘I think it’s a Sainsbury’s Local now or something.’

  She began tapping on her keyboard, faintly aware of Tyra saying something about the place being a bit of a backwater, and how she missed the clubs in London. Her voice sounded distant as Irma read and absorbed the words on the screen in front of her.

  ‘Well I never.’ She gave a low whistle. ‘Coral McKinty turns up dead near a wood with a head injury, and guess who was released from prison less than a month ago?’

  ‘Let me take a wild guess,’ Tyra said. ‘Tom Billinghurst?’

  ‘The very same. I haven’t a clue why Billinghurst would want to do her any harm and it might be a coincidence,’ Irma said. She turned off the monitor and stood up. ‘But something you should know about me, DS Barnes, is that I tend not to trust coincidences and so this sounds like a very good place to start.’ Coral McKinty’s son had already lost his father thanks to Tom Billinghurst’s lethal punch all those years ago. The grim reality was that this lad was now an orphan. ‘Grab your coat, we’re going to the crime scene.’

  ‘Cool,’ Tyra said, and dashed over to her desk to collect her things, leaving Irma with a hollow sense of hopelessness.

  They might be able to find out what had happened to Coral and even charge the perpetrator, but they’d never give her young son his family back.

  Sometimes, life was so incredibly cruel.

  Thirty-Nine

  Jill

  October 2019

  When I started to drive away from Tom and Bridget’s house after confronting her about why she’d been with Audrey, I saw my son still hovering at the front door, the bright hallway light like a halo around his broad shoulders.

  My heart ached but I didn’t linger there, didn’t wave. For the first time, I felt as angry with my son as I did with Bridget. Angry that he couldn’t see what was so apparent to me, that Bridget was keeping secrets from him, playing some kind of game with both of us.

  I drove away without looking back and headed across town to Audrey’s house. It was a twenty-minute drive, and on the way I tried calling her again, with exactly the same result as before. Her phone was off, but this time it wouldn’t even let me
leave a message, presumably because her voicemail box was full of all my previous pleas for her to get in touch.

  When I arrived at her modest two-bedroom semi in Mansfield Woodhouse, I sat in the car and took in the house. It was fairly obvious Audrey wasn’t home, because her car wasn’t parked out front.

  The house was neat but very plain, nothing to make it stand out amongst the other similar plots on the quiet street. It reflected Audrey’s personality. She didn’t like to draw attention to herself. She operated in the background in all areas. At the shop, she liked to hang back and let people browse to their hearts’ content. She wasn’t the sort to jump on customers the second they walked through the door and start the hard sell.

  A reliable, sensible person, she was always there when you needed her. The perfect friend, or at least that was how I’d thought of her up to a few hours ago. Worry nibbled at the edges of my annoyance. Where could she have got to?

  I got out of the car and walked up the short path. I rang the bell and knocked on the front door, but I wasn’t surprised when there was no answer. I walked around the side of the house and leaned over the small gate to access the security bolt I knew she’d had fitted about halfway down.

  I’d been in the small, neat back garden in fine weather many times over the years. Audrey would make us a simple chicken or prawn salad – never barbecue food, she hated the mess – and we’d sit out at her little round wrought-iron table and eat, laugh and put the world to rights, sometimes for hours on end. My heart ached when I thought about how long it had been since those days, way before Tom went to prison.

  It shocked me to realise the enormous slice of time that had passed in my life with nothing to fill it. Ten whole years of nothing but waiting and planning for a fantasy future, and for what? For Tom to marry Jesse’s mother and ruin any chance he had of living a normal life. To pass up having children of his own, grandchildren I’d visualised so vividly I almost felt I already knew them.