by Sam Hayes
Robert retreated as far as the shower enclosure would allow. He banged his elbow on the glass, which Erin instantly made a point of kissing better. Before he knew what was happening, she unbuckled his trousers and dropped the saturated material to his ankles.
‘While I’m down here . . .’ She grinned, staring up at Robert and massaging his buttocks with gel.
Robert felt himself respond. If he didn’t stop her now, he knew he would succumb and while part of him was screaming out to allow her to continue, the sensible side, the lawyer side of him, forbade it. With a massive surge of self-control, he stuck both hands under her armpits and hauled her upright. Their faces were close, the magnetic space between them filled with thick steam and the zing of lime shower gel. Robert tried, but failed, to gain an insight by staring deep into Erin’s eyes, in case he saw something that would make him change his mind.
‘How many times do you think we’ve made love?’ Robert heard himself asking. He had no idea how this was going to come out, only that he knew it had to.
‘Let me see.’ Erin thought it must be a game and began counting on her fingers and then borrowed Robert’s and then dropped to her knees again to use his toes. She stared up at him and said, ‘Two or three hundred?’ before continuing with her mouth on his wet skin.
Robert dragged her upright again, roughly this time. Erin rubbed at her sore shoulders and frowned.
‘Hey . . .’
‘So what do you reckon I owe you then, considering it’s all been on account?’ Robert levered Erin aside and turned off the water. He pulled up his wet trousers, which wouldn’t come up easily, and wiped his hands over his face. He studied his wife, searching for any reaction, however minute, that would convince him that Baxter King had made a terrible mistake. There was nothing. Erin stood completely still, staring at the droplets on the glass.
‘Time to settle my bill, I think.’ Robert took a step forward, knocked Erin back against the tiles. He truly didn’t know what he was doing when he took each of her wrists in his hands and raised them above her head, pinning her to the wall. He pressed his face close to hers but she turned her head to the side and closed her eyes. ‘How much do I owe you for all the sex? Tell me what you charge.’ Robert’s voice ricocheted off the glass. ‘Tell me!’ he yelled.
‘I don’t know what you mean, Rob. Stop this. You’re scaring me.’ Erin dared to open her eyes. Robert’s face was veined and red and mapped with worry lines that she’d never noticed before. ‘Let me get a towel. I’m freezing.’
Whether it was the sound of his wife’s voice or the sight of her small body trembling beneath his grip, Robert wasn’t sure, but something in him gave a little, and he allowed her out of the shower. He knew that she couldn’t possibly be cold. The room was stifling. She was shaking with fear.
Robert followed her out and stood, dripping, in their en-suite bathroom while Erin put on her robe. She wrapped the white towelling around her, pulling it closed up to her neck. She eyed the doorway to their bedroom but Robert was standing in it, both arms stretched across the opening.
‘How much?’ he spat.
‘Robert, what happened last night? You’re acting so strange.’ Erin’s voice was several tones above its usual pitch and faltered over each word. Robert noticed immediately.
‘I didn’t go to a conference,’ he admitted. He fixed himself in the doorway, determined to keep Erin trapped until she confessed. ‘I went to Brighton.’
They both felt it, as if the humid air was suddenly freeze-dried and the gap between them had become an impenetrable pack of ice. Robert watched Erin for a reaction but she was silhouetted by the midday sun streaming in through the opaque window behind her. It had no effect on the chilled atmosphere.
‘Brighton?’
‘I went to see Baxter King.’ All Robert’s senses were on red alert to gather Erin’s response. But she simply stood, hugging her robe around her body, shivering, her soaking hair dropping rivulets of water down her face. She made no attempt to wipe them away. The seconds before she spoke seemed like hours.
‘Is he a lawyer? A client?’ Erin pulled herself flawlessly into a role Robert didn’t recognise. Her voice transformed into that of a confident woman and she appeared to gain an extra six inches in height. She strode up to Robert with an inner calm and deftly ducked under his arm into the freedom of the bedroom.
‘I’ve not heard you mention him before,’ she called back as she swiped clothes from the wardrobe and tossed them onto the bed.
Robert turned in the doorway. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. With her back to him, Erin slipped into denim shorts and a halter-neck top and wrapped her dripping hair in a towel. She was acting as if she’d never heard of Baxter King. At her dressing table, she wiped on face cream and applied a stroke of mascara. She seemed positively upbeat, as if Robert had mentioned a completely inconsequential name that would never occur in conversation again.
Robert desperately wanted to accept the wash of relief that his body was begging for and his heart was in need of a break from the steady stream of adrenaline which had fuelled it for over twenty-four hours. It would have been easy to accept Erin’s assertion that she had never heard of Baxter King; easier still to fall into bed and carry on what she had started in the shower. His wrecked body needed it. Robert pressed on, fighting away the memories of Jenna hanging on every word.
‘So you’re telling me that you’ve never heard of anyone called Baxter King?’ Robert paced around the bedroom as if he was briefing a jury in court.
‘Correct.’ Erin spoke without moving her lips as she applied lipgloss.
‘And am I right in thinking then that you’ve never lived in Brighton?’
‘Absolutely. I’ve never even been there.’ Erin put on her watch.
‘So if I said to you that I’ve heard otherwise, that you do know Baxter King and you did live in Brighton for a number of years, what would you say?’ Robert stood directly behind his wife, staring at her in the mirror.
‘I’d say you’d heard wrong.’ Erin didn’t blink, barely breathed and returned Robert’s look with perfect composure and an honesty that was hard to question. Her hands were locked together on her legs, the only discernible movement being the minute flicker under her left eye.
Robert saw it and noticed also how she was unable to help a tiny swallow followed by a minuscule jaw twitch – all the things his years of experience trained him not to miss. He’d sat in enough police interview rooms to know the symptoms. Erin was too controlled, just too artificial.
‘And if I asked you another question, one that could change everything between us forever, do you swear that you’ll answer me truthfully?’
‘Of course but—’
‘Did you once earn a living by having sex for money?’ Unable to use the word ‘prostitute’, Robert spat out the words like machine-gun fire, aimed at the back of Erin’s neck.
She swung round to face Robert and stood up. Their faces were inches apart. She held a perfect defence, her frosted blue eyes melting with tears in order to win Robert’s sympathy, in order to buy precious seconds to think. Her lips parted a little, not to speak but to display ultra-feminine shock. Robert wondered if she would wipe the back of her hand across her brow and fall gracefully to the carpet.
Instead, they were both knocked off balance by a loud bang downstairs and frivolous teenage banter in the hallway. Within moments, piano music filled the house as Ruby played her latest composition loud and strong.
Robert didn’t know what to do. The moment of strike had been missed. Like an army general standing in the war zone with his troops gathered around him, weapons poised, Robert quickly assessed the situation. A third party had inadvertently entered the battlefield, stumbling across territory that was about to become an area of destruction, smoke and bleeding bodies. To spare the innocent, Robert allowed Erin to flee the bedroom. As she went down the stairs, she called out to her daughter, asking why she had come home from school so early.<
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Robert sat on the dressing-table stool and stared at his reflection. A worn-out face grimaced back, not directly at himself but over his shoulder, following the path by which his wife had just exited. He could still smell her and he felt the warmth of her on the stool. The signs had been there, no doubt. Robert debriefed himself by playing over the scene again in his head.
‘So I put it to you,’ he said quietly to his reflection, ‘that your beloved wife is a skilled liar and a common hooker. I also put it to you, for careful consideration, that you are an idiot for not realising it sooner. Case closed.’ He banged his fist on the dressing table. There was nothing more he could do. Erin had answered his question by not answering. He would go back to the office to think, to figure out a suitable sentence. Since his mind was bereft of sense or any vision of the future, he didn’t expect he would do much more than sit and stare at the paintings on his wall.
Robert changed into dry clothes. He went downstairs and was about to leave the house but froze in the hallway when he heard a deep voice crooning and laughing around Ruby’s words and her now intermittent music. In the dining room, he found Ruby sitting at the piano and a teenage boy leaning awkwardly over the body of the baby grand. The two kids were engrossed in coy conversation and affected giggles and didn’t notice Robert listening in the doorway.
‘It’s not!’ Ruby insisted, covering her chocolate eyes but leaving her beautiful smile exposed.
‘Sounds like it to me,’ the boy teased, poking at a few random notes on the piano.
‘Well, maybe just a little bit,’ Ruby confessed. ‘But not a love song in the traditional sense, ’cos I don’t know you well enough yet. It’s more a song of admiration.’ Then they both giggled again and Ruby flicked her long hair back over her shoulders, a nervous habit Robert had seen her do many times before. The two teenagers obviously fancied each other like crazy. Robert wasn’t sure if he had any rage left in him to fend off the attentions of the scruffy-looking boy.
‘Dad!’ Ruby squealed. The boy turned round and stood up straight, losing the inane grin on his greasy-skinned face. ‘This is Art. Remember I told you about him?’
Robert nodded grimly at the boy, allowing his eyes to briefly study his lanky body. He wore shredded jeans that barely held on to his hips and a faded T-shirt with ‘Nuke’ splashed across the front. His hair, a muddy, unwashed brown, was long and unruly with glints of yellow smeared at the ends. The boy surprised Robert by holding out his hand.
‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Knight,’ he said in a voice too deep for someone so skinny. ‘Rube was just playing me her new song. It’s cool.’
Robert managed to offer his hand in return but didn’t bother replying to Art. ‘Why aren’t you at school, Ruby?’ His voice was raw and jagged.
‘Study afternoon, Mr Knight,’ Art replied when he realised that no credible words were going to come out of Ruby’s open mouth.
‘Well then, shouldn’t you be studying?’ Robert hated himself for being cruel to Ruby, especially when she appeared genuinely happy.
‘We were going to study up in my room together.’ Ruby finally found her voice and blushed at the sound of it.
‘I think your mother and I would prefer it if you stayed downstairs to do your work.’
‘Nonsense, Robert.’ Erin came into the dining room from the kitchen carrying a tray of pizza and cans. ‘They’ll have peace and quiet upstairs. Here you go, love. Can you manage? ’ Erin handed the tray to Ruby and shot a look at Robert. The teenagers disappeared and so did Erin, back into the kitchen where she began to make a show of banging plates and pots and slamming cupboard doors.
‘And I’ll get more peace at the office,’ Robert yelled towards the kitchen. He left the house with a floor-shaking bang of the front door and drove back to Mason & Knight.
Den was obviously talking to a woman on the telephone. He’d got his feet spread wide apart, his chair pushed back from his desk and he’d loosened his scarlet tie. His face shone with tanned approval as he pushed his fingers through already tousled hair and flirted with the woman on the other end of the line.
‘I bet you say that to all your gentleman callers, you tease.’ Den grinned into the phone. ‘Oh, oh, I don’t think that’s fair! I’m a perfect gentleman. I hope to show you sometime.’ Den raised his arm when he saw Robert standing in his open doorway, beckoning him to sit opposite. ‘Yes, I’d like that. Well, maybe I will. I’ll call you later and we’ll arrange a time. Gotta run now. Bye.’
Den sank back into his chair and broke the knot of his tie completely, leaving it dangling around his open collar. ‘Phew, red-hot babe,’ he said, expecting a pat-on-the-back kind of response from Robert. Then, sizing up the stiff figure in front of him, Den silenced himself and frowned. ‘Robert?’
Robert breathed in deeply, the first decent breath he’d had in hours, and blew out a desolate, choked sigh. He put both hands on his neck and dug his fingers into the tight muscles stretched over his aching bones. As much as he wanted to say, ‘There goes another marriage,’ he didn’t. Instead, he gathered his thoughts and dragged his mind back to business.
‘It’s the Bowman case. I need you to take over.’ He gave no reason; that could wait until he heard Den’s reaction to his plea.
‘Now tell me what’s really on your mind, sunny Jim.’ Den closed his office door, opened his mahogany drinks cabinet and poured two shots of Jack Daniels. ‘Take, drink, and tell me everything.’ Den perched on the arm of the leather Chesterfield and waited for Robert to speak.
When Robert did finally manage to produce words that were connected with what was really on his mind, they were broken and incomplete and skirted hesitantly around the issue that he had reason to believe his wife was once a prostitute.
‘Basically, we’re not getting on too well. Bit of a mess, truth be told. Stuff in the past, that kind of thing.’ Robert knocked back his drink.
Den shifted uneasily and waited. Dealing regularly with difficult clients, he knew that squeezing facts, the extra gem that could secure victory in court, depended on giving them time, room to think. Leave a big gap for the truth after all the lies and confusion are done with.
But when, after several minutes had passed and Robert continued to drop further from reality with the weight of his problems, Den realised that his usual tactic wasn’t going to work. He said, ordering rather than asking, ‘Dinner at my house tonight. I’ll call Tula and let her know. If you need, you can stay overnight.’
Robert nodded and held up his glass for a refill. As he downed the next shot, his head and chest began to unravel and Erin and Baxter King and Jed Bowman and Ruby’s new boyfriend all went a little muzzy at the edges.
Den instructed Robert to go for a head-clearing walk while he wrapped up some work on a case due in court first thing in the morning. He said they would leave the office at six because Tula always served dinner at seven and that would give them time for a pre-dinner drink and private chat in the library before they ate.
Robert was comforted by the routine of it and did as he was told by taking a walk through Greenwich Park. He ended up beside the Roman ruins, a spot where he and Erin had taken picnics on several occasions soon after they’d met. Their stroll along Lovers’ Walk had sent pinwheels of excitement through him as he anticipated what it would be like to make love to the exquisite and mysterious woman he had recently met. Just the suggestion of anything to do with lovers while he was in Erin’s company – be it a film or book or the words of a song – aroused him insanely. But the best part, and he wanted to savour it for as long as possible, was the waiting, the not having her completely. He treated her like one of the rare flowers in the shop where he had first noticed her, arranging displays and dealing with paperwork while he watched and pretended to choose flowers. He cared for her like he wanted the exotic beauty to last forever. Even then, he knew he would love her. Even then, he knew flowers wilted.
Robert walked back towards the boating lake and took a bus, something he
never did, and returned to the office. Den had been right. The still summer air and hazy sunshine had eased the pressure in his head and for half an hour at least he had been able to think of the good times he and Erin had shared. It made everything seem not so hopeless. That even if Baxter King was right, that if his wife did have a messed-up past, there was a flicker of optimism he might be able to deal with it.
Now he was standing in the Masons’ kitchen, a thirty-foot-square room with stainless-steel appliances and a black and white checked floor, while Den popped the cork on a bottle of Faustino.
Tula was like a tiny mammal, Robert thought, as she scurried about the vast room in which everything was enormous. Even the refrigerator was the size of a double wardrobe. Tula wore tight black trousers with a lacy top stretched over her new, improved breasts, and a mass of gold jewellery accented her neck which was ridiculously smooth for a woman of her age. She also had on a navy and white striped butcher’s apron which, because she was so petite, came down past her knees.
‘My poor darling,’ she’d crooned when Den and Robert had arrived. Robert thought she was talking to her husband but was quickly embraced by the spindly woman, who had to stand on her toes to kiss him. ‘Den’s told me you have woman troubles again. And so soon into your marriage.’ Tula returned to the car-sized professional cooking range and stirred a sauce. ‘You want to do what Denny does to me, sweetie, when we have a tiff. Send her off to a health farm. It’ll do her no end of good. She’s obviously stressed and probably needs a good detox.’ Tula dipped her finger in the sauce and tasted it. ‘I can give you a number.’
Robert smiled, warmed by the familiarity and inane comments that he could always rely upon from Tula. Everything about her had been reshaped or uplifted or enhanced or implanted or removed. When she wasn’t in a Harley Street clinic begging her beloved surgeon to take away just a little more of her nose or to stretch her skin a little tighter, she was either at Madeley’s, the private club where he and Den played squash, being massaged or cleansed or shrunk in some kind of wrap, or she was lunching with friends, planning their next tropical vacation. And children weren’t a possibility for the couple, even if Den had wanted a family. Her body, she’d said, would be ruined.
