by Marrs, John
“Arthur? No, Kenneth Jagger. When Mr. Nicholson visited him he put down your address.”
“I think you’ve got the wrong Simon,” I replied. “His father’s called Arthur and lives in the next village. And as far as I’m aware, he’s never been to prison.”
A mental picture of the old coot behind bars made me smile.
“Oh, there must have been a mix up,” he replied. “Sorry to have troubled you.”
“Wait,” I interrupted before he hung up. “So someone using my husband’s name and address visited this man in prison? When was this?”
“Bear with me a minute,” he said and I heard the rustling of papers. “According to the visitor’s book, it was June 10, four years ago.”
“Well that definitely couldn’t be Simon because he went missing on June 4.”
“Missing?” the warden queried.
“Yes, my husband disappeared that day and hasn’t been seen since. The case is still open but he’s presumed dead.”
I mulled it over but I couldn’t work out who might’ve pretended to be you.
“What did this man Kenneth leave for him?” I asked.
“A watch.” Suddenly the dim glow of a light bulb emerged in my brain. I swallowed hard.
“It’s a gold Rolex, he continued. “ It feels quite heavy. Nice looking piece…” but by then I’d stopped listening. I felt a stabbing pain in my chest as his words bloomed like a drop of blood in a glass of water, staining everything.
I raced up the stairs and back into the bedroom to face a square green box lying on a shelf at the back of the wardrobe. Inside should have been the watch from your mother; the only thing she’d ever given you yet I’d never once seen you wear it.
Slowly I pulled it forwards and then stopped myself, reluctant to open it. If your watch was inside, someone had used your identity. If it was empty, it could only have meant one thing: you had taken it with you and left me on purpose.
‘Please, please, please,’ I whispered as the gold hinges creaked open. There was nothing inside.
‘No, you must have put it somewhere else,’ I decided. So I rooted around the rest of the wardrobe, but it was almost clear. I yanked all the folded clothes from inside bin bags and rifled through each pocket. Nothing. I felt inside each pair of shoes to see if you’d put it there, then rummaged through the drawers of your bedside table. Every time I drew a blank I’d think of somewhere else to look. I searched each nook and cranny of the house, even places I’d already hunted through when you first disappeared.
Then I threw my trainers on and ran to see the one person who could put my mind at ease.
*
“Who is Kenneth Jagger?” I asked, breathless from my run to their house.
I prayed for him to plead ignorance. Instead, Arthur’s face immediately drained of all colour. Two things I was now sure of - Kenneth was your father and you had planned to leave me.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he replied nervously and tried to close his front door. I stuck out my foot out to block it.
“Who is Kenneth Jagger?” I repeated; determined not to be fobbed off.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about. Now please leave.”
“You’re lying Arthur, and I’m staying here until you tell me the truth. Or would you like me to involve Shirley in this?” He soon surrendered when he saw my threat wasn’t an empty one.
“I’ll meet you behind the garage in five minutes,” he replied. He was there in two.
“How do you know his name?” Arthur demanded, keeping a deliberate distance from me.
“It doesn’t matter,” I replied, unwilling to tell him it was likely you were still alive.
“Has Kenneth been in touch?” he continued.
“Not unless it was through a clairvoyant. He’s dead.” Arthur looked relieved.
“Well? Was he Simon’s father?”
“No, I am,” he snapped, then paused. “But Kenneth is biologically.”
Arthur may have been a browbeaten, pathetic little man, but he wasn’t a liar. He reluctantly told me the story of meeting Doreen while she was pregnant, and how during her many absences, she’d often gone back to Kenneth.
“And Simon knew all about this?” I asked, amazed I’d not known.
“Yes, but not until he went to visit her in London. Kenneth was there and Simon found out who he was. It devastated him.”
I remembered something about your trip upsetting you, but you wouldn’t tell me what it was. What else had you kept from me?
“Simon never saw him again,” added Arthur. But I had proof he was wrong. “Now what’s all this about?”
I hesitated. I could have told him everything I knew: you’d upped and left of your own free will and six days later went to visit that Jagger man. But what would have been the point? If you had planned to come back, you’d have done it long ago. So I’d only be giving him false hope. And once he told Shirley, she’d have informed Roger and old wounds that were still healing would be reopened, all to find a man who didn’t want to be found.
What on earth would I tell the kids? For four years I’d lead them to believe their dad was dead; how was I supposed to explain I was wrong and that you’d left them? God only knows how much damage that could do. So all I told Arthur was that a prison warden had been trying to trace Kenneth’s next of kin after his death.
“Catherine,” he asked as I began to walk away, “how are the children?”
“You lost the right to ask about them the moment you accused me of murder,” I replied and left him to wallow in guilt alone.
*
I was beyond furious and needed to hurt you.
So I grabbed a pair of scissors and tore into your clothes. Ribbons of material from every jumper, pair of trousers, T-shirts and jackets flew through the air and scattered around the room. I didn’t want anybody else to wear clothes stained by your lies.
Framed photographs of you I’d kept on sideboards were hurled into bins. Any visible trace of you was erased from the house there and then. Suddenly I remembered the pink rose bushes you’d planted for me by the side of the house.
I ran to the garage, took the shears from a hook and hacked them to the ground. You planted them for me when I was at my lowest and they’d become a place I’d visit when I needed comfort. You’d even ruined that and when I finished, I sat on the lawn, too numb to blink, cry or to be sick despite wanting to do all three.
By the time everyone arrived home late in the afternoon, you were dead to me. Again.
“Where have Dad’s pictures gone?” frowned James, the first to notice.
“They’re in the loft,” I lied.
“Why?”
“Because I put them there,” I replied sharply.
The kids looked at each other, puzzled, but rightly sensed not to push me any further. Tom followed me upstairs to the bedroom.
“What’s going on Catherine?” he asked, concerned. When I didn’t reply, he put his hand on my shoulder and tried to pull me towards him. I couldn’t even look him in the eye.
“I’ve cleaned out the wardrobe, you can use it for your clothes if you like.”
“What happened today?”
“I woke up.”
Then I locked myself in the bathroom to try and put the roof back on my rage. It was only the second time I’d kept something from Tom - the first was something I’d never told a soul, not even you.
But your secret was far worse than mine.
Christmas Day, 1.07am
Tom and the children were fast asleep while I spent the early hours of Christmas morning in the attic, tearing up our wedding photographs.
I was struggling to get to sleep when I suddenly remembered where they were and I couldn’t let your face to remain in my house for even one more night. I didn’t look at any of them as I took them out of the albums and ripped them into pieces. By the time I’d finished, they surrounded my cold bare feet like confetti. I was too angry to go back to bed. I sat on the fl
oorboards listening to the central heating gurgle, thinking about you again.
I was livid with myself for the time I’d wasted crying over you; worrying about you; making ‘missing’ posters; phoning hospitals; mourning you… it had all been for nothing. You’d simply run away.
While we’d left no stone unturned in our frantic search, you were on your way to London to visit a man you barely knew to give him your most treasured possession. Your body wasn’t rotting in a ditch somewhere; it was very much alive and out there, away from us. I wished you were dead.
I clenched my fists every time I thought what an idiot and a liar you’d made of me. I was embarrassed and humiliated. The only person who I might’ve possibly confided in was Caroline but I’d lost her too. And even then I don’t think she could’ve taken on that burden without telling Roger.
It was like someone had attached a valve to my heart and any love I’d ever felt for you was leaking into the air like a foul smelling gas. And all the time, I kept returning to the same three-letter word. Why?
I knew where you’d gone in part, but it threw up so many new questions, each more impossible to answer than the last. Where did you go after you saw Kenneth? Who else knew you weren’t dead? How long had you dreamt of running away? Was it a spur of the moment decision or part of a twisted plan to marry me, play the doting dad and then move on? Why had I never felt you slipping away?
Were you more like your mother than you’d let on? Like her, did you have other lovers scattered around the country? Where does someone go when they have no friends and no money? Did you ever regret it but didn’t know how to come home?
Why, Simon? Why?
My frustration rang louder than the church bells would later that day. But the only thing I prayed for was that you were roaming the earth in an eternal state of wretched misery.
Because that’s exactly how you’d left me.
April 11, 8.25pm
There was nothing wrong with Tom; he was what most women would describe as Mister Right. But you’d taught me even the right people can wrong you when you least expected it.
I hadn’t jumped into my marriage with you wearing rose tinted glasses. I knew that given our history with both sets of dysfunctional parents that we’d be lucky to sail though life without a bump or two in the road. And when we bickered, or when screaming kids made the house feel like a prison, it was normal to fantasise about running away.
But that’s precisely how it should have remained - a fantasy. Only you’d made it your reality. And my logic reasoned that if you, the man I’d loved and trusted since forever could do that to me, then Tom, someone I’d only know five minutes in comparison, was going to do the same.
I took out my rage towards you on that poor innocent heart without him ever understanding why. I’d watch him over dinner and wonder why someone so attractive, funny, and caring would ever want to be saddled with a family that wasn’t his. Instead of feeling lucky or grateful and that I deserved him; I didn’t trust him.
I asked myself if I was just a stopgap until he found a younger, better-looking model who could give him kids of his own. I gave serious thought to having his baby. It was a man’s basic instinct to reproduce, and I was stopping him from doing that, even though he’d shown no inkling of wanting kids of his own. But having three hadn’t stopped you from running away.
Besides, I had a business to run, and I knew I couldn’t deal with all the craziness and upheaval another child would bring. And that meant it was a given Tom would leave me. That’s what people I loved did. They left me. Mum, Dad, Billy, you, Caroline…
So before he had the chance to run, I spent months trying to drive him away. I had to be aware of his every move; winding myself up a treat over what he was doing if he wasn’t doing it with me. I rifled through the glove box of his car hoping to find a pair of some other woman’s knickers.
I flicked through his wallet for receipts of places he hadn’t told me he’d gone to. I checked the suitcases he stored in his garage to see if they were packed in case he wanted to do a moonlight flit. One night, I even left the kids to sleep home alone while I stood behind a conifer outside his house waiting for female visitors.
But despite every sneaky, stupid way I tried to prove myself right, there was no evidence to suggest he was anything other than a decent, honest man. And that frustrated the hell out of me – if I’d missed traces of your unhappiness, I probably couldn’t see his either.
So I created arguments over nothing – missing groceries he’d forgotten to buy; not putting the bins out on time; even how he wasn’t satisfying me in bed.
All the time I knew exactly what I was doing. I just couldn’t stop myself from tarring all men with your filthy brush. They say the quickest way to drive a dog mad is to stroke it then smack it.
But my dog just kept running back for more.
May 12, 8pm
“Let me move in,” Tom asked suddenly.
“What, why?” I replied, confused that after all my goading, he’d still not cracked. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“I’m not stupid Catherine. Something happened the day you threw Simon’s clothes away. And while you’re obviously not ready to tell me about it, I know you need to feel more secure about us. So let me prove to you I’m serious. I love you; I love the children. We’ve been together more than two years now so let’s see where this takes us. Let me move in.”
I looked him in the eye, pushed him onto the bed and made love to him there and then, all the time knowing we were never going to last. All it did was extended the inevitable.
I went through the motions of pretending we were a family, trying to convince myself we might just work. But eventually my resentment towards you reared its ugly head again. I’d wake up in the night and stretch my arm across the bed to check Tom was still there. Once I shouted at him for not being next to me when all he’d done was go to the bathroom.
I gave him the silent treatment for the best part of a week when he came home from the pub with Roger later than usual. And when I found two phone numbers I didn’t recognise on my itemised bill, I refused to believe he wasn’t having an affair.
No matter how often Tom assured me he understood my unforgivable behaviour, you’d already ruined any future we could’ve had together.
And six weeks after he came to live with us, I asked him to leave.
***
Los Telaros, Mexico, Twenty-One Years Earlier
April 13, 3.10pm
The pool cue snapped in half as effortlessly as a toothpick when it made contact with the old man’s spine. He grunted as it thrust him forwards and he sprawled across the table.
His attacker, as equally drunk and elderly as his victim swung one hundred and eighty degrees with the remaining half of the cue in his hand and collapsed into a disorientated heap. His counterpart fumbled around the table for a ball to smack against his assailant’s head. But one too many Bourbons made him lose his grip and the ball nosedived a few feet across the room instead, barely nudging the skirting board.
Miguel and I tried our best not to laugh at the clumsy fight before us, and then stepped in to separate the drunken pensioners. Their arms span aimlessly like hurricane-damaged windmill sails, only making contact with the smoky air around them as they fought for the attention of the same prostitute.
“They’re like this every time,” explained Miguel, as he pulled the frailer looking of the two up from the floor.
“Aren’t they friends? I saw them arrive together,” I asked, safely concealing the other behind me.
“Friends? They’re father and son!” he laughed. “They share the same taste in women. By the time you leave the whorehouse, there won’t be much of life you ain't seen.”
*
I hadn’t intended to look for work, and especially not in a brothel and sex was the last thing on my mind when I walked through its doors. All I required was something alcohol-based to quench my thirst from the Mexican summer and a place to rest my blistere
d feet.
It had taken mind over matter to rid myself of my mental and physical dependencies on narcotics. But now my system was free from impurities, and while I wasn’t always able to keep the lid on Caroline’s box, only now and again did she manage to escape. By constantly reminding myself I had no other choice, I was able to imprison the memory of our confrontation again.
I’d spent a few weeks travelling and with my nose in language books learning rudimentary Spanish. But my need for a drink became lost in translation when I mistakenly asked a fruit farmer for directions to a watering whore, not a watering hole.
Many Mexican towns I’d blown through accommodated their own Whiskerias, and sold much more than Wild Turkey in their back rooms. Their neon signs targeted long-haul truck drivers who wanted to take their minds off the endless roads ahead with female company.
But with its orange tiled roof and black wrought iron balconies scattered across the first floor fascia, the bordello in Los Telaros resembled a hotel. There was no signage or indication it was anything else. Inside, porcelain lamps on smoked glass tables discreetly illuminated purple reception walls. Glass chandeliers hung from wooden rafters above white leather sofas and a solitary reception desk. Scented candles masked cigar smoke with hints of sandalwood and vanilla. The crushed velvet curtains remained closed to prying eyes.
Its true purpose was revealed inside in the bar, where men of all ages were fussed over by attentive girls in varying states of undress.
I sat at the counter, swilling ice cubes around my glass of Jim Beam, amused by the behaviour of the clientele. The girls’ acting abilities were faultless as they pretended to desire the customers and not the pesos in their pockets.
“Can I introduce you to a young lady, senor?” a barman began behind me.
“No, I’m just here for a drink,” I replied, turning around.
“That’s what all first timers say,” he laughed as he refilled my glass. “Are you European?”
