Clean Break

by Tammy Cohen

  We go for pizza. They are pleased to see me at first, but soon they get bored. Ben is missing a night out with his mates. And Amy would rather be home watching Netflix and messaging her friends.

  ‘You have to stop quizzing us about Mum the whole time,’ she says, when I ask a perfectly harmless question. ‘Just face it. It’s finished.’

  ‘Or maybe not,’ I say. And smile so they don’t know if I’m joking.

  I’m not joking.

  I have my phone in my pocket set to vibrate so I will know the second you get in touch. You don’t get in touch. I keep remembering how you leaned into me in the car, wanting me to hold you. Surely it is only a matter of time until you call?

  When I go to the loo I check my phone to make sure it is working.

  I try to persuade the kids to stay out after dinner. We could go to the cinema, I suggest. I know I will have to stay out until late, waiting for everyone to go to bed so that I can sneak into the loft. The empty hours stretch ahead of me.

  But Amy and Ben want to go home. Back to their laptops and their friends. When I drop them off, the house is in darkness.

  ‘Mum gone out then?’ I ask.

  They shrug.

  ‘The thing is,’ says Ben, ‘it’s not really your business any more.’

  He doesn’t say it to be unkind. It is just a statement of fact. Even so, I feel a surge of redhot rage and have to curl my fingers up into fists and count to ten in my head.

  I think about telling them that you have changed your mind. That things will soon be back to normal. But there is something about the dark rooms and not knowing where you are, or what you are doing, or who you are doing it with, that stops me.

  I park at the end of the road, where I can watch the house. It is after midnight when you arrive home in a taxi and nearly 2 a.m. before I dare let myself in. I am so tired, but I am wide awake. It feels as if there are lines of ants crawling through my veins. At least tomorrow is Saturday, so I can stay up here in the attic all day looking at you.

  Lying in my sleeping bag on the loft floor, I turn on my phone and flick through all the camera views – living room, kitchen, hallway – but all are dark and still.

  I wish I had put a smoke alarm in the bedroom so I could watch you sleep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  KATE: Saturday morning,

  twenty days after the split

  ‘Did you have a good time with Dad?’

  Amy shrugs, her mouth full of Cheerios.

  ‘It was OK, I suppose,’ she says.

  ‘Please tell me we don’t have to do that every Friday night,’ Ben says, glaring at her over his steaming tea. ‘I missed a really good night out.’

  ‘Just till things get sorted,’ Kate says. ‘I promise.’

  The kids both tell her they will be out this evening. To make up for missing out the night before. Amy is on a sleepover with her best friend and Ben is going to a party. ‘We’re all crashing at Jake’s afterwards,’ he tells her. ‘Safer than coming home alone,’ he adds, when she tries to protest.

  So now she has the house to herself for a whole night.

  After the kids have gone back upstairs, Kate puts on the radio while she cleans up the kitchen.

  She feels embarrassed now that she fell apart in counselling the evening before last. She was with Mel last night, and her friend is so much better. Back to her old self. She wishes she hadn’t let Jack drive her home, or put his arms around her. She does not want to give him false hope. There is something strange about the way he is handling everything. He is too calm. Something bothers her about him, but she cannot work out what it is. And she regrets telling him about Tom. She was at such a low point. That’s why she admitted there had been someone else interested, and why she lied about it being over.

  It is not over.

  Kate decides she will invite Tom over later. It is too good a chance to pass up. Tom lives in a two-bedroomed flat that he shares with a couple who rarely go out. Kate never quite relaxes when she goes round there. This is a chance for them to be on their own for once.

  Also, though she does not like to admit it, she will be glad not to be alone in the house. Since Jack left, everything has felt strange. The noises at night. The sense of things being disturbed. Food going missing. Someone in her bed. It must be Amy or Ben, of course, although they deny it. But still, it makes her feel on edge.

  After Amy and Ben go out, she spends a long time getting ready. A half-an-hour soak in the bath. Home-waxing her legs with those strips that make her yelp with pain. Plucking her eyebrows.

  She dresses with care. A pale blue silk top with tight denim jeans and high-heeled shoes. Best underwear. She twists her hair back and secures it with a clip. Jack always used to like her to leave it long and loose. Tom is different.

  When Tom arrives, he can tell how nervous she is. As soon as the front door closes behind him, he takes her in his arms and kisses her deeply in the hallway.

  ‘Better now?’ he asks, when they pull apart.

  She nods.

  He has brought a bottle of champagne and they go into the kitchen to fetch glasses. She is making a beef stew with a red wine sauce. When she gets up to stir it, he pulls her down on to his lap and they kiss again. By the time they finish their second glasses of champagne, they have lost all interest in food. Instead, they go upstairs to the bedroom.

  For the next hour or so, Kate is lost in what she and Tom are doing. It is only when she gets up, naked, to go to the bathroom that she gets that strange, prickling feeling again. As if the house itself is angry with her.

  After a while, they are hungry and they go downstairs to eat. Kate realizes how much she loves having Tom there in her kitchen. He is so full of compliments. About her. About her cooking. Her home.

  ‘You are an amazing woman,’ he tells her. After all those years with Jack pointing out her faults, she feels a warm glow of pride.

  They go into the living room and cuddle up together on the sofa. Tom tells her he is DJ’ing tomorrow lunchtime in a chill-out bar in town. He does it for fun, he says. He asks her if she will come along, and she is tempted but says she had better not. She is taking Amy and Ben to her parents’ house in Cornwall on Monday and needs to get things ready.

  Tom does not stay the night. Just in case the kids come back early. But it is nearly 3 a.m. by the time he tears himself away. Yet still he cannot bring himself to leave.

  ‘I need to tell you something,’ he says, standing on the doorstep. ‘I think I am falling in love with you.’

  Kate’s heart expands in her chest until she feels it might burst.

  ‘Me, too,’ she says.

  Afterwards, she lies in her bed, reliving the evening, remembering the things they said and did. How it all felt.

  She knows she needs to sleep, but the anxiety is back, prickling at her skin like an ice-cold needle. She thinks she can hear the squirrels scratching above Amy’s room. Even when she does finally drop off, her sleep is disturbed.

  She dreams she hears a man crying as if his heart would break.

  Chapter Sixteen

  JACK: Sunday morning,

  twenty-one days after the split

  How could you? How could you? How could you?

  I am walking around the early-morning streets, and the words are stuck in my head like an annoying tune that I can’t shake off.

  How could you?

  With him?

  I have no idea how long I’ve been walking. After he left I was in shock. I sat there in the loft, shaking and crying. The images played out in my head as if they were on a loop. I shouldn’t have watched. But I couldn’t look away. My wife. My Kate. You. With him.

  Twice, I was sick in the bucket in the corner. The smell was disgusting. In the end I had to creep down from the loft and come outside to gulp down lungfuls of fresh air. Since then I’ve been walking. While the sky turned pink and then orange and now the deep navy blue of spilled ink.

  I cannot believe I have been so stup
id. I let you lie to me. I let you tell me it was over. Whatever ‘it’ might be. You have made a fool of me. The two of you. Laughing at me.

  You will both pay.

  This is my second night without sleep. My feet are moving, one in front of the other, but I do not know how. I am like a robot. Except robots don’t feel pain.

  How could you?

  It is too risky now to go back into the house, so I must stay outside, walking to keep warm. While you are cosy in our bed. The bed where you had sex with another man. On sheets we bought together in the Boxing Day sale.

  Rage is a white-hot blade, twisting in my gut.

  At ten o’clock I go back to the house. I cannot keep away.

  I ring on the bell.

  ‘Oh,’ you say.

  I force my mouth into a smile.

  ‘Just thought I would pop by and see how you all are,’ I say. ‘You never replied to my text. I wanted to make sure you were all right.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ you say. ‘I’ve just been busy.’

  That’s when I lose it.

  ‘I’ll bet you’ve been busy,’ I say. ‘Busy shagging him. Croissant Man. After everything you said about it being over.’

  Your face turns the colour the sun was a few hours ago. The colour of a blood orange.

  ‘It is over,’ you lie. Then: ‘Have you been spying on me?’

  I can see your mind racing. You are wondering how much I know. And how I know it. I see your eyes flick across the street, wondering where I could have hidden myself to keep watch on the house.

  ‘I don’t need to spy. I can smell him on you.’

  You slam the door in my face. I ring a few more times. I think about using my key but don’t want to risk you taking it off me.

  Finally, I walk away. There’s a movement at the upstairs window and I know you’ve been watching me, waiting for me to leave.

  I almost laugh out loud, imagining your relief, thinking you have got rid of me. I will be back. Don’t you worry. But there’s something I need to do first.

  I find the bar without a problem. I remember him telling you it was called The First Floor when he was trying to get you to come along.

  I remember everything.

  It’s not the kind of place I normally go. There are sofas and armchairs and little low tables with board games on them. Board games, for fuck’s sake.

  They only sell bottled beer, and when I hand the barman a fiver he only gives me fifty pence change.

  I recognize Tom straight away. That stupid hair that he has to keep flicking out of his eyes. Playing boring music that makes you want to slit your wrists. He doesn’t know who I am, of course, so I get to stare at him to my heart’s content.

  Every now and then his eyes dart over my way. As if he senses me looking.

  How could you?

  With him?

  By the time he finishes his set, there are six empty bottles of beer on the table in front of me. But my mind feels razor sharp.

  I have the car parked outside, but he takes off on foot. I follow him. Ten minutes. Fifteen. As long as it takes. It is getting dark now, and I stay a long way behind him. I keep close to the wall, ready to duck into doorways, but still he looks over his shoulder two or three times, as if he can feel me watching him.

  Finally, he turns into a gate that leads to a tall semi-detached house. There are three bells by the front door, which means three flats in the building. I watch as a light goes on in the ground floor window, then I make my way around the side of the house. There is a gate, which is locked, but it is easy to put a foot up on the heavy metal bolt, and hatred carries me right over the top.

  I have no plan of what I am going to do. But I know something will come up. The garden is small and overgrown. I hide myself behind a bush near the back and wait.

  After forty-five minutes, the back door opens and he appears. He lights up a cigarette and stands in the doorway, inhaling deeply.

  At one point his phone makes a sound and he takes it out of his pocket. The screen is lit up and bathes the bottom half of his face in a silver glow, as he reads whatever is written.

  I know it is a text from you. And now he smiles, a secret smile that makes me want to smash his face until there is nothing left of it.

  He goes back inside.

  He doesn’t lock the door.

  Chapter Seventeen

  KATE: Sunday evening,

  twenty-one days after the split

  Tom is dead.

  No matter how many times she tells herself that fact, she still cannot take it in.

  A fire. He fell asleep in the chair in the living room, smoking a cigarette. The chair caught fire. And then the curtains. His flatmates were away for the weekend so the fire had taken hold before anyone noticed. Tom was dragged out of his flat by an upstairs neighbour but died in the ambulance due to inhaling smoke.

  A bottle of whisky was found at the scene, and witnesses from The First Floor bar said he’d been drinking throughout the afternoon.

  According to the policeman who came round to see her, a friend said Tom had boasted of having hardly any sleep the night before. He had winked when he said it.

  The policeman was only interviewing Kate because they were putting together a picture of his movements over the weekend before he died.

  ‘Could it have been arson?’ Kate asked, when she could finally speak, after she had run to the sink and retched until her stomach was sore.

  ‘We’re not looking for anyone else at this stage,’ the policeman said.

  He was a young man with an Adam’s apple that looked as if he had a golf ball lodged in his throat. Kate focused on that golf ball to ward off another wave of nausea.

  Now the policeman has gone and she is sitting in the kitchen with her head in her hands. Her thoughts are going round and round in her head like in a washing machine.

  For the first hour or so after the policeman left, all she could think of was Tom, and the look in his green eyes when he told her he was falling in love with her.

  But now her thoughts have moved to Jack. How his mouth had twisted up when he’d said, ‘I can smell him on you.’ The hatred coming off him in waves.

  It’s just coincidence, she tells herself. Jack would not do that. Then she remembers all the times when her husband had lost control. The times when he had thrown things and broken things and had looked at her as if he wanted to kill her. And she shivers.

  She thinks back to the last time she saw Jack. Standing on her doorstep. What was it he had called Tom? Croissant Man? He must have been watching when Tom arrived at the door with a brown paper bag. But something doesn’t add up.

  She can still picture Tom standing there. Holding up the bag. How did Jack know there were croissants in there?

  There is a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if she has swallowed a lump of ice. She thinks of the food going missing from the fridge. The vodka replaced by water. The rumpled bed. The science text book picked up from the living-room floor while she was out at work. There is something else that has been niggling at her, too. Something he said in counselling. She forces herself to concentrate. And now she remembers. When Julie had got them to say things they liked about each other. He’d said she used to be a good mum. Patient. Not shouting at them. Not like now, with the bed and the vodka. That’s what he’d said.

  But how had he known that she’d argued with Amy about being in her bedroom, and with Ben about replacing her vodka with water?

  The kids must have told him, she tells herself. But she knows it isn’t true. Amy and Ben wouldn’t tell tales on her to Jack.

  The cold feeling spreads from her stomach to her chest, freezing the blood around her heart.

  He has been in the house, watching her.

  She sits upright. Her eyes dart around the room. How is he doing it? Her eye is caught by a tiny prick of red light that seems to be coming from inside the smoke detector. Normally, she doesn’t pay any attention to the white discs on the ceiling, but
now she pauses. If there is a light, shouldn’t it be green?

  Her heart is thudding in her ribcage as she drags a chair underneath the smoke alarm and reaches up to twist off the cover, as she has done before when the battery needed changing.

  There is no battery inside. Just a lot of coloured wires. And a memory card and a tiny microphone and a camera.

  For a moment, the room sways and she thinks she will faint. She drops down on to the chair and sits with her head between her knees.

  Then something else occurs to her.

  The noises in the roof.

  No, she says to herself. He wouldn’t.

  But even as she is thinking it, she is moving out of the kitchen and up the stairs, and taking the pole that they keep in the airing cupboard. She is hooking it over the loop on the hatch. And tugging it open. And now she is reaching up to unhook the ladder with the pole, and she is pulling it down and climbing up the steps, even though she doesn’t like going up in the loft. And … oh!

  A sleeping bag, unrolled on the bare floor. Packets of food and plastic water bottles piled in one corner. A bad-smelling bucket in another corner.

  He has been living here. Watching her through the cameras downstairs.

  Now she remembers about Tom coming to the house. She scrambles down the stairs and runs to the bedroom, almost collapsing with relief when she sees there is no smoke alarm on the ceiling.

  But still she feels violated.

  He watched her. He watched Tom. He watched them together in the hall and the living room and the kitchen.

  And then he did something to Tom. She is sure of it.

  She sinks to the floor and lies there for a very long time.

  Chapter Eighteen

  JACK: Monday morning,

  twenty-two days after the split

  Safely back in the loft, I cannot believe I have got away with it.

  I pick up my phone from the top of the sleeping bag next to me. I go to the website of the local paper and read the headline for the hundredth time, even though I know it off by heart.