‘Regrets?’ he asked, sounding small and scared. Nothing like the man who’d faced down his terrifying brother earlier.
‘No,’ I replied, turning my head towards him. He was vulnerable, unsure, so unlike the man I’d come to know. He usually had the confidence of someone who’d had to stand up for himself from an early age. I put my hand on his face, to reassure him, to touch him, to get back what we’d been sharing a few minutes ago. ‘No regrets.’ I just wish we’d done that for us. That we hadn’t been pushed into it because of your idiot brother. But then, what were we waiting for? What difference would a month or a year make? Except to waste more time. If we did this now, we could be over in the blink of an eye. We could be the itch that we’d both needed to scratch for a while. And once that itch was scratched, we could leave it behind us.
‘It’s OK, isn’t it, that I’ve fallen in love with you?’ he repeated.
No scratches here. No leaving this behind. Just this: us.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I think I’ve fallen in love with you, too.’
My two mates have gone; the many-layered one was turfed out, the thin one was taken into the back. I never knew what they were here for, but without them, I’m lonely. This waiting is not good for my mind. Too much time to think unravels more of the denial I have been hiding in.
If it’s all a mistake, why isn’t he out yet? The longer he’s in there, the worse it feels.
Last time I had waited this long was when Cora had to have surgery last year. I thought I was going to go crazy, sitting in her room, waiting to find out what was happening. Scott had been called in to work at the last minute, my parents were looking after Anansy, so I was on my own then, too. On my own, waiting to hear if one of the people I loved most in the world would be returned to me in one piece.
BUZZZ! of the door beside the reception desk makes me look up. And the policewoman who read Scott his rights and ordered him to be taken away is there. She meets my eye across the reception and her face softens into a small, sad smile.
That smile, its sympathy and understanding, hits me in the centre of my chest and I physically recoil. I wasn’t expecting that. Surely police officers don’t smile like this at the wives of men they’ve arrested?
‘Mrs Challey,’ she says warmly as she comes towards me. ‘I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. I was tied up and really couldn’t get away. I’m sorry.’
‘How’s Scott?’ I ask. The words are too heavy for my wafer-thin voice to project: they sink in the silence of the empty reception area once they leave my mouth.
She draws herself a little more upright, inhales deeply, then exhales deeply. ‘He’s … he’s all right, under the circumstances.’
‘Will he be able to come home soon?’ I ask. ‘I mean, what time should I book the taxi for?’
Her forehead becomes a confused frown, and her eyes level on mine. ‘Um …’ She grimaces slightly, then points to the seating area. ‘Come take a seat, Mrs Challey.’
‘I don’t want to take a seat, I’ve been sitting here all night. My children are traumatised, and I need to be with them. But first, I need to know when I can take my husband home and when this dreadful mess is going to be sorted out.’
‘Mrs Challey—’
‘Stop saying my name like that.’
‘Like what?’ she asks, alarmed.
‘Like … Like I’m simple and won’t understand things unless you speak very carefully.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise I was doing that.’
‘Well you are. You’re treating me like I’m an idiot. I don’t know why, but I want you to stop it. I am not an idiot.’
‘I know you’re not. I’m sorry that this is happening to you, I really am. But …’ She seems unsure of herself again. There was none of this earlier when she was reading Scott his rights, but this confusion, hesitancy, does seem genuine, as if she doesn’t want to do this. ‘Your husband is being kept in overnight and will be questioned again in the morning. We want to give him a chance to change his mind and get a solicitor. After that, it’s likely he’ll be sent to court for arraignment, which is the formal reading of charges.’
‘What?’ I ask. I’m suddenly in a long, wide tunnel and feeling the vibrations of speech through the air, not really hearing them. ‘What?’ I repeat. ‘He’s being charged? Sent to court? What? What is going on? What are you—’ My bag slips from my fingers to the ground, and I push my hands into my hair. ‘What are you saying to me? He’s getting—’ I tug on handfuls of my shoulder-length twists, feeling the pain of it in my scalp. ‘He’s being held overnight and getting sent to court because of a speeding ticket?’
‘Speeding ticket?’ she repeats.
‘I know Scott drives too fast, and he’s been caught a few times on cameras and he doesn’t always pay his fines on time but this isn’t … unless …’ I lower my hands as a new thought grows in my mind. ‘Did he hit someone? Is that what this is about? Did he hit someone and they’re badly hurt? Because, you know, I can promise you that he wouldn’t have meant it. It would have been a complete accident. You can’t keep—’
‘Mrs Challey,’ the police officer cuts in, sternly. This time she says my name like she knows she isn’t dealing with an idiot – she simply wants to stop my rambling. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this but your husband isn’t being held because of speeding, and as far as we know, he hasn’t hit anyone with his car.’
I am silent as she shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other. The ponytail of smooth, chestnut hair she had earlier is gone: her hair is messy and scatty – as if she’s been in a fight.
My mind is already racing through all the other crimes he could have been capable of because there aren’t that many that Scott could have committed. Maybe Grand Larceny, but we have money. I know how much he earns, how much I earn, that we have enough to live a fantastic life on – he wouldn’t need to steal it. Surely?
Detective Sergeant Harvan pauses a moment longer before she tells me what my husband has been accused of. And as she talks, the words echoing to me through that long, wide tunnel again, my body grows still and cold. With every word I become frozen, petrified. When she has finished, she asks if I am OK, if I understand what she has said to me, and because I am unable to move under my own steam, she takes my arm and walks me to the seats, deposits me there before leaving me alone.
This is not happening. I have accidentally stepped into someone else’s life and this should all be happening to them and their family, not to me and mine.
The policewoman is gone, the Kindly Policeman behind the counter is watching me warily in case I freak out. But I am not going to do that, I am not going to freak out. Why would I? This is not my life, this is not happening.
Suddenly I am on my feet, darting across the reception area to snatch up my bag, and then fleeing into the night. Running away from the police station and down the hill towards the train station where I can get a taxi. I am too scared to call for one, I am too scared to stop for a moment because it may not be my life, it should be happening to someone else, but until I get my life back, until this is happening to the person it is meant to be happening to, I have to deal with this. I have to live in this life. I have to get home.
As I run, my body cutting through the cool night air, my heart too scared to beat properly in my chest, the policewoman’s words, still resonate through me. They drive every step, pushing me to sprint faster than I have ever done in my life.
‘I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, Mrs Challey, but your husband is being questioned in connection with a very serious crime. He has been arrested for a serious sexual assault. What I’m saying is, he’s most likely going to be charged with the attempted rape of his work colleague and neighbour, Mirabelle Kemini.’
Beatrix
‘So, Beatrix, tell me about yourself,’ he asks.
‘I’m not going to do that,’ I reply with a grin. ‘It’s all a bit fake when people do that. I prefer to get to know people
over time, slowly.’
You want to know what he looks like? He’s tall, taller than me, but that doesn’t mean much because I only just clear 5ft 4 myself. He’s got a nice body, not gym-sculpted or anything extreme, his body shows he is comfortable in his own skin, if that makes sense. He’s got a slight paunch, but that adds to the ‘real’ quality he has. His hair is black, his skin is white – pink, but you know what I mean – and his eyes are brown. His arrangement of features is one that definitely places him in the ‘hot’ category of men, but it’s hard to get across that he’s ordinary-looking too: straight nose, nice-shaped eyes, normal mouth. He’s nice, is what I’m trying to say.
I would sleep with him, is what I’m really trying to say, if it was only down to looks and how he comes across on the Net. In real life, it’s all a bit flat. I was expecting fireworks, or at least a spark. Flatline, instead.
‘I take your point,’ he says. ‘You see, from that, I could infer that you want to see me again, I could grasp that and cling to it, thinking that you might have changed your mind in the last few minutes.’
‘Changed my mind about what?’
‘Me. You. The possibilities of anything happening beyond tonight.’
‘Ah. You felt the absence of a spark, too?’
‘Not at all. I’m sparking all over the place. However, your face and your body language told me from the moment you walked in that you were disappointed.’
‘I’m not disappointed,’ I protest.
He doesn’t believe me and lowers his gaze, pretending to scan the menu, a bit hurt that I won’t be honest.
‘It’s not disappointment,’ I say, covering his hand with mine. ‘Honestly. I don’t know what I expected doing this dating thing, but it’s lost its shine for me. I’ve become jaded. I suppose my problem is I’m looking for love at first sight so we can leapfrog over all the getting to know each other stuff and skip to the end.’
‘Ah, Last Page syndrome,’ he says with a nod and a refusal to meet my eye. ‘That thing where you don’t like the hard work involved in finding out the truth about something, you just want to know right now so you read the last page before you should.’
I do that with books all the time. Don’t most people? ‘But sometimes you need to know if a book is worth sticking with, otherwise you could be wasting your time only to be bitterly disappointed at the end,’ I say. ‘Plus, what if you get run over by a bus? You’ll die not knowing how the story ended. I knew a boy in sixth form who used to eat his dessert first for that reason.’
‘What, he feared getting hit by a bus every time he ate his dinner? Where was he eating it, in a bus lane?’
I laugh. I can’t help myself. It feels like I haven’t laughed properly in an age and I’m not entirely sure why since I have a great life.
‘Seriously though, Beatrix, what if the important part of the story happened much earlier? Would you keep flicking backwards to find it, or would you take a chance and read the book?’
‘I don’t know, I’ve never really thought about it. I’ve done it, sure, I’ve flicked backwards searching for the last mention of a name, but it’s never occurred to me that if I don’t find what I’m looking for straight away, like on the last page, I should simply read it properly.’
‘Honestly?’
‘Yes. I suppose it’s the same with the dating thing. If I can’t skip to the end in my imagination and see us together in “X” amount of time, I don’t really bother to think about dating a few more times.’
‘Don’t you worry you’re missing out on whole new dating experiences doing that?’
‘No,’ I reply with a shrug. ‘I remind myself that life is too short to bother with pointless encounters with people you can’t get on with and ditch them after the first date.’
‘Ouch,’ he says.
‘Don’t “Ouch” me. You haven’t been ditched.’ Our eyes meet.
‘I sense a yet coming on.’
‘You sense wrong,’ I reply.
‘I’m in with a chance then?’
‘I haven’t skipped to the end yet, let’s leave it at that and see how the night goes.’
‘Sounds fair enough to me,’ he says with a smile.
I smile back. I’m surprised to find that it’s a genuine smile. Like the laugh from earlier, this is a smile that comes from enjoying myself. Usually my smiles are rustled up to fit the cleavage, tight dress and ‘sex kitten’ image, or if I’m at work to fit the ‘trust me, you want to buy this’ persona I’ve created. This smile is neither. It’s mine, it’s real. I seemed to have mislaid it somewhere along the journey of my life that has led to here. This man has helped me find it.
‘So, Beatrix, what looks tempting to you on the menu?’ he asks.
‘Call me Bea,’ I tell him.
His name is Rufus, by the way.
Tami
Two years ago
The road we lived on, Providence Close, was shaped like the top half of a wine bottle. Our house was at the part of the bottle where the wine label would start on the left, and today I was heading for a flat on the far right side of our road where the ‘lip’ of the bottle was. As I turned the corner at what would have been the neck of the bottle, a tall woman was coming out of her corner-plot house to deposit a black bin bag into the green wheelie bin on her gravelled driveway.
I glanced away quickly, recognising her from somewhere other than the Close. Another couple of steps and I knew where she was from: she worked with Scott at The Look Is The Idea, the international design agency where he was CEO. A lot of the people who worked there lived around here, and I was constantly running into them on the school run, or down on the high street, or on my road. Another step closer and I remembered who she really was and my heart sank – she was his second in command: Miriam or Mylene or something.
‘Do I know you?’ she called as I passed her property.
‘Yes and no,’ I said, stopping. ‘I’m Tamia Challey, Scott’s wife.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, cautiously, in that way people tended to do when they met the boss’s wife. ‘It’s nice to meet you.’
‘Yes, you, too. Sorry, I don’t know your name.’
‘Mirabelle Kemini.’
Unbidden, the theme tune of Mama Mirabelle’s Home Movies, the show about a world-travelling cartoon elephant, started up in my head. It’d been Cora’s then Anansy’s favourite programme for years.
‘You’ve got the theme tune to that elephant programme in your head, haven’t you?’ she asked.
I nodded. ‘Sorry.’
‘Happens all the time.’ She shook her head and rolled her eyes good-naturedly. ‘Of all the names in all the world, they had to give the cartoon elephant mine.’
I pinched my lips together to stop myself from laughing.
‘Why haven’t you got any shoes on, Mrs Challey?’ Mirabelle asked me, reminding me where I was going and, more importantly, what I looked like.
I was wearing a bleach-flecked black Goonies T-shirt that Scott had brought me back from a trip to America last year under my big Aran cardie I usually wore in bed, and fluff-speckled joggers that sagged at the bottom, oh and odd socks.
‘Well, it’s a long story,’ I replied. ‘But the short version is I was in a rush to finish a project I’m working on but I kept looking out of my office window at the bins sitting outside the house, from the bin men earlier, cluttering up the pavement. It was bugging me so I decided to go out and bring the bins in. I got two steps outside when the door blew shut, locking me out. Actually, that was a pretty long version. So, the upshot is I’m going around the corner to my friend Beatrix’s house to see if I can call my husband to send some keys home in a taxi.’
‘I’m on holiday but I’ll drive you to the office if you’d like?’ she offered.
‘No, I can’t show my face looking like this.’
‘What’s wrong with your face?’ she asked.
‘I’m not exactly dressed for the TLTI offices, am I?’ I replied. The office was
now a sleek, chrome and glass nirvana – completely different to how it had been when I worked there. If you were employed there now, you had to look perfect every day or you’d be encouraged to consider how your personal appearance helped to broadcast the company ethos of beautiful design and superior presentation (i.e. sent home to change). That was the edict from the current CEO, who I happened to be married to. Me turning up in my current state would probably give him an aneurysm.
Mirabelle’s eyes fluttered suspiciously over me, as if confused. ‘You look fine to me, but if you don’t want to go in, I can drive in and get them for you. Or you can come in and ring your husband?’ She indicated to her house behind her. I bet she put the snib on, I thought darkly.
‘If you don’t mind, that’d be great.’
Up close to her, I was struck by her beauty. Plenty of women were good-looking, radiating their inner allure, but this woman was beguiling. Her skin was the colour and texture of dark hot chocolate, so smooth and well hydrated it seemed almost liquid. Her lips were gorgeous and full. And her slightly cat-like eyes were a pale hazel colour – a striking shock against the darkness of her skin.
‘They’re contacts,’ she said.
‘Pardon?’ I replied, embarrassed at being caught staring.
‘Most people avoid direct eye contact because a black woman shouldn’t have such light-coloured eyes.’ She wrinkled up one side of her face in a half-grimace. ‘I kind of like the effect it has. I wasn’t too sure when I first got them – on a whim – but then I noticed how they affected people and, well, I couldn’t help myself. The contacts stayed, my self-consciousness left.’
‘They do stand out,’ I told her. ‘In a good way.’
‘Thank you.’
Scott used to talk about Mirabelle quite a lot, to the point where I asked him if he had a tiny crush on her. Then he simply stopped. When it occurred to me he hadn’t mentioned her name in a while, I asked if she’d left the company. ‘No, worse luck,’ he said. ‘She used to be brilliant but lately her work’s gone off. If she doesn’t buck up her ideas I think it might go to disciplinary.’ I’d been taken aback that it was possible to go from being the most amazing worker since, well, him (he’d actually said that) to being in line for disciplinary action.
The Rose Petal Beach Page 4
