The Loving Husband

by Christobel Kent

  He came through the door with flowers and magazines and chocolates that lay undisturbed on the end of the bed until the nurse moved them. He stayed less than an hour, nervous the whole time. ‘They said you’d need to sleep,’ was how he excused himself, and he hadn’t looked at Emme in her cot until right at the end and only then despite himself, stealing a glance, as if he was afraid of her.

  Patient in the dark, at the far end of that long tunnel that had led them from that brightly lit hospital bed to here and now, Fran sat on Emme’s bed until her daughter’s breaths lengthened and grew even at last and only then, stiff with waiting, did she stand and leave the quiet room.

  Some time long before dawn Fran woke, and she struggled up out of heavy sleep on some command she couldn’t remember, only really knowing she was awake when she knocked into something as she moved across the room. Then she was at the window, the cold coming through the glass.

  The sky had cleared and although she couldn’t see the moon the landscape was illuminated by it. A man was standing on the edge of the field, legs apart, hands folded in front of him. As if mesmerised she watched him, numb to danger. Then she saw the police car, parked under the row of bare poplars, the stripe down its side showing black in the moonlight. She went on watching, but the man didn’t move, and slowly she went back to bed, and slept.

  She dreamed of DC Carswell, his narrow little face close to hers in a confined space. The policewoman was there too, Ali Compton, standing in the shadows by a door, but she had her back to them. Carswell put his hand on her breast, he cupped it, he tilted his head to examine her reaction and Fran felt her mouth open, but not to protest. She closed her eyes and saw the other face, a different face, familiar, and she waited for him to kiss her. The policewoman in the corner hummed something, so as not to hear.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Wednesday

  Fran woke as the pale sun was coming over the horizon and immediately she was out of bed, still groggy with sleep but on full alert. A number of things were wrong: she staggered a little and reached for the wall, trying to work out what they were.

  Her breasts were hard as rocks, her nightdress was damp where they’d leaked. Ben hadn’t woken her in the night. That never happened. She steadied herself and leaned down to switch on the bedside light and saw something on the floor, dislodged from under the bed by her bare foot, but she didn’t have time for it. Hoover. Later. A scrap of something blue.

  Ben.

  He was sleeping, soundly, noiselessly, his face was calm and rosy and the blanket was so neat it looked like he hadn’t even stirred all night. Fran straightened from the cot.

  She had to tell Emme. She walked into Emme’s room and sat down carefully on the edge of the bed. Emme was curled around herself tight, her duvet was askew. The soft golden hair was matted at the back of her head from her restlessness on the pillow. The knowledge of what she had to do, to say, sat in Fran’s chest like a stone. Should she have Ali Compton give her advice?

  She remembered the dream. Ah, shit, she thought. Shit, shit, shit. For a second her skin crept all over, for shame. Just a dream. It wasn’t a policeman she’d wanted to kiss, though. It wasn’t Nathan, father of her children, either.

  Leaning down to Emme’s cheek, pressed sideways into the pillow, Fran set hers against it. Emme’s breath had that sleep smell, baby-sour. She stirred, turned, her eyes opened and ranged, away and back, across the ceiling above Fran’s head, blank. The bad man, in the roof, in the cupboard, thought Fran. ‘I’ve got to tell you something, Emme.’

  My baby, she thought.

  ‘It’s about Daddy.’

  Emme sat up, wriggling into place, then her shoulders dropped, attentive. She watched Fran’s mouth as she spoke. ‘Daddy hit his head,’ Fran said, keeping her voice. ‘They tried to make him better but it didn’t work.’ She stroked Emme’s hand. ‘He died, Emme. Daddy died. He didn’t want to, but sometimes we can’t stop it.’

  She stopped talking and slowly Emme’s eyes travelled up, and met hers. ‘Where is he?’ she asked. Her gaze was steady.

  ‘They have to keep him in the hospital.’ She swallowed. ‘Emme, we won’t see him again. You can think about him as much as you like, he’ll still be your daddy. But he won’t be here.’

  ‘Harry said he wouldn’t come back,’ said Emme and she stared down, frowning, her arms squeezed against her body.

  ‘Harry doesn’t really know what happened.’ Fran leaned down to look into her face. ‘You can stay at home with me, today, if you like. With me and Ben.’

  Quiet, blank, Emme looked past her, to the door, back to her face. ‘No, thank you,’ she said, obedient but firm. ‘I don’t want to, thank you.’ And she was wriggling past Fran, she made for the door. Fran heard her feet on the stairs, careful.

  They left early for school. There was no sign of the police as they came out of the kitchen door, Ben buttoned under Fran’s coat in the sling, Emme muffled and silent in scarf and gloves. The puddles in the yard were frozen hard.

  The fields stretched out flat and white with frost to either side of the road. The long straight line of a drainage ditch stretched away from them at an angle, unwavering and black in the frost, and the sky was pale and hard and bright overhead. A high-pitched whine took them by surprise, coming from behind them as they came out of a corner and then a scooter almost skidded on the ice as it swerved to avoid them. A kid, a skinny teenager helmeted but not dressed for the cold and hunched against it, he righted himself just in time and kept going.

  When she had first slept with him, Nathan had still had the bruises on him from coming off his scooter. It was the next morning, as he rolled to get out of the bed, there had been a big greenish-yellow one on his torso, another on his back weirdly shaped, like a footprint – he had laughed them off. He’d sold the scooter soon after: he said he’d lost his nerve on it. She’d thought then, they’d been lucky, it could have been a write-off considering the damage done to Nathan, but there wasn’t a scratch on it. Nathan had been lucky to escape serious injury; now Nathan was dead.

  She stopped in the road so abruptly that on the verge Emme turned in surprise, only her eyes visible between the layers of bundling, staring.

  So Nathan hadn’t come off his scooter. But if he’d been mugged why wouldn’t he have said? He hadn’t seemed like a man traumatised by something like that, walking through Jo’s front door, smiling at her. She thought about that bruise shaped like the imprint of a boot and with Emme’s eyes on her she set off again, fast.

  As the playground filled up they stayed against the fence, Emme obedient for once, holding her hand. The bell rang and the small queues began to form at the door. Fran knelt. ‘Are you sure about this, Emme?’ she said, and Emme nodded, pulling her school bag up and hugging it against her. Then her eyes flickered away.

  ‘I can’t be late, Mummy,’ she said, and she tugged her hand suddenly out of Fran’s. ‘Look after Ben, Mummy,’ she said, and she ran.

  Standing to watch as Emme’s queue disappeared inside the school, Fran became aware of faces turned towards her in the small milling group of mothers she knew only by sight still, one of them detaching herself to head towards her. As she approached, Fran had the firm impression that the woman – pale, pudding-faced – had been deputed to come over. She planted herself in front of Fran, a grimy shopping bag hanging from her arm, and looked at her with dull curiosity.

  ‘Sorry to hear,’ the woman said. She didn’t sound sorry. Fran nodded, wary. ‘’F there’s anything we can do,’ she went on. ‘Kids an’ that.’ There was a pause. ‘I’m Sue,’ she offered, as an afterthought.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Fran, thinking with sudden unmanageable emotion that she wouldn’t even let this woman hold Emme’s hand, not even her hand, but the woman – Sue – went on. ‘Whass’it like, then, that old house? Martin’s place.’

  Fran opened her mouth but didn’t trust herself to say anything. She had to restrain an impulse to step back. There was no sign of Karen.
‘’Cause I heard that there were shit all over it,’ Sue went on, darting a look back over her shoulder at the knot of women that had discharged her. ‘I heard, you had to get professional cleaning in, it was that bad.’

  She sniffed, waiting. Fran stared at her. ‘No,’ she said, slowly. ‘The house was clean enough when we came.’ She thought of the statuette in the spare bedroom’s cupboard.

  ‘Kept his business in bags, all over the house,’ Sue went on with relish. ‘Martin were a headcase, ’s’all I’m saying.’ As if she might not have understood. The little huddle seemed to have lost interest, their backs were turned now. ‘I bet he never wanted rid of that place neither. Police thought of that? Headcase, even before his wife left. Where’s he gone then?’

  ‘He didn’t leave an address,’ said Fran, unwilling, but there was something in what Sue was saying that held her there. ‘I think he said he was going to somewhere by the sea. Up to the Wash.’ Then it registered, what she’d said. ‘He wasn’t married.’

  ‘He tell you that?’ said Sue with satisfaction. ‘He were married, all right. She upped and gone, didn’t she? Soon after she went, the newspaper gone up at the windows, he tell the postman she took the nets with her.’

  Fran just stared, the thought of John Martin living in the dark behind battened windows silenced her.

  ‘Anyhow,’ Sue said, hoisting her shopping bag against her, ‘anything we can do, like I say, kids an’ that.’ And she was walking away.

  The police car passed Fran on the way home, slowing. She would have liked to keep on walking, past the house and on, but Ben was stirring against her in the sling and they were waiting in the car in her drive. Carswell was getting a silver toolbox out of the car when she turned in.

  Ali Compton came inside with Fran, leaving the men outside. She closed the door behind them and put on the kettle without saying anything then turned, resting against the side.

  Fran felt the heat rise, between her and Ben’s warm heavy body, as he began to struggle a little in the sling. Methodically she began to unstrap him.

  ‘Fran,’ said Ali, and there was a warning in her voice. ‘Fran. There’s something we’re not talking about.’ A pause. ‘The man that came into your bedroom that night.’

  ‘I could have dreamed it,’ Fran muttered stubbornly, head down. She extracted Ben’s arms from the straps as he stared up at her, with Nathan’s dark eyes.

  She hadn’t, though. All the tiny things that told her the man in her bedroom had been real buzzed and flickered in her head but they were like fireflies, she couldn’t catch them. She hoisted Ben against her, set her cheek against his, but she knew Ali Compton was watching her.

  ‘But if you didn’t,’ said the policewoman. ‘You said he came upstairs. He came to bed. So we’ll get the bedroom dusted too, right? Like we said.’

  Fran stared at her, hypnotised. Once she said it, once she released it, it couldn’t be put away again, it would never be caught. Could a man have killed her husband then come softly up the stairs to find her, and she hadn’t protested, she hadn’t known the difference, or hadn’t cared?

  ‘I … yes, of course.’ Fran stepped back, away from Ali Compton. ‘Sure. I’ll leave you to it.’ She took a breath. ‘I want to make some calls, anyway.’ Jo.

  Ali looked at her, calculating something. Fran made for the door. But she wasn’t quick enough.

  ‘He got into bed with you,’ said Ali, looking at her, earnest. ‘Didn’t he? The man you thought was your husband.’ And what she said next didn’t follow but somehow Fran had known it was coming. ‘Something had gone wrong,’ Ali continued softly. ‘Hadn’t it? In your marriage.’

  Fran stared.

  ‘You need to be completely honest with us. You know that, don’t you? It’s the only way we can help you.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  His flat had been on a main road at least, not some suburban side street, not nice houses with trees where Fran would never have got a cab, not at two in the morning. She’d lain wide awake, head aching from the booze, nausea rising inside her, naked beside a man whose name she didn’t know.

  She had no idea where it was, she didn’t want to know, she even kept her eyes closed to block it out until her head began to spin and she had to open them again. It had been quick, though, ten minutes, maybe fifteen, in the wet deserted streets. She wanted it to be further away, she wanted it to be the other side of the world.

  For weeks Fran had felt physically sick with terror that Katrina must have known, must have understood, that sooner or later she would give it away. She never did, she never said anything, but Fran’s life was gone. Sometimes she felt as though she’d never get it back.

  She had had to tell someone. She thought she was going mad.

  ‘Look,’ Jo had said, relenting enough to meet her eye. ‘You know what? It’s better than that surrendered-wife crap. Nathan this, Nathan that.’

  ‘Hold on,’ Fran had said, protesting, ‘is that how I’ve been?’ She tried to remember the few conversations she and Jo had had, since Emme, since the wedding, and her heart sank. Maybe she did mention Nathan too much. Maybe it had sounded like that. She couldn’t after all have expected Jo to hear the things she never did actually say, like, I wish it was like old times, you and me. I wish, sometimes I wish I had my old life back.

  Didn’t everyone think that, now and then? But Jo was frowning, she was still talking. ‘Baby baby baby. Look, it’s your body. I’m not saying it’s healthy exactly, for you and him, but Christ. It happens. Get over it.’

  They’d talked about something else, then: Jo had a boyfriend, she said. ‘Not a boy, exactly,’ she’d said, wry. ‘He’s nearly fifty, been married once already, teenage kids. I like him, though.’ A pause. ‘He’s a builder, too. Seems like a grown-up.’ Then they walked back in through the big revolving doors to the magazine, and up separate staircases without a word.

  Fran made herself think, There’s been no rift, things just evolve, but Jo’s angry face when she said, Baby, baby, baby took too long to disappear. She’d just have to get on with it.

  They moved out of London.

  She didn’t ask herself why he wanted to do this, suddenly. She told herself, this isn’t surrendered-wife crap, I’m making it work. She cleaned the house, made the curtains, she took the bus to Oakenham with Emme in her buggy, walking her around and around until she slept, to the butcher’s and the baker’s and the swings. She sat by the river with her bare legs stretched out in the sun and her eyes closed repeating to herself, I’m happy, we’re happy. What else could she say?

  Then one day she’d opened her eyes and there on the bridge was a man watching her, and with the way he looked at her it all came back. He had waved and she had sat up, her hand to her mouth.

  Was this, she wondered as she walked home that day, a different, secret energy humming inside her, so much that Emme turned in the buggy to look up at her as they jolted along the towpath, how life worked? You settled into a groove, a family like other families, life as flat and endless as the wide, rich, dark-earthed fields, you assumed this was it and then you hit a stone in the road, someone turned and smiled at you in the sunshine as if they knew what you were thinking and everything was different.

  It was nothing but a tiny grain of difference, that old chemical in the bloodstream; it was just daydreaming. She had bought the dress, after going into Oakenham’s only decent clothes shop five, ten times and pretending to consider things, inventing occasions for the benefit of the increasingly wary middle-aged proprietor. A party, a weekend away. But they never went out to dinner or to hotels. No one invited them to parties.

  Sometimes it brought her up short, breathless with anxiety, what would Nathan say? Who are you buying pretty dresses for then? But all he ever said was, ‘How was your day?’

  No harm in dreaming. And then she would smile back. ‘The usual. You know.’

  And sometimes she even wondered if he did know, and he was happy for her.

  Carswe
ll and Gerard filed into the kitchen, carrying a silver box, and Fran went quiet. ‘We’ll give downstairs a quick once-over first,’ said Gerard. ‘If you need anything from upstairs before we get started.’ She bobbed, yes, and they moved inside the house. Carefully Carswell closed the door behind them.

  Fran turned back to Ali. ‘Things were OK, honestly. I don’t know what I can say. Whose marriage is perfect? He was away from home a lot, that’s the only thing that upset me, conferences and all that. But…’

  It pattered in her head, freezing her under Ali Compton’s kind look. She’s asking about my marriage because she thinks I must have known, all along. She thinks I asked the man into my bed, they’re sure even if I’m not, he wasn’t Nathan, he wasn’t a dream, they think I had a lover, they know …

  ‘We were fine,’ she said, lowering her voice, getting to her feet. ‘Look, I’ve just got to … I’ll be quick.’

  Fran took the stairs two at a time.

  In the bedroom she set Ben on the carpet on his back, and put a little hooped contraption of dangling plastic animals over him. She could hear them moving around downstairs. Ben quieted, reaching over his head for a red elephant, his small foot setting itself with determination flat against the floor to lever himself towards them.

  She put her finger to the mobile on the bedside table and the screen sprang to life: 10.18 a.m., Wednesday 10 February. Sunday was Valentine’s.

  Nathan. She sat back on her heels. Nathan.

  They never did Valentine’s, it hadn’t ever figured, nothing to look forward to except possibly some scoffing, from Nathan. But this year he’d bought a card.

  She reached for the drawer in the bedside table, but as she hesitated a message sprang up on the mobile’s screen. Are you OK? I saw it in the paper, is that Nathan? Nathan’s dead? She stared at it for no more than a second, her thumb trembling over the delete button. Gone.