Somebody's Doodle

by Nikki Attree

  It’s been nearly three months since she last saw Jack, and the immediate pain is certainly easing, replaced by a dull aching void. She misses the positive things: his humour, his warmth, his Jack-the-Lad spontaneity, but she’s not sure if she can forgive him or ever trust him again. She really needs to find out though, so she can finally put him to bed (“maybe not the best way to put it” she thinks) and move on. Perhaps even, God forbid, via internet dating.

  She rings her brother and tells him that he’s right: she needs closure, so she’s decided to visit Jack in prison. Robert isn’t convinced. He tries to persuade her that it’s not a good idea, but she tells him that seeing Jack in prison uniform will hopefully be enough to erase any feelings she might still have for him. Anyway, her mind’s made up and her brother knows her well enough to know when he’s beaten.

  * * *

  Annie enters the prison visiting area like a nervous dog waiting for a firework to go off. She scans a room full of burly, tattooed men all dressed in identical uniform. Jack is seated at one of the metal tables in the corner, looking like ... well, just like his old self really. Somehow he even manages to make a prison uniform look stylish.

  To say that she’s shitting bricks would be a crude understatement, but she sits down opposite him and manages a nod of the head. There’s a tense pause while they each try to think of something to say; the buzz of conversation all around them, mocking their lack of communication.

  Annie is the first to speak. "So, how are you?" she says quietly, in a neutral tone, avoiding eye contact.

  “Not bad, thanks to the five star facilities in here” he replies, trying desperately to sound upbeat. “How about you? And your menagerie?”

  “I‘m alright, I suppose, and the animals are much the same. No births, deaths, or marriages.” She’s still avoiding his eyes, waiting for the small talk to be over with. The lull before the storm. The pause before the fireworks.

  Eventually Jack breaks the tension. “It’s so good of you to visit me, Annie” he says, with genuine feeling. “I didn't expect to see you again, after what I did. But that’s how you are: kind, generous ...”

  He looks at her, and for the first time their eyes meet. The rest of the room is forgotten. There’s only this long look of regret. Time is frozen, until Annie tears her eyes away from his gaze, and presses ‘play’ on the remote control of their lives.

  “Yes, well I don't know why I am here, to be honest.” She looks at him, shrugs, and then abruptly gets to her feet.

  Jack panics. “Please don’t leave. I know that you’re still angry with me. Of course you are. I can understand that. But at least give me the chance to say sorry, and try to explain ...”

  Annie hesitates, shrugs, and then sits down again.

  “When we first met I assumed that it was going to be like my previous relationships. You know: go out together for a while, go to bed, split up because I’m scared of it becoming too serious.”

  Annie’s not sure that she wants to hear this, but before she can butt in he continues: “it didn't take long for me to realise that you were different - a very special person. I don’t expect you to believe me, but the truth is I starting falling in love with you almost immediately.”

  He looks wistfully into the distance. She avoids his gaze, and lets him say what he needs to say: “I realise now that I should have ended it while we were still friends, and saved you the pain of finding out that I was full of lies.”

  The first tear rolls down his cheek, and splashes onto the shiny metal table.

  “I should have ended it sooner, but I just couldn’t let you go. It was the first time I felt really comfortable in a relationship. I’m not just talking about the night we had together, though that was amazing ..."

  A hint of a smile flits across Annie face, and she looks at him.

  "Everything just felt so right with you Annie, but I ballsed it up. Stealing dogs was wrong. I realise now how much pain I put Gizmo’s and Doodle's owners through, but hurting you was even worse. I’ll never ever forgive myself for betraying your trust. The one person that I had something really special with. Something I’ll probably never find with anyone else. And I ballsed it up.”

  The tears are flowing now. Again the moment is paused.

  A prison office announces, brutally, that there are five minutes of visiting time left.

  Annie shakes her head. “Is that it then, Jack?”

  He looks past her, into the distance, lost in regrets; and says nothing.

  “Is that all you have to tell me?”

  Still nothing. Just another tear splashing onto the table. She looks straight at him. “What about Jennifer?” It jolts him back, like an electric shock. He stares at her blankly, confusion on his face.

  “You know, the pretty girl working at Wags. Remember her?”

  A glimmer of recognition on his face now. Then panic.

  “You should do. You had sex with her in one of their rooms, didn’t you?”

  He starts to speak; to lie; to make excuses; stops; and starts again. “Yes, I did” he whispers, looking down at the little pool of tears on the shiny metal tabletop.

  Annie feels sick. “So, is that it then Jack? Anything else you haven’t told me?”

  “There’s nothing else” he whispers. “All I can say is that it was before things got serious with you, and it meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was part of checking the dog hotel out. I was in disguise actually. Playing the part of ‘Jason Gable’.” A rueful, hollow little laugh.

  Annie doesn’t laugh, but she can see the black humour in the situation. “Right, I see. So it wasn’t really you in that room with her? You were just acting ...”

  Jack shrugs. “No, that’s not what I meant ...”

  “Anyway, it doesn’t really matter any more. Just another lie. So, were you in disguise that night you spent with me then?”

  Jack shrugs. There’s nothing for him to say, but he can’t hold back a rueful smile as he remembers their night together. The prison office announces three minutes of visiting time left.

  Now Annie is crying. “That’s typical. Men always think they can make everything alright again with a cute smile and a speech. But it won’t work this time. They’re just words Jack, just words.” She whispers the last phrase like a sigh, as if speaking to herself. She can almost taste the bitterness.

  “You knew I’d been hurt before. Why did you have to lie? Why Jack?”

  "I’m sorry, Annie. I don’t know what else to say. I can’t expect you to believe me, or forgive me; and like you say, it’s all just words anyway. So, I’m lost.” He bows his head.

  The prison office announces one minute left, and paces around the room. Visitors start to say their goodbyes and head for the exit.

  Annie gets to her feet again. "I’m leaving now. Thanks for the apology, and the explanation. Nice words Jack.”

  He lifts his head. Tears stream down his face. Finally they look at each other as they did that night. Their final minute stretches out, and everything seems to go into slow-motion.

  “Don’t look at me like that Jack!” She’s angry with herself now. “Why do I always have to chose the wrong men?”

  She looks at him sitting there, head in his hands, looking like a little boy who’s just lost his pet dog; and she remembers him telling her, that night, how he did lose his dog when he was a kid; how it made him scared to get too close to anybody. What was his dog’s name? Of course: ‘Scruffy’, and he was ‘@ScruffyLad’; her scruffy lad; and he is different from the others; even if he did hurt her, just like they did; he is different; and he’s the same as her: lost and vulnerable ...

  She sits down again. The guard starts to walk towards them. There are thirty seconds left in the lifespan of their relationship. Jack raises his head, desperation etched there.

  “Will you visit me again?” The question hangs there for twenty seconds. It feels like a lifetime. Ten seconds left. Countdown to annihilation, or liftoff?

  "I
suppose so ..." Annie smiles, and reaches across the table to touch his hand.

  “Time’s up!” the guard bellows.

  Annie gets to her feet. "See you Jack. Next time ..."

  “Bye Annie. I love you."

  She turns towards the queue of visitors waiting to be searched before they leave, pauses, and looks back at him.

  "I love you too Jack."

  * * *

  The next week passes slowly for each of them. Jack immerses himself in his books, trying his best to shut out his surroundings, but time weighs heavily when he’s not studying. At least he has something else to look forward to now, besides vague plans to make something of his life.

  Annie is equally impatient to see him again. Instead of closure, now she has hope; possibly. But does it amount to a future together? Can he change? There are still so many questions that need answers from him.

  Robert is of course disappointed to hear that the affair is still ongoing, but even though he thinks she’s making a mistake, he has a smidgeon of grudging respect for Jack. It stems from their conversation in the interrogation room at Stoke Newington police station. Occasionally the detective inspector comes across a villain who impresses him, and when Jack stunned them with his ‘turn up for the book’ revelations about Elizabeth, Robert was quietly impressed. As he was by Jack’s demeanor in court. He didn’t want to mention it to his sister, but he could see what she sees in the lad.

  Miranda is thrilled when Annie tells her about the prison visit. The teenager is a romantic at heart, and her anger at Jack’s crimes has been replaced by a vision of them as a pair of Star Crossed Lovers. Annie jokingly suggest that she reads Romeo and Juliet to discover what happens to unsuitable boyfriends.

  Eventually it’s the next visiting day and Annie arrives at the prison with rather more optimism. She still feels like a nervous dog, but this time the nerves are balanced by expectations. It’s as if the dog is still scared that the fireworks might yet explode, but now there’s also a good chance of a bone to chew.

  It’s not easy to rescue a relationship in the confines of a prison visiting room, but she’s prepared to give it another go. As they talk through what happened, things begin to make more sense. They start with their earlier highlights - they both have fond memories of their first meeting in the ‘Pawesome’ vet clinic, when Angus threw up on her boots.

  Annie: “no wonder you were so nervous. I think you told me that you were looking after him for a friend, so our relationship kicked off with a lie?”

  “Yes, you’re right” Jack confesses. “Angus was our first victim, and I had to take him to the vet straight after we’d nicked him. I was thinking that maybe we’d bitten off more than we could chew with this dognapping scam, and I was very relieved to find out he didn’t have anything serious wrong with him. We returned him to his owner shortly after that, and she gave us the reward money.”

  “Well I’m glad you’ve put the record straight. That’s one less lie to worry about. Maybe it was Fate, us meeting like that. It seems to be completely in line with what happened later. I must admit I was quite smitten. I thought: ‘wow, this chap is good looking, charming, and he loves his little dog. Interesting ...’”

  Then there was their first date at Crofts dog show. Jack admits that it was the first time he realised that another kind of a career involving dogs might be possible.

  “Looking after them perhaps, instead of stealing them?”

  Jack agrees, and they remember how they’d shared a few laughs at the weird and wonderful show-names, before being asked to leave for not taking it seriously and for making a nuisance of themselves.

  Jack: “I might be a hooligan, but you have to admit you were just as bad that afternoon!”

  Now it’s Annie’s agree turn to agree, laughing at the memory.

  Jack: “remember that disastrous night in the ‘Bucket of Blood’? When Harry and Pauline showed up?”

  “How could I forget ... It was the first time that I started to have a few doubts about you, Jack. I just couldn’t understand how you could choose to work with such an obnoxious man.”

  “Yes, well you were right again, of course. It’s the second biggest mistake I ever made. The first was ballsing things up with you.” He looks regretfully into the distance. Annie is worried that the tears are not far away, but he moves on swiftly: “thinking back to that night, there was that other obnoxious punter in there - remember him? He spat at you, and I couldn’t figure out why he hated you so much. Was he connected with your detective work somehow?”

  “Yes, he was just one of the unsavory people that I have to deal with in my job.” Now it’s her turn to move on swiftly, as she realises what she’s just said. She tells him how close she felt to him on their date at the cinema, watching ‘Marley and Me’ together.

  Jack agrees: “yes, that was probably our best moment, wasn’t it? After that I had to keep lying to you, and things started to fall apart.”

  "Well, I suppose I wasn't completely truthful with you either, by keeping my job a secret. When did you realise I was a private investigator?"

  "When I was sitting in your living room, and I saw the newspaper cutting on your wall. You know, about solving that poisoned dog mystery at Crofts? I was thinking how ironic it was that we were there, on our first date, when it must have happened. Then I suddenly realised that you could actually be investigating me. But by then it was too late. I was in love with you; we were just about to make love; and it was fate. Que Sera, Sera ...”

  They exchange another of those looks. A look that only soul-mates know.

  "I don’t usually believe in Fate” Annie says, hesitantly. “Normally I think you make your own luck, rather than Destiny deciding it. But perhaps we’re the exception. Don’t you think: how strange it is that what connects us is a crime? It should make us enemies ...”

  Another of those frozen moments, when time is paused.

  Then Annie presses ‘play’ and continues: “you know Elizabeth’s daughter, Miranda, has been telling me that you and I are a pair of ‘Star Crossed Lovers’, like Romero and Juliet.”

  Jack is visibly upset at the mention of his victim’s name. “God knows how she must have felt, thinking her dog was being tortured. You have to tell her: I’m so sorry for what I put her through.”

  “It’s OK, Jack. Amazingly, she’s actually forgiven you, and all she wants is for the Star Crossed Lovers to live Happily Ever After!”

  Annie goes on to explain how appalled Miranda was to discover that her mother had been secretly conspiring with him. He admits to being absolutely gobsmacked himself by Elizabeth’s manipulative behaviour.

  Annie: “it was a clever stunt, but it could have been even more of a disaster if you hadn’t treated the dogs so well.”

  “Well you know what? All the time I was staking out her house I had the feeling that she just didn’t care about Doodle. It was like the pooch was just another accessory in her designer lifestyle. Funnily enough, once Doodle had got used to being with me and Gizmo she seemed to quite like it. I grew very fond of her, and it was quite upsetting to have to give her back to someone who wanted publicity more than her dog.”

  Annie: “it backfired for her anyway. She ended up alienating her daughter, and once the media found out what she’d been up to, they turned on her. I think she’s realised now that it was a big mistake.”

  She goes on to tell Jack how Elizabeth has been working her community sentence at a dog refuge, and how she seems to have benefitted from the experience. “She’s getting on OK with her daughter now, and Miranda says that she’s treating Doodle much better. Perhaps you two needed Fate to bring you together, so that you could both learn from your mistakes? Anyway, I think that when you get out of here we should all get together and talk things through. Have a truth and reconciliation session ...”

  Jack shrugs, and gazes around the bleak windowless room. The world outside these four walls seems a long way away right now. The tannoy crackles into life as
the prison officer starts his countdown, announcing coldly that there are five minutes of visiting time left.

  Annie shrugs. "Maybe one day we’ll see the funny side of all this. Right now, it feels like Fate has a very black sense of humour.”

  Jack smiles his wry smile. It doesn’t feel very funny from his side of the table, dressed in a prison uniform, but at least everything is out in the open now. Perhaps the slate has been wiped clean.

  Annie surprises him, yet again, with what she says next: “you know Jack, I desperately wanted you to escape. Like you, I realised too late what was going on. I’d just about figured out that ‘ScruffyLad’ was you, but I still invited him into my bed. I was praying that you wouldn’t show up the next day in that car-park. You must have known you were going to get caught - why the hell did you through with it?”

  "To be honest I was beyond caring by then. I just wanted it to be over. I knew that I’d lost you, whatever I did, and I actually wanted to get arrested so that I could start again; with a normal life; hopefully share it with someone ..."

  He gazes into Annie's eyes. Two minutes left.

  Annie: "that moment, when you were arrested, you gave me a look just like that. I thought it would be the last time we’d look at each other the same way. But here I am ...”

  There’s a pause and a few more valuable seconds tick by.

  "I do love you Jack. God knows why!"

  "It's more than I deserve" he whispers.

  “Yes, it is definitely more than you deserve. But it seems that we aren’t always in control of our destiny."

  Jack: “so, perhaps we are a pair of Star Crossed Lovers then? From two tribes who are enemies, like the Montagues and the Capulets,22 or in our case a catty detective and a dogged criminal.”